Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources
reuters.com
reuters.com
- Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter.
- Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out.
- Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-bait content.
Trump 2024, here we go.
"I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."
which could imply that those banned for non-criminal speech would be reinstated.
Edit: This is not about whether de-/replatforming is the right thing to do. Only about the fact that Musk can have (legitimate or illegitimate) reasons other than his political support of Trump.
So what you're saying is that whatever you or your party claims "threatens democracy" -- justified with some vague and arbitrary standards you just invented and that you judge -- is what threatens democracy. And anything anybody else thinks is wrong.
And by the way questioning election integrity and voicing concerns about that is not "threatening democracy" so that's just not some fundamental truth you've stumbled upon there either, other people can disagree about that. If your democracy is threatened by people voicing their concern about election procedures and results and must silence them to function, then it's not really much of a democracy.
What about people concerned about voter suppression or gerrymandering or whatever? Do we need to silence them too? I'm sure you're going to come up with some other vague handwaving as to why those don't meet your criteria for silencing your political opponents.
So now you see why pro-free-speech people don't like these kind of restrictions, because they can and are abused.
The asymmetry of the disinformation war markedly benefits the fascists. There is no need to bow down to them "because free speech."
I agree but the analogy is still a bad fit. A better one would be a phone company back in the days of of AT&T's monopoly. If they kicked you off of their service then you'd lose access, in practical terms, to all those people. This was considered enough of a problem in the past that you weren't allowed to lose your phone service for the content of your speech, on or off of the phone.
I think the analogy extends quite well when we consider the lengths other concerns have gone to in crushing competition, the Parler debacle being the most obvious.
The part of the analogy that holds, in my opinion, is the part where a monopoly concern can kick people off for the content of their speech. It wasn't right with telephone and it doesn't seem right with this but they are being treated differently. I'd say that's because speech is powerful so the logic goes that it must be curtailed, if you're against certain views.
I'm someone who's confident that truth will win the day given a fair hearing, hence, I want freedom of speech.
I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication. Those barriers were the "fair hearing" (an author needed to spend weeks/months/years on their work. They probably spent several years before that studying their topic, or journalism, or whatever. It needed to pass through editors, maybe peer review, etc. It had to compete with others working just as hard, etc.)
For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information. This form of truly unrestricted access to mass communications has nearly put a stake in the heart of western democracy in less than 20 years. I am not at all confident truth will win the day.
> I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication
I've heard this take a lot and I'm not sure I agree. The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg offered the same relative change in communication reach. Previously, only wealthy entities (nobles, ecclesiastical authorities, etc) could have the money to create actual written books to disseminate ideas. Literate non-wealthy people could only hope to make a sign and hope for the best. The monopoly on distributing ideas lay with the wealthy and the state.
> For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information.
The printing press led to centuries of chaos in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther used the printing press to print several copies of his "99 Theses" and plastered them on the walls of churches, widely disseminating his ideas. Now, after a renaissance, an enlightenment, and an Industrial Revolution in the West, we have built the cultural norms in place to deal with the negatives of Print. We have social norms separating tabloids from newspapers. We understand that different newspapers have different biases.
Governments have tried to restrict what can and cannot be printed. Many Enlightenment-era empires (Empire of Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire, etc) restricted what can be printed by whom. The Soviets famously only allowed government-approved publications until Glasnost under Gorbachev. In the end, despite the dangers we've found in unfettered public speech, the benefits have proved more salient.
I think it's a lack of norms. A lot of folks don't know how to treat the Web. They see a hot-take/dunk on Twitter and because they agree with the aesthetics of a person's post and some of their other content, they think of the poster as "correct" and retweet/share their content. That's how online tribes form. I'm confident that in a few generations, we'll all "know" much better how to navigate the online world. Until then, much like the aftermath of the printing press, there will be instability.
When you share something on Twitter, there is literally a script (executed by Twitter) that shares that same thing with all your followers. That's essentially the primary mechanism of Twitter, and I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know to tell them something (at least for people with more than, say, Dunbar's number of followers). Because of the fact that it's automated, essentially instant, and essentially unbounded in its reach, it is mechanically much more similar to robocalling than to calling your friends to tell them something.
> I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know
Okay, one is a broadcast to subscribers and the other is single calls to subscribers. The end result is the same, again, the difference is in implementation and convenience.
Anything that is afforded to the public (for whatever price) is a public square, any ban or deprivation from it amounts to censorship and exclusion. This is unremarkable on the micro scale (e.g. a golf club or a coffeshop) because alternatives are plenty and easy to find, but when a huge corporation with effectively monopolistic control of a huge slice of some market does it it's worrying. And it should worry you even if you happen to like the effects of one particular incident, because the same machinery that allows such incidents to happen is bound to impact you someday.
Completely unmoderated free speech is beneficial to them because regular people that can't even tell what's real or fake aren't ever going to organize to the point where the privileged positions of the elite are challenged.
Trump starting Truth Social and Musk buying Twitter are literally the same thing to me. They're both tying to prevent any kind of unison or popular movements that could de-throne them from their positions as the ruling elite. They both also want to ensure their status as the loudest voice in the room can't be taken away because they use that to convince the average person they "deserve" to rule the world.
That's a deeply depressing take.
specifically Trump's access to the platform is de facto supporting or implicitly allowing Trump's right to lie, attack our Republic, spread violence. (if don't agree crosses into violent words, at least should agree definition something like: suggestively, dog whistle, saying it without saying)
I don't believe anyone can make a good faith argument that his rhetoric did not incite violence. During the campaign, during BLM protests, and most important Jan 6
But not convicted! Something you Trump obsessed seem to always leave out. So yeah, means nothing more than Clinton's impeachment.
BLM? The summer of love? Surely you jest!
And January 6 - sure you want to keep beating that drum? There is far more documented evidence of people on the FBI payroll inciting violence in the days leading up to January 6th than anyone in the Trump campaign, let alone of his followers. Indeed there is plenty of video of such wackos as Alex Jones and other right wing extremists telling people NOT to enter the capital. More video of capital police standing by or ushering people inside. I was watching it live on various live streams on January 6th because it smelled too good to be true. People being ushered inside by the capital police - that's one hell of an "insurrection". People walking between velvet ropes, not lighting shit on fire, spraying things with paint, knocking statues down. People walking inside of a public building and taking selfies. ZOMG! How will the republic survive?!?
How many convictions have they gotten - after more than a year - of these "insurrectionists"? Zero. A few plea deals that are now unraveling. But sure, keep bang that "insurrectionist" drum.
seriously? Where is this documented evidence that more FBI employees were violent leading up to Jan 6. More than hundreds and hundreds storming the Capitol?
You haven't seen the huge amount of footage of battering police, pepper spraying police, throwing spears at police, brutally beating a cop on the ground who now has long term head trauma, the death of police, ransacking, throwing over, messing with proprty.
crazy. flag.
The future causes me intense anxiety especially 2024 ;(
though i do work in politics so perhaps I think about it too much.
I have no idea how we can continue when such a large % of the country believes increasingly insane things
Nah, they all determined he did it. Republican Senators like Lamar Alexander were all quoted saying that both times, they just went on to say they didn't care or they think he learned his lessons.
> How many convictions have they gotten - after more than a year - of these "insurrectionists"? Zero. A few plea deals that are now unraveling. But sure, keep bang that "insurrectionist" drum.
Over 150 by my count. The Oath Keeper who was Roger Stone's bodyguard that day pled guilty to actual sedition!
It hasn't rolled up to Alex Jones and further up but it will, since he was intentionally leading people around to the east side for an attack on Pence by claiming Trump would "give a second speech" there.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1503855795951312898
If you wanted to actually follow this, which is kind of a waste of time but might be educational(?):
https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/04/04/the-evidence-needed-fo...
A republic isnt' based on "good faith arguments". There are 80 million people who will disagree with your "good faith argument".
This is why courts exist. A political impeachment is not an impartial legal system. What are you even talking about?
Your position of deciding for the public what the truth is is the biggest threat to the republic - not a single orange man.
He was not convicted. That's the same as being tried and found not guilty in a court of law.
> Trump's right to lie, attack our Republic, spread violence.
I'd be happy with a right to lie, because it implicitly protects the rights of all others to speak truth.
Would "attack our Republic" include via speech? Then I support a right to "attack" a republic, any republic.
How does one "spread violence" that one is not engaged in?
Intent can not be separated either.
What do you mean you support the right to attack a republic? You want to attack our government?
We have a means to make change in our country/government. It's called Democracy, activism, and yes through protected (non violence causing) speech.
Directly trying to literally overthrow a free and fair election & government by the chief executive and Members who are sworn to uphold the law and constitution is explicitly sedition and their 'speech' that caused and incited this should not be and is not protected. Trump's lies directly caused this and his actions were (and still are) a threat to the very foundation of law that protects our speech.
He WAS involved in violence and is 100% responsible for instigating it on multiple occasions. He directed his supporters to act multiple times during first election on through most important Jan 6 obviously.
Congress was attacked. People with guns and weapons broke into the Capital. I do NOT support the rick to literally attack our Republic/country it's crazy that people support this. There was permanent injury and death to multiple people. It was violence. Many explicitly intended to kill members of Congress.
Citation needed - and be specific with how he, personally, was "involved in violence".
Beyond his words, there are huge amounts of convicts who told the police they acted bc Trump's words or even used Trump's words as an argument in court to attempt to show they weren't directly responsible/as culpable. Trump might not punch protestors in the face himself, but his words cause acts of violence.
--
Also given the topic twitter lays out specific examples on their platform.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
--
The clearing of lafayette square Trump said 'bust some heads' and reports of some blatant attempts to order the military to intervene inappropriately the entire summer.
Trump saying "Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. There won’t be so much of them because the courts agree with us,"
“when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
“I’d like to punch him in the face.” to a protester.
A funny gem: Wanted spikes on his wall that would 'pierce flesh' 'shoot migrants' build an 'alligator moat'.
Like, you can't make that up in a movie it would be too outlandish. Dr evil type contraption that can be easily overcome lol
BLM "“That will never happen with me. I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will. But that was a disgrace. … I felt badly for him, but it showed that he’s weak.”"
Thugs pissing on and beating homeless people: “I think that would be a shame. I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that,”
infamous "very fine people" (charlottesville)
Lots of reports of his wanting to use the military during the summer with clear tone and political intent. some reports of nebulous rants about doing the same after he lost to try and hold onto power.
"we’d like to get them out a lot faster, and when you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody. Don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?"
Gianforte body slam: “Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.” (wish we would have won that race Kathleen is great candidate...)
Lots of campaign rally examples.
“See, the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!”
“You see, in the good old days, law enforcement acted a lot quicker than this. A lot quicker. In the good old days, they’d rip him out of that seat so fast — but today, everybody’s politically correct,”
Another video of Trump saying “Get him the hell out of here! Get him out of here! Throw him out!” to a BLM protestor while a member of the crowd physically beats protester
Attack has a broad meaning and use, perhaps my hint as to the sense I was using was strong enough. I've seen it defined as violence and as words. I support words, not violence, if someone wishes to criticise any government then I would support their right to do that, even though that government's supporters would frame it as an attack.
> He WAS involved in violence
I didn't realise that. Did he use his bare hands or a weapon? How many people did attack? (not the words sense)
This is just like saying that Putin is not involved in war in Ukraine. He obviously is, and we have a name for this kind of involvement and it is called a "war criminal”. He didn't have to pull any gun triggers.
Additionally, the claim is that Trump enacted violence. Putin has not enacted violence, he's ordered it. Of course Putin is involved, and he's legally involved, and even though he's not enacting violence he is on the hook for that violence (or should be). I don't know anyone who wants free speech, even proper absolutists, who would make this case (that ordering military action is covered by free speech). Do you know of one?
Now, please tell me which violence Trump was either actually involved in by actually committing violence or by ordering violence, and by "ordering" I mean making an official, legally backed order in the course of his duties as president and commander in chief, because I'd really like to know or even better, knock these silly claims on the head.
I won't hold my breath waiting.
No. I think they've been frequent, intense subjects of government scrutiny, including antitrust litigation.
He may not be a supporter, but certainly has similar methods. Using mobs of useful idiots to flaunt the law is a bad thing.
Musk overtly uses his companies to retaliate against people who criticize him; he's not at all radically free speech in the sense of believing the owner of a company should not fully utilize the company to promote views that serve their interests and suppress others.
I still would be surprised if we saw Musk abusing his powers to make user-generated things disappear from Twitter.
Except the description of Musk as pro-radical-free-speech and the benefits supposed to result therefrom rely entirely on the definition (otherwise problematic, sure) that free speech means exactly that, and specifically that private actors will not use their own freedom to materially retaliate against you for your unwelcome speech.
Sure, you can maybe defend Musk being for “free speech” in exactly the sense that people claiming that Musk being for it will change Twitter say isn't “free speech”, and is the problem with the current approach at Twitter. But that...defeats the argument for Musk being a beneficial change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/16/business/elon-musk-politi...
He can run for office. He can win office. But just no more chicken stuff please. It really upsets the community. It’s your chicken store and you can ban anyone you like, especially the weird chicken trash can guy.
That would seem a more accurate depiction. Regardless, Trump has not been stuffing chickens into bins, you're comparing speech to actions other than speech in order to justify that speech being curtailed because you don't like it. Are you okay with the Saudi royal family controlling Twitter too?
Long live HN.
That wasn't the claim, if it was one. This is what I wrote:
> A Saudi prince and his family control access to the square, along with a group of incredibly rich investors. Criticism of them is strictly controlled.
We know that certain critical speech is suppressed on the platform, part of the problem is we don't know how much (hence Musk's wish to increase transparency). That does not, however, mean that all criticism is stopped at source. Do you reject, for example, the existence of shadow bans? If not, do you think they are only used against trolls?
As to citations… I'm not giving a viva. If you want me to clarify things I write, you can ask in a normal way.
What makes you think that his ownership will increase transparency. He has sued whistleblowers, he has sued and insulted and bullied people he disagrees with, he employs gilded-age tactics against workers who want to unionise... Words are cheap (especially when you're virtue signalling about things which don't impact your bottom line), but actions speak louder.
Those aren't related to transparency.
> He has sued whistleblowers,
The logic is that Tesla/Musk are suing whistleblowers to silence them because of embarrassing information. Why would Twitter's algorithms be embarrassing to Musk? Or its moderation policies?
> Words are cheap (especially when you're virtue signalling about things which don't impact your bottom line), but actions speak louder.
Exactly, all the more reason to treat words as a special case and not restrict them.
I think it's more than this. Trump's tweets have had significant real world consequences. Questioning the integrity of the US elections based on no real evidence eventually led to an insurrection at the US Capitol. When someone's speech is actively dangerous, it makes sense to block it, akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.
I can see a thousand ways that could be misused in the aid of authoritarianism. Try speaking it in a German accent, perhaps with "vhere iz your mister Churchill?", and I'm sure you'll see the problem.
> akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater
That was the example given by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr for the clear and present danger test[1] in Schenk vs United States[2]:
> The ruling established that Congress has more latitude in limiting speech in times of war than in peacetime and set out the clear and present danger test, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. indicated that the most stringent interpretations of the First Amendment would not protect a person who causes public panic by shouting “Fire!” in a theater when no fire exists.
I don't see how that test would apply to Trump, even in wartime.
[1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/898/clear-and-prese...
[2] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/193/schenck-v-unite...
Did I write that? I find it endlessly fascinating when people think in black and white and come back with some kind of false dilemma because I was able to make an entirely legitimate and obvious criticism.
I've a better question: is there anyone worse to own Twitter than the Saudi royal family?
I think so but there aren't many.
But Trump broke the rules multiple times and then was trying to get around his first ban. Treating Trump differently would be giving him his account back, I don't see any reason that if you try to get around your ban you should get your account back.
There is no reason to believe that he's changed.
Wouldn't Trump tweets drive a bunch of traffic and therefore ad revenue to the platform? Seems like an obvious move just from a business sense.
They can have at it.
Freedom of speech also means freedom to leave.
It does but you could also not look at his tweets. Shouldn't other people on the platform be able to decide whether they wish to see (or not see) the tweets they wish to?
it's also about public good and legitimate intention to stop attacks on the foundations of our republic and stop the spread of dangerous (imho should. be libelous under law to combat) lies.
complicated and can become paternalistic, deciding what is best for someone. but we do that (or used to, vaccines and mask pushback) all the time on other dangers.
You are able to block the account and then you wouldn't see retweets. If they screenshot something then you could shrug and get on with your day in the knowledge that you'd stopped most of the stuff, or block your friend. I'd give users more tools, like the one Twitter itself has, to rate accounts and shape the kind of tweets one can see.
> it's also about public good and legitimate intention to stop attacks on the foundations of our republic and stop the spread of dangerous (imho should. be libelous under law to combat) lies.
If stopping lies comes at the cost of undermining free speech for everyone, then it would be the thing undermining the republic, far more than a known liar lying.
I rely on Mill for my views on bad men speaking bad things:
> It is also often argued, and still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to practise. This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints on discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, unless the opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth. The truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition should be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of whether or not it is true?
Trump & members of Congress's actions are not "opinion: disputable, open to discussion." Clear facts that actually happened.
The election was free and fair. Fact.
There was minuscule fraud which did not affect outcomes, even on the smallest level. Plus a decent chunk of the worst offenders were Republicans including the COS who actively engaged in this sedition. Fact.
Congress was violently attacked. Fact.
Trump & sworn Government Representatives tried to overturn the election, subvert democracy, and overthrow the Government. Fact.
That can not be supported and is a clear exception to free speech that is grossly & intentionally harmful.
To the below comment, I do believe courts have interpreted and created law which applies to Trump's words and actions, specifically on reasonable restrictions to speech which incites, creates, has immediate danger.
Trump's actions and words fit that and he is culpable for the actions resulting from his words.
On the actual law surrounding the consequences of his speech and attempts to subvert our Government and Democracy
Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Law specific says incites https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/par...
Hence, those facts, as you assert, are moot. Additionally, as Mill wrote:
> Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.
Hence, the veracity of those facts is irrelevant.
> That can not be supported and is a clear exception to free speech that is grossly & intentionally harmful.
Here we find a limit - should speech that is knowingly wrong and malicious be allowed? We're back to infallibility. Are you going to prove to me that Trump committed mens rea, or do you think he'd be able to claim he really believes the election was stolen from him? You don't have the ability to read minds.
His actions are clear, direct, immediate threat and dangerous. Speech his says to support that should not be accepted.
Did you skip over the bit where Mill mentions infallibility?
> His actions are clear, direct, immediate threat and dangerous.
Not according to US law.
> Speech his says to support that should not be accepted.
As Chomsky would say, even Stalin and Goebbels were in favour of freedom of speech for speech they agreed with.
The legal system is already adequate to deal with libel. If someone libels you then you can sue in civil court.
But I will not contribute 1 cent/penny/vote in advertising revenue towards a platform that hosts that horsesh!t.
I'm going to try my best to find a more matured and curated (and long lived) kind of horsesh!t that's closer to actual truths than the fresh and regular horsesh!t on twitter.
We should probably stop now. Good luck.
Twitter does put a lot of stuff from people one doesn’t follow in their feed though. I imagine the problem would be a lot less severe if they didn’t push for this kind of “engagement.”
They've had this for years. Press the "swish" (stars) button top right.
This happens so often with so many things.
Facebook: "I haven't used Facebook in 10 years, and never bothered to unfollow things on my feed back then, but it sucks! The feed is just garbage!"
SNL: "I haven't watched SNL since the 90s. It hasn't been funny in years!"
Expensive restaurants: "I went to one Michelin star place in 2007 and it was like 3 bites of food! I don't know why people bother!"
I do occasionally have the misfortune of using twitter - sometimes a link is posted or sent to me, or I am curious if something specific is trending. It sucks ass and is unenjoyable in my opinion - the worst when someone tries to use it as a full blown blogging platform. It seems designed to exploit certain triggers for compulsive content consumption.
There are numerous similar testimonials of people that still regularly use twitter if not compulsively, so the straw men are irrelevant.
Twitter users follow people and see their posts. Their feeds are mostly their followers posts.
You ever look at the youtube home page when you're logged out? It's absolute garbage. It's also not the way most people use youtube.
Can you actually back this up with any evidence, because I don't buy it off hand. You're saying it's uncommon for a huge long tail of rare users and lurkers that just casually drop in to twitter to see some one off post/conversation from an aggregator or their friend sent them, or post/DM bitch to a company that fucked them? I have a twitter account, I have a handful of followers (all likely from more than 5 years ago), but I hardly use twitter enough to even care. And I don't think this is that rare.
> You ever look at the youtube home page when you're logged out? It's absolute garbage. It's also not the way most people use youtube.
I don't follow your point. Most people use youtube by following links from aggregators such as reddit or here. They don't actively participate in the youtube "community" with its cesspool of comments nor even subscribe (what is it - like 3 to 5 subscribers per 1000 views) - that is hardly the "vast majority".
That's a strong assertion. You have any data to back it up?
> They don't actively participate in the youtube "community" with its cesspool of comments nor even subscribe (what is it - like 3 to 5 subscribers per 1000 views) - that is hardly the "vast majority".
I think you're right about the comments and even subscriptions, but you're entirely skipping the "algorithmic" way of using YouTube, which is using the suggested videos on the homepage like the person you were replying to alluded to, as well as the related videos. Also, searching.
YouTube can and will suggest new videos from channels it has decided you like on the homepage whether you're subscribed to them or not. It will also put them in the related videos, even if they're unrelated to the video you're currently watching.
Huh? This is blatantly false. Link aggregators are not as large as you think. People go on youtube.com and watch the videos there, or check out their subscriptions, or use the search bar in youtube.
And yet its influence on media I do consume is undeniable. I dont think there are many journalists not on twitter
edit: to everyone saying that this doesn't happen anymore, thanks for the clarification! i guess i stopped fighting the algorithm back when this wasn't the case.
Of course, the main way they measure ‘liking’ the site is via engagement, which may actually just measure compulsion to use, not enjoyment. And, of course, the however small, cohort of people who genuinely ‘like’ chronological order are ignored.
But algorithmic feeds are endlessly unique and composing them is vastly more difficult than doing chronological order.
Maybe to improve profitability you'd want to improve how much you can serve out of memory, but I think Twitter has more than enough compute to just generate your page for you when you visit. (I haven't seen a fail whale for over a decade!)
My understanding (from a watching a Twitter Tech talk, maybe about redis?) is that that is actually how it is (was) implemented. They were so focussed on time to first render, they took the efficiency hit.
I think the issue is a little deeper: it's not that people want chronological vs. non-chronological timelines, it's that they want a way to get the "best", "most relevant" content to be surfaced from those timelines and presented in a sane way. Non-chronological timelines are better at producing the "best", content (for some relative definition of "best", at least), but by presenting it out-of-order, it requires more of the user.
Suppose that your feed refreshes itself while you're trying to read a particular tweet. You go back looking for it--now badly ordered, irrelevant content is positively correlated with your amount of scrolling and time spent in-app.
So the app isn't just optimizing against your lazy attention, it's probably in some cases also rewarding itself for actively hindering you.
These software patterns are anti-human. Imagine using a hammer that is trying to maximize your engagement with the hammer itself. Well, I know I'll be more engaged with the hammer if the head keeps falling off, but that isn't what a hammer is for.
It usually takes me a few minutes to notice. I'll see a tweet that I recognize from a previous session, or from someone I don't follow, or something like that.
Perhaps I'm on the wrong end of Twitter's A/B testing.
Defaults matter! Most people will just see the default state of things and not be too curious about ways they could change things, and never even notice this sort of setting.
And on top of that, like Facebook did long ago with its chronlogical timeline setting, it resets itself back to the algorithmic timeline periodically.
Click the "Sparkle Button" to change the timeline sort algorithm. Right, totally obvious...
Holy crap, I can actually use Twitter again. Thanks.
I think in this case it might be that you clicked through a pretty hard to miss box.
It also appeared on multiple of my accounts that were made before the switch, so this hypothesis also seems wrong.
b) The icon is exactly the same style as all of the other icons in the app. If you couldn't work out that the picture is clickable how did you know how to search or access messages. I'm actually confused how you use any mobile app given they mostly all have this style.
c) It is not a traditional sort ordering though. Using the curated mode brings in entirely new content into the feed that is not in chronological e.g. followed topics, recommended topics, greater emphasis on retweets.
The one thing that is mighty annoying though, is how it keeps pushing "recommendations" on you. The "someone liked", "someone follows someone", this kind of stuff. If only there was a dedicated button to make someone else's tweet appear in your followers' timelines... I somehow managed to break that misfeature by muting a bunch of "words" that are apparently contained somewhere in the recommendation objects because apparently the mute feature checks not only against the text of the tweet but against some kind of serialized form of it. So I no longer have these neither on the web nor in the Android app.
would find it very informative about a tweeter
When Mark Anderson blocked Jack Dorsey was it because of harassment?
To me, something like that is a valuable piece of info. I wouldn't have known had Jack not pointed it out.
There are notable actors/actresses who've blocked me because of this. It just immediately makes me dislike anything they are in because I just can't think of them as a person worth respecting.
Why? We used to be able to import block lists, so I have 59,990 or whatever accounts blocked that spam.
I'm not sure how that confers much useful information about a user.
Ideally the blocked list would be viewable.
I think it's important if you believe Twitter is 'the town square', people should be able to see who and who isn't allowed to enter that town square to respond.
There are a lot of reasons a person may choose to block another account, from harassment to simply curating a better experience for themselves.
> people should be able to see who and who isn't allowed to enter that town square to respond.
Do you use Twitter? This isn't how Twitter works at all. The fact that a person blocks you doesn't prevent you from entering the "Town Square" in any way.
This is a strange kind of town square.
First of all, it has to protect wealthy elites, emperors, and so on, in a society with appalling wealth inequality. All people who would be unable to enter a town square without elite soldiers / praetorian guard / varangian guard to protect them.
Secondly, this town square is not a public space, it's the wholly owned private property of a collection of ultra-wealthy people and institutions (or a single wealthy individual, who may as well be Caligula at this point).
Finally, the town square already isn't a great model: there were town squares during the reign of Caligula, the entire institution of serfdom, during slavery in the American colonies, during Jim Crow. What was discussed there? Whose "free speech" was protected there?
vs.
An application process, with identification verification. While optional, would allow any one who cares about their feed to completely turn off anyone who could be a scammer or bot. I don't remember that option in Facebook. I would definitely have it turned on.
Not sure how these are even remotely comparable.
twitter has 213 million active users. imagine if 20% of them want to get verified. it would take decades
> Coinbase has more than 89 million registered and verified users
https://earthweb.com/coinbase-statistics/#:~:text=4.1)%20Rel....
Authenticate the security features on the ID? There's a company for that.
Match the name / DOB on the ID against public record? Yep.
Check the ID against a list of known fakes? Ezpz.
Verify the format of the barcode on the back of an ID? There's another company that offers that.
You get the jist.
I don't think the profit motivations on Twitter will be similar enough.
Of course, in practice they're just as vicious to each other under their real names.
Keeping things as human only as possible means that you can't scale-up apparent vocality of opinion via automation.
Funny, I've also noticed this strategy is very common in the cryptocurrency space, especially in Telegram groups. Signal-to-noise is abysmal.
There are some approaches that suggest something similar as you say, not for every post but an occasional proof that you're human, like once a month. Check out IDENA.
Twitter could verify that you're a human in order to let you use the platform, but they don't, they instead verify your identity. Google does the same thing, and Facebook, too. They want a phone number tied to real accounts with cell providers or photo IDs.
It's not just about bot prevention, it's about monetizing their user base.
At one point Facebook wanted my driver's license to use the platform after a while, so I just stopped using it.
We should debate idea's not authors. Anonymous Speech enables idea's to be spread not personality cults, one would thing those opposing Elon believing that people just support him because of his personality and fame would want more Anonymous Speech not less
Facebook pushes “real names” because Zuck thought it was a good idea, and it makes them more money.
To be fair Facebook started with the "(re)connect with your college friends" premise, so it made sense for them to push real names. Not that they couldn't have changed it later, though.
Sure, they may log your IP and your ISP could connect the dots, but it still provides privacy.
This only works if you guarantee that both sides are going to argue in good faith and, well, gestures at the world, that just isn't realistic right now?
But I'm starting to think even that doesn't really get to the heart of the issue. I think there's something about the network effects that leads to a dumbing down even if everyone thinks they are arguing in good faith. I feel like I've noticed a negative difference in discussion quality even over the past year. I can read a reddit headline now and feel more confident I can predict the content of the top two or three comments, the lazy popular thoughtless replies. And I've seen emergence of widely upvoted opinions that you know people adopt not because they've thought through it themselves, but because they've seen it two or three other places and thought it sounded good, irrespective of truth or accuracy. So I think we're seeing behavior that appears trollish even though it may not have come from actual trolls. Call it structural trollism, maybe.
> reddit is a crazed totalitarian system with Red Guards on the loose all around the communities looking for wrong opinions to report
..they immediately think to themselves "right, there's another loon", and move on. At worst they get annoyed at their once-mature community getting infested with loons, and they downvote it.
If you want to have an interesting conversation, I would start with not moaning about 'totalitarianism' because you got downvoted on a social media site. You can just say that you're frustrated that the site is moderated by people who don't share your political views. That's all.
Assuming people don’t use multiple accounts and don’t share accounts with others, the current state of Twitter and all major social networks is pseudonymity, not anonymity: you know that all tweets by @someone were written by the same person. Their "real" name doesn’t matter as long as they always use the same pseudonym.
If your ideas can't stand up to anonymous criticism I'd postulate your ideas are the problem, not the anonymous speech.
Yes, there are scammers and bots and a e-commerce platform would need to evaluate identities for transactional purposes. But to discuss ideas? Please more anonymity.
The difference before the Internet is that if I found your idea odious I could punch you in the nose you even if you were "anonymous". And, in return, you were not likely to be attacked by a mob unless you actively did something really horrible.
There are two big problems with social media:
1) I have no way to directly punish you when I find what you are saying sufficiently irritating. You are unlikely to say something really nasty to my face if I could slap you for it. I am unlikely to slap you if you can do so in return unless there is a really good reason. I don't have a good suggestion as to how to implement something which works for this.
2) You have no way to defend against a mob who finds what you are saying sufficiently irritating. In the US, we, nominally, run on presumption of innocence before we punish someone, and the defendant has the right to confront their accusers. Mobs are anathema to both of these. The solution for this is that social media should not be granted safe harbor. If you need moderators, you should also be liable for what is being said on your platform. If you want safe harbor, you should only schelp electrons.
That is false, you do understand that many seminal works like the Federalist Papers where penned anonymously with attribution only coming by way of historians looking at other known works, the entire purpose of Publius was to ensure people were debating the IDEA's not the people.
You seem to be operating under the false idea that before the internet the only communication was in person verbally.
>I have no way to directly punish you
that is not a problem and you should not be empowered to "punish" anyone for their speech, it is very sad you do not respect the concept of free expression but people like you are the exact reason Anonymous Speech is required. You reject the premise of "I may disagree with you but I will defend your right to say it"
Respecting speech you approve of is easy, respecting speech you find offensive is what requires protection. We have lost that in principle in modern times
>You are unlikely to say something really nasty to my face if I could slap you for it.
if you did, you would and should be jailed for battery. Physical violence is NEVER an acceptable response to speech. This modern "punch a nazi" narratives prevent in the authoritarian left is an affront to the principal of free expression
Sorry. This is completely wrong. The GOVERNMENT must respect speech that people find offensive. And I will defend to the death the right of free speech to not be oppressed by the government.
I, as an individual, do NOT have to respect your offensive speech. It is, in fact, my DUTY to oppose your offensive speech, and I'm tired of people forgetting this. And, yeah, some of those reponses will be "against the law". Lots of people have been arrested for sit ins, protests, chaining themselves to fences, violent labor strikes, etc.
> if you did, you would and should be jailed for battery. Physical violence is NEVER an acceptable response to speech.
Sorry, my experience says you are wrong.
Racial slurs, for example, tamp down real fast after the first time someone gets a punch in the nose for slinging one. Been there. Seen that.
Might you be going to jail for battery? Maybe. But that's the risk you take. Might you take real damage getting your ass kicked? Maybe. That's the risk on the other side.
Far too many people are willing to say and do odious things simply because they never get any actual punishment for them. See: the disbelief of all the Jan 6 mob. A couple of those people having gotten their asses kicked might have caused their brains to process that what they were doing was wrong before it escalated to people getting shot.
If you go up to someone and call them a slur, then you have committed verbal assault:
"the use of offensive language directed at a person, where such language is likely to provoke a reasonable person to physical violence."
No it can't.
Also, that has nothing to do with making that response with physical violence legal. You can still only use violence when you are defending yourself against physical injury. Sure, provocation might be mitigating, or get you to a lower level of assault or murder (as the case may be), but it’s not a full defense.
You actually do, if by respect you mean that you are obligated to not engage in violent activities against someone for speech.
If you are going around doing that, then hopefully, other people will engage in their fully legal rights to self defense against you for such actions, or use the legal use of government force against to, to segregate you from society.
You don't have to respect what I say. You have to respect my right to say it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
First sentence clearly states that to adhere to the principle, retaliation is not to be feared or people will not speak up. This threat of violence is prevalent in dictatorships all around the world.
But for any intellectual dialogue the adherence to freedom of speech is a minimal requirement.
There is a difference of principle and requirements de jure.
How can you cancel anyone with a better idea than you have if you don't know who they are?
Although this will probably get derailed now by GPT3-esque astroturfing/trolling.
Anonymous speech is like graffiti, pseudonymous is like Banksy.
There is a large group of people that is more interested in other people instead of ideas and to evaluate anything they need to check their trust in the person uttering it. I think they simply need different platforms.
Otherwise I 100% agree, there are good behaving anonymous platforms but I don't know if Twitter ever can become one. I would never register with my real name though.
So basically make people's Twitter experience even more of a bubble than it currently is?
Not even going to address the issue of the "real person" filter not actually filtering out the realness of the person, but rather if they can afford to dox themselves to Twitter.
What problem does that solve? Nobody on Twitter sees or engages with posts without a blue checkmark anyway. Twitter is the Hollywood of social media. You're either an influencer or you're a lurker. There is no middle ground.
There's a reason people talk about "Black Twitter" and "Gay Twitter" and "Poll Twitter", etc.
There are massive ad hoc communities with the product.
I hate to break this to you, but Twitter is Elon's soapbox for raging against the SEC and swinging markets his way. You're basically telling me McDonalds has the best ice cream around meanwhile McDonalds couldn't care less about the quality of their ice cream. That is a loss leader for them. They don't even consider it a product. It literally just keeps the place stocked with followers for the influencers.
Not Musk specifically.
Also searching users with curl and the api works great too.
Those are not mutually exclusive. I may be interested to know that @emmanuelmacron and @emmanuel_macron are both real persons but I’d also want to know that @emmanuelmacron is the famous one while the other is just an homonyme. Blue Check symbols are also a lot useful to distinguish real brand accounts from fake ones.
> Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out.
See @yishan’s thread on moderation [1]. Moderation is a hard issue, "consistent moderation" is not achievable because the hardest decisions are made based on the personal feeling of the moderators (that’s also why FB has tons of humans moderators: you can’t just automate it beside obvious spam content). You can’t have rules for everything and you will ALWAYS have people whose behavior match the 'rules' but are still problematic. I guess that to have a good opinion about moderation you must work as a moderator for some time.
Sounds like one to verify identity, one to verify a "position"
this used to be a big deal because people could steal celebrity handles. that's why many famous accounts start with @theReal...
celebrities being reachable on twitter is a big part of the appeal. anything that helps them to protect their brands is good for business
A lot of people get this mixed up! but it more adequately explains low-follower outliers.
[1] only-ish
To me, this is proof that verification isn’t about security feature, just social status. It’s been exploited by hackers to mimic famous accounts, including Musk himself https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46097853.amp
A name is not a unique identifier. Full stop. If you expect a specific name to refer to a specific person just because it's public, you're glossing over a lot of details which just plain don't make that work.
To some degree, this is not a problem with the social media network, it's a problem with people not realizing that a name on a social media network doesn't necessarily have to be the first person you think of when you see that name, and some personal responsibility to know who you're contacting is expected. There's things social networks can and should do to make this easier, but ultimately the problem will persist until people change their behavior.
Or repurpose the misinformation banners to make it clear that this is a person with the same name not a person with the same position/title. Maybe the long-tail gets messy but that's where implicitly or explicitly linking to external sources is valuable. Or just trust twitter to be that external source (maybe with 3rd party alternatives via "open sources").
By "missing some of the nuance", I meant of the example presented earlier (https://twitter.com/willsmith), which is not someone impersonating Will Smith the actor, is someone somewhat famous in their own right (even if much less so than the actor), and has the name because they were on Twitter first. They go out of their way to state who they are and to disambiguate themselves from the actor Will Smith, but are also verified as Will Smith. Guess what? They got a lot of hate tweets recently from people that didn't bother to actually look whether @willsmith was the actor or not and just blindly assumed so.
Perhaps you missed some of the nuance in that as well?
@willsmith is clearly not the Will Smith that slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. He isn't claiming to be, but he could change his profile photo and all of a sudden the world would think he was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The blue checkmark adds some validity to that claim.
Some account handles will match real names. People make assumptions on that. At the current time, no matter of locking down profiles so they don't change will solve the problem of people assuming an account name must match the famous person with the same name, because names are not only not unique, collisions are common enough that famous people share names all the time. People don't do the barest amount of verification of what they are seeing compared to what they assume, so nothing you add that they have to look at to fix that will actually fix it.
You can make this argument about the extremists on either side.
There should be no doubt as to what is real and what isn't, independent of political ideology.
God damn Southpark Politics
That's a really different concept. Either you have a strange definition of extremists, or you have a strange definition of "the middle".
On the one hand, in context, it makes a little sense; you can understand it as saying that objective reality is an orthogonal concept to political extremism.
On the other, it's hard to imagine an "extremist" who's "in the middle".
I suppose you can picture a few things though:
1. A "delusional centrist". Here you get the severed connection to reality, but also the political moderation. Some "End of History" person with 90s-era thinking might be like this -- maybe what you think of when you hear "Krugman" or "Fukuyama" (though I think both have been shaken, actually).
2. A "radical moderate". Here, "moderate" is a little different from "centrist". I hear "centrist" and I think a Clintonian foreign policy hawk with liberal social policy; I hear "moderate" and I think more of a cultural stance. Nowadays "moderate" might connote breaking cultural taboos. It seems like male comedians end up in this category a lot. I don't think he'd use this description for himself, but I once heard someone describe Slavoj that way. "Radical" somehow connotes a connection to academia and to certain philosophers more than it does any specific conclusions (which may not be extreme at all).
Overall this maybe just what you get when you play with two words neither of which means a ton.
Yes, extremism to me does feel orthogonal to political orientation. "Delusional centrist" is closer to what I had in mind.
Here's the thing that I think is important: you can't talk to extremists rationally. Their mental world model doesn't match reality in big chunks, so there's no shared world view to agree on.
Perhaps I am redefining "extremist" but that's just my mental model.
The problem is people choosing emotions over rational discourse and establishing footing and common ground. A lot of commenting is in the vein of “I am right and you are going to hear me out (or else)!”
Tell me, which of our major modern divides can be solved by "rational discourse?"
Consider something like the coronavirus pandemic. Studying the virus itself is a monumental undertaking requiring the funding of states or large corporations. Laypeople must simply "choose sides" and pick the sources they like best. Suppose that you tell me the virus is killing X people a day and I claim it is only killing Y. How do we settle that via "rational discourse?"
We can't discover the truth by talking amongst ourselves like a couple of Greek philosophers using inductive or deductive reasoning.
Our choices are either to perform our own primary research (again, wildly impractical for an individual) or to point to sources we feel are credible.
So I would envision that it would mean people talking and finding out validity of statements made. If you come with a Mirror tabloid article that says that Coronavirus turned people into vampire zombies, that would be a much different discussion than discussing the minutiae of a topic.
The problem is “side thinking” and not enough “gradient thinking”
We might not know some of the finer details, but by inquisitive discourse we can come to a ballpark for your example, or identity problems with each method.
This is my exact point.
you mean go on twitter? ew, no
My theory is that a lot of people had an axe to grind, and that thread was sufficiently aligned with them.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chipotle-rehires-manage...
> Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.
A twitter mob went after Shor, including people tagging the CEO of his company (who _is_ on Twitter, not sure what the confusion is there) and asking them to "Come get your boy." A few days later, he was fired. Four days after that[2], he was kicked off the Progressphiles list for being "racist."
If you don't like New York Magazine, here's a Vox article that goes over what happened[3].
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-... [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-raci... [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow...
The culture didn't last long - people usually fight back at the mobs now, who have died off some. Now it only exists in minor extremist form where leftists (anti-Epstein conspiracists) and rightists (many other kinds of conspiracists) go around calling random people pedophiles. Twitter still doesn't ban them if you report them though.
Also, that research he quoted is from a Black researcher (Omar Wasow) who is still around tweeting himself and seems well respected.
And in the end nobody suffered as much as the folks living in these high crime neighborhoods. Not only is there evidence the riots increased homicides, https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr..., but also it created a backlash against police reform even in the most progressive cities in the country, like NYC and SF. Police budgets are now bigger than ever: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cities-vowed-2020-cut-po...
Bi-partisan momentum on police reform evaporated as Trump baited progressives into picking a self-destructive fight over the acceptability of rioting and the need for policing.
In our timeline he did, since I remember reading some followups he wrote about it.
It's not the real most annoying research you could post; that'd be the NBER paper finding protests reduced covid cases by getting uninvolved people to stay home.
I don't really care about the details of these stories, it doesn't affect me if the virus came from a lab or how deep the corruption runs in the Biden family. But any rational person without a political agenda has to agree that the censorship system as it exists is ripe for abuse by bad actors. These two examples in particular completely changed my viewpoint on moderation and I no longer see Facebook or Twitter fighting "misinformation" as a good thing given how easily they can be manipulated into denying valid information. They simply cannot be trusted to identify what is or isn't misinformation.
... That may be true for Twitter, but it's certainly not the case for IG and FB. Discussion of any sort was off-limits, based pretty much entirely on Daszak's letter (we agree that's batshit insane, right?). Millions of posts were deleted, and tens of millions got a little warning bar that dropped interaction by "at least" 80%.
Meanwhile back at Twitter, people who tweeted wrong-think of very mild varieties, such as anything but the current and official (and ever-shifting) stance on vaccine effectiveness were getting banned. While that's not super cool, you're right to point out that Twitter weren't quite as authoritarian as claimed.
Some people did that, sure. Others were genuine. For example, this tweet in cautious favor of a new vaccine development got a Professor of haemostasis and thrombosis at the University of Sheffield banned, and even on appeal they made him delete the tweet: https://twitter.com/ProfMakris/status/1474068222550884367/ph...
Many, many other cases of this sort exist, and there's no justification for it. Speaking of unwarranted - your assumptions about people's motives, to justify attacking and censoring them, are disturbing. Do you feel like that's a normal thing to do?
Trump has used this tactic effectively many times in the past: he says something that makes sense ("we need border security") in such a racist and distasteful way that causes the opposition to kneejerk react against whatever policy he's proposing, forcing them to take a position that's at odds with common sense ("border walls are racist!"). It's possible he may have had some classified information about the lab leak being a feasible story, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was just one of the thousands of things he blabbers uncontrollably about and this particular one luckily happened to have some truth to it.
Moderation is a solved problem. Replace the entire team with dang. Bam. Good forum.
What is the scalability of dang?
For deeply indebted and cash-flow poor companies like Twitter is about to become (at the surprisingly high--and positive--$1.5B EBITDA, interest is going to erode that by upwards of 60%), is there an equivalent service offering? dang-as-a-service, or "daas", if you will?
That's a super interesting question. In my idealist mind, if one person can do something, anyone can do it (given reasonable levels of teaching and learning ability).
I don't think it looks like DaaS -- each company must curate their own "dang" group that has an almost gut-level understanding of the site's "sinew", or the ideals that it lives by come hell or high water.
Maybe Twitter doesn't even have a philosophy. Maybe it ought to.
Nope. I can't be dang.
I can learn the tools he uses. I can learn the procedures he follows. But I don't think that I can learn his patience and his charity toward people who are being flaming trolls. I mean, I've seen him model it. But I can't imitate it for long.
I guess the real question is: are dang's parents still alive or do we have to clone him? Hopefully Twitter can wait for the minimum 18.75 years it'll take to scale out.
Train AI model based on HN moderation by dang
Sell high quality moderation as a service for other plaforms
Profit?
I've been a moderator before, within a team of moderators. There were varying views within that group from 'ban the slightest aggression or just disliked person' to 'give people as many chances as can be afforded, ban is last resort (my view).'
Members got 'banned for nothing!' or regarded as 'why is that person still here?' Depending who you asked both statements were wrong...
It just doesn't scale massively without something like Reddit's subsite moderation structure. FB, Twitter, etc all can't do it at scale across one public community and algorithms can never be nuanced enough and are extremely vulnerable to political/ideological bias ('misinformation' labels are a simple example of this, regardless of what you think of their accuracy or usefulness).
It’s quite possible that an AI could learn to do all this but I suspect that a big part of modernism that participants in a community know and respect the moderators. Not many humans respect AI in the same way.
An algorithm can't ask itself for feedback. I hope Musk does make the Twitter algorithms open source, that would be fascinating and put pressure on other platforms if it turns out to be eye opening or useful
But I think a more refined version of my initial comment is that if the users respect moderators, then moderation will be much more cohesive and well received.
Twitter clearly has utility. But it will never be a nice place to hang out except in some very localized parts of it.
It was built in America, by Americans, and now, is about to be owned by an American. And like America, everyone is (should be) welcome... provided you honor our Western traditions of free speech.
I like what Musk said about free speech within the limits of the law. I think that's a good place to settle things.
A lot of stalking and harassment laws are state level and not the same in every state. Since online harassment is a common problem on Twitter, which state’s laws would you like to apply?
Spreading misinformation that results in violence towards an individual is not governed by federal laws unless it falls under the definition of a hate crime.
Spreading misinformation about results of elections isn’t illegal but is very obviously quite damaging and has real world consequences. How do you tackle this issue?
That’s just a very very small sample. The problem you are going to face with your approach is that the US laws were not designed with the idea of governing stuff on Twitter.
You don't. People are legally allowed to spread misinformation.
> The problem you are going to face with your approach is that the US laws were not designed with the idea of governing stuff on Twitter.
Yes they were... you just don't like the way American laws handle these things.
Difference.
"Assume good faith" is one of the HN Guidelines[1].
I think dang walks the walk and applies that principle himself during moderation, to a rather amazing degree considering how long he's been at it and the challenges of the job.
My sense is that Musk earnestly wants to do something similar at Twitter, and that he's motivated by a kindred idealism.
However, assuming good faith on the part of forum participants means that outgroups end up having to tolerate a lot of unpleasantness, so long as that unpleasantness is couched civilly enough and could possibly be interpreted as well meaning. (For example, whether women are biologically predisposed to be less ambitious than men is considered fair game on HN and gets debated ad nauseam.)
It's obvious that dang passionately wishes for people from all backgrounds to feel welcome, but that wish exists in tension with the lenient moderation philosophy.
I've come to believe that HN's demographic skew is a direct and predictable consequence of the moderation philosophy, and that ultimately the skew is endemic and won't budge over time. I'm occasionally troubled by my own participation here because of it, as much as I enjoy and appreciate the positive aspects of the site.
I expect something similar will play out at Twitter, with outgroup participation waning as Musk shapes it according to his utopian vision of what he calls "free speech".
Yes but isn't that a good thing for a public forum/town square, given the alternatives (censorship, politicization, etc.)? Shouldn't it be exactly the sort of place that people feel unafraid to discuss controversial subjects?
If the choice is between some outgroups feeling uncomfortable with civilly-expressed criticism of themselves and their worldview, and draconian, politicized, highly subjective, moderation foisted on everyone, I know where I stand.
And private fora are not town squares. The rules for actual town squares have to be lenient because government suppression of speech is problematic. The relevant freedom for private fora is not freedom of speech, but freedom of association.
Why not? At what point is it OK to let people exclude each other? We don't all have to be friends and play together, do we? We're discriminatory, hierarchical, social animals. Some people will always be excluded. Using authority to try to solve this problem is futile and draconian.
> And private fora are not town squares
I agree, but the question here is whether it's worthwhile for this particular private forum to operate under the same principles of free speech. Certainly some people seem to think so.
> the sort of place that people feel unafraid to discuss controversial subjects?
> If the choice is between some outgroups feeling uncomfortable with civilly-expressed criticism of themselves
So this is the key tension. Outgroups get criticism of themselves every-bloody-where. As you noted, "We're discriminatory, hierarchical, social animals". One more place doesn't make the difference. What good moderation does is provide an opening for an outgroup to issue its own civilly-expressed criticism, with a chance of being listened to instead of reflexively ridiculed and dismissed.
I'm not sure that's true at all, lots of fringe views gain traction on Twitter. I'd imagine more of them still are moderated out of existence.
> So this is the key tension. Outgroups get criticism of themselves every-bloody-where
Yes, and by being a digital town square, Twitter, or any similar platform, would become part of everywhere, with the same consequences for outgroups.
> provide an opening for an outgroup to issue its own civilly-expressed criticism
I agree that outgroups should have this opportunity, but it must be applied to all the outgroups, including those who have a mutual loathing for each other, and those whom we loathe ourselves. Fairness dictates we shouldn't play favourites, in the same vein that the ACLU defended the a Nazi group's right to march through Skokie.
If an outgroup wants a private, safe space to express themselves, that place cannot also purport to be a public square of free expression. It's one or the other.
That's not particularly close to what I said. I am talking about the outgroup being able to participate in the "public square of free expression", in a way that is actually free for them to speak to the ingroup.
These conditions do in fact represent "actual" freedom. Basically if you support people insulting and ridiculing Nazis (which I do), you should support them insulting and ridiculing anyone else on the same principle.
> civilly-expressed criticism of themselves and their worldview [0]
or where they should expect to be ridiculed and insulted? And why would anyone sane want to regularly participate in the latter?
As to why people would want to participate, I suspect it's for the usual reasons: to accomplish a goal, or to gain influence and social status.
Edit: Surely you agree that sometimes rudeness is warranted, and that people in fact are rude on Twitter?
Also, it's not clear how to do it well. I do have some ideas which I'd like to try someday. Here's one: people work well with feedback loops, so telling them that they're penalized and giving them a way to fix it could be a good thing. Unfortunately, it could also just be awful. This place is always one step away from sudden decline, and when walking near a precipice one wants to step carefully.
"We" is only "citizens of the USA". Other countries have quite a different tradition regarding this, and citizens of such countries often quite a different understanding than USA citizens of what is considered as "free speech" in the USA and what does not.
Twitter is not purely a US forum. In some places the law may say that "hate speech" is illegal, or that politically dissident speech is illegal... what then? Are you presuming that US jurisprudence should be the standard for all of humanity, worldwide?
How do you avoid the problem of thousands of accounts from Russian-funded troll farms pumping out millions of disinformation tweets on everything from vaccine conspiracy theories, Ukraine wars, lies about elections and so on? Do you just accept that Putin gets a free ride to influence public opinion, destabilise the liberal democracies and nudge close elections in his favour?
Muting accounts might be good for my blood pressure (if I can mute thousands of accounts) but it doesn't fix problems like the above or interesting people getting bullied off the platform (it's bad enough already).
> No mora bans on so called "hate speech"
Why is hate speech "so-called" hate speech rather than just hate speech? Do you think Twitter would be a better forum if anyone can e.g. bombard a Black professor with racist abuse when they share some research?
Do you think HN would be better with no moderation?
> or politically dissident speech
This is not banned.
Honestly, Elon Musk along with the team at OpenAI using things similar to what has already been accomplished with GPT-3, can make a real improvement in AI based moderation, at least in terms of being able to understand the differences in messages and their meanings. Everything from hate speech to terroristic threats to suicidal messages can at least be accurately measured and scored by AI to move up to a human moderation queue. AI based moderation in a transparent way would really help the current opaque, biased, politicized moderation that currently exists on twitter and most other large platforms.
There are multiple, ever-shifting layers of references and sarcasm and irony and slang and so on.
Check out some of the more notorious places online - r/pol, Kiwi Farms, etc. Even for humans that stuff is extremely dense and bordering on incomprehensible unless you have seriously spent some time diving into it.
Like any subcultures with their own slang/lore/jargon/etc many of the statements cannot be understood on their own, only when the fuller context is understood. On top of the complexity, the meaning of everything changes unbelievably quickly. The meaning of many statements is the opposite of their literal meaning, or somewhere in the middle.
I've never seen ML/AI experiments that really grasp humor or other such metatextual type stuff.
>I'm now going to reveal the institutional bias of every large social network (i.e. FB, Twitter, Reddit):
>Are you ready?
>Here it is...
>They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.
>That's all.
Yeah, as if 'users squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama' did not result in higher engagement rates and these platforms did not exploit that for their own gains.
Also, the more transparency you have the more you get things like "but you did this and that for Alice last time, that's so inconsistent with your decision about Bob today!!1!". Yup, it's not consistent because it's human and constantly evolving, people get better with experience, cases are never 100% the same, etc.
You'll never stop the banned person from being angry. The point of transparency is so that you provide something to make the mob think twice about grabbing pitchforks.
It's the same reason we have a justice system, to stop vigilante justice from tearing apart society. You have provide the illusion of justice or people make their own judgements based on limited information. Of course it won't be perfect every time. You just have to persuade _enough_ people.
If there is an emotionally resonant argument that can be made in favor of the banned user, then a mob will form.
Procedure, objectivity, precedent be damned.
You are essentially describing the court of public opinion, which is governed by deeper rules that are hardwired into our social brains.
Big Tech is extremely political, practically ruled by politics, and those politics - as of 2022 - are almost exclusively left-wing.
Twitter's response to everything they don't like is to construct a rule forbidding both sides to do anything that goes against Twitter's politics. Truth, public interest, and freedom of speech do not factor into the equation.
This would limit the population of "people who can trick others that they are Emmanuel Macron" to people named Emmanuel Macron, which is such a small edge case I don't think it's worth considering. Add photo validation to ensure that a profile picture is actually you and the problem is pretty much solved.
For brands, it doesn't seem impossible to do verification for any brand through DNS proofs or something like that.
So why are you panicking just because Musk bought the company?
This is laughable gaslighting. That whole thread is misdirection. Yishan is a liar and should be called out on it.
Moderation is not "easy" because it requires careful design and effort, but it is not "hard" in the way he describes it.
None of the major social media companies made any real effort to make moderation transparent.
None of the major social media companies made a real effort to come up with a solid set of content rules that most people can agree with upfront (at least in principle) and that doesn't change after every major news story.
How can they claim this stuff is "hard" when they never even tried to take the most obvious measures to re-establish some level of trust in their companies? Trust that they've had initially and squandered though their actions, BTW.
