Stop Begging. Start Building

Culture

from the stop-begging-for-scraps dept

As a reminder, I’m on the board at Bluesky, which means you should consider me extremely biased, even as this article isn’t really about Bluesky.

The writer Jerusalem Demsas wants you to stay on Twitter. In “The case for staying on Twitter,” she admits the site is effectively overrun by neo-Nazis, but she argues that people should remain on Elon Musk’s platform to fight for it.

Her argument boils down to this:

Twitter is — without question — the most influential public square we have. At one point, in 2021, a Pew Research poll indicated that Twitter served nearly one in four Americans. By 2024, two years after Musk had bought the platform, 21% of people reported using it.

More anecdotally, no other venue sees elected officials mingling with academics, Fortune 500 CEOs, and celebrities. In Washington, Twitter is still one of the best places for a young think tanker or journalist to gain attention for their work. The posting-to-policy pipeline is alive and well.

But here’s the thing about that “influential public square”: you can’t “win back” a platform that’s owned and controlled by someone who actively opposes everything you stand for. You can’t “win back” something you have no ability to control at all.

Demsas’s central concern is about what she calls a “politics of hygiene”:

What I take issue with is the idea that staying on the platform is somehow failing a purity test. What I take issue with is a politics of hygiene, of cleanliness, a politics where you are judged not by the ultimate impact of your actions but by your ability to demonstrate your total and complete separation from that which you deem evil.

This framing recasts leaving a broken platform as performative “virtue signaling” rather than strategic action. But it’s a false dichotomy. The choice isn’t between purity and pragmatism—it’s about where you can actually have impact.

When a platform is designed to suppress your reach while amplifying extremists, staying isn’t pragmatic. It’s masochistic.

This all fundamentally misunderstands the nature of power on these platforms. Success on social media is about building community. And you can’t build community if someone else has all the control over how that community works.

Elon Musk bought Twitter specifically to reshape it according to his vision. It was never about “free speech” or the “public square.” It has always been about creating the world in which he holds all the cards, in which everything is designed to give him more power over you. He controls the algorithm. He decides what gets amplified and what gets buried. He can (and does) change the rules whenever—and however—he wants.

As Philip Bump points out, this isn’t about persuasion—it’s about power and who has it:

In fact, it is useful and important to look at this question not through the lens of persuasion but the lens of power. Your engagement and your work, not unlike your vote, is a form of power, something you can choose to grant to others. Those others, particularly organizations and companies, accrue that power to use as they see fit.

Demsas’s argument represents a broader problem: the learned helplessness that has infected how we think about the internet. We’ve been trained to believe our only options are to beg tech billionaires to be nicer, lobby the government to regulate them better, or hope a “good” billionaire swoops in to save us.

This mindset is exactly what the tech oligarchs want. The more we believe we need them to solve our problems, the more power they accumulate. We’ve forgotten that the whole promise of the internet was to put power in the hands of users, not centralized authorities.

What Actually Building Looks Like

So what does it actually look like to build something better? We’re seeing it happen in real time on platforms like Bluesky, where genuine communities are not just migrating but flourishing.

Take the science community, which has decisively moved to Bluesky. A recent study found that research posts get substantially more engagement than similar posts on X:

Per Shiffman and Wester, an “overwhelming majority” of respondents said that Bluesky has a “vibrant and healthy online science community,” while Twitter no longer does. And many Bluesky users reported getting more bang for their buck, so to speak, on Bluesky. They might have a lower follower count, but those followers are far more engaged: Someone with 50,000 Twitter/X followers, for example, might get five likes on a given post; but on Bluesky, they may only have 5,000 followers, but their posts will get 100 likes.

According to Shiffman, Twitter always used to be in the top three in terms of referral traffic for posts on Southern Fried Science. Then came the “Muskification,” and suddenly Twitter referrals weren’t even cracking the top 10. By contrast, in 2025 thus far, Bluesky has driven “a hundred times as many page views” to Southern Fried Science as Twitter. Ironically, “the blog post that’s gotten the most page views from Twitter is the one about this paper,” said Shiffman.

But it’s not just about higher engagement—it’s about better engagement. As one marine biologist who studied this migration noted:

“When I talk about fish on Bluesky, people ask me questions about fish. When I talk about fish on Twitter, people threaten to murder my family because we’re Jewish.”

The same pattern is happening with NFL communities, which have created thriving spaces on Bluesky that are more engaging and less toxic than what they left behind on X. This isn’t about finding a “safer space”—it’s about building better spaces. Spaces where users have actual control over their experience through features like custom feeds, moderation tools, and algorithmic choice.

