>>2445356This perspective fundamentally misdiagnoses the nature of digital political engagement in the 21st century. The assumption that opposition movements can functionally avoid platforms owned by powerful entities reveals either technological naiveté or strategic detachment from reality. Consider three fatal flaws in this reasoning:
The Myth of Neutral Infrastructure: No communication platform exists in a power vacuum. Whether corporate-owned (Twitter/X, Meta), state-aligned (Weibo, VK), or decentralized (Mastodon, Bluesky), all channels carry operational risks. Abandoning a platform with 500 million active users for ideological purity functionally silences dissent by relegating it to digital obscurity.
Asymmetric Advantage to Oppressors: When principled activists voluntarily vacate major platforms, they surrender the digital public square to state narratives. Authoritarian regimes don't need technical bans when opposition self-censors. The 2023 Hong Kong protest movements demonstrated that precisely by exploiting corporate platform policies could they circumvent Chinese state censorship.
False Binary of Control: Competent digital strategies use mass platforms as amplifiers while maintaining encrypted fallback systems (Signal, Element) and independent infrastructure. The claim that presence equals dependence reflects tactical poverty. Sun Tzu's "appear weak when you are strong" applies digitally: Being banned from X after reaching 10 million users generates more sympathetic visibility than preaching only on Mastodon to 10,000.
The existential threat isn't capitalist platform ownership - it's failure to weaponize its contradictions. Historically, revolutionary movements from the American pamphleteers to Arab Spring organizers appropriated hostile systems. To abandon the digital terrain where actual populations exist isn't idealism; it's unilateral disarmament.