Edit:
Also, I am sick and tired of social media CEOs, VPs and founders pointing a finger at their users and saying "you, users, are the real problem here". This is bullshit. An average interaction on (moderated!) social media is significantly worse than an average interaction in (unmoderated) real life. It's about medium structure, not people. The vast majority of people are fine.
How is it not both? Give people a medium wherein they can be semi-anonymous, or otherwise removed from the immediate social impacts of their actions and words, and they are awful. It seems to me that you need (a) distance from social impacts and (b) people willing to be awful.
How is it not both? How are people not responsible for their own actions online? I don't get what you're saying.
I think Yishan was trying to say that moderation is hard not in a "This requires brilliant minds and hard effort" kind of way, but more in a "This will emotionally deflate you for years" kind of way*
Edit: *especially if you're the public figurehead who will receive tremendous heat for this.
One problem with moderation is that you have to choose somewhere on the continuum between (A) "Don't be dick (everyone surely knows when they're being a dick, right?)" and (B) Enumerating literally every possible rule violation.
You quickly learn that (A) doesn't scale and it gives your moderators maximum leeway, most of them having very, very, very different ideas of what it means to be an ass.
And with (B), you get into the business of rules lawyering where users will continually use your own rule list against. By trying to be comprehensive, you create leeway through omission. This reminds me of forums with 1000 rules. Nobody is going to read them, and the only people who do are the ones who will waste your time by finding the one obvious rule you left off. And with this, it seems even easier for bad users to rally the support of obvious ones because they seem to make a good point, and you have a weirdly bigger issue on your hands than you would have if your rules were less focused.
In other words, there is no way to make a set of content rules that people can agree with (in spirit not interpretation), else moderation would be easy.
You can try this yourself. Pick a hot topic like trans rights or racism, come up with tweets that you think are obviously unwanted and also tweets that come close to crossing the line. And then try to write a rule that encodes this sorting in a way that leaves no room for interpretation neither among users nor your moderators.
Because most people don't care about this. For most websites, making moderation transparent only opens you up to more abuse and does nothing good.
>None of the major social media companies made a real effort to come up with a solid set of content rules that most people can agree with upfront (at least in principle) and that doesn't change after every major news story.
Because it's literally impossible to do this.
>Also, I am sick and tired of social media CEOs, VPs and founders pointing a finger at their users and saying "you, users, are the real problem here". This is bullshit. An average interaction on (moderated!) social media is significantly worse than an average interaction in (unmoderated) real life.
No it's not bullshit, I'm taking from this reply that you haven't spent any amount of time moderating an internet forum. (Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong there) The users are the real problem and it's the entire problem you're getting paid to solve when you work for these companies. Nobody would use these services if they weren't solving these problems. Real life interactions usually only involve a handful of people and don't require figuring out how to get everyone in the world to get along with each other. If the users were capable of "coming up with a solid set of content rules that most people can agree with upfront" they would've done so already and we wouldn't even be having this discussion because there would be no need to demand that Twitter try to do it.
This raises an obvious question. If the people hearing the ideas manifestly want to hear them, who is being served by the moderation?
One possibility is the moderator. It's evident that Twitter executives, or people who influence them, don't want certain ideas to spread. But why? One possibility is that they believe these ideas to be false or "harmful" (whatever that means).
They believe the the masses are easily duped and that counter-arguments are unlikely to be sufficiently persuasive. If only a minority of people are easily duped, then false ideas tend to burn out within a small radius as they are exposed to counter-argumentation and common sense.
But if the masses are putty in the hands of bad idea creators, then a wise and disinterested moderator has a role to play. He can spot the bad idea and cut it off before it spreads.
But can a wise and disinterested moderator exist? If company executives faced no outside pressures, then it's theoretically possible. But we can see clearly this does not exist in the real world. The US Congress and Whitehouse have not been shy about making very specific moderation demands of Twitter, backed by serious and credible threats. As a result, correct ideas are bound to be moderator out and bad ideas allowed to spread.
(A few hundred years of political philosophy, as captured in the founding documents of the US, make it clear why we don't want government to play any moderation role whatsoever.)
In my opinion, the wisdom of the masses combined with opportunities for vigorous counter beats centralized moderation by a very large margin.
To deal with harassment and SPAM, there are perfectly functional tools like rate limiting and user-initiated blocking. These don't need to be applied based on post content. Note that saying something unpleasant once isn't harassment, and that posting something people disagree with isn't SPAM.
The problem is that the most dangerous content is appealing to people on a very low emotional level, it's called "stochastic terrorism" for a reason. Just take the QAnon crap about children being held hostage and mined for adrenochrome in the basement of a pizza parlor. Yes, the dude deciding to shoot up a pizza parlor [1] should be punished for his actions - but should those who published the crap or hosted the crap be allowed to get off without consequences? What about the baseless claims of a "stolen" election that led to a putsch attempt and the deaths of seven people [2]? Neither of what was published was illegal, even under European laws, but nevertheless real, actual people died.
99.9999999% of people won't fall for QAnon content to the degree they get violent over it, but it only takes one gullible-enough person and suddenly something that most (>50%) of the population would dismiss as crap becomes an actual cause for massive harm. If hundreds are gullible enough, you get a Jan 6th-scale event. And if millions are gullible enough, you get Trump, Orban, Kaczynski or Brexit (as well as, again, an accompanying rise in violence, murder and terrorism based on these people and their ideologies).
In my opinion, actions have to be taken against the peddlers of QAnon, election fraud and other propaganda before the stochastic terrorism principle applies and people get killed as a result. And the worst contributor to that is unmoderated and undermoderated social media, no matter if it's 4chan and the other chans that gave rise to QAnon, Facebook and Twitter that gave rise to Trump or Telegram that gave rise to the corona deniers and anti-5G conspiracy peddlers.
Democracy is not something that is god-given, democracy is something that has to be fought over to obtain it (and in every country, that fight cost millions of deaths) and has to be fought over to keep it alive - sometimes bloody (e.g. in Ukraine), sometimes at the election campaigns, and always at a legislative level. Democracy needs the attention of everyone and the counteraction against threats - including curbing the freedom of speech, where proven to be necessary.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/business/media/comet-ping...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6-capitol...
YES. The people who published the nonsense are in no way responsible for the actions of the murderer. Neither are the people who manufactured the hardware, mined the raw materials, ran the cabling, or built the datacenter. Responsibility for action must terminate at the actor.
Liberty basically decentralizes power as much as possible. The inevitable consequence of this is that individual people are powerful. And if they happen to be gullible or stupid, they can exercise that power to do stupid things. The alternative is taking away power from individuals and concentrating it in authority. This inescapably carries a much higher risk of the power being corrupted and abused, since there are fewer actors who wield more of it.
I'm glad to suffer the occasional school shooting or laughably ineffective putsch, if it means I will never be subjected to a Kristallnacht.
> actions have to be taken against the peddlers of QAnon, election fraud and other propaganda before the stochastic terrorism principle applies
This is basically precrime/thought crime. I just don't trust any authority with that much power over any period of time. Following Blackstone's formulation, I would rather 10 dangerous lies spread unchecked, than be censored for promoting one truth.
And this is one of the things that are broken on the large social media platforms. I mostly use FB, so that's what I know about. But what they do is so ridiculous, that I started to collect their decisions. I've been banned for a week for calling a politician, a public figure (with 50k followers) "braindead" in response to a really stupid comment he made publicly under news article. (That's all I said. It's a widely used expression in Hungarian for saying that someone is an idiot. It's the exact same term as the medical one for someone being in the state of brain death. Not exactly a nice thing to say someone but not over the top either.)
He used his public profile (not his personal one, but the FB page). I got blocked 20 minutes after making the comment for harassment . Their policy explicitly says that public figures should accept more than ordinary people. And this is what the law says as well. At the same time I keep reporting people making homophobic, racist comments or simply just being flat out rude, using obscene remarks (addressing me or others) and they almost always get rejected after 3 days.
But since transparency is non-existent, no one really knows what's acceptable and what's not, what the consequences are (it seems that the penalties get longer and longer, doesn't matter how serious the violation is, but there might be an expiration, so maybe only the last year counts).
At the same time what I found to be working (which is the same I see here) is that instead of deleting, which is inefficient for a lot of reasons, you should issue warnings, explaining what is not OK with the comment. This seems inefficient at first, but it works because it adds transparency and helps everyone understand and internalize the rules. It also helps people to calm down because they'll see that if others misbehave they won't get away with it either.
But yes, algorithms don't work (yet), especially not in non-English languages. Underpaid, invisible, who-knows-whos might be cheap, but they don't cut it either.
This is one of those things that sounds great in theory. But in reality, it likely functions much more like any other adjudication system. People can break rules an infinite number of ways, so there are an infinite number of reasons to ban an account. Understanding many of them will require context that may be problematic to share (for ex: if it happens in DMs). So in practice, the shorthand public reason for bans will pretty much always reduce to "violated site policies."
The day Parlor was deplatformed - by all of big tech in an obviously coordinated action - the flimsy pretext was they weren't doing enough to curb hateful speach. Yet on Twitter you had the president of Iran shouting more death to America and China congratulating itself for repressing minorities within its boarders. Yet twitter didn't get booted in the same way. The hypocrisy is beyond blatant.
And that's the real reason for the outrage that Musk might force Twitter to actually move back towards a neutral balance and cease being part of the coordinated propaganda machine - the other services shenanigans are going to stand out even more starkly in contrast. Twitter is big enough and casts enough of a shadow that there is going to be some significant contrast. So much so that those filthy casuals are going to start noticing something different. They might actually start paying attention to everything else going on in tech and the media. Real horror of horrors - they might start asking questions! Uh oh! And if you think all of what I wrote above is conspiracy theory BS - great! Then what does it matter if Musk owns Twitter or not? The gate swings both ways. If everyone else is normal and he starts to bend twitter to his will, that will stick out like a sore thumb in contrast. Nothing to worry about, eh?
Which end of the political spectrum do you mean? I've often heard of them being criticized for leaning too far to the liberal-left but the examples you gave are a little confusing.
The Chinese government is authoritarian left-wing so that kind of aligns with the anti-right sentiment but it goes against liberalism.
Parler is conservative/authoritarian right-wing, so that holds up but the Iran example is also conservative/authoritarian right-wing which contradicts that?
The biggest bias I see for the English language with foreign languages being poorly moderated. It is a business after all, so they probably only invest as much in moderation as they need to to keep their advertisers.
Second: let’s say it’s true. How would we know whether it’s because 90% of problem content is generated from participants with one political leaning vs a policy designed to discriminate politically?
I understand your point about being unfair. But wouldn't this solution just lead to people simply leaving the platform because of the increased toxicity?
The last time the Twitter iOS app tried to force me into the algorithmic feed it was the straw that broke the camels back and I switched.
They also let you block advertisers for some reason.
Then I tried the fediverse, and it was worse, except that it was much weirder overall and posts mostly concerned extreme fringe topics and opinions.
I like good blogs and I'm fine with some Youtube channels, even though the signal to noise ratio is high. But microblogs seem like a complete waste of time to me. Can someone explain the appeal of these sites to me? What do people get from them? What interesting things do you read on Twitter?
Signal to noise ratio is indeed very high, and sadly I see too much content I don't care about, which makes me abandon Twitter for weeks, but I think that it could be fixed.
I agree with you in that, it sucks for content consumption, outside of keeping up with things in a shallow way.
I don’t know if you could rise to higher levels of understanding by continually using twitter, in the way you could by reading a lot of books.
I'm on fosstodon.org and don't really see this, I get presented with mainly FOSS related opinions/news/tech and cat pictures, I'm very happy with it.
I can't stand twitter which appears to want to bombard me with politics, popular culture and garbage.
At least Reddit is easier to tune - you can get a great feed by joining a dozen subreddits, instead of following hundreds of individual accounts on Twitter.
There are 3 feeds - (1) home, your personal follows, (2) local, the people on your local instance and (3) federated, the people followed by anyone on your instance (+ stuff they boosted).
If you join a server somewhat aligned with your interests, you'll have a much better time.
I would also add ability to privately mark people as "Friend", "Collegue", "Trusted" etc so that I can influence algos to show more stuff from people I care. Facebook has this feature to mark friend as "Favorite" and it has seriously improved my newsfeed. Unfortunately, they limit it to 30 and it's just nonsensical.
Also doesn't following 5k people make your timeline way too chaotic?
• make it so you don't have log in to view a single tweet
• de-monopolize the apis
https://www.fastcompany.com/40511058/most-twitter-execs-didn...
So Milo was hassling one of the actresses from ghostbusters. Her important notifications were full of insults. She complained to her talent agency.
Her talent agency reps a lot of celebrities. Their complaint was that they need blue check notifications to be civil because the talent has to look for questions from reporters and other celebrities.
Pulling Milos blue check was the easiest way for Twitter to fix the problem.
Well, then, here's the first half-truth. Milo may have roasted a celebrity who just made a bomb of a movie, but the complaints were largely about people responding to Milo who would also "@" the celebrity. So there really wasn't an issue that it was hard for this actor's staff to sort out questions from reporters, etc. She could have also simply blocked Milo. Problem gone!
The agency reps a lot of celebs who don't want to see insults in their blue check notifications.
Twitter wants those celebs to be active on Twitter and doesn't need Milo.
- More visibility to smaller tweeters. My feed is full of boring/dumb comments from "big tweeters" that get thousands of likes because of their large number of followers. Smart tweets from upstarts often get little to no viewings.
If it’s done YouTube style (thumbs down button) it just counts as engagement and promotes the post but without any visibility as to why.
> More visibility to smaller tweeters. My feed is full of boring/dumb comments from "big tweeters" that get thousands of likes because of their large number of followers. Smart tweets from upstarts often get little to no viewings.
Switch to the "regular" feed that shows only content from people you follow. That won’t help you discover small accounts but at least you won’t get the boring accounts.
I wouldn't have downvotes on tweets, only on comments. Yes, people would sometimes downvote things they just disagree with, but I'd rather have more containerization than endless flame wars.
If you want quality debate, find a tweeter whose followers want the same thing. Or have you debate off Twitter.
> Switch to the "regular" feed that shows only content from people you follow.
My main gripe is that I want more people to discover _me_ :-D But in general platforms like Tiktok make it much more inviting for new people to contribute. Being a low-follower-count tweeter is not fun.
2) I think this one is just a reflection of how you use Twitter. Besides people in my niche community, most of my timeline is random viral tweets from accounts with <100k followers.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90697826/the-top-25-most-active-...
id rather have a choice among several recommendation systems. chronological timeline is the simplest and the worst
Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of ideas. Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. Maybe there's some other Musk magic that will do what so many others have failed to do.
Is Twitter available in on of the following countries? China, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, Turkey? Since we know the answer I'm looking forward to see how helping those local governments go after "dissidents" will be aligned with Musk's high ideals of free speech.
But since this whole affaire started with "ElonsJet" refusing to shut down, and Musks reaction was a teenagers "Then I'll buy this company and fire you", I'm inclined to believe free speech is going to be ok as long Musk is criticized.
Sadly, not just in Turkey but increasingly in what you'd consider developed "western" countries. This is concerning.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/introduction/enac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
Certainly he could retreat from places like Turkey and China. Alas, increasingly there is nowhere left to run. You can be inclined to believe what you want, we can just wait and see what happens no?
Bullsh*t alert! Name one western country that charges people for terrorism for criticizing Erdogan.
Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK for posting ‘offensive’ tweet Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job. She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn’t participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen.
Sworn testimony in parliament makes it seem as if Mr Strahl’s story is either wholly or partially manufactured. No accounts were frozen for donating when the protest was still allowed.
Additionally there is no evidence that a person by the name of “Briane” lives in that town, and no one with that name was listed as a donor to the protest.
One day Mark Strahl or somebody like him will be in power and the shoe will be on the other foot. If you start banning people you don't like (from twitter, bank accounts, whatever) left and right you will end up in a very dark place by setting that precedent.
There were ~200 accounts frozen affecting less than that number of people (some people had multiple accounts frozen). The claim is that these accounts were the ones directly supporting the protest. This was after the courts had declared many aspects of the protest unlawful. The accounts were mostly unfrozen after the protest broke up. The mechanism that was used to freeze their accounts allows them to sue for compensation
As much as the process for the emergencies act has been painted as absolute power. It very much isn’t. It is subject to quite a bit of oversight from the legislative and judicial.
I understand what your point is, but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this. As far as I can tell this was way more preferable to the usual tactics that the RCMP used to enforce injunctions.
For example, the military was used to clear native peoples off their land to build a golf course. A child was bayoneted. In 1990.
The RCMP broke into a cabin with a chainsaw and axe where indigenous elders were praying to stop oil and gas construction. That was last year.
Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Besides all that, at the time it was VERY clear that this political action was funded from unknown sources outside the country. I don’t think that money is speech. And I really don’t think that political destabilization should be funded by anonymous overseas donors.
Yay
> but Canada has a history of going after left leaning protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this
Sigh
Temporarily freezing the banking privileges of people involved in the perpetuation of 1. A crime 2. while acting against an injunction 3. after being authorized to use that power by a majority of elected representatives is a pretty acceptable use of government. Regardless of who in power does it.
You said you don’t like people in power arbitrarily freezing accounts of people they don’t like, and cited what appears to be a completely made up story from a fringe candidate.
I’m pointing out that this was not arbitrary, and it was used in a very specific and limited manner, as authorized by law, to accomplish a very specific goal. The goal was accomplished with, as far as has been actually proven, an absolute minimum of harm caused, even to the perpetrators themselves.
The protest is still allowed, there are still people protesting in my town. Just saw ‘em this weekend. What they aren’t allowed to do is use money from unknown international sources to shut down cities and infrastructure
What are we discussing here? Because your response to me was that "the other side is much worse" and you cited the military bayoneted a child in 1990.
This Mark Stahl fellow is a sitting MP not a fringe candidate.
> Temporarily freezing funds of enablers seems like a pretty reasonable solution to an unlawful protest, all things considered.
Well, if they are willing to bayonet children to build golf courses imagine the pandoras box you've now opened for when they get back in power. Won't seem so reasonable when they freeze your bank account in turn. Not a hard concept to grasp.
Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”. There are more than two major political parties in Canada. And the East/West/French divide is as important as the left/right divide.
I’m seeing this through the lens of government quelling illegal protest, regardless of what is being protested. I see what happened in Ottawa as a restrained response that I wish was used more, rather than the violent response that is so common.
At the time temporary asset freezes we’re used, military force was authorized by the legislature. They could have dragged the trucks out using military recovery equipment, instead they made it so they couldn’t buy diesel and propane with money from unknown sources.
> Try to imagine a carbon copy of yourself who fell into the other echo chamber and has similarly low opinions of your politics. There will be no shortage of justifications for why you must be punished.
If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
The people weren’t “punished”. Organizers had money frozen for about a week until it could be seen that it wouldn’t be used to support more activity deemed to be an emergency.
The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
Many people are childish and it is now fashionable to stick your fingers in your ears and try to make the thing you don't like disappear instead of dealing with it. Once upon a time citing did not imply agreement. Sometimes reality is icky.
> You seem to be seeing this through the lens of “two sides”.
I'm seeing it through the lens of "no sides". Try putting politics aside.
> If I fall down some conspiracy rabbit hole, protest by unlawfully shutting down a city for a month, ignore an injunction, and encourage others to do the same while ignoring warnings about the consequences, I sure as hell expect that the government will come after me.
I wonder why you think only people with politics that differ from yours (and therefore are clearly wrong) are susceptible to this behavior and members of your tribe are somehow immune.
> There was no “pandoras box” opened. The legislature authorized the PM to act in a limited way to end an unlawful protest. Those powers have expired, and could have been rescinded at any time.
It seems you are under the impression you need to convince me.
Many people would say otherwise, to use your parlance. Alas, Mark Strahl is still an MP, even if he spreads lies. Marjory Taylor Greene somehow got elected. They have supporters. You need to convince them.
Is it getting easier or harder? What will happen when they regain power? Something to ruminate on.
And not only the "fringe" or conservatives but even people who might agree with your politics directionally might disagree with the heavy handedness and perceived slide into authoritarianism. It is as if your perceptions are not the only ones that matter even if undoubtably you're right of course.
> The dangerous precedent isn’t the seizure of money. It’s using foreign bankrolls to pay for a destabilizing protest movement to use industrial equipment to shut down major infrastructure and cities while ignoring the rule of law.
Presumably it could be both. You could have multiple ongoing problems. And in a heavy handed attempt to solve one exacerbate others. I really hope it sinks in but I'm quite afraid you'll just reply again about how bad the people you don't like are.
Nobody had their bank account frozen for "saying mean things about Trudeau."
People did get their bank accounts frozen for playing key roles in protests that shut down critical infrastructure for a prolonged period. Protests that were at least partially funded by foreign interests. Protests that cost Canadians millions of dollars and posed a safety risk for many people.
Whether you like JT or not, at least on the surface the government had justification to do <<something>> to stop the protests after so many weeks. Some governments would have gone in with clubs, rubber bullets and teargas. Ours elected to shut off the funding tap. And it worked.
Whether the emergencies act should have been used here is definitely up for debate. For what it's worth, an independent inquiry has been established to look into this. I for one hope they recognize the slippery slope that such a blunt tool represents and put in better controls and oversight.
Sure, one can’t survive without money. And they shut that dissent down real quick. Like they controlled speech quite well. Now that they’ve found the button, I wonder how many times in the future they’ll push it. You’re basically bragging about your loss of dissent.
Also, the government did not "shut down the dissent real quick". The protests went on for weeks without any reprisal. The shouts were shouted, the horns honked, the memes posted, the swastikas flown. The protesters got their fifteen minutes of fame and more. We all heard them speak, unfortunately it turned out they didn't have anything interesting to say.
So they let it take it’s natural course? Or did they force it to stop by using power wielded only by a gov?
Incidentally, Ahmadinejad is quoting 2pac on twitter: https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956/status/10519371063927521...
Of course this is nothing new, the slippery slope in the UK started over a decade ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Joke_Trial
"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
Chambers was arrested by anti-terror police at his office, his house was searched and his mobile phone, laptop and desktop hard drive were confiscated. ..was found guilty at Doncaster Magistrates' Court, fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 costs. As a consequence he lost his job as an administrative and financial supervisor at a car parts company.You're welcome to explain to me how a teenager quoting snoop on her instagram is deserving of a court case whether somebody is familiar with the quote or not as opposed to Ahmadinejad quoting 2pac.
Or the Taliban being explicitly allowed to stay on the platform for that matter: https://www.mediaite.com/news/twitter-says-taliban-spokesman...
how do you think this is on par with Turkey consistently persecuting ---dissidents---?
Scotland is a small place so can't find much for you other than this one local explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvmF1peteGE
You can now meme yourself to jail now. No need to even go so far as the head of state, any random individual can feign offense at you to land you in legal trouble.
English defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defendant, and does not require the plaintiff to prove falsehood. For that reason, it has been considered an impediment to free speech in much of the developed world.
> The Netherlands' lese majeste law dates from 1881 and carries sentences of up to five years jail or a fine of 20,000 euros ($22,200; £16,700).
Not really abolished, just a lower punishment.
> 'It had to do with an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries,' Reagan said Monday, relating the story he told Gorbachev. 'And the American in the story said, 'I can walk into the Oval Office, I can pound the president's desk, and I can say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country.'
> 'And the Soviet citizen said, 'I can do that.' The American said, 'You can?' He says, 'Yes. I can go into the Kremlin to the general secretary's office, I can pound his desk and say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country.''
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/11/18/Reagans-jokes-draw-S...
> The Böhmermann affair (also known as Erdogate[1]) was a political affair following an experimental poem on German satirist Jan Böhmermann's satire show Neo Magazin Royale in late March 2016 that deliberately insulted Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan using profane language. ... After the show was aired on German public television channel ZDFneo, the Turkish government released a verbal note demanding that the German government begin criminal prosecution of Böhmermann. German Chancellor Angela Merkel further escalated the situation by apologizing for Böhmermann's "intentionally hurtful" poem – later she called this "a mistake".[2] On 15 April Merkel announced in a press conference that the German government had approved Böhmermann's criminal prosecution, but would abolish the respective paragraph 103 of the German penal code before 2018. Intense criticism followed the Chancellor's decision, with speculation that she decided to allow the prosecution in order to protect Germany's refugee deal with Turkey.[3] The case was dropped in October 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Böhmermann_affair
This has nothing to do with elonjets btw and if that's the worst example you can come up with... you'd be just convincing those who think that Twitter's moderation policy is horrible. Because for them, a dude censoring people who track him (which won't happen anyways imo) is still insanely better than the current policy that they deem is used to supress entire ideas/events.
In SV you don’t get locked up or suicided if you say the wrong thing.
Following the law in some of the places listed above would have Musk help identify those breaking local laws.
My point was that I'd prefer companies to stick to their principles, and if that means they can't do business in certain countries, so be it. Saying that you'll follow local rules if that means abuse of human rights is not something I agree with. In this context 'human rights' is used as a personal definition rather than some sort of legal one, as local rules allow abuse in some places.
Do you believe it’s a win for human rights to allow dissent whilst also helping governments identify dissenters?
Your proposed rule might be unpractical, since it would disallow the U.S. government from from saying anything about free speech for at least 30 more years (see [1] and [2]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
Suffice to say that censorship was pretty prevalent through the history of Germany and it did not provide the advantages some had hoped.
And the allies did censor speech that is true.
> The representative of the Allied forces admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program.
In that case the measure can be understood as the country was full of Nazi propaganda and alternative media was more or less dead. But it was indeed temporary and the Allies also wrote Germany's constitution, which explicitly forbid censorship.
Lies and incitements to violence were a significant factor in Hitler being able to assume emergency powers, so you could argue that Germany learned a valuable lesson from one of its dictators.
Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood. It's illegal in Germany to promote or advocate for illegal acts. Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets interpreted a little different.
> There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canade etc.
I'd say its more than a little different. The US definition is pretty narrow and immediate. You can't get on a megaphone and tell a crowd to go kill some guy right now.
>Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canada etc.
It's all down to opinion of course but those nations do not have sensible freedom of speech. They pay lip service to the idea but will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Except for exceptions, such like making some kind of threat against the president.
> will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Can you show me such examples for lets say Germany?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-...
However, when a country doesn't allow you to promote or advocate for war crimes, then it's "only the U.S. has free speech", go figure.
But I agree with your more general point that Americans should be a bit less smug about the superiority of their free-speech rules.
I think both have their historic reasons, place and differences.
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US media, getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for human rights and "justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
But it does, it's just that to prevent a misuse, any ban on symbols (which are used to advocate or promote something criminal) a separate law is needed to prevent misuse and allow judiciary overview. That's an additional protection.
> US attack on Iraq was also illegal
That's a fair point (and I agree on the illegality), and I would actually like this to be challenged in the court and see a decision. However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z symbol as a symbol for this war. If there was a symbol for U.S. drone strike or the invasion of Iraq we could be talking about something more concrete.
The Z symbol exists for the same reason why the V symbol existed on US military vehicles in Iraq; It's mainly a friendly fire and unit identifier as Russia and Ukraine use a lot of the same mechanized equipment.
While the Anglo V also stands for V as in "Victory" and even has a hand sign associated with it, it's a whole campaign dating back to WWII and Winston Churchill [0].
Me and many of my schoolmates would flash it at US military convoys passing our bus at school trips in the 90s. The soldiers were always super happy about it, while we thought we were signaling "peace" to them.
Ultimately the V would morph into a Chevron with different orientations to distinguish what military group a vehicle belongs to [0], but there is a whole propagandist history behind the Anglo use of V, overlapping very much in the same ways of military necessity as the Russian Z does.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150708011459/https://time.com/...
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-invert...
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place only recently [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US state media getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for "human rights and justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
Ability to advocate for illegal, repugnant, or offensive ideas or acts is in fact the entire point of free speech, so being able to do it is an essential right.
In summary, those basically are high treason, murder/manslaughter, assault, robbery, counterfeiting, creating fire/explosions/radiation, destroying/interference in infrastructure (planes etc.).
Back in the day, noone prevented same-sex partners to marry in Germany in front of a religious congregation which allowed that according to their rules. They just couldn't get the marriage certificate from the State.
As for the illegality: it would make gay marriage an impossible act, because the legal framework to marry two men (or two women) from a legal standpoint (which includes the marriage certificates and the rights and responsibilities associated with it) would not exist. A public official who wrote a marriage certificate for a same-sex couple in 1999 would not have committed a crime, he or she would just have written an invalid form which would have had no legal bearing (and the public official would probably have been reprimanded).
Something you cannot do by definition cannot be illegal.
None of them has free speech. Free speech is a binary thing - either speech is free, or it isn't. The moment you face criminal lawsuits for saying the wrong things, you do not live under a Free Speech regime. To my knowledge, the only country which does this correctly is the US.
Many countries claim to have Freedom of Opinion - which is a different concept from Freedom of Speech. Under a "Freedom of Opinion" regime, you can hold any opinion that you like - but some you need to keep to yourself.
But the thing everyone forgets is that he has very strong ties to the US government. From a free speech perspective, this is as good as the government taking over twitter, but much better PR
That's why he's perfect for this task. Most decision-makers feel intense scrutiny and tip toe around things that cause backlash, especially things that threaten the status quo.
When you're oblivious to how people will react to your vision, you're more able to follow through and make it to the other side.
I'm all for a good damning with faint praise, and this definitely put a smile on my face.
I'm still convinced this is just the Twitter board calling Musk's bluff.
Lets say this does fall through, the SEC, Tesla, and SpaceX fall out could be REALLY bad.
> In 2018, he came under fire after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla private, and the SEC charged him with fraud. Musk agreed to a court-approved deal in order to settle the charges, which required that Tesla lawyers review any social media posts containing information "material" to shareholders. Months later, after he was called out for defying the order, the settlement was amended to include a specific list of topics Musk needs permission to tweet about. The list includes tweets about the company's financial condition, production numbers or new business lines.
> The SEC notified Tesla that two of Musk's tweets from 2019 and 2020 — one about Tesla's solar roof production volumes and one about the company's stock price — hadn't received the required pre-approval, the Journal's Dave Michaels and Rebecca Elliott reported.
I find it hard to overlook that at least one thing that might be motivating him to buy Twitter is to tweet however he wants to tweet, regardless of US law.
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/tech/elon-musk-tesla-sec-twee...
Perhaps I'm looking too deep into this and he really does care a lot about other people having freedom to tweet whatever they want. I think there's just a good chance that the SEC ruling telling him he needs to have his Tesla tweets reviewed before sending them could also be motivating him to buy Twitter.
He got in trouble because of what he said given his responsibilities to Tesla and the market in general, not where he said it.
He'd have gotten in just as much trouble had he posted on Instagram.
Maybe I'm wrong and he'll still abide by the law (which, apparently he wasn't doing very well anyways), I just see it as possible escalating conflict between a private business and a government agency.
> The only question is whether the SEC has the authority to actually create pain for someone whose wealth is so outside of the norm.
I assume they should have the authority to make such rulings regardless of how wealthy someone is. Now, will they actually enforce those rulings to create that realized pain? Maybe that depends on how much regulatory capture one can muster.
This doesn't really track. First of all he already tweets however he wants. Secondly what difference would it make to the SEC if he owns Twitter here?
Also highly recommended for anyone curious about what he wants to do with Twitter.
Verified, real people will change the dynamic.
> Admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal.
He got all those self-confessed trolls & edgelords together, created companies in hard sciences and made everyone rich in the process. I worked at Tesla, it was a good time.
I am also utterly gobsmacked how people here jump to the defense of billionaires.
> Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny -- https://twitter.com/emilybell/status/1518580094649966592
The discussion forums hosted by a startup accelerator are friendly to major capitalists? Who would have expected it?
Whatever laws protect that data or communications will continue to exist. And if you're just taking it on good faith that the current ownership won't do anything shady even if there's no laws preventing it, that's a much bigger problem to address.
If this dataset is dangerous, regulation is the way to solve that, not relying on the benevolence of corporate boards and shareholders.
What you're saying is why do regulations allow for this? Idk, but this is a regulatory question, and therefore it should be directed at the government not at the billionaire in question.
Call them Oligarchs like we have been taught to do for their commie counterparts.
American Business Titans are individuals who personally own and control obscene amounts of a country's infrastructure, through outsized stock ownership. And they wear fitted t-shirts instead of creepy euro-suits.
Often people look up the ladder in awe and respect because we all want to move up and be there ourselves one day, so it makes sense to venerate that position in order to justify it within ourselves subconsciously.
Welcome to Voat 2.0.
Or Reddit 1.0? That's what reddit used to be, and reddit got quite popular when it was like that.
If Musk can dial up the abuse on Twitter, Reddit 1.0 can live again.
I don't see how twitter changing ownership will change anything structurally at Twitter. Jack Dorsey started out as a free speech champion many years ago. The things people say cause real problems for real people and at some point the rubber meets the road. A large site like Twitter is at the mercy of the politics of the world.
Even stuff like "Twitter will comply with local laws" is a subtle concession to local censorship laws. Cracks in the facade are already appearing before Musk even owns twitter.
They do not.
They lock down specific, controversial threads in this manner when outsiders start making confrontational comments. AFAIK this was done because the racist vitriol proved impossible to moderate.
Reddit has huge "tyranny of the majority" problems and many communities spring up to essentially censor the speech of people outside of that community so people in that community can speak their mind without getting downvoted (I.E. censored) by the masses of Reddit. BlackPeopleTwitter has a system where all users that are not verified black users will be censored if the moderators deem it appropriate, which is perfectly reasonable. Is this racist censorship? Absolutely and yet it turns out that's not always a bad thing.
I find much of the discourse on free speech to be an oversimplification to the point of self-parody. I support the intentions of free speech but not a literal interpretation of what it means, which is just never censor anybody ever. That literally doesn't work and can't work, it's not a thing that's possible outside of a thought experiment, you'll end up getting DDOSed by speech.
Just remember, twitter does not give those people a megaphone. It's the media that report on their stupid shit that gives them an audience. Otherwise nobody would know what they're saying - especially the people who don't like them - and yet everyone knows who some of those people are.
I foresee measures coming to prevent coordinated attacks too large for simple blocking, but that will take some time.
After taking part in the "DevOps" cultural revolution, I feel that there is no path to mandating culture. Culture is the summation of ideas, practices, and values of all parts that participate in a system. If you try to discriminate against participants in order to get "the culture you want" then you'll end up doing some nasty discrimination along the way. That practice is also, ime, heavily correlated with ideological hell holes that lose relevancy the minute they gain relevancy because they're frozen in time along the timeline of acceptable ideas.
"Just don't ban US politicians" seems like an unworkable solution.
As a smart person you should realize this is insane.
Also, yes. That sounds incredibly sane. Especially if they say "Lets have trial by combat" and other such calls to violence.
We can quibble over details but it's far from being a "lie".
Seems well run enough to pull that off.
Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).
As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony Stark.
It's clear he knows a thing or two about rockets. Obv no single person is designing the thing, but it's clear he's highly involved.
Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
Musk is not a rocket scientist.
I'm quite sure that Musk understands the engineering totally and makes important contributions. Plus, his instincts in providing direction as a CEO are excellent. Very few CEOs understand tech like Musk does.
Shotwell is an excellent president and pretty much directly responsible for many of SpaceX's prominent contracts (as well as their survival in the early days), but she handles the 'business' side of things (although, since she has a mechanical engineering background I assume she also keeps up with the technical side), while Elon mainly deals with the technical side.
To take your example, she doesn't need to be able to weld rollcages into racecars, but she may be able to understand that a rollcage can only be expected to be useful in X cases or that a good rollcage should have Y features.
Similar to how Elon most likely isn't telling people to change X flange into a weld by adjusting the pipe by Y mm, but rather asking his engineers what they would adjust to achieve Z and the technical tradeoffs, then stating what he thinks is acceptable and what isn't.
I think you still being too generous. Other than Teslas which starting to get large amount of competitors who were late to EVs market, and SpaceX, which won't have many competitors because we still kind of figuring out what the heck we need to fly in space for (at this price points), Musk's basket is full of terrible failures.
The most shocking to me is a Boring company. What was promised - vast network of 3D tunnels where cars will move at 150mph speeds. Eventually trip from New York to Shanghai will take less than 2 hours.
What was delivered? A short tunnel with absolutely zero safety features, no ventilation, no exit points, build with state-of-the-art technology that turned out to be 3 times slower (per mile) than 30 years old boring machine that dug La-Manche, and Teslas are driving in that tunnel at... 35mph.
And Musk as we could all predicted came out in defense of all this tweeting that "We made the whole thing much simpler" - no elevator ramps, no high speeds, simple one-lane tunnel. And his base ate it up like some sort of genius he is that he invented moving traffic in one lane underground at bicycle-ride speed.
I say the same thing will happen to twitter. Initially it will be: - open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either - as an ex-Googler, I can tell you these algorithms are like rings inside a tree - hundreds of layers amassed on the top of each other over the years; - allow full free speech (so no control over even nastier language) - fight with bots.
Fast forward 5 years from now, the only people who understand the algorythms will be large bot farms and they will game the system to get throw to the top before anyone elses tweets. Just like there is reason Google is hiding their algo instead of f.e. patent those, they do that because they don't want smart people to game the system. Full free speech will bring even more maneuver to the site, and at the end of the day its impossible to remove bots. In China for 5 cents you can get someone's real ID. For 10 cents they provide you photo of ID with todays date. For 15 cents they will show up on any video call to provide they are who they are. So at the end of the day small trolls and insignificant bot farms will get wiped out, but the big players who make decent buck by trolling, they will continue undisputed. In a few years Musk will abandon Twitter to focus momentarily on another shiny object. "in fight for humanity freedom", like he couldn't do that when he proposed to solve world's hunger.
On the top of that, isn't his involvement in another project just a big fuck-you to everyone still waiting for:
- Solar City - roof shingles that will revolutionized electricity and actually will make you the homeowner to sell electricity to the power plant. - Tesla trucks and semi trucks - nothing new on that? - Boring company - no new progress after years of LV "loop". - Flying to Mars (many things changed now - from fancy trip sort of Cruise Trip with fun games etc, now the word is that many people will die during the trip and it wont be fun)
Seriously if all these projects would run full speed ahead on all cylinders, I would be happy Musk is taking over another project. But they are not. Most are terrible failures and Musk is still in hot water re: Solar City buyout. I'm starting to think all these projects were just temporary scams to boost Tesla stock value (which Musk succeed with 20 x P/E), and that's about it.
- The Tesla Cybertruck and Semi are going to be manufactured in the Austin, TX factory, which literally just opened after only 2 years of construction (mid-pandemic) – seems like progress to be.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
"Why would I want my kitchen to be sexy?"
"Why would I want my car to be sexy?"
Good luck with that, because at this rate you can literally sell snakesoil and claim it works. Take any group of say 10,000 people, have them use it for the rest of their lives, I guarantee you find few people who miraculously got some sort of disease cured.
- Who said the initial crewed missions to Mars would be a fancy sort of cruise trip?
Musk said that during the first presentation regarding the trip.
100% of engineers won't either. These algorithms are all going to be neural net based, which means they need the data (which will be private) to even know what outputs will be for a given input. And why the output is such for a given input? No way to know - basically a black box.
It absolutely is an engineering and technology problem.
If he runs Twitter like 4chan, it will surely fail, but I think he has more to his plan than he is willing to share publicly at this time.
Well, from that perspective I don't think it can get any worse.
What's so elusive about it? Let people say what they want and give users a robust word and account filtering system.
If you think your ideas and values won't stand up to public scrutiny, then perhaps you should do some self-reflection. If it's just a matter of your own comfort, use the block/mute/blacklist controls.
The path is balancing all that. It’s not just about people being “uncomfortable”, there is very real & hurtful abuse on social media, some of which breaks laws that Twitter will also need to respect. Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
Frankly, I didn't think the rest of your quote added anything meaningful to the first part. Rather than being rude I was just going to leave that out and hope you picked up on it.
My reasoning was as follows: Twitter is already forced to follow US laws where the legal system is willing to enforce them, and "toxic cesspool" is highly subjective. When it comes to handling the mob mentality, I've already offered my thoughts and suggestions in my previous comment.
>Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate.
So, which is it then? Is it a public platform, or a publisher curating content? Either way, Twitter couldn't exist without the taxpayer footing the bill for ARPANET, which is why I think they should be forced to allow all legal speech on their platform.
>More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.
Explain why it's bad for "echo chambers" to exist. Why shouldn't people be allowed to mind their own business and tend to their own spaces? I do this daily by choosing to not use 90% of the modern web.
At least in the US, there is no law that says non-government things have to offer "free speech" to customers. Womp womp.
He solves very few problems himself, personally, with ideas from his own mind. He just recognizes the people who will be able to solve the problems and brings problem and problem solver together.
There's no reason that should be less effective with Twitter than anything else.
Elon strikes me as an insecure man and opportunistic free speech champion. I don't think accounts like TESLAcharts would survive on the new Twitter. Stonks are supposed to go up, so your speech is definitely free to help that.
Once people like that get rid of inconvenient to them speech limitations, they inevitably end up with new ones, overt or hidden. There is never unconditional free speech in any society.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...
"I mean, frankly a top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter," he said. "I think these influence … They make the product much worse. If I had a dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, I would have a hundred billion dogecoin."
https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/technology/twitter-deal-bots
In fact, I think Twitter announced new measures of linking bots to bot operators back in Feb, so I have no idea why this bothers Elon so much (unless being identified as the owner of the entire Tesla bot horde is exactly what he is worrying about).
I for one, if you made me pick an example, would point to his treatment of Vernon Unsworth.
There are varying definitions of 'censorship' floated in this thread. A lot of people in this thread who are defenders of Musk are willing to apply the label censorship to 'canceling people'...or at least when certain people get push back. If we take their definition at the word, if we take it as honest, then it is reasonable to apply to his own actions.
vis a vis, by the definition of censorship floated in support of Musks purchase, he censored Vernon.
Do I buy that definition? no...but...I don't think 'cancelling' is censorship, I think its just another form of free speech thats given a hostile label to bound free speech in a hierarchical way.
Otherwise, and its worth noting this actually highlights the subtext of the overall conversation, there are two definitions of censorship being applied by some people - a broader one to speech they like, and a narrower one to speech they don't.
He's tried to get a teen to take down a Twitter account that follows his private jet: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-jet-tracking-teen-...
He's fired anyone who disagrees with him: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-ruthlessly-f...
He's fired employees for YouTube videos: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-self-driving-...
He's fired people for walking too close: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrifi...
He refused to pay severance to the Tesla founder unless he took down a blog post: https://www.wired.com/2009/06/eberhard/
He blocks people on Twitter: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1279326187559374849?lang...
Sure, he's never censored people the same way he could on Twitter, but he's also never had the chance.
@prvc while you do this volunteer fanboy work of defending him, given the opportunity he'd just as soon eject you out the nearest airlock. It's sad really, he's essentially a Borg with a malfunctioning emotions implant.
It isn't a crime, it is the American way.
No, that doesn't mean you're better than anyone.
When was grace in power determined to be a useless quality?
I doubt that you even are. The "we" you used earlier was certainly a mischaracterization of your supposed "power".
At the very least, they aren’t resigning and relegating themselves to be a victim of Elon Musk. That’d be weakness and the opposite of “power”.
You are as weak as anybody else, don't have delusions now.
Sure, our opinions are equally useless, but there’s varying degrees of being able to take action on that opinion.
Elon Musk can afford Twitter and do whatever he wants with it. You can’t.
I can afford to be unemployed while traveling nonstop for years on end. I can work on whatever TF I want. No BS meetings or a boss. That’s freedom, and freedom is power. You probably can’t. Do you have a boss? If you do, that person is already more powerful than you. I’m probably more powerful than your boss, since I report to no one except the government. I can afford to not work for employers who values I don’t agree with, or just don’t feel like working for. If you are enjoying being a wage slave, be our guest.
If you’re so smart, don’t be poor. Don’t be delusional for me. The world is pretty fair for people with good ideas and the ability to actually execute on them. Talk is cheap. You can also short or long Twitter or any stock too, if your opinion had any economic merit. At the very least, don’t dread Monday. That sounds awful. Bet you have student loans too. Can’t relate.
What freedom do you have in stopping Musk from buying Twitter? Everything else is irrelevant.
>You probably can’t.
Another assumption.
>If you’re so smart, don’t be poor. >Bet you have student loans too. Can’t relate.
Next time you go out on a date, I suggest you show them this comment.
>The world is pretty fair for people with good ideas and the ability to actually execute on them.
I'm happy that you haven't had any significant pains in achieving your financial independence. But just know that, if you want to make it to the big leagues, you will have to recognize the advantages you were given in order to fully make use of them. Musk, Gates, Buffet are priveleged, to be sure, but they are smart. They are in tune with the reality of their privilege. They are grateful for it, and that is essential to why they made it. Only because they are in tune with their reality, can they can shape it.
Good luck.
Passive aggressive intolerance and ageism. Aren’t you supposed to be virtue signaling?
> in the US
Explains why an American team winning American “football” are deemed “world champions”. Why did you assume OP spent his youth in America? Even if they are in America now, they could have been adopted from an orphanage in a different country. Logic.
If you grew up in the slums you might make it out with a good, stable, comfortable life through good planning and will. But becoming rich enough to buy Twitter? To influence people on a global scale? You're not going to do that without the approval of the incumbents. And you are deluding yourself to think they are meritocratic. Consider how long it took -it is taking- for people with tattoos to not get written off as gang members or no lifes.
Kindly refrain from assuming people's privilege and mentality. You don't know shit, sorry to say.
You’ve just moved the fencepost to a random percentile. WE could very much mean anyone who owns companies, or at the very least the non-working class who controls land, labor and capital, as opposed to being the labor and barely owning land nor capitalz
Another assumption.
>as opposed to being the labor and barely owning land nor capitalz
What the fuck kind of misanthropic sociopath are you?
Are you seriously implying that people who don't own land or capital are just dumb? Have you considered that they simply don't want to deal with the headache or that they don't want to commodity the work of other human beings like you?
EDIT:
You are closer to the slums than you are to Musk. You have no grasp of the magnitudes. $500k is nothing to them.
It seems to me you're defending this reasoning because you think you are "we". You're not. You can't put satellites into space from out of your own pocket.
I think someone coming from the mud can obtain their own capital and land. But that doesn't make them able to affect humanity on a global level. To someone who can, their power is nothing.
Or maybe you are just a troll and I am falling for it hard
Is honest introspection not part of your more kindness in this world mission?
> Supporting assholes is pretty hard hearted dude.
Nowhere did I write I support anybody. And you don't know my gender / dudeness.
> You are literally condoning them harassing other people.
Nowhere did I condone anything, neither literally nor figuratively.
> abusing their significant amount of power
Nowhere was abuse of power discussed.
You asked me whether I "perceive people in powerful positions being assholes as a problem?" and I said no. You don't know my perception beyond that, the only information you have about me is that my perception differs from yours.
In response you very rudely and judgmentally insulted me in a condescending manner. You mentioned that you experienced unnecessarily aggressiveness towards me. Your own words.
You claim you are all about kindness but then you proceeded to gaslight about being judgmental. And now you're digging in and just making things up and acting like a jerk.
Phoney kindness selectively extended only to people you find agreeable is no kindness at all. It is how you treat people different than yourself that reveals your true colors. You are simply a bully.
He was bullied as a child, and your comment is probably true about many autistic people.
I'd say Elon is using free speech for populist reasons and will not deliver a Twitter with true free speech (he is too insecure and besides almost nobody would ever use a platform like that), but no need for personal attacks (it just points at your own insecurities).
He managed to become a billionaire even though he's autistic so I think it's fair to criticize him on the same level as we do others.
If you don't do that, perfect.
Having autism would not be an excuse, by the way. It's just orthogonal and isn't something people are assumed to have say in, like their skin color. Attacking that (calling emotionless Borg and so on) actually hurts any point about specific problems with his actions.
I misinterpreted your "Don't bother, nobody has any sympathy for autism here" comment as a way of saying "People are so hard on him, even though he has autism", so my bad.
The existence of fanboy armies is entirely orthogonal to any discussion we’re having here. Their existence should have no bearing on how Elon is judged by a neutral observer.
He didn't violate any of his stated principles with his earlier actions.
If he goes a year or two without taking such action, will you reverse your opinion?
Which is partly why free speech absolutists cannot exist. Eventually, everyone draws a line in the sand. In the case of Elon Musk, that line in the sand seems to move depending on whom does the censoring.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600?s=20...
Twitter is a private platform, that now belongs to Elon Musk. If you don't like it, build your own.
“Build your own Twitter!”
“Build your own ISP!”
“Build your own DNS”
“Build your own copper lines!”
And now Chomsky has gone as far as to say that people who disagree with him (vis a vis vaccines) should be put in a desert and build their own societies. When asked if those people wouldn't die of starvation he shrugged it off.
Citation for Chomsky?
Firing people is a lot more than that lol
Being fired is exponentially more impactful and harmful for the average person than being banned from Twitter and has a much higher chilling effect on free speech than Twitter censorship does.
I don't understand the logic being twisted around here -- Musk himself has complained about ruining people's livelihoods over political/social disagreements. Getting people fired because of their social media is one of the chief complaints people have about "cancel culture."
If people aren't going to criticize Musk for attacking employees over blogposts, then it's going to be real hard for me to take them seriously whenever they talk about Twitter mobs.
I'm also arguing that it's silly to say that it's an existential problem for Twitter to do moderation because it's a public square while simultaneously saying that there's no problem with denying critics access to a place of business or firing them from their jobs. I will point out that "denying people access to a private place of business" is literally what Twitter does when it bans people.
Musk has the right to fire employees that argue against company policy, but firing critics is an obvious characteristic of someone who does not actually have that radical of a view about free speech and mostly just likes to think to himself that he does. If you want to understand someone's views about free speech, don't look at how they react to far-away political discussions that largely don't affect their life, see how they react when the speech hits them closer to home. Every time that Musk actually takes offense over speech, I see him immediately lash out in a way that is uncharacteristic of a free speech advocate, and very often that takes the form of trying to financially or reputationally harm critics -- both of which are actions that are a heck of a lot worse than banning someone from Twitter.
>Dear @ElonMusk: Thank you for reaching out to me. I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post, “Dear @ElonMusk: You should be ashamed of yourself”, was a personal attack on you.
Do you really think this is journalism, and that you have to serve a customer who treats you like that?
Second link:
>Mark Goldberg, a Morgan Stanley banker that helped take Tesla public in 2010, told Higgins that Musk repeatedly threatened to fire bankers from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs before Tesla's IPO launch in 2010.
Poor bankers. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, very sensitive people I'm sure. Also, the linked Twitter thread shows one event described with Tim Cook was denied by both of them. It looks like a typical poorly sourced attack rag.
>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1421150913075503112?s=20
First Amazon review of the book:
>I'm always somewhat skeptical when it comes to accounts of what transpired in meetings behind closed doors; especially when the accounts are largely from people that left Tesla on bad terms.
You can imagine at this point there's no need to go through the rest of the list, and that list would actually have the opposite effect of the one you intended.
Yes, it could be. Need to read the rest of the article to know whether it was merited or not. Elon has done lots of scummy things (Tesla battery swap scam for one).
> and that you have to serve a customer who treats you like that
You don't have to, but when you are pretending to be the paragon of free speech, it is an important data point.
And no, it doesn't really mean "then Twitter is right to ban everyone because they are private" since we're far from being in any kind of free market. Existing regulations, powerful existing lobbies and de-facto monopolies mean we should strive towards a complex balance.
I personally believe that freedom of association is an important part of the First Amendment and while I think that Musk has a thin skin and is abusing his power to censor his employees, I also think he has the right to do that. But at the same time, it's ridiculous for anyone concerned about public censorship to compare entirely personal blocklists to firing someone from a company or banning them from a place of business.
Musk has (some) right to censor people at his companies and he has a lot of right to choose who he does business with, but I also have the right to call him a hypocrite whenever he waxes poetic about censorship ruining people's livelihoods, as if your boss firing you because of a Twitter post is somehow worse or in any way different than your boss firing you or denying you severance pay because of a public blog post.
> And no, it doesn't really mean "then Twitter is right to ban everyone because they are private" since we're far from being in any kind of free market.
If you think that Twitter should have different rules because it's big, then the answer to that is to either break it up or nationalize it. Certainly, the answer to "this thing is too big to be bound to the whims of one elite person" is not to privatize it under one elite person.
What you're doing now is far worse than Musk trying to manage his own private companies and reputation, you're fear mongering; "what if he's the boogie monster!"
Managing a private company is not akin to managing free speech on a "public square" - and Elon seems quite aware of this. He's also quite aware of the risk and threat of tyranny if the general population doesn't have a place they won't be censored by systems toeing the line for domestic or foreign bad actors/interests, whether they're for-profit industrial complexes or authoritarians.
Why do you think Hacker News exists as a space to have reasonable, we’ll-intentioned discussion? I’ll answer for you: moderation.
Without moderation, all anonymous public discussion forums devolve into cesspools. By and large, reasonable people don’t want to participate in these places. Twitter certainly isn’t the best place for meaningful discourse right now, but without moderation it can certainly be a hell of a lot worse.
Because one, Twitter right now is already difficult site to be on if you’re queer and not using a chain-block extension to deal with bullies, edgelords, and bridagers, and opening the floodgates isn’t exactly going to help.
And two because people spewing hate have already learned to avoid most moderation by dressing them up as “ideas/alternative views”
Some real takes I’ve gotten in my replies unsolicited.
* “I don’t hate gay people I just think they’re existence is a sin, they’re pedophile groomers, and they shouldn’t be allowed to be married.”
* “I don’t hate trans people, I just think that trans men are just confused self hating women, that trans women are rapists, and that they shouldn’t be allowed to have any representation in media because they will brainwash kids into ‘gender ideology’ (whatever that is).”
I both don’t really feel like dealing with this on a day to day basis and I’m really afraid that the literal decades of progress is going to be undone by giving a huge megaphone to these people whose hate manifests in real life harm.
And that's good, I think - a better investment direction than NFT avatars.
> “I go like, Oh my gosh, Elon Musk just DM’d me: ‘Can you take this down? It’s a security risk,’” Mr. Sweeney said. “Then he offered me $5,000 to take it down and help him make it slightly harder for ‘crazy people to track me.’”
[...]
> Mr. Sweeney made a counteroffer to Mr. Musk, according to the screenshots of the exchange, saying that he would abandon the account if Mr. Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/technology/elon-musk-jet-...
He received an offer to shut it down, then countered the offer. Then said he was joking. You're not a lawyer, by chance?
However, Karen’s car is not required to have a transponder, so the location of it isn’t public information. Therefore, it’s actually nothing like the Elon Musk plane situation. Hope this helps!
Aircraft transponders, which are legally required to broadcast on public frequencies, aren't remotely similar to whatever cell based surveillance trickery you're thinking of.
> The owner of the account is a stalker attempting to extort his victim.
Extortion is a criminal offense and stalking can also be one, depending on its severity. So that means you're the one who brought crime into the discussion (with wrongful accusations, in my view).