What makes this different from past platform migrations is the underlying architecture. Bluesky isn’t just another corporate silo—it’s built on the AT Protocol, which gives users genuine ownership of their identities and relationships. You can take your followers with you. You can choose your own algorithms. You can even run your own infrastructure if you want.

This is building, not begging.

Building Beyond the Screen

The contrast between begging and building extends beyond social media. And, once again, it has to do with building genuine communities.

The same weekend Demsas published her piece, NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani showed what actual building looks like in the political context. His citywide scavenger hunt drew thousands of New Yorkers out into their city:

The scavenger hunt was announced on social media Saturday night. The first clue was posted at 11 a.m. Sunday.

The Mamdani campaign prepared 500 participant cards, and thousands of people showed up to the first location at 2 p.m. Sunday. All of the cards were gone in less than 15 minutes, according to the campaign.

The hunt wasn’t just fun—it was a demonstration of building versus begging. Mamdani didn’t petition the current mayor to make NYC more engaging. He didn’t “work the refs” to get permission for civic participation. He just created it. In a single afternoon, he built the kind of engaged public square that Demsas claims only exists on X—except this one gave participants actual agency instead of subjecting them to an algorithm they can’t control.

As one participant noted:

I think actually trying to have fun in politics and do a little bit of a community building exercise, a way to actually learn about our city — I’ve never known another politician to do it.

Regardless of political parties or even policies, Mamdani was showing how to build communities built not around anger at and complaining, but about possibility and promise.

The theme of the scavenger hunt was telling: it focused on NYC mayors who fought corruption, who built great public works, who expanded opportunity. Leaders who didn’t wait for permission to make their city better—they just built. Thousands of people showed up not because an algorithm promoted it or a billionaire allowed it, but because someone created something worth participating in.

This is the fundamental difference between building and begging. Demsas says “stay and fight” in Musk’s sandbox, hoping your presence might somehow influence him. Mamdani looks at NYC and sees a vast fascinating place, calling people out to “create your own spaces.” Bluesky is giving people the power of choice to create their own communities. One version perpetuates learned helplessness. The other demonstrates actual empowerment and community.

The Power of Building vs. the Powerlessness of Begging

The contrast couldn’t be clearer. While Demsas argues for “staying and fighting” in spaces we have no control over, actual builders—whether creating new social platforms or new forms of civic engagement—are demonstrating that we don’t need to beg for better. We can build it ourselves.

Demsas argues that leaving Twitter is just “deplatforming yourself”:

But leaving Twitter in 2025 is not deplatforming Nazis, it is deplatforming yourself. The Nazis have already taken over the bar. The question is who will come to take it back.

But this assumes there’s something to take back. There isn’t. And before you say “but X still has more users”—that’s precisely the learned helplessness talking. Yes, X might have more accounts. But what good is a larger audience if the algorithm ensures they never see your work?

It also guarantees more organic rather than forced engagement.

Bluesky’s growth isn’t just about people fleeing X’s toxicity—it’s about people discovering they can have actual agency over their online experience. They can choose their own algorithms, create their own moderation rules, build their own communities. They can, quite literally, build the social media experience they want rather than accepting whatever some billionaire decides to serve them.

Stop Begging. Start Building.

The lesson isn’t that we should abandon all existing institutions or retreat from public engagement. It’s that we should be strategic about where we invest our energy, efforts, and attention.

We should build new systems that give users actual agency and choice. We should support candidates who demonstrate what better governance looks like through their actions, not just their words. We should create communities and institutions that embody our values rather than tilting at windmills and pretending to fix ones that actively oppose them.

Most importantly, we should stop accepting the premise that the systems we have now are the best we can do. They’re not. We can build better. We are building better.

The question isn’t whether we should stay and fight in broken systems or build new ones. It’s whether we want to spend our time making Elon Musk richer and more powerful, or whether we want to actually build the future we want to live in.

Demsas worries that leaving X means “deplatforming yourself.” But staying on a platform where you have no control, no voice in governance, and no ability to shape the rules isn’t exercising power—it’s surrendering it.

Real power doesn’t come from begging oligarchs to be nicer. It comes from building alternatives that make their monopolies irrelevant.

The choice isn’t between purity tests and pragmatism. It’s between learned helplessness and taking control. Between begging for scraps from digital landlords and building our own damn table.

The answer should be obvious. But for those still clinging to their spot at the Nazi bar, hoping the bartender will suddenly start serving something other than poison, let me be clearer: You’re not fighting. You’re not resisting. You’re just giving Elon Musk your data, your engagement, and your tacit endorsement while getting nothing in return.

The builders have already left. They’re creating something better. The only question is how long you’ll keep begging for scraps before you join them.

Filed Under: begging, building, choice, community, elon musk, empowerment, jerusalem demsas, learned helplessness, zohran mamdani
Companies: bluesky, twitter, x