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by JanneVee 1438 days ago
From the article:

> Since then, the site’s importance to global politics and culture has grown, and a long-lasting outage could even have had a material effect on the Conservative party’s leadership election, where runners and riders have been trading barbs since Boris Johnson announced his resignation last week.

This is downright dystopic and people don't get it. A countrys exceptional situation where a they get a new leader which is not being democratically decided by the people, but a minority of Tories that have the time to read "barbs" on Twitter. It is insane to think that the availability of a tech platform like Twitter has a material consequence on how the Tories elect their new leader. But if it is true that it has consequence on the result, a minority that have the time to write and read Twitter instead of working for the people(like the politicians are supposed to) are deciding the result of their leadership.
1 comments
tablespoon 1438 days ago
> This is downright dystopic and people don't get it. A countrys exceptional situation where a they get a new leader which is not being democratically decided by the people, but a minority of Tories that have the time to read "barbs" on Twitter.

That's not dystopian, it's just how that system of government works. Literally no system will satisfy everyone, and direct democracy has its own well-known flaws.

For what it's worth, a lot of US liberals are currently fetishising parliamentary systems like the UK's.

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JanneVee 1438 days ago
"It is how the system works", is not getting it... Twitter is used by a minority yet it supposedly captures significant political power. It is really hard to explain it to someone who doesn't care how supposed work and think I mean that it is about "direct democracy". Elected politicians should be working for the people regardless they voted for them or not. They aren't supposed to write crap on twitter about the "other guys" within the same fucking party.
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tablespoon 1438 days ago
I think Twitter's a red herring. IIRC, in the UK the prime minister is chosen by the MPs from the majority party. It's not just the ones on Twitter, though Twitter might be one of the channels some of those members use for rhetoric to influence the final decision. That rhetoric will happen somewhere, Twitter or no.

Also when it gets down to it, in an election the ultimate outcome is decided by the people who are on the fence, which is much smaller that the whole group.

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