Reality is, governments and the airline industry could make this system be sufficiently private if they wanted, or at least a lot harder to abuse. There's no particular reason personal details of jet owners have to be linked to the radio transponders.
He's not tracking a person's movement. He's tracking a vehicle, via public information, traveling through public airspace.
With opinions like these coming from the Elon army, Twitter is going to get worse.
Elon army? Where did you get that from?
I'm psyched either way. Instead of a faceless organisation with a CEO who can justify anything as his duty to the shareholders, now we will have a directly responsible figure. If Musk fails to deliver on free speech, his persona will be on stake.
His past actions show he isn't a believer in free speech and that almost all his principles are transactional. An example of this transactional behavior is calling out Saudi Arabia for lack of free speech while owning twitter which is interesting because he didn't have much problem with SA when they held 4.x percent of Tesla a few years back.
His beliefs appear to be built on a sand, not rock.
what are you even expecting here? he should've called them out for lack of free speech when they owned tesla? was there some instigating event during that time period which he ignored more than every other public figure? (i don't think we expect all public figures to make annual condemnations of every nation that does anything we consider appropriate. do we?)
as far as i know, he was snarking at saudia arabia's involvement in twitter because they commented negatively on his buyout proposal.
I expect them to also live under the same sort of rules and regulations they would have the rest of us live under.
Being honest and not lying often would be nice too.
>The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure! I encourage people to visit and see for themselves.
Source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1410413958805270533
And never, ever a word about freedom of speech issues in China. We all know why.
He is praising the economic growth of China, which is a fact. It did grow a lot.
What would he say?
"The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, despite lacking freedom of speech"??
If he has offered any criticisms of the CCP's relationship with free speech, I apologize for missing it. Otherwise, it's hard not to be cynical about people like him that claim to care deeply about freedom of expression while playing up business interests in countries that do not share such a value.
If he added "free speech", it would've meant that you could achieve good economic growth even without free speech.
I'm sure that's not the narrative anyone in the western world wants to go with.
Tesla is a public company and anyone can buy stock. What did you expect Elon Musk to do if Saudi billionaires buy stock?
Hardly; nothing Elon Musk does will turn his fanboys off, and everybody else already has a "meh" opinion of him. There is no risk for him.
He says Netflix is woke without any citations but just had two kids with Grimes.
Elon is about making money and good at building support.
I don’t mind him buying Twitter per se but I do believe it will distract from his noble pursuits. The former Reddit CEO’s thread nailed it.
It doesn’t make any sense on its face other than as a way to con certain ideologies.
I have Netflix and I consume Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Squid Game, Bojack, etc. Calling Netflix woke is pure virtue signaling.
Maybe he’s planning to run for President?
I think it’s either that he’s upset with Grimes for leaving him and is being anti-woke in response OR he’s up to something else that’s yet to be revealed. I don’t think this virtue signaling matters to getting state legislatures to allow direct Tesla sales. Maybe it does in his mind?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2021/10/03/follow...
Making theories about the private lives of celebrities and what they demonstrate about what they really are like or are motivated by... seems pretty much like fanfic to me. Fun game if you're into it, but I wouldn't base my worldview on it.
That would be incredibly ambitious; getting 40 states to agree to that seems exceedingly unlikely.
I don't like to take chances in politics these days...
Who says that the richest man on the planet can't set up a lobbying/propaganda operation to secure him a shot at Presidency too? Especially a man who has a lot of very vocal, very dedicated fans all over the US? Have them e-mail and call bomb enough representatives and he'll get his will.
Meh, Netflix does produce a lot of low-effort woke content: Sense8 and the one where they stopped a school shooting through interpretive dance comes to mind.
I'd love to watch more high budget series where diversity is achieved without it being shoved in your face (all female Ghostbusters / all female oceans). They come across as pandering to their audiences instead of progressing societal views elegantly - hence why people say Netflix produces woke content and loses subscribers.
The goal should be subtlety and not wokeness. So far the only show (of Netflix) I've seen that hit these tones was Altered Carbon and it was aided a lot by the fact that it's set in a futuristic society where bodies are viewed as disposable sleeves.
> When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
Depending on where you stand, either will be bad to you and should be stopped. If you are building a company that moderates content, then you have to choose to be neutral, left leaning, or right leaning. Twitter started as neutral, arguably started to lean left, and under Musk many assume will start leaning right, or at least move more back towards neutral. We will have to wait and see.
IIRC when conservatives were complaining that twitter was reducing their reach, the refrain from the left was that twitter is a private company and can do what it wants. With Musk taking it over and taking it private, it is an even more private company, and if it becomes less obviously supportive of left-leaning thought and more tolerant of right-leaning thought, then the same argument applies, its a private company and it can do what it wants.
Maybe this will be the opportunity for a twitter competitor to pop up and vacuum up all of the disgruntled left. It would be interesting to see how an explicitly left-wing version of twitter would faire compared to the right-wing versions that have not been able to land.
Conservatives were only getting their reach reduced because they were being banned for posting racist content. Them screaming "shadowbanning" isn't a real thing.
There have been reports that US GOP politicians have been exempted from the algorithmic moderation because too many of their accounts are posting content indistinguishable from white supremest talking points such that they would get banned too.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-trea...
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-...
People don't do citations in casual conversations.
Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement is weather wokeness is good or bad.
Netflix produces a lot of content. I would venture a guess that 99% of it isn't woke or anti-woke.
I thought conservatives preferred facts to feelings? This doesn't seem to be an opinion based on facts.
Do they? I don't. Mainly because I don't even know what that phrase means anymore. Any meaning the word "woke" HAD has been thoroughly lost as it has now become a stand-in word for any position some conservatives don't like.
This is factually wrong. I never even knew that there was a conversation about wokeness and Netflix. And I still don't understand why. Netflix just streams videos? Is this about the content they make/license or about their corporate/employee culture?
People who are pro/anti wokeness I think spend a lot more time thinking about this stuff than everyone else does.
They make a lot of content too
It'd pretty obvious Netflix is woke by their original content. It also tends to be boring now.
Sen..si..tive.
Netflix is extremely woke. If you doubt this, go watch Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and observe how half the people in regency England, including the Queen, are now black. Then go watch Manifest, and observe that in the final episodes one of the characters suddenly starts talking about how the government is "putting people in cages", quite out of the blue.
That's just the last two shows watched in my household. Manifest isn't as woke as Bridgerton but ... let's just say none of the characters are suddenly espousing the wisdom of Adam Smith.
Do you also get mad when the characters speak in modern english, or is that just fine?
Is it woke, or are you sensitive to race?
in the history of England, the United Kingdom and the whole Commonwealth there has not been a single instance of a king or queen being anything other than - here comes the dreaded word - white.
what's the point of making them black?
coming from Eastern Europe, it's like you made John Paul II black - or any of the patriarchs of Eastern Christian Churches. you can do it, but it's so far offbeat it isn't even funny.
in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black. they just weren't.
This is, in fact, (while completely beside the point) wrong. There are several non-white Kings and Queens in the history of the Commonwealth; e.g., Mswati III of the Kingdom of Eswatini.
> what's the point of making them black?
What's the point of alternate history and historically-inspired fantasy? That's a kind of big question. Do you literally think every film or show should simply depict life literally exactly how it actually occurred at some time in the past?
> in the US, I guess you could make Lincoln, Washington and Reagan black.
Or make Lincoln a vampire hunter.
(Of course, there isn't a long history of rumors that Lincoln actually was a vampire hunter taking as their starting point a too-literal reading of contemporary descriptions probably meant as throw-away insults.)
The complaints about Bridgerton seem to be highly-selective blindness to the entire concept that overtly fictional entertainment is typically something other than an exact recreation of history. (And/or assertion that race is somehow a uniquely unacceptable thing to fictionalize for unspecified reasons.)
“Woke” racists are the usual source of such race-swapping, because they’re obsessed with race and can’t simply tell a story as it makes sense.
The period in question isn't medieval England.
> can’t simply tell a story as it makes sense.
Using a literal historical setting unchanged doesn't make sense when the central premise of a story is taking a particular ahistorical (though historically rumored) fact proposition and dialing it to 11.
It's like making a complaint about the political intent of the X-Files because it shows unrealistic FBI procedures rather than telling the “story as it makes sense”.
This is so far out of touch it's unreal.
Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white. And you're claiming those same people would have no issue whatsoever with making a TV show about the history of Africa in which the Africans were all depicted by white people? It's hilarious and sad that people are actually reduced to trying to claim that.
And no, Bridgerton is not some fantasy or alternate reality. For goodness sake. Absolutely nothing in it is out of place in any way for the time except the races of all the actors.
> Woke people are currently trying to claim that maths education is racist because too many famous mathematicians are white.
I'm in the middle of "Woke America" and work on math curricula, and I've NEVER heard anyone assert this in one of the most liberal public school districts in the US. Is there someone that has said this before? I'm sure there is. Just like there are people on the right who believe Blacks don't have the intellect to learn math - neither represent the majority of these groups.
Now if someone tried to pass off white Africans as real history -- yes, you'd have complaints. But a fantasy story about it I think could be absolutely fascinating. Spoken from someone who self-identifies as "woke". Just in case you're keeping count.
You're statements would be funny, if they weren't so scary.
Is there someone that has said this before?
Oh boy, yes. Just search for 'racist maths' to find endless discussion of it. For instance here's Ontario editing maths textbooks to put woke nonsense at the start:
https://www.tvo.org/article/what-does-an-anti-racist-math-cl...
And California:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/focusing-on-the-correct-a...
Here's a British university jumping on the bandwagon:
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/04/11/decolonising-math-durh...
These are just random examples. There are many more.
Bridgerton is not a documentary, or even historical fiction, it's a romance set in a fantasy setting largely spun off of an extended what-iffing of a long-standing popular (but rejected by all current serious sources) rumor about Queen Charlotte.
Not sure how it's existence supports claims that Netflix is “woke”; sounds a lot like the fringe Christian Right descriptions of any fiction including magical elements (but not exclusively explicitly Christian miracles) as satanic.
Bridgerton is "woke" for two reasons: 1. Like the extremely lucrative romance novels it is adapting, it doesn't care what men think of it & the female characters are the protagonists 2. It includes interracial relationships
That's it. To the anti-woke crowd celebrating Musk's purchase of Twitter, romance = bad, racism = good and any media that disagrees is "woke".
All streaming platforms are first of all streaming capitalism.
Netflix funds content. Netflix licenses content and has a say on how future content from that IP is produced. They are not just a streaming platform. When you look at every new show as of late you see themes commonly associated with wokeness. Replacing characters with "BIPOC" (I hate this term) when adapting from source material when it clearly seems out of place. Mixing in subtle commentary about immigration, healthcare, "hate" speech, etc. Women are always the strong saviors, men are always the aggressive out of control beasts or they're docile homemakers.
You can see it in pretty much every show. Witcher Season 1/2 (immigration, replacing characters, men/women tropes), House of Cards Season 6 (all of the above), Altered Carbon, etc.
Unless they were only going to adapt actual fascists like Campbell, it is impossible to create science fiction without questioning the premises our society is based on. That's sort of the whole point of the genre. If one considers science fiction "woke" that says more about the person watching than it does about the company making Hillbilly Elegy and Cobra Kai and The Crown.
> questioning the premises our society is based on
There's a difference between doing this in a way that also tells a coherent story and one that just forces themes that don't exist into the story. One of those things is woke and the other one is not.
What Netflix experiencing is very similar to communist economy. Producers don't get paid for views hey generate and they have no market incentive. Unlike cinematic releases, you cannot go in loss on Netflix because deals are made upfront. There is no cost of failure to you. There is no real economic award or punishment from the market. So people just come in and slap whatever content they can to spend the available money.
It is misleading to state this in present tense.
Haha. He falsely accused british diver of being a pedophile on Twitter.
Musk doesn't care much about his persona.
This was crystalized for me when I came across an article detailing what they found from dumpster diving through Mark Zuckerberg's garbage. I mean, really?
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/a-professional-trash-pick...
Who writes the rules about "public sphere"? If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed? How much money? Does it depend on the cause I'm donating to?
If I buy a [legal private means of transportation] to travel, people should be able to track my whereabouts.
Is this limited to private jets? How about private boats? Single engine airplanes? Or is there a price cap? Is a $50k plane allow you to maintain privacy? 100k? What's the cutoff? Should it be inflation adjusted?
I'm just trying to understand
I recommend that you read this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager
One does not need to answer literally every single edge case or scenario, to answer other more obvious questions.
Elon Musk is a public figure. A random person driving a car is not. And everything in between is a spectrum, and we don't need to know the exact specific cutoff point to know the obvious answers here.
Should spaceship flights be private? :)
What exactly a 'public figure' is depends on the given legal system. But its pretty clear that is a public figure, by any definition. He's among the most wealthy (some might say; obscenely wealthy) persons on the planet and thus enjoys outrages amounts of social and political leverage.
Of course he doesn't enjoy the same rights to privacy as you and me.
so yeah. you can't buy that kind of privacy unless you want a nation state air force on your six, or some kind of a patrol boat in case of a yacht.
Yeah probably. Publicly elected official is pretty up there on it being important to have transparency.
> If I donate to a cause that hopes to influence public policy, should I be doxxed?
No, you shouldn't.
> the rules about "public sphere"?
The rules are a spectrum. Someone can both believe that it is important for very large public figures to be transparent, and also believe that it goes to far to dox anyone who has donated 1$ to a political cause.
And there is no contradiction here. And if you are to imply that there is a contradiction, then you are engaging in Loki's fallacy.
No I don't know the exact specific point where someone becomes a public figure. But I do know that Elon Musk is a public figure, and a random person who donated 1$ to the ACLU is not a public figure.
You can search for people on google and get literally all of their information. Address, phone number, job, family, friends, and anything else that is public knowledge. Presented in a very easy to read format.
Why should the wealthy be special? Just because they have the money to stop it? I didn't opt in to having my information packaged nicely and presented to anyone who cares to search for me.
There are only a handful of ADS-B tracking networks out there. Most of them filter out certain airplanes if requested/paid by the owner (FR24, FlightAware). ElonJet exists solely at the mercy of ADSBExchange.com at this time.
No. You have a responsibility to be private, which can easily be neglected by underpaying the wrong people. C'est la vie!
In fact, once you have a jet you can strategically use it to deceive your movements.
And maybe you can hire people to protect your garbage, I dunno.
Interestingly, the courts have ruled that the ultra wealthy are "public figures" whether they act so or not, because of their "undue/oversized influence on public and social policy".
Honestly? Maybe not. He's the richest person in the world, and as such he's incredibly influential (and unelected). It's absolutely in the public's interest to know what he's using all that money and influence on, in a way that isn't relevant for your average median-earning Joe Schmoe. Once you get that rich you become more influential than a senator, and senators certainly don't have a right to privacy for their constituents to not know what they're up to.
On the private jet front, airplanes don't have privacy, necessarily so, because you need to know where they all are at all times to prevent collisions, protect airspaces, etc. So if you don't want people to know where you're traveling, don't use an airplane that has a 1-to-1 correspondence to you.
Do you believe privacy is a right?
I’d subscribe to an SMS or email feed of @ElonsJet if it was deplatformed. Higher level, I try to get any info available on Twitter in my email instead; it’s just a shitty message bus for my purposes.
It doesn't seem impractical that the government needs that data to operate effectively, but to require that a person (or plane) broadcast their information to a registry that is public seems to be the crux of the issue here.
The system fundamentally doesn't work if you try to make it non-public. The end result might end up being more privacy for Elon's jet, sure, but also way more mid-air collisions, as it would no longer be able to serve its function of letting a plane tell other planes where it is.
I suppose a decent, easy system for evading its tracking would just be for rich people to swap keys to their private jets. Or chartering. Or flying commercial. Etc.
I guess you don't believe free speech is a right since you don't think people should be able to speak about Musk's travel location?
"If you cross a certain threshold and lose your rights then they are not rights."
People cross thresholds and lose rights all the time. We put them in a right-less place called jail. I guess you think nobody has rights then?
I think it's a bit of a pointless concern to think about the equal privacy rights of a man who's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The whole "privacy is a human right" shtick is a virtue-signally scam. Privacy is your duty, nobody will give it to you for free. Complaining that the rest of the world won't ignore you after writing a Tweet that 500 thousand people liked is absurd. Musk had his chance to live a private life. He threw it away, and now he lives the consequences. Defending some multi-billionaire because he can't have his cake and eat it too is just ridiculous. I say that as someone with neutral feelings towards Musk overall.
Or consider someone pointing binoculars into our window from a a high vantage point so that he can watch my partner undress. If privacy is "our duty", should we be required to use closed blackout curtains on all windows at all times, or else it should legally be our own fault for being watched? My vitamin D is already low enough.
I absolutely agree that you give up certain aspects of privacy when you accept the privilege of being extremely wealthy. No argument from me there. But I still think Musk should enjoy the right of showering without someone selling uncensored photos of the event.
From a legal perspective, this depends on the country you're in. In the US where Musk lives things like Article 8 do not apply. Also, public figures in general are considered differently under various legal tests than private figures.
But tracking where he goes on vacation is really not relevant.
(Yes, the point about airplanes not having privacy stands, so the kid is obviously on the clear. It's just not a worthy social service.)
True, and he has also not passed a single law or regulation.
Rachel Maddow is also unelected, and likely has more influence than Musk does. Oprah also had tremendous influence, though she seems to have stepped away from the limelight recently.
Posting his airplane's position on twitter has nothing to do with aviation safety and everything to do with doxxing and harassment.
Actually, that's not true: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-spend...
In fact, a large corporation must make political contributions, otherwise they'll be targeted by the politicians (as Microsoft discovered in the 90's.) Large corporations are expected to pay tribute.
Microsoft overreached significantly and the US government 30 years ago gave them a slap on the wrist.
Corporations are creatures of law and exist and are structured solely at the discretion of government, except to the extent government delegates power to other entities.
So, yes, they are at the whim of politicians.
Politicians may be at the whim of the haut bourgeoisie as a class, and those are the same class of people who the joint stock corporation as a form disproportionately serves, but there aren't the same thing as corporations.
Not if you are deliberately aim to be a person of public interest.
Multi-Billionaires are persons of public interest by the power they wield given their wealth.
So; you probably don't have a right to privacy if you are as obscenely wealthy as Musk or Zuckerberg.
Most of these people have public itineraries...
FOIA wasn’t meant to make every record the government has public, it was meant to prevent the government from hiding things from the people. I can’t FOIA your social security number. I probably shouldn’t be able to FOIA the cell phone tracking data firehose that the FBI has, either. What I should be able to FOIA is the fact that the FBI has such a firehose.
If you're a public figure want to project a certain image of yourself, it hurts to be exposed as being the opposite of that.
[0] - not least because the source of the data is his own plane broadcasting its position
Would you like it if there is a twitter account that tweets everywhere you visit?
Elon can totally hire private investigators to follow the family members of a journalist just to prove that nobody would like this kind of accounts when they are the targets.
People who write things who get binned into these categories should get a score which, after reaching a threshold, get blocked, and ideally even generates a report for others to see of who I've blocked, and why, to save others the trouble.
Interestingly I feel like the trolls would like this too because it would let them compete with each other for being the most horrible and the most blocked on the platform.
Spend some time on /r/BestOfReports and you'll see what moderators deal with. People use reports like a "super downvote" button for things they disagree with, and I don't mean the "things they disagree with" as the racism/bigotry dog whistle it often means.
Reddit somewhat recently added a option to report a post for describing intent to self-harm, and if someone hits it, it sends a message to the user containing resources for seeking help, and spend enough time on reddit and you'll see people edit posts/comments saying "Apparently someone reported this for self-harming?"
I think the only way to make crowd-sourced content flagging and moderation work is if you see a post that's been flagged that clearly shouldn't be, you should be able to click a button that unflags it for yourself, AND adds everyone who flagged it to a list of accounts to ignore their flags. But that list must be kept personal. As soon as you allow that data to train an algorithm that detects false flaggers, the system gets broken again.
I agree, which is why I didn't suggest it.
Right, but you said...
> I've always wanted a feature that just bins similar reactions together, so I don't have to read them.
You've presented a contradiction. You said you want them binned together so you don't have to read them, but that you decide how to bin them by reading them.
Using AI as you suggest could work. Could also possibly eventually be gamed.
> I basically want a killfile++ for twitter.
I've said in the past that I wish I could just never see any tweet by someone whose username takes the form of a first name followed by 4 or more numbers, like "Joel47871". Those are bot accounts 99.9% of the time.
I think the issue is that there’s no reputation cost for false or wrong reporting. They need some way to have reputational value for positive contributions and negative.
This is hard but I’d like to see some company try rather than give up.
Maybe make reports public for who reported them. Or just false reports.
The problem has always been who gets to decide those things, not that it would be nice to have. And since no one can be trusted to do that, we don't get to have it.
There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict with existing pressures, like ads.
He claims to commit to get an understanding of the algorithms for both censorship and promotions/verifications, and make them more transparent. As to what this will reveal, or how this will be changed, we don't know, except for a general direction of less censorship. So far he mentioned to want to strike a balance where both extremes (left, right) are equally unhappy.
My hope, but I expect to be disappointed, is that the influence that both extremes have on Twitter is nuked. A reversal of roles, where sane and reasonable voices capture the majority of attention, instead of rage-addicted mobs.
The truly tricky thing though is that if you dis-empower these extremists, you'll find that there's not much else. Twitter is basically those people and the rest retweeting it. What remains when you take away this outrage snowball activity...not very much. Twitter isn't at all a mainstream platform.
I suspect that some of the issues causing the ugly stuff will get corrected.
I'm genuinely curious: how so? I'm all for the idea of aligning moderation with the law of the land, but to be honest I'm not in-the-loop enough to know what people are upset about in the first place, except banning Trump I guess?
I can see how the Twitter UI kinda sucks in some ways, but it gets the job done. I'm fairly new to Twitter, and I'm pretty impressed at the level of participation from well-known individuals, and I'm also impressed with the ability to sniff out breaking news.
If the "broken" part of Twitter is people arguing all the time, how is that different from other corners of the internet?
The character limit in combination with a completely unusable threading system basically makes any non-trivial discussion impossible.
Reply counts are buggy, and make no sense. Notification counters are broken. There's obvious bot armies. Reporting doesn't really work. Verification is broken.
Discoverability for "common" users, the non-influencers, is a major problem. They're all basically tweeting to a wall.
I could go on, but can sum it up as Twitter being far less usable and robust than it can be.
I'm really just playing devil's advocate of course, but I do have a comparison to draw: Reddit and Slashdot. Reddit, which is heavily popularity-based, arguably has a friendlier UI, but Slashdot's, once you come to understand it, seems much better at avoiding landslides of groupthink.
Twitter will always have “problems” and most of them are impossible to solve in a global way that won’t leave a significant portion of their user base upset.
I’m intrigued in what changes Musk drives and their eventual effects but really don’t think he (or anyone) will have the ability to significantly move the needle in increasing Twitter’s perceived value.
I'm serious.
Both are platforms that exist to connect a poster with an undefined (but hopefully as large as possible) audience.
Tik Tok does a very good job of giving audiences exactly what they want and nothing else. Twitter constantly forces audiences to see the content that the other side likes (even the replies to a tweet you do like may be content you don't like).
This causes the audience to be generally unsettled and somewhat cranky while using Twitter, which causes them to generally focus on the platform's problems and resent their usage of it much more than their usage of other social media.
It will be very hard to 'fix' that with 'free speech' but I welcome Elon's attempt.
The things I mentioned in my comment above seem pretty neutral to me, benefiting all users when fixed.
This is exactly right. This leads to a surface level consensus from all parties that Twitter is in some sense broken, without a consensus on what exactly that means.
/ lots of "hopefully" and "maybe" in the above
Could be a wikileaks-level society shaking revelation.
The issue is the speed and spread of those messages. Right now they are amplified like a snowball and end up dominating the tone and culture of the entire platform. Influencers are richly rewarded for it, whilst sane and reasonable people get crickets.
That's the part that should be reversed, which is of course easier said then done, as it's the DNA of current Twitter.
The thing that ordinary people like us should consider is political tolerance. Most people in this world are reasonable and are in the bandwidth center-left / center / center-right. That's the room for sane conversation.
With this I mean to say that you should not double-down on "your side". When you're moderately progressive, you should equally reject far-left and far-right extremism. Whilst opening up to the reasonable people on the opposite side.
Reject all crazy people.
I would be utterly shocked if he adjusted it from this path. Hell he personally revels in stirring the pot on twitter.
The structure of Reddit means that topic-based forums can work well in the absence of outrage and promoters, but I don't think Twitter can work like that without significant restructuring. Doubt Musk's focus would include that.
I think Musk's abuse should be seen in a larger context. Not as an excuse, rather as an explanation. He takes on seeming impossible missions and is then ruthless in achieving them. Anything that gets in the way has to go, from employees to institutions.
You can debate whether these methods are required to achieve the results or not, I wouldn't know the answer to that. But I do believe he's not intentionally abusive like some evil villain.
He's autistic. His mind doesn't work like the mind of most of us. He cuts straight through politics and social rituals and doesn't read them or comply with them like the rest of us. You could say he's not good at people things, and perhaps that's why he overachieves.
Please look into the history of his companies, Musk is first and foremost a financier who among other things purchases the "Founder" title when buying companies.
The chief of the UN food program, so most definitely not the EU, claimed that 2% of Musk's wealth would solve world hunger.
Musk invites them to do the math, and would agree to provide such funds if the claim were to be true.
They couldn't produce a sane plan. Instead the idea was to give 40 million people free money, for one year. Which is great, but it's not a sustainable approach or way to "solve world hunger".
So the UN was bluffing and the bluff was called. Musk did not bluff as immediately after, he donated 5.7B of his wealth to an undisclosed charity (on record with the SEC).
I guess this shows the power of narratives. Musk is a rogue character but if there ever was a technical or economical way to solve world hunger, I'd put my money on Musk.
The actual tweets, UN claim, and donation are in the open: https://fortune.com/2022/02/15/elon-musk-5-7-billion-donatio...
"Have to"? You don't "have" to defend Elon Musk at all, and maybe you should ask yourself what compels you to do something that makes you feel silly. I mean, you do recognize that what you're doing here, defending the reputation of a billionaire, on some level is very silly. He certainly doesn't need your help, so why do you do it?
The UN was virtue signaling and playing the greedy billionaire card to guilt trip Musk into being responsible for not solving world hunger, whilst he easily could.
The UN claim was an incompetent bluff, that was called. Hollow words and zero substance. Meanwhile, Musk donated 5.7B.
So yes, when somebody is doing something good for the world, billionaire or not, that truth has to prevail. Same for when said billionaire does something bad.
If you think I'm being naive or blind please feel free to explain me how. I'm almost eager to have my mind changed.
Musk is paying $44B, 176 times more.
Seems different.
This is how uninformed internet people think things work. I think you'll all be disappointed
the @elonjet account?
Kid or not, it's doxxing. Musk could have sued him outright but instead he asked him nicely to take it down and offered a good amount of money too. Kid's own fault he didn't take it.
You can't be for vigorous suppression publication of factual information about yourself that you dislike being known and radically pro-free-speech. They are opposed views on right and wrong.
He clearly stated that free speech applied to Twitter means that in the case of a grey zone, it's preferential not to censor. Which is not the same as an absolute take on free speech. People are running with a claim that was never made.
As for doxxing, I find it disturbing how a technicality is used to defend information that is clearly threatening. Recently, in the Netherlands extremists have been digging up the addresses of some politicians they dislike and publishing them on Twitter. It destroys their lives and basic sense of safety.
Technically, the addresses were public. Do you really see that as a sane justification to collect said data, actively publish it to an extreme audience with the very obvious intent of intimidation, and directly increase the odds of just one nutjob to do untold damage? It's fine because the data was "public"?
I’m not discussing his free speech claims, I am talking about the claims about Musk from the opponents of any restriction on legal speech on Twitter.
They may be misinformed about Musk's free speech claims, but I’m also not concerned with why they are in error.
So all he had to do was get 10 million dollars and he'd win. Simple!
Is a Twitter account that uses this API to post all movements of a single private individual, or their vehicle really so unobjectionable, just because it comes from a public API?
At some point we will need either very strong social norms, or case law, or most likely legislation to address this issue.
Addressing the privacy impacts of programmatic operations on public data (i.e. what you can see from a window, or a satellite) is an important frontier for privacy and a largely unsettled question. You're just seeing it play out in this case because data for this particular vehicle type is public.
(Which, I should add, is surely just for legacy reasons and definitely a terrible idea. There's no public interest in being able to track everyone with a plane any more than there is a public interest in being able to see comparable data for anyone with a bicycle, car, or cellphone. Or look at it this way: when private flight become 100x cheaper and safer to the point where we fly instead of drive, do we want our movements tracked just because we were in the air? Of course not.)
I doubt private flying will become that frequent within the next 100 years. How would it possibly be safer than driving? Now instead of just dealing with distracted, sleepy, drunk drivers on the road, I have to worry about accidents raining down from the sky? Please, just build train systems and well designed, well-zoned, walkable cities and we won’t need to worry about flying.
I'm on the board of an organization (fightforthefuture.org) that has been leading on passing legislation for limiting the use of biometric surveillance, like face recognition. That's a small subfield of the larger problem of the privacy impacts of programatically analyzed public data, but people seem to understand it intuitively and that makes it a good place to start.
Also, I mentioned the flying cars example not to assert that there will be flying cars, but as a way to illustrate why this data should not be public: i.e. because it would be clearly bad to have this data public for a more popular vehicle type.
I should also say that it is definitely wrong for people with Musk's level of resources to sue people without those resources over something probably this minor.
I'm just chiming in to point out that we should not consider aggregated public data fair game just because it comes from public data, because some uses of this data (including this one, though again probably in a minor way, though I say "minor" knowing almost nothing about Elon Musk's personal threat model so maybe I'm wrong) can have a harmful impact on individuals and the public.
Air travel is a tightly regulated business and all flights are registered with and regulated by the FAA, which requires certain information about all flights to be publicly exposed. Thus, a function of air travel is that publicly available information is governmentally mandated to exist. The usage of this publicly available information is clearly enshrined.
The day to day of a child on the other hand is something that should not have information published publicly about, and entities who were to collect and share this information may be violating the law. I will not comment too much on the legality, but the ethics of such an action as described are also extremely questionable.
And before the internet, it was not public at all!
What you're also missing is that US legal system can bankrupt you financially and mentally if you're poor enough. Musk is clearly in the wrong there, there is no even gray area.
Doxxing is typically done from public sources, only very unusually it's some kind of uncovered private information (e.g. by hacking). Most of doxxing is piercing together public information and spreading it among the masses.
For example where I live there is a general law about harassment and it's broad enough to cover this case, to have that Twitter account closed, and to have the person tried at criminal court and at the very least fined and put under supervision, if not imprisoned - if it happened inside this jurisdiction, of course.
It doesn't matter at all if it's from public sources or not. A lot of things are in the public now - because of careless data handling, due to leaks and hacks, and a lot of information is easily retrievable with social engineering. Making a special Twitter account that automatically announces every move that a person does with their vehicle is really way out of the norm.
Our society should not accept this, not even if the target is a rich person. How do you expect people are going to behave to poor people if this is how they're allowed to treat rich people?
Any source on this or is it just made up? I see news articles about him casually dming the @elonjet account run by a teen and offering him $5k to take it down. I guess that could be construed as a threat, except nothing else happened and the acc is still up
https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_elon_musk_talks_twitter_...
(a) Linear timeline.
(b) Stop injecting stuff into people's timelines.
(c) Hide like and retweet counts from anyone but the person who made the tweet.
(d) Add a cooldown period on tweets: they're not visible for this period, and they can still be edited during it. Editing a tweet resets the cooldown period.
The problem with all this is that it drives down "engagement".
Addendum:
(e) Make it possible to prevent retweets (including quote retweets) from certain accounts you follow from showing up on your timeline. There are certain people you might like who retweet effluent, and you don't want that effluent going straight into your eyeballs.
(b) Present each person with the fake reality that is least likely to offend them
(b) That's impossible, but a linear timeline with people who I actually know comes close.
If downvotes reduce visibility and Twitter is composed of 60% A's and 40% B's, I will expect to see vastly more A content than B content, since the like-to-dislike ratios will differ by a factor of more than 2 (over twice as much A content).
In my mind, Reddit is a prime demonstration that voting to say "I find this content objectionable" and voting to say "I disagree with this content" are often indistinguishable.
Downvoting just adds fuel to the fire. It's a classic technical "solution" to a social problem. We've known it doesn't work since the early 2000s, but people keep trying it because it's cheap.
It's not perfect, but reddit threads sorted by "best" are a sight better than threads sorted by "new".
Upvotes-only wouldn't get you the same effect, since "best" is about the ratio.
Honestly twitter should implement downvotes and just copy reddit's thread-sorting system verbatim.
Finally, I swear I saw downvotes on the Twitter app some time in the last few months. Unless it was an April fools joke, it was briefly a real feature! What happened?
Reddit doesn't actually work that well, and it only works as well as it does because of human moderation outsourced to people volunteering for a for-profit company.
> Finally, I swear I saw downvotes on the Twitter app some time in the last few months. Unless it was an April fools joke, it was briefly a real feature! What happened?
They did some A/B tests. I don't use Twitter, but it was in the news.
For example, you can only retweet so many times per day (budget). Only after a tweet is a certain age (slow down). Tweets need a negative feedback option (thumbs down) so that poorly appreciated tweets do not spread further, or less so. Yet of course done in a way where downvoting isn't misused, which is hard.
Remove quote tweets as it's only used to talk AT people behind their back to one's own followers. Join the main thread if you have something to say.
Detect screenshotted tweets as this too is only used to weaponize conversations and normalizes obsessively digging for dirt. When such screenshots are overused, consider rate-limiting the tweet or the entire account.
Similarly, punish false reports. When continuously reporting tweets that do not break any objective rule, take the ability to report away and rate limit the account.
In general, detect mob patterns where out of the blue at breakneck speed you see mass negative actions, and rate limit it. Put out the fire.
I don't expect much of this to happen, but one can dream. As for engagement, the current type of engagement is exactly the problem with Twitter.
Honestly - hide them full stop. From everyone. I enjoy using Twitter, but I dislike how my small brain can be very unhealthily obsessed with those numbers.
Pretty sure that this is literally the reason he argues Twitter needs to be privately held in order to improve it. As long as Twitter is beholden to the addiction of engagement at any cost, it cannot improve.
If we're talking about the same people here, their position of "power" is uniquely granted at Twitter. For better or worse, Twitter is dominant in setting the cultural and political tone.
There's no other platform that offers this.
I'd say quite a few, if not most, moderate progressives are not at all on board with extreme wokism. Similarly, moderate conservatives may not be too crazy about Trump or "alternate realities".
This massive group, which is most people, and pretty much all sane and reasonable people, have no place in social media like Twitter. The silent majority. They can't even express a single critical thought about their own "side" nor engage with political opponents. They're scared.
Rather than doubling down on this battle of which side should be censored, the very point should be to reduce extremism and its reach on both sides. Not just "your" side. Sane people should dominate conversation.
Yes, there are people who use the term too eagerly, just like there's people that use the term "alt-right" or "far-right" too eagerly. But we all know what woke means.
I'm from the deep south, perhaps you are too, but there is definitely a thing known as hate speech, and there's definitely a thing where the leaders of a town are happy to keep black people down, including using derogatory words. Their speech reflects their views on life. I disagree that we are improved as a society for them being able to make such comments in the public sphere.
1. de-censoring
2. de-radicalize
3. de-politicize
The twitter addicts aren't going anywhere. The de-censoring will allow left and right to meet on a level playing field. This should help de-radicalize the fringe extremes and allow for discourse without discussion or users being banned. With more room for nuance the center of the road folks will feel better about discussing their views. Also this should ultimately de-politicize platform and be a win for, at least, America.
--
PS. I would like to see censoring of violent terrorist groups increase. That would also be a win. Also new features!
I'm highly skeptical that putting the extremes in greater contact would cause de-radicalization. I think it's more likely that would cause the extremes to further polarize and dig in for apocalyptic battle for the fate of the world.
I think a more-likely "de-radicalization" path is to hyper-amplify the center while suppressing the extremes. Specifically exposing users to a lot of content one "notch" toward the center and some content two "notches" in that direction (e.g. extreme right user gets a lot of moderate right and some centrist; a moderate left user gets a lot of centrist and some moderate right).
In a balanced system you can see how far each side stretches. You're better able to understand what truly is the "extreme" and what isn't:
LLLLLLLLLL <you> RRRRRRRRRR
In a system where one side is censored, what you see doesn't change, but your perception of what you see is warped. The extreme L may not seem so extreme given how much closer you are to it. And even the mild R can begin to look more extreme compared to everything else you see.
LLLLLLL <you> LLLRRRR
Allowing both sides to speak without censorship may not have any impact on the actual L and R extremist, but it will hopefully have an impact on "normal" people and stop warping their perceptions.
> I think allowing both extremes makes it clearer where precisely the center is located. Look at it this way -
1) That's not at all what I was talking about, to the point where your comment is kinda non-responsive.
2) I think you're likely basing your reasoning on false assumptions about the distribution.
3) The ability to more accurately label oneself one some spectrum seems kinda pointless.
> Allowing both sides to speak without censorship may not have any impact on the actual L and R extremist, but it will hopefully have an impact on "normal" people and stop warping their perceptions.
4) I think the situation you're trying to engineer is likely to be alienating to "normal" people.
Bubbles pop when reality collides with speculation and we get closer truth.
Honest discourse through free speech where the facts are not censored will surely get us closer to the truth.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
~ David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
For instance: put a committed extreme left-liberal in front of Fox News opinion programming for 8 hour a day, and they'll be more likely to die of an aneurysm due to constant rage than to moderate.
If the distance is too great, throw-em-together online contact isn't going to do anything to bring people closer together. At large ideological distances, the only kind of contact that can bring people together is a very slow, deliberate, and personal kind (e.g. the opposite of social media). That's why my comment was about engineering smaller-distance contacts.
But I am glad we have a platform we can freely disagree on! :)
I'm not so sure. That study seems rather limited, and in any case it would be far from definitive.
But I can't see it happening because it would reduce engagement for the majority of people and thus Twitter's overall value.
So many platforms go to crap chasing money. eBay went from auctioning off your second hand stuff to buy-it-now for small business. Craigslist is full of car dealers listing things for $1 and spamming keywords. Etsy was handmade things but gradually overwhelmed with AliExpress junk.
Twitter literally censored facts and discussion about the Biden laptop, covid, and vaccines.
They let Russia-gate accusations go unchallenged even after courts had decided it was false. I bet there are people here who still believe it was true and real.
That's evidence.
The bias is undeniable unless of course the media a person consumes tells them otherwise. In which case they'd have no facts or data to challenge the narrative they've been fed.
Twitter censors the "right" at the drop of a hat. The "left" rarely ever.
Honestly though I am not sure if the labels "right" and "left" really fit the discourse anymore. It seems more that the compass of the political spectrum [1] as defined by Nolan has shifted counter clockwise. Not unlike the shifting of the Overton window [2]. This shift roughly moves "Liberals" into the "Authoritarian" quadrant and "Conservatives" into the "Libertarian".
So today we find ourselves in more of an "Authoritarian" vs "Libertarian" dynamic.
The great centralization via the Internet and big technology services really gave the Authoritarian seed the fertile soil it needed to grow.
There is a political realignment going on along those lines.
I am ranting. Time for bed. Cheers.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
What courts and what findings?
What was found by the Special Counsel was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign welcomed the help and then Trump personally obstructed the subsequent investigation into said interference. The Republican-lead Senate Select Committee on Intelligence then released a report that found the Trump campaign transferred internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer as they were in the process of running a psyops campaign targeting American citizens aimed at helping Trump, and they lied about it to everyone.
If you believe Russia-gate was a hoax, please explain this finding of the Republican-lead Senate select committee:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era."A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
> ... please explain this finding ...
A committee does not have the same requirements as a court of law and is permitted to be speculative in it's findings. Trump was acquitted on all impeachment charges and no criminal collusion with Russia was established.
I suggest pulling on this thread [1] checkout these fines [2] regarding this debunked document [3] and follow this investigation [4] and consider the meaning of collusion.
"Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"
--
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/24/muel...
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/11/04/the-real-collusion-was-the-cre...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/dnc-clinton-campaig...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier
[4] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-cia-concluded-data-a...
Yeah, this is the typical refrain. "It's all a hoax!". To debunk your sources all I need to do is refer you to the Mueller report Vols I and II, as well as the Senate Intel report Vol V. specifically. All of the posts you link fail to account for Manafort having contact and sharing information with a Russian intelligence officer while Russia was hacking Democrats. I get not wanting to engage with this fact, because it shows direct collusion with Russia at the highest level of the Trump campaign, and it's quite convenient for you to claim that it's just made up, but I really must insist.
The Republican-lead Senate Intel Committee, chaired by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, authored a report that said the Trump campaign passed internal data to a Russian intel officer. What do you say to this? That they made it up? Why did Marco Rubio make this up? Why did all the other Republicans on the committee agree to publish this report with made up information that would hurt Trump, and be 100% counter to their message that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia? Republicans controlled that committee, so they could have written anything they wanted. Why did they write that specifically? What's your actual theory here?
> A committee does not have the same requirements as a court of law and is permitted to be speculative in it's findings.
You haven't presented any court findings yourself, so I'm not sure why you take issue with the Mueller Report and Republican-chaired Senate Intel report as not meeting a high enough standard for you.
Anyway, your Wikipedia link about the Steele Dossier doesn't help your case. It says much of what the Steele Dossier contained turned out to be true or at least has not been disproven at this point.
> Trump was acquitted on all impeachment charges and no criminal collusion with Russia was established.
Trump was never charged or impeached for his conduct with Russia, not for reasons at all relating to his conduct mind you.
But I must note the juxtaposition of "court of law" and "Trump was acquitted on all impeachment charges" in your reply. Impeachment is not a fact-finding process, and the standards of evidence during impeachment are actually far below what you would expect from a court of law. The verdict is rendered by politicians, so insisting on a standard of evidence and then pointing to a political process as proof of innocence doesn't track.
But since you brought it up, the first impeachment acquittal shouldn't be taken to mean Trump was not guilty of extorting Ukraine. He absolutely was, and it was proven without rebuttal during the impeachment process. The defense raised was not that he didn't do it, but that he had the right and power to do it. Republicans acquitted Trump on that basis. It was an affirmation of the raw exercise of power for personal gain as a legitimate tool of statecraft. If you listen to the speeches given as rationales for their votes, plenty of Republican senators concede that Trump engaged in the alleged extortion scheme, but that he had learned a lesson and was sufficiently chastised by the mere blight of having been impeached.
> "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty"
That's exactly what Trump did... he was called out on colluding with Russians, and then he turned around and said it was Hillary who actually colluded.
Be honest, have you actually read the Mueller Report or Senate Intel Report? Because you don't make points I would expect someone who has read these documents would make. It seems like your entire knowledge of the events in question come from right wing media sources, and I really have to ask: if you haven't read these reports, why have you formed such strong opinions about them? And if you have read those reports, why don't you engage with the specific evidence raised in them instead of dismissing them outright and bringing up right wing media sources?
The entire thing boils down to people on his campaign meeting or exchanging information with alleged Russian informants and peddling in the WikiLeaks documents.
If that is the standard by which collusion is defined then there are so many guilty parties on both sides including his opposition that the whole system would fall apart.
I will hold my tongue until the Durham investigation concludes but at this point in time it looks like the foundations on which the scandal was developed are highly suspect.
But maybe I'm wrong.
True, I'm going a little out on a limb here but IMHO makes total sense.
Since Twitter is - in Musk's words - the “de facto public town square” - it doesn't make sense for it to be a private company at all (which is much less open to outside scrutiny and/or criticisms).
Which is kind of an oxymoron given the fact that the changes he supposedly wants to implement will only be possible if he takes it private.
All of this leads me to believe he might just implement the changes he wants and promptly go public again, keeping control of the board or as CEO (prob also at a much higher eval). This, or maybe he'll turn it into a nonprofit.
Twitter is addicted to engagement. Solving for this in the long term cannot be squared with modern capitalism.
I think the best reasonable outcome will be for it to be destroyed by this, and set the cause of elite outrage back a few years until something else evolves. I assume this is the master plan. Otherwise, what is the real pathway to a single site where opinions coexist, free speech is allowed, and people participate in good faith. It's a bit like democracy, it only really works if the overwhelming majority have the same goals, otherwise it sucks for everyone.
I see the potential here for a tower of Babel type destruction where all the silly tribes fighting each other just get scattered and take some time to regroup, and hopefully give society a chance to thrive for a bit. Let's see.
They would not want to discourage heavy users (who bring the crowds) from using their platform.
Mine currently has "reply deboosting" applied. Twitter didn't notify me of this either. I had to actively hunt it down. And there's nothing I can do to change it.
Such a shady company so far.
It’s possible if you worked to change that and then emailed dang again they’d revisit the comment rate-limiting?
The first site says I have a search ban, while the second says I don't.
Pushbacks on Elon threatening to bring free speech back (hopefully addressing the toxic witch hunts, cancelling) were seemingly orchestrated by incumbent billionaires with their own mainstream media outlets feeling threatened by it—because it would undermine the impact of their own loudspeakers if views that challenge popular narratives or The Current Thing.
Anyways, I am not a fanboy of Elon by any means other than SpaceX, I think it was a refreshing move for a billionaire to not just buy another mainstream media outlet. Unsure what will happen going forward ....
but strictly from a business point of view, buying Twitter for the purpose of profiteering was a bad one, but at his level, money has become irrelevant, its more about control here.
Having said that I do question how far he would be able to take the free speech thing as a private company.
The alternative facts and hate speech that dominate Facebook have been incredibly harmful for society, and I think there should be tighter guardrails for online content moderation. There are legitimate reasons to disagree on this issue.
You can censor comments suggesting the current understanding of the science might be flawed, but then what happens when the understanding shifts to that censored understanding? Do you go censor all of the comments, CDC articles, and news clips that communicated the incorrect understanding? Do you remove the censorship for the old comments? Are there any repercussions for unknowingly leading people astray, and perhaps even causing some deaths for those who thought they were protected by flawed guidelines?
When was this exactly that YouTube was banning videos for saying it was airborne? Examples?
I'm considering running for president on a one issue platform: A constitutional amendment to criminalize false claims that a non-governmental actor has violated your free speech.
"Unacceptable views" could include: Covid came from a wet market, the Iraq war was about WMD, etc. Pick your controlversial topic, there's going to be a battle over even the limits of rational debate - ones you agree with and ones you definitely don't.
You may be happy with the censorship flavour of the month now, but wait until a government comes into power that you dislike. Imagine what G.W. Bush would have done with the censorship powers available now?
You're opening the floodgates to massive governmental and corporate control. I want no part of that, and I don't want my democracy to be destroyed by the broader effects that would have. If you're consciously advocating for that, then I disagree with you in the strongest terms. Yes, there's an ocean of trolls out there. And the effects of strong censorship are far worse.
I think a big problem is the short attention span of most people - myself absolutely included. But finding ways to amplify the influence of those who have paid attention and reduce it from those who only read the titles - that could be interesting as well. There's lots of info out there to use ML to discern low quality input, it'd be interesting to see it applied for good instead of evil!
Maybe this is OpenAI's next challenge :)
The irony of this statement in a discussion about taking a public company private
"common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury."
Regardless of if his or the company's official claims, when network effects centralize virtually everyone into a small number of platforms, it becomes a defacto utility. This has wide ranging and damaging effects on actual democracy. I don't particularly care what statements Twitter has made, if their platform has such wide ranging negative effects then it becomes an issue that needs to be addressed. How that's addressed is another question, but being a private entity doesn't magically free them from accountability of the negative effects of their platform.
Twitter is a business and it literally has nothing to do with democracy at all. Using twitter is a personal choice, if you don't like it, don't use it. That's the solution. Your perception of their business being negative or even positive is neither here nor there.
Once that was done, they noticed that people aren't free to speak & won't use a platform where they are constantly under attack from racists, sexists & harassers. As a private entity, Twitter cared more about people feeling comfortable participating than it did about other people's "right" to bully, harass or send dick pics.
They also realized that if they kept letting their platform be used to radicalize terrorists, the government was going to shut them down because they were harmful to the community. It's also possible that they didn't feel great about helping people murder people they hated. Repeatedly.
By that point Jack had realized that "Free Speech" is a lot more nuanced than he imagined as a 29 year old with no background in sociology, philosophy, law or political science. Jack still believes in freedom: he just knows now, experimentally, that you can't achieve that by letting might make right.
Nobody is arguing that constitutional rights directly apply here. They're arguing that free speech is important, especially when the government has been pushing around that private company: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/07/15/gover...
He was recently quoted as having "[..] encouraged employees to remain focused and told them 'we as employees control what happens'"?
Is that quote accurate?
If so, not only is the latter part apparently a straightforward falsehood, but seems to demonstrate more ability re: daft virtue-signalling than creating value for shareholders.
"Being held to account" is only meaningful if the ones holding you to account are doing so in good faith, and via a semblance of rationality.
Why not? How much time and effort have to go in to recognizing shitty behavior (cat calling, brown face, jerking off in front of someone without consent, etc)?
Besides, if they have such a short attention span, they can't cancel anyone -- canceling only works if you keep shunning them for a long period of time.
Arguably, the root cause lies with the employer that fires them or landlord that evicts them, but it take a lot of integrity to stand up to a large angry mob filled with ignorant and self-righteous anger.
If you watch the full, unedited video it's actually very easy to see the situation was far more complex than the media portrayed it to be: A crowd of young kids wearing Trump hats (distateful to say the least, and a powderkeg of a situation), some _actual_ black supremacists (the Black Israelites) spouting off some real hate, and a smaller group of indigenous protesters. This was a recipe for bad interactions, but in reality the kid (Nicholas Sandmann) that got all the online hate appeared to be trying to keep the peace (getting his friend to stop doing the tomahawk chop), and was confronted somewhat aggressively by a grown adult (Nathan Phillips).
There's more nuance to be had of course (and those kids should not have been there, wow!), but the media got it completely backwards based on some very creative editing apparently to support a given narrative.
Cancel culture in this case turned the mob against that kid. With little to no understanding of the actual situation, and based only on the most superficial stereotypes (red trump hat, conservative, probably doesn't like indigenous people, etc). I'll admit even I fell for that trap before I watched the whole video. It is simply unfair and inappropriate to target a CHILD who happened to get caught up in this crazyness. We have a young offenders act in my country for exactly this reason. And the amount of hate he got was incredible.
So yes, cancel culture has, does, and will continue to make mistakes. "How much time and effort" should you go to to not ruin an innocent person's life?
I don't know, but you should at the very least make an effort to get informed on the situation via multiple sources before you break out the daggers. And be aware that you're being fed a diet of what is often corporate misinformation.
canceling is a label applied to play the victim when people are being held accountable for things they don't want to be or by people they don't consider equal.
What word should we use instead then?
What word is suitable to describe low-context, online-mob-driven pile-ons / denunciations?
(Perhaps you’ve never seen that happen?—that would be remarkable.)
The problem, as usual, being that you are trying to describe something with a term where the common usage is just plain bad faith.
Unfairly attacked?
Harassed?
There’s lots of words…the common usage of cancelling is none of them nor what you described. The common usage is what no one in this thread seems to want to admit. And it’s why the same people who cry about cancel culture want to use it’s supposed existence as a reason to actually restrict others free speech.
But I think I see your point. It's a phrase that can be used lazily and in bad faith and itself contribute to degraded discourse.
It’s important to note that there is a significant portion of the people employing this term in bad faith who are doing now intentionally and to cause confusion. The problem with a new term is that it will, almost inherently, be co-opted by these same groups.
The attempts to mislabel are intentional and coordinated. I think you are coming from a good hearted place, and it’s nice to be able to have this convo, but a new label won’t fix it because the label isn’t the problem the use is.
Man you're just coming out swinging.
Remember when a scientist was cancelled over a shirt? On a day of greatest achievement of his professional life? We remember.
Justine Sacco was definitely canceled, in exactly the way you are denying happens. There is a legitimate discussion to be had on the phenomenon, and it can't be hand-waved away by claiming it's completely legitimate. Clearly it's not.
The fact that real things happen doesn’t make using the same term to describe not real things happening acceptable.
I can’t call out of work because there was a blizzard if there wasn’t a blizzard recently where I actually live
Cancel culture is a real thing. It's a new thing enabled by the structure of the systems we've only just created. I think a label is justified (even if this one kind of sucks). And of course concept creep will find this label weaponized almost as soon as it's been created.
That's kind of the era we live in: bad faith abuse of language by the extremists on all sides.
Not sure where your 'rule of elites' angle into play here, good faith and rationality are things that are debated and roughly agreed upon within societies and institutions (perhaps I do agree with your statement "These are emergent properties that come from free speech"). My point(s) were explicitly that: - Cancellation often happens with ill intent from bad actors: partisan, one sided policies that don't apply to 'their side'. You'll see little in the way of due process, benefit of the doubt / chairitable intepretation. - That combined with reactionism and little desire to combat base stereotypes, makes an easily weaponizable army.
I found Jonathan Haidt's description of cancel culture to be on the mark. It's all about intimidation: Not just for the one being cancelled, but of everyone else who's watching. It's a prelude to a wave of self-censorship.
He got banned from all Academy events for 10 years
Anything legal should be allowed, this already excludes 95% of cancel targets. For the rare illegal 5%, only the courts and public authorities should be allowed to investigate and administer punishment.
how is he supposed to address these without restricting speech?
How would those two things not increase under absolute freedom of speech?
Agreed. Bezos, Gates, Musk, etc don't buy media companies for money. They buy it for influence, propaganda, etc.
> Having said that I do question how far he would be able to take the free speech thing as a private company.
I like Musk and generally support things he is trying to do. But I'm not holding my breath. No way he allows twitter to be a free speech platform. Nobody spends $44 billion to allow others to have their say. Nobody spends $44 billion for other people's benefit. Maybe he'll make some symbolic gesture like letting trump back on the platform, but I'm guessing twitter will be his personal megaphone to push his products mostly.
Or maybe this is a watershed moment and elon's purchase of twitter is the start of a shift back to what the internet/social media used to be.
How do you do that while keeping the content open? Of course Twitter itself can simply not ban people or hide/remove posts, but that's all part of Musk's free speech angle. Apart from that how do you tamp down witch hunts etc without interfering with the content itself?
Maybe there is more behind it? https://app.finclout.io/t/A3lkgnE
1. Simplifies the business operation by reducing fixed headcount significantly
2. This will have a hard hit to Twitter revenue but Musk will have the benefit of downgrading the new ad-free business valuation and using the haircut against his future personal Tesla stock sales. Losing the ad business doesn’t actually cost him anything.
3. Product will now be more user friendly than competition, focusing more on product Vs ad tech. Eventually because it doesn’t have ads it could reignite growth to become a dominant social network.
