The following message is charged, and I truly don’t expect everyone to start making massive changes overnight. Heck, you might not agree with me at all and I welcome the conversation.
But.
If you’re still on Twitter, at this point, you clearly support a certain type of leader with very anti-democratic and anti-rule-of-law tendencies. Same goes for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp (though good luck (to me included) getting people to move away from that). Amazon as well. And quite a few others companies.
Every ad-view those companies get from you is money in their pockets. Do you support people doing the very evil salute? I hope not, because we can’t be friends then. And every post or like on Facebook keeps promoting a leader that is now acting on their belief that diversity is bad. Every scroll on TikTok? Keeps it in the zeitgeist to keep pushing extremist propaganda to people.
The last few weeks have highlighted that Europe has to double down on itself if it values democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Many companies (and politicians, but we can’t choose the politicians in other continents) have chosen to follow a path that, in my opinion, is much darker. And every time we encourage them, they undermine us. So if you believe in European values, act on them.
Today’s rant sparked by the following news:
- study found that TikTok and Twitter feeds in Germany are biased towards not the right, but the far right
- more Meta layoffs of anyone that dared take any longer leave (think health or pregnancy) in the previous year (and calling them low performers)
- Amazon stripping away your ability to download ebooks
- more crypto cons, such as the most recent Milei-backed rug pull
