One of the unexpected effects of Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter purchase is that non-woke and right-of-centre accounts on the platform have suddenly surged in popularity, while woke and left-of-centre accounts have lost followers. MailOnline has more.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter appears to have led to a split in users’ fortunes along ideological lines – with conservative figures gaining followers while leading ‘Wokerati’ go in the opposite direction.
The Tesla founder’s $44 billion bid was unanimously accepted by Twitter’s board on Monday. Shortly afterwards, prominent American right-wingers, such as Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., saw their follower counts shoot up while Democrats, like the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suffered falls.
The same dynamic is occurring in the U.K., with statistics from Social Blade showing Nigel Farage added 3,912 followers yesterday as he enjoyed his most successful period for at least two weeks – while left-wing talking heads James O’Brien and Owen Jones lost 241 and 546 each.
J.K. Rowling, despite being a critic of the Conservative party, has become unpopular with many left-wing Twitterati due to her stance on gender issues. Yesterday, she saw her followers increase for the first time in weeks.
Meanwhile, Harry Potter star Emma Watson appeared to be losing her magic touch – down 5,168 yesterday – while former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn shed 850 followers and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, 146. Actress Jameela Jamil, who has threatened to leave Twitter over Musk’s takeover, lost 615.
The picture was far rosier for right-wing figures, with journalists Douglas Murray, Fraser Nelson, Toby Young and Julia Hartley-Brewer seeing their follower counts rise 4,784, 24, 286 and 655 consecutively.
The fluctuation in follower numbers in the U.S. triggered a wave of theories seeking to explain the phenomenon.
Some suggested ‘free speech absolutist’ Musk’s takeover prompted developers to change the social media giant’s algorithm to highlight conservative accounts and suppress left-leaning ones – a theory that was slapped down by people who pointed out that Musk will not officially complete his purchase of the platform for months.
Others argued ‘woke’ Twitter programmers, who have been accused of silencing right-wing voices by suspending or banning controversial accounts whose views they disagree with, had adjusted the algorithm to be more balanced in an attempt to cover up their previous biases.
But Twitter blocked its staff from making programming changes to the app to prevent it being sabotaged, suggested that theory was off the mark.
Today, Carrie-Ann Sudlow, a digital marketeer and social media expert, insisted the changes were not the result of ‘an algorithm issue or a conspiracy’.
“When something like this happens in the world, the influencers like Nigel Farage have an opinion on it, and it’s either popular or not popular and that leads to them gaining or losing followers,” she told MailOnline.
“This is a big takeover from a very influential man. With influence comes strong opinions. Elon fans seem to be for or against with few sitting on the fence.
“He’s making a big impact on all areas of the world, his sceptics will not want to fund him so leave Twitter. His supporters will rejoice and jump on the back of the news hence gaining followers.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: @LD_Sceptics, the Twitter account of the Daily Sceptic, has jumped in popularity since Elon’s takeover and now boasts 20,300 followers. The Free Speech Union’s Twitter account has also exploded (~70,000). If you’re on Twitter, please give them both a follow.
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It’s inches away from being full on, nazi/communist type punishments. They are the type of people that took up important roles in the nazi and communist states. Evil people.
Answer is YES
Gay-Queer-Tranny Gestapo.
Case closed.
I’m reminded that the Bolsheviks started by abolishing the death penalty, and only developed the Gulag and extra-judicial execution when it was clear that softly-softly didn’t catchee monkey.
The logic of totalitarianism always ends up in “He’s not fit to live!”
“The Bolsheviks started out with the determination to remedy the abuses of Tsarist Russia. Under the Tsars, about 17 death sentences were carried out each year. The communist revolutionaries thought that outrageous. They screamed bloody murder: The death penalty should be abolished. However the contract contained a small footnote: In the beginning, there still would be executions it it was necessary to install communism itself as a system. In the first months after the Russian Revolution of 1917, there were 540 executions per year; after a few years, this increased to 12,000 per year; and between 1937 and 1938 more than 600,000 executions were carried per year.
Even more astounding than the numbers of victims was the arbitrary way in which people were sentenced to death. Each city and region was given weekly and monthly quotas that stipulated how many ‘traitors’ had to be arrested. If, at the end of such a period, the local mandate holders observed that the target number had not yet been reached, they took to the streets and arrested people at random:”
The Psychology of Totalitarianism
by Mattias Desmet.
Whatever happened to nudists?
Global boiling.
What this will achieve is that more and more people will develop a deep rooted evisceral loathing for the rainbow people.
Jordan Peterson became famous for declining to use preferred pronouns – he was perfectly willing to be courteous but unwilling to use ‘compelled speech’.
And so on to Emo. Not good enough for them to quietly be “…in the community have nothing against anybody who lives here or what their thoughts are.”. They must follow compelled actions.
And that is tyranny.
Interesting, how far we have traveled from the original aims of “gay people just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace”…
Now it’s “if you don’t celebrate us, we will terrorize you”.
Funnily enough, if you read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the similarities are quite clear: it wasn’t just some kind of hedonistic party community, it was actually a very dangerous and violent place where sodomistic rape was the way of life.
Still, it didn’t end well. It never does.
