And I’m getting sick and fucking tired of the phrase “echo chamber”.
EVERY FUCKING MESSAGEBOARD / SOCIAL PLATFORM IS A FUCKING ECHO CHAMBER.
Feel free to name me one that isn’t.
Right? Right.
I mean, this messageboard has folks on the “same team” having a go at each other (ergo - the pit), hence, could here be one of the least echo chamber-y places, then? (Yeah, I realise this is getting away too much from Elon…)
Meanwhile, Elon is blaming the Jews for Viktor Orban’s crushing electoral defeat.
Better the fictional Soros organization than the real musk or Orban organizations.
Elmo’s net worth is almost 100 times that of George Soros. The obvious question is, why isn’t Elmo outspending Soros to save the world?
Because his goal is to play with it, like a cat and mouse, not save it.
The funny thing about these sorts of wild claims is that there’s never any explanation for exactly how this worked. You know, that whatchamacallit thing – “evidence”! 
I’m still waiting on his check for my No Kings participation. I’m beginning to think I’ve been stiffed.
Bastard.
I’m not sure I agree that all platforms are echo chambers. I would say all platforms contain echo chambers. And all platforms will have certain practices that are generally unchallenged because they become part of the culture there.
But any sufficiently large platform has people who will disagree. Sure, BlueSky has a lot less transphobia than Twitter, but that’s because Twitter has a huge transphobic community that BlueSky lacks. Whether intentionally or through the algorithm, these transphobes find all the trans posters and they can’t stand their existence, and thus go after them.
On Bluesky, they seem to just create lists that block everyone who disagrees with them. (People are told when they are added to a list, apparently.) See, there’s that “contains an echo chamber” concept.
On the other hand, that’s the favorite cry of Bluesky trolls too. “Why won’t you let me into your house so I can shit on your living room floor? Is it because you’re afraid of dissenting views?” Blocking those openly posting in bad faith has certainly made Bsky a better place for me. But I don’t use blocklists - they are too easy to abuse.
There’s the old trope of freedom for sheep and freedom for wolves being a) very different things, and b) incompatible with one another.
As applied to social media spaces, or a bar on Friday night, that becomes:
- There’s freedom for mean people and freedom for non-mean people.
See also the Paradox of tolerance - Wikipedia.
I think there are 3rd-party apps that will help you figure that out, but I don’t think it’s an internal feature of Bluesky.
It was interesting to me how many leftist/liberal people I was friends with on Twitter who decided not to migrate, or who migrated briefly and then went back. I think it may be hard to give up the clicks. That was also true of some sports and some academic interest accounts I regularly interacted with.
Soros is simply the real life version of Emmanuel Goldstein.
Does he even exist? I’ve never seen him. I think you’re onto something.
“Pointless activism”..???
Rachel Maddow’s staff, at least, make sure that she’s a familiar presence on Bluesky. The account definitely supports activism, as it regularly chronicles both peaceful protests, and the efforts of US communities to block DHS from acquiring warehouses and such to house their political prisoners.
Elon uses the wrong sockpuppet account while fluffing his ego.
Elon is now facing criminal charges in France.
Good. I hope that more countries, or even the whole EU, follow path.
He’ll just flee to Mars, and good riddance.
A good analysis of the shell game Elon Musk has been playing with AI, as it has moved around between his various companies.
In court under penalty of perjury, he has contradicted statements he made to the public and to shareholders. Everyone should recognize that pattern.
The recent agreement to lease the SpaceX supercomputer to Anthropic, is because he doesn’t have a training model for Grok, he used the OpenAI model and now may face legal action as he didn’t properly license it.
He presumed he would get control of OpenAI and have full access to the model, but instead he’s off the board and out of the company. His lawsuit is trying to get it back, but it’s actually exposing his method of misrepresentation.
Musk invested more than $300B in xAI, but the entire group of cofounders walked out when he tried to make the OpenAI model for-profit as his own. Hence the need to now entwine xAI with SpaceX and the upcoming IPO.
In each case, he has represented his AI development as the reason for the massively inflated value of his company, but it was never his to begin with. What a tangled web we weave.
Late, by at least a year.
A federal judge has ruled the DOGE cancellation of humanities grants unlawful and unconstitutional.
She also created a class of all entities that had funding withheld from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) by DOGE, and ordered their funding restored.
The 143 page ruling is incredibly detailed as to how the decisions were made, and the variety of ways in which they broke the law. Also highly critical of the NEH director appointed by Trump, who allowed DOGE to act in his name and with his authority and his signature, without any justification or even the semblance of diligence.
The judge pointed out that although administrators are appointed by the President, their first duty is to the Congressional law that created, governs, and funds their agencies.
Lol, that will be news to Trump’s lackeys, who all think their first duty is to kiss the orange hindquarters.
The DOGE use of ChatAI to cancel grants is fairly entertaining, once you get past the outrage. These guys were functioning at a high school level (and that’s being charitable). Musk literally hired the most idiotic followers from his fan base. They had no other credentials or expertise, other than they blindly obeyed Musk.