[HN Gopher] Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer - sources
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer - sources
Author : marban
Score : 1847 points
Date : 2022-04-25 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| edison112358 wrote:
| I suspect Dorsey is coming back to run it and Elon just bought
| it. Given Dorsey's comments about how toxic the board was I think
| this is the ideal situation.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Any machine learning experts out there willing to weigh in on
| what they expect to see if Musk does open-source the algorithms
| used in Twitter's individualized recommendation and overall top-
| ranking systems? What kind of datasets are used to train these
| machine-learning models? What's their technology stack like
| anyway?
|
| 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.
| billiam wrote:
| My life will get a lot better when I abandon the platform the
| second this deal goes through. It's just the last reason, not the
| first.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I leave the apps uninstalled, and only look at it when bored at
| home. no need to look at this throughout the day.
| Splendor wrote:
| Same here. I've had an account since 2007. This will be the
| thing that nudges me far enough to delete my account.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Why wait until it goes through? Make your life better now.
| parenthesis wrote:
| I will become a Musk fanboi if he reverts twitter to allowing
| unlimited reading without being logged in.
| oxplot wrote:
| uhhhh, Tesla, SpaceX, and everything else didn't do it for you,
| but not having to sign in to read a website, will?!!!!!
| thehappypm wrote:
| I honestly can't believe how bad the experience is. I click a
| link and can't read the tweet without logging in. So they're
| making it difficult for end users to view content. But on the
| flip side it's so easy to make an account that there's bots and
| spam everywhere. Twitter is literally designed to make it hard
| to consume, easy to pump in crap.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Maybe I'm just in the lucky A/B cohort, but I haven't seen any
| auth nags for a while now.
| nicce wrote:
| They come constantly atleast for me. Better use lightweight
| alts such as nitter.eu
| LegitShady wrote:
| On desktop I use an extension that redirects everything to
| nitter but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a
| functioning extension for firefox android.
| [deleted]
| doom2 wrote:
| Bring back the chrono-sorted timeline while he's at it. The
| algorithm sorting is a big reason why I use tweetdeck and FB
| purity to keep it as it was.
| rwiggum wrote:
| They already brought this back as an option you can set.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This, holy shit. I only click on a Twitter post like once a
| month, but every time I have in recent months, I usually X
| right out of it because of the login prompts. I despise this
| walled garden bullshit.
| WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
| Elon is no fit to own and run a social media company. Let's
| remember the toxic tweet against Bernie
| https://twitter.com/sensanders/status/1459584250668331011
|
| I will for sure delete my account.
| willcodeforfoo wrote:
| This $43B valuation makes the GitHub acquisition look like a
| bargain.
| dark-star wrote:
| Think of all the awesome stuff he could have done for humankind
| with that kind of money.
|
| But nooooo, he wastes it all on a that dungpool of a website
| sidcool wrote:
| Musk has seen production hell. This is a different kind. Good
| luck Elon. Make good on your promises.
|
| 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.
| nailer wrote:
| You can fix a lot of the interaction at scale by allowing mass
| verification (there are third party APIs for this) and allowing
| people to filter on verified real human interactions.
| boringg wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. Musk has done very well on hard
| engineering problems - now he is entering a special kind of
| hell running a social media company.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I have no idea why he would willingly take on this kind of
| distraction at this point.
| warning26 wrote:
| Presenting Twitter with AI Full Self Anti-Spam!*
|
| *Coming in 5 years
| dudus wrote:
| Why do you assume he'll be running the company? I assumed he
| would appoint a new CEO and just participate on the board.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| If he just wanted to participate on the board he could have
| stuck with his 10%. It definitely seems like he's looking
| for a more hands-on role than that.
| dudus wrote:
| He just has a different kind of decision power by owning
| 100% of a private company. But he doesn't need to be
| involved on day to day operations and can appoint a CEO
| to do his bidding.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Serious question: how many Twitter employees (engineers +
| managers + directors + whateveer other levels) will
| quit/protest/strike if Elon un-suspends Trump's account, and
| what are the chances Elon suspends Trump's account?
| jdrc wrote:
| dont they have too many employees?
| Volrath89 wrote:
| Serious question: How come he is banned forever?
|
| 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.
| mewle wrote:
| He used Twitter to foment a violent insurrection.
| Aromasin wrote:
| See their statement on it below. Inciting violence against
| others is against their ToS, and his comments about
| marching on the capitol building were interpreted by the
| team responsible for banning accounts that break ToS
| (presumably a specialist committee with it being Trump) as
| a violation:
|
| https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensi
| o...
