What Are People Still Doing on X?

[demmiblue]

Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout

This has been a banner month for X. Last week, the social network’s built-in chatbot, Grok, became strangely obsessed with false claims about “white genocide” in South Africa—allegedly because someone made an “unauthorized modification” to its code at 3:15 in the morning. The week prior, Ye (formerly Kanye West) released a single on the platform called “Heil Hitler.” The chorus includes the line “Heil Hitler, they don’t understand the things I say on Twitter.” West has frequently posted anti-Semitic rants on the platform and, at one point back in February, said he identified as a Nazi. (Yesterday on X, West said he was “done with antisemitism,” though he has made such apologies before; in any case, the single has already been viewed tens of millions of times on X.)

These incidents feel all too natural for Elon Musk’s social network. Even without knowing the precise technical reason Grok decided to do its best Alex Jones impression, the fact that it became monomaniacally obsessed with a white-supremacist talking point says something about what the platform has become since Musk took over in October 2022. Specifically, it validates that X has become a political weapon in his far-right activism. (To be clear, white farmers have been murdered in South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates, according to Reuters. But there is no indication of a genocide. In 2024, eight of the 26,232 murders nationwide were committed against farmers. Most murder victims there are Black.)

This has been obvious to anyone using the site or paying attention to Musk’s managerial decisions. He’s reinstated thousands of banned accounts (QAnon supporters and conspiracy theorists, and at least one bona fide neo-Nazi) and the platform is engorged with low-rent outrage porn, bigoted memes, MAGA AI slop, and, well, a lot of people proudly using racial slurs, frequently to attack other people on X. The platform’s defenders would likely argue that X is a true experiment in free-speech maximalism and that it is one of the only truly neutral zones on social media. Musk and his sycophants have constantly cited his takeover as an attempt to “solve free speech”; Joe Rogan has suggested that Musk has done just that. (This isn’t quite true, as X has complied with government takedown requests, temporarily suspended journalist accounts, amplified accounts that promote Musk’s worldview, and tried to censor words its owner doesn’t like: Last year, it briefly warned users who attempted to use the word cisgender in posts, after Musk said he considers it a “slur.”)

…

You may not have any interest in participating in a culture war. The problem is that on X, everything is a culture war. Culture war is the very point of the MAGA AI slop the platform traffics in and the viscerally cruel White House X account. Culture war is behind Tucker Carlson’s choice to debut his post-Fox show on X and why Alex Jones livestreams on the platform every day. West’s nihilistic neo-Nazi single is an act of culture war: Its message isn’t just that X has energized his ideas, but that the platform renders people like Ye unignorable. Only Musk could shut this machine down, but plenty of others lend it their credibility and happily turn the cranks, ensuring that the culture war grinds on and on.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/stop-using-x/682931/?gift=bQgJMMVzeo8RHHcE1_KM0ZFAJnC47hGETLAEy8bNA0Q&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

[Scrivener7]

1. Excellent analogy. And those who are still using it are, indeed, drinking with the Nazis

and enriching the Nazi bar owner.

[Basso8vb]

2. Enabling naziism.

[regnaD kciN]

3. Vultures of a feather...

…flock together.

[RockRaven]

4. Actively bringing about their own immiseration and abjection while lying to themselves

about both goals and consequences.

[womanofthehills]

5. Most all the Dem politicians are on X

What is really covered in depth on X is the genocide. Palestinians sadly post in real time the atrocities happening to the children. The Drs in Palestine post direct from the hospitals. Israel can’t hide what it’s doing to the children because it’s a real genocide on our phones in real time day after day.

Most independent journalists are X as are tons of Democrats. Obama has 130 million followers on X and AOC has 12 million.

[MineralMan]

6. I deleted my account there the day Musk carried the kitchen sink in.

I have not been near there since.

[PJMcK]

7. Because people EN MASSE are stupid

Social media is a cancer on civilized society. In all its forms-- X, FaceBook, InstaGram, etc.-- it fosters a ton of self-perpetuating bubbles of commonality that goes against the grain of logic and reality.

For example, YouTube now features mini videos of AI generated stories that have no basis in reality. I saw one the other day about a "woman" programmer who beat out her boss by retaining ownership of her software. Her "boss's" name was that of an Australian tennis player and there was no evidence on Google of Duck Duck Go that the person in the story even exists. Yet the video had a ridiculous number of comments saluting the so-called heroine of the clip.

People are fundamentally stupid. Perhaps that explains Benjaimin Franklin's quip. Following the Constitutional Convention, he was asked what kind of government we would have. He replied, "A Democratic Republic if we can keep it."

I guess he was correct.