Good morning.
Here's why Nostr matters to me. It's personal now.
Elon Musk is making exaggerated claims about South Africa. His statements imply there's an ongoing genocide currently happening against white people, which there isn't. I should know. I'm white and I live in South Africa.
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And try as I might, corrective statements I make on twitter get very little traction, far less than my average post.
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It may be true, it may not, but it's obvious that it's in the interest of Elon's algorithm to remove all nuance from the conversation and make it as divisive as possible.
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Case in point, this "major political party" he refers to got less than 10% of the vote in recent elections and they've been shrinking, not growing. Their habit of singing a song that calls for killing "boers" (aka white people) is absolutely despicable. But most people (of all races) can see that and have little appetite for it.
Which is why there's no reason to expect that its leader, Julius Malema, will ever be South Africa's next president. Off course this may change, the future is uncertain, but as things stand now, it is a HIGHLY unlikely expectation.
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Don't me wrong. There are huge problems in South Africa. Our current president doesn't have the backbone to condemn the very obvious racist rhetoric of parties like the EFF, while pretending that very serious concerns raised aren't real.
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And in a way it's good that someone like Elon draws attention to it.
However, I'm almost certain that his particular rhetoric isn't helping nearly as much as it's dividing people and inflaming the situation. And I wish he'd instead draw more attention to and amplify many of the more reasonable voices that do speak about this.
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But this won't happen.
If it bleeds it leads. And if someone controls the algorithm, why would they push something that draws less attention to their own platform?
Simple answer is, they won't. And this is why Nostr matters, to me.
It doesn't fix this today.
But at least I know there's a potential solution. Ready for us, when we are ready for it.