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > How come he is banned forever?
|
| https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensi
| o...
|
| > due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
| jumpkick wrote:
| No one but the (US) government needs to give a hoot about
| free speech, nor should they.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It doesn't matter how many quit. The asset of Twitter is its
| network and they won't be taking it with them.
| queuebert wrote:
| Does that suggest the vast majority of them are overpaid
| then?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Semi seriously, I think Musk would use a move like that to
| conveniently encourage the kind of people he doesn't want at
| Twitter to self selectively remove themselves rather than go
| through a painful HR process of finding and identifying them
| manually.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| While I don't think you are wrong... I have to wonder what
| % of the staff at Twitter that is. I'm sure their core
| application doesn't have a bus factor of 1 but... a mass
| exodus of staff (5%? 10%? 20%?) could be an interesting
| problem.
| downandout wrote:
| Exactly this. Musk doesn't seem to have any patience for
| political nonsense - from either side of the political
| spectrum. The kinds of employees that would do this likely
| aren't a culture fit in a Musk-run operation, where
| pragmatism is the order of the day. You can always find
| another employee who isn't a PIA.
| lostlogin wrote:
| You characterise Musk as pragmatic?
| downandout wrote:
| I characterize the organizations he creates as pragmatic.
| They exist to objectively look at problems and solve
| them. You cannot solve hard engineering problems in any
| other way.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Judging by the quality of the work done and the decisions
| made (Zuckerberg calls twitter a clown car falling into a
| gold mine) I don't think their departure would matter too
| much.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Serious answer: nobody cares.
|
| 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.
| extheat wrote:
| I think Twitter could actually financially benefit from
| lessening their head count. It's not an incredibly profitable
| company, and could do with changes to leadership and
| direction in terms of their lagging performance compared to
| other tech companies.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Serious response: Wouldn't that be good for Twitter to get
| rid of those people? It's like when Coinbase offered people a
| payout if you're not 100% onboard with there mission and told
| people to stop talking politics.
| parkingrift wrote:
| I've no doubt Elon would be happy for these people to quit so
| that he doesn't have to fire them.
| rappatic wrote:
| Incidentally, I'm guessing this will cause a rise in Trump's
| popularity again. There's a decent chance he gets unbanned by
| Musk (who is strongly in favor of unregulated speech on social
| media), and Twitter was how Trump garnered much of his base.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Hopefully my friends and artists I follow can be unbanned. It's
| annoying how their abuse team fails to understand the context
| behind messages because they aren't a part of the community.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Elon is probably doing it for increased political and social
| influence. Like I've said before, whoever controls twitter,
| controls the next election.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| For all the Free Speech posturing Musk has put out around
| twitter, it will be very interesting to see if @ElonsJet account
| gets banned.
| bko wrote:
| As somewhat of an aside, I think ElonsJet should be allowed to
| exist but I also think its a terrible thing to do and
| harassment. Do you not have a right to privacy if you're
| wealthy? Could I start tracking and broadcasting the
| whereabouts of someone in my office? How about [unpopular
| politician]? It's weird that people celebrate this invasion of
| privacy. He's still a human being.
|
| 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...
| smcl wrote:
| I think the real harm @ElonsJet does to Elon Musk is not that
| his privacy is breached, if we learn where he's taking a
| plane a couple of times a week that's not exactly
| particularly intrusive[0]. It is that he is trying to
| position himself as the man who is directly tackling
| environmental issues by single-handedly bootstrapping an
| electric car company ... while frequently flying a private
| jet and having a carbon footprint thousands of times more
| than the average person.
