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A Slightly Expanded Footnote on Why Timothy Snyder should Leave X/Twitter (and Substack)
I included this footnote in my aforelinked Timothy Snyder/John Lithgow piece:
Linked reluctantly to Snyder’s Substack site. I wish he would leave Substack already. While I’m at it, he should stop posting to X/Twitter, too. He already has a vibrant Bluesky following. His continued presence on those sites drives revenue and attention to them.
It made my point, but I wanted to expand slightly on one aspect of the impact of Snyder’s X/Twitter presence. It became too unwieldy for a footnote, so here we are.
First, regarding Substack: There are plenty of really good, long-standing reasons why Snyder should abandon Substack. I won’t belabor that.
As for X/Twitter, Snyder has a “Verified” account. This means he signed up to pay the execrable Elon Musk at least $7 a month for a blue checkmark next to his name. So did John Lithgow and many businesspeople, brands, authors, influencers, and activists—many of whom, I’d wager, would express personal distaste for the man whose business they willingly support with their money and attention, thus fueling his ability to continue wreaking havoc on our democracy.
Paying for Premium is the only way to get a blue verified checkmark today:
Starting April 1, 2023 we began winding down our legacy Verification program and accounts that were verified under the previous criteria (active, notable, and authentic) will not retain a blue checkmark unless they are subscribed to X Premium.
Let’s put aside the obvious protection racket of having “paid verification systems”—which amount to little more than “it would be a shame if someone impersonated you”—because what’s more irksome is that X/Twitter uses the fact that these well-known, supposedly respectable people have paid for protection—I mean, Premium accounts—as a way to drive more subscribers to Premium by prominently placing ads for the service on the site, with this come-on:
Get your own Blue badge
Verification boosts your credibility and visibility, like @TimothyDSnyder.”
Every verified account you view displays this ad (until you dismiss it)—they’re paying to be exploited.
Gross.
From Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, ‘Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow’
Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.
Lithgow is a stellar choice.
(Apropos, I’ve finally ordered a copy of On Tyranny.)
Linked reluctantly to Snyder’s Substack site. I wish he would leave Substack already. While I’m at it, he should stop posting to X/Twitter, too. He already has a vibrant Bluesky following. His continued presence on those sites drives revenue and attention to them. Update: Read more in this expanded "footnote." ↩︎
“We have been hurt, so it must have been them”
Timothy Snyder at Thinking about...
If a radical-right politician such as Donald Trump is the victim of an assassination attempt, should we not presume that the perpetrator is on the radical left?
No, we should not.
That sort of presumption, based on us-and-them thinking, is dangerous. It begins a chain of thinking that can lead to more violence. We are the victims, and they are the aggressors. We have been hurt, so it must have been them. No one thinking this way ever asks about the violence on one’s own side.
Snyder offers an historical perspective from the 1920s and 1930s to Saturday’s shocking violence.
(via Dave Spector.)