[act-ma] Musk is the lord. We are the peasants.

[Evan Greer]

Hi folks, just wanted to flag that I have a piece out today in TIME
Magazine titled* "Elon Musk is the lord of Twitter. We are the peasants."*

*Here's the link:
https://time.com/6228045/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-future/
<https://time.com/6228045/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-future/>*

I try to take a step back and explore a bit of how we got ourselves into
this mess. Then I argue that Musk's takeover should be a wake up call: we
need to move past circular debates about content moderation that amount to
working the refs in a game we always lose, and start envisioning and
building the liberatory Internet that we want in the future.


*Here's an excerpt: *

"...even if he were the courageous, rights-defending super genius that his
> supporters seem to think he is, Musk’s claim
> <https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585841080431321088> that “the bird
> is freed” would be bluster at best. The truth is that we will never have
> meaningful free speech or human rights as long as we’re all digitally
> landless, paying rent in dollars or data. If we want a modern town square
> we can leave to our children and our children’s children, we need to build
> online spaces that can’t be owned or controlled by a single person, with
> tools to address harm, harassment, and injustice that give individuals and
> communities power over our own online experience."
>

I hope this is a helpful contribution to the many conversations happening
around this. Please feel free to share / amplify / respond / disagree ;-)

*Here's a few tweets to retweet if you'd like (i'm still setting up my
Mastodon):*
https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1588266050461859841
https://twitter.com/fightfortheftr/status/1588267991191670789

Cheers,
-Evan at FFTF


-- 
*Evan Greer*
Director, Fight for the Future <http://fightforthefuture.org>
Phone / Signal: +1 978-852-6457
Email: evan at fightforthefuture.org
Twitter: @evan_greer <http://twitter.com/evan_greer>
Music: evangreer.org
Pronouns: she/her/hers