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Social Media Safe Spaces

Posted by Matt Birchler
— 1 min read

Elaine Godfrey writing for The Atlantic:

In Arizona this weekend, 51-year-old Tammy Shutts put it this way to me: “100 percent, 1,000 percent, 1 million percent Biden didn’t win” her state, she said, gesturing to the hordes of people around her. “I’ve been in Arizona for almost 21 years. There is no way—no way—we went blue.”

Here's what I'll say: one of the things I love about Twitter is that despite what conservatives like to say, everyone is there and there is a wildly diverse range of thoughts being shared all the time. I don't need to go find a "pro-Trump" network because pro-Trump people are all over Twitter, and Twitter's UI makes sure I see whatever hashtag they're getting trending at that moment in time. Swap in whatever political/sports/business/whatever you want, there's almost never a "everyone on Twitter thinks X," because there are tons of people disagreeing about that thing.

Anyway, this person at a Trump rally saying, "how could he have lost, look at all these people who agree with me!" made me think of these conservative social networks we see cropping up, and how they're very much trying to create safe spaces.