|
| 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_
| ce4 wrote:
| Thats information that is publicly available anyway - it's
| just that the presentation is nicer. ElonsJet can be
| replicated by anyone.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And it should be if the original get's banned. Just waiting
| to get Nunes Cow back!
| bko wrote:
| Your license plate, address, and employer is likely
| publicly available. Doesn't mean I should broadcast it out.
| Loughla wrote:
| Except it is already being broadcast, on hundreds of
| sites.
|
| 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.
| esarbe wrote:
| When you are moving in the public sphere - as Musk is
| doing - you lose certain rights to privacy that nobody
| John 'Random Person' Smith enjoys.
| bko wrote:
| So it would be okay to you to list the home address,
| movement and acquaintances of senators, congressmen,
| judges, etc?
|
| 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?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > So it would be okay to you to list the home address,
| movement and acquaintances of senators, congressmen,
| judges, etc?
|
| 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.
| pacerwpg wrote:
| If I buy a private jet and use it to fly around the
| world, people would have access to the same information
| as they do on Elon Musk. He wants the convenience of
| having his own jet, that comes with a cost.
| bko wrote:
| Let's remove Elon Musk from this.
|
| 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
| esarbe wrote:
| You cannot remove Elon Musk from the discussion. He is a
| public figure[0]; the same discussion would not apply to
| you (I presume) or me (I know).
|
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
| pacerwpg wrote:
| My comment was about the known requirements for air
| travel. You have to register your flight and that
| information is available. He has other options that would
| more safely guarantee privacy. If the privacy of your
| travels is more important to you than the convenience of
| having a private plane available, then you choose another
| option.
| baq wrote:
| both civilian jets and big civilian boats are required to
| broadcast their position when under power, sometimes also
| when stationary.
|
| 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.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > 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 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.
| majkinetor wrote:
| How about a spaceship?
|
| Should spaceship flights be private? :)
| mft_ wrote:
| Geunine question: is, or how, or where is that enshrined
| in law?
| esarbe wrote:
| There's a long and healthy discussion about this question
| in many legal systems. The topic of discussion is the
| definition of 'public figure'[0] and what that entails.
| Public figures usually don't enjoy the same right to
| privacy as other persons.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure
| ce4 wrote:
| It's inferred data only. Elons jet is required to publish
| ADS-B location beacons for air traffic control etc.
| Crowdsourced platforms like ads-b exchange collect and
| publish these public/unencrypted airplane gps beacons
| worldwide. You just need to know the jet's registration
| to look it up.
| chinathrow wrote:
| That's not 100% correct. Yes, the ADS-B data packets are
| out there in the public ether but for covering longer
| flights you need access to a network of receivers.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Just because you're rich doesn't mean you "have" to use your
| jet. You can charter another jet, fly first class, drive, any
| number of means of transit.
|
| 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.
| spupe wrote:
| That information is of public interest, because Musk is a
| public figure that constantly talks about climate change.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
|
| 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".
| jf22 wrote:
| I think there is a difference between "tracking somebody in
| your office" and using public information in a more efficient
| way.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I don't disagree but I also don't think there's less
| sympathetic example on the entire planet to use than Mark
| Zuckerberg. He's quite literally made his fortune exploiting
| the privacy of the rest of us. I'm certainly not going to
| lose any sleep over his privacy being violated.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I think that after certain threshold of wealth you're not
| quite human anymore and fair game. You definitely don't have
| much in common with 99.999% of others, and have effectively
| infinite resources to bend reality to your will. So yeah, eat
| the rich and all that.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
|
| 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.
| notpachet wrote:
| Time to bust out the unlicensed jetpack and really blur the
| Elon Musk/Tony Stark lines.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > unelected
|
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... It would be a great point if it was about people
| tracking him giving money to politicians, buying
| communication platforms, ads spending, or even random
| investments.
|
| 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.)
| bko wrote:
| I believe privacy is a right. Rights have to granted
| equally otherwise they're not rights. If you cross a
| certain threshold and lose your rights then they are not
| rights. And if rights can be granted and removed
| arbitrarily without due process then they're certainly not
| rights.
|
| Do you believe privacy is a right?