Whether it grows in value or not is irrelevant to Musk and because of this, he seems like the most aligned to improve the product Vs any other financial suitor.
I can understand people not liking Musk, but I don’t understand why that leads to “he only cares about money” or “his business success is sheer opportunism” when those are wrong.
Such assertions seem to be emotional rather than rational. “I don’t like Elon therefore he is 100% bad in every way and nothing he has ever done is skill”. Surely the more likely situation is - he’s sometimes good, sometimes bad, and his business success is a combination of hard work, skill, luck, and timing.
Even if you’ve made Elon your personal enemy, surely you can accept that eg SpaceX is an amazing achievement.
Musk didn’t have much capital at the time. They almost ran out of money.
Your argument might apply to Bezos, but not to Musk.
Look at the trump presidency for just...rife examples of this but the phenomenon occurred before and after. Until the remaining news media stops having news stories that are primarily based on 'X tweeted Y' organically, there is a serious negative incentive to have Twitter's corporate leadership end it for them.
Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over... he could see that revenue rise quite a bit through people actually seeing value in advertising on twitter again. If he can keep operating costs down and get the ad revenue up further, he'll be repaying his initial investment within a few years, and if he takes this private he can IPO it again or sell it to someone else privately.
I wish him the best and hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again.
You think "Lord Edge" is going to make Twitter less of a cesspool? Everything he's said and done indicates he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be removed.
Reducing speech limits won't reverse the clock, but it does make me think that speech limits and cesspool-ness are largely independent of each other.
People love to ponder how to improve social networking, and what the best model might be. The truth is that the best forum is simply the new one that the masses haven't caught onto yet.
Either way, reddit is unlike twitter and more like a network of networks, so the same result might not occur there.
> At the same time, Reddit has been trying to increase monetization. In the aftermath of Taylor's firing, reports surfaced that the company was planning to add more video interviews and other sponsored content to generate more money with popular features on the site, something that Taylor apparently advised against.
You're talking about the obvious in your face censorship and bans that were going on at the same time as these other changes to become attractive to advertisers (and their target demographic) fleeing facebook. But these changes all happened at once and they came from the same source. They cannot be separated.
My perspective isn't more valid than yours, but I think you might underestimate how many people literally fled reddit due to the deluge of hate and highly antagonistic posts about US politics.
Indeed, if Elon Musk takes Twitter private and uses his power to force 'free speech' on the rest of us, and I start seeing references to kikes and fags and such in every casual tech discussion, I'll just close my Twitter account and walk away.
I want a moderated forum. I like what dang does for HN. I don't want a free speech heaven, because it reliably turns into hell. I used to run my own BBS back in the 80s, and even then it was obvious. If you don't put in guardrails, the assholes take over and suck all the oxygen out of the room.
While HN is moderated, you can have pretty much any fair view as long as it contributes to the discussion. Which is nice and the ideal middle ground. Although I will say, I never have any issues with Twitter and the moderation is just fine besides some high profile cases I disagree with. I would say it's even to lax.
I remember that, and just like most other times there is a mass protest on a social media site about social media itself, the uproar and discontent was largely weak, reactionary, and disturbingly out-of-touch with the business realities of the company. There's a very good reason the complainers didn't get what they wanted.
The longer a service is around, and the more broad (less cohesive) its userbase, the more likely it is garbage.
Focused communities can last a long time.
Broad communities flame out, particularly when user-interaction becomes the gauge of what's shown by default.
The irony is that there were far fewer mice running around when we didn't set out mousetraps.
Sounds amazing. Maybe then we'll finally have a truly neutral platform with no censorship of any kind.
This utopian "free speech" bastion never works out on the internet and always devolves into congregations of hate groups, which normalize themselves and spread. Look at 4ch => 8ch => Brennan's postmortem on the experiment.
Plus there will always be a level of moderation. No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn. This has already happened countless times on other platforms.
It simply will never work.
Nope. These places are full of all kinds of people. There's just a wider spectrum. You'll see the best and worst of humanity.
> No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn.
That's obviously not allowed anywhere, not even on chans.
In a well moderated environment, only once. Or at least, once in between probations.
>> Comedians like Stephan Fry left exactly because people were saying whatever they wanted and being abusive. You can't have it both ways.
> People will be hurtful and abusive no matter how moderated the platform is.
Which only proves the point that the GGP's formula for Twitter's success doesn't add up.
Also, we're not talking about a binary condition, but one of degree. If people are leaving now because of too much of "people ... saying whatever they want... and being abusive," it's reasonable to assume more people like that will leave as the moderation lightens up. Other people might join because of the policy change, but I doubt they'll be "comedians and entertaining accounts."
I don't think that proves anything. It's an example of one person.
Most companies, figures, games, movies, etc have twitter accounts to convey information or offer support. If anything Musks ambitions will draw more of those entities back, especially ones that were not aligned with the twitters political views.
Sure, it is social media, but the individual users that used to use twitter like Facebook, browsing trends etc have left for the next new platform, for example TikTok.
I find it really hard to imagine that there is a significant number of such companies that is just waiting for Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones to be unbanned, so they can finally resume using Twitter for their commercial purposes.
Perhaps My Pillow?
But yeah, the claims just don't pass the smell test. You bring in more people like those (and more of the TheDonald.win crowd), and you'll either polarize the platform by driving off existing users or have more of a toxic, polarized, trollish, bitchfight that isn't good for anyone or anything except maybe Twitter, Inc.
Even though I'm not a twitter user on multiple occasions I've had to deal with impersonators there pretending to be me and acting abusively towards friends and colleagues with threats and harassment, only to have twitter dumbly respond with that no rules are being broken and only taking action after enduring months of it and rolling the report dice over and over again. In the mean time, I got to watch friends calling out abuse get suspended for harassment and forced to remove their posts.
A lot of people see twitter's moderation as politically motivated, and while I don't doubt that some of it is-- a lot of it is just bad and chaotic: allowing deeply abusive behavior to persist when randomly raining hell fire down on someone who merely said something a bit controversial. That inconsistency convinces people that it's politically motivated because they notice when someone is suspended over something inconsequential while at the same time so many examples of serious abuse continue.
There isn't any guarantee that it's possible to do better, for sure-- but I'd like to think that it's possible. Certainly there are other sites (like HN!) which do a much better job, but they tend to be facing challenges of an entirely different scale.
All that blather aside, the obvious implication of that 5 billion dollar revenue isn't that it could be grown-- it's that much more of it could be returned to twitter's owners. For all twitter spends on development, it still manages to be a service where even its CEO posts photographs of text to tweet longer messages. Perhaps there is a good reason for all the longstanding gaps in functionality-- perhaps twitter is all it could be -- but if so, it could be returning a lot more value to its owners.
What are the two "ways" that supposedly are in conflict?
2. no abusive comments
Content moderation is difficult.
It's not going to happen because this model is not going to generate any revenue unless Elon figures out something.
I've barely had my coffee, and I've already seen the most "HN living in a bubble" comment of the day.
Totally. Why would anyone self-host when it could be written to a blockchain and be decentralized, tamperproof and censorship resistant? Twit-coin could reward influencers for their certified engagement metrics without knowing their underlying physical identity by maintaining value flows virtually. Brave browser is 80% there already.
But.. Bittorrent is actually about 20 years old. Maybe getting on for 25.
Censorship resistance is only meaningful if there are actual people exchanging ideas and building community. Cryptocoin and 100% free speech is a perfect recipe to create an online space even more dominated by trolls, bots, and conspiracy theorists than Twitter is today.
Unfortunately, between Musk’s obvious enjoyment of manipulating markets however he can and Dorsey’s increasing focus on dWeb/Web3/“magic crypto sprinkles” I imagine they will run full speed towards more or less exactly the model you describe.
“Every tweet is an NFT now! Popular accounts charge Twitcoin to follow them! Advertisers can pay people Twitcoin to follow and retweet!” Etc. Etc.
Ambiguity is a spice in life. I was thinking the name "twit-coin" would give the game away.
> actual people exchanging ideas
I enjoy exchanging ideas with ideas and with people. Anyone here may be an actual person or a biological process hosting a meme collection.
> conspiracy theorists
Are "conspiracy theorists" individuals who theorize about conspiracies or groups of people conspiring to promote a theory?
Thanks for bringing up the NFT. I had that in mind to add in but got distracted during composition. Imagine the possibilities of fractional ownership of 144 characters--it would open up a whole new world of ETFs.
BTW the site you are currently on has two moderators.
Hackernews has two moderators and several orders of magnitude fewer users. I would argue that the amount of moderation required increases exponentially with the number of eyeballs.
Better mind than yours have chosen to solve this problem, they work at facebook and twitter and it's been a disaster! Twitter has been impotent, and facebook have been a public danger. The hard truth of it is that HN just isn't a scalable solution. It ropes in users to self-moderate which results in some really unehealthy issues at scale.
Moderation is hard work, and making users do their own moderation themselves defeats the purpose from a user perspective (e.g. exposing Fry to toxic comments so he can theoretically moderate them away himself on his own instance is not practically different that giving him an unmoderated platform).
> It's not going to happen because this model is not going to generate any revenue unless Elon figures out something.
Musk isn't going to figure out anything. If anyone does, it will be someone working for him and he'll get all the credit.
You can't wave that away with a wand and an incantation.
If I only want tweets that contain the words “Zaphod Beeblebrox” then that’s all I want to see, and should have that ability.
You can already mute words on Twitter.
Can't say I see the problem here.
Even those that have the self control not to engage will eventually get tried of filtering content and leave. Then your are just left with the 4chan crowd.
Let’s not forget the current lawsuits against Tesla for its treatment of minority employees, or the dead-on-arrival roll-out of the cyber truck, or the Boring Company’s baffling underground-tunnel-turned-traffic-jam-generator.
The evidence and history points against “if.” Best of luck to it.
The premise for this is that Twitter saw a huge loss of revenue as a result of deliberate actions like removing @realDT (Twitter share prices actually peaked a few weeks later in February 2021).
Very few companies make major changes without a major champion. Could apple have turned around without Jobs? Maybe. Did it? No.
With a fresh start with new people where needed, it can have very different capabilities.
Elon Musk is absolutely not the right person for this job though. Indeed, he's one of the main forces hell-bent on making Twitter a toxic place. Look at this tweet for example (I'm not cherry-picking something from way back in the past; this is the third most recent thing he's tweeted):
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496
The quality of that post is significantly below the quality of anything that routinely makes it to my own personalized feed. And in case you don't understand the context of that post, it's because Bill Gates may have shorted Tesla or something. So in retaliation for that, Elon is making fun of Bill Gates's appearance on the largest platform he has, and countless of his followers will take up this mantle and run with it.
It's actually hard for me to think of a worse person to come along and try to improve the quality of Twitter, except for maybe Trump.
Show me advertisers who are happy to monetize on this exact content then.
From there it has spread to numerous other brands like Moon Pies, Sunny Delight, etc. Many snack and food brands were highly visible early adopters of this iteration of internet culture as a way to rep their brands.
So I ask again, show me examples of advertisers that enthusiastically advertise on shitposts.
Your own chosen example was Elon Musk recent twitter history. Debating the difference between your chosen example and Dennys to identify an obvious principle that distinguishes them is asking people to play calvinball with you.
You also have advertisers willing to target the outrage crowd, so they would also stand to gain from the post.
Not all advertisers care about the things that advertisers from companies like Disney or the NFL care about.
... and I say this as someone who agrees with the argument that twitter is deeply toxic, that it systematically rewards, promotes, and monetizes toxicity, and that in this case Elon was behaving in a manner which within the abhorrent norms of the overall platform. [Though, I'm sure Mr. Gates will be fine, and that ultimately the comment mostly just makes Mr. Musk look bad...]
But having a different opinion on that doesn't make someone a killjoy. Someone isn't humorless because they think that mocking someone's appearance like that-- particularly outside of special context like a comedy club-- is gross.
Humor is very hard to monetize.
Elementary grade humor is still more funny than advertiser friendly, because the latter means safe. And safe hot takes don't really work.
I use Twitter to be redirected to other sites or topics, but not recently anymore because they banned anonymous users.
And it is still far better than some corporate consultants shilling for new rules for speech.
Twitter _is_ a toxic place with or without him.
He had thousands of replies to that tweet with people posting pictures of Musk looking even worse. Sure he posts low quality garbage on Twitter but so does everyone else. The entire point of the site is to post low quality 140 character zingers every waking second of the day.
You're missing the cause-and-effect here. People are stooping to his level. He's serving as a prime example of the worst kind of behavior to emulate, and emulate they are.
I disagree. Musk is stooping to the level of Twitter. Musk's shitposts generate way more activity than any of his SpaceX or Tesla posts.
You’re saying it’s ok for an “algorithm” to slap the comedian off the stage but not Will Smith?
Your definition of “toxic” should be made explicit. I imagine you believe “offensive == toxic” which is naïve.
Not an easy problem, but if you’re a public figure then the rules surrounding satire / humor are different.
I'm most looking forward to Patti Harrison getting back on Twitter.
context: https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127
There's a lot of mystery about how these algorithms are designed, trained and used in practice - and not just at Twitter - and having all that open-sourced would in itself be a huge benefit to the whole world. A whole lot of authoritarian outfits are trying to use these algorithms as a means of social control and popular opinion manipulation - and not just in places like Russia and China - and it's reached the point where understanding how such systems are used is kind of critical to preserving the future of non-authoritarian society.
As far as long-form Twitter, at the very least doubling the character count would allow for a lot more nuance in Twitter communication, which is defintely lacking at present. And no, multiple posts in threads don't really work for that purpose because of the way those individual posts are distributed elsewhere, without context.
If that was true, I'd imagine you could get quite a nice payday from Google.
That's not to say it's never been gamed, but it doesn't seem notably more "gamed" than Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
I'm reminded of Elon's tweet where he said a second stimulus would not be in the best interest of the people:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286673686821515266
People got PISSED...because they conveniently ignored the very next tweet where he said he supports UBI:
I don't, however, think that one-time stimulus could maintain the current inflation, which is probably due more to the hiring difficulties and natural positive feedback loop that maintains inflationary economies.
Of course, if we hadn't diverted so much of the economic gains from the past decades to the wealthy and instead allowed a proportional increase across the economic strata, I expect the inflationary effect of the economic stimulus would have been far less muted (since there would have been much less pent up demand).
Of course it can turn into a cesspool. Of course there are ways around that problem. Like allowing more customizability for users.
Like a ‘old Twitter’ filter that would allow only content compatible with the old moderation norms.
IMO this is a lost cause— they're on Tiktok now, and it's in many ways a better platform for that type of content in terms of its ability to drive engagement and also deal with abuse.
Is Trump a non-extremist?
Is extremism inherently wrong?
—Barry Goldwater, 1964
If anything, as time goes on it’s becoming more obvious there was a continual coup against him, including direct collusion by the opposition political party with foreign governments and actors to try to prevent his election.
Confession through projection.
The autocoup was basically attempted between election day 2020 and the end of his lawful term in office, though some preparatory groundwork was done before, and quite a lot of residual activity continued after (mostly, it seems, around preventing accountability rather than continuing the initial coup attempt). Jan. 6, 2021 was key crisis point in the attempt (and often conflated with the attempt rather than being viewed as part of a larger whole.)
Paywalls are the most effective way to screen out bots and frivolous bullshit.
Twitter is so fantastically successful because they've created a platform that both feeds their users a constant stream of enraging content, and more importantly, incentivizes the creation of content that's enraging to someone else. In the process they've managed to mold almost the entirety of mainstream public discourse into an endless supply of hot takes, sick burns, and us-vs-them polarization that results in Twitter being an essential tool for anyone who wants to participate.
If they get rid of the rage bait and toxicity, then people won't need Twitter anymore and will move on to whatever new platform provides it for them.
In my opinion, there's two reasons for this; first, Twitter has largely moved mainstream discourse to a superficial conflict-based format, even among those who might previously have enjoyed quiet reasonable discussion; a lot of these people are no longer going to get what they need, emotionally speaking, from a less confrontational platform. Second, the nature of Twitter has brought a lot of people into the mix who were not interested in participating in online discussion at all, but have been energized by the presence of a platform that provides an opportunity to dunk on jerks all day. These people, likewise, are not going to be served by a less-confrontational platform, and are going to move to the next thing or just disperse if no suitable platform is offered.
Twitter is huge; it's scaled for the kind of vast crowds that are attracted by the particular flavor of discourse it offers; if any significant portion of those vast crowds go away because it starts offering a different kind of discourse, then it will collapse under the cost and complexity of running a platform of that size.
I mean, the three threads with the most comments in the past week (by a significant margin) have all fallen under "rage-based engagement" (two threads on Elon-Twitter and the thread on Google Docs' new inclusivity checker). So while HN may be better in that regard, it is by no means exempt from that same influence.
People are inclined to argue in comment sections, and Twitter is one big comment section.
(It's also worth noting that HN enjoys its comparatively high signal-to-noise engagement because of its fairly heavy moderation; it seems self-evident what more "free speech" would do to that)
Yes, but being an international speech platform is a massive liability. And when you take a role of an arbiter of what politicians and MNCs can and cannot say you have to navigate thin lines. Just look at the chart of its stock price since IPO to see that its success is not financial. It’s basically a place for first-hand short-form news and for pretend-journalists to do “research” and pad their articles. Oh, and for overly online people to argue about controversial topics.
> If they get rid of the rage bait and toxicity
because AFAICT Elon wants to make speech more open on the platform, and when I hear that I think -> less moderation, which means -> more opportunity for rage posting, which doesn't really add up in my brain.
I don’t think people really appreciate how messed up that is, for someone who should be insanely busy with multiple wildly successful corporations.
I’m confident a logical case can be made. But… seriously?
Well, he did reveal the intent to do it with a series of snarky tweets.
The changes needed are drastic and in any environment where there's a lot of ceremonial overhead that slows down a clear vision, those changes can't be attained. Having somebody in a leadership position who can clearly say, "this is where we are going, this is how we are going to get there and no, I don't have to run it by anybody for approval" is worth it.
The users are already there.
She approvingly describes a story where the Youtube content moderation team traveled to Thailand, and agreed to censor (with a geofence) gratuitous insults to their king. But it's hard to imagine they would have even considered this if, say, Alabamians wanted them to take down some blasphemous material. In another case, she mentions that "the video was restored once its political significance was understood", but have they ever made such an exception when it's significant towards political causes Youtube trust and safety team doesn't agree with?
“Despite” is misplaced. Twitter has carefully calibrated toxicity as part of it's engagement model.
> If elon [...] welcomes non-extremists back on, [...] and lets people say what they want
You do realize that those are opposed goals, the first about decreasing and the second increasing Twitter’s existing toxicity, right?
I haven't received a good answer yet for how Elon would solve the bot problem.
It's as if misinformation/disinformation/harassment are propagated only by bots and not real people, So would these people be blocked along with the bots? Would censorship be fine here then?
Social media firms have turned a blind eye towards bots/click farms because it has helped them to exaggerate their engagement figures to the advertisers, Just like any other online-advertising firm.
Then again, Elon seems to have expressed some views against advertisements on Twitter.
There are millions upon millions of bot accounts, trivially identifiable as “word647829585729” with a profile that reads “Soccer mom. Ohio. Loves baseball. Hates cheese.” or similar.
Every single one of those could be removed and the problem would be improved even if not eliminated. Pick the low-hanging fruit first…
That said I don’t imagine Elon Musk has any intention of doing that, and don’t intend to stick around on Twitter to find out.
It's not like bot operators can't change handles or like the flags which would really catch them "engages on $politicalwedgeissue and amplifies "$particularpoliticalcause" are uncontroversial
Take the most extreme case: a bunch of new accounts with long-numbered names posting identical political messages. It turns out that many of these have (unique!) real people behind them. They're not bots, they're coordinated people who are part of a campaign that's either grassroots (sign up and make ourselves heard!) or AstroTurf (I've been paid by a PR company to...). Are these excluded as bots? After all, a lot of PR accounts are paid to post.
Many other 'bot' accounts have scheduled high-volume posting, but are directly operated by a single human; they may be spammers, but they aren't anything other than who they claim to be.
What about political clubs brigading? If I get my mates to set up alts and frequently shitpost about politicians we dislike, is that a bot army, or privacy-friendly political activism?
In the end, you just have to take a view and decide what you're prepared to accept.
however I am not quite sure why Mr. Musk needs that. He once declared that his goal was to go to Mars, in other words he was about "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun"
Although it makes for a funny thought, you don't become the richest person on earth by throwing your money around at memes or for some sort of "revenge".
Just a couple examples:
>gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board
Musk's personality and actions turn off many of these people. It will much harder for Musk to get these people back than it would be for a publicly traded company.
>lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over
Musk himself controls an army of shills who attack anyone who disagrees with him. It has now become common for people criticizing him to stop using his name because some of his fans will search Twitter for anyone talking about him in order to aggressively defend him. Why would we expect him to work to stop shills site wide when he has put no effort into stopping his fans from exhibiting this same behavior?
Why not tell him to let things play out?
What does this look like to you and how am I not doing that? Because it sounds like you are saying I shouldn't criticize what Musk might do which would be pretty ironic considering so many people think Musk is doing this to force Twitter to allow freer speech.
People said the exact same thing before Tesla and SpaceX.
Whenever we achieve the grand unified theory of comment sections, it will include a formalized concept for this process of context loss as an explanation for where arguments come from.
The deeper in you go, the more likely that the reason the point was raised will be lost. And crosstalk will arise between people carrying on the original point and those who experience the latest comment as its own starting point.
Fact is the issue was largely already solved, even though the perception was that the water was still unsafe.
He’s also guaranteeing that the soldiers still alive in the Mariupol steel plant can communicate with their families, because of a swarm of Starlink satelites currently positioned above Ukraine.
I dunno, I find the guy abrasive, but he does get results.
(FWIW, if it'll save anybody else either eye strain or 5 min on Google, I ended up parsing it through Twitter Reader App to read end-to-end and print to PDF; not affiliated, never heard until 20min ago, no clue if it'll work for anybody else)
> They would like you to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and having to adjudicate your stupid little fights.
There is a community on Reddit that is currently at risk of being banned according to the admins. The community is a heavily moderated location to respectfully discuss controversial topics, one that is fairly insular and doesn’t advertise itself, and takes pride in respectful and nuanced discussion.
They regularly have innocuous posts removed, while nearly all posts with truly dangerous ideas stay up — we can attribute that to one-off moderation errors, but repeated threats from the admins cannot be.
The admin threats seem related to a specific issue which is not even in the top five most controversial things discussed on the subreddit. They’ve made it clear that any discussion on the topic is unacceptable, no matter how civil.
Sorry for keeping it vague. The communities loves to write endless heapings of words, so I’m sure if and when it is banned, much ink will be spilled. Perhaps another member of the community will recognize which it is I am talking about (there is overlap with the HN crowd) and be able to summarize better than I.
It puts a lot more burden for content moderation on the sub mods, since the community doesn't have as much ability to voice disagreement in replies (once a resident troll bans enough dissenting repliers, the only people who can reply are the remaining community minority that agree). It's also hard for the mods to detect, since they don't get any visibility to the ban system from their side. I would be hesitant to take advice on how to manage a social media communication platform at scale from anyone presiding over recent decisions at Reddit, since they seem to have equipped the most toxic users with the tools to pseudo-organically poison the well for open discussion.
I read @yishan's thread about Twitter and agree, as I think anyone who's run a forum would, that Elon is "in for a world of pain," or at least for a type of pain both much nastier than hard engineering problems, and with far less upside as well.
Where I think he's mistaken is his claim that the left and right both want to ban each other roughly equally. Among the elite, and within Twitter specifically, there is much more inclination to ban the right.
I say this as someone whose political views, if you force them onto the left-right spectrum, probably end up about 80% toward the left. E.g. I've spent millions over the past several elections supporting the Democrats.
It used to be that censorship was something the right did, and free speech was something the left were in favor of. But over the last few decades, banning "problematic" ideas has become a huge component of left culture (http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html).
Plus tech companies in general, and especially Twitter, lean to the left. Imagine walking around Twitter pre-Covid. You'd find plenty of openly far-left employees. How many openly far-right employees would you find? I don't think you'd find any.
The combination of (a) the left's recent focus on banning heretical ideas, (b) the leftward lean of tech companies generally, and (c) the leftward lean of Twitter even among tech companies, means that right-wing speech is much more likely to get banned on Twitter than left.
That's why people on the far right keep starting lame Twitter alternatives. You don't see people on the far left doing that. They don't need to. They have Twitter.
This is such a tiring rebuttal.
Do you really believe Elon Musk is the best to lead any enterprise because of Tesla and SpaceX? I mean, they both produce great products, but aren't necessarily great places to work, nor do either have any measurable lifespan outside of the easiest money environment we've ever seen. That is to say, we don't really know how good these companies are...yet. One or the other, or both, could turn out to be investor capital burning machines. Which is to say, not great businesses. Twitter is already that.
His company made rockets that fly backwards and park autonomously.
I had no idea. I always assumed he was inspired by SpaceX. October Sky is a great movie btw.
Blue Origin has accomplished practically nothing compared to SpaceX, even if they "landed a rocket before SpaceX". In the 7 years since New Shephard first flew, they've not flown anything new. To this date, BO has not launched a single gram into orbit.
For comparison, 7 years after Falcon 1 first flew in 2006, SpaceX had flown F9 v1.1 and had built a spacecraft that flew to the ISS.
It is not hard to imagine an alternative world where Elon Musk had nothing to do with the SpaceX company and the same achievements would have been reach. Or even an alternative world where the NASA funding would have gone to a completely different company, or—yet even—a world where NASA would have developed this technology them selfs (hiring the same experts off course).
All is to say that Elon Musk is not some essential figure in the development of VTVL rockets. Rocket engineers would have developed it regardless in any world where the Space Shuttle is sunset.
I think if it wasn’t for SpaceX this technology would still exist today, just developed by a different company (or even NASA them selfs if they were so inclined). SpaceX just happened to be the right company at the right time with the right engineers onboard to reap the benefits afterwards.
You then try to make the case that because these companies have gotten money from the government that it discredits their successes as if another reality they might have failed. This isn't reasonable as an argument structure. In another reality, English might be spelled differently. That doesn't mean that you don't know how to spell. The argument structure is deeply unsound.
Next you demand certainty, but you restrict the range to just Tesla and SpaceX. If you were genuine in demanding certainty, you would have to expand the range to include PayPal and Zip2, since in those cases we can say things with certainty because his involvement is over and so judgements can be made. You do this, because you have to, because if you didn't that means you would have to accept plausible reasoning. Yet the measurements which incorporate plausible reasoning, such as the stock price, refute you to an extreme extent.
By stating all this with appeals like "do you really believe" and "this is such a tiring rebuttal" you trick yourself by employing rhetoric. It makes you seem to yourself as if your argument is much stronger than it actually is. After all, you are obviously right that he doesn't actually think what you implied he thought. So when you ask that question to him you already know that the answer is no he didn't think that. Unfortunately, there is a reason as far back in Western thought as Plato rhetoric was being described as the art of being convincing without being right. Beating up the straw man makes you think like your argument is correct so much so that you grow tired of it.
For example, was Tesla a success because of some unique ingenuity by Musk? It seemed to me that his success was more the result of a commitment, both personally and financially, to building EVs that no one had previously had. Yes, that eventually led to success. But he didn't succeed were others tried and failed. He succeeded were the other auto manufacturers didn't even try because of their own bias towards the status quo. With Twitter he would need to succeed where every other social media platform has failed.
Not even that. Other people founded the company in 2003; he became Tesla's fourth CEO when they were about to launch the Roadster in 2008.
Regardless, of how you label it Elon created Tesla and there is no Tesla without elon.
Do we say the Warren Buffet owes everything to the founder of the New Bedford based Jewelry company Berkshire Hathaway? Hate Musk all you want but IDK why people try and discredit him with stuff like this
EDIT: Changed AP => AC
That's not what the actual founders say though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eblPwXFb7TE
They say he was not a founder within the first minute of the video.
Musk was the first investor in Tesla, and chairman of the board from the beginning. While chairman, he was involved in the business. He took over as CEO in 2008 and has grown Tesla into the world's largest car company.
Trying to claim Tesla's success is not due to Musk is just wrong.
Nitpick: The most valued car company. Many larger companies in terms of employees and car output. Everything else sounds right though!
The group in charge now caused more bleeding. Other social networks are doing great.
There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
I also think it's worth noting that he brought the best of current "good enough" manufacturing practices to luxury automobiles. I think this is the fairest examination of that, since it includes Elon himself: https://jalopnik.com/best-of-2021-in-epically-nerdy-intervie...
Our expectation around cars is that the build quality will be good from day one; this kind of incremental improvement approach is not common. IMHO it's also sub-par and somewhat dangerous for something as deadly as a car, but that's probably a side point for the current discussion.
We also see this with the Hyperloop. Big optimism, and the first actual implementation in Vegas kind of sucks. Maybe it'll improve over time, maybe not, but there's certainly an initial quality gap.
The question I'd ask is what does the equivalent look like for Twitter? I sort of think the "do it crappy, see how to improve it later" policy is more typical for social media.
I wouldn’t say best of ”good enough” .Tesla is actually one of the worst in terms of ”normal” car quality, even when compared to non-luxury cars. It has great battery, electric motors and even software, but normal items which you can see in normal car, are in the lowest side on quality. Also the way how you feel the car when driving is critized being B quality when compared for example German cars.
In many countries it has been listed on the best place on fault statistics (have most of then)
When you buy Tesla, you invest on EV research, not so much for luxury car while it might drive itself. You get a glance for the future.
Teslas, especially during the initial production runs for any given model, are built like Wayfair furniture. Good enough to do the job, but without a high level of quality. Turns out consumers will accept that.
Returning to the Twitter question: gosh, I hope Elon decides to invest heavily in areas I care about and doesn't ignore aspects which I think are vitally important.
See also: fast fashion.
Like electric cars and low cost access to space? Both of those fields are littered with the dead husks of failed attempts from prior decades.
Musk was hardly the first person to try any of this, he was the first person to be successful.
You do realize companies have been trying to make EVs even before there were fossil fuel powered ones, right?
There has never been a time in the last 150 years when some company wasn't making EVs.
First of all there are a lot of questions about whether that story is true. And even if it was, it isn't material to Elon's success: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-mus...
Second, what makes Elon truly remarkable is what he accomplished AFTER he made < $200 million from selling PayPal. Most of which were impossible according to conventional wisdom in the industries that he accomplished them in. Anyone who fails to recognize that, has demonstrated a complete lack of comprehension.
Key quote:
'We had so much money we couldn't even close our safe'
So, as soon as somebody cites a fact that is confirmed by an authoritative source that can be googled pretty trivially, you cease to take them seriously. Honestly, this is par for the course with Musk fans and it baffles me.
As for Musk himself, um, I'll continue to go with "rich kid gets richer due to quantitative easing, some supposed business sense albeit not much actual evidence for it, and state subsidies for most of his businesses".
It is also probably worth calling this part out too: an interview with Elon Musk is not "balanced coverage" of Elon Musk.
That part is true. Their custom tunnel machines dig twice as fast as other machines.
Boring Co's tunnel machines are just customized versions of existing machines. At best they are slightly faster than they base machines, and only in specific soil conditions.
However, as demonstrated by the Hawthorn and Vegas tunnels, the Boring Co machines are, in practice/in the real world, no faster than the non-customized machines, while at the same time yielding significantly lower quality tunnels (referring to the concrete shell built to protect the excavated portion of the tunnel).
And here's the crazy thing: if Elon had actually done his research, he would have known that the "automated digger" Boring Co plans to build already exists. They're just really expensive, because digging machines are built to-spec for each project based on soil conditions. These existing machines can be powered by multiple sources, though generally they aren't electrified due to the demands on the local power grid. In a nutshell, you'd have to build a dedicated substation to handle the electricity draw; the only reason Boring Co's tunnel machines don't is because they dig small utility-sized tunnels rather than large transit-sized tunnels.
Isn't that faster than existing machines?
Even if Boring Co actually builds such machines (and given Elon's history of grandious unmet claims that's very unlikely), no. Utility-size TBMs on the market can already bore faster than the P2 hypothetically would.
The delay in tunnel boring isn't the TBM machines; it's in the other stuff like the undisclosed power lines and other utilities that the TBM will run into while boring and which must be painstakingly rerouted, or the things above the tunnel that must be accounted for. For example, LA's "regional connector" transit project has been delayed for almost 5 years because they ran into hundreds of undisclosed utility lines and pipes while digging and had to spend years rerouting those utilities before they could continue digging. Boston's Big Dig was delayed because they had to build underground bridges while tunneling to support the weight of ongoing activities above the dig, like existing rail, highways, and subways.
Note that both of the examples above are transit-size tunnels, but the issues LA Metro ran into would still apply to Boring Co's much smaller tunnels.
Really, the biggest problem with Boring Co's tunnels is that they're basically useless boondoggles: as the Vegas tunnel demonstrates, they simply don't have the capacity to handle meaningful amounts of traffic.
Control of media is the drill for mining for government subsidies, not the oil field.
Bezos runs a successful business, is just as predatory, but doesn't try to fight Vladimir Putin. Or brag about throwing shade at Bill Gates. Or sleep on people's couch. The guy can't afford a hotel?
I question whether he actually sleeps on their couches. He may sleep in their spare bedrooms, or spare master bedrooms, or spare houses.
But possibly he's sleeping on couches—I guess I imagine it's more likely part of his business model, which mostly appears to me to be raising capital exceedingly well, getting other people to pay for his ventures. It's a hard sell to get investors to say, "Hey, I'm going to use all your money on these mansions." Much easier to say, "All the money you invest, I will spend on making you profits." In a way, his main model seems to be similar to nonprofit fundraising and in nonprofits, funders seem to hate if the people running the show look to be too wealthy, as it may appear to be a waste of funds.
But I could be off on this, just the vibe I get.
Toyota made green cars a thing before Tesla. And Chevy and Nissan made EVs. Without the Prius and the EV1, there wouldn't have been a market for Tesla.
SpaceX launches rockets into space. 7 countries and 3 private companies were doing that for decades before SpaceX. SpaceX just does it cheaper. And note that SpaceX's research is almost entirely funded by government sources, and is largely just a continuation of reusable rocket research begun by NASA in the 1970s (which ended when their budget was cut by the Reagan administration).
"SpaceX's research is almost entirely funded by government sources"
I don't believe this is true. Do you have sources for this claim? The USG has purchased services from SpaceX, the income from which SpaceX has then used to develop reusability. But that's not the same thing as "the USG funding SpaceX's reusability development." In fact, the government missions initially specifically disallowed using reused boosters or Dragons.
yeah like when he smoked weed on the joe rogan podcast... comedians absolutely hate that. and tweeting about shibu coin or whatever... ELON YOU CAN'T JUST TWEET SILLY THINGS! THE COMEDIANS WILL HATE IT!
"Musk himself controls an army of shills who attack anyone who disagrees with him."
no he doesn't.
"Why would we expect him to work to stop shills site wide when he has put no effort into stopping his fans from exhibiting this same behavior?"
you sound like when the military industrial complex was trying to shut down bernie by inventing the term "Bernie bro" and then saying that Bernie is bad because he doesn't shut down his "toxic fanbase" on Twitter. such a pathetic argument.
Because he has a track record of doing things no one else could.
Like installing solar panels on people's roofs?
Anybody who's doing incredible things will fail incredibly at least half the time.
>>> Because he has a track record of doing things no one else could.
>> Like installing solar panels on people's roofs?
> It's more interesting looking at what he succeeded in doing against the odds.
Not when you're dealing with the incredible and persistent hype that follows Musk.
> Anybody who's doing incredible things will fail incredibly at least half the time.
Which is exactly my point. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, even with Musk. Unfortunately he's built a cult of personality around himself, and too many people view him as some kind of tech-god (er, "technoking") that can succeed at anything.
/s, in case it wasn't obvious.
Building SpaceX is not the same set of challenges as fixing Twitter. They are different enough to be completely unrelated.
No one else tried. Twitter has been stagnating drinking the kool-aid for many years.
I would argue that not a ton of groups can put together a $43 billion offer very easily. So the pool is somewhat limited.
"Either (a) Twitter is terribly bad at detecting spam or (b) there's something about Twitter that makes detecting spam difficult or (c) they don't care.
Based on my experience detecting spam, I'd guess (c)."
"Twitter engineering: If you're going to do such a bad job of catching spam, how about at least giving us a one-click way to report a tweet as spam and block the account, like email providers do? It may even help you get better at filtering, since more reports = more signal."
Passing the bucket to anyone with 43 billions on the side still doesn’t look like a good strategy.
That’s the naked truth. You can spin it this way or that way; none of the reasons I’ve heard make deeply convincing arguments.
It’s basically 100% political.
This is a platitude. He seemingly has no fundamental moral compass, his beliefs are almost always entirely self-serving, which people often interpret as "libertarian."
No single person is 100% left/right/whatever. If you don't openly say what you are it leads things open to interpretation, and people seemingly paint whatever picture they like on Musk.
* Make a better tomorrow
* Solve humanities most pressing problems
* Make humanity a multi-planetary species
I have no issue with this guy, but it's odd to me the way people use him as a blank canvas and fill in all the blanks.
Nobody would take any other tech CEO's "make a better tomorrow" directive seriously, so why his?
It probably explains why he attracts the type of people he does and why he has the sort of following he does.
Most other CEOs speak corporate lingo. Have you heard Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai speak? It's like their words make a visit to the PR office before leaving his mouth.
Sure I did. I also use their products every day and so do billions of people ranging from Downtown Manhattan to subsaharan Africa.
Meme Lord Enron Musk instead managed to get Tesla to account for a paltry 1.3% of all cars globally sold in 2021. He won the lawsuit to obtain control of Tesla in 2002. That's 20 years. 80 quarters. If my math isn't wrong that's 0.01625% per quarter growth rate. Amazing.
Oh an there is a small detail that they are rich people's toys. Badly refined rich people's toys I should add.
But hey at least he post memes just like all of us plebs /s
Look, it's fine if SV wants a politician they can identify with, but at least you guys should come out and say it openly instead of hiding behind the veil of him being a "businessman".
Businessmen don't behave like Musk, politicians do. Autocrats to be precise. He's SV Donald Trump.
I've seen the rest of your comments, please be nice.
Considering you framed me as toxic I wonder how you frame the guy you are defending, as he is the one who is bullying everybody, committing securities fraud left and right, engaging in pump&dumps and doxxing whistleblowers.
But all that is somehow okay because of empty promises of Mars, FSD or some other technoutopian pipe dream.
It's the same identical blindspot Trump voters had about his character because he made empty promises to do something about China and immigration.
The issues people care about are often exploited by autocrats and fraudsters to gain power and wealth right now while they promise to do something about the issue sometime in the future (and never do).
Fear of death is already starting to be exploited in SV by cryonics companies, but I predict Musk will enter this niche too with Neuralink as it's too juicy of a fear not to exploit.
It’s pretty obvious Trump and Alex Jones tweeting again would bring in a lot of eyeballs for better or worse.
But he is not so “Libertarian” that he refuses to accept government subsidies.
There's no point saying this in a real discussion.
Those are all “Libertarian stances”.
Personally I'd make the opposite change (everyone should be exempt) but religious organizations shouldn't get special treatment just because they're religious. The practice of having special rules which only come into play when religion is involved undermines the separation of church and state; it means that the state is discriminating between citizens on the basis of the presence of absence of a (recognized) religion.
> Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals
Religious organizations are exempt from tax, but so are PETA and the ACLU. Against that background, efforts to strip tax exemptions from churches are a deliberate attack on religious organizations as compared to other civic organizations.
There are plenty of other areas where the government shows favoritism toward religious organizations besides 501(c)3 status. For example, ministers are exempt from federal income tax withholding, despite being classified as W-2 employees, and can opt out of Social Security taxes via Form 4361, which is available only to "An ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister of a church; A member of a religious order who has not taken a vow of poverty; or A Christian Science practitioner."[0] (That last one is oddly specific… and goes so far as to endorse a specific religious organization.) Membership in a "health care sharing ministry" also offers, or did offer while it was still in force, an exception to the individual insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act (26 U.S. Code § 5000A(d)(2), "Religious Exemptions"[1]).
Ministers are exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it, and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc417
And that was the point. Other organizations have to be based around some particular beneficial purpose such as charity or education in order to qualify, and that classification can be challenged if, for example, a "charitable" organization doesn't actually redistribute most of the money it receives to charitable causes, but you can start a religious-themed amusement park (charging admission!) and call it a "church" and it's automatically tax-exempt.[0]
> exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it
Which means they're getting several months' worth of extra growth out of that portion of their income than everyone else by paying it at the end of the tax year rather than having it withheld from their paycheck. It's clearly a religious privilege; other W-2 employees would opt out of withholding if they could, but they can't since they aren't ministers.
> and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers
Despite not being self-employed, and only if they don't use Form 4361 to opt out of Social Security, as I said before. Which is something which can only be done on religious grounds, or a lot more people would be doing the same, as SS is a poor retirement strategy compared to investing the same amount of money privately. (The average rate of return for SS contributions is lower than T-bills, much less mutual funds or stocks.)
[0] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-holy-land-experi...
There are some historical nuances about power dynamics and avoiding conflict between the church and state, but that is all long ago.
But it's 2022, not 1992, and a lot of contemporary conservative causes are based on coding conservative positions as being based on "religious beliefs" and liberal positions as being based on some sort of "rational morality." But that distinction is fictitious.
For example, liberals decry Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban as "imposing religious beliefs." So why do highly secular countries like France and Denmark draw the line at 13 or 14 weeks? In reality, the abortion debate rests on competing moral ideologies--one that emphasizes the importance of reproduction, and one that emphasizes the importance of individual choice. Neither position is based primarily on scientific facts or rigorous logic.
Likewise, when it comes to teaching kids about sex and gender. "God created man and woman and told them to reproduce" is a religious gloss on the factual observation that humanity comprises two sexes which reproduce sexually, and any sustainable human population requires each woman on average to have 2.1 children. Any conclusions you want to draw on top of that are moral judgments, not based on science or logic.
It's no different when it comes to law enforcement. Unless you're an anarcho-libertarian, you recognize that the state has a role in defending individual rights. Moreover, any system of law enforcement is going to produce problems and false positives at scale--especially when dealing with people at the margin of culpability. Leaving aside second-order effects for a moment, there is nothing inherently libertarian about asserting that we should err on the side of less aggressive policing to reduce the false positives, at the cost of allowing more wrong-doers to escape punishment. Likewise, there is nothing inherently libertarian about saying that destroying private property in riots is a justified reaction to police misconduct. These are all liberal moral judgments.
None of this is to say that liberals are wrong about any of these things. It's okay to formulate positions based on moral ideology rather than logic. My point is simply that you can't stake out a bunch of positions based on moral ideology, while claiming the high ground of secular rationalism and attacking your political opponents as "imposing religion."
Why does it always seem like the people who are on the “margin of culpability” always minorities? Like when Ving Rhames was suspiciously sitting in his own house (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-...)
There are plenty of statistics showing minorities are stopped at a higher rate, convicted more harshly, face higher bail, etc for the same crime when you control for everything else.
So if you should only marry to reproduce, does that mean old people shouldn’t get married? Should we stop people who take steps not to reproduce? Conservatives use to fight to outlaw birth control and it is still the stance of many.
None of these are “Libertarian” stances.
Who said this?
Except the current debate isn't about marriage law, it's about what kids should be taught in school, and when. It's one thing to have marriage law accommodate different groups with different beliefs about the basis of marriage. It's a different thing to teach any particular view or set of moral judgments to kids in public schools.
> Conservatives use to fight to outlaw birth control and it is still the stance of many.
As I noted in my post, it's 2022, not 1992. Today, 90% of conservatives agree with 93% of liberals that birth control is morally acceptable. https://news.gallup.com/poll/257858/birth-control-tops-list-....
Conservatives and libertarians were on opposite sides of this issue in the 1960s. But today, the political dispute is over privately owned companies being forced to pay for birth control for employees. And on the contemporary issue, libertarians and conservatives are on the same side.
For example, the significant majority of Americans think that sex between teenagers is not morally acceptable (54-42). Do the teachers who want to teach these facts believe that? Will they use materials that depict sexual interactions between teenagers—as in many of the books that have become controversial recently? Conservatives—and many moderates, given the Florida law has strong public support—view this as a “tip of the iceberg” situation.
Isn’t the entire idea behind “libertarianism” that you can do whatever the hell you want to do as long as it doesn’t affect others?
Shouldn’t Libertarianism be more concerned about teaching that you should conform to the standards of a religious institution?
> For example, the significant majority of Americans think that sex between teenagers is not morally acceptable (54-42). Do the teachers who want to teach these facts believe that? Will they use materials that depict sexual interactions between teenagers (as in many of the books that have become controversial recently)?
Yes because “abstinence education” has shown to be really effective. I’m sure if teachers have all of their students take “abstinence pledges” it’s going to stop them from having sex just like the “Just Say No” campaigns stopped teenagers from smoking weed.
I can’t help but notice how you’ve framed this in terms of “choice” and “self expression.” Do you see why even parents who want their kids to learn to be accepting of these biologically-determined differences might be wary of how the message will be delivered in practice?
> Isn’t the entire idea behind “libertarianism” that you can do whatever the hell you want to do as long as it doesn’t affect others?
That applies to adults, who are fully developed persons. But the moral socialization of your own children—dependent humans with underdeveloped brains—is within the ambit of what the State shouldn’t mess with. Aversion to social engineering is a key distinction between liberals and libertarians on this front.
> Shouldn’t Libertarianism be more concerned about teaching that you should conform to the standards of a religious institution?
You’re not allowed to teach that in public schools either. And libertarians should be concerned about the State trying to socialize children in the opposite ideology too.
> Yes because “abstinence education” has shown to be really effective. I’m sure if teachers have all of their students take “abstinence pledges” it’s going to stop them from having sex
Teenagers will draw outside the lines. All the more reason to draw those lines rigidly. And again you confirm what ideologies will come in through the door of these discussions.
> just like the “Just Say No” campaigns stopped teenagers from smoking weed.
Legalization of weed seems to have resulted in a significant uptick in smoking of marijuana.
> Teenagers will draw outside the lines. All the more reason to draw those lines rigidly. And again you confirm what ideologies will come in through the door of these discussions.
No matter how you “draw the lines”, do you really think little Johny and Sue are going to decide not to have sex because their teacher told them “it was wrong”? Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach them how to be safe?
Sure I would rather my underage son not drink. But I also have told him if he is in a position where he shouldn’t be driving, call me. Well at least that’s the old school way. I told him to call an Uber and if I see him home without his car - no preaching. Just call the Uber to take him back to his car.
> Legalization of weed seems to have resulted in a significant uptick in smoking of marijuana.
More importantly it’s taken a tool out of the toolbelt of the police state - something that libertarians should want.
Who shouldn’t? The way you framed it—in terms of “choice” and “self expression”—it could apply to everyone. Certainly, it’s not the role of teachers to tell straight kids that they don’t have to conform to Biblical or Quranic teachings if that’s what their parents want. That’s the point. Liberals believe in non-conformity, self-fulfillment, and self-expression for everyone. Many parents therefore don’t trust liberal teachers to talk to their kids about topics that implicate morality. (My Bangladeshi immigrant mom flipped out when my high school counselor suggested I major in European History given my interests. She doesn’t suffer fools!)
> No matter how you “draw the lines”, do you really think little Johny and Sue are going to decide not to have sex because their teacher told them “it was wrong”?
Many won’t, and even the ones that do will learn to keep sex a private part of their life and identity. Either way, the point is that—e.g. some white American teacher doesn’t get to decide how some Muslim kid is socialized to think about sex.
Libertarianism is premised on independent rational actors. Libertarian freedom doesn’t apply directly to children. Instead the freedom from State interference applies to the parents in deciding how to socialize their dependent, mentally undeveloped children.
Because that is the only time it makes the news. It sort of follows with Coulter's Law which states roughly that if the race of a suspect isn't initially mentioned, they are non-white.
>There are plenty of statistics showing minorities are stopped at a higher rate, convicted more harshly, face higher bail, etc for the same crime when you control for everything else.
I actually used to assume this to be true. However, when you factor for income level of suspects, the variance disappears. This is probably why you almost never see black millionaires in prison. Even with Bill Cosby it took hundreds of allegations across over 40 years before he did time. Because he had money.
The police definitely don’t know my household income level (I work remotely for $BigTech and I make over twice the median income in my county) when they see my 6 foot 3 son walking through our neighborhood back to our house in a county that’s only 3.9% Black and stopped him to question him twice.
For this to be true though, whites would also have the same advantages over Asians, but it's the opposite. So logically does that mean whites are discriminated against more than Asians, since that is what the numbers say? Or is it maybe that different cultures are more or less likely than others to do things that warrant police attention?
Another example of your logical fallacy is comparing men vs women. There are HUGE disparities in police interactions between men and women, is it because of sexism or is it possible that one gender reacts more aggressively during interactions with police on average..?
I had to look this up and while it's somewhat true, it's highly misleading. "On demand" abortion in Denmark is limited until 12 weeks. However you can still get an abortion afterwards "if the woman's life or health are in danger" or "if certain circumstances are proved to be present (such as poor socioeconomic condition of the woman, risk of birth defects in the baby, the pregnancy being the result of rape, or mental health risk to mother)."[1]
The special circumstances allowed by the Mississippi abortion ban are much more narrow, including only medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormality[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Denmark
[2] https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas/mississippi-ab...
Moreover, both agree that there are extenuating circumstances that can change the balance in specific cases. And they agree on the particular extenuating circumstances that are most likely to arise: risk of severe deterioration to woman's physical health, and fetal abnormalities.
All you're pointing out is that Denmark recognizes additional extenuating circumstances for special cases. Specifically, the health exception covers the risk of "severe deterioration of woman's physical or mental health." But note that the "risk to a woman's life or to her physical or mental health should be based solely or principally on circumstances of a medical character." The other grounds for second trimester abortions require unanimous approval from a special committee: https://cyber.harvard.edu/population/abortion/Denmark.abo.ht.... They are not an open-ended exception to allow second trimester abortions in ordinary cases.
I would say the former isn't about the value of reproduction any more than the principle of not killing a one-year-old is not about reproduction. It's about what counts as murder, based on what counts as human life. Whether or not one thinks of a 15 week old as being human life is all the question is about.
Yes, people don't realize that Roe v. Wade made abortion far more permissible in the US than in almost every other Western country. The only exception I am aware of is Canada, which because of a series of accidents ended up with no abortion laws at all.
I have several liberal beliefs myself, but do think that other liberals delude themselves into thinking that they are somehow scientific judgements, opposed to simple moral sentiments, inherently subjective.
To use abortion as an archetypal example: a fetus’s right to life is traditionally coded as “religious” and a woman’s right to autonomy is traditionally coded as “secular” but they’re both just assertions in competing belief systems. Neither of those things are scientific truths that will turn up in an autopsy—much less any conclusions you draw about how to strike a balance between the two. Thus there is no necessarily libertarian take on abortion. In a free society that recognizes that morality may be the basis for law, there is no real way to keep the government out of abortion; only to ensure that competing moral views are reconciled democratically: https://reason.com/2015/08/14/sorry-rand-paul-haters-pro-lif....
Likewise many contemporary conservative debates have to do with what public schools (the State) teach kids against the wishes of parents. These teachings, for the most part, are not scientific truths like evolution or climate change, but rather unfalsifiable moral assertions. The true libertarian solution here would be something like school vouchers, but taking public schools as a given, it’s wholly consistent for libertarians to side with religious parents against State schools that want to teach their kids a particular moral framework.
Conservatives and libertarians are different. But it’s 2022, and the alignment of contemporary conservative political causes is different than in 1992.
This does not follow. There are various ways to approach a libertarian position on the morality of abortion per se which don't devolve into "striking a balance" between conflicting rights (a decidedly non-libertarian concept; natural rights are all negative rights, which do not conflict), but in the end it doesn't matter because there is only one entity involved with both the ability and the standing to justly apply either defensive or retributive force in response to a threatened or actual infringement of their rights, and that is the woman having the abortion. Anyone else using violence to either stop the abortion or punish the woman for having it would be in violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, as they are neither directly harmed by it nor acting with the informed consent of, and under the direction of, any party who was harmed.
> The true libertarian solution here would be something like school vouchers…
The "true libertarian solution" here would be private schools, with 100% private funding. Though of course anything that allows for more choice in where students can receive their education and what they are allowed to learn represents a step in the right direction, all else being equal.
> There is only one entity involved with both the ability and the standing to justly apply either defensive or retributive force in response to a threatened or actual infringement of their rights
Presumably your stance here is that the fetus does not have the ability to apply defensive or retributive force, and therefore has no right to it. This seems to suggest you hold a "might makes right" morality: If someone isn't able to defend themselves, then they have no right to. Taken to its logical end, wouldn't this imply that any murder would not be immoral, since if someone was not able to defend themself from murder, then there is no violation of the Non-Aggression Principle?
No, that "therefore" does not follow. One does not lose a right just because one lacks the power to exercise it. The fetus would not be wrong to employ violence to resist any attempt to kill it—though even putting it in those terms presumes a degree of conscious decision-making and self-ownership which is not in evidence.
> Taken to its logical end, wouldn't this imply that any murder would not be immoral…?
No. To begin with, I never said that abortion wasn't immoral or a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. Both of those are debatable; from a libertarian point of view the answer to the latter question hinges on whether the fetus can claim self-ownership, which presumes a degree of conscious control and responsibility for the effect of one's actions on others.
That is all quite abstract, however, because in practical terms it would be a violation of the NAP for anyone else to intervene. An adult, or even a young child, who found themselves harmed or threatened with harm could consent to allow someone else to fight on their behalf; or, just as importantly, could withhold that consent. (For example, they could be a pacifist and believe that fighting back would be immoral.) In the case of a murder one could look to a will or the like as evidence of the victim's wishes. For an abortion, however, there is no such evidence. Anyone responding to it with force is doing so entirely on their own, and not in self-defense, which makes them the aggressor.
Standing is where the Libertarian argument collapses. It is the age old question of when does a human have standing and a right to life. Can you kill your 5 year old child, 1 year old, 9 month fetus, 15 week, fetus, ect?
There is no clear libertarian or scientific answer for when rights and "standing" enter the human body. You extended the NAP to requiring direction or awareness from the harmed party, but there is the matter of time.
Would the harmed party in this case object if given time and awareness? If you shoot someone before they object, do they have no standing? If you poison them secretly, without knowledge to object, do they have no standing?
Anything that is harmed has standing, human or not, conscious or not. A tree has standing to fight back when it's threatened with an axe. The fetus certainly has standing here. What it lacks is the ability to act on it, or to request or consent to someone else acting on it. Not only physically but developmentally, it lacks the capacity to make conscious, intentional, deliberate choices and take responsibility for the consequences. Likewise for "right to life"—the right to respond with defensive force against aggression which threatens your life. It has the right to defend its own life but not the ability.