And look how Enoch Burke has been made to suffer for doing the exact same thing in Clown World, Ireland. The judge repeatedly seeing fit to punish him for not adhering to some bullshit, toxic ideology. And the fact this is Ireland, that I always thought was so uber-religious and traditional, makes it even more ironic. The woke mind virus trumps religion, it seems, although not Islam, from what I can tell. ”Christians, get to the back of the line.”
As far as I can tell, what happened in Ireland is that one state religion was replaced with another.
This new religion is intolerant, totalitarian and hateful; it doesn’t recognize the concept of forgiveness, it is based on resentment, envy and spite. It will eventually fail but leave a devastated, poor and deeply unpleasant ruin of a society behind.
”From the fruits you will know them”, indeed, the fruits of this particular tree are ripening right now.
”I am proof that men can get pregnant”, Jesus wept. I mean, nothing says ”I’m a real man” like being able to get pregnant then deliver a baby in a birthing pool via your VAGINA. Do you think she stopped taking her testosterone for 9 months? Going by the facial hair I’m not so sure…No fear of baby being exposed to testosterone via breast milk, that’s for sure. And of course the little one is ‘non-binary’, because why would you want to abuse your child’s ‘right’ to choose how they want to identify?
”Transgender birthing activist claims “women don’t own pregnancy” and uses they/them pronouns for her baby.
Non-binary babies? This is highly concerning.”
https://x.com/againstgrmrs/status/1870594538362097673
Is it Ever Legitimate to Compare a Pride Flag to a Swastika?
“As a lawyer who does this work, that means I’m going to start taking people’s houses and their vehicles and their toys and draining their bank accounts and garnishing their wages because no one is going to stop behaving this way until there are real consequences. Until there’s real financial pain that attaches to it. We’re going to keep doing that. Hopefully, the message will eventually get through that you have free expression, but that doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.”
Douglas Judson, Director of Borderland Pride
“For you must also understand this, my people’s comrades: No leader can use more strength than his followers give him! What am I without you? What you do not give me, I can never use for your own benefit! If you refuse me your unanimous unity, what should I do?! I am a single man, I can possess the best will. The will is not worth more to you than your will is worth to me! And that brings us to the problem of freedom! Freedom, yes! Insofar as the interest of the national community gives the individual freedom, it is given! Where the freedom affects or even impairs the interests of the national community, the freedom of the individual ceases! Then the freedom of the national community takes the place of the freedom of the individual!”
Adolf Hitler (1937)
Well noted parallels, the words may differ but the message is the same.
The word that I hear all the time is ‘community’.
We’ve already seen the Nazi-lite in action: Trudeau suspending the bank accounts of anyone who participated and donated to the Truckers-against-mandated-jabs ….. Paypal’s suspension of account of anyone who has political opinions which don’t conform to the “woke” and Nat-West’s banking attack on Nigel Farage.
It’s totalitariansim …. not quite as Hitler and Stalin carried out; more like the system Xi oversees in China.
Funny that ….
A Social Credit system will, they believe, MAKE you conform.
“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”
Justin Trudeau
Really? I’d not heard that one before. Nothing would surprise me anymore.
‘They’ certainly made a massive fuss when Farage mentioned a level of admiration for Putin.
Here is the evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0&t=133s
Justin Trudeau’s China dictatorship gaffe
He is also a WEF Young Global Leader, like Jacinta Ardern.
How about this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2LTTy1p4k8
NPR CEO Katherine Maher claims striving for “the truth” is a “DISTRACTION”
I think there is a difference between Farage and Trudeau on this matter. Trudeau admires Xi for what he can get done using totalitarian rule while Farage admired Putin for fighting Russia’s corner (this was before he invaded Ukraine). I do not think Farage wished to emulate Putin’s totalitarian methods.
The statement of this lawyer is basically I will completely deprive them of the means to lead a human existence. This doesn’t seem particularly light to me. Even people in Nazi concentration camps had roofs over their heads and were clothed and fed (until the last stages of the war at least, as the scarcity of everyhing due to the renewed total trade blockade obviously hit inmates even harder than the general population which was already slowly starving). Judson doesn’t plan to be so generous with his targets, he just doesn’t want or doesn’t need to get his hands dirty with inflicting physical and possibly lethal harm on them. He’ll just create the circumstances which will see to that.
Well I learned something reading this piece. I could have sworn that ‘garnish’ meant to decorate food. Thanks to the morally repellant Douglas Judson, I now know it also means ‘an unauthorized fee formerly extorted from a new inmate of an English jail’. I’m glad Judson believes in extortion.
“Borderlands Pride to have arrived at the ‘incorrect’ answer, a complaint was then made to the HRT, who also agreed the locals had arrived at the wrong answer – and so demanded they reverse their decision immediately, or else. ”
Sounds like that haven of democracy the EU!
The mayor should refuse to pay a dime and make them oust him. Hold a vote among the townsfolk about this nonsense. Go on Jordan Peterson’s podcast and tell the world.
Publicity may be a good disinfectant.
It is just a failure of the resolution of the paradox of tolerance. Sometimes you have to admit that your intellectual endeavours end in failure
Just checked the comments and whilst they make good points nobody is suggesting anybody actually DO anything to resist this totalitarianism, which is all over the place in our country. E.g. councils plastering LGBT symbols all over the place. Not saying I’m any better but why are we all so compliant in practice?
The Nazis didn’t start full-on did they.