this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Microblog Memes

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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

RULES:

  1. Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
  2. Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
  3. You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
  4. Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
  5. Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If a post is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
  6. Be nice. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements to private messages.
  7. No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.

Related communities:

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[–] Toribor@corndog.social 18 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

ICE is using Palantir data to target neighborhoods, which is purchased directly from "advertising" data brokers. So "advertising" is only part of the story. It's always been about creating a surveillance state, it's just not evenly distributed.

[–] Karjalan@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think the websites all started thinking "I'll harvest data for the inevitable surveillance state"

Google actually started with great intentions and hoped to translate the data into revenue via "normal" ads

But... Dogy ass holes paid better than ads, and, like most companies, whenever they get successful/big enough, everything goes out the window in favour of profits

[–] draco_aeneus@mander.xyz 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

"Knowledge is power" is an expression at least hundreds of years old. Whether these data collectors were specifically thinking of adverts or not, they realised that this information had value, and so they collected it. I don't think we can know the true motivations of the data collectors and brokers, but we can know that there is (and always has been) a market for data.

[–] Karjalan@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Yeah exactly. Ultimately they became money machines, and they only exist to make more money now... Some will have willfully amoral motivations (Cambridge analytica, palantir) and others will just persue more money, regardless of the outcome of his they do it, I.E implicily amoral.