Hacker News Reader

Comment by RetpolineDrama | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

This won't be a popular take because it's mostly nonsense. But the harm that the current owner of Twitter is foisting on the employees is very real and well documented.

Twitter actively harmed hundreds of millions (billions?) of people via coordinated mass censorship and manipulation. A lot of these people should be in jail, so getting off with "having to find a new job" is pretty freakin generous.

Look at the replies here, most people don't even deny that the crime occurred. They just think it was "worth it" to filter things like racism.

As someone who is entirely out of the loop, can you list out these crimes with some sources? Thanks!

Such as...

I have yet to see a rational claim by an ex employee of actual harm that was outside the bounds of US law, or individual contract.

Many of the wider claims (such as violation of WARN) have been disproven .

If this was a class action lawsuit it would likely be dismissed or not even allowed to form. AFAIK they didn't violate any laws.

The cause of action is, essentially, Twitter violated its contracts with its employees. That is sufficient grounds for a class action, assuming the contracts and the nature of the violation is reasonably standard among the class.

YSK that lawsuits are not only about breaking laws. Contracts and torts are civil cases, not criminal cases.

Just gonna quote my favorite philosopher, Stannis the Mannis: "A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward."

I agree

Here's an even less popular take: as someone just casually browsing twitter, it seems to work pretty much the same or slightly better than it used to, with the same (or slightly better) content. The fact that they achieve this with one quarter (!) or so [*] of their previous headcount is truly amazing, and more interesting than some of the other takes media tries to spin on it.

[* by some accounts one tenth -- this is even more amazing if true]

I see a lot more hate, election-denying, conspiracy, racist, sexist tweets.

I guess, for some people, this is an achievement.

Funny, I don't see any such tweets. Literally zero. Perhaps you're following the wrong accounts?

Freedom of speech can be scary I know!

Like when Elon started taking down a ton of posts at the behest of the Indian and Turkish governments? Or when he said "comedy is now legal on Twitter" and then suspended parody accounts? Or when he suspended accounts that tweeted public information for "doxxing" and then asked his 100m+ followers to identify someone in a video? Or when he banned people for posting links to competing social networks? Or when he made searches for "substack" return results for "newsletter"?

It's exhausting to have to reiterate this constantly growing list every time this comes up. Free speech doesn't have to exist on private platforms and that's okay! We can stop pretending he cares about it!

So your concern is not freedom of speech, it's that the speech is being regulated in a way you don't want?

I don’t really have a concern. I’m just telling you that whatever’s happening over at Twitter? It’s not freedom of speech.

Talking over other people and being throttled down is not censorship. Being talked over, is censorship.

Trolls don't have to be right, just louder. Their goal (from my perspective) is to pollute the information space. With large enough volume and noise, this seeks to invalidate all information. "If you can't be right, at least the other person won't be heard"

I suppose if that's the kind of thing you go looking for it's what you will see. I actually see a lot less hate on Twitter. I struggle to see how there could be more than there was in its prime, since that was most of the content.

It does have a lot less technical content now though, and that has decreased its value for me.

The "prioritize bluetick replies" has really benefited a lot of the nastier reply guys who show up to put hate under certain topics.

I find that fascinating because I deleted a ten-year-old account attached to my Real Name because of how quickly what it showed me degraded after he purchased it. I'd say 80% of that was from the elevation of blue checks to the top of every thread, 10% of it was seeing his dumb-assed tweets no matter how hard I tried to avoid them, and 10% of it was recommending people I absolutely did not want to see.

I almost half agree. It's definitely less stable than before, but it's holding up impressively well for how much smaller the staff is.

The content is unambiguously worse though. I had to block Elon himself to keep the "for you" page sane (though I mostly stick to my "following" timeline anyway), and the replies to any moderately large account are a dumpster fire of people who paid for visibility. Those tweets are substantially more racist and less thoughtful than before, and are also prone to conspiracy thinking nonsense. His changes to the verified system are already awful for usability, and are getting worse as he imposes more dumb ideas.

It is important to keep in mind that while this works for you, many users do not want slightly more racist content. Some prefer much more racist content. And some even prefer a little less.

For me, Twitter has come to life, since Musk took over. It’s definitely more lively and it’s great to see conservative voices given the same freedom to express themselves as leftwing voices.

The world will be more harmonious if we allow the left and right to debate openly, rather than trying to divide and segregate society along political lines.

Musk did a vital thing with Twitter 2.0. Long may it continue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com