| foepys wrote:
| This is an absolutist argument. In the real world lines
| have to drawn somewhere all the time.
| staticman2 wrote:
| "I believe privacy is a right."
|
| 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?
| missedthecue wrote:
| I think the common wisdom is that your rights end where
| another person's begin.
| xdennis wrote:
| Human rights were invented to protect the weak against
| abuses from the strong (who would otherwise always get
| their way because in nature might always makes right).
|
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| If the strong don't have human rights too, then the
| strong will obviously dispense with any pretext of
| valuing the premise of human rights in the first place.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ah, but who decides the cut-off line between strong and
| weak?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Privacy isn't a right because it can't be enforced.
| Should I be able to sue someone for taking photos of me
| walking to the grocery store? Should other people be able
| to sue me for reading a newspaper over their shoulder?
| No, that kind of litigation is insane. There is no such
| idea as a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when you
| own a multimillion dollar private jet. You're being
| taxied through airports on one of the largest vehicles
| mankind can make, of _course_ you 're not going to be
| private. There's no basis for enforcing that kind of
| right, it would quickly devolve into a game of "who can
| buy the better lawyer", which certainly doesn't balance
| the scales of justice.
|
| 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.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm sympathetic, but _some_ aspects of privacy are
| absolutely rights (and should continue to be). In the US,
| for example, HIPAA restricts health care providers from
| wanton dissemination of your private health information.
| This applies to Elon Musk as much as anyone else. I 'm
| happy enough considering that a human right, inasmuch as
| similar laws don't apply to my dogs' veterinary records.
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| bko wrote:
| In your example about right to build whatever you want on
| your property, that restriction is limited to a property,
| not a person. So saying "this property is zoned for a
| building of X stories" is different than "if you're a
| 'public figure' your property is zoned for building X
| stories, otherwise its zoned for Y stories"
|
| Do you think we should broadcast the location and
| movement of sitting judges and politicians? They're
| certainly "public figures"
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I do not believe the location and flight paths of your
| private jet being kept private is a right. Its
| transponder is also publicly broadcast whenever active,
| and any receiver in range on ground or in space can
| receive and retransmit its broadcasted payload.
|
| 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.
| bmelton wrote:
| It's an interesting conundrum. As someone who believes in
| rights, the problem here seems to be neither with elon's
| expectation of privacy nor with elonsjet's expectation of
| free speech, but in the requirement of having to report
| his plane's ADS-B realtime output to a public system.
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's not only the government that needs that data, it's
| other pilots. These transponders are used to prevent in-
| air collisions between planes. That's not a centralized
| system; it's peer-to-peer. Your plane has antennas that
| are directly receiving these signals and ensuring that no
| other plane is too close, or on a collision course. These
| signals are also read by ground-based antennas for
| similar purposes (and also by avgeeks who want to collate
| the data, e.g.: https://www.flightradar24.com/add-
| coverage ).
|
| 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.
| bmelton wrote:
| A very good point that embarrassingly highlights my lack
| of knowledge about it. Thank you for the correction.
|
| 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.
| dmschulman wrote:
| His right to privacy isn't being violated by ElonsJet. The
| information being used is public knowledge.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Your license plate, criminal record, and any property you
| own is all publicly available. Do you care to share?
| creaturemachine wrote:
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
|
| No. You have a responsibility to be private, which can easily
| be neglected by underpaying the wrong people. C'est la vie!
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Blame the FAA. ADSB data is stupidly simple to receive with
| an RTLSDR and a raspberry pi, and there are community sites
| where you can upload. Point being: his plane can be tracked
| as long as it's flying legally with its beacon on. This
| wouldn't be a problem if the FAA just pushed back harder on
| the FOIA request for his jet data, then it would just be
| another anonymous private jet in the system instead of Elons
| Jet.
|
| 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.
| esarbe wrote:
| > Do you not have a right to privacy if you're wealthy?
|
| 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.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _How about [unpopular politician]?_
|
| Most of these people have public itineraries...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The guy who made a bot to copy data from adsbexchange has
| almost half a million followers, and is a public figure. I
| wonder if he would enjoy getting harassed in the same way or
| not.
