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Sally Skinner's avatar

I have a heavy heart. I am avoiding Twitter now. I became so enlightened there. I am older and have health problems. I need my life to be more simple as I slow down. 🐌 🥲 keep up the good fight! I am a cheerleader!

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Steve Pecile's avatar

Another great piece by Dr. Zimmer. I always find reading Dr. Zimmer's pieces help inform my own views and am thankful for the access. Twitter is a mess, and perhaps it is a microcosm of what is happening to western democracies. The advent of technological access promised and delivered incredible potential for greater conversational connections as Dr. Zimmer noted. While maddening at times, and occasionally hampered by bad actors, it still managed to establish and grow those conversations between experts and average people like me. Personally, it served as a re-awakening. Now in my 60s, it felt like I was in my 20s going back to university. I didn't mind having to bat away the odd troll because the access to, and wealth of, intelligent educated diverse views reinvigorate my desire to participate again. It did so during a time when our western democracies had been failing to provide the promised benefits of a better world. Wealth inequalities had widened not only domestically, but globally. More and more power had been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. And social media has become the next battle ground for power. I think it is in that environment that we must understand Musk's almost visceral destruction of Twitter. And it isn't only Musk. Plenty of billionaire funded dark groups have been toiling away to pit communities against each other, destroy participation, or otherwise distract from their wealth hoarding. I am somewhat buoyed by the response of many with some social media power to reject Musk's rather erratic and infantile moves, but worry that the fallout still achieves the hostility towards democratic pluralism that people like Musk intrinsically want. Insights like those provided by Dr. Zimmer help and I hope they will find other avenues should Musk's destruction become total.

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