It’s not Twitter anymore, it"s Xitter…
Pronounced “shitter”.
As there’s plenty of alternatives, I disagree that the platforms are the problem. Most people prefer to remain in their respective bubbles.
And if you must post Twitter shit, crop out everything but the content.
Billionaires should not exist
I would also support a wealth cap at eg. $10M, or a rule to a similar effect
1% tax imposed on any money entering or leaving a bank or stock account.
I’d like to see a soft cap implemented that’s tied to the nation’s average income (I think median would be the most fair, but it’s very possible I’m wrong). So for instance, the real median income in 2023 was about 80k according to census.gov. Let’s say we cap total wealth at 500x that median which = 40 million, after which taxes make it increasingly difficult to accumulate wealth, and have a yearly earnings soft cap of 100x = 8 million with similar restrictions.
I think that would drastically reduce inequality while still preserving different economic classes, which I think are critical to motivating people into difficult, high-value jobs like engineers and surgeons. Stacking up 500 years worth of income would let the rich stay wealthy, and a soft cap would discourage hoarding and encourage spending which stimulates the economy and spreads money around. If the wealthy wanted to be able to earn more per year or raise the soft cap they’d have to arrange for the average income to go up. Moreover, I <think> that increases across many people at the bottom would move the median more than a few large increases at the top, which would encourage a higher “floor” for earnings.
40 million is about 20 lifetimes.
The thing about lifetimes is you don’t need more than one. And surgeons/engineers aren’t making 40 million. You certainly don’t need that much money to motivate a professional class. Even if money was such a motivator.
There’s no reason for anyone to have more than a few million dollars at their command.
And surgeons/engineers aren’t making 40 million.
That’s true. I’m just ballparking numbers and gave surgeons/engineers as an example of what I consider difficult, valuable jobs (as far as education etc.). I don’t think they are the top paid individuals in America by a long shot.
40 million is about 20 lifetimes.
I think a person living with the best society has to offer (big house, multiple cars, a yacht, luxury trips, personal chef, etc) + setting up their kids to succeed (e.g. buying them a house) could spend 40 million in their lifetime . Obviously those aren’t necessities, but IMO enjoying the best society can offer is the hallmark of being in the top tier of a system with economic classes. It’s definitely just a ballpark, but I think the purchasing power of 40 million in 2024 dollars is a sustainable cap on wealth that would be immensely better for wealth inequality while still allowing the very successful to enjoy the best in life.
I don’t disagree a whole lot with what you said, but I think perhaps you are placing caps based on a middle-class life lived according to necessities + some luxuries like yearly vacations. Honest question, not putting words in your mouth I promise - are you expecting absolutely everyone to live a middle-class lifestyle (which I think makes caps on wealth a much harder sell)?
If they’re living in a yacht and doing luxury trips then they aren’t being professionals. The only group that’s incentivized by that level of wealth are the same people who are billionaires now. They will continue to operate in the same way.
I think someone who takes say, a month off per year could still be a professional. Even 2 or 3, which has them working 9 months a year. If you disagree it’s not the end of the world. If you have a grounded argument to make in opposition, go for it and I’ll listen.
Yes, they will operate in the same way (motivated by money) but they’ll do it at a drastically reduced level of societal harm. You come across as someone who isn’t greedy, and who understands the concept of “enough” which are admirable qualities I strive for myself - I live on disability payments and largely succeed in being thankful for it. However, making everyone happy with a middle class level of “enough” (i.e. no motivation to succeed beyond that) would require changing the nature of a lot of, perhaps most, human beings IMO. I think it would be a hard sell. Failing to convince at least most people to not strive past middle class living could lead to dissatisfaction, a collapse of the limits we’re proposing, and an eventual return to more harmful “norms”.
That sounds sensible. Yes I have exactly the same line of thinking.
Good luck getting the politicians in the billionaires’ pockets onboard.
After Watergate Americans learned that a free press could bring down a tyrannical government. So the Right got to work destroying the free press.
Reagan went after the Fairness Doctrine and made it easier for one company to own all the TV and radio stations in a town. The new tech helped destroy the local newspapers.
1996 Telecommunications Act
1996 is 16 years after 1980, when Reagan started it.
Blaming the Act is like saying Harry Truman won WW2 for the Americans.
The more I learn, the more I learn Republicans have been hurting America for decades
Try at least a century. Go listen to some of FDR’s campaign speeches, many of them are as relevant today as when they were given.
Around 55 years, when the southern strategy was enacted to solidify racist support for Republicans.
Before that the parties were more mixed and it was the confederates and robber barons doing the damage. Before that it was the slave owners. And before that it was the colonizers. Before that it was probably whichever tribe had the best growing season or pointiest flint arrowheads.
I’m starting to second guess what the point of progress really is. Are we trying to ride humanity out until the heat death of the universe? Or just the next billion years before the sun boils our oceans away? Another 2000 years so today’s assholes can become deities? 52 more years the the US Tricentennial?
The lethargic, stagnant, apathetic, merciless, ignorant, xenophobic state of humanity in the sci-fi Lord of the Rings fan fiction called Warhammer 40,000 is getting increasingly more prophetic.
Republicans and democrats controlled by big business and billionaires
And after the Panama Papers, they got to work with Khashoggi. After Epstein, they got to work with Twitter
Reminder of a lesson repeating again and again throughout history: banning twitter will make them more powerful.