> You extended the NAP to requiring direction or awareness from the harmed party…
I didn't "extend" anything. The NAP is a convention which applies only between self-owners, as otherwise action affecting any lifeform (cattle, plants, …), or even non-living matter, without its "consent" (assuming that's even possible) could be read as a violation of the NAP. The question of whether the "harmed party" does in fact have the quality of self-ownership is thus relevant. Whether an entity has self-ownership is determined by its ability (and will) to make choices and take responsibility for their consequences.
This, by the way, is the root of the justification for employing defensive force: Deliberately causing harm to others, or failing to take responsibility for unintended consequences of one's actions, undermines one's status as a self-owner, thus placing one outside the protection of the NAP. The relationship changes from that of two self-owners to that of a human actor and a harmful element of their environment.
> Would the harmed party in this case object if given time and awareness?
Would the tree object to being cut down if we found some way to endow it with consciousness and the ability to communicate? Perhaps, but that isn't the situation we actually find ourselves in, and it won't happen unless someone puts in the effort to make it happen.
> If you shoot someone before they object…? If you poison them secretly, without knowledge to object…?
Obviously they have standing, but that isn't really the point since they're dead and can't do anything about it. They have a (posthumous) right to restitution and retribution in either case. The question is whether they delegated the enforcement of that right to someone else (which could be "anyone" or a specific person or group) before they were killed. If not, that doesn't imply that the victim didn't have a right to live or that it wasn't wrong to kill them, but it does mean it would be wrong for someone else who wasn't harmed to initiate violence unilaterally against their killer, when they can't rationally claim to be acting for the victim in accordance with their wishes.
But every position I argued in my original post is about giving the government less power over people that objectively doesn’t affect someone else.
The version of the history of the founding of the US is very much a sugar coated version of what actually happened.
There are very few conservative teachers who teach the Lost Cause version of the civil war. There are some debates within the historical community so it isn't really fully settled though. Many in the North were talking about the federal government trampling state's rights and they weren't talking about slavery so it isn't quite as simple as you make it out to be.
I assume you are talking about slavery when it comes to your last point? If that is the case there are no conservative teachers denying slavery happening in the US including the fact that some of the founding fathers had slaves.
As far as the “Lost Cause” not being taught..,
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/20...
Are we in 1992 or 2022? Because I learned the "real history" of the civil war growing up in Virginia in the early 1990s back when it was solidly Republican.
It takes immense willful blindness not to acknowledge that the opposition to "CRT" in schools arose at the same time as school districts began paying folks like Ibram Kendi to come lecture to teachers: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/fairfax-county-schools-defending....
If you're a parent whose school sent them a reading list including Kendi, who writes in his latest book:
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Maybe, just maybe, you might have objections that while not supporting "Lost Cause" narratives of the Civil War?
I’ve had this idea that many people who talk about libertarianism, but particularly in the US those who vocalize their alignment with the Libertarian Party are just republicans who don’t want to admit it. The famous “libertarian” Thiel going mask off and then helping build the surveillance state and military industrial context convinced me.
“Conservatives” are for maintaining the power of status quo elites (in most modern developed economies, that means capitalist elites), generally by marshalling traditional/religious justifications.
These views fit together...rather well, actually.
I'm not certain Elon even has a declared political affiliation.
What I find absolutely true, is there are a growing number of people seeking to excuse his faults, without evidence I might add, as some kind of political motivated 'religious belief'.
It is much easier to ignore criticisms when you turn off your brain and follow some cultish belief, and 'evil liberals jumping out of trees' is quite a popular cult at the moment. Then you can ignore whatever someone says, about anything, in whatever twisted way you can think of to turn it, 'political', or into a 'them versus us' moral goodguys vs badguys argument.
To distill it further: A bottom-up argument would be that "Because Elon has done X, Y and Z; I dispise him". What's going on here is "I disagree with Elon's fundamental values, but let me pick X, Y and Z to make my case".
Cherry-picking examples that don't accurately reflect someone's values is a common problem, but that doesn't seem like what you're describing.
"Values" aren't some abstract thing; they're only visible through actions. Saying things is an action like any other (an unusually significant and/or representative one if you are a public figure).
Rephrasing my statement: What's going on here is "I disagree with Elon's fundamental values, but let me pick X, Y and Z to make my case and ignore his accomplishments, almost impossible achievements and world of good he has done for the planet, humanity more broadly."
So, it doesn't hold water IMO. Future generations will look at HN discussions (if they're perverse) and exclaim "They really argued about a rude pedo tweet vs. making our species multi-planetary. Boy,..oh boy."
> He exudes libertarian, progressive and conservative values depending on the context
The context is whatever fits his self interest, wallet or ego in that specific moment in time.
People on this board like to proud themselves of how smart they are, it turns out IQ doesn't matter that much in such situations. You just can't measure street smarts and the ability to call out cults and snake-oil salesmen.
His companies are badly run because he prioritizes his own ego over learning the domains he is working in. He risked worker safety because he doesn't like the color yellow. He doesn't care about the people who work for him: the California Sheriff's office had to lock his factory doors when covid was rampaging. He exploits nerd-joy to avoid having to provide safe, supportive, constructive environments that actually produce good software.
If more people were like him, the world would be a worse place for all the rest of us.
I don't believe any of that is "conservative". Aside from his drug use & exploitation of workers, I'm not sure what of it is "libertarian". And "progressive"?
- a discoverability problem for topics, authors, and tweets
- too much garbage, spam, low quality tweets
To the point where I “churned out”.
It is clear that twitter as a platform has immense long term potential if curated properly. The fact that “cancel tribes” and virtual lynchings are a recent mainstay of the culture of the user base, shouldn’t make it surprising that critical and interesting voices (no free speech) do not feel free. Enabled wokism from the top down has materially affected the quality of the content on the platform in its current form.
The issue at twitter is likely a combination of:
- poor management
- internal cultural issues
- lack of a revamped product vision
All of the above issues are the perfect set up for an executive shakeup from an outsider.
If we take the above as true, who else has the gull and ability to do such a shake-up? Twitter’s board as demonstrated in the previous weeks seemed quite entrenched and reasonably powerful.
This seems like a good fit, IMO.
You're not credible if you say comedians don't want a platform that cracks down on mob cancellation.
Yes, downright controls. /s
"When you're fresh meat, kill and throw them something fresher."
I think this captures average twitter well. It does not need much to be "controlled"
So therefore "not controlled". That tweet was funny or at least mildly amusing. We can call any likes that any celebrity gets a "controlled mob", if we go with this line of thinking.
Not him specifically. Just any private owner of Twitter.
I don't think there is anything inherent to the twitter situation that means it can't be fixed. Do I think Musk personally is the guy to do it? Of course not. But he probably wont appoint himself CEO. If he does appoint someone competent and with a clear vision for fixing Twitter's numerous flaws, then he will succeed. He put a good head in charge of SpaceX and he merely acts as the public face. Do the same here and it will work. If he doesn't do that then it probably wont.
Shilling/bots isn’t the same as rabid fans. Yes people shouldn’t brigade and intimidate people making arguments in good faith. Of course, few people make arguments in good faith.
"Shills" implies commercial backing. Ex. the democratic party hires operatives with shill account networks to create the illusion of popularity for certain tweets. (google sally albright)
"Stans" is the better term for Elon fanboys. I haven't seen any evidence Elon is paying these people to defend him online (would be pretty pathetic if he was). I think most of these people are just really into the cult of personality. Much more similar to kpop stans. (etymologically rooted in the eminem song "stan" - an excessively obsessed fan)
(There are definitely a LOT of ~"@elonmusk59393259" fake accounts pretending to be him that try to pump coins or offer fake giveaways, but I don't think he's done so himself?)
These people are not like us. They're more like sovereign corporations with a pseudo-monarch as head, and a literal army of both overt and covert support workers handling security, PR and impression management, financial operations, and so on.
Social media bot accounts are possibly the lowest cost and highest return form of PR and sentiment management ever invented.
I personally suspect that his army of stans is large enough he doesn't need shills, but it'd certainly be a huge story if they could prove he was funding shills.
True shilling feels significantly more morally repugnant than these sorts of 'coattail-riders', but their impact is certainly similar.
Huh? You do realize the parent comment is not talking about Amy Schumer, right?
> It will much harder for Musk to get these people back than it would be for a publicly traded company.
So, you're saying that comedians who are on social media to gather following to promote their content... and were banned while doing that will not come back to Twitter if unbanned because Musk? Do you think they gave two shits about who the CEO or board members or majority investors were when they joined?
Then there’s his view of what Twitter is; de facto public square. When the user base is 300 million MAU minus bots and spam, it’s hardly pushing numbers that make me believe it’s to be taken seriously as a place for discourse.
His greater good pandering to the middle ground who just want the Clinton years back, appeals to his wealth as some sort infallible measure of his correctness, it’s all just more of the same human lizard brain going where it feels warm and fuzziest; no one has any evidence any of these efforts are helping the future and the industrial and social wasteland they create seem to indicate the opposite.
He's come out and said that he's buying it to fulfill some kind of free-speech absolutism fantasy. If you think Twitter is toxic now, wait until it's just Parlor with 100x the users.
It’s not a fun place to be if you aren’t specifically using it to advance your own agenda. Occasionally I will end up on Twitter to read a thread linked from somewhere else, but if I’m forced to log in to read I always close the tab and move on with my day…
So is this a generational thing? Much like YouTube, where I spend a lot of my time instead of watching TV, the people I follow on Twitter are practically nobodies posting really funny and interesting stuff. Since 2015-2016, I'd say there really hasn't been a need for the old celebrities as we used to know them, there's plenty of people creating good content now.
You don't need to be approved by Netflix or HBO and be paid millions just to be funny.
> a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over
I really only see this under crypto tweets, and I've eliminated most crypto talk from my feed. Problem solved.
It’s not about how much you make. It’s about how much you keep. Besides the demographics of people who want the crazies back on Twitter are not exactly the type that mainstream advertisers care about. Have you seen the types of advertisers on most far right sites?
As Elon himself says:
"If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!"
"And authenticate all real humans"
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354 & https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573
If Elon erodes privacy even more than at present, won't everyone else follow suit?
I don't agree with everything that the twitter leadership does but I'd be shocked if there were simple actions they're deciding not to take that would dramatically increase the quality of the site.
Here is a real world example: A technology company I was at was acquired by Cisco Systems. During onboarding Cisco said that usernames on e-mail addresses couldn't be longer than 8 characters. Someone raised their hand and said "What do you mean? E-mail addresses can be longer than 8 chars. Cisco responded well that may be true technically, it isn't possible at Cisco"
Allowing 20 char e-mail addresses is a very simple action, but that organization couldn't do it.
If you're the CTO of Cisco, what do you do there? Do you risk your job and the continued existence of the company, spending God knows how many developer hours refactoring your codebase? Or do you just deal with 8-character email addresses?
The Climate change situation would be better off if we didn't have Tesla disrupting the status quo on EVs?
Rural and Emergency responders and the Ukrainian civilians would be better off if Starlink didn't exist?
The idea that a problem "looks easy to solve" and therefor the problem is that the people in charge are dumb is a childish way of looking at the world. All of large companies I've worked in / with have dumb restrictions. Everyone knows they are dumb. In my experience they are sometimes right and sometimes wrong but it's true that implementing "obvious" fixes is much, much harder than you might imagine.
I know it isn't a simple as editing a config file that has "MAX_CHARS=8". It is going to break some peoples' spreadsheets and processes, but the world will not end, and the company will not go bankrupt because of that change.
A privately owned twitter will behave very different from a public one.
Great example is that the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings. This means that they *can* solve the bot problem, but don't want to solve it right away lest it impact their metrics.
So ultimately the decision to take the company private will help execs stop focusing on short-term earnings and focus on long term values
> the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings.
For instance - I don't think MAUs "impact" Twitter's quarterly earnings - it is a stat that contextualizes their quarterly earnings for the market. So they have an incentive to not solve the bot problem if not solving it makes the site seem more popular - but that is very different from "being able to solve it."
Like, I just think that problems at scale are hard. There are bots that seem, to me, to be hurting Twitter's apparent position as a public company and it seems like, if they could fix those bots, they would.
I think what people want is to act like a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over. I doubt that bots are to blame when it comes to harassment campaigns in rather niche fandoms. A frightening number of people I respond to are somehow convinced that toxic echo chambers are a good thing.
Isn't "remove ads" on his takeover agenda?
I think more likely, he feels like if he owns the platform he will be free of legal oversight and SEC interference in regards to whatever he wants to say over his bully-pulpit - Twitter. We have (literally) the richest man in the world being told that he's not allowed to do something, and he thinks he has the means to fix that.
Because he can, it's a flex
You can want to protect free speech and want the company to do well too. But I do believe his priority is free speech first. Profits, if possible, second.
This is a hedge. If Twitter loses money Elon will say "I wasn't trying to make money"; and if Twitter makes money Elon will say "I made money despite not even trying". Win-win.
While TikTok is eating Meta, YouTube and Twitter together for lunch? Twitter's problem with making money are not just internal anymore, There's an established competitor to which young people are flocking to just like we did with Twitter when we were younger and advertisers go behind the young.
Why would he remove bots? Isn’t having bots post on my behalf covered under my free speech?
But he IS rage bait. He taunts, mocks, and slimes social media constantly. How could his leadership look any better if he treats it like shit personally?
This looks like classic overstep.
If only there was a rational segment of investors ready to make a counterpoint here about anyone saying they are going to fix Twitter ... LOL ...
This is the universe balancing itself. Elon will have to mess up Elon, and my bet (or wishful thinking) is this inflection point right here. He'll be going to Mars to forget this mess.
Popcorn, please!
At that point twitter will get problems with many countries and their laws like the Network Enforcement Act in Germany.
It could get a similar reputation like telegram as a place for conspiracy theorists and extremists.
I don't know if this attracts many ad partners.
As long as it doesn't violate the laws, conspiracies and extremists should be allowed.
If anything is wrong, court should be the one who decides that, not a random twitter employee.
Which court? Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia?
This is good for repressive regimes, as their critics can no longer express themselves on Twitter without revealing their identity.
Doesn't sound like free speech to me
I actually think this will be the demise of Twitter.
No content moderation makes harassment and abuse rampant and the good users will flee and you're left with a cesspool of hate.
What is this even supposed to mean? Extremist in what sense?
If we are talking about politics, a common context for this kind of language, the United States is the most extreme capitalist nation in human history, so just being a US patriot should reasonably be considered an extremist position.
He's probably going to unban Trump and other awful people. His buying Twitter is literally a risk to the foundation of civilization (if far-right clowns gets into power again and destabilize the US and Europe). Billionaires gained a lot of money and power in the past few years.
Being financially sound is not always great for society.
I don't think you have seen the power of cancel culture. Once, X number of celebrities decide that Y needs to be cancelled, the pressure is enormous on all businesses and their CEOs to join the cancel parade. It's literally you are with us or against us. In fact, these cancel culture torch bearers will now use Twitter itself to put pressure on subscribers and advertizers.
Just imagine Trump coming back, posting something very controversial and all celebreties up in arm against Musk to ban him again. At that moment, it is no-win scenario (I call it getting "Zucked"). If you ban him, republicans paints target on you. If you don't then dems do that job. Musk has companies that require belovancy from government and it is not really hard to put him at enormous disadvantage.
A good example is France right now. Many peoples voted against Lepen. But do they know what exactly they voted against, can they elaborate ? No.
One example, the media say she is racist, but she got 60-70 % score in DOM-TOM (Martinique, Guadeloupe, etc).
I would call Macron an extremist. Of the rich, of the globalist and europeanist.
Anyone who has ever worked in content moderation / trust & safety knows what kind of unrelenting deluge of obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff that is constantly being pushed back on any moderately popular social media site.
It seems so easy from a distance. Just let people say what they want to say, right? Unfortunately the result of that is a place that very few want to spend time in.
That actually kind of mirrors my politics. I think freedom is what you get when every movement, crusade, and ideology simultaneously fails.
This isn't nihilism. It's a belief that problems are best solved without force.
The problem occurs when those ten percents use the ensuing outrage to recruit.
yeah that sounds great but the devil is in the details and they have always been. I feel like Musk gets tunnel vision in his thought process. Like he goes "A leads to B, B leads to C, and then C leads to D and done." without contemplating the complexities along the way. It's interesting because he's not naive to business and how things work. He's certainly gotten things done in timelines that people thought impossible and even laughed in his face but other times he has wildly missed.
Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?
Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country
Interviewer: Right. So you can't incite people to violence like a direct incitement to violence. You can't do the equivalent of crying fire in a movie theater, for example.
Elon Musk: No, that would be a crime.
Shouting fire in a crowded movie theatre is not, and never was, illegal. It was an analogy in a court case which was then overturned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Interviewer: But here's the challenge, is that it's such a nuanced difference between different things. So there's incitement to violence. That's a no, it's illegal. There's hate speech, which some forms of hate speech are fine. I hate spinach.
"I hate spinach" is not hate speech, and importantly, hate speech isn't even illegal.
Well, in US there are certainly attempts to make it so. There is definitely framework in place and there is the mores. The time seems ripe too given how people seem afraid of what people might say if you let them.
There are definitely hate speech laws in other countries.
For the record, I am sympathetic to your stance, but I am not sure it is accurate.
I'm not actually American, but my understanding is that there have been prior attempts, especially in some US states, to make hate speech illegal, but each time it just gets knocked down because it violates that pesky first amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
Now, if you're saying "All twitter should just follow the laws of the country", now you've got to decide which country?, because most Twitter users are not in the US, and Twitter operatates - has business entities and employees - in other countries apart from US.
You pose an interesting question and I might not have sufficient information to give you a full picture, but I might try to show a glimpse of what I think may be happening.
Someone somewhere decided it may be a good idea to expand existing framework ( hate crimes[1] ), which was relatively easily adopted in America due to historical ( slavery ) and political factors ( combating racism ).
[1] https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/laws-and-policies
With that in mind, the first step is saturating the media with opinions indicating some sort of support for a policy/law change ( in this case hate speech - links with sample articles follow - note how old some of those are ):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-ameri...
https://newint.org/sections/argument/2012/12/01/is-hate-spee...
https://www.ihrb.org/news-events/press-centre/the-challenge-...
https://theconversation.com/the-idolization-of-free-speech-i...
Once the population is sufficiently primed, one can run it through congress. It is not a weekend project.
Note that it is exactly the same pattern with encryption battles, but at least that one has clear originators ( usually three letter agencies ).
If/when the Democrats restructure the Supreme Court to have a liberal majority, overturning Brandenburg with a single ruling becomes on the table, and the door is open for hate speech legislation.
I don't think any of the current sitting life time appointed supreme court justices have expressed any will at overturning that decision.
The whole difficult part of 'hate speech' is that it often is highly offensive and nasty, but what people find highly offensive and nasty differs (e.g. an atheist stating there is no god is deeply hateful and offensive to many people, or being pro-abortion). Ugh. I can't even.
> And in fact the line from Justice Holmes in Schenck v. United States is “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That “falsely” is what’s doing the work, both in Justice Holmes’s hypothetical, and in how such a false shout would be treated by First Amendment law today. Knowingly false statements of fact are often constitutionally unprotected — consider, for instance, libel, fraud, perjury, and false light invasion of privacy. That would presumably apply to knowing falsehoods that cause a panic.
Also see: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1038.
That said, this doesn't change your broader point that it seems that most people (myself included) are not very clear on 1A exceptions.
Of course it can turn into a cesspool. Of course there are ways around that problem. Like allowing more customizability for users.
For example: an ‘old Twitter’ filter that would only show content compatible with the old moderation norms.
Use your imagination, intelligent tech folks, instead of airing the same hyperventilating opinions.
I think we've had plenty of years to demonstrate a way to make it work without the toxicity and damage to society, yet we've not done so - even with the most scrutinized platforms in history and the world's most capable software engineers.
We are social creatures. Social media is not at all an incarnation of 'society' in which we can function.
"If in doubt, let the speech exist. If it's a gray area, I would say let the Tweet exist. In a case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not want to necessarily promote that Tweet. I'm not saying I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be very reluctant to delete things..."
(Seek to about 19:40 in the interview: https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM)
But once you remove all those things, you’re left with people honestly and civilly arguing for their opinions. And that’s the scariest thing of all.
Some people think society should tolerate pedophilia, are obsessed with this, and can rattle off a laundry list of studies that they say justify their opinion. Some people think police officers are enforcers of oppression and this makes them valid targets for violence. Some people think immigrants are destroying the cultural cohesion necessary for a free and prosperous country. Some people think transwomen are a tool of the patriarchy trying to appropriate female spaces.
Each of these views has adherents who are, no offense, smarter than you are.
I would like to give people another perspective on events like Tumblr banning female-presenting nipples or Patreon dropping right-wing YouTubers or Twitter constantly introducing new algorithms that misfire and ban random groups of people. These companies aren’t inherently censorious. They’re just afraid.
But in here, even the author seems to point to testimonials that indicate that value of unique discussions gained just by allowing the conversation to happen.
It is sad that it ended partially because author was harassed for hosting it, but I suppose this is the price you pay in 2022.
As it pertains to Musk and article linked to Musk, I am relatively certain he can handle the mob.
Tim Wu has a book "The Master Switch" also about this. I think his argument was once you become big enough, the rules change and you end up being forced to censor. You become valuable target for people who want censorship and close to a common carrier.
It’s been seen time and time and time and time again and I’m not sure there’s any real way to preserve it.
You have a similar thing with tiny tourist places - everyone wanting to go there forces it to change, it cannot remain a tiny tourist place and almost always ends up being a place that is “on show”.
The US has more than 30% of its population on there, the third highest- India has about 20 million of its 1 billion+ people.
From my small Eastern European country - no one I know uses Twitter, Reddit is more popular than it. That’s anecdotal, of course.
It says there are 206 million active Twitter users, 77 million of them in the USA. That’s less than half of them.
Of my family and friends I only know of 2 who use it actively though most have an account.
Musk's Twitter is certainly going to clash hard with Europe's recently adopted Digital Services Act.
It's easy to point to 'oppressive' countries like China (where twitter is banned), or Turkey[1], or India[2] as examples of where speech can be severely limited, but there are many limitations to speech in other countries like Germany, Canada, France, Australia, UK.
When you make a globally available website, how do you "follow the law" when the laws of various countries are not compatible with each other? Do you geolock all tweets - Canada twitter is vastly different to US twitter? That doesn't sound scalable good!
[1]: https://www.article19.org/resources/turkey-twitter-becomes-l...
[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/6/22564768/twitter-india-leg...
Just maybe its the enforcement of orthodoxy that makes "content moderation" so toxic?
I personally believe you can hold abhorrent views and still be polite, so I don't see why there is a necessary contradiction here.
Its very hard to get people to learn things by shouting at them
Very weird to lead with this and then expect anyone to take anything else you say seriously!
Like... we really want TWITTER, of all things, to be the place for important social discourse? I never had a Twitter account, but isn't it still limited to some 200 characters and/or an image per post? And from what I've seen the "threading" of discussions also seems to make replies difficult to follow. Apparently, our society wants important social issues to be discussed in 200 character snippets. I'm going to go cry into my coffee.
I'm now imagining a medieval town in an all-out drunken brawl.
I certainly don't. But, I can see why an individual who owns Twitter would want it to be the place for important social discourse.
A lot of academics are on twitter, and it's a reasonably good way to find interesting new work. It has problems, but the character limit isn't one of them.
The Internet was actually LESS free back in the day, in the sense that we hung out on tightly moderated Perl CGI discussion boards, where idiots and trolls were not tolerated. Usenet was great too, without moderation, as it required one to be pretty technical to get there.
>obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff
None of the preceding scoundrels' favorites should be illegal tho.
The arbiter of the global soapbox should to be in favor of almost absolute free speech imo.
Regardless of how this goes, it'll go down in history, and Musk is well aware of that.
This won't actually happen though. Content moderation, censorship, and bans will continue on Twitter unabated.
Is there a reason you can't turn all of the bans (of legal stuff) into filters? Then users could turn on and off nazis, Q, sex, porn, etc? People could turn them all off and get the same experience as today.
Among other reasons, because Twitter is a brand with an image to maintain. They don't want to be known as a safe hangout for Nazis and other unsavory content.
That said, they are already auto-flagging posts to some extent.
And I haven't seen a reason that this is any more tedious work on Twitter's part than the work they do blocking it. Maybe one argument is that Nazis are more likely to post illegal stuff, so banning them early preempts the work of looking for reasons to ban them later.
Want to keep the default list? Good, just do nothing and you will see what Twitter wants you to see. Want to see unfiltered? Just turn the blocking off. Want to add a filter just for yourself? Easy. Upstream that filter such that it eventually becomes the default? Go for it. Have different filters to cater to different cultures? We've got the different lists for you to subscribe to.
They should be made so that you can algorithmically pick whatever subset you want. If you just want Parlor content, go for it. If you want everything except Parlor content, just flip that flag.
Something literally illegal? That gets deleted and removed from everything.
His point was that there's no conservation of energy on the internet right now. Requiring a small ransom for safe passage would fix that, retaining anonymity.
Crypto won’t solve the problem only make it worse.
Though it will also exclude people that can't afford it. I'm thinking of poor people and children. The kind of people who use computers at the local library, because they can't afford their own device (and more expensively) the Internet connection to make it useful.
And yes, I realize that some of the above groups are also absolute shits, who I would keep off the Internet (if I could) until they decided to grow up.
It's actually the sort of thing I could see CloudFlare etc. providing, so each website doesn't need to implement it themselves.
Problem being that Metafilter is unpopular compared to many of the free alternatives. Correlation is not causation, but there is a plausible causation mechanism here.
Cool. Who decides when I visit a random website that my request was abusive?
What if they deem me abusive after several months of using the website?
Actually similar happened to me recently. I woke up to find my PayPal account close and no one can tell me why.
No, the problem is that determining bad behaviour (or at least, doing so in a way that is fair, just, and broadly accepted) is very difficult. There's no objective naughtiness meter that detects when someone's behaving in bad faith. There's no set of words that always, regardless of context indicate undue rudeness. There's no perfect demarcation between just asking questions, and harassment.
So basically any system is going to have to make a series of judgement calls, and those judgement calls are going to be specific to the context of the person (or people) making the judgement. And most importantly: other people will disagree with that judgement call! Not least the poor victim of your unfair banhammer (or the poor victim of the abusive spammer you choose to do nothing about).
Money's not going to fix that problem - if anything, it'll make it worse when people have more on the line.
Saylor discussed this mainly in the solution of DDOS mitigation. Perhaps he didn't intend for it to extend as far as content moderation and I'm taking his idea too far, but I think he probably did.
Perhaps because they realize it effectively boils down to thought policing at some level and do not want to undermine their own intentions.
Remember that we are talking about words on the screen 99% of the time. I would be willing to bet most of us are reading on a post by post basis and don't know the full spectrum of every given persons beliefs (in fact, I'm not sure this is healthy or desirable).
It's also bullshit. In the old days people used to file complaints with your ISP or uni or get you removed from distribution on the server. But usually newcomers were brought in line by the community. Now, we have eternal September and it's simply not feasible to educate the hundreds of millions of people who don't know how to behave.
Well, unfortunately we aren't on the old internet though, are we? Before we talk about this approach we would need the tools to take timeline and personal content moderation in our own hands. This, however, isn't in the interest of Twitter, algorithmic timelines and ad/outrage shoveling in general and thus it probably won't happen.
I wouldn't even be surprised if excessive blocking would lead to your account getting flagged.
You are basically criticizing people for not building their own functional shack while all they have at their disposal is a bunch of timber of varying quality and merely a few rocks as "tools".
There is a fundamental asymmetry in harassment.
My account is important to me; I don't want to abandon it or give it up. If my account is under attack I cannot continue to use the site as I would like.
The accounts used for harassment are either disposable and it doesn't matter to the harasser whether they get blocked or banned. And non-disposable harassing accounts that get blocked can either just move onto the next target or continue to direct the harassment through screenshots etc which encourage the disposable accounts to do the dirty work.
The cost to the victim can be meaningful, but the cost to the harasser is non-existant.
And this isn't just applicable to concerted harassment campaigns. There is also a lot of "drive-by" harassment from accounts who will just reply to any black/trans/queer/woman who posts online.
That's the actual problem with algorithmic feeds; they want to find ways to put things you don't subscribe to into the your view and the views of people you follow. You can't opt in to the content you see. Even if you studiously avoid algorithmic feeds, the people you follow won't, and they'll share that content onto your feed anyway. Even if you and the people you follow avoid them, nothing's stopping the algorithm from putting you into others' view and effectively inviting them into your feed.
Thus blocking/muting going from being primarily a self-moderation tool against abuse, to a necessity to stop the endless stream of algorithmic content and commentary coming from people you don't subscribe to, or who don't subscribe to you.
Plonk! [1, 2]
It's not an easy system to develop and maintain, but Twitter pays well enough to afford people who can do it. The goal just needs to be set.
If Twitter goes private then maybe the income expectations change and therefore the platform algorithms can change. I don't use twitter but it seems like putting more moderation power in user's hands ( chronological feeds, easier management of what you see and what you don't, etc ) becomes possible when Wall St. expectations are no longer a part of the design process.
If you don't have a stock price to answer to then you can do things that create a healthier community but may not be the most profitable.
EDIT: You know, Musk be on to something about leaving a company private. Tesla is public and the shorters almost killed it, he really had to fight them and still does. SpaceX was left as private and is thriving. maybe he's taking lessons learned from both Tesla and SpaceX and trying to apply them to Twitter? just a guess
Trending topics, your friend liked/replied to this, your friend follows this person, we think you'll like this tweet... all of these things show up in your Twitter timeline now, without having followed any of the people they're showing you.
What you are describing is the heavily moderated, arbitrarily censored social media experience the entire planet experiences today.
> Unfortunately the result of that is a place that very few want to spend time in.
Perhaps social media is a place that we should not encourage people to spend inordinate amounts of time in. Perhaps the idea of combining all the world's people into a single centralized location to communicate with one another, should carry with it the very explicit notion that such a place would be chaotic, high-energy, and risky --- just like going to the casino for the night.
Twitter's true customers are its advertisers. It's who pays. And they are even less likely then the normal person to want an "everything that isn't illegal is allowed" approach. Advertisers don't want their ads seen next to hate speech and certain other types of speech.
It's been clear that Reddit and YouTube have been censoring at the behest of advertisers for years, and I don't think Twitter is or will be any different.
Users matter the most because if non-toxic users flee the platform, Twitter has no value to advertisers.
Then I opened /wg/ and there were anime porn ads.
So first, users are one of the major levers to keep valuable advertisers happy -- not the only one, but also not the only significant one, and they are purely instrumental. Second, Twitter does not want a negative public perception, along the lines of cable news, or much worse, 4chan. The former loses you a subset of a subset of the market and is a constant PR/lobbying headache, the latter loses most medium to high value advertisers altogether and is an existential regulatory threat. In almost no way is the worry that the toxic environment would be a subjectively bad experience for users.
Before Parler was banned from the App store (and before it was re-instated after more moderation was added), its stated policy was roughly to moderate strictly to what's within the bounds of the law, albeit with some significant inconsistencies especially around pornography and nudity. I used it during this time, and it was extremely common to see a lot of seemingly intentionally hateful but legal use of the n-word, etc. P&G, Nestle, etc., don't want to associate their brands with an environment like that. Obviously Apple didn't either.
It's important to always keep these realities in mind for all corporate action. Take Jack Dorsey's bluesky initiative[1], which many viewed in purely ideological or technical terms. My personal opinion is that it was either a way to counter negative PR ("Twitter is a moderated node that's profitable, but technically you can choose another node that's toxic and unprofitable but with less moderation, and good luck with that...", where Twitter gains all the "free speech" PR benefit with none of the significant costs), or a low cost self-soothing action to assuage pangs of guilt for instituting some policies he didn't personally agree with, with the important part that it is designed with a hard constraint to do nothing to negatively affect profits. So it's just an escape hatch for PR or personal angst.
Somehow other websites with copious amounts of pornographic content, like twitter and reddit, get a pass on this "sketchy" characterization.
Maybe, but twitter and reddit are not among them. Both are known for hosting very extreme content.
But I think this is all a distraction from what I was trying to convey -- my point doesn't depend on getting to the bottom of what is meant by "sketchy". Just define X to be some kind of website that has extremely low value advertisers (scammers, etc.):
> [X] websites do have advertisers, just extremely low value ones. Twitter wants to maintain a pleasant environment for the medium to high value advertisers, [...]
> We don't want our advertisements to be shown next to posts that do X, Y or Z
That's effectively, the same as
> We want to see our advertisements by A, B and C
Just give advertisers different options.
Further, Twitter advertisements aren't much different than billboards. Do you worry about the politics / optics of the drivers or even protesters beneath the the billboards in a city? No, of course not, you just want people to buy your products. Do people care, no.
It's all fake outrage, trust me people will still buy Coke or Pepsi even if someone sees something distasteful while doom scrolling.
In terms of general "toxicity" there's already blocking users, but allow users to "avoid topics" if they need their safe spaces. Then as a business, let users "pay to avoid topics" as it'll require some hand curation -- boom. More money for twitter, more users on the platform, everyone wins.
From an advertiser perspective, if Twitter allows nazis, advertisers will be funding the distribution of nazi content — UI framing means nothing.
There's not a chart anywhere I can find that shows advertisers reducing their spending on youtube. I "articles" (potentially paid for advertisments) claiming that was happening; but as far as I'm aware, there's no evidence that it made a material difference.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/289658/youtube-global-ne...
Unfortunately, the data wasn't public during the controversy; so it's not really clear besides anecdotal virtue signaling by companies.
It's hard to explain how much you're understating the difficulty in doing this. It would likely require AGI to do this well. Until then, advertisers buy ads on entire platforms (like a given TV network), and they have to rely on the platform to ensure that the content is advertiser-friendly.
And if an advertiser pays a service that, for example, shows terrorist propaganda, then they could be seen as funding and supporting terrorism.
Better to not take the risk. This was another reason why the credit card companies and / or payment providers pulled out (hehe) of Pornhub; they did not verify the age or consent of the people involved, thus were the payment providers complicit in perpetuating this. It would have been morally unjust to keep funneling money into PH if they didn't do anything against them. Not that the payment processors can claim much moral high ground, generally speaking, but you know what I mean.
This is a PR problem and fixable.
Further, this is an issue with advertisers. As Elon is proposing, have people pay to get verified ($5 / year or something). Further, as I mentioned, you can "pay to avoid topics" (have users label / flag stuff they don't want in their topic, like they do now generally for breaking the rules) and advertisers can select topics to promote on AND topics to not promote next to.
The reality, is Twitter would then get a large segment of revenue outside of advertising AND advertisers would feel more confident -- boosting revenue from both sides.
> This was another reason why the credit card companies and / or payment providers pulled out (hehe) of Pornhub
This is different, the advertisers didn't pull out of Pornhub, payment processors did. Twitter could probably lose half it's advertisers short term, but if they grew the user base they'd make more money long-term. Advertisers buy eyes not virtues. Yes, a bad post next to an ad is somewhat damaging, when your choices are literally: Twitter, Google, Facebook; are you really going to cut one of your 3 choices? Not long-term.
Hell, advertisers don't want their ads to be seen next to Elon's current Twitter feed ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496 ), let alone what Twitter will look like in a year after everyone starts posting using the owner's timeline as example.
You're basing your assumption that advertisers will be the main source of revenue in the future.
Looking back at Tumblr, I'd say that's not a rule.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354
At this point, he sounds like a politician making conflicting promises that he can't possibly keep... And also like a politician, he probably has his own interests in mind ahead of your average Twitter user's.
So yes, free speech only applies to humans, lol.
Do you support spam bots having rights or are you just using that to try to win your argument?
"... holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech because they are "associations of citizens" and hold the collected rights of the individual citizens who constitute them." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#:~:text=T....]
Actually, the Supreme Court established it no later than First National Bank v. Belotti (1978), despite the frequent claim that this was an innovation in the 2009 Citizens United case.
You seem to assume it's a binary answer. Either allow everything or nothing?
Moderation is hard, genuinely hard, every order of magnitude increase in community size is not linear to the moderation requirement: it is factorial.
Why? Because every single communication has the potential for abuse, and the number of interactions on a platform do not scale linearly with the increase of users.
This is why things like the "Eternal September" exist, a deluge of new users is basically impossible to moderate at scale.
I think Twitter, Facebook and co. have done a fairly decent job of the mess they made, but crucially they decided that a walled garden where everyone exists together was their business model.
I think this is fundamentally flawed. "Back in my day" (I know it may be glazed with nostalgia, but) smaller close knit forums were much better at moderating communities, because it was still humanly possible.
There did exist some communities which became tyrannical; but the benefit of small communities is that people just go wherever it's "nice enough", and if you don't like the moderation staff or how they moderate you can move on with your friends.
I think people don't want this to be true, people are so financially invested in the centralised model; but ultimately you force a single set of potentially tyrannical moderators and a single culture. -- and people aren't willing (or able) to pay for the correct level of moderation.
It's Sisyphean and totally self-inflicted.
That is just not true. That's a count of possible relationships. There is a limit to how many interactions a human will perform in a day, and it's not related to how many other users there are on the platform.
To many, reddit is just as unpleasant, and in some cases worse than twitter.
Plus, Musk tweeted that he's eliminate bots or die trying. If he really means this, it would be a truly great contribution to twitter -- free speech is one thing, but amplified disinformation is another. But, this apparently requires levels of effort beyond all the social media today, especially when it is not just automated bots, but also paid troll farms grinding out disinformation and deliberately undermining communications.
If someone posts a hateful tirade on twitter, it's no one else's responsibility but twitter's really. It's their account, and Twitters platform.
Of course, if you gave Twitter uses the ability to self moderate, it would be an absolute mess.
C'mon. You know this.
Twitter receives something like 500 million tweets per day. So if you had a million paid moderators, maybe they would be able to keep up with the sheer volume. And then you'd still get people arguing either side, too much or too little moderation/censorship. Corporate bias would be attributed, rightly or wrongly, just as it is now.
But who gets to decide what a heated conversation looks like and who should take a breather? This is the fundamental problem that we can't seem to agree on as a society.
Great reference. I used and liked Usenet a lot in the early 90s. I lurked in the comp.* and sci.* groups among several others. Sure, I knew there were nasty crazy things on alt., and as a 13 year old I looked at some porn in there.
Usenet was not "centrally" moderated, and it was fine. There was spam sure, but with a suitable client with spam filter, things where good.
In my view, moderation has to happen at the edge, and not in the center. People should be able to post whatever legal stuff they want in those type of services, in the same way anyone can go to a public park and shout/speak whatever crazy things they want. Now, if you start to pee* in public (illegal) or post something illegal, then the police should investigate and get you for committing an illegal act, but there's not reason why there should be censorship of everyone for the possibility of someone committing a rime.
Everytime some idiotic thread shoots up with 1500 comment I just assume it can all be summed up with a line like this.
> Why? Because every single communication has the potential for abuse, and the number of interactions on a platform do not scale linearly with the increase of users.
I'm not sure this is correct. It sounds like your underlying model is "number of users N, number of potential interactions N x N." But people have finite time and resources. Every user can only post a maximum of T times a day, where T is some constant. So I think the number of actual interactions is linear in N.
In reality twitter is 1:n relationships.
Content that is interacted with may lead to new interactions from unrelated people. So it’s really n:n.
A persons posting time, in any event, easily approaches one’s ability to moderate it. It’s very easy to spew content and requires much more effort to analyse and weight it.
I sincerely believe it’s not in step with the growth of users, instead it is exponential.
So many Silicon Valley companies launch products designed to scale without any regard for social impact - it's time to move beyond that myopic pov. It's not someone elses problem.
All he's really saying is he'd prefer to accept more shitty behavior from people who he aligns with and less from people who annoy him.
This is not only simpler for Twitter to implement, but provides a better level of due process and accountability. How many times has someone been 'abused' on social media and claimed XYZ company did nothing about it?
0: I don't agree with this vernacular, it's just what the kids say.
The obvious solution to me is just let people pick their own moderation tools, or at least configure it to how they would like. Moderation is great, but what I want moderated is different than what you might want moderated, and we should support broader implications.
This also allows Twitter to gain some independence from the wrath on both sides who want more or less moderation. They can respond by saying "Use the X moderation tool if you want more moderation or "Y if you want less".
And there is the other dimension where you actually want to remove the ability to block from some users, like public businesses and brands probably shouldn't be able to block complaints from customers and shareholders, politicians shouldn't be able to block their constituents, etc.
It never made sense why try to force me to use the same filter as the Karen that complains about kids skateboarding.
I personally don’t believe he means that he wants to turn Twitter into 4chan. Rather what he’s saying is that nobody should be censored on Twitter for the content of their (otherwise civil) speech. There is a wide gulf of possible moderation policy choices between current Twitter and 4chan that he could park it at.
"Moderation lenses" would operate as follows:
Any person or entity can be a moderator. Moderation could be done manually or in an automated fashion, it doesn't really matter. Users would be able to opt-in (and later opt-out) of whatever set of lenses they want. The lenses they opt-in to would affect what posts they are able to see.
Online communities (for example, a subreddit), could have a default set of lenses applied to newly-joined users, but as with any other lens, they would be removable by the user. One would imagine that most users would leave a "spam" lens in place.
Governments would be able to produce their own lenses for things such as "misinformation", "hate speech", or whatever the evil-of-the-day happens to be. And if people want a government filtering what they see, they can add those lenses. And if they don't, they don't.
Human opinion is inherently subjective, and agreeing on what is "correct" or "appropriate" across large groups of people is rarely possible. Trying to impose a single viewpoint of "correct" across millions of people is laughable.
The user should be the one who is given the tools of censorship.
What's wrong with this idea?
I keep hearing this, and it makes no sense.
1) Add a block button. 2) Don't surface random content to users. 3) (Optional) hard restrictions on private messages.
This solves the issue entirely, with no need to moderate anything that isn't illegal.
The simple fact is that this is a really easy problem to solve. Companies just don't want to implement 2).
We're about to see a digital clash of cultures.
I am less worried about Musk "overworking" and more worried about him getting identified as sacrificial scapegot in one of the political fights and get "cancelled".
> I can bet car manufactured will return to same-old same-old in no time.
I'd bet against you. Not sure if you noticed, but gasoline prices are skyrocketing. This isn't the first time this century and it definitely won't be the last time. EV will happen whether musk autopilots his way into a highway median or not.
> scapegot in one of the political fights and get "cancelled".
Maybe you shouldn't "cancel" your spellcheck.
Automakers have invested billions in EVs and the platform technology around them, there's no way they abandon it if Elon dies. Electric vehicle manufacturing and adoption is absolutely here to stay.
We’ll probably be fine. What should worry you is the reason he wants to buy Twitter.
If I had to make a choice b/w Musk and Einstein, I'd pick Musk 100:1 in Musk's favor. Musk moves things forward with whatever tech/science is available right now. Likes of Einstein are absolutely needed but we have way more tech than we make efficient use of right now.
> Musk is an opportunistic man-baby
Name call all you want — he's changing our world for the better today and for your kids and their kids like no one else has. or ever will.
> not the second coming, let him burn out...
I'd give my money to keep him healthy, alive and kicking long before spending a cent on any charity, as do many others who don't have their heads up their asses.
Same is true for enterpreneurship... however, I believe Musk is one of the few who has built companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Boring etc. which nobody else would even want to get into because they thought they were not worth doing for making money. In fact, people like Bill Gates are still shorting Tesla because they don't believe it has value.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_...
Just like in business. Electric cars were pushed by Musk, yes, but they were helped by rapidly increasing battery capacity and demand through the increasing sentiment against ICE cars.
SpaceX is definitely also cool, but by now every billionaire seems to have it's own space company. SpaceX is still pushing for Mars like nobody else, but it's not like the field is deserted.
> I believe Musk is one of the few who has built companies [...] which nobody else would even want to get into because they thought they were not worth doing for making money.
Given how many insanely valued companies we have who's business model is basically to spend VC money (see, for example, Uber), I highly doubt this. There are also a lot of small-time car manufacturers, with quite a few specializing on electric vehicles even. There's definitely money to be made in this space.
> In fact, people like Bill Gates are still shorting Tesla because they don't believe it has value.
There's definitely a way where you can believe both, that a) Tesla really fast-forwarded the adoption of electric vehicles and did something good and b) that Tesla being the most valuable car company on the planet is insane.
I'm not saying Elon achievements are not impressive, they definitely are and his net impact is positive. But just like Einstein, if it wouldn't have been for Elon, there would most likely be another company filling this space right now.
That is solely and utterly because of Tesla. The reason for the demand was to build electric cars which Tesla and only Tesla, building butt load of BEVs required. Everybody else before Tesla showed up was either making hybrids with minuscule capacity requirement or low range BEVs in low volumes.
> There are also a lot of small-time car manufacturers, with quite a few specializing on electric vehicles even.
Again, all because or Tesla. They are all riding on Tesla’s success. Why do you think Rivian IPO was greater than century old car makers marker cap making multi million number of vehicles a year where Rivian made none?!! Tesla.
> there would most likely be another company filling this space right now
That is a pointless statement you can say about anyone at any time in history which is to say nothing. You can’t go back in time and let this play out by someone else. Elon is the one who did all this and we’re stuck with this history.
What's your point? Any dimwit with a couple thousand dollars can found a company and register a trademark.
> he acquired a ready-made idea / plan
Plans and ideas are aplenty. If I got a dime for every time someone said they had an idea for an app at a dinner party, I'd be a billionaire by now.
> just poured his (daddy's African mine) money.
He poured all the money he had made from PayPal in which he had poured the money he had made from Zip2. His "daddy" gave him b/w $20K-$30K. Anyone with half decent credit history can get a loan multiple of that. I don't see millions of Elon Musks out there. And all of the above is less than $400 mil. At the time, Bill Gates, and others had dozens of billions in cash (ie orders of magnitude more money) than Elon.
> I'm very concerned with this cult of Elon...
I'm very concerned that people don't seem to be able to do a dozen Google searches and get their facts straight and just repeat junk they hear.
And so did Tesla with it's roadster. The model S was/is also a lower-volume, high price luxury car; it's only the model 3 that really changed this. Also, the increased demand was relating to BEVs; some of which is surely due to Teslas offering, but a lot definitely came from recent trends against ICE cars and increasing prices.
> Again, all because or Tesla. They are all riding on Tesla’s success.
Hard disagree. The Nissan Leaf has been around since 2010, and so have manufacturers like BYD. Just take a look at the list of production BEVs [0] (the smaller manufacturers are actually missing from there, since they're not production vehicles). Tesla wasn't the first to market and didn't create it on its own. I'm not disagreeing that they pushed the field or that they generated a lot of hype, but the market would exist with or without Tesla.
Also, sidenote:
> Why do you think Rivian IPO was greater than century old car makers marker cap making multi million number of vehicles a year where Rivian made none?!! Tesla.
Hype and market insanity, really.
> That is a pointless statement you can say about anyone at any time in history which is to say nothing. You can’t go back in time and let this play out by someone else. Elon is the one who did all this and we’re stuck with this history.
Which is completely fine. Having Elon is surely a net positive. But attributing all progress in the BEV space and space sector just to him is simply wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_ele...
hahahahah what
You should probably learn about Elon Musk a little bit more before you finish building your shrine of him. He's a conman at best.
>Musk moves things forward with whatever tech/science is available right now.
Are you saying that Einstein didn't do that? I'm confused, do you have any idea how much of the tech that Elon is using is reliant upon the findings of Einstein? Genuinely awe-struck reading your comment, also he isn't even improving the planet, the lithium in all those batteries has to come from somewhere. Oh and the lithium batteries can burn for hours at extreme temperatures when they combust, and in some cases when this happens the Tesla's "advanced AI" will initiate the door locks, trapping you inside :) but it's okay, cause Elon is a cool guy on twitter :)
Disagree. He’s a clown at best!
Seriously? Clowns in your town start revolutions in manufacturing, energy, space travel, worldwide comms, etc.? Well if you consider how many things he's juggling at a time, he may actually be a circus performer. A darn good one - the best perhaps, given that he has also created jobs for 100K+ people in the world.
Revolutions? Really? Revolutions?
We know Musk wants a less moderated Twitter (less censored, depending on your point of view). But it's hard to think that all the changes would stop there. I can't imagine Musk just opening the door on content and then... Stagnation. But what else would he change? A more comprehensive social platform than just tweets? Revive the Vine concept to compete with TikTok after completely missing that opportunity the first time around?
And since Twitter is one of the social media pillars, whether they succeed or fail will strongly influence the direction of the other big players. They could follow suit in content policy, or lean harder in the opposite direction to distinguish themselves in the marketplace: Twitter is open, some other places are more of a walled garden, users choose what they want.
It could also mean slightly less antitrust & political attention for other social media players: again, market differentiation would mean that mainstream social media still provided all users with a top-tier platform. It's difficult to argue that Big Social Media (BSM™) is stifling free speech, or has a collective monopoly (or Cartel), and therefore needs to be regulated or broken up. Not when one of the most influential outlets is a much more open platform.
the play is really simple: restore the orange clown account. get more subsidies in case the orange clown gets re-elected.
that’s it. can make a big show out if it and we can build more shrines to Musk (yuck) but at the end of the day nobody pays 69 billion dollars out of pure thoughts on free sp33ch.
No, we don't.
We know that Musk says this, and we can probably reasonably conclude that he wants a differently moderated Twitter, but neither his past actions, his use of congressional Republicans (and their willingness to do the job) as bad cop to pressure the board, nor anything else other than his own PR supports that Musk has any particular devotion to the idea that private actors should not do everything in their power to constrain others speech.
> Twitter is open, some other places are more of a walled garden, users choose what they want.
Musk's specifically stated plans include making Twitter more of a walled garden, pushing people harder to paid accounts and using paid account status of the originator as a stronger signal in content distribution. Looser content policies, even if that is what actually happens, aren't opposed to being a walled garden.
> It's difficult to argue that Big Social Media (BSM™) is stifling free speech, or has a collective monopoly (or Cartel), and therefore needs to be regulated or broken up.
Au contraire, it's must easier to argue that your preferred approach is reasonable, viable, and should be mandatory if someone is already doing it and you can vilify those not doing.
>Looser content policies, even if that is what actually happens, aren't opposed to being a walled garden.
I don't think it's an either/or. It's a spectrum. The looser the content policies are, the less it's a walled garden.
It varies. I'll preface this by saying I am not privy to the specifics of this deal, but in general this depends on the terms of the options plan. Some employees may have their options accelerated upon triggering events like a change of control. Others may have options accelerated on a "double trigger" such as a chance of control followed by termination.
> And what’s my incentive to work for an established private company with no stock growth prospect? I guess Twitter will have to pay 500k senior eng. salaries in cash instead of stock?
You don't need publicly traded securities to have deferred compensation. Shares continue to exist even if the company is private and liquidity events can be structured to allow employees to cash out in a "controlled and deferred" fashion. Plus you could structure deferred compensation entirely without those liquidity events or shares for that matter. Just promise to pay people $X in Y years
Typically insta-vest and converted to cash on date of sale.
From a "Twitter is a going concern" perspective, the company and its technology function today. In a non-functioning state, the assets have materially less value. As in effectively zero value. Therefore, it is in the interests of the new controlling owner to see to it that enough of the current employees remain at least long enough for a decision to be made about which of these employees are wanted long-term.
As a result, I anticipate that efforts will be undertaken to see that employees are made close-enough to whole that there is not a larger mass-exodus than the change in the political party of the senior leadership is likely to generate on its own, more or less regardless of whether the employees have any shareholder rights in their RSU contracts.
For employees, are they pretty much seeing their comp getting divided by 2 because now they can't sell the stocks/rsus they vest every quarter?
- replace RSUs with cash payments on same vesting schedule @ equivalent of final sale price
- keep RSUs despite being private (apparently SpaceX issues RSUs just fine & has regular liquidity events)
Lets them stay private longer term while still allowing employees to benefit from stock appreciation.
I don't know how it impacts RSUs. I'd imagine RSUs already committed to are bought out, and future contacts need to compensate people some other way.
This is one area of the the law that works well.
If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on. Having the last word means nothing on the internet.
Its like white people telling brown people that airport security isnt a toxic place and its all in their mind. Things are toxic...just not for everyone. Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is.
The point of twitter isnt just to read, but also to engage. But engagement is hard when tiki-toting nationalists are sending death threads to anyone that doesnt want to turn the world into prison.
Even technical (non political) conversations get all sorts of hate flung at PoC accounts.
Try being a white right-of-center man and see how toxic it is. Try being a Christian and see how how toxic it is. Try being a gender-critical feminist and see how toxic it is. Etc.
If you got hate for having Christian imagery or references in your profile, that would be awful. But if "being a Christian" means quoting Leviticus 18:22 at homosexuals then that is an action you're taking and getting pushback for.
I find people like yourself in traditional power structures genuinely believe the enforcement of the existing structure is a "neutral" act or position to hold. I think this delusion is how you come to think of politics you actively engage is as merely "being". It's not, and no on else is obligated to pretend it is.
- have been purveyors, not victims, of discrimination within USA
- introduced extreme polarization to mass media & political discourse
- controlled enough political power to push their beliefs on the majority through law since the inception of this country
I wonder if “center of X” voices have ever wondered _why_ their opinions aren’t well received outside of their bubbles.
Possibly but Twitter’s ownership won’t help with any of that.
Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.
I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
Oh, so you've visited the Bay Area?
>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?
That is what I too think every time some says that.
With the flexible content controls that Twitter already has in place, you can make Twitter to be just about as nice as you want it to be. If you mark your profile private, selectively follow, and either mute or block things / accounts that interfere with your worldview, it can be quite pleasant.
The problem is that you have to be public to get virality, and that virality opens you up to people who disagree. Locking your account and developing your own content haven is an easy tradeoff for those people sane enough to not need internet likes from random people.
I tried to do this for years but I’ve been unable to do this because everyone just tweets about politics (or Twitter finds a way to inject their recommendations into my feed). So I gave up and stopped trying to control that.
Even when Twitter finally made the option to use ‘latest tweets’ instead of their feed, after a decade of making that difficult, it still seemed to be too far gone.
Now I only use Twitter when I get linked to it from other sources.
(Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.)
The only recent example I can think of is the Babylon Bee and, yeah, this was 100% warranted https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babyl...
I think this is what I don’t understand about the general sentiment that Twitter is some kind of uber-censored platform. Sure, high profile accounts and tweets can sometimes be removed, but have you ever tried reporting tweets?
9 out of 10 times that I report tweets threatening violence or harm against someone, I get a notification a few hours later that the “moderation team” has reviewed that tweet and found it not to be in breach of any policies. Twitter’s reporting system is ineffective at best, and I almost wish I had seen the kind of heavy handed moderation that people prescribe to Twitter here.
