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Absolutely none of this is surprising to me whatsoever. In my opinion and definition, the “median voter” is split into two camps; those who voted for Harris, and those who voted for anything else/didn’t vote. Furthering my opinionated answer to your question, the former group already cares and anticipated these developments and so does the latter group, it’s just the latter group doesn’t believe it’s happening, and I don’t think they’ll believe it until a serious, serious recession hits the economy and tanks their income.
In my experience, the Trump voters believed that we were already in a recession or heading there. One happening now will just cement their belief that we were already there.
I will admit to being surprised that DOGE wasn't just shunted off to a room to spout hot air and do nothing. Government budgeting is messy and the real problems are extremely difficult to solve (bad demographics and a basically unreformable healthcare sector; we can't grow our way out of the debt when our post '08 growth has been pitiful compared to Reagan, Clinton, or even Dubya). Are social conservatives brave enough to suggest that MAID is the morally correct conclusion to Boomers and older Xers' fondness for aborting future taxpayers? I doubt it.
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I think this is how voters would take it if there is a recession (which seems at least plausible, IMO, but certainly not guaranteed). On the other hand, I've seen a lot of ink spilled about how "essential" all these roles are, and if there isn't a recession, or worse, there is a period of perceived prosperity, it'll hurt the credibility of the left's messaging with those voters going forward. I'm thinking about how many said Twitter would fall apart without half its employees, and despite a few extra "fail whale" pages it's still online, at least. Or how Reagan effectively won the standoff with the ATC strike.
I don't know if it's "the left's" messaging. I've seen plenty of folks online get fired from the National Park service, for example, which as far as I know is a fairly bi-partisan group of folks.
We're not going to agree about Twitter. Twitter was THE global platform, once such a vital and reliable source of communication health and safety departments of various countries relied on it; now the bar is set to "still online", since Musk's suspension of journalists' accounts, measures like labeling media outlets as "state-affiliated" and restricting their visibility, viral misinformation, hate speech, and antisemitism, statements without evidence such as that Community Notes "is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media" thus he is going to "fix" Community Notes, has completely driven out everyone but reactionary conservatives. Hardly a win in my book.
We might, actually. The doom-selling I remember that I'm calling out as inaccurate was from the technical side regarding site reliability. The cultural side, whether it can maintain relevance and cachet as X, I think you're correct still remains to be seen, and isn't trending great for them (although I think it was previously on a different course, if perhaps slower, for irrelevance by losing the political zeitgeist in the other direction).
Even the technical side isn't great. I've been locked out of my account on desktop for a while now since every time I try to log in I get into some kind of loop where it keeps asking for my login information. I never really used it much, so now I just don't use it at all. I imagine for people who are into it they've figured out all its quirks, but for a casual user like me it just isn't worth it.
That's not so uncommon on other platforms either.
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Musk's? All of those that ngs predate him.
His statement is, of course, cope, but he's the one that set up the Community Notes system to start with, I'd say he deserves credit for that.
Progressives got so used to total control of speech, that not having it will always look like "everyone but reactionary conservatives being driven out".
Can you show me evidence that previous Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal did those things? Because I can show you evidence that Musk did all of those things. And what do you mean, exactly, by "progressives got so used to total control of speech"? Who are the progressives, what are the parameters of total control, and by speech are you including verbal?
Wait, you were talking about what a given CEO did on the platform, rather than it's hat was happening under their reign? Why?
That speech that would go against their preferred narrative would be reliably removed or throttled.
What are you asking here? The ideological of what qualifies and disqualifies one as progressive?
Mostly what I stated previously - that stating an alternative viewpoint would get one reliably banned, their content taken down, and/or their reach throttled
Until Spaces, Twitter wasn't much of a verbal communications platform, so no.
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