I’ve been mulling over Janus Rose’s recent 404 Media article, “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism.”. In many ways, she’s not wrong. But once again people are ignoring an entirely other way of doing social media that can, in fact, fight fascism.
. . .
What is to be done? Well, Rose argues that there is no antidote to Trumpian poison to be found in merely taking to social media and posting about his (or Elon Musk’s, or Pete Hesgeth’s, or any other Trumpist’s) bizarre or cruel statements. “If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president,” she writes, “it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.”
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Can folks doomscroll on the fediverse? Yes. Can folks post on the fediverse? Yes. Might they post about the latest outrage of Trump? Yes, definitely.
Does that mean they are failing to fight incipient fascism? No.
In fact, I argue that the act of running, moderating, and participating in federated social media is precisely the sort of organizing that Rose calls for. It’s just taking place in a media environment, rather than, say, in an NGO’s offices in a city.
Nah you’re not going to post your way out of fascism. The whole point of Musk and Trump is they literally dgaf about what people say. Actions matter, and organizing on any social media that’s easily reachable by AI might as well just fax the FBI their plans.
Opsec is not the fediverse’s strenth, no. Anything you post here is going right to the FBI, courtesy of Palantir and Peter Thiel.
Anything you post online ANYWHERE is likely to end up there: if it’s not e2e encrypted, then you just told the FBI, and even if it is, you probably shouldn’t trust that it’s actually secure unless there’s public audits showing that it is, and you’re using a reproducible build from verified source.
…also, unrelated rant: stop taking pictures of people at protests and posting it online. Why is everyone doing state security’s job for them?
Pictures prove that protests were big and non-violent
And that would be good… why?
To attract more people to the follow ups
Both of those people are SO FUCKING THIRSTY for constant approval.
Musk wants to be acknowledged as superior by everyone, Trump only cares about a few fashie friends/idols/key holders of his.