Electric Vehicles

The social media scene should be fragmented. The fact that everything became so centralised was a problem, and became weaponised. Too many people see these things as necessary to get a singular "good" message out, but a monoculture is unhealthy regardless of how well intentioned the message is.

What fragmentation means is that now sites need to put more effort in getting an audience. No more posting on Twitter/Facebook and watching the clicks come in. The flip side will be a better diversity of opinion in discussions and a healthier community.

I think it is a very good thing to have multiple sources of information and discussion in the EV community.

I work with thousands of EV fans on both sides of the political divide there, and I’ve lost hundreds of followers. Using tools to track unfollows, I’ve found that most of the people deleted their accounts. Thousands more simply stopped posting or interacting in any way, leaving without deleting or announcing their departure (X/Twitter isn’t an airport). But enough people have told us where they’re going to know that BlueSky and Threads are the most common destinations.

That is a massive drop in engagement, it will be interesting to see Twitter’s monthly active user count after the dust settles.

What I’m seeing happen now is Democrat-leaning and centrist EV enthusiasts moving off to BlueSky, Threads, and to a smaller extent, the Fediverse (Mastodon, Diaspora, Hubzilla, and various other CMS platforms via plugins). Right-leaning people are either staying on Facebook (which has become a home for elderly illiterates) or X/Twitter.

Mastodon got mentioned wooo!

Because Tesla is still the juggernaut of the EV industry, it only makes sense that many EV fans are also Tesla fans. Many Tesla fans are big fans of Elon Musk, and have followed him into right-wing politics in recent years. So, the EV space has become a place where right-wing views have become more normalized. But many people got into EVs because they were environmentalists, so many people did not follow Musk down this rabbit hole.

I'd be curious to see some numbers on this. I can't imagine that the political views of the CEO of one automobile manufacturer would cause a significant reversal in people's political leanings.