The fact that moderation tools exist does not imply that they are being used for political censorship. None of the screenshots of "search blacklisted" accounts from the leak showed any evidence of it being used on actual people, they are all random alphanumeric usernames with more reports than tweets.
In fact, the opposite is true. In 2018, when the feature was first rolled out, it was found to be catching several notable conservative commentators because their tweeting behavior is hard to distinguish from trolls and spambots (wonder why...), so those people were explicitly whitelisted so that they would appear in searches and trends despite their bad behavior.
There’s no goalpost moving here - a social media site having the ability to prevent large volumes of spam making its way to the trending page in front of thousands of eyeballs shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The number of crypto scams in replies to tweets by Elon himself suggests that this tooling is definitely not as draconian in ability as you seem to believe.
Your email provider also has “secret” blacklists, and if incoming email originates from a sender on those lists then it gets put in your junk (or even bounced). Does that concern you?
The tweet is still up, even. Babylon Bee are being asked to delete it as a form of bending the knee to an opposing ideology. It's wrongthink, not hate speech or incitement, that you and Twitter are concerned with.
I don't have a horse in the trans debate, but I have my fair share of opinions that are verboten in progressive circles. It would be stupid of me to deny what is happening there.
Especially in this case where it was targeted at an individual, and not just a conservative blog post on transgenderism being linked to etc. Notice that Ben Shapiro et al have not been banned.
I'm not trying to define hate speech, I'm saying that there's no hate there to begin with and so all we're left with is an argument over reality (or the terms we use to describe it): is a woman an adult human female, or is there something else we have to consider?
In your counterexamples, black people/women are being declared strictly inferior. That's not the case here - Levine isn't lessened by being an adult human male.
If you want something censored, the onus should be on you to prove that it is hateful, not on someone else to prove that it is not. For that, you need to define hate speech and explain how the Babylon Bee's post fits that definition alongside the examples you just gave.
It still is, if we're talking about averages. Extremely well studied too.
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
>I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored.
Unity 2020 campaign account got permanently banned and links to its website were restricted even in private messages. They broke no rules, posted nothing edgy and no one ever coherently explained why this happened.
New York Post got suspended after Tweeting Hunter Biden laptop article link. The suspension was based on clearly fabricated rationale.
These are just two egregious cases that I'm well familiar with. I can post about a dozen more. There are thousands less notable, but no less clear-cut examples out there. There are even more examples that are debatable, but which in totality indicate a pattern or political manipulation.
Funny thing is, I don't even use Twitter. The question is, why does a person like me is more aware of its censorship that someone who claims to be well familiar with the platform?
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
The only thing Libs of TikTok posts is videos made by liberals on TikTok. Yet it was deemed hateful? Reposting liberal content is hateful now.
What? How do you know how long they are watched? How do you how long it's watched on Twitter?
> Then labels the videos as evidence of pedophelia/child grooming
Strange way to summarize the captions, the annotations and summaries I've seen were pretty accurate and more specific than your hyperbole.
How many posts have there been on Twitter calling republicans Nazis? Or claiming the 2016 election was stolen? Or calling Clarence Thomas a house —-r or an Uncle Tom.
Libs of Tik Tok is tame by comparison.
"This is a mental illness"
"This teacher has been identified and is employed by @FergFlorSchools"
"3rd grade teacher at @GracemorNKC teaches 8 year olds about gender identity and then “wonders if anyone [students] will change their minds” presumably about their gender. These groomer teachers need to be fired. "
You say "just annotating videos", those political blinders you're wearing must be pretty strong...
In what way was this "100% warranted"? You mean it's "100% warranted" to ban accounts which make fun of people and things you don't like? What about making fun of Trump? Is that fine? Seems to be, and seems to be based entirely on the mod's political persuasions.
Let's talk about Hunter Biden's laptop. This was banned almost immediately under the premise of "hacked material." Okay, seems fair. Except they allowed (and continue to allow) hacked material to circulate about the Canadian Freedom Convoy donors.
Let's talk about covid. Twitter banned any and all mentions (and accounts) which discussed the possibility that covid came from a lab in Wuhan. This is now a leading theory of its origin. Project Veritas, whether you like them or not, have been instrumental in exposing the relationship between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. The fact that Fauci oversaw re-defining the term "gain of function research," that he explicitly gave funding to EcoHealth Alliance, knowing they would be funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain of function research, and uncovered incorrectly redacted emails between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance.
Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
I feel quite certain you're busy telling yourself "but these are all totally justified!" This means your views align really well with the moderation on Twitter. Where it's fine to ban things like this, but not the hacked private information about Canadian Freedom Convoy donors, or Trump and family hacks, or the doxing of Libs of Ticktok founder Chaya Raichik.
Twitter's moderation is fairly transparent, and mostly consistentish (as it can be, moderating on the scale that twitter does, which i guess is not very consistent at all...). Just because you don't agree with their moderation doesn't make it untransparent, or inconsistent.
This is the one example everyone who is getting their knickers in a twist about Twitter censorship loves to bring up, but it doesn't seem to be a great example. There's only weak circumstantial evidence in favour of the theory and banning discussion of it was something Twitter realised was a mistake and rolled back on.
I don't think it's unreasonable for mistakes to happen as long as they're corrected. I think there are plenty of things you can criticise Twitter for, but this seems like an odd one to highlight.
> Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
"Even"? This is a misrepresentation. Yan is a political hack. She refuses to have her work peer-reviewed. See e.g. [0]. She's a useful pawn for Steve Bannon.
[0] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archiv...
The whole point of free speech is that no faction should be allowed to suppress the speech of others, lest such factions prevent consideration of ideas that might eventually prove convincing and true.
Where it starts to look biased is that they've drawn two lines in the sand in recent years: 1. No disinformation about a global pandemic, and 2. No using lies about an election to justify violence against the government. And they banned a bunch of people that did that. And yes: it was one side that made those issues "partisan".
I really don't know what you want Twitter to do here. In any other society, those would seem like reasonable rules.
Why was Robert Malone kicked off? Isn’t his opinion more valuable than some random news personality when it comes to Covid? Literally banning a scientist who helped invent the very tech he is discussing. If he’s wrong, that’s fine, but it isn’t about facts — even the debate is banned.
And what exactly constitutes misinformation? I think this is the problem.
I'm noticing
A) twitter users that interest me and don't discuss politics are usually pretty great
B) I generally don't want to read anybody's political opinions on Twitter or most places... people who want to talk about politics mostly seem to be in to fighting a culture war, there might be people who aren't but I don't see them and it isn't the platform's fault or a moderation issue
It seems to be falling out of fashion, but a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherwise interesting and insightful tech Tweets. I think Twitter and other ideologically-aligned media radicalized them, which is to say that avoiding political accounts is a fine thing except (1) sometimes Twitter turns accounts political and (2) avoiding accounts that Tweet about politics at all is swimming against the current and (3) it sucks to have the all-or-nothing choice between following/not-following an account (rather than being able to follow interesting tech Tweets but uninteresting political Tweets, for example).
Example?
"I don't think California should repeal civil rights legislation in order to allow overt hiring on the basis of race and gender."
"I think we should perhaps reconsider our non-enforcement of property crimes due to the fact that nobody can park on the street, the stores across from me are boarded up, and two pharmacies in my relatively affluent neighborhood just closed due to theft."
"I didn't find it appropriate for the protestors to tear down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or rename a school from Abraham Lincoln."
"I don't think it should be part of the school curriculum to be talking to preschoolers about gender and sexuality."
"Asians are disproportionally denied access to schools and employment due to arbitrary ethic and racial targets."
Other such hateful things.
To be clear: there is often a lot of gray area and some middle ground to be taken in complex debates. When one side (eg: far-right American trollish behaviour) goes too hard in to the paint, the (over?) reaction by the opposing side(s) often loses perspective and it's the more reasonable opinions in the middle that get squashed in the well meaning attempts to supress troll like extremist influence. I think the above post highlights exactly these kind of opinions that get steamrolled away, even though many of them are within the realm of sensible debate.
All the sarcasm accomplished was an indirect criticism of the prior poster who asserted without evidence tech figureheads were tweeting "overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets". It's pretty uncharitable to assume they were referring to stuff on that list (many of which aren't just in the realm of sensible debate, but are actually majority views-- e.g. #1 we can look to the results of the ballot measure).
I don't think anyone seriously doubts that with enough searching we could find a couple examples that would make their claim technically true, at the very least... without delving into comments within the realm of sensible debate.
We shouldn't need to be so cynical, but if we must we don't need to do it at the expense of other participants here!
Twitter encourages hot-takes. Because of that all sorts of ill considered crap shows up there-- and that includes both inappropriately tarring views as racist as well as racist views that most people would agree are racist.
Would you identify which of your examples is speech that you find objectionable? The last statement about discrimination against Asians seems particularly well-supported by evidence, so it's not clear to me and perhaps others which statement(s) you intend to highlight as the example of "hateful things".
These things need to be discussed, but it’s best left for the people with their skin in it to discuss.
I'll go even farther and say it's nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team and you are too insecure about those politics to entertain other viewpoints. The sort of people about whom John Stewart Mill wrote:
> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
You are always going to fail at moderating millions of users. It just depends how bad you fail.
"I hate Muslim men" = banned (Muslim and man are inherent traits)
"I hate Muslim cab drivers" = OK (cab driver is a chosen profession)
I have a friend who was banned for saying something to the effect of "I hope white men have trouble sleeping tonight"
They have specific rules and they apply them. No one is going through millions of tweets every day and seeing if they match an ideology.
https://twitter.com/ButNotTheCity/status/1518051399631785986
Content moderation can be a challenging problem, but this is a clear failure of both algorithmic and human moderation processes, and there are an enormous number of these failures that lead to real harm in the form of radicalization and targeting of individuals and groups online and the real world.
But come on, the account name is, literally on it's own, a violation of the first rule of the Twitter Safety rules.
Also, Muslim isn't an inherent trait. It's a religion that is taught. Even your examples are faulty.
That looks like an utopia to me
My experience with twitter is great. Things happen and the people that I follow react to them. I see news, machine learning papers and one liner jokes / pithy observations. I've no problems with freedom of speech or any other aspect of it.
Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.
There’s a very very vocal minority of accounts that spam up every trending topic to make it as politically divisive as they can.
I doubt changes in Twitter leadership will change much for people who use Twitter this way. It's unlikely it would be in Twitter's interests or even widely popular but I do hope for better tools for configuring your feed, especially options to filter out politics and current events if that's not what you're on Twitter to read about.
IMO, as long as you stay away from politics, Twitter is great; you can probably say the same for Reddit and other socials too.
One thing that I do hate though, is the bizarre message threading model - it's just so confusing! All I want is messages in chronological order!
One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.
Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.
Here is a guideline for a good Twitter experience:
1. Everyone who is negative, irrational, too political and so on gets unfollowed.
2. Everyone who is interesting gets followed.
3. Unfollow is more important than follow, because negative Tweets are more attention grapping.
The most difficult part about Twitter is to start out and curate your feed from nothing. But once you have that, it's one of the best social media tools out there.
At the same time, doing that feed management feels increasingly like swimming upstream against Twitter's desires. First, they started showing tweets that people I follow simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time.
I have to spend more and more time reminding Twitter not to do that garbage. But, overall, I still find the time spent is worth it in return for the quality of conversation and education I get in return.
Reddit is like this for me 10x, with very little effort required to maintain my feed. Spend a few minutes picking a handful of healthy subreddits and unsubscribing from the giant ones and Reddit easily becomes one of the best sites out there.
While in principle, you might assume certain topics should have a community of a certain size and caliber, there's no guarantee that such a community exists if the right set of humans haven't happened to coalesce around it.
That's just the nature of human group behavior. You might live in a city that has enough disco fans to support a thriving disco night every Saturday, but there's no guarantee that the right DJs and nightclub will get together to make it happen.
Subs like /r/sysadmin ban this sort of question and tend to be mostly populated by working professionals.
Communities where all the top 10 hottest posts are made by newbies generally never grow into great subs. That sort of thing should be prob reserved to /r/askfoo or something.
What do you do when someone somewhat important in your industry puts out 20% abusive/toxic content (and that 20% is probably 90% of their engagement)? If you ban them you create drama, if you mute them you're still cutting yourself out of potentially important non-toxic conversations.
But when you don't ban/mute them twitter seems to want to constantly show you their hottest hottakes-- the very reason that you're not following them. (I'm not even sure if muting is enough to prevent the recommendations).
These features aren't available on any third-party clients. You should give a third-party client a try, because you'll just get the straight timeline.
This makes sense. These platforms are in the "engagement" business. They're trying to have you spend more time by suggesting content you will watch, not turn you off and have you close the tab.
During the pandemic, my family settled into a routine of watching some YouTube every evening before we get the kids in bed. The recommendation system has dialed in our tastes very well and basically get an enriching, relaxing, enjoyable ~30 minutes or so of shared experiences every night specific to our hobbies and interests.
When we pick up a new interest, it's quick to notice and start recommending related stuff. When we move on, it doesn't tend to take long to get it to stop recommending stuff in that category.
It definitely tends to overfit, but it's so much better than most other systems and I will absolutely take that over it recommending garbage-but-popular content.
Also, most of my music listening these days is DJ mixes on YouTube.
But a major source of toxic tweets is buying up all of Twitter.
$420 funding secured, "Thailand guy is a Pedo", constant attention-seeking, COVID19-conspiracy theories, etc. etc. Elon Musk's Twitter Account is one of the worst.
To see that this man is about to become the owner of Twitter really doesn't strike much confidence in me.
Lab leak was a conspiracy _theory_ a year ago. Today it's _very_ much a serious contender for the source.
If people are _crazy_ and blocked or censored for theorizing about conspiracy, then conspiracies will happen.
The best solution to bad speech is more good speech.
> Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April
>> 5:38 PM · Mar 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
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Musk was constantly marginalizing COVID19 statistics and downplaying the effects. There's more than one COVID19 conspiracy.
Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists.
How is that a conspiracy theory? That's an opinion. Everyone has them. Why would you label him a conspiracy theorist for having an opinion you disagree with?
edit: why also is conspiracy theorist considered a pejorative? Conspiracy turns out to be the stuff of history.
At this point, we can say that "COVID19 will be done by April 2020" is a laughably incorrect response to the COVID19 issue entirely. Elon Musk was 100% the "like the flu", "Gone by April", "Lockdowns are stupid", "masking doesn't work" (etc. etc. etc.) bullshit train.
Everybody has their bad takes on various subjects. Elon Musk's COVID19 hot takes are among the worst I've seen. Others include some rather shitty behavior, like calling the Thailand guy a pedo for instance.
All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
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Do you remember the 2020 election with any decent amount of memory? "COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject. Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
> ..."COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject...
are not terribly likely to sway me. In the same nature as you thinking people like that are crazy, I personally find your views to be wild. But it's nice we can both voice them and remain civil.
> Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
Particularly:
> falls into fall on conspiracy nut now
Conspiracy is when a group of people conspire. To have a bad opinion is not to be a conspiracy theorist. If you want to call him a nut for a bad opinion, fine, but I just don't think conspiracy theorist makes sense when it has nothing to do with groups of people conspiring.
> But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
Maybe I'll check out the Pedo guy tweets. I'm not on twitter, and don't know to which you refer.
Frankly I couldn't care much less about Musk. I care a great deal about free speech and throwing conspiracy theorist around as a pejorative.
The use of conspiracy theorist as a pejorative is an echo chamber way of attacking the message deliverer and dismissing what they have to say out of hand without consideration of their message. We do that too much in today's society, and considering the corruption present, we really shouldn't.
> All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
Sure, maybe fair. I don't know. I feel that if he removes moderation and adds free speech, then it will be a net positive.
If any billionaire puts their slant on content moderation, I think its a net negative whether I agree with them or not. So, if he somehow does _just_ bring free speech back, then good. If not, then twitter will just be another biased platform as it has been, but with a new bias.
Do you even Jan 6th insurrection?
Donald Trump was removed from the platform because he has, and continues, to be a Jan6th conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump still believes he won the 2020 election.
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There's also a severe amount of Russian propaganda going around the internet right now. Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
Russia / Moscow are clearly trying to use the internet to spread false information on Ukraine.
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In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
The dumbass celebrity shitposting is the worst part of Twitter. I like Twitter mostly as an RSS-like replacement (since RSS itself is not as popular these days), with well-intentioned bloggers sharing information on a "push to serve" basis.
But the long-back-and-forth of 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion. It generates traffic and ad-revenue for sure, but its not useful to me. Good debates need longer-form formats, blogposts with multiple paragraphs and data to discuss.
I think "thread-reader" and 1/x and 2/x style long-form posts help a lot, but Twitter really isn't designed for medium-form discussion.
This is gross language. I assume apparently implying something so obvious as to make my points absurd?
Regardless free speech should be welcomed in this case too. People can then just ridicule his opinions and tear them down directly. It's not like he can't reach his audience on Gab or some other network.
For background, I'm not pro-Trump. I'm libertarian and think both sides of the spectrum are just legs of the same body that stomps on our freedoms and makes us poor.
> Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
With regards to propaganda I think I have an operating brain. As such, I can make up my own mind. As for bots, I do think it would be nice if we could come up with a technical solution guaranteeing a human is posting the tweet.
> In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
Sure.
> since RSS itself is not as popular these days
Which is really too bad. I really love RSS based podcasting though!
> 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion
I completely agree.
Jan 6th insurrection is what started this "Twitter moderation debate" when Donald Trump was banned from the platform.
This is absolutely central to the entire discussion, and I'm trying to remind you of it. What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
I think the solution chosen is obvious. We ban bad actors from online platforms of note. Russia (particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT) are another group, like Trump, who likely deserve the axe.
Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss. Its simply a matter of moderation, who truly deserves it or not. I think that moderation is a difficult and thankless job (I've done it myself on occasion).
But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions. Twitter banning some bad actors is just a continuation of the online moderation model that we've used for so many years (since USENET at least).
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The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is how Elon Musk (might) bring Trump back to Twitter and reverse the Trump ban. Is this hypothetical something you'd support?
There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government". And alas, I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp, and that Donald Trump's ban should remain firm.
If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state". That's the kind of talk that almost took down our entire country, and still threatens to do so in the next election cycle.
I don't think there's much to remind me of. I'm not on twitter and never really had the debate until now.
> What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
Point out where they're factually incorrect. Ignore them. Ridicule them.
> I think the solution chosen is obvious.
This doesn't make it right.
> Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss.
I don't agree. And frankly, you just pointed out a a slippery slope that is exactly why I think you shouldn't ban anyone.
> But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions.
I'm on the fence. Moderation is probably fine, but I don't like when megacorps do it. Centralization of power is my biggest concern.
> The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is...
I don't care. In my mind conservative and liberal media, cable news networks, and NPR, Etc... are just mouthpeices for the government and or corporatocracy. So long as the funding comes from a government or advertising, it's junk media in my mind.
> There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government".
I would like you and me to peacefully rebel against our current system of government. Stop voting and stop paying taxes. Stop registering your vehicle, and stop getting government involved in marriage licensing. Let the whole dirtly system dissolve so we can be free individuals.
There, I openly incited rebellion. I'm sure you disagree, but that's not the point.
> I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp
I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
> If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state".
Wow, that's pretty dogmatic. Who watches the watchers? At some point a hammer like that will be used against perfectly peaceful people. Your statement sounds like it belongs in 1984 bequeathed by the Ministry of Truth. What if there at some point is an issue with the voting systems?
> particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT
One man's propaganda is another's BBC. BBC and NPR are both sponsored by governments that have bad track records of abuse of human rights. Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
Good luck with that.
Trump, and his followers, today still believe the election was stolen. I don't believe there's any way to convince them otherwise. The only thing that can happen is to mitigate the damage.
You're welcome to try to convince them. I've done what I can from my side.
> Ridicule them.
That doesn't work for state-sponsored propaganda sites like RT. These groups have access to huge amounts of state-sponsored money and hire troll-farms from 3rd world countries to gaslight the discussion.
The opposite occurs, I'm ridiculed more often than not with these ridiculous discussion points. Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Unless I myself use a ton of fake accounts to build up a fake-following and build up a fake discussion, there's pretty much no hope at actually reaching critical mass and making discussion points move.
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The same occurs with billionare-level supporters like Elon Musk and/or Trump. They have the money to buy up false support and astroturf their supporters. You're up against literal professionals, who are paid per tweet to make the discussion look like their sponsored billionare is winning the discussions.
Its not quite as bad as state-sponsored propaganda like RT, but still bad.
You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
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> Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on?
> I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so. At best, you're unaware of the tactics. At worst, you're in tacit support of them and are trying to convince me that the pro-Trump Jan6th insurrection crowd is a reasonable group that can hold a discussion with.
Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time. I've also discussed the Russian/Ukraine issue with pro-Russian / RT-supporters.
Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet. I still seek them out for debate and they're readily available to discuss the issues with me.
Bit defeatist, but fair enough.
> Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Now who's the conspiracy theorist? Who's they!?
Just ribbin' you. : )
> You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
I've read some articles and have found most of this to be unconvincing. I think you're probably right that Twitter lends itself to bad conversation. But, just because a bunch of bots show up with false information or call me a dork, doesn't mean I have to believe them. I can verify sources, and quantity != quality when it comes to shitposts.
> Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on
I'm on the side that understands without governments there aren't wars.
> You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so.
Yup.
> Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time.
Not unique to your experience. Many of that view run in my circles.
> Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.
Okay. Well talking to an immovable wall isn't a good look, so I'll drop it.
> Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet.
Yup, which is why I don't care too much about Twitter either way. I'm just an advocate for free speech.
@dragontamer,
Thank you for the extended discussion. I'm going to try to get some work done.
Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
Cheers,
- reedjosh
I feel I have the ability to figure this stuff out too.
Unfortunately, the people I care about do not have such ability. And they trust these online personalities (who are largely supported by bots) more than my discussion points or arguments.
Yes, I'm defeatist, but there's a reason for that. I don't think my friends being dumbasses / unable to handle propaganda is a reason to cut them out of my lives, but it is very disconcerting to me how terrible at logos they've become, and how much ethos/pathos sways them these days.
These are people close to me: my mother, coworkers, my sister, etc. etc. I enjoy a spirited debate with them now and then still but its not to actually convince them of any facts, but only for me to check up on how far the propaganda train they've gone. Actually trying to convince them of anything doesn't work, and is not the point of discussions in my experience.
The fact remains: online personalities (be they Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Trump, etc. etc.) hold more sway to these people than my own words. I cannot win the ethos or pathos battle, only the logos battle (but that's only one peg of the rhetorical triangle). Without any support of ethos or pathos, its all for naught.
That's why rhetoric is ethos + pathos + logos. We can't just focus on the logos leg. Figuring out ways to punish the ethos (ex: banning Trump from Twitter, to diminish his reputation) seems like the only answer.
Any attempts for me to diminish ethos on my own only leads to an ad hominem attack which is easily deflected and diminishes my own logos.
> Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
You as well.
Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.
Definitely not my experience, or that of anybody I know who curates their feed carefully. It certainly promotes shallower conversation, and forces irritating kludges like threads. But it's simply not true that it categorically precludes complexity or depth.
Or you follow people who post (relatively innocuous) things that enrage the sorts of people who post angry comments in response to opinion points.
Now if Twitter removes 3rd party client access, well, yeah, I guess I'll see where my followees go. Or find another source of entertainment/news.
You need to be really brutal with muting anyone who creeps into your timeline and posts something you dislike, and turning off the retweets or just unfollowing people who bring the people you find yourself muting into your timeline.
Like straight away see something you don't like then hit mute.
False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow and is very clearly heavily driven by subject categorization (which is often also hilariously bad), as well as stylistic categorization (or maybe instead of it, as I see very little indication that the latter plays a role.) So, if you see toxic posts, it probably means you engage with tweets ON SUBJECTS on which some people post toxic takes, or follow people who post tweets on such topics.
It doesn't require any direct interaction with toxic tweets or individuals.
I don't see any of that, on the official mobile app with timeline set to "latest Tweets". The only stuff from non-followed accounts I see are ads, and those aren't even terrible.
I do use the killfile zealously though.
I like Twitter precisely because it puts me in control over which accounts I get to see. It's the only social network that I still enjoy using.
Yes, if you use a non-default setting carefully isolated from the Settings menu on its own menu with a non-intuitive icon, it behaves differently.
I had no doubt that somebody who hates Twitter could find a facile excuse for that hate. I didn't need the demonstration.
I don't even use twitter but I've lost friends because they became intolerable after being radicalized by the twitter hot-take feed. It sucks. Also ignoring it or even avoiding the platform completely doesn't solve the problem when toxic twitter traffic has made you a target.
If you recognize the need to immediately unsubscribe from lists and have a practice of doing it, you can keep your inbox functional and sane.
If you don’t, the thing gets hard to use or downright unpleasant to work with.
2. the toxicity is primarily in replies and interactions not always in posts. the posts which are toxic can still appear in your feed via RTs and simply looking at trending topics.
I agree you can do a lot to control your experience on twitter, but it simply isn't that simple unless you have a small <500 follower account.
What's too political for you? Taken too far, this can be putting your head in the sand.
As someone who deleted Facebook after maybe two years on the platform and never took up anything else, I find Twitter to be slightly useful. I get insight from a handful of people for whom Twitter is their best outlet. I use it very much as source of information. It sucks as much as anything else when it comes to discourse. For my usage, I would see Twitter moderate content much, much more strictly than they do now. The most valuable creators don't come within 100 miles of violating any ethical boundaries and I'd reckon the vast majority of readers (and ad clickers) don't post much at all and will be completely unaffected by any moderation rules.
- check their liked items. Is this something I agree with or want on my timeline? Are they being consistent with their online persona? (Is a Christian account going out and liking pics of scantily clad people?)
- check their replies for how they talk to others. Ctrl+f for words or topics I just don’t want to see (and already have muted).
- check their following list. Who are the following? Do I want to see their 3p retweets in my feed?
Regarding the “topics” feature, I almost always click “I don’t want to see this” and I’m at the point where I never see that feature. It’s related to what you “like” so ymmv on how accurate it is for you. Additionally, I never follow tags or trends. That’s just asking for noise.
I’ve effectively created a twitter account that is isolated to “homesteading/gardening/farm twitter” and I’m pretty pleased with the experience. It’s everything I want and nothing I don’t.
It didn’t come without some online weed pulling though ;)
This only works if you treat Twitter as read only. Any Tweet that reaches a sizable enough audience will have people interact with it and its author in a toxic way. The level of the toxicity will often depend on the specific author and certain types of people definitely receive more toxicity than others.
Or try element picker from ublock origin.
1. you only see direct tweets and commented retweets from people you follow 2. no trending 3. no suggested
I've started using twitter heavily over the past year, and honestly as long as you keep it focused and immediately unfollow anyone who starts tweeting unrelated things it's a pretty decent experience.
Just pick a theme, and follow people who tweet about that theme. If they go off track, just unfollow them.
I don’t know why there aren’t better features to curate/ filter feeds.
But what if I want to follow more than 100 people?
Though to be fair, I do have to avoid reading the replies in every post. This feels like an actual loss, since they often contain thorough, intelligent rebuttals or supplements. It's just not worth wading through all the insane people.
[1] I say this with empathy. I think outrage addiction is real.
[2] eg Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias both turned into trolls at one point, though silver has since improved
you sound completely braindead
“I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?”
no, it isn’t
“Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.”
no, it won’t
I would place an exception on Facebook, or Facebook-like networks because you follow actual people, not public persona and ideas. For example I have some good friends that have some debatable political ideas, that's fine, we may have small and respectful arguments, but most of the times, we just avoid the subject and do things we both enjoy. But add them to Facebook and you get all the vomit, no only their posts, but others too, because Facebook thinks that if you like a person, you must share the same ideas. It makes my Facebook feed essentially worthless, as if being littered with ads wasn't enough.
For this reason, I don't use Twitter at all. I prefer to stay on sites like HN or even Reddit. All of them have their issues and rage bait, but at least those two in particular generally have more long-form content. Reddit, when used for hobby-related content, is actually pretty great, even though it gets a lot of crap (granted, the crap is kinda deserved). Just don't use it for political stuff and you're fine.
People are starting to organize hangouts/parties with people in "this corner of twitter." I even met up with dudes from twitter last weekend and had a great time!
@visakanv and @eigenrobot (among many others) seem to be some of the biggest community members. Even though it's probably more lib-right than I am there's a wide range of fascinating people who I pretty much consider internet friends.
I can’t remember blocking anyone in recent memory and follow ~350 people. I’ve also had some of my best customer service experiences there, typically from places that, without twitter, I’d have to phone and spend hours on hold.
My simple rule for anything on my phone is that I’m extremely tight on what app I give notification rights to. I can count on one hand how many apps have that ability and twitter most definitely isn’t one of them.
Maybe I have a different experience than most. I just wanted an anon account for specific times and organic content. Guess if you do that you are evil and shouldn't have that right.
I do occasionally get the random suggestion that is irrelevant, but that's a quick fix.
Facebook however. I don't think there is any help for my feed. I've abandoned trying.
[1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @", "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"
[1] I may follow someone for their tech content, that person may also be a big American football fan a sport I have no interest in.
[2] hashtags are not the same and people don’t use them consistently
I'm following exactly one person (a mathematician). A significant number of the tweets I get to read are still political. I also get some stupid recommendation (tabloid type of content).
It's entertaining, probably not toxic, but addictive, noisy and overall not a very productive activity. I get much more from HN.
To feign ignorance on the subject is silly and side steps the main criticisms.
No one is talking about your personal twitter feed here. They are referencing Twitter as a whole and its culture.
Censorship doesnt seem like a big deal if you agree with the side that is censoring.
Most complains about twitter aren't really about it's "toxicity", which is about how the user who browses twitter perceives the content, like you said. The main issue with Twitter is differential treatment and straight out censorship in some cases. This is not something the "user can fix" by changing his perception or views.
e.g. I just saw a tweet from someone I don't follow in my feed -- let's say, Lisa. Above it, it said "You are seeing this because Bob liked it". But I don't follow Lisa, nor Bob! Why am I seeing this??? I swear this has just happened, and it happens all the time.
Nobody I follow ever bothers me and I certainly don't post much, but it's the internet flame factory in terms of how much other nonsense gets posted because the content is public by default. That's almost the point.
News stories like, "One user on Twitter thinks..." that shows a tweet showing the inflammatory thing they want to pretend is a trend, even though the tweet itself has virtually no likes were the beginning of a trend that got us to the news cycle we are today.
IMO it's the root cause of the "everybody is terrible" news cycle that people have been trying to live in for the past 10 years. IMO it's all been a media driven attempt to polarize people and it's self reinforcing because Twitter becomes the reference point to determine if people are polarized.
twitter should be for top-most posts only.
As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.
I sure read a lot more junk here on HN than I do on my twitter feed, mostly because I have a lot more control on what comes my way there. However, keep in mind that by having such control, one is very prone to ending up in an echo chamber whereas on HN, I learn to think differently once in a while because of someone who disagrees with me and puts up a civilized response.
I'd like to have both environments. Each have their pros and cons.
(Just turning the thing off would do that)
Now lets approach refuting your claim a different way, not of itself, but instead by providing a rational idea which is compatible with the idea of a good life and is a byproduct of social media. Social isolation is known to create extremely negative well being consequences in social actors. Pandemics encourage physical isolation. Social media provides a mechanism for social interaction despite physical isolation. Yet your claim is so strong that you accidentally imply that even the idea that a large segment of the population avoiding fractured sanity might be of benefit to our future is laughable and has no rational bearing.
Self-refuting, inconsistent with observation. But why? How do you get there? I think you get there because you are an intelligent observer. Game theoretic tit for tat consequences of defection take time to play out and produce a bubble of observation from your perspective which misinform your beliefs. Defection in game theoretic terms is truly laughable, though rational in zero sum games; it is obviously inferior to policies rooted in love which don't degenerate into tit for tat destruction of value. We're in such a time and in such a bubble and so there are many which draw the obvious conclusions. It looks different over larger time slices and so different people come to different conclusions on the value of social utility. Ultimately, this results in them not only valuing social utility, but valuing it even to the extent of free speech to those they vehemently disagree with. Going into why leads to arguments rooted in information theory, ensemble models, and shared values; yet with literal and without any hyperbole war occurring even as we speak and one of the battlefields being social media, this isn't currently a compelling thing. Self-preservation instincts are strong enough that even near certain victory doesn't dispel them. Anyone who goes cliff diving into water will have sensed this. Jumping is hard, even if the action is safe, it doesn't feel that way. And we think fast and with feeling because reality is so complicated that to do anything else would be paralysis.
Free speech is probably safe. Social media probably does have value. Yet it is hard to see it, because society is still learning and part of that learning process is punishing defectors in our shared cooperative game which demands love above all else.
I know they need to find other revenue other than ads, Elon might be able to find a replacement once it's a private company.
I wouldn't disagree, it just feels more like a wishlist that anything.
But what is your comment on billionaire Elon Musk buying Twitter.com?
I wonder if similar prompts like that on Twitter/et al would improve toxicity. I don't specifically mean a "welcome our new community member" prompt. I'm suggesting UI changes that are designed with the goal of improved community manners which work in the context of Twitter.
StackOverflow being a community of mostly tech professional is far from an analog to Twitter. Surely, the goal of curtailing toxic behavior is much more easily attained in a community where the society have a common goal of solving technical problems.
Stuff like not needing to login to browse or a better system for longer tweets/threads. I'd also be a fan of a very fast/lightweight interface, something closer to nitter.net.
I bet you get Donald Trump back on Twitter.
I don't think he gives a damn about the product or how it functions.
Carson Wells: "They aren't. You're not cut out for this. You're just a guy that happened to start an electric car company."
Wasn't ~half of the capital coming from margin from equity Musk has in Tesla? I wouldn't count that as "not involved in the deal" although I see how it could be construed that way.
No need to go that far back. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post
He seems to do quite well once he puts his focus on a problem, even if that's due to the people he ultimately decides to hire/fire.
You realize people have tried that before as well, e.g. Parler, Gab, Truth Social, etc?
You're likely right to some degree though, in so much as that there will be a group or a few who will for reasons (whether truthful or not) don't want to associate with a site owned by Musk and will try to start and create a successful site; it's not easy though - and why Musk is willing to buy a head start for ~$42 billion.
Still, an alternative wouldn't succeed.
Beyond the moderation, these sites have the problem that they are inherently set up as a sort of opposition haven -- "we're twitter for people banned from twitter!"
This results in a phenomenon Hank Green calls the "worst people problem"[0]. I'm not a huge fan of the judgemental term, but the core idea is similar to pointing out the inherent contradiction of, say, an anarchists' society. You end up with a userbase that is defined by its desire to flaunt rules and reject any normative standards.
[0]:https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1348101443404787718.html
(somewhat related and worth a watch: Folding Ideas' 2017 video essay about YT alternatives. Alt platforms have had inherent problems even before the more recent political bent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI)
If Elon owns Twitter he will attract very quality people, and he will pay them well, reward them well, and then they will be the ones doing most of the work to actually run Twitter.
I think it was Jason Calacanis who suggested charging people for the ability to write essays on the platform. I'm not convinced some of these people even understand what Twitter is.
His life is rapidly looking like a cautionary tale about social media addiction that we should all learn from.
Twitter has its problems, but not having long-form should not philosophically be one of them, especially since it was centered around 140-280 character limits for short updates. Twitter should focus fixing the trolling, abuse & toxicity before they try fixing other things. Feature overhaul probably needed.
So you hope the only people are banned are those posting what you find disagreeable or illegal. How is that different from what anyone wants? What kind of porn do you hope is banned? All of it or just what you personally find shameful? And do you have a definition for porn we can all conform to (e.g. does describing a sex act constitute as porn? Do lewd sounds count as porn? Does nudity count as porn? How much nudity?)
And who gets to write the laws about what's legal to post? Would that be content owners and rich billionaire owners of media companies?
Musk has talked on number of occasions, about how he shares his time between his various companies. I'm sure in a few months, we'll hear someone ask in an interview, how much time he spends on Twitter. I'd wager single digit percent. That's how much time he seems to spends on all of non Tesla and SpaceX combined (e.g. Neuralink, Boring company, etc.).
To quote a pop song: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone"
Do we really need to concentrate power even more than it already is?
Maybe I should have been clearer, but I didn't mean "information" in the sense of "true facts about the world", I meant in the sense of "data someone wants to get in the heads of others". Truth, lies, stories, anecdotes, misinformation, fiction, data, and nonsense are all "information" in that sense.
And Twitter is clearly one of the world's largest services for moving data into human heads.
Musk tried to have an employee whistleblower murdered by the police by falsely accusing him of being a mass shooter and having him SWAT'd[1]. That is not something a "free speech advocate" would do if they were sincere about advocating for free speech.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
It says that Tesla contacted law enforcement about an anonymous tip that the whistleblower was planning a mass shooting.
It also says that the whisteblower expressed the opinion that Musk might be the caller.
> Tesla fired Tripp on June 19.
> The following day, news of the lawsuit hit the internet. Tripp Googled himself and saw a story titled, “Martin Tripp: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know,” which said he lived in a rental apartment in nearby Sparks, Nev. Panicked about who might come find him, he sent an email to Musk. “You have what’s coming to you for the lies you have told to the public and investors,” he wrote.
> His former boss, of course, engaged him with gusto. “Threatening me only makes it worse for you,” Musk replied. Later, he wrote: “You should be ashamed of yourself for framing other people. You’re a horrible human being.”
> “I NEVER ‘framed’ anyone else or even insinuated anyone else as being involved in my production of documents of your MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF WASTE, Safety concerns, lying to investors/the WORLD,” Tripp responded. “Putting cars on the road with safety issues is being a horrible human being!”
As Martin Tripp was emailing Musk, and Musk was emailing him, Musk made up a story about him coming to Tesla to shoot people:
> The anonymous shooting tip was called in to a Tesla call center a few hours later; then Gouthro relayed it to the Storey sheriff’s office. Tesla also printed out a BOLO flyer—short for “be on the lookout”—with Tripp’s smiling face on it and the words “do not allow on property.”
> After Gouthro had called the sheriff, he made a second call—to the private investigators he says Tesla kept on retainer, asking them to find Tripp. The PIs found Tripp before the police did, tracking him to the Nugget casino in Reno. Gouthro says his boss told him not to tell the cops that Tesla had Tripp followed.
> Meanwhile, Musk emailed a reporter at the Guardian: “I was just told that we received a call at the Gigafactory that he was going to come back and shoot people,” Musk wrote. “I hope you all are safe,” the reporter replied.
The call said nothing about a shooter. That was made up wholesale by Tesla and Musk. Higher ups at Tesla told subordinates to call the police with this claim that Musk made to reporters.
Tesla refused to let the cops interview or investigate further on the situation, and the sheriff reiterates that the call Tesla claims they got said nothing about a shooter, despite Musk's insistence that he was coming to shoot up the place:
> Gerald Antinoro is the sheriff, and he looks the part, dressed in black cowboy boots, a black denim jacket, and black Wranglers, with a pistol on his hip. In an interview in his office months after the incident, he still seems both mystified and amused by the Tesla shooting threat. The sheriff says that when he’d looked into the anonymous call after police confronted Tripp, the threat seemed less threatening than the company made it sound. The caller said Tripp was volatile but didn’t say he was on his way to shoot up the place. “You remember playing telephone as a kid?” Antinoro asks. “It got blown out of proportion.” He dropped the investigation when Tesla declined to make available a colleague of Tripp’s who might have called in the tip.
Even after the sheriff told the company that the threat was fake, they continued to insist that Martin Tripp was a mass shooter:
> To Antinoro, one of the strangest parts of the situation was that after he told the company the threat was false, it asked him to put out a press release hyping it. He declined, but Tesla publicized the incident anyway. The morning after the threat was debunked, a spokesman texted another reporter: "Yesterday afternoon we received a phone call from a friend of Mr. Tripp telling us that Mr. Tripp would be coming to the Gigafactory to 'shoot the place up.'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...
If you want to talk about free speech, talk about free speech. If you want to talk about the first amendment, talk about the first amendment. If you want to talk about something else - label and define it precisely.
It is critical to this debate that things be properly defined and labeled. As is patently visible in this discussion, people are trying to defend indefensible or unrealistic positions by shifting their meaning and playing with ambiguity.
Words have meaning, that meaning can be flexible to include common usage, but there is nothing inappropriate about calling out objectively problematic uses of words - especially those that are disruptive or distracting (c.f., Canadian truckers making 1st amendment claims in Canadian courts).
You can say Trump. Because that's what this buy-out is about. Musk can call it what he wants (free speech, transparency, etc), but his intention is clear to anyone with a brain -- unbanning Trump.
Once that happens, I'll be happily finding myself off of Twitter and any other platform that allows a "legit" (and proven) dangerous lying narcissist to find their way onto my browser again.
With regard to Trump though, if half the country is listening to him anyway I want to know what idiotic things he's saying as opposed to just burying my head in the sand. Censorship has never historically worked, and it will continue to not work.
I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
We also still have billions addicted to the new digital crack / cocaine called TikTok. So this is far from 'the end' of social media.
In fact, it is the start of the increasing echo chambers and the ills of social media being used for disinformation campaigns.
Now I exfiltrate the good stuff with Nitter RSS feeds, and that way I get the experience you say you like about Twitter.
The only sane way to use Twitter is through a 3rd-party client: no ads, none of that Notifications spam and other recommendations
Being bought by Musk ought to bring about an end to any such perception. It’s going to be a rich man’s plaything (nothing new there, billionaires used to buy newspapers instead!) and who knows if it’ll be a success or not, but it has no higher calling and we’re probably all better off for recognising it.
> I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
It's possible Twitter(and Social media in general) is as not as toxic you feel. I spend more time on LinkedIn than other sites and I feel it's more toxic than others. SM sites do feel less toxic if you tune up your feed, mute people and spend a little less time on them.
Twitter underwent a change over the last ~4 years where it went from having its own, weird "extremely online" culture to being a battleground. You really can't avoid the mess unless you put in an extreme amount of effort.
99% of the stuff I see is interesting technical content
Hoping they end up as footnote in history textbooks of a weird time when people worried about checkmarks and follower counts, and it all amounted to nothing.
Now you know how the old school Useneters feel. Welcome to Eternal September.
The second point is also interesting, but isn't being discussed: Twitter enacted a poison pill on 15 April which could allow Musk to pay a ton but not get board control. I'm not an expert but what I've read is that if Musk (or anyone) tries to get a controlling share then other shareholders can gain voting shares for cheap, which makes it very expensive for Musk to actually achieve a takeover in the sense that he can do what he wants with the company. I'd love for somebody who knows more about that to help clarify it.
Elon is a smart guy but the real impact of this takeover will come from his ability to act unilaterally. Jack Dorsey hasn't owned a significant amount of Twitter for a decade and likewise hasn't had much ability to take bold decisions for at least as long. Elon will come in with the willingness and ability to take tough decisions, such as sacrificing engagement numbers for the sake of kicking out bots.
So here's mine: Musk should make Twitter a public utility. Nominal fee for an account, anyone can have one (or many!); they can be removed for actual illegal behavior (with reference to some government authority for redress) or technical TOS reasons, and thats it. Let the 4chan bloom.
No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or foreign oligarchs, or Saudi royalty who get free unlimited money and power from the ground, we're all perfectly comfortable with an executive amassing ever-increasing power like a giant Katamari ball.
A democracy can vote out a leader who grows corrupt or ineffective. But the power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-billionaires) is effectively unstoppable. Bill Gates, e.g., still sits at the top of the money-power pile, even though his own success peaked 25 years ago.
Perhaps the reason why people are more troubled by the Waltons (family net worth: $238B) than Gates ($132B) is that the Walton wealth is multi-generational and Gates' is not (so far). Though I think that as long as the Waltons keep spreading their money out among an every increasing number of descendants, it mostly takes care of itself.
The wealthy elite want people frothing at the mouth over identity / social issues so nobody notices how much money they are stealing and how much toxic sludge they are polluting our environment with.
All of our mass media news is owned by one oligarch or another. That is why CNN only talks about Trump and Fox News only talks about whatever controversy-de-jour is going on for the day.
I personally can't come up with anything (at least nothing negative). If anything, many of them have made the world much better (on balance). Yes, even the Saudis. Oil is the lifeblood of the modern world. Yes, we need to rapidly transition to renewable energy. But oil is still king.
> But the power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-billionaires) is effectively unstoppable.
This is a very significant exaggeration. Just go look at what Xi has done to the tech titans in China if you doubt it. Jack Ma was placed under house arrest until he bent the knee. Violence and the legal monopoly thereof >> everything other form of power.
That's not my criteria for how much power one should be allowed to wield. (whether they've wielded it against me or not)
> If anything, many of them have made the world much better (on balance). Yes, even the Saudis. Oil is the lifeblood of the modern world.
We should hardly forgive the Saudis for their human-rights violations because they "made the world a better place" by generously sharing their oil.
> Just go look at what Xi has done to the tech titans in China if you doubt
You're right, a corrupt authoritarian government can crack down on the mega-rich (another example: Putin took the oligarchs' extreme wealth, and redistributed it to himself).
I'm merely pointing out that their power is probably not as great as you fear ("unstoppable").
> We should hardly forgive the Saudis for their human-rights violations
And yet we (China, U.S., Germany, Japan, etc.) have been for decades. In other words, many societies have made that bargain.
> a corrupt authoritarian government can crack down on the mega-rich
Disagree. Any entity (i.e. a government) having a monopoly on violence can crack down on tech companies and/or the mega-rich. If you can be arrested, your power can be curtailed.
To put all of this in perspective, and to tie it back to your original comment, Twitter is smaller than Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snap, WeChat, Sina Weibo, Telegram, etc. It's smaller than Pinterest. This is nothing like a dystopian scenario in which the rich and powerful are all-powerful. It's not even on the level of, say, a Russian oligarch. Rather, it is a very rich individual (made so by his skill as an innovator and capital allocator) buying a relatively small and stagnant social network.
You're conflating two relatively unrelated things - when systems are put in place to limit wealth accumulation, there are not only still people whose power is effectively unstoppable, they're far, far more dangerous than Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg ever will be.
Bill Gates made 3X more money after his retirement by doing nothing than what he made through working at Microsoft 12-16 hours a day for 35 years. All hail capitalism!
The billionaires you mention can only remain powerful as long as they can convince people to willingly hand over money in exchange for the goods and services they provide. They don't get to collect taxes at the point of a gun or simply print money the way the government does.
The political leaders are controlled by the rich, because they rely on their money, so your idea that the people can vote for a better politician is incorrect - nearly all the time, the winning candidates are essentially chosen by the rich.
That’s Chomsky anyway, I’m reading him at the moment, but it’s hard to argue against.
Ironically, the same double-standard we apply tech billionaires vs Saudis/Waltons, etc, also exists when it comes to campaign funding. The same people who decry money in politics, are overjoyed when their candidate is outraises the opposition.
(*) In part because I don't want to be that guy that's always quoting Chomsky :-) "The last Toy Story movie was clearly nothing more than manufactured consent!"
Because if a checkmark costs $1/month for example, then spending a couple grand to be able to turn any story you want into "trending" is chump change for corporations, governments, and any particularly motivated silicon-valley salary'd employee.
There are already services which essentially sell you retweets - all this is is an adjustment to their business model to sell "verified retweets" and "aged verified retweets" (in case you want accounts with a posting history to do it).
It's a cost model adjustment, that might not even cost that much - after all if "verified" accounts receive less scrutiny from anti-bot algorithms, then they'd be cheaper to run then the developers/workers who need to keep your sockpuppet farm ahead of the game.
Non-government actors can get in on the action by procuring IDs in other ways ("Make money by scanning your late maw-maws ID"[1]), or large scale phishing campaigns (fake jobs or college admissions abroad with 100% applicant success rate, the only catch is scanned IDs and qualifications are required).
Electronic forgeries are likely the best way to do it at scale; just the other day, therr was a top story ok faking as if your document was scanned. Do the fine people handling verifications at Twitter know what a legit Madagascan ID looks like?
1. Or "Get $10,000 funeral assistance from this new Biden admin relief program"
> Do the people at Twitter know what a legit Madagascan ID looks like?
Yes, there are guides for checking ID cards, how do you think that they check ID cards in real life?
Oh no, I've broken the ID forgery laws of Burkina Faso and am in big trouble now. Isn't it a rule of low-level scamming to always target jurisdictions away from your own? State-actors don't care about commiting crimes against themselves, only the mid-level, "semi-pro" threat actors care about avoiding major crimes.
Get a face from a thispersondoesnotexist.com like generator. Get the format of the ID in a template, fill in random but realistic data. Like for example, 1000 names for each race-gender combo. Realistic zip codes and addresses from another source.
It’s about a weeks work to get it working to production quality, but it can be easily done.
For bonus credit, see if you can generate an image of the same person holding up this ID. Harder, but not impossible.
What’s frustrating is, those of us who work or have worked in Integrity have already discussed all of this for years. We know the easy solutions, the low hanging fruit. It’s not that helpful when a bunch of people say “why don’t you just charge $2 a month”
Is that assumption correct? It seems incredibly wrong to me, but I may be misinformed.
Those are also not really the problem.
What makes you think users want any of this?
Frankly, most of the suggestions I've seen coming out of the SV "thought leaders" about what to do with Twitter are terrible. The bot problem isn't easily solved, and adding a ton of friction and/or reducing anonymity isn't going to be some huge boon to the platform.
He must think it will work?
Frankly, I think Reddit could do the same and give more weight to upvotes from those that prove they’re real.
It could help with disinformation problems and with finding signal.
<edit>I found the quote [0], which I had quoted in my essay "Why Twitter Should Verify More Users: Towards a More Human Web" [1]:
> Facebook’s killer feature was that it replicated the real world by forcing people to use their real names, whereas MySpace users used pseudonymous handles
[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-myspace-ceo-explains-why-1...
[1]: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...
</edit>
I know one of the things I loved about Facebook was interacting with university-verified humans. Then it got flooded with more and more spam accounts.
I hope either these platforms or the next generation of platforms realize there is a strong opportunity for real-name policy platforms. It won't be the whole market, but I'm personally really tired of anonymous accounts. I mostly come to HN because there aren't many real-name platforms that talk about these things. Maybe that's because lots of people don't want it. I guess I just don't buy that argument. I think there's a niche for sure.
That is already a thing if you are verified and one of the reasons why "blue checkmark for $2" (Elon's plan) won't work and will make many verified people unhappy. They don't want even more peasants and "cloud chasers" in their verified timeline.
For a lot of other people on Twitter, the pseudo-anonymity is a feature not a bug.
I’d pay if it allowed me to filter out garbage.
It’s like paying for the removal of commercials.
I don’t believe Musk intends to require people to be publicly identified.
I don’t believe I follow anyone anonymous on Twitter.
Authenticated real people are more valuable to advertisers.
If it’s only for verification they, yeah, they might be fine as long as the verification fee is optional.
A few bucks a month is nothing these days for dedicated netizens who want their social drug of choice.
Then THAT gets sold to the Depts of Defense, Homeland Security, and whoever else wants.
I feel it’s fair to say we do.
2. Most of the Twitter bots people are worried about when they talk about bots are state-funded.
If companies can't prevent a self-funded scalper, what makes you think Twitter will be able to prevent Russia? There are a lot of ways to obfuscate payments so they don't look to be coming from the same source. Even more ways when you control the banks.
But... scalpers do this, especially so. As far as a retailer is concerned, a scalper is every bit as 'real' as any other customer.
Now, if it succeeds, that does create an incentive for corruption within Twitter. The enemies of democracy have huge incentives to keep up these divisive public influence campaigns that have worked this past decade.
I work in this field and to be honest, the main reason retailers have issues curbing bots is that they don't really spend much resource on it. It's a game of cat and mouse, there's constant work that needs to be done but there's a lot of low hanging fruits that the vast majority of retailers don't do to block bots. And, no, just setting up perimeterx and calling it a day is not enough.
I have no idea, but he’s a better bet than most other folks I’d say.
Will he succeed? I’d bet not, but I can’t think of someone better to try.
Also note: that's not the same thing as saying "Twitter shouldn't require identification to register" (though personally I don't think that it should). It's just to say that it's WAY more complicated than "bots vs. ID".
Why is this comment not signed with your full name?
How do you feel about inevitable leaks and your identity being stolen?
To me it seems that he's the only one who wants to.
They (twitter) remove a lot of volume because it doesn't fit with their political narrative, even though this is financially detrimental to them.
Do you have those statistics on hand? I don't, so I was asking.
I know the stock price is substantially lower than its peak 1+ yrs ago -- it's easy to find a graph of that -- but it's not obvious to me that this is the result of Twitter's politics rather than other factors.
Meanwhile everybody else does seem to see bots as a problem. So even if Elon wants to, I doubt he's the only one.
Elon can afford to think long-term.
Judging by their past actions they were far more interested in using Twitter as a propaganda platform than worrying about it making money.
1. as a public company, they are afraid to lose so many accounts - see Netflix as an example on what could happen to their stock
2. bots are the future, at some point I think everyone will have a bot to post for them
Those who post quickest have a higher chance of not getting lost in the noise and that is where bots will probably be used first by individuals as well.
With that said, hopefully this not the future and new ways of moderating and presenting information will be invented, but the way things are now, it's a slug-fest and the fastest and loudest often wins.
I can see people setting up some form of pre-loaded opinion/responses based on what they want to be seen as..e.g. if $OPINION_I_DISLIKE print $YOU_BAD else print $YOURE_RIGHT! but that seems like it's pretty limited as to completely not work in practical human communication
APIs need to use actual headless browsers in order to generate the appropriate signature.[1]
Maybe s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶4̶3̶B̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶t̶o̶w̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶i̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶ the rise in valuation, and Elon's involvement, can bring in some more money for the company itself for these kinds of endeavors.
Hopefully the rise in valuation, and Elon's involvement, can bring in some more money for the company itself for these kinds of endeavors.
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/yt_dlp/extracto...
I don't think _only_ Elon can solve this problem, but one way of looking at the problem is that Twitter appears to be hesitant to 'solve' the bot problem because their most important metric that drives stock price is the number of engaged users, which includes bots. Taking twitter private (is this actually what Elon is doing? I haven't been following very closely) potentially removes the need to focus on this metric, freeing them to 'solve' the bot problem and not worry about the effect on the stock price when the # of engaged users drops by 40%.
For legacy implementation reasons, the backend service that published messages to Twitter would lose 1-2 queued messages every time the service was redeployed. Bleakly, the engineering team decided to not consider this a major issue, despite it being a core competency of the platform. It was simply extremely unlikely anything of value was being lost.
Obviously in the longterm it hurts value, but "doing things that don't scale" creates a lot of degrees of freedom (user growth, cashflow, funding) that you can use to pay off your "tech debt".
He could "Make Twitter Great Again" by killing the bots, and rage-engagement, and making Twitter interesting and fun again. If that raises Twitters value by 10% he gets a $4.5B return.
Publicly traded companies are too often affected by short sighted investors.
I don't think this would ever change unless they go private with someone that has no intention of selling it. I have no idea how successful Elon would be at removing them, but at least he intend to try to do it.
