Curate a good group of sources/people to follow and it is most helpful. If one expects it to just provide what one seeks, without active participation in the search, well, yeah, maybe not such a useful tool to have in one's toolbox.

Personally, I think some older folks don't know how to utilize social media productively, thus feeling the need to disparage it.

It's all about the curation!

violence is not the answer, until it is. We have to be prepared to either accept violence imposed on us, using the path of Gandhi and MLK, or fight back against that violence, when it comes. What we should not do is initiate it.

We are in a war against propaganda, developing our own trusted sources for information is needed. Blue Sky is one source we know isn't state controlled right now, so it's valuable. FB, IG, and X are essentually state run social media right now, the billionaires who installed Trump using the power of those sites now control what people think. We need to fight fire with fire.

Not to mention violent attempts to fight back against civil rights activism...

I don't know that those not even alive then appreciate the same threats hanging over their heads now (and all of ours). Few have served in the military or faced violent blowback from participating in peaceful protests. They (we) are not prepared and that scares the hell out of me.

So more and more people became aware of, say, the lawlessness in which some Vietnam soldiers were operating with crimes against civilians, real body bags with bodies were shown nightly, and in other areas, they showed fire hoses being turned on children in the Civil Rights era, and the aftermath of Kent State. Because news sources were limited to local papers and nightly newscasts from trusted sources, these stories and footage brought the issues of the day into people's living rooms, and helped sway public opinion.

Now news is too disparately aggregated between 24 cable channels and 24-hour social media scrolls. We can each choose our own media and sources, and moreover, the mainstream media, in an attempt to retain viewers, has chosen to both-side everything and thus, sanewash the current GOP.

I think we have to do better than that.

"resistance." But I would argue leaving X for any other platform is an act of resistance. I am willing to bet acts of resistance will be born on BlueSky, just as they are sometimes originated here.

What should they do? Go to Truth Social? Why don't you let people decide where they want to spend their time?

what it all meant to a young mind. My first protest was a walk-out in high-school something to do with black-power. I was maybe 14, reading Malcom-X, scooped up into all that was going on around me. Womens-lib, wearing pants to school, going bra-less, tie-dye, bell-bottoms, hip-huggers, mini-skirts, free-love, the kick-ass music, the drugs. What a time. Years later I thought anyone alive at that time, and breathing the same air as I, had to have evolve. Fantasy never equals reality, and that was a hard lesson to learn.

"Welcome to the Echo Chamber"

their positions will create an echo chamber.

Posts that are against the rules (or popular opinion) and alerted are removed. That vehicle for groupthink is not on bluesky

too many posters on this site that repeat right wing talking points for it to be an echo chamber

It's an information source, a support group, a forum for action planning ....much like DU.

otherwise you will encounter all sorts of fascist bullshit that you can waste your time on.

My guess is that you either don't use bluesky, or actively block the trolls bots and idiots, this creating the echo chamber you are complaining about.

So... what were you saying?

I protested the Vietnam War, back in the day……it was just something we locally wanted to do. How do I find a local group willing to physically protest??. Now, it’s country and world wide people protesting not, in my local area…..how do I find locally ready to protest people??? What this orange piece of shit has done and will continue to do is absolutely horrible……

BlueSky...

Live and let live...personally, I have no use for an echo chamber full of catnip and half truths but I support the right for anyone to do whatever they want that makes them happy and harms no one.

You realize you just posted on a social media site dedicated to electing members of the Democratic National Party... yeah?

Social media, including DU, is an excellent source of news and commentary and also can be an excellent organizing tool for people.

Whether or not activism can happen from Bluesky, that's up to us, just as it is from Meetup. Further, Twitter is probably also an echo chamber and yes, going to Bluesky in the short term is a filter bubble, but at least maybe you can get news and perspectives there that mainstream media lacks (and probably more than this forum/platform). You want neutral news, go to BBC World or get the Ground News app on your phone.

Does not make a statement more important.

There are too many MAGA echo chambers out there. Far too many. I'm not into Authoritarian regimes.

Seems useless to me.

I don't navigate it. I'm mainly on it read and share stuff. Same with twitter. Never spent much time on that either. Great tools for following the media/breaking news type stuff. Twitter has more participants though