| hammock wrote:
| The Twitter board caved before that kid did
| incomingpain wrote:
| Just because people are watching this and how newsworthy it
| would be, it won't happen.
| sigmar wrote:
| He talks a lot about crypto scams as one of the reasons he is
| buying twitter, I'm willing to put money that he tasks
| someone or a group to develop 'review' mechanisms for any
| account with the name 'elon' or 'musk'
| trothamel wrote:
| I suspect that it'll be for replies from accounts with
| substantially the same name and avatar as the original
| poster, and that it won't be just for him.
|
| And that's good, I think - a better investment direction
| than NFT avatars.
| philipov wrote:
| The public's memory is short, while spite's memory is long.
| biscoitinho wrote:
| Also, why offer the original creator $50k to remove the bot? If
| it gets removed, other developers will obviously create other
| ones - it's a public API, after all.
| smcl wrote:
| I honestly don't believe he thinks that deeply about it and
| doesn't see any contradiction over what he says about free
| speech and how he acts. If it wasn't for the negative PR it
| would receive, he wouldn't think twice about booting the
| account. I don't think he realises that _everyone_ has their
| own line at which point someone 's "free speech" becomes
| unacceptable to them and that everyone has an idea on what the
| consequences should be for crossing that line. It's just "me
| and my pals are alright, we're harmless and shouldn't be
| cancelled but the guys I don't like can take a hike"
| [deleted]
| Fargoan wrote:
| The owner of the account is a stalker attempting to extort his
| victim. Why hasn't he been banned? If I were to make an account
| tracking a random person's movement I'd likely be banned. Why
| should it be treated differently when the stalking victim is a
| celebrity?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It's not extortion to respond to an offer from that person to
| accept a sum of money to take that information down. Nor is
| it extortion to negotiate on the sum.
| oska wrote:
| Just to play Devil's Advocate, the account is only tracking
| the movement of Elon's jet, not Elon himself. I don't know if
| you can consider that 'stalking' when, different to a private
| car, the movement of private planes is still somewhat public
| information.
| Fargoan wrote:
| I know this. If I were to track movements of a car around a
| city and call the account KarensCar and try and extort her
| in exchange for shutting down the account it wouldn't be
| any different than what this guy is doing to Musk.
| jf22 wrote:
| Is the Twitter user extorting Musk?
| vntok wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| > "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-...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Indeed._
|
| He received an offer to shut it down, then countered the
| offer. Then said he was joking. You're not a lawyer, by
| chance?
| [deleted]
| mcphage wrote:
| That's not what extortion is. (Or stalking, for that
| matter).
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Or if someone personally canceled the Tesla order of a
| Tesla critic which he has done at least once. For all his
| talk about free speech without limits he doesn't really
| practice it.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| If the location of Karen's car is publicly tracked and
| available, then it's exactly like the Elon Musk plane
| situation.
|
| 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!
| Fargoan wrote:
| Karen's car drives and parks on public streets. It has an
| identification number posted on it. The information is
| out there for everyone to see. It's not as easy to
| automate as a transponder, but it's not necessarily
| private.
| oska wrote:
| And I just pointed out to you that the movement of
| private planes is already far more public than the
| movement of private cars, and for good reasons. The
| account isn't (as far as I know, I've never looked at it)
| actually doing their own tracking; they are simply (I
| assume) collating public information from air traffic
| control authorities, etc.
| tpetry wrote:
| Karen's car is not publishing updates about her current
| location on a public radio frequency which everyone can
| receive.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I'm not completely sure that's true these days.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| ... it isn't.
|
| 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.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Flights are public information. Cars are not. Are you
| seriously such a fanboy of Elon that you have to pretend
| to be offended by someone sharing public information that
| anyone can google and get in 3 clicks? If the 1% doesn't
| want their private flight info to be shared, then they
| can just take a normal flight like the rest of us.
| Fargoan wrote:
| No, I'm not a fan boy. I just think it's ridiculous that
| people are ok with this. I know it's very easy to look up
| flight data. But looking up flight data and making a
| Twitter account dedicated to a private plane's movement
| and then trying to extort the owner is different.