Mostly, I think this is going to end up being one of the most expensive acts of individual hubris in history. It's strange from someone whose other notable projects have such clear goals. "Moar free speech lmao" doesn't sound measureable, let alone achievable while also making bank.
But mature media giants are supposed to lose money, right?
Did you just make up a ridiculous quotation and then attribute the sound of it to Musk ?
Surely the biggest outgoing for marketing departments is paying for 'active users'.
Edit: spelling
While I'm an optimist in real life, unfortunately I don't have much reason to believe anything will improve, particularly due to Musk. He is hardly the most reasonable or grounded person. (Mind you, as a twitter user I do hope it improves.)
How do you reckon he’ll do that?
Combating fraud was a key technical challenge in building PayPal and bad actors on that network had more direct financial incentives to write them because PayPal was transmitting money rather than social updates.
Levchin was PayPal's CTO and is also deeply technical.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes...
Fortunately, people can and regularly do gain expertise in multiple things! Just as learning how to program doesn't destroy one's previously acquired drawing or writing skills, learning how to manage capital doesn't destroy someone's ability to combat fraud or detect malicious bots.
Elon has the cash + clout to solve the problem. Is he unique in the ability to solve it? No. But he may be in a unique position to solve it.
I would not bet on it - as far as I understand it, fighting spam is like 95% of what engineers at Twitter do and openly available ML on GPUs seem plenty strong - but it is a possibility.
More narrowly, I buy that this is true for some segment of the tweeting population. I know this is provocative, but removing those false positives from Twitter may be a good thing.
I have a Twitter account that I use very casually (1 tweet/month, maybe), and I'm 100% sure that my activity is not replicable by a bot.
I'd no longer call myself an expert, but I used to work in conversational AI and have kept up with the research. The latest language models are incredibly exciting, but they're still not at the level where they can simulate a non-braindead tweeter.
The above is more of an amusing thought experiment than an actually-feasible approach. Aggressive removal of botlike users would have to be opaque enough that it'd cut against the free speech objective that Musk has been promoting. But I will say that, at a smaller-scale, the best communities I've ever participated in have had incredibly strong content neutrality norms alongside robustly-enforced civility norms.
frankly I'm jelous and wish I could do that.
On the other hand, why are bots not considered a result of free speech? I'm not free to run hogwild on your platform with bots? That's censorship!
Just see the top comments here:
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...
This is the official death of Twitter.
He can't and he is unlikely to want to.
Uhhh... objection.
A digital town square is more like Reddit or Hacker News or an online forums, where people are gathered by discussions, not someone attractive. Twitter and other social medias however, is where people go if they want to watch someone.
From this perspective, I think Mr Musk bought the wrong company...
However, these comparisons are bound to fail, town square is a physical space that has natural limits such as number of people who can gather, speed of discussion and communication, tolerance to hostility and such. Almost none of these limits apply to a digital space. Humans just don’t know how to deal with these new media we are making up rules as we go along.
Personally I've always had a low opinion of Twitter and have never used it or even looked at it, except by accident when a tweet gets memed somewhere. More often than not my response to reading some 'tweet' is "I am now stupider for having read this." I also loathe the typical recommendation algorithms (Netflix in particular), which assume that you only want to see more the same.
Has anyone ever considered that at least some people still like to see things outside their little bubbles, some novel content, something new, creative, interesting? Those algorithms are reinforcing siloing - here, get in this little box, here's what you and your fellow box-mates like, here's some more of that box content, here's what to think and believe...
Really, the knobs and dials on these recommendation algorithms need to be directly exposed to the userbase, and the overall ranking algorithm and the datasets used to train it need to be open-sourced.
In Europe some of it will be illegal.
Musk is seriously underestimating the toxicity of "liberated" social media in its current form and seriously overestimating the nuggets of truth and criticism we would not be able to read in the absence of it.
His human authenticating scheme is unimplementable in the EU.
It's a shame, because I'm all for a real free speech platform.
Ideally, he'll move to mars and take twitter with him.
How so? I hadn't heard of Twitter, or any media (social or not), preventing him doing exactly that already? Quite the opposite.
I think that Musk has an evolved version of Jobs' reality distortion field. The cult of personality is more important than the actual output and he is definitionally "cool" to his followers.
Pretty much everybody I know loves SpaceX and the technology and doesn't give a shit about US politics or the SEC or whatever other crap people in the US get worked up about.
My read is people find reasons to hate him due to ego, they see someone running like 6+ successful companies when their lives aren't going so well, and go looking for all the moralistic things he must be doing wrong.
I don't think it is all just ego or jealousy. He has made some questionable comments in the past. He keeps going on that this particular purchase is about free speech. He consciously has chosen to be very public with some of his more questionable opinions (especially regarding Covid) on his Twitter.
Yes I am very glad that he has started SpaceX and Tesla. I despise the criticisms of billionaires "Wasting" their money on Space. But that does not absolve him of criticisms of him personally outside of those companies.
I would much prefer nuclear over wind/solar/battery. But I know if I argue against wind/solar nuclear isn't magically gone happen.
So its fine if you want to argue that US shoud invest 100+ billion in public transport or bikes or whatever. Those things are not gone happen just because EVs don't happen. You are probably right, but EVs are not preventing that from happening.
EV are absoulty 100% a huge improvement over other cars and its not close. Even outside of the environment it would have eventually happened, they are just better cars.
He’s doing cool things, it’s impossible to deny that (especially with SpaceX). But you only need to look at his Bill Gates related tweets this weekend to see why people think he’s an asshole and it’s nothing to do with jealousy. He acts like an edgy 14 year old and it’s really cringey.
I really don't care if people think he is an ass.
But what happens is that people think he is an ass and then they adopt this culture of downplaying everything and making shit up.
'Rockets landed in the 70s', 'He is just a marketing guy', 'Tesla is fake company that is doomed' blablabla
I will never disagree with people who don't like Musk, only people who then start to make dumb arguments about him.
I agree I do have concerns that things may be changing and his original goals of humanitarian goals (EVs, solar, storage, space travel) are now getting caught up with straight power plays (twitter). I wonder if he has been caught by the twitter validation loop.
I don't really have an opinion about mr Musk or his intentions, but I truly fail to see any downside with this deal. Either he does in fact make the twitter platform a generally more positive/useful/pleasant/... experience, or twitter's function will eventually be filled by other apps, maybe even new ideas.
For one, Trump seems to finally be receding into the background, and I can guarantee he gets his account back when Musk takes over. That alone is enough to view this as a net negative.
Worst case, he runs it into the ground and we live in a world without Twitter. Win win.
I have a tough time imagining the other worst case not prompting regulation.
Maybe it overthrows our political system! I don’t know, there are certainly some politicians who command from Twitter and will be hurt or helped by Musk. (Probably, invariably, helped.) But that seems less likely than Congress creating a rule book and regulator for social media.
Why would it? People have been complaining about facebook/twitter/etc for ages and competitors haven't turned out to be less harmful. Why is the idea that Musk forces his values into Twitter and that this makes the platform worse not a possibility?
Who cares. He delivers.
I’ll take the guy who delivers, with possible ulterior motives, over someone who really cares, but uselessly. The latter describes most of our leadership to date on EVs and Mars.
Would it be nice if the genius came without the bullshit? Sure. Am I convinced those are inseparable? No. Is this relevant if you don’t care about EVs or Mars? No. But a lot of people do, and for us, he’s worth the tradeoff.
You act like Musk is some kind of genocide dictator. Oh my god, he fights with the SEC therefore he must be shot in the head.
> Musk has shown time and time again that his ideals of climate change or whatever are not genuine.
Literally based on what? He has been consistent for 20+ years. Given tons of talks and has literally changed one of the most conservatives industry in the world to a much, much greener industry.
Why did he do Tesla? Do you think he thought 'What a great businesses idea?'.
> He wants to get to play with cool toys, make bold but undeliverable promises, and get as much attention as possible.
When he started SpaceX he was not famous. You can go back to inteview where he was a mostly unknown (at least by people who don't follow Silicon Vally startups). And he already talks about all those things.
The idea that he build a rocket company because he wants to 'play with toys' is just nonsense.
And even if it was, so what? SpaceX achieved what it did, no matter the reason.
> And yet, people look up to him as if he’s some saint bestowed upon us.
He is a successful entrepreneur and engineer. I defend him from people who just make up a bunch of nonsense because they don't like him as a person.
> I truly feel letting a billionaire like him take one of the biggest megaphones in the world private as a personal playground is one of the worst things that could have happened.
Sound like you lived a really privileged life if you think that.
And he already did use it as a megaphone, that is literally what Twitter is.
What exactly are you suggesting would happen?
> And it’s all because he wants to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it, even though he has a history of bullying and trying to shut up people who disagree with him.
Twitter not being owned by him has not prevented him from saying anything. The SEC doesn't care who owns twitter.
They give a shit about a lifestyle brand they are emotionally invested in. It's no different than buying a Gucci handbag or a Bulgari bracelet. They believe purchasing the right brands will give them the social status they crave.
But even among the people I know who work at SpaceX, the draw was "I want to work with Musk" rather than "I want to work on rockets."
As Eric Berger states in his book. Engineers don't want to spend 10 years being responsible for the quality control of a single screw on the F-35 program.
At SpaceX you are producing rocket faster then anywhere and you always develop next generation technology.
That is why engineers want to work there.
As for the mission - seems mostly legit though I don't think Elon is motivated by climate change otherwise he wouldn't be using Natural Gas for fueling his rockets more for ability to create self sustaining energy off planet.
There is a quite interesting inverse effect too, though. Musk's actual output is undeniably pretty impressive (I challenge you to watch a rocket land on a drone ship and tell me otherwise!), yet there is a veritable army of people online waiting to suggest in the comments on stories like this that he's just all about memes and personality. Maybe two opposing reality distortion fields with Musk suspended somewhere in the middle?
A big challenge is that Twitter's problems aren't engineering problems. They are sociology problems. Musk has demonstrated that he can hire engineers to solve engineering problems. How well will that translate into sociology problems?
I can't wait to see!
Either he improves Twitter, which is great because it's in really bad shape, or he destroys it, which is great because something else can fill the void.
Good luck to twitter I guess.
Many many people on twitter would happily pay for it. It's not like Facebook where you have to rely on ads because 90% of users would never pay, and the ones who would you don't want to charge bcause you make $200+ per year off them.
I think Elon understand both these things because of the way he says it's become the defacto public square. It really has for thought leaders. But thought leaders are a completely different market to most social networks.
maybe that's the key. $15/month subscription to post, free to read.
The only "legitimate" alternative is the legal process and that's too slow.
Personally, my lack of imagination makes me say we don't have an alternative right now.
I don't know how to interpret this, in that case.
But it might also be much, much smaller.
Censorship is a very real threat to scientific research but it tends to manifest as the state restricting research or pulling funding from politically unfavourable topics like climate change, as is seen in many American state governments and on a federal level under the previous administration. Scientific publication isn't exactly known for going through the channels of mass social media.
I talked about flow of information. Science isn’t done on twitter, and twitter is not for scientists or those able and willing to read papers. Twitter is for the 90% who rely on groups, and the more tooling we implement that incentivizes those groups to devalue intellectual depth, the more we restrict the flow of actual information at scale. Policing who is able to distribute which data is, simply put, harmful to the organism.
Improving signal quality != fire walling signals as a whole.
And that question is another one than "does twitter censor climate change-discussions?", right? My point was: yes, it does.
I would argue the opposite: moderation reduces paid corporate shills (when done correctly).
Currently, SpaceX is blocked from doing the first starship orbital test. Not for technical reasons, but for frankly totally bullshit bureaucratic reasons. A free speech twitter might be the right way to fight back against this government overreach.
He didn't make speech more open and free when he canceled a car order because someone pissed him off nor when he tried to get that flight tracker shut down.
He is building Starlink and refuses any form of censorship on there.
He sent several containers full of terminals to Ukraine (responding within hours to request for help from the Ukrainian government) to restore connectivity as the country is being attacked by Russia.
If you really believe those “he didn’t give one guy a car because he was pissed” propaganda stories, go ahead. People are easy to program.
He said Starlink had been jammed in Ukraine then a few weeks later said it had never been jammed.
Enlighten me, why did he cancel that car order?
Let us take it for granted that people will disagree with us regardless of what we say, and let us also take for granted that we cannot control or take responsibility for the emotional stability of others. A disposition toward trying to control the emotions of others is not something I want to promote in the world.
How about pivoting away from a system where shouting “toxic” is a means to silence uncomfortable speech, and to a system that gives users better tools to focus on what they’re looking for?
As a person, I really don't care about his personal opinion on most things. I really don't want him in charge of Twitter especially since I can see the first thing he does is unban Trump. So I am hoping if this does go through an alternative quickly springs up and gains dominance.
But when it comes to Space... I am a strong believer in SpaceX. The facts with how they are performing. Especially after how bad the SLS is going. We basically needed SpaceX.
Tesla? I mean I am glad he did it when he did it. Thankfully we are now seeing most (if not all?) car companies working on electric and I don't think that would have happened without Tesla.
Twitter is a private company and do whatever they want to do. It is their platform.
They actually aren't a private company, yet, but it sounds like they probably will be soon.
Just because they can do something doesn't mean they should. A huge amount of our public discourse flows through platforms controlled by companies. If you want those platforms to start to ban everyone who disobeys some set of rules, who would you like writing those rules? Are you comfortable with them making them up as they go along?
To answer your question, yes. Rules (like laws in government) change overtime. Twitter helpfully has a section outlining their rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules . It also clearly states that they can update these rules at any point.
As far as who sets the rules, Twitter. It is their platform. How is that a question?
In case it's not clear, I don't claim that Twitter doesn't have the legal right to moderate their platform. I claim that it is a problem for society that more and more of our public discourse happens on platforms with this type of arbitrary moderation.
Just because something has become a major player in communication, doesn't meant these companies should be obligated to turn a blind eye to content that they find disagreeable.
Also, I have yet to see a case where anyone has been "arbitrarily" restricted. They conform to the rules as clearly stated on their website. If anything I have seen that they are not doing as well as I wish they were at enforcing their rules. But it largely makes sense that the bigger you are the more scrutiny you will have on your tweets.
It isn't like just because you have an account on twitter you can't have an account on some alternative.
Since each of your replies ignores this and focuses on individual issues — unrelated to my comment and uninteresting to me — like which platform(s) a person chooses to use, whether Twitter has the right to moderate, or whether they have historically used their arbitrary moderation power in a way that you find acceptable, I'm going to disengage from this thread at this point since I don't think we can enlighten each other in any meaningful way.
why? what would the other car manufacturers do when there is no more oil to put into the combustion engines? just lie down and die? everybody can see the writing on the wall. sure, tesla might have sped it up a bit. but to be solely responsible for that? tesla is not even the first EV company or the first prototype.
I more meant the timing of it, I think if it wasn't for Tesla we may be looking at another 5-10 years for electric vehicles.
It is entirely possible another company would have come out and taken Tesla's place. But I just don't see the main car companies having tried it yet if it wasn't for Tesla (or another well funded EV that was that bullish).
What are you referring to? Even his lamest company (TBC) has delivered some stuff. When it comes to reducing fossil fuel use Tesla has achieved more than the USA Green Party, and with regard to expanding space access SpaceX is beating most national space agencies combined.
He genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity.
A lot of us who agree with him, do so in alignment, because as individuals we also want to make a difference to humanity, and .. in so doing: we see the problem with the commons.
If we do not fix the commons, it will be weaponised against us all, and that is in fact the situation.
So, from a fanboix perspective, in all honesty, this seems like Elon has added a 3rd option to his list: iii) stop humans from killing each other in the meantime.
Delusion and narcissism don't get things done.
The rapid and visible progress towards the construction of a viable space age, not so much.
As for what he has to say, for every one of your tabloid moral arguments .. there are at least 25 things Elon has said, with which I would completely agree.
This ideology of moral superlativity is taxing. It doesn't actually get things done. Maybe the reason Elon gets things done, is he is fine with saying stupid shit, but doing very, very good things.
I mean, where does this argument lead? Does taking Elon down at a character level, produce some vital substance or circumstance, for the species?
I couldn't care less what happened with the Thai submarine. And, neither should you.
There is a frickin' viable space age about to happen. Can we stop killing each other so easily - and maybe just get on with bringing a peaceful resolution to the worlds resource problems?
Because that's what the space dream is really all about.
Infinite sky. Narcissism and Delusion don't get us there. Like, seriously.
So I should just ignore as irrelevant the Twitter feed of the person who is currently attempting to buy Twitter? I'm sorry, but that's just doesn't make sense to me.
So .. are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter?
Because, factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation.
That's simply not a statement of fact. It's a subjective opinion.
> are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter?
Yes. In my opinion, Elon Musk's ownership could conceivably make Twitter worse.
> Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened.
This seems, honestly, like a ludicrous claim. _Everything_ that _everyone_ is worried about has already happened? Come on now...
A) FSD has been coming for a while now. The historical record seems to indicate that he was either delusional by at least years, or knowingly lying. I would bet on the prior.
B) he stood in front of everyone at Boca Chica and with a straight face said that the very early Starship prototype behind him was going to orbit. Again, I actually believe maybe he thought it. Which is kinda weird/scary?
To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
This is not to excuse Elon - or indeed any of us. The expectation that any human being is free of these kinds of moral sins, is unreasonable. And such parody is exactly why, indeed, [1] the imperative to make humans multi-planetary - i.e. with strategically enhanced survival potential, is important.
Unless of course you are in the 'humans are dumb and must perish' camp. Jump you to [1], human!
Is this a serious take? He has worked in EV cars and rockets. Cars are something we should be moving away from and not towards. How have those things benefited even a fraction of the global population? Even in the U.S., inequality has continued to rise, poverty has risen, education has decreased, and several other poor indicators. Musk has used a huge portion of public funds in his companies, funds that could be used to solve these very real problems, and he’s done nothing to return value back to the general public.
Well there are lots of things humans should be doing, and never do. But I do believe Musk already did accomplish Tesla’s goal of accelerating electrification of the planet. Combustion is just less efficient. The ball is now rolling. Resistance is futile.
I believe it is arguable that some of the more damaging climate change scenarios are possible. So anyone moving the needle there could be extremely beneficial in the long run. Musk moved the needle more than anyone in modern history, hasn’t he?
I also do buy into the long-term goal of making Earth’s life spread beyond Earth. I happen to believe that complex lifeforms are extremely rare volumetrically. It does seem worth it to me, and I truly cannot think of a greater goal. SpaceX has revolutionized orbital boosters with F9 and FH already dropping costs by at least half. If/when Starship and Superheavy are up and running, then the economics of getting to space may be 10x better.
On the other hand Musk is not omniscient and scares the crap out of me sometimes.
The boring company plan for West LA didn’t make sense beyond paper and pencil prototyping.
I got banned from multiple Tesla forums for being upset about Tesla’s proof of work crypto investment. Eventually Musk came around on that too, but why did it take so long? How did this even pass muster?
The scariest thing is Neuralink though. The goal is to give humans a fighting chance to compete with a possible future AGI by greatly increasing our i/o bandwidth. Ok, but assuming AGI is created, then it’s fair to assume that it will be possible to increase the AGIs speed using various methods. Maybe we will have a chance to compete up to some point, but that time will pass as AGI develops further.
We are trading a fleeting advantage against a possible future threat in exchange for giving read/write access to our brains to the governments, corporations, and NSO Groups who we all know and trust. Would love to be talked down from that one because this appears to be monumentally dumb to me right now.
Because what has Musk done for the "good of the species"?
I mean you have guys like Fritz Haber, whose Haber-Bosch process is responsible for the production of nearly two-thirds of the world's foodstuffs and literally feeds half the world.
Or Stanley Norman Cohen, father of genetic modification. Whose patents touch nearly every other biological field today. You literally cannot calculate the number of lives he has potentially saved.
Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his worshippers are still telling that his different and he meant something different.
16 Psyche HQ is established, and humans are engaged in a pact of cooperation and union, against all elements, against all odds, to end all wealth.
Starships drop from the sky with supplies. The whole planet is growing, there are no more reasons for the borders.
We have instead, the infinite sky.
We could get way, way more from it than SpaceX and Tesla.
Dreamy fantasies are the only reasonable response in such circumstances.
My understanding of the human condition, led me to exactly this moment, 'mmkay?
How can you look at his compensation package at Tesla that he negotiated and claim it was not to "get rich"? It's not like he did it for free.
and he did that with paypal. not everybody wants to stay with safe and boring stuff.
everybody knows that sooner or later the combustion engine goes the way of the dodo, cause there won't be anything to put inside it...
the odds of succeeding with an EV company are not extremely low but exactly the opposite, it's the future, guaranteed. but of course it's not an overnight project and one needs to do better than introducing models 5 years ago that are still not being manufactured (roadster).
If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison.
We want to stay free. You know, as a species.
There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden.
I mean, if you wanna get weird about it...
Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?
It'll be pretty hard for Earth beligerents to be genociding when there are Starships dropping in on the starving villages and keeping them alive.
Yes yes, there is still a lot to be done before we can manufacture a Tesla on an asteroid, and land it back on Earth wherever its needed.
But, if you think about it, its definitely a better way forward than to just stay here and keep killing ourselves over what is .. admittedly .. a pretty small planet.
we've got this cultural veil of cynical nihilism that keeps us from thinking people could think like that. You're suggesting that someone is a good person? OMG no way. and he's some rich arsehole? can't be
Terry Pratchett called it "crab bucket" thinking.
It may be worth the risk of buying into some Musk hagiography just to have a break from the common popular despair.
SpaceX is cool...
Gotta love any company that has a banded Flame Thrower --- the Borning Company....
All of that said, I follow Musk because he He does what he wants, public perception be damned, Media be damned....
I am tried of Political Correctness, anyone that stands in the face of that has my support, even if I disagree with them politically as I often do with Musk.
I've said it before but Twitter is like a cancer, it begins to grow in some poor unfortunate souls irrespective of wealth, knowledge, or privilege, and slowly overtakes their whole being.
People invest with Elon because he has, objectively, an extraordinary track record of success.
- SpaceX's market capitalization has surpassed $100 billion [1].
- Tesla's market cap has topped $1 trillion, eclipsing the combined value of all other automakers [2].
- Elon's latest venture, The Boring Company, is currently valued at $5.7 billion [3].
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/key-statistics/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/elon-musks-boring-company-hi...
Investors are here for the money. While some will favor some companies over others for ethical reasons, no one invests to lose money. In the case of, for example, Tesla, the reasoning is usually that governments all around the world want to move away from fossil fuels and because Tesla is in that market, it will eventually make shittons of money.
That Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter shouldn't have an impact on the potential profits Tesla can make, Elon or not, Tesla will continue making electric cars in a world that demands electric cars to move away from fossil fuels. As for SpaceX (the "interplanetary" side), it is private, so you can't invest.
This is allowing journalists to write a lot more stories without leaving their desks, which means they can likely pump out a ton more articles each week than in the old days.
If Twitter changes such that it's no longer seen as appropriate or acceptable to pullquote tweets as the basis for an article, a lot of Blogs/News sites are in serious trouble.
Or is there something else at play (maybe expectation is that shareholders reject it?) and this is just a PR ploy.
Maybe someday it will all come out.
If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem: Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR department, lashes out against any criticism against him, canceled a preorder because he didn't like a journalists' article etc.
Musk is great at self-promotion and this often helps his companies in some sense, but what else does he bring to the table?
He's solved the full self driving problem. He has more time on has hands...
> The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
So Musk is honest? because intentional or not it clear Bezo's ownership of WaPo has impacted editorial positions
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Amazonian, and I think it is great company to work at (blue collar jobs excluded, but that's true for all warehouse and delivery jobs). Amazon managed to get rid of the middle population of a Gauss distribution regarding performance, Amazon is relentless (I like that drive for efficiency). By taking out the middle, so, the very top and the very bottom are left unchecked and un-moderated. Which breeds all kinds of problems.
And that's all the interference I care about when it comes to reporting.
Likewise what's to say China doesn't already have agents at Twitter and access to that data? It's far easier, and better, to do that in an incognito way - no?
Another example is Reddit's last round had Tencent contributing 50% of the round or $150 million; how much influence or access do they have because of that?
That does mean that it’s biased to what advertisers think is OK, but it’s always going to be biased. It’s just not really a bias based on a deep agenda or underlying conspiracy. I actually believe that. There may be some controversy but nobody has really demonstrated much consistent bias, less anything more sinister.
I say this knowing Elon is (was?) South African.
I'm not sure you can call what's going on on Twitter any of these words, at least on any even slightly polarizing topics.
And twitter knows they're getting a great deal!
I like twitter -- I can get in and out fast. In 15 minutes I can see a lot of new, interesting things, or just see what everyhing thinks is cool today.
And many of the things people complain about I don't see. I follow people around my specific interests: tech, electronics, jazz, and classical music -- and rarely see anything else. Judicious use of "block" and filters makes it rare that I see anything I don't want to see.
But I recently tried another social media plaltform: TikTok. I was surprised as a 59-year-old that I'd even understand it, but I followed people in the same categories I follow on Twitter, limit viewing to those I follow (I don't try the suggested feed) and it's nice and I'm having fun. Haven't posted yet, because I can't just type a few words or post a link and hit "send", but I'll figure that out, too.
Twitter's biggest problem is profitability and Musk doesn't seem to care about the economics of Twitter.
Kind of a weird example. Musk shutdown Tesla's PR department because Musk believes Tesla can get better organic press. It's unrelated, but if anything, getting rid of a dissembling PR department can only serve to promote better discussion, not suppress it.
What has Tesla PR got to do with free speech?
Or cancelling a pre-order?
Journalists and "the media" have little to do with free speech in general, and maybe even a negative effect on free speech if it is though that media representation is an alternative.
It's also notable that freedom to express an opinion, and freedom to express something as factual as somewhat different. Twitter generally deals with opinion (and does a poor job of dealing with facts/fact-checking).
And the right to not send a luxury good to a journalist/blogger is hardly a free-speech chilling penalty; refusing service is not censorship.
But that's what Musk wants to fix on Twitter, so I think it's applicable.
> For example, what does not having a PR dept supress?
On the face of it nothing, but if the PR dept is closed to make it harder for the press to ask questions, then it's indicative.
> And the right to not send a luxury good to a journalist/blogger is hardly a free-speech chilling penalty
Of course it is. The next reviewer (if he wants to buy one) will either not review the car or try not to upset Musk with his review.
> refusing service is not censorship.
Well, then how is refusing service to right-wing users on Twitter censorship?
> to make it harder for the press to ask questions
entirely different from censorship or suppression of speech - in fact this is the right not to speech. Free speech implies to right to information.
> The next reviewer
Same issue with paid reviews, these motivating examples are not much of a challenge to free speech.
> how is refusing service to right-wing users on Twitter censorship?
Because twitter is a platform for speech, buying a Tesla isn't the same. That said, if there weren't a few large corps monopolising social networking (and usually via shady methods) it wouldn't be so much of a free speech issue either - There would be an issue if Teslas was one of a few car manufacturers also.
Twitter HAS a free speech problem. This is not controversial. Now you may not agree that Twitter SHOULD allow free speech, but you can not deny that censorship exists on Twitter and it is serving the political agenda of some people.
Tech misinformation is interesting because a Chinese government account gets a flag and an American government account doesn't. A company pr account doesn't get a bias flag, but it is wholly designed around spreading misinformation. Misinformation seems to be used as an argument against not only free speech, but only leaning towards very specific directions politically.
There are hundreds of records of censored content which doesn't have anything to do with all that. This is a fact whether you agree with it or not.
Twitter has limitations on free speech, it's totally debatable if that's a problem or not.
But let's also not say that "Twitter has limitations on free speech" because it feels like a misleading euphemism. Free speech is not a spectrum. You either have it or not.
How about we just say that "Twitter doesn't have free speech".
And yes, "it's totally debatable if that's a problem or not". That I agree.
Have we become so delusional that we can’t recognize this simple fact?
No, it doesn't.
> This is not controversial.
If you keep getting in arguments about something, it's pretty silly to claim there is no controversy.
> Now you may not agree that Twitter SHOULD allow free speech
If you don't agree that Twitter should do something that it currently isn't, you by definition don't see it as having a problem in that behavioral domain.
> but you can not deny that censorship exists on Twitter and it is serving the political agenda of some people.
Private actors controlling the use of their private resources to select which ideas they will and will not promote with them is called “free speech”. So, you seem to think Twitter’s problem is that they exercise free speech.
I have to admit that this makes sense. But still kinda disturbing in this case. Because when the private resource we're talking about is Twitter, the actors behind can exercise their right of free speech for mass manipulation. That's too much power. I guess this is the problematic part.
It's not exactly the same thing as the right to free speech of a single individual or a small company.
Your logic is sound, but sometimes scale changes the rules. Especially in this very special case where Twitter has become the digital equivalent of a global town square. That's the catch.
Anyway maybe my quick arguments weren't very good after all.
But do you really not see any problems with Twitter lately? Is everything okay?
You seem smart. I'm genuniely curious.
As usual for Musk, this is a business decision that is meant to benefit him that he is trying to sell as benefitting other people.
Edit - Musk's other companies, SpaceX, Boring, and Tesla, rely heavily on government subsidies and contracts. The access he gets to politicians by controlling their newsfeeds on the social network they pay attention to is also very valuable. Not valuable for Twitter, valuable for Musk.
It wouldn't surprise me...
He cannot even solve moderation of racism in his own factory, let alone online.
I'll be ditching twitter completely. The whole thing rubs me up the wrong way in terms of what I want to associate myself with.
Facebook vibes.
Just another facebook run by another egotistic billionaire.
Not my cup of tea.
The mission of Tesla is not free speech, but to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Tesla seems to be doing just fine without a PR department, so it seems he was right to shut it down.
The mission of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary. So of course there is no right to free speech for the employees.
But the mission of twitter should be free speech within the bounds of the law, at least according to Elon.
Currently it seems to be to move the Overton window so much to the left that you can be banned for giving the definition of what a woman is that was commonly accepted by everybody in 2010.
The problem is, his past actions don't inspire any confidence in that being the truth.
> Currently it seems to be to move the Overton window so much to the left that you can be banned for giving the definition of what a woman is that was commonly accepted by everybody in 2010.
That's the right-wing view and there are countless examples of the left-wing getting banned, and they are angry as well. I don't thing it's cut and dry.
Can you name some that weren't due to the poster threatening someone, doxing or otherwise something illegal? I honestly can't think of any off the top of my head where a left wing post/user was banned for something legal but I can think of tons from the other side.
* https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-account-ba...
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/fruzsinaeordogh/2018/07/31/why-...
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...
Don't get me wrong: I'm sure more right-wing/conservatives users are getting blocked than their counterparts, but only because they are more extreme (right now) on those platforms.
While they shouldn't be banned (and I'm assuming that was fixed after that article came out if in fact they were not bots), I haven't seen any examples of specific left wing accounts getting banned for posting content as many on the right have (examples: Hunter Biden stories and the NYP, anyone posting Wuhan Lab leak theory in 2020-2021, The Babylon Bee for the Rachel Levine satire posts, etc).
Transparency about moderation is the easiest to fix. All everyone wants out of Twitter is to know why posts are moderated, promoted, shadow-banned, etc. It doesn't have to be super specific, in terms of moderation, but giving everyone an overall sense of how and why things are moderated the way they are, would help to restore a sense of fairness.
If he does well with Twitter in that regard, all the other platforms aren't hard to replicate if you've got the servers and money.
OR
He loses most of his wealth selling off stock to try to do this, and we learn the difference between paper and real wealth.
If you get banned or suspended, they tell you why.
They communicate their efforts like this pretty transparently. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2022/our-ongoi...
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...
Courts and parliaments have rules of procedure so it's not, whoever's loudest wins.
Free speech is never 100% free, there are laws against libel, fraud, conspiracy, copyright, trademark, which create crimes that consist only of speech, or civil liability. And then there are social norms.
It's always a balance between letting 20% of hateful crazy trolls hijack all rational conversation, on the one hand, and blocking unpopular opinions on the other hand. Even HN moderates a lot.
Same applies to all the rights enumerated in the US Constitution, you have freedom of religion to the extent it doesn't infringe on the other important rights and provisions of the Constitution. Polygamy is banned. If your religion says servitude of women or Black people is God's will, you don't get to practice it. 2nd Amendment however broadly interpreted doesn't let you build a nuclear weapon in your backyard.
There are people who want to block legitimate speech they don't want to hear and these should be resisted. A first step toward fascism is indeed people not caring about free speech and thinking their personal discomfort is the most important thing, starting with the most powerful. There are also liars and extremists who want to take a first step toward fascism by extinguishing the ability to have the sorts of rational debate we need in a democracy.
You need to find a balance. You need to protect free speech by having reasonable rules and norms.
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." - George Washington
Conspiracies are entertaining and there are consequences for libel and fraud. So what is the problem again?
There are social norms? General norms for the whole planet you mean? I have yet to hear a good case for more content control on the internet. The EU just voted for a law against illegal content? Makes no sense at all. But it is also against hate and for propaganda. Some say it is historic. Doesn't make a good case for history then.
I don't think your quote adequately confirms the incentive of big tech companies deleting user content. Yes, the anonymous blob of internet users has arbitrary und unlimited powers. Should I really believe that?
As AI generated content approaches 100% of internet content over the next decade (gtp-powered bots, russian troll farms, etc), it will be good to have human verification…
If, after human verification, twitter can implement a zero-trust software means to allow those humans to post anonymously to protect certain dialogue… that would be great.
everything else is already being handled by a centralized authority (twitter), why not let them also handle letting users post anonymously after having been verified?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-democrats-billiona...
Unfortunately, there is a severe education gap in the United States which allows conmen to gain political power. And until education can be properly addressed, and the people have a willingness to learn and critically think, this will only continue to get worse.
EDIT>> The point being, the uneducated allow themselves to be duped by said conmen on Twitter, their choice of news outlet, Facebook, etc. And voting is the only power that I, an educated, reasonable, and critically-thinking citizen, have to combat anything I am concerned about.
Because if we're being truthful, the issue at stake here is the fact that Musk is clearly a Republican who thinks there are free-speech issues at play with Twitter due to the silencing of Trump and others on that platform. I will disagree completely because Trump and those others who have been silenced from those platforms are quite free to create their own Twitter (and have) and work to gain a critical mass. It doesn't really matter, though, since almost every single social network on the planet is just an echo chamber of what people want to hear. But I, for one, have no interest in hearing lies being made with a very huge bullhorn such as Twitter -- no matter who it comes from.
If this deal is done, I will wait and see what Musk does. If he does what I expect him to do (unban everyone he agrees with politically, financially, etc. despite those who were banned for good reason), then I'll happily stop using Twitter. The good news for me, is that I have choice. While I cannot control what the other masses will do, I have control over what I will do. And very, very little will change in my life if I no longer use Twitter.
* Musk announces Twitter is now an open platform for free speech and no one will ever be banned, re-instating everyone including Trump.
* Trump wins the 2024 election by appealing to populism and the working class with Twitter his main outlet.
* Trump continues to lower taxes for billionaires like he did in 2017 [0].
* Elon Musk saves billions in taxes whilst Twitter is estimated privately at $100b due to Musks's involvement.
And we won't be able to tell if the downvotes we get for protesting such actions on twitter will be authentic or not.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/10/trum...
Why do you think Elon is uniquely dangerous in this regard?
1) People who look at the future with wide eyes and and a huge amount of optimism would gladly put their lives, finances and generally the whole society in the hands of this man.
2) People (including myself) who look at the future as a concept that scammers and snake oil salesmen often use to convince people to give them money...well they think this guy is nothing but a scammer and a snakeoil salesman convinving people to give him money right now for stuff that he'll never deliver.
I sometimes envy the first category and would like to make a leap on the other side...just to see what it's like...but man are the awakenings rough. When they happen the former optimists reach level of cynism that are sky high even for those of us who are regularly cynic.
Take a cue from StackOverflow, which does a better job surfacing quality content while letting drivel sift to the bottom. It has an incentive system where those who demonstrate expertise build up reputation over time (instead of a simple popularity contest won by the loudest voices). Even here on HN the culture nurtures a forum that holds more interest for me than Twitter.
I know politics is a different game, but I think the internet's still barely scratched the surface when it comes to transforming democracy. There's so much runway remaining to elevate constituent engagement without the toxicity. When I see examples like municipalities using apps to let citizens photograph and report potholes it gives me hope. The internet is powerful at enabling people who care about a given set of issues to congregate in convenience and without limits of geography. We can figure out how to do it more constructively.
I envision a more issues-centric platform, a kind of one-stop you can visit to get a concise picture of the best-informed discussion around hot topics of the day (or archives of the past). With elements from Wikipedia, and the ability (and allure) to dive deeper where you're interested. Integrate fact-checking efforts (something like Snopes / PolitiFact) to encourage authenticity. Maybe you could even plug in a feedback loop where local officials can open polls and allow granular voting on matters within their jurisdiction (borrow ideas from Change.org) or facilitate grassroots organization ("garbage cleanup at the park today swing down if you can").
Democracy could never exist without the invention of mass media. Historically that's been a one-way street. The internet upgraded the pipe to an instant, two-way connection to almost every citizen. Yet we've stuck to the same old pattern (figures with lots of followers using it to broadcast their message) with a bit of incremental evolution (interesting or provocative replies can get upvoted). But that's just baby steps. The internet has transformed nearly every other industry, is even transforming banking and finance, and I believe the way we run our civil institutions is up next.
Just like invention of mass-media enabled democracy, the internet is about to facilitate the evolution of some kind of Democracy 2.0. I for one want to see that nurtured into something amazing and special.
Is this so? Or just that the offered price is too good to pass up? Real questions.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquir...
I run one (@bostontimelaps1) and it has been such a fun project for the last year with nothing other than positive interactions with my niche group of followers - even a bunch that are obviously on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me.
Not to mention it has been a great learning experience building the automation and the content itself brings me joy to see tweeted automatically.
Had heard about maybe verifying this type of account. I’d be willing to pay to keep it going but I definitely don’t want it overly easy to tie it to my name for all kinds of dumb reasons.
I think there is value in robots on Twitter, and there is value in anonymous accounts (for whistleblowers etc)
Elon asked the board if he could buy Twitter. If the board were to say "no", the poison pill protects Twitter against Elon buying up all the shares in the open market anyway.
The board saying "yes" bypasses all that.
Set aside any issues with employees not wanting to work for a Musk-run Twitter if they believe would be more toxic. I would still expect a lot of employees to look for the exit right now.
First is simply the uncertainty involved: Large restructuring, reassignments, or layoffs could occur and it's always nicer to find a new job before you begin to hate your old one or lose it all together.
Second is compensation: Equity via stock options or awards boosts total compensation, but it's much more complicated in private companies. There's been a commitment to the same benefit plan for the next year, but beyond that no new ones can be issued after the deal closes until Musk decides what they will look like. If he doesn't commit to keeping a similar vesting & award schedule then it will be a problem. Then there's liquidity. You can't sell private equity the same way you can with a public company. Again, if Musk doesn't commit to preserving the same liquidity as employees would have in a public company by allowing stock sales back to the company at-will then it will be a downgrade in compensation.
SpaceX uses an internal market to provide liquidity to employees for this, but Twitter will be more uncertain. It will depending on how many current investors decide to stick around & their appetite for increasing their shares. SpaceX is also on a strong growth track, giving awards & options a likely increased value in the future while Twitter is on much more uncertain footing, especially with Musk emphasizing that it's not an economic investment for him. A stock grant equal to $50k today at SpaceX might grow to $100k by the time an employee wants to sell, whereas the same grant at Twitter may not have the same expected growth.
It will also be difficult to hire new people until this is settled. Anyone accepting a job right now will have no idea when or how they'll be able to cash in any stock compensation promised in the benefits package.
As for the ideological issues, that may balance out. People leaving for such reasons by could be offset by new employees seeking jobs because they like the new content direction, although the extra churn will still make operations more turbulent for some time.
Twitter was the last one I used a very small amount (never more than 5 minutes at a time, not more than once a day). This was the final straw for me. No good options when the choice is: participate in communities I care about + my data being abused, or maintain a sliver of privacy and control over my data + social isolation.
The only thing i can think of being bad is micromanagement, and inadequate compensation. I dont know how twitter compensates their employees, but i'm sure it's not inadequate.
She is certainty great, but Musk still has to (and wants to) spend a huge amount of time working on SpaceX.
I think he's obsessed with his growing celebrity and Twitter is his megaphone.
(20 years ago I’d have said the same about watching “hours” of TV each week).
What does that have to do with my comment? I was just saying that he won't be hands-off as CEO of Twitter because he isn't hands-off even as a user.
Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
Even if it were normal, Musk is not a "normal" user (he gets armies of worshippers responding to every tweet) and he is the CEO of at least two other large companies, in addition to being a father of 7 children. He shouldn't even have time to eat or sleep, let alone troll people on Twitter on a regular basis.
> Also, if using Twitter that much were "normal" then Twitter wouldn't be struggling as much as it is.
I think they’re struggling financially (if you can call a multi billion dollar profit “struggling”) because the money people make from advertising on Twitter isn’t that related to how much any given person uses it, as they’re mostly competing with each other for a fixed quantity of disposable income. (Number of users seems too large to count as a struggle, not sure what else you might mean).
(That’s my guess, at least).
Also, If they didn't feel bad about creating value for Saudi royalty shareholders they probably won't feel bad about doing random stuff for the lulz
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/saudi-arabia-invests-2b-...
The effort has to go towards corporate regulations and culture change. Ending slavery within the US took a civil war and we're still decades away (at least) from fixing the legislative echoes and civil rights issues. Influencing China to end their own slavery and civil rights abuses isn't feasible at an individual level, except through correcting the allowed business behaviors and relationships by imposing laws and changing the culture. America is incentivizing human rights abuses under its current system.
We have an obligation to correct our behavior at the nation state level. Voting with wallets is no better than brooms on a beach. We need to vote for representatives that will fix the issue through international trade regulation.
As for what he'll do with Twitter.... I don't think anyone really knows how it will turn out. He's proven to be pretty self obsessed (canceling critic's Tesla orders), so maybe he'll use his power to knock down stuff he personally doesn't like (his private jet tracker). Or maybe his talk about free speech is real and he has good ideas on how to actually make social media a benefit to society. I think in his companies' software has been his weakest area (still thinking cameras are enough to do full self driving, which I think out of any project has most failed to materialize his promises?), so maybe he won't understand how to mold a fully software based company. However, maybe he'll just want Twitter to work the way he thinks Twitter should work as a user, knock down a bunch of unnecessary BS (eg the insistent push towards algorithm timeline) and force his hand on features people really want (eg, the ability to edit Tweets.)
1.Pretend that there are specific problems where groups of people loose trust in the systems they interact with. 2.Pretend that social networks currently implemented as social platforms are strongly biased towards noise.
Assume for the sake of debate that Elon is ware of this.
He may be after the crux of the issue in that monitoring is an indication that social platforms are amplifying noise from interactions with broken systems.
He may instead be after an algo change rather then re-instatement of those who were banned.
Stockholders are holding it because they believe it's worth more than its current price. And Elon's offer is only slightly more than the current price. The board members do not hold much stock at all. It seems this might fail at shareholder vote.
The price was <$40 before Musk announced, currently $51.7.
At this point, an investor might see it as a chance to make $2.30 MAX or loose 11.60 OR MORE if it drops lower than it started.
I have a feeling that Twitter's Q1 numbers to be reported on Thursday won't be good.
If they would be, they could reasonably ask for a better offer. If, as I expect, they aren't, they wont have much of a credible leg to stand on to continue to refuse his offer.
The subtly terrible journalism continues. The implication of this phrase is that Twitter was previous controlled "by the people", whereas now some rich oligarch will control it. The irony, given that Musk hopes to make the platform more neutral than ever before.
"suggest"/"insinuate" is a less strict term, however, and that definitely applies here!
I just paid Tumblr $25 last week to have 7000 people see a funny joke I made last year. Win-win. The users get a sensible chuckle, and Tumblr gets a little walking around money. Can't believe Tumblr Blaze is advertising done right.
But nooooo, he wastes it all on a that dungpool of a website
Turns out no amount of money can speed up opening a car factory when a bunch of so called "environmentalists" keep nagging the regulators for baseless water shortage claims (all of which have eventually been declined).
Musk has already done more awesome stuff than any single human in history has done with their cash. He has built multiple companies, each a catalyst and revolutionary in their field; has paid more tax than any single citizen in US history; and shit load more than I can remember right now from top of my head.
Improving human interaction isn't anyone's goal. Imagining there is a "right person" is fake.
Why are people imagining the network which invented contextless hot takes is somehow now the most important public square which must be protected from what? Twitter will be destroyed and we won't have what?
But sometimes, there is something happening that is just random... stuff.
If you don't find it valuable, why are you in this thread arguing about it? For the past year the baseline opinion on HN about twitter was that it should be considered the public square and trump should not be banned (no one would say this specifically but if you poke people this is what they actually care about).
I guess I thought someone might come along with some technical, economic reasons why his individual behavior and choices might not factor in as much as I imagine. Although I guess the way I began the discussion probably invited misinterpretations.
We've seen the social media companies work in unison to censor important information that later was proven to be true. Examples are abound and I'm not going to debate them here.
I'm hopeful that will come to an end. This kind of censorship only works if "everyone" is doing it. With the reduced censorship, there will be lots of nonsense I'm uninterested in. I will not follow nonsense accounts and will simply block them if necessary.
I definitely don't embrace Elon Musk's politics as he is vehemently anti-union, but I don't know how much he'd force Twitter to become an echo chamber for himself.
Yeah, I think HNers supporting this should reflect on the fact that comments like this would get you moderated and rate-limited here on HN, and that's generally considered a good thing.
Einstein (and Ghandi, and MLK) cheated on their wives. Harvey Weinstien is a predator who produced Pulp Fiction. Ben Franklin (and Henry Ford) were virulent anti-semites. Von Neumann wanted to preemptively nuke Russia. Lincoln freed the slaves but was overtly racist.
So go ahead and cut Musk out of your life for his behavior. But don't forget to cut out everyone else who's done what he's done, and worse. And cut out all those who don't agree with you, and certainly do not dirty yourself by the use of their discoveries. Do not watch, listen, or use what they've made, for these are the products of bad men, and by using their work you become bad, too.
Although I should say that my list of idols is short for this very reason. I don't think I ever imagine that the real people behind historical figures were as perfect as we imagine.
I think there's also an argument that we live in a time where a single person's failings have an outsized impact on the broader world because of how quickly their words travel. But the real impact of this is debatable. It's probably been said in every era that "this time is different."
> on a few occasions he did use offensive language about Jews in his private correspondence, though this language does not come close to the antisemitic vitriol he ostensibly publicly uttered in the “Prophecy.” Franklin, who also owned slaves and featured slaves for sale in his newspaper prior to becoming an abolitionist, was not at all times free of prejudice.
So if you have doubt about his antisemitism, have no doubt about his slave-holding. The next line in the article is quite good, too:
>In much of today’s popular culture, there often seems to be room only for saints or villains. Franklin was neither.
BTW I'm glad there's doubt about Franklin's anti-semitism. That one in particular always made me particularly sad, for some reason.
On that note excited to see if ads go away.
TLDW: He wants to open source the ranking algos and make the history of each posts ranking transparent.
We also must consider the fact that the government has leverage in the form of subsidies to Tesla and Space X. For example, this leverage could be used to get an interface to all private messages for some agency.
1. A letter from his banks offering to lend $13 billion to Twitter, if he buys it, with $7 billion of that coming in the form of senior secured bank loans and $6 billion coming in the form of junk bonds.
2. A letter from his banks offering to lend him $12.5 billion personally, secured by $62.5 billion worth of his Tesla Inc. stock. At yesterday’s closing price, that comes to about 64 million shares, or about one-third of his Tesla stake.
4. An agreement with himself to put up the other $21 billion, give or take.
Musk is the man of leverage and likes to live on the edge. Loans with junk bond rates, his stake on Tesla,
Levine:
>... So Musk will be paying his banks, personally, about $1 billion a year for the privilege of owning Twitter. It is possible that Twitter will be paying him $1 billion a year of dividends, after its own debt servicing costs, but it is, uh, unlikely in the near future. It is more likely that running Twitter will be a continuing expense for him. But, again, he has said that he’s not in it for the money. Spending $33 billion to buy Twitter, and then another $1 billion a year to own it, is I suppose in a way a kind of philanthropy for Musk?
Im not sure I can sit here and say that it wasnt needed, but people need to remember that 4 years ago, Tesla was at deaths door trying to scale up, shorters were doing everything in their power to maniuplate the stock, and no one thought they could pull it off the way they have.
Fortunately technology in SpaceX and Tesla will not cease to exist if Musk goes personally bankrupt and loses these companies.
If he burns and falls, all the good stuff he made is left behind.
Hell even the Boring company just raised a ton of capital. All three are fairly debt free at a time where debt is about to become insanely expensive.
2. Increase valuation
3. Sell equity
4. Cover debts
Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user.
Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide behind anonymous hate speech - they'll flock to somewhere else, and good riddance to them.
Sadly, the human race isn't quite ready for anonymous 'free speech' online as all it does is attract the shouty nutjobs and political shills. So lets park that concept, and try again in a few decades time.
EDIT: To clarify (and thanks to the responders for calling it out), I meant a real name policy on the verified account details only - it doesn't have to be visible to the masses.
---
[1] REAL verification for all, not the blue tick which is basically a vanity symbol these days.
Searched a lot but either I Am doing them wrong or unable to locate the exact thing I am looking for.
We know how Musk feels about whistleblowers:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
Similar for dissidents. They can generally find a party outside the reach of the regime they are dissidents of that also opposes that regime and agrees with the dissidents. They just need a secure way to communicate with that outside party. The outside party can then handle spreading the message on public platforms.
Which is besides the point; why do you think Elon will do any of this, when the previous board/company/ownershop did not?
Right now having a verified account is a form of privilege were you pleased some sort of twitter corporate representative who decides these sorts of thing. They have a history of giving blue check marks to accounts they agree with and taking it away from verified people they disagree with.
By handing out checkmarks to anybody willing to pay them for it (and by extension tying their legal identity to their twitter one) then it neutralizes the political aspect of verified accounts while improving a revenue stream.
The revenue stream would improve in more ways than one.
Turns out knowing a person's browsing history and what accounts they have online is not really that useful or interesting to advertisers. It's not a big money maker.
However if you can tie financial identities into online identities then that is vastly more interesting and is something advertisers are willing to pay for.
This is why Facebook insists on having "real identities" nowadays when people sign up. They partner with other data mining operations and tie people's financial history into their facebook accounts. This way adverisers know people's buying habits, income levels.
Pretty much everything you fill out for drivers licensing, hunting licenses, loan application, credit card history, debit card history, mortgage applications, etc etc.. is now tied to your Facebook account if they can figure out to connect the dots. Which isn't that hard for most people.
I don't think that extends in the fashion you believe it does. It's like the HashCash solution for email. It was never employed because it probably didn't work, it just made spamming more expensive but didn't eliminate spam. The current walled-garden state of email has also made spam very expensive, but email spam persists to this day.
Ability to pay for something online also does not indicate actual identity. It's trivial to get an anonymous Visa number, and so on.
Not only because it is an incredibly niche market, but probably because they don't see the advertisements in the first place.
We are talking about people trying to figure out how to extract money from tracking and documenting the great unwashed masses. The hyper tech freaks can abandon these platforms en masse and it wouldn't amount too much more than a rounding error.
Remember:
The purpose of Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites, including Reddit, is to provide services to people willing to pay to disseminate propaganda. Primarily in the form of advertisements.
The platform for discussions and content is not the product. The product is the people that use the platform. Anything they can do to improve the quality of the product, ie information about the users, can increase revenue.
Comparing to email doesn't make sense. Also Email is such a garbage protocol nowadays that it is much more profitable to prolong its brokenness than actually solve its problems.
Please fact check me because who knows where they finally landed on this but at one point Elon Musk backtracked on the blue checkmark in favor of a different symbol for a paid account (iirc down to USD 2 from USD 3 and different amounts for different countries).
I do 100% agree. Sadly, I don't think it'll be possible to stay anonymous in the future. Not because of credentials or personal data, but the things we say and the way we say them online. These things will be enough to link personal accounts and alt-accounts. Sure, you can obscure and keep quiet about things, but what's the point then anyways?
Something else that comes to my mind: Lot of people on HN (me included) share rather personal stuff here. Everything I ever said with this account should (in theory) fall in a consistent picture. But those bots are not there to mimic that. They have other purposes (some of which you already mentioned).
Are you basing this on writing-style analysis?
The rest of this post makes sense but what is this supposed to mean? How is using real names "a position of privilege"? Does this just mean that some people's name is more influential than others? In which case, renaming "influence" into "a position of privilege" to attach to SJW ethos to something completely unrelated is double-plus ungood.
Also, in my view, no democracy is safe, things can change in any country and I wouldn’t want a history of things that can be linked to me so easily. I am pessimistic coming from a place I did. Check marked people at least have money and connections to navigate those issues.
I am sure there are more examples. I think it was a valid statement.
To take an example from a sibling thread: If you live in Turkey and write negative about Erdogan you get charged with terrorism. It's something people can only afford to do if they are reasonably sure they will not be identified and I think we can agree a real name policy makes this rather hard. So, if you ask for a real name policy you ask for a policy which not everyone can afford to adhere here to. You probably[1] can, so it's a privilege you have, others don't have. Therefore, written from a place of privilege.
[1] If someone asks for a real name policy while not being able to adhere to it (without dire consequences for themselves) they don't write from a position of privilege, but imho that's a rather academic case.
However, while accountability might have worked 50 years ago it sure looks like it wouldn't anymore - it's not as if people, including prominent people actually go to the effort to hide their identity before spouting nonsense - some of it fairly vile, some of it so idiotic it surely would have caused reputational harm a few decades ago.
Real names won't work where there's no sense of shared reproach; no sense by the speaker that their friends will be disappointed or even outraged. Worse, they revel in it; being crazy is a point of pride; as is harassing others (made even easier should a real-name policy be adopted).
So whether or not anonymity for the oppressed is worthy enough aim to accept also supporting yet more disinformation campaigns is probably a moot point; real names will no longer discourage extremists from spreading their special brand of insanity.
People just got tricked in to doing this because Facebook was centered around connecting people at college, where you interact with people in real life. It was obsolete and an aberration the moment Facebook decided to open up to the wider world.
Rate limiting solves the problem of bots crapflooding the service and turning it into a sewer. Not every account you find objectionable is a bot.
This still burns me up. I only signed up for that reason, and it seemed like a great idea, limiting it to people with institutional .edu emails so it was like a modern interactive yearbook. Then overnight it was something else. Like that old commercial for roach traps where they think they're settling down in a nice comfortable living room and then suddenly it's revealed they're trapped and are being poisoned.
I think some people legitimately do. If someone is pretty close to the typical mainstream archetype for their culture, it's easy to get caught up in idealism about how great things would be if all books were open.
