As Twitter begins a process of laying off workers at its Irish office, the Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with workers employed by Twitter both here in Ireland and abroad.
The recent takeover by Elon Musk is but another example of the impact of the growing monopolisation and concentration of global social media platforms.
The impact of US oligarch Elon Musk has seen wholesale redundancies with workers receiving notice by email. Dismissed as mere commodities to be used and abused. All workers need to join a trade union to protect themselves.
Workers in those monopoly corporations, tech or otherwise, need to learn from experiences such as this that any amount of fluff and spin about them all being part of a caring global family, with a fun CEO at its helm, is just that; it is just spin. No amount of bean bags, pool tables or chill out zones can protect workers. Only strong trade union organisation and representation can best guarantee workers their rights.
The lesson that we live in a value free, open platform media is a myth. The dissemination of ideas is about securing the dominant narrative; that capitalism equals democracy, and that all other alternative economic and political systems are anti-democratic.
There is simply no such thing as a free media, or of a free ideological space. Twitter, like other social media platforms, is but a place where intellectual goods are bought and sold, where the ideology of capitalism is reinforced.
