Checking Prior Assumptions

John Gruber, “X Once Again Marks the Spot”:

If you have stayed away, or even just mostly away, from X for years and then come back, people just say things like “Hey, glad you’re back!” On the other networks, especially Mastodon, they tell you you’re “feeding Nazis” — by going to the platform where Tim Cook posts Pikachu videos. These people have either lost their minds or refuse to check their prior assumptions.

Okay, you know, I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about this, but since I was linked to with the word refuse in that paragraph: let’s check my prior assumptions!

That was a link to “If Your New People Are on X, Maybe Your New People Suck,” in which I spelled out those assumptions pretty explicitly:

But the bar that hung the big FASCISTS WELCOME banner out a few years ago hasn’t changed management; the banner is now a permanent sign. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that most AI supporters on X, are, at the least, comfortable with soaking in an authoritarian-flavored social media stew.

John’s defense of X doesn’t address that, instead, it focuses on the undeniable truth that X is still much bigger than Mastodon and Bluesky combined, which—again, undeniably—means that many users there aren’t particularly interested in politics, don’t actively support Elon Musk or the Trump administration, and so on. I don’t think anyone can argue to the contrary. I never explicitly wrote “of course, people can still have perfectly normal, fun conversations on Twitter/X,” so let’s stipulate for the record that yes, of course, they can.

Let’s also stipulate for the record that they can behave in these ways:

And these ways:

My assumptions about X aren’t that no other platform has harassment, nor that it’s impossible to have friendly, apolitical discussions on it. Neither do I assume that X is the only platform in which people get harassed, or get doxxed. But I do assume that X is intentionally a right-wing political project, and I base that not just on a hunch, but on widely-reported studies, such as one published earlier this year that shows X’s “For You” algorithm shifts political opinion toward more conservative opinions. That study is based on an experiment from 2023, but it appeared to still be true in 2024, as 404 Media reported that the algorithm serves ragebait replies to Democrats more than Republicans.

But those are a whole two years old now, and X’s former head of product claimed the reply-boosting changed in mid-2026. And that’s for algorithm-driven engagement anyway. Perhaps we’d get a better idea of the modern X ecosystem by looking at the accounts with the most engagement this year. Nate Silver, of all people, can help:

Hmm.

Again, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to avoid politics on X, nor am I saying that John is wrong when he says that you’re way more likely to get shit for talking about using AI on Bluesky or Mastodon. What I’m saying is that neither of those contradict my assumptions.

I think when people say “Twitter is a Nazi bar”, it’s easy to dismiss that because Twitter is obviously nothing like, say, the Stormfront forum. So let me stretch the metaphor for a moment: Twitter is a Nazi bar in the same way that a neighborhood coffee shop run by an evangelical church is a mission. You can be a regular at that coffee shop for years without magically becoming an evangelical Christian. Everyone there is just so friendly and nice! Sure, there’s a weekly Bible study on the events calendar, pamphlets on a corner table, Christian soft rock slipped into the playlists. But it’s not overtly proselytizing. Right?

But that coffee shop is absolutely a mission. That’s what they made it for. And that’s explicitly what Elon Musk has turned Twitter into. As Dash put it, X’s point is its politics. The fact that you can have conversations about ostensibly non-political subjects there without feeling attacked is not a sign that X is “remarkably friendly and inclusive”; it’s a sign that what you’re posting isn’t drawing fire there. The political right wing supports generative AI far more the political left wing does, and it is worth pondering that uncomfortable truth for a while. Also, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if John Gruber posted a photo of himself at a “No Kings” protest in downtown Philly holding an “ICE OUT” banner, the responses on X would be somewhat less friendly and inclusive.

Okay. Whew. Prior assumptions checked. You know what? I’m feeling pretty good about them.