Interesting, I haven't engaged much on Gab but I presumed it to be genuinely patriotic. But as much as I'd wish otherwise, I am very suspicious of "X" as it seems to be what I would call a "patriot-trap", where shady Elon riles up all the conservatives with his mostly-meaningless but-very-sensational woke-bashing memes (that's the "honey" for the "trap") and then what results is effectively a large database of self-identifying patriots (unfortunately myself included as I was probably too slow to catch on). But who knows, maybe Substack is also a "trap" in this sense, or ultimately who cares; can't run and hide – but what sent off warning alarms for me on "X" was the obvious shadow banning that never went away. I don't sense any such shadow banning here on Substack (yet), and Substack is thankfully devoid of distracting memes and junk.

Also, it's yet to be falsified or contested, but whoever he is, Dr. Shiva's scathing claims about Elon using "X" for exactly these purposes (by keeping the back-end surveillance connection intact with government agencies) really made me concerned: youtube.com/watch?v=2KO…