The Argument on staying on X

The new Substack for "centerleft" (lol) writers decided to open their launch with a passionate argument of why its totally fine to stay on Twitter.

There is a fuck-ton wrong with that article, but its always pretty nice when people are willing to write down in detail that they don't know how social media works in 2025.

The obvious issue is that surrounding yourself with hatred changes yourself, something that gets zero attention in the article. The second issue is that social media functions as sense-making tools, and it thus also impacts your perception of how you think other people view the world. Doing that in a nazi environment thus makes you think that nazi thoughts are more acceptable and mainstream than they are IRL.

But what really stands out to me is the total lack of a theory of power. It says:

But leaving Twitter in 2025 is not deplatforming Nazis, it is deplatforming yourself. The Nazis have already taken over the bar. The question is who will come to take it back"

It is a good question: how do you actually take power back from nazis? Which makes it very funny that the article does not even attempt to answer their own question they raise. Like seriously, its really weird how the article has nothing to say about this. It continues to talk about the possibility of persuading the normies that are still on X. Which might or might not happen, but thats an answer to a different question altogether.

It says: "We do not control the bar, we are not the proprietor or the landlord. We have no power to deplatform anybody. We are a small group of patrons, hoping we don’t get kicked out of the bar before we get the chance to grab the aux cord again."

Which is a pretty good observation! It also answers the question raised earlier by in the same article, namely that you cannot really take back power from a nazi owner of X. Which is kind of a big problem!

So to summarise, the article is both morally wrong, completely misunderstands how social media works, and does not even bother to make an attempt at answering the core question of the article. Its the final thing that really grinds my gears: I can deal with intellectual or moral disagreements. Its the lazy writing of not answering the core question of your article that really bothers me.

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