The more one sees outside of that bubble, the more apparent the problems become, but being in the bubble reinforces the positive aspects of that model.
I'm gonna call nonsense on this. Practically every social media platform that forces real identities are cesspits because of the real name policy. Largely because of the soap box celebrities/influencers who shill their views and monetize their followers.
I prefer reddit/HN a thousand times over the garbage of twitter/FB/etc..
In that case, why would you care about the threats exactly?
The threats caused by people like Trump, Joe Rogan, Musk, Russian bot farms, Farage, Le Pen etc... and their toxic ignorant views on Vaccines, climate change are far far worse to society than some vague inactionable death threats.
The community decides in absence of who is saying whether my words have merit.
If it doesn't, I have a healthy ability to toss my entire account and walk away.
In some countries a lot of people share the same full name.
The best of reddit and HN can only exist because they're niche subcommunities.
We should be under no illusions what would happen to HN if 5% of YouTube commenters showed up tomorrow.
Yea you get toxic, cancerous, illegal subcommunities etc... On the whole though I am happy with the upvote, downvote curation compared with the algorithmic trash provided by FB. Even before reddit went overly filtering for advertisement purposes, I was happier on Reddit/Digg than the trash that came aftewrards.
In my opinion, humanity would be significantly better off without Twitter/Facebook.
I have seen death threats, anti-vaccer junk, brexit/trump/le Pen, Cambridge Analytica style election manipulation (including for Bolsonaro and Modi), the Myanmar genocide and human trafficking on a massive scale via FB/twitter.
I remember being pitched specifically about several cases of groups/companies using Facebook/Twitter to subvert democratic processes via selective targeted propaganda.
Nobody subscribes to all of Reddit.
Nobody subscribes to every Youtube channel.
So what is your point?
It's a model that work and scales to half a billion users per month.
Reddit's moderators are volunteers with iron fists who only police tiny sections of reddit. Admins get involved in TOS violations, not direct moderation.
Your comparison makes no sense.
What moderation? For what are you talking about? From what I gather they predominantly rely on automatic filtering, with barely any human filtering. They don't even moderate some of their largest channels.
E.g.
LinusTechTips complaining about spam junk and community fed solutions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_uoFI1WXM
MarquesBrownLee doing the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cw-vODp-8Y
Reddit does the same broad stroke in that yea they have broad generic spam/bot detection, and also rely on reporting moderation and community driven tool. They already operate in a similar/better model than youtube.
The original argument was that Reddit/HN couldn't handle 5% of Youtube community and I am calling nonsense to that.
That's false, admins do get involved in direct moderation, and Reddit has a whole team of admins (Reddit employees).
disagree. it's about - and has always been since the first usenet message - moderation. lots of free speech absolutists confuse moderation with censorship and Elon will learn the difference with sweat, blood and tears if he doesn't know it already (note: I can hardly imagine why he wouldn't know it).
It's not a question of scale, it's a question of culture. Also, Reddit and HN do have active moderation.
The lack of real names, and shitty games prevents influences and garbage celebrity monetizations.
I haven't seen a Cambridge Analytica style event happen on reddit. That happened brazenly in the open, and still happens today on Facebook/Twitter to subvert democratic processes (e.g. Brazil, India, US, UK).
Twitter is the most toxic "mainstream" community I've ever seen.
edit: Anonymous accounts that allow for detachment and people need to learn not to consume media they don't like. It is pretty easy actually. People in the public, even small ones like streamers are putting themselves out there and it can become a problem. But there isn't a technical solution, these are the age old problems of PR. This is why popular people in the public sphere have agencies just for that single problem.
The real name idea is overall pretty bad for numerous additional reasons.
The ad-revenue model relies on attention, and attention thrives on memes that inspire outrage, contempt, and fear. The solution is a freemium subscription model. But I don't think he'll do that. I admire the guy's accomplishments like everyone else but we all know he's got a bit of an ego. He'll not put a paywall in front of his Twitter army.
Nope that is not the only way. Federation can also solve moderation issue. Basically you host a server instance and set some ground rules of what is allowed and what is not. But federation cannot generate revenue so I don't think that will ever happen with Twitter unless Elon figures out how to make money from a federated social network.
The ad-revenue model relies on attention, and attention thrives on memes that inspire outrage, contempt, and fear. The solution is a freemium subscription model. But I don't think he'll do that. I admire the guy's accomplishments like everyone else but we all know he's got a bit of an ego. He'll not put a paywall in front of his Twitter army.
The success of most things in the world relies on attention. This is not unique to ad-revenue models of social media companies.
Currently users can choose to only let followers/mentioned users reply. Maybe add an option to only allow real-name users to reply.
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[1] I don't know if this is really true or not, as I don't have the money to buy myself a super cool blue tick.
1. People whose opinions are perfectly in-line with the corporate-backed, advertiser-friendly status quo, further cementing such ideas as the status quo
2. Maniacs who have nothing to lose, and/or want to be seen as a martyr
All of the reasonable people will just not use the site cause they don't want to risk stepping out of line and having aforementioned maniacs harassing you/contacting your employer/etc
The school of "we'll destroy your livelihood" freedom of expression made sure of that.
Thank you for your smug, hand-wavy, holier-than-thou dismissal of online free speech on behalf of the entire human race.
You claim to be entitled to free speech and your own opinion, yet claim most people cannot use those entitlements responsibly. Who decides what is and isn't responsible use of free speech? You? People who think like you?
i have to delegate trust and if everyone can and will speak whatever they want - or worse, there are FSB troll farms purposefully injecting noise into any public free speech forum, i can't do that. noise floor raises so high the signal can't be filtered out anymore. what then? we declare 'free speech won' and go home victorious, but without a public forum like HN?
I'll give my personal opinion, which you may want to treat as one of many possible viewpoints:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/just-go-on-the-internet-and-t...
The internet has run on the concept of trust and reputation for a while now, but IMO, if you want anything close to the full story, you have to put in the work yourself: Compile your sources, evaluate your and their biases, and come to a conclusion. Ground News is a pretty neat tool to help me with this if it's a widely-reported story.
Some examples:
- Something from a reputable news source? Probably true, but not always. I try to wait for a decent handful of other, diverse outlets to report on it before believing it, sharing it, etc.
- Something from a single account on Twitter on Hacker News? Probably not, but not always. I try to wait for other confirmations before believing it, sharing it, etc.
I personally believe it to be a case where free speech wins, people raise the bar for what's worth their trust, and fake news begins to decline as a result -- the opposite being one where people lower their guard due to blind trust in other entities, and fake news can therefore take advantage of that and flourish.
Right now you're just an anonymous account, and by your own rules, part of the problem.
Real names is not good solution
The Republicans announcing public lynching of trans kids are doing it under their real names.
Those people tend to avoid platforms with effective "censorship" as they call it, and that can be done without names. The majority of internet users doesn't spend much time thinking about privacy or anonymity, and it's not uncommon that people make death threats under their real name or end their career with dumb posts on social media.
What we need is smaller communities with better moderation. Twitter with its lack of structure is the opposite and acts more like a global spam folder, and discourages meaningful posts by limiting their length. Insults and other toxic language always fits nicely in a tweet.
... is how you crush political dissidents.
I actually disagree with forcing real names everywhere; it didn't make Facebook any less awful and it shuts out anonymous speech. What Twitter needs is a defense against sock-puppeting. You should be able to totally register a pseudonym and speak out if you need to, but not 10,000 "real names" so you can go and manufacture consent. The problem with this is that it's actually really expensive to limit something that costs nothing[0], and furthermore Twitter does not want to do this. The value of their advertising is big-O[1] proportional to their active userbase, so they want to make new account registration as easy as possible to juice those numbers.
I don't think this is entirely tractable; all large online communities have problems with sock-puppeting and hate speech even when they are trying to fight it. The incentives for any ad-funded social network is to make the problem worse and worse.
[0] The cryptographic term for this conundrum is "Sybil attack", and it's the reason why all cryptocurrencies have to either burn energy (PoW) or internal liquidity (PoS) in order to both prevent rollbacks and remain robust against netsplits.
[1] Big-O notation is a system of categorizing growth curves where you only include the fastest-growing term. i.e. if something grows at n^2 + n, we say that's an O(n^2) process.
Although there are many crappy communities, no other social platform comes even close to Reddit's best, well moderated subs.
I believe social platforms keep failing exactly because they try to solve spam, etc.. globally and that's not possible. It's better to empower mods community builders.
I also believe there is a good opportunity for a social platform that allows mods and builders to be paid somehow.
Edit: Another though - that's also how Discord took off.
What I learned is that there are plenty of crazy people online. And I do not want them to have my real identity.
The question is whether people can trust Twitter with that information.
Speak for yourself. I've been participating in anonymous and pseudonymous internet communities for decades and it's great. If nutjobs and shills are the price we must pay for their continued existence, then so be it.
I would use Twitter daily if I had an option to control an "identity strength threshold" where I would then only see comments from people who have implemented their organization memberships into an online identity.
Of course this is wildly conceptual and would be an impossible feat to implement, but it's a fun thought exercise.
Have you uh, seen "NextDoor"?
IIRC, Facebook's still toxic even with a real-name policy. Wackos often lack the shame or self-awareness to not be toxic even under their real name.
Anecdote time: one of the most toxic people I've encountered online posted under their real name--in a Web 1.0 forum where pseudoanonymity was the norm.
Facebook has real names and the messages are just as bad if not often worse.
Extremely naive to think this will solve anything.
Remove the "feature" that recommends something to you. Or alternatively, allow users to turn it off.
Problem solved.
Someone routinely posts and shares something you don't like? Unfollow them.
Someone posts something that is illegal? File a report with the authorities.
This, "you must tie all your thoughts to your government issued identity" only solves one problem: allowing the thought police to come after you after losing their hold at Twitter.
So how it is possible to get a loan for this amount of money?
https://twitter.com/elonmuskjet
It's will tell us a lot about his plans with Twitter.
Second reaction: I think Twitter has a lot of potential still. The platform is currently stuck in the past and having a power user being in-charge would help Twitter grow again.
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1518658761979842560
>Here is the executive summary of the UN’s plan for how they would spend the money. Musk publicly ghosted them after this was provided.
>Months later, they told Forbes they never received the money. “Whether WFP receives any of this money is yet to be seen”
https://www.wfp.org/stories/wfps-plan-support-42-million-peo...
Now, stop being redundant.
-- The Department of Redundancy Department.
When Trump was banned in Jan 2022, most of his 88 million followers never heard from him again. No matter your feelings or leanings, that’s a lot of power - to instantly mute a president.
This has nothing to do with turning Twitter around as a business.
It may have something to do with fostering freedom of expression globally.
It definitely confers a huge amount of power on the new owner and ensures no one can mute them.
Given the adversarial nature that Musk has with the current US administration, I expect an almost immediate regulatory action if this deal completes.
In that case, I wonder if the monetization will ultimately be based on latency and message size: pay more for your message to be sent from Mars in the next transmission, and pay more to send a larger message. Locally, I wonder if Twitter will be tied to starlink in some fashion.
If this does become some kind of interplanetary messaging system, I wouldn't be surprised if other technologies are built around it. Maybe Dorsey's decentralization attempt will be used as the infrastructure for the free tier of Twitter, and starlink is the infrastructure for the paid version (pay more to send faster, or to another planetary body).
Edit: I can imagine a rebuilt backend that's decentralized across large (planetary?) regions, where messages are just the tweet content & metadata and passed between nodes. Very efficient, and the non-technical user already has the right expectations.
I don‘t think so. That‘s why you get people posting screenshots of text, or 50 tweet threads including a link to a thread reader "unroll" service.
Many people want to use Twitter like a blog. But it is terrible for that use case.
It's so terrible that it must have been implemented this way on purpose.
They do share a great many similarities. Both seem incapable of logically structuring their content, but most of it consists of gibberish and made-up facts anyway.
A single tweet is so incredibly bloated and inefficient for transmission through space, that it would not have any chance of arriving uncorrupted on the other side.
"If you open that tweet in a browser, you'll see the page is 900 KB big. That's almost 100 KB more than the full text of The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s funny and enigmatic novel about the Devil visiting Moscow with his retinue (complete with a giant cat!) during the Great Purge of 1937, intercut with an odd vision of the life of Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ, and the devoted but unreliable apostle Matthew.
For a single tweet."
They'll even have netflix, if you think about it. Not youtube thought.
More seriously, I don't know why you assume Netflix would be accessible or a priority for settling on Mars - or that Youtube wouldn't be.
For live transmission I think signal issues will cause everything to need to be pre-buffered basically to completion so streaming is not a realistic thing to consider. For instance, twitch is probably just flat out unless we have some pretty insane developments in general data transmission reliability (probably including FTL data transmission which, who knows, might some day be possible through entanglement).
They just send one to Mars and it’s good to go.
In the context of interplanetary communication, sending the tweet from a server on mars to a server on earth would be a tiny packet containing a payload no bigger than the char limit, and some metadata. Browsing the website on earth would fetch from the servers on earth, and might still be 100KB, but no one cares about optimizing that bandwidth usage.
Idk if this is that much different from the original telegram at this point though. Sending tiny messages using limited bandwidth between two places. Eventually we'll widen that bandwidth sufficiently, it's just latency that probably won't ever surpass the speed of light. Also the problem of timestamping tweets when relativity is involved.
For example, my only means of accessing Twitter are either through the bloated Web UI, which is unusable on most of my devices, or through Nitter, which is read-only and sometimes doesn't work due to Twitter's API limitations.
Honestly, I stand by my estimation that interplanetary communication will probably primarily be done over email.
It's just helpful to discussion if we don't assume others are expressing the stupidest possible iteration of the ideas they describe.
If we could build a "bubbled" city on Mars, we could do it on Earth far more cheaply, it seems.
I'm not sure if that is the same case if a meteor strikes.
And it's easier to ignore people on another planet. Empathy does not survive distance, and on Earth even a wall is enough to remove empathy.
I haven't given much thought to this but managing earth time zones and other planet timezones is going to be a real PITA - obviously these are smaller issues.
I would have to imagine that interplanetary communication wouldn't be as frivolous as the stuff we waste energy on here currently as the deployment costs are much larger.
In a Vernon Vinge's novel, they used a kind of galaxy-wide Usenet.
I mean, yeah - my whole point is that's not far from what twitter is already. Musk is getting a social media platform full of users that's tailor-made for interplanetary latency.
Social media in general would be infeasible on an interplanetary scale.
The delay this introduced would have a social effect similar to time zones: "Oh the martians are caught up to event <x> and their reaction is <y>" instead of "Oh the Australians are waking up after event <x> happened today and their reaction is <y>."
I'm looking at this from the perspective of the user experience and the physics limitations, and I'm observing that they fit very well together.
The point is that a non technical user sees Twitter, fundamentally, as a place to send one way messages out, and to consume one-way incoming broadcast messages. And, crucially, the exact time of sending or receiving isn't a significant aspect of the UX.
You just log in and see what showed up in the queue over the last n minutes. If you want to say something, just send a message; you don't really care when it's received, because Twitter is fundamentally all about checking your feed whenever you feel like it, and 23 minutes latency is nothing.
The user experience fits the physics limitations. Who cares what the current implementation looks like.
Recently tweet limits were relaxed, but it still remains the normal to communicate "significant dialog" through image macros which are extremely unfriendly on transmission size and threaded discussions (multi-part tweets) tend to mesh very poorly with how the social features of twitter work, where certain chunks of the thread often get different levels of promotion leading to incomplete segments of the conversation being conveyed.
I don't really think twitter has any real advantage over any of the other social networks (outside of the explicitly image focused) except through its arbitrary payload limit which, as I mentioned, is no longer a firm limit and often comes with additional auxiliary payloads (like a linked image) to actually communicate - AFAIK the actual mechanics of how communication is executed isn't particularly well suited for this sort of lossy transmission, at least in any way that isn't matched by other social companies. It's much more likely, IMO, that mars based communication would just use emails since that transmission format already comes with the ability to embed images as needed and works well enough that it's survived decades of existence.
The current limit was not.
The limit was not chosen because it's particularly well aligned for interplanetary communication so I'm still confused as to why twitter is being touted as the best aligned social media platform.
Right, it was even more arbitrarily chosen based on stylistic preferences not any communication system constraint.
Well, it seems you had a notably unique idea. Your comment got presented on the Timcast, and a 20 minute clip containing it has over 90,000 views at the time of writing this comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyrf5wLit34
I think a lot of the child comments have very valid criticisms, particularly concerns with bloat and other existing character limitations often being more about managing the user experience than bandwidth constraints. But your comment's a magnified part of the conversation now, so we'll just have to see how the narratives develop and the nuts and bolts of "interplanetary twitter" and the "Elon Musk NeuraStarLink Space Dystopia" actually plays out.
IMO, it's still too early to really expect much of interplanetary anything. I would expect Twitter to reach the end of its lifecycle and be replaced by something new, and then for that new technology to reach the end of its lifecycle and be replaced with another new thing which might be ready for integration in interplanetary communication.
Notable too, I think we're seeing here news people sympathetic to the right wing looking for large, active, engaged "intelligentsia" social media alternatives to twitter to quote comments from that use chilling moderation strategies. Ones that aren't completely overrun and saturated by fringe far right content refugees. Hacker news is probably going to get quoted more often by those kinds of sources until its owners/operators feel like taking some Illuminati Deep State money or whatever. That is, if there's any of that money left.
Twitter earnings this quarter are a disaster. Elon find a way to pull out of the deal by not being able to secure financing. Twitter falls to 30 dollars.
I have some 48 USD call warrants. I was surprised to see them crash in value today. They showed some really weird behaviour.
Like Robert Malone or Silvano Trotta or Alex Berenson.
I remember the absolute smugness of people who trotted out that line when it suited their politics
> Politically incorrect (i.e. chan culture)
> Gender-critical (i.e. transphobia)
> Shitposter club (advertised as loosely moderated)
> Free speech extremist (not moderated)
> (Along with a meta server about new features for the platform itself)
Without judgement from the content of those spaces, I would argue that those are the exact kind of culture and content that people are worried will become rampant on Twitter. If someone doesn't like what Musk is hinting towards, this is the last space they would be interested in joining.
But they should be. "People" can have lots of reasons for wanting to leave twitter with Musk at its head - including but not limited to having a loose canon billionaire have control what can and cannot be said. On the fediverse, there's a lot more freedom. With this freedom comes people you'll agree with and those you won't.
-- Edit --
Actually, disregard the blue-check comment. I oversold it. A blue-check is actually not that important.
Instead, I think his ideas for blue check verification won’t happen because blue checks are unofficially a carrot that Twitter can hang for brands that spend on their ad platform.
> Notable people were using Twitter long before blue checks were a thing
True. Now that I think about it, I most definitely oversold it. Blue-check is a nice to have benefit but notable accounts are still today religiously using Twitter despite not being verified. I think I was focusing too much on the journalist clique on Twitter and their excessive desire for a blue-check.
Obviously anyone with a blue check is going to be inclined to defend the exclusivity of it, but that's the problem. There are also notable people who aren't verified because they didn't jump through Twitter's hoops to become verified.
Personally I'd like to see real human verification and filtering based on "real human" and I'd pay for something like Twitter Blue if it had this. Sam Harris recently interviewed Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) and he had a very interesting and related point which was free speech should be just for real humans, bots don't have such rights. Unfortunately it seems that there is Blue Checkmark land and then spam land for the rest of us. If it kills Twitter for certain people to lose their status symbol, well, it would have killed Twitter in the long run anyway by maintaining it.
EDIT: What I will be watching for is what Elon will do when freedom of speech is at odds with a big chunk of revenue. He is investing a boatload of money and at his philanthropic worst, he would like to break even in a few years.
*Coming in 5 years
Twitter employees can find employment elsewhere if they don't like their new boss. There's no shortage of people that want to work for Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Elon's other businesses. Twitter is no different.
It’s definitely against free speech, I’m with Musk on that one.
If he (or any other person) does something against some written/objective rule then sure ban him temporarily. But permabans should be only for posting illegal stuff.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
> due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
* Musk approached us and we decided it was the best thing for him to take over and join the board
* We have decided that the best way forwards will be for him not to join the board
* We have decided that we absolutely do not want to have Musk as owner
* We have decided to accept the offer to buy Twitter by Musk.
All of this is corporate bollocks and probably has very few useful lessons for us lesser mortals except that to succeed in business, truth and honesty does not add any value.
I wish we had an open forum on HN to call out all the times engineers have been fucked over in so many situations of acqui-hire-BS that has occurred.
I know I am not alone in having companies build entire revenue streams around my efforts and contributions and fucked me over in the end after I set them on the right trajectory with my efforts.
Its funny this came up, as while I was on my morning ride, I was lamenting about this very issue ;
I was calling back a memory from a few years ago while I was building the Salesforce offices throughout the US...
I had regular meetings with my CEO discussing my bonus. Which was to be about $30,000 for the completion of 50 Fremont in SF.
They used a tool to track contribution to the efforts, and I had a pretty little graph showing my bonus payout based on what I was doing...
(we were the technology designers for all their offices, I was the TPM who did the actual design, implementation, consultant and construction management of the LV/AV/IT/Sec/Facilities etc.. vendors et al - installed and configured every piece of networking equipment, maintained the IT project plan and etc....
I made this company millions.
After completing the Chicago office - I was told that the project was closing and that I would be laid off ( I did the work of a team )
and that my bonus was $2,000.
that "Salesforce hasn't paid us yet"
---
This company, was denigrated all over the bay area, and I was literally hired to clean up their mess at multiple locations. Hospitals, tech companies, etc...
They have a slimy sales and CEO, and while they seem all professional and moral etc.. they are not.
David and Ken, bless your heart, for helping keep psychopath archetypes alive and well.
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Because whenever Tesla has a huge accomplishment, people always come out of the woodwork and claim Elon is Not the founder and all he does is take credit for everyone else’s work.
I personally wouldn't give him credit for the great engineering done at tesla. It seems like he is good at hiring decent people, and when he gets out of their way, great things happen. When he gets involved (like with the absurd touchscreen console, no-LIDAR self-driving, and the "lights-off" factory idea) it goes wrong. Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
This is not really the case at all. Why are you just making stuff up?
Go look at between 2016 and 2018, by far the closest Tesla came to bankruptcy then at any time sine 2008.
So I'm looking at that data and there is no magical 200% stock price raise based on media.
What actually happened it Tesla managed to execute and bring a mass market vehicle market successfully.
> like with the absurd touchscreen console
Man somebody should have told the 1.5 million vehicles they will sell this year for 30% magin how stupid that is.
> no-LIDAR self-driving
That's why you can now anywhere in the US can jump on a self-driving LIDAR tax and buy a LIDAR self-driving car at your local dealer.
> and the "lights-off" factory idea
And now Tesla has some of the most advanced factories in the car industry where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able to produce vehicles as fast. What an idiot he is ...
> Musk is an amazing marketer and he deserves credit for that, but not for engineering work.
That is literally the opposite impression you get when you actually investigate anything other then twitter opinion.
Pretty much everybody who got to spend any time at Tesla or SpaceX comes away with the opposite impression. Musk literally spends the waste majority of his time in detailed engineering review meetings.
Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press, more then any other company I can think of. But Musk made the company successful with marketing?
What are you even talking about, what marketing? His twitter account and a TED interview or something every could of months? The viewer numbers on those things are far to low to explain Tesla value.
Source for that? And not the drone footage of one of Tesla's factories please.
>> Tesla had a gigantic amount of negative press
But this is still press, isn't it? And it is Musk that gets the negative press, not Tesla.
A lot of people are spouting short-seller crap from 2018. I suggest that they honestly look at where tesla is now, not when they last paid attention.
At the nearby Gruenheide factory outside of Berlin, Tesla is currently trucking along and set to achieve the goal of making an electric vehicle in under 10 hours. At this time, Volkswagen’s main Zwickau plant requires 30 hours per vehicle. Diess hopes to reduce that to 20 hours per vehicle by next year.
Conclusion: Neither Tesla nor VW are producing EVs in ten hours. And Zwickau is not a dedicated EV plant and needs rebuilding to become one. Interesting that we only get concrete numbers from VW, so. I have to admit, it is funny to see VW, which was the most marketing dependent car maker I know up until Tesla showed up, and Tesla to slug it out in a PR and marketing war!
EDIT: Zwickau wasn't a EV plant until 2020.
Tesla went from a company who had never manufactures anything in large quantity, 5 years later they are seriously comparing to VW a company that has been a globally dominate automaker for decades.
So look at Tesla in 2017 and say 'Musk is an idiot he thinks he can automate production' and then look at how Tesla produces cars in 2022 and tell me he is an idiot.
From publicly available footage, a Tesla factory looks not any more impressive, even less so from commentary that knows much about automotive manufacturing than I do, than state of the art factories from legacy coomoanues.
Tesla and SpaceX are impressive feats, I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
You may want to true up your perceptions.
On Ford - "The Detroit automaker sold 1,905,955 vehicles in 2021, ending up behind new U.S. leader Toyota Motor Corp (7203. T) and rival General Motors Co (GM. N). Ford had sold 2,044,744 vehicles a year earlier.Jan 5, 2022"
VW (not including sub-brands, which are managed and mostly built separately): 4,896,900
It's worth noting both of those companies production is failing, while Tesla is increasing 50% YoY.
https://www.hotcars.com/largest-car-manufacturers/
Statista has similar numbers.
Edit: Turned out it was more like 2017 numbers... This source here has 9.5 million units for Toyota, 8.8 million for VW, both after steep drops in 2020. Ford is down to 3.9 million, I am honestly surprised by this. But then I undersetimated the drop in car deliveries in 2020.
https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-manufacture...
We will have a few really large groups, VW, Toyota, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance. GM has also lost a gigantic amount of vehicle volume in the last 10 years. There will likely be even more consolidation.
In general volume is going down and because of supply issues its not going up as much as people thought this year.
> Because he gives a fuck about first pass yield and those things.
Do you mean he doesn't? Anyway whatever you are trying to say, fact is Tesla is producing a lot of vehicles, they are a major automaker, they are growing fast, and they have industry leading margins.
> Plus, Tesla is still almost a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota and the like.
What an absurd argument is that? So do you think BMW, Daimler and co are also all shit at manufacturing? Because they don't make as many cars as VW either.
So in your mind, only if Tesla creates the largest car company in the world he can be considered good at manufacturing? You realize that is a totally absurd position right?
Tesla went from selling a few 100 vehicles 10 years ago to likely outproducing BMW and Geely in 2023. That means they had continues massive growth curve for 10+ years straight.
If you compare the output of individual plants, Tesla plant in Shanghai is easily one of the most productive car plants in the world and that is the first plant that Tesla ever even built.
> I don't get the urge to pass Tesla and Musk as all encompassing geniusus that know everything better than encumbents.
That not the argument anybody made. Tesla is not better at everything. But they are actually very good and anybody that still thinks of Tesla in 2017 is just stuck in time. In some important they are actually better, body structure, electronics, battery integration is just ahead of everybody else.
If you want to dislike Tesla and Musk that's fine, but your arguments about him being and idiot and Tesla being depended on marketing just don't have a bases in reality.
- 2016 - model 3 preorders with no backing except a drawing.
- 2018 - cybertruck, semi, and full-self-driving preorders with one single prototype of the vehicles.
- And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering. A CEO spending a lot of time in detailed engineering reviews doesn't make you an engineer, it means you enjoy doing detailed engineering reviews.
It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter. That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
Its not hyperbool is literally just false.
The stock price in 2018 was essentially flat.
The stock price in 2016 is flat.
You made an argument about 200% and at best its like a few %, meaning your argument is total nonsense. Literally made up with nothing to back it up.
And even if the stock went up a bit based on announcement, that doesn't even remotely prove that that stock raised 'saved' the company.
> These are feats of marketing, not feats of engineering.
No what are actually feats of engineering, and actually had impact on the stock price is when Tesla from 2017 to 2018 made the first EV that was produced over 5000 times a weak and had significantly possessive margin. And when they turned a mud field in China in to a working factory in about a year.
That is when the stock ACTUALLY started to go up. When Tesla proved they could produce cars at very high volume and good margin.
So you are just flat out factually wrong on this and I don't know why you are trying to hold on to your take. The data is right their anybody can look up the data and instantly know that you are wrong about this.
> It is undeniable that Tesla is successful in large part because of the cult of personality that Musk has built, largely on Twitter.
That is just total nonsense. Tesla successful brought the first modern Li-Ion EV to market before Musk was famous. Even when the Model S came out Musk was not very well known. Actually releasing the Model S successfully and getting car of the year is part of why Musk did get more famous.
So Tesla already had like 5 years of growth before Musk got all that well known. Also, you vastly overrated, twitter, far fewer user, use it then you might think.
People were attacked to Tesla because they made actual real EV that you could buy, that had a charging network. Tesla had a message about EV saving the environment and that message reached 100x wider then Musk twitter. People don't spend 50k+ on items because of a guy on twitter.
> That has bought his company the good grace to do preorders with ridiculous turnaround times and to lose money year over year on the stock market while keeping an astronomical valuation.
Well turns out they very actually undervalued not overvalued. And they didn't actually lose that much money, and didn't raise that much money.
They showed they were profitable with the Model S and they were a sustainable company. Then they went into Model 3 and everybody knew this was capital intensive and they guided for loses for a few years.
Do yourself a favor and compare how much money Tesla raised and what their evaluation is compared to companies that are in this space now, Rivian, Lucid and so on.
Tesla actually operated handled their cash very well and did a lot with not that much money.
> The rest of Tesla-the actual car making thing-is something that an organization of several thousand engineers could have certainly done without Elon Musk given the amount of cash they had, and probably could have done better without Elon Musk. They just needed Elon Musk to raise the cash.
And who heirs the engineers? Who defines strategy? Who decides what people should have leadership positions and so on. Tesla was not a company with 1000s of engineers when Tesla became CEO, its was a company about to go bust who had not delivered a single car.
This is HN, building a company from tiny to gigantic is a huge achievement that doesn't just 'happen'.
There were Tesla competitors many had just as much or more cash then Tesla, but they failed. Why? I thought if company just had money they would magically start mass produce cars.
> He is exactly like Steve Jobs: a briliant marketer with a cult of personality, who people think of as an "inventor" because he likes to spend time doing that.
That you think they are the same just proves that you have not really been paying attention beyond surface level. They are very different in their approach. And with both its not actually marketing.
Being an "engineer at heart" is part of his marketing game, just like it was for Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs. Also, being an engineer at heart doesn't make someone a good engineer. Tesla has accomplished incredible feats of engineering, but that doesn't mean that _Elon Musk_ has accomplished them. Also, the fact that Elon Musk is an incredible marketer shouldn't be taken as a dig: he is clearly the best marketer of his generation and Tesla undeniably would have failed without him. It's when he or his followers get fantasies about Elon Musk being brilliant at everything that I get upset.
As to credibility as an engineer, let's look at the other examples of Musk's engineering work (the ones we know _Elon Musk himself_ was responsible for):
* The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering. Musk personally wrote the "white paper" for it. He wrote that white paper because the California legislature was proposing high speed rail from LA to SF (that would be a ridiculous waste of money), and he didn't like their proposal.
* The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
I have no problem with Tesla and I hope they become a successful car company. There is a good chance that my next car 3-5 years from now will be a Tesla if the company proves itself capable of surviving a bear market and the quality issues go away. Musk has been great for Tesla in the growth phase, but they may need a new CEO for the next stage of life.
This old sad meme again.
Do you mean he is not a technically certified engineer? Because a lot of people are not that but go into engineering, specially in software.
What would you suggest qualifies somebody as an engineer?
Musk studied physics and was was accepted as PhD student for material science at Standford. Many people from that path go into engineering fields. Musk didn't finish his work on ultracaps and instead created a software company where he was the main software engineer. He actually wrote the code and lead the team of coders at a company that sold for 20+ million. Does that not count as engineering?
And Elon did actually work on the actual Falcon 1 rocket. Both on design and on the actual hardware.
He is not the Chief Engineer in name only. He does what a Chief Engineer does. He is in every technical review meeting with senior engineering leaders and make top level decisions, he defines the strategy and direction of the engineering work. He fundamentally makes a the choice of material/manufacturing process and so on, and takes responsibility if it doesn't work out.
There are plenty of domain experts who have interacted with Elon who have talked about how he actually has the knowlage to talk with all the engineers about domain specific details in those peoples field. And those people were not working at Musk companies.
> * The hyperloop is a ridiculous concept that defies physics and engineering.
Funny then as it was validated by engineering teams of both Tesla and SpaceX with the best simulation tools available in the industry at the time. Please tell me what defies physics.
> * The boring company makes tunnels. They are not particularly cheap or fast to dig, unless you compare their tunnels to tunnels several times the diameter (as Elon Musk does in his marketing material).
Well the bought a commercial tunnel boring machine to start of at. So of course those are not faster. But the point of the company is to make it faster. Are you suggesting that they have made their next generation tunnel boring machines slower then currently commercially available designs?
Where do you get your knowlage about tunneling prices and speed? Do you have some sort of internal knowlage about cost from the boring company?
The Boring Company just raised 600M$ but so I guess at least some investors who look at the tech don't think its trash.
Musk's RDF in full effect here.
That quotation was about quality control - and Tesla's relatively abysmal QC compared to other production lines.
VW's CEO said that an average VW took nearly 30 hours to come off the line, versus approximately 10 for Tesla.
He also said that they're targetting 20 hours in the next decade. Huh. They're not even trying to beat Tesla, there. Wonder why? Maybe it's so they don't deliver cars with mismatched tires, leaking sunroofs, _missing brakepads_, and so on.
I think it's hilarious that people like you believe with a straight face that a $250B/year production line hasn't fired up a spreadsheet and done the numbers on costs of "implement another line, so we can spend more time on each car and push more out in parallel" (VAG manufactured 8.4M vehicles in 2021 versus 900K for TMC), than "hey, if we just cut some more corners, and deal with things after the fact, it'll be cheaper".
And the claim that you need 10h for quality control is utterly ridiculous. The reason they likely are not targeting a lower number is because their production centers are far more distrusted and they don't have full vertical integration from battery cells to cars in one building.
There are other possible explanation. You can't just assert whatever you want without any evidence at all.
If VW has a higher quality standard then Tesla (questionable) then that fine. That literally changes nothing about my argument about production argument.
And Tesla quality issues have been far less in Shanghai were they have faster production then in Fremont. We have yet to see if Berlin will have production issues.
And outside of VW or whatever. Its unquestionable that Tesla made major gains in manufcaturing that is a competitive advantage. So the claim that Musk is dumb because he wanted to increase automation or simply wrong.
The idea that they cut 20h of production by 'cutting corners' is just a delusional take. Sorry. If that was possible do you think GM would not have done that in the 2000s. Do you think Nissan wouldn't have done it?
Tesla first attempt at that automation was wrong, but they adjusted and actually did make real innovations. Denying that is just making you look silly and uninformed.
I think we're approaching a point in the lifespan of Tesla where is can stand on its own merit and no longer requires Musk to continue making a ridiculous amount of money. However, Musk is integral to the continued innovation and success, the same as Steve Jobs was to Apple. Under Tim Cook, Apple continued to thrive, albeit in a different way.
Regardless, no way will Musk run Twitter on a day-to-day basis, he'll remove the board, replace the CEO with someone he trusts, likely get Jack involved again, and a lot of developers will leave, leaving the company in a better position financially. Musk will likely just guide functionality and policy decisions from afar.
I don’t eat at McDonalds, but that doesn’t make me think they’re going to collapse. In fact they’re likely successful for precisely for the reasons I don’t eat there.
Define "worst tendencies", because most people agree that "doxxing" and calls to violence are unacceptable but the left has just labeled all speech that they disagree with as "violence" or "misinformation" and just banned it all. I think musk has a good pulse on the dividing line that is most appropriate and that having the wrong opinion on the definition of a man, who won the last presidential election, and whether or not a vaccine is "safe or effective" have no business being censored by the cretins currently running twitter.
Literally what is this based on.
Tesla was going straight into the shitter, Musk took over and now its a trillion $ company. How do you explain that?
Fundamentally, his beef with Twitter seems to be around their speech policies and maybe some missing site features. He doesn't need to be even close to full time to resolve those. He just has to find a tech CEO who agrees with his values and who can execute when given a clear mission. There are plenty of those kicking around the Bay Area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Denholm
They also have over 100,000 employees. How much can Musk really be involved in?
Tesla is pretty much on full self driving now, it's basically blue chip and not going anywhere. Yes the trillion $ market cap is due in large part to him.
>Musk is already spread thin, now he’s so unfocused and undisciplined that he’s unable to stop himself from buying an irrelevant social media company as an expensive hobby. It’s the height of hubris.
I couldn't disagree more. He's the richest person in the world, he's so tremendously successful whatever attributes that you want to apply to him is literally only something to learn from. Hubris? Overconfidence? He's basically the world's first trillionaire. He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
I get why he's buying twitter and it's not about it being a hobby. Sure babylon bee was a catalyst but basically he sees the societal value of twitter. He sees the damage that twitter is doing through their political censorship. By fixing these problems it will provide tremendous value to twitter. He's going to benefit greatly with the purchase.
What?
That figure doesn't include spacex/starlink, boring company, etc.
Spacex has gross revenues in the billions, 12,000 employees. Not to mention... ISS basically is Russian or Spacex launches to get there and back. With Ukraine... that makes Spacex the only option? What's the intrinsic value there?
What valuation would you give SpaceX? Their only real competitor right now is Russia and people dislike them.
Lets say you're right. How did you come to a $80 billion valuation for spacex? The last valuation in 2021 was $100 billion. So spacex has lost value in your eyes? Starlink has happened since. Ukraine happened since.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
What he really did say is a bit more complicated:
> "The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch"
The irony is modern democracy with free speech, where the scale of your wealth directly transfers to the scale of your speech, makes the wealthy just as powerful as they would be in any standard oligarchy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_...
Is it the goal ? To be the richest ? Amazing perspective for our world ahead, let people amass cash, it's going to go _great_
>he's right every time
Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit. In the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
No, Elon understands money unlike most people. Money is not a thing to anyone except the poor. Money is not a measurement of being able or not to do anything. In understanding that you generate wealth that is beyond money.
>Except when he bets on camera only FSD, causes deaths, pushes the Hyperloop, does the Vegas Loop, calls people who reject him pedophiles, pushes Starship, pushes absolutely terrible working conditions for both factory workers and engineers, and an unending list of Elon bullshit.
Controversial guy eh. Crazy how much society is rewarding him so much.
>n the same way, is he "right" when Tesla only exists because of credits from the state (which he then complains about when the state asks him to respect the law), when SpaceX only exists because the US has kept it afloat, when he was kicked out of Paypal for being a dumbass, when he threatens our spacefaring possibilities with bullshit pride projects such as Starlink, when his stocks are propped up with his lies and just his personality ? Sure. Must be nice to live in the Musk Reality Distortion Field. Be real. He's not a hero.
I agree, a certain political persuasion really dislikes him.
Ah. The red pill argument. I’m surprised I didn’t connect these dots more clearly until now.
You worship a false god.
They didn't "come off", they absolutely are. Don't really care about being downvoted.
Am I right to say that Elon is not going to dinner with you?
> He has had how many doubters along the way and he's right every time?
So the robo-taxis have released on time as promised at the end of 2020 then as he suggested.
I think this is hilarious.
"I can't run my company because a lawyer is meant to review my tweets so that I don't commit securities violations".
"I can't be involved with my company because the SEC is investigating my brother and I for insider trading".
This is horseshit. If this is the case, and I doubt it, it's entirely because he is trying to martyr himself, not because of any actuality of the "fight with the SEC". The SEC doesn't give two shits about the efficiency of his production lines, his plans to open a new battery production facility, or whatever. Let's stop the narrative that the evil bad SEC is stopping Musk from innovating to move humanity forward.
A guy who has managed to lead multiple startup companies to huge companies for literally decades threw multiple economic crisis. He is one of the longest running CEO in the auto industry.
Its just amazing to me how people focus so much on 'omg look at how he manages social media' compared to 'simple looking at the actual record of the companies he leads'.
People said the same thing about Neurolink and the Boring Company. And yet neither SpaceX nor Tesla have suffered.
That said, I'm against it too. I just think that the idea that this will collapse Tesla is not realistic.
And both failed.
Risky businesses are risky.
How has Boring Company failed? They've successfully opened the Vegas loop, have a pitch to open a similar project in (I believe) Miami? And now they're looking at building a Hyperloop 'in the coming years'.
Like who are you convincing with this nonsense?
It literally takes 5s of googling to show that you are totally full of shit.
Boring Company just raised 600$+ million $. And is hiring lots of new engineers. They have multiple projects in the pipeline.
So we have a company that is growing and has costumers in the pipeline. Their first costumer is so happy that they want to extend the system considerably.
But that I guess is not enough either?
What more do you want other then happy costumers, new costumers and the ability to raise money on the bases of those things?
This is a company that builds actual machines. They make their own tunnel boring equipment. That is a capital intensive businesses not a software startup. They need to raise money to expand production.
Yes, Tesla bought SolarCity, the rest is just a bunch of nonsense. One can argue that, this sale didn't work out as well expected.
But if that is really the worst think you can come of with, it pretty sad.
Musk got rich off of PayPal. But lets be clear, he "lead" it for less than four months before being fired as the CEO for gross incompetence.
He was fired because he wanted to keep it and had a very aggressive growth plan.
The other people just wanted to cash out.
He was not fired about incompetence, he was fired because of disagreements about strategy.
So maybe it was more about Elon.
And if you invest your money into Musk companies you would now be far, far, far, far richer then anything you would have invested into any of the other PayPal founders companies (or Ebay or PayPal).
Revenue will continue to increase, but at a slowing rate.
Stock price correction != company collapse.
Twitter allows users to select unwanted tweets and say ‘not relevant to me.’
Allowing people to set there own filters seems like a better option to me. Also, Twitter could have a standard set of filters that users could choose from.
Prepare for a new Twitter cryptocurrency that is based on verified humans, and instantly has more users than any others out there.
The price he paid to be able to do that is a steal.
The difference with Elon is that’s he’s actually in a position to do something about it.
To me it feels like twitter or something better should simply be a DAO. What are the chances of that?
Clearly folks w/ ASD have incredible super powers, and in Elon's case, he feels he take a hard problem: ie, how to provide "freedom" of speech in every country, while adhering to that country's laws, and provide more transparency, better UX, and decrease the spam/botfest.
and with the help of other experts in this field, solve it. Sure why not. But solving social media and all its nuances, psychological challenges, per culture, is not the same as solving manufacturing or space expansion..IMHO.
It requires, I feel a different set of skills ( soft-skills ) which you just dont read about, but embody yourself to a major degree.
So for example he was asked recently here at this TEDx : https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM?t=1477
"how would you solve the Edit button problem? If someone tweeted "Elon Rocks" and then it was retweeted by millions..and then they changed it to "Elon Sucks" and everyone is embarrassed. How would you avoid changing a meaning so retweeters are not exploited"
his response:
1- I would have Editing() be available for a short time only. 2 - I would Zero out all retweets and favorites.
His solution, is very 'systems-thinking', and im sure comes from his personal social-skill biases 'super powers'. Which seems fine on some level, but also opens up another debate on the benefits of keeping a record or not.
But let's say that in the end, his psy-ops team of scientists take a vote and tell him that 50% of them feel we should not Zero-out ( because X, Y, Z ) and he ends up being the tie-breaker, and dictates that he prefers a more non-human/empathetic solution that would be more appropriate for his Ai's educational training.. or simply his personal social algo/taste.
But 'managing' communities is one thing, managing the MOTHER of all communities globally across cultural differences is another.
IMH(biased)O the person filling that role should have DEEP social super powers, instead of deep neurological inabilities to effectively socialize and communicate. The chances for success is way higher, but hey he could be an outlier too, I just wouldn't bet on it.
Even so, it might be a commercial success if they can keep the advertisers on board. But if mainstream advertisers panic and pull out then they're going to have push a lot of gun/porn/crypto/whatever ads to keep the lights on. And that may work, or it may turn into the biggest act of wealth destruction in history.
I wonder how much of Musk's $23B Tesla bonus is going into the purchase.
Twitter premium API pricing right now is ~$0.25/call. How about $0.01/call?
- Peter Thiel, 2025.
That's my hot take.
> Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction
Isn't there an arbitrage profit here of ~$3 per stock or something? Am I completely nuts or is it a sure thing to throw literally all money at twitter right now haha.
But share holders appear to be happy to take the cash and make that Elon Musk's problem. That tells you all about the level of confidence they have in the current leadership.
To me, this is historically important news of the ‘interesting’ variety. I’m not sure where this is taking us, but it surely will be interesting.
Guess this will put a dent into the whole "limit fake news on social media" push we've had recently, at least in the US (which some people will of course argue was ill-fated to begin with).
Together with his "subscription model" ideas, Twitter is toast.
This is a great business opportunity for someone who wants to put together an alternative. Maybe a micro-blogging protocol open to all instead? Usetwitnet?
There is a difference between choosing who to follow, who to mute, who to block and Twitter deciding these things for you. He's advocating the former, not the latter.
How long until it becomes a dumpster fire like FB
- Delete it
Also, social media is now an attack vector for misinformation from hostile foreign adversaries. How will he fight that?
Trump has only ever posted a single time on Truth Social, a generic coming soon message, and it probably wasn't even him. He doesn't give a shit about it. He doesn't even know its name, apparently: https://www.businessinsider.com/video-shows-trump-struggling... It's best to think of Trump's role with Truth Social as a disinterested mascot. Even your basic paid shill would be doing a much better job of promoting/using it.
Trump loves Twitter, and would be back on it in a flash if allowed to do so.
There's no leaving Twitter, in my opinion. Its the only game in town. That said, I sincerely hope there is a fracture here. An ecosystem with many smaller platforms seems far healthier to me.
My conspiracy theory is that Musk is buying Twitter mainly so he can extort Trump for something in exchange for readmitting him. Like telling his base to buy Teslas.
I don't think it will be that obvious/simple. Tax breaks, anti-union laws, incentives to build new plants in red states... or something even smaller will be all it takes.
That could be the end of Twitter.
Full 180 and probably shouldn’t use an argument you don’t believe in to help make your point if you are on the receiving end of that joke.
Just trying to enjoy the ride on by this one…
I’m still much more concerned with the on-demand Ludovico Technique / aversion therapy device TikTok is using on kids.
If anything comes from this Twitter mix up and supposed transparency — hopefully some algo literacy. Just not a healthy way to be informed through a click bait anger machine designed for engagement.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4woPg0-xyAA&t=3m10s
Aka, don’t ever tune in and tune out!
And having seen the arc of many social media sites with "libertarian" moderation, I'm firmly in that camp.
I mean, Hacker News would not be what it is today without firm-handed moderation.
However, I see similar commentary of "anybody who supports inclusive language is just giving stupid prizes to weenies" or something like that. This, by contrast, is fine.
It may be just that dang disagreed with my tone, or never saw the latter, or just thinks this is "my bias", or simply the large number of comments posted (which is kind of a natural effect of being heavily opposed -- agreement with the consensus on this site is intrinsically quieter than disagreement). I don't know.
Either way, their site, their prerogative. Either way, I'm trying not to get into politics on this site anymore.
I thought you were gonna say when Americans are the ones doing it. (I think you mean the opposite, when non-Americans are flaming the US - let me know if I misunderstood you.)
I see far more toxicity allowed about China and (recently) Russia than about the US. I've even seen misinformation allowed in the titles of posts (which are usually heavily moderated to remove even hyperbole, much less misinformation), when the target is Russia.
This only reinforces your "Dang is not without his biases" point though. As a (presumed) political leftie, he's probably more inclined than the average US-ian to allow self-criticism of the US. But as an American in the first place, he's inevitably imbibed some of the caricature of places like China and Russia, and likely doesn't even see the toxic flaming of them for what it is. You see the first bias as the one stands out, while for me the latter is the one that seems visible and obvious.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/04/08/musk-twitt...
"Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication."
...said a multi-millionaire in a newspaper owned by a multibillionaire.
There were also hundreds of notable comments and dozens of articles to that end across the usual websites. People should stop doubling down on their lies and just admit that their past positions weren't based on any real principles.
I don't think that was ever Ellen Pao's position. What you've done is taken two groups of people:
* People think that twitter is private and should do whatever it wants (hence can moderate if they like),
* People that think twitter has a big public influence and therefore has a responsibility to act in a certain way (ie, moderate a certain amount)
And claimed that these two positions are in opposition and therefore hypocritical. But there is no hypocrisy because they're not the same people, they just disagree.
A straightforward reading of that tweet is "It's a private company, they can remove hate and harassment if they want."
Her WaPo editorial from 2.5 weeks ago argues that even though the First Amendment exists, the government should force Twitter to remove hate from their platform.
One could simply turn the charge of hypocrisy back on Ellen Pao - if she cares so much about the first Amendment (see the tweet that preceded the one I linked), why does she want the government to regulate speech on social media?
All of these channels are controlled by rich people. Who is controlling the lobbyists? Who is financing political parties/campaigns. This is the cost of oligarchy. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't know how we get out of this spiral. I think a huge tax on digital ad revenue would help make these channels more organic and less contentious but I really don't know.
Why is everybody assuming we are all hypocrites who are 100% in support of the status quo?
They can do whatever they want with Twitter, but I don't have to use it. Which is exactly what everyone complaining about "censorship" on Twitter was told as well. If Musk wants to make Twitter more hospitable to trolls and harassers, then they're welcome to go annoy each other in their new paradise.
Thanks for the idea
your threads are more so focused on the threat of more bigoted stuff
I’m focused on how it would be a hilarious meme factory, amplifying the amusement park that twitter already is to 4chan levels of entertainment, while inheriting a much better more modern interface than 4chan if they tweak twitter just a little more
Yeah that comes with crazy, I’m looking forward to it. I really like that “but muh advertisers dictate what I do” goes away when reducing the options for advertisers. This could be a big and lulzworthy shakeup for the overton window.
I always find myself laughing at the speed and meme preparedness of the respondents though. Twitter has some of that but it really pales in comparison.
People will just have to find a different forum if they want something else shrug
I really like the potential for Elon to tell advertisers to pound sand since he wouldnt need to impress shareholders with the idea of ad revenue growth, and many people and organizations will still see the value of advertising there.
I'd like to buy an Internet Experience without memes.
There's no world in which Musk is going to be anti-trolling. The dude literally started this whole thing BY TROLLING.
I'm mostly unsure if I trust Musk, someone I associate with unfiltered mental garbage intended to en(r|g)age on Twitter to lead the vanguard to moderate out any of that.
It guess it is like Media Literacy where a person is able to contextualize the info they read about in a bigger picture sense.
The second someone — especially a kid — opens TikTok / social media, they are essentially granting access and unlocking their mind for someone else to cram as much information as possible into it.
The Clockwork Orange example is just a reference of mixing that concept with emotional videos and high screen time. The whole idea is not new and it has serious impact on your behavior and sense of self.
Social media is easy to blame for problems but it would be better if people learned to guard themselves a bit.
I haven't used TikTok myself but I have observed others using it and it certainly feels a lot more fast-paced and saturated compared to Instagram (which for me already feels like that anyway).
I often am told certain things that might or might not be true, but are often couched in true things. The one i heard the other day was a long list of mandela effects, now some of them were true, but often had context around them that wasn't given ... e.g. Pikachu not having the black stripe on its tail, that could easily have context with regards to time that picture was used, lore in pokemon..etc. but it's reduced to a far more simple "fact"
"it's a private company they can do what they want" is a response to the right-wing claim that moderation is somehow illegal. It isn't, and it still isn't. Online forums are allowed to moderate as much or as little as they want to.
Moderation isn't illegal. Reduced moderation also isn't illegal. I hold the the opinion that some moderation is preferable to no moderation, and I am disappointed that this move may lead to a reduction in moderation and an increase in spam and trolling on the platform. That's not hypocrisy.
Noone was saying what they were doing was illegal, they were saying they didn't like what was happening and perhaps it should be illegal.
So people said "it's a private company, go make your own Twitter".
Turns out the network effect is hard to overcome, so the solution is new management.
It is not a violation of your first amendment rights for me to refuse to lend you a megaphone. In fact the opposite is true, if the government compelled me to give you my megaphone, that would be a violation of my free speech rights by compelling association.
People who used to say "increasing moderation on twitter is good and legal" now say "decreasing moderation on twitter is bad, but legal". Those are not contradictory.
Every dispute of Twitter's moderation you read was claiming it was illegal?
Like every single comment? Would you like to link to those comments on here? I can go to a thread and find plenty of arguments of people saying it should be illegal.
I have to think that you aren't arguing in good faith because that's such a ridiculous statement.
edit: I picked a random thread and found this exchange immediately:
We have Gates, who is seemingly using his philanthropic money shenanigans disguised as for the public good, while ensuring every single move is 100% profit driven only... and winding up an evil figure from such
We have Musk's fanciful and awe inspiring feats of enterprise and business acumen, and the glowing admiration from imaginations of our future futurists...
Yet, both cut from the same cloth, just orthogonal threads.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1518645588350361602?...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518623997054918657?s=20...
1. Those who are active on Twitter; and
2. Those who don't and don't even scroll through it.
The first group seems to think this buyout is the most pressing issue of our generation. The latter just doesn't care.
I honestly just don't care about Twitter. The only people who "engage" in Twitter are those with a decent number of followers and they're, by definition, a small minority (of the small minority who use Twitter). For the remainder that read Twitter, it's really interchangeable with Facebook or Reddit or whatever. Like Twitter disappearing overnight would (IMHO) have very little impact.
My prediction here is that Elon will take it private, realize the "problems" aren't really problems or are incredibly hard to solve and then after a couple of years there'll be some face-saving reorganization and the whole thing will get made public again, probably for a net total loss.
Luckily (thus far) there's a pretty limited market for conservatives crying about censorship of hate speech masquerading as free speech.
I will for sure delete my account.
I can't wait for twitter to become another Parler or 4-chan filled with hateful content.
As someone impacted by this kind of speech, I don't see how this is any different than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
We are essentially normalizing ideas that will lead to violence and oppression of certain groups.
You'll be horrified by this one eighteenth-century document.
More seriously, if Twitter becomes 4chan, won't it become as popular as 4chan? Sewers aren't popular places to hang out.
Don't worry. Whole MSM bash white people and they are ok.
You will be fine.
One solution is to charge users $1 to tweet. Charge users with over 10k followers 1k a month per 10k to Tweet to their followers.
Its a PR machine, not a news source. Treat it like one and its value will both rise and fall...
News, as its meant in the lexicon, is factual based reporting. Twitter is the opposite. Its a hodgepodge of everything. You have to mine the data to find the gems.
Very few people (percentage of the pop) are on Twitter. People hear about Twitter via other media's amplification. So on its own, its a small platform with oversized influence.
As much as the rats don't know where to jump for alternatives perhaps it's better to just sit on the sinking boat to see how far it goes before it has completely sunk or whatever refloats their boat.