Legislating against it legitimizes it and gives it a boost - “why would they ban it if they weren’t dangerous for speaking the truth?”Germany banning Nazi speech after WW2 legitimatized Nazis and gave them a boost in the 1950’s?
They were also banned in the 1920s. It just took a war with several million dead to discredit them. And now 80 years later they’re back, despite still being banned.
The time to do something about it was two years ago. The fucking morons who haven’t deleted their Twitter account have been keeping the Nazi bar alive and relevant, I hope they’re not surprised or complaining about anything now.
I left Twitter on the day, musk bought it. I knew, I could trust him with my data and him firing so many people proved me right. Twitter isn’t a safe place for your data.
His politics, now and then, would have been good reasons too but you don’t need politics. Everyday it becomes clearer, Twitter will fail.
Yeah that was the best time, the second best time is now.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good… you hear that abstainers?
The best-best time might’ve been 10 years ago or something but… now is good.
“Should not” is immediately countered with “Is, and what are you going to do about it?”
And so far, the answer is nothing.
By being here we are already fighting it.
Lemmy has a total userbase of around 60k, unless it’s grown since 2 months ago. Even if every single Lemmy user donated $10,000 each to a cause fighting elon musk, their efforts would STILL be less than a rounding error in comparison to his money.
And twitter userbase vs lemmy userbase is equally laughable.
We’re here because WE don’t approve of corporate bullshit. But make no mistake. Lemmy, nor we, are any threat to stopping musk. Just like Gen X was never a threat to Rupert Murdock in the 90s.
It may piss you off, but thats the reality. 40 years from now, musk will still hold more power than you ever will. He’ll continue to make more money in a second than you’ll make in a lifetime.
And I’m not defending him. I’m just stating facts. The people will not do anything to stop him. It would take a coordinated effort, from basically every person on the planet to take him down at this point…and that’s not happening.
60,000 x 10,000 is - 600,000,000… yeah ok for someone who has billions and billions 600 million dollars isnt anything.
That’s my point.
yes
Youre only pointing out that not enough people are fighting back, but being here is fighting against billionaire control of social media.
When you watch a hockey game, and your team is down by 3 in the 3rd, with 10 minutes left on the clock…is a comeback possible? Absolutely. But you have to pay attention to the quality of play. If your team is consistantly getting quality chances that miss by inches, sure. It’s entirely plausible that one goes in, starts a rally, and you score 2 more in 9 minutes.
But if the score is 3-0, and your team is lazily drifting on the ice, barely getting puck time, and then abandoning the puck through sloppy passes, and weak shot rebounds, then that 3-0 is everybit as intimidating as it sounds.
And right now I don’t see an environment where society is hungrily fighting for the puck. I don’t see people demanding an alternative. I don’t see people making any progress towards even trying to dismantle big vorporate interests and control.
I see a public that’s complacent. I see a public lazily saying they wish they could get rid of twitter, without finishing the thought process of how to do that.
It would be like saying “Linux has more features and more privacy than windows, therefore it existing and having an audience will mean it will kill windows!”
But forgetting to take into account that just because you’re passionate, doesn’t mean anybody else gives a shit. If they did, they’d already have switched. And the amount of people who have switched aren’t even enough to be worth mentioning the platform exists.
Im not talking about lemmy being generally critical of billionaires, i mean the platform itself and its use is directly fighting against billionaire control of social media, because its social media they cant control.
BlueSky has 14 million users and growing. Hoping it’s federated as planned soon.
The people will not do anything to stop him.
Sure seems that way.
Countering with money isn’t possible. People need to be mad(der). Barely withholding (or not) violence mad. In the streets mad. Revolution mad.
Had the chance to avoid the violence part before electing someone who flat out said he’d use the military against its own.
my brain decided you said replaced with instead of countered with, and I was trying to piece the sentence “Billionaires is, and what are you going to do about it? control our information feeds” together like a puzzle xd
He also controls Starlink, which apparently many new poling places had installed for this election.
We need a nationwide recount. Too many enemies of America have had access to our voting machines.
Should’ve used paper. https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs
I am always so disappointed to see how many people are still on that cesspool. It’s not even a good experience unless you pay, and even then it is still toxic as fuck.
“I have to be on it because everyone else is” - Everyone Else
Well, no, but yes. There’s a shit ton of company accounts exclusively on Xitter, also some local government services. I hate it, asked them to move but it was as successful as asking my municipality to move from Facebook… they are now on Instagram next to Facebook.
Trump says he may put Elon in his cabinet as a “Secretary of Cost-Cutting.” Simultaneously, within hours of his inauguration, he plans to enact a “Digital Bill of Rights” banning online censorship. I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon is appointed as the “Social Media Czar” instead.
Elon Goebbels it is
Tell your friends its time to switch to Mastodon
Because Twitter (X or Xitter (pronounced as Shitter)) is enshittified years ago
We need the big companies that people follow to start switching. Also my country uses Twitter for government info and alerts and I hate it
If Bruce Wayne (and subsequently Batman) was real, would he be on Reddit or Lemmy?
I feel like he would be running his own instance called The Bat Cave.
If Bruce Wayne was real I would hope that he got shot in the face while beating up the poors and his wealth confiscated in a 100% estate tax.
Okay there, Penguin.
Who do you think has been controlling your information feeds all along?
Television? Newspapers? Hell, even the town crier only told you what his masters wanted you to hear.
There should be a petition to vote for banning Twitter in the EU. It’s time we take a step against US Oligarchs and their election interference