| phatfish wrote:
| This sort of repression of free speech is a very slippery
| slope. It starts with publicly stating the location of
| Elon's private jet becoming a crime, and ends with a
| dictator in control of the world's most powerful armed
| forces.
| oska wrote:
| No-one is defending the owner of the account asking for
| more money _in response_ to Elon asking them to take it
| down and offering some compensation. However, they didn
| 't take the initiative to approach Elon first and ask for
| money for removal of the account, and their responses to
| Elon can be read as just (immature) bravado. So your
| accusation of 'extortion' looks to me as overhyped as
| your accusation of 'stalking'.
| native_samples wrote:
| Flights are clearly not public information. I cannot look
| up where you've been flying on regular airlines recently
| and that's how it works for virtually everyone.
|
| 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.
| jonlucc wrote:
| Or take a friend's jet? Or rent one? There are a lot of
| ways to travel via plane that don't broadcast your body's
| location.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| He hasn't been banned because despite your claims it is
| neither stalking nor extortion.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _If I were to make an account tracking a random person 's
| movement I'd likely be banned._
|
| 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.
| Fargoan wrote:
| Ok, so if I track your car driving on public roads and post
| it on Twitter it's cool?
|
| Elon army? Where did you get that from?
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| No, instead the person behind it will be doxxed.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That particular incident is under intense spotlight, so it will
| probably not happen and if it happens it will change the course
| of free speech discussions.
|
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| > 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.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| I expect people who says that specific freedoms and/or
| principles are important to them to let such beliefs
| guide all their actions not just when it is convenient
| for them.
|
| 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.
| id wrote:
| On a related note, on the 100th anniversary of the CCP,
| Elon Musk had this to say:
|
| >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.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Tesla is a car company, not a speech platform. Not sure why
| he should have a problems SA holding a % in Tesla? His
| comments were specifically targeted towards how their
| prince was opposing selling twitter without holding a vote
| from the shareholders.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| I expect people who hold very public positions of
| specific rights to keep those positions and moral values
| in mind when making decisions every time they make such
| decisions, not just when it is best for them.
| robonerd wrote:
| Saudi Arabia's genocidal war in Yemen should be enough to
| make anybody ashamed for having anything to do with the
| autocratic _K_ SA.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I mean US is the one which gives arms to SA. US also
| destroyed Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and so
| on. No one's hands are pure when it comes to the military
| industrial complex.
| erug wrote:
| This is the typical "no one is perfect, so beeing bad is
| also fine" - argument (which I personally disagree)
| busymom0 wrote:
| Not really. Unless you propose that he completely stops
| doing business with everyone, shuts down spacex and Tesla
| etc, not sure what's your point. SA, a major energy
| country, having a stake in Tesla is a pretty remote thing
| as compared to their prince having a stake in a speech
| platform.
| dd36 wrote:
| He is worried about climate change and promotes bitcoin.
|
| 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.
| Avicebron wrote:
| what does the grimes thing have to do with Netflix? I might
| just be out of the loop
| dd36 wrote:
| He said Netflix lost subscribers because it was producing
| woke content.
|
| 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?
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Maybe he's planning to run for President?
|
| That would be incredibly ambitious; getting 40 states to
| agree to that seems exceedingly unlikely.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| People thought the same about the 45th, and yet the world
| was forced to endure these full four disastrous years.
|
| I don't like to take chances in politics these days...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Musk can't be president without a constitutional
| amendment.
| robonerd wrote:
| I don't recall '45' getting any amendments to the
| constitution through.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| OK, how are the children he had with Grimes related?
| dd36 wrote:
| He was with Grimes for years. If woke was a turn off for
| him, would he have been with Grimes for years let alone
| had children with her?
|
| 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?
| robonerd wrote:
| Not everybody expects their partner to share their
| political beliefs. There is a reason we let married men
| and women vote independently for themselves.
| dd36 wrote:
| Absolutely. What's more likely? Elon is putting on a show
| to accomplish some goal or Elon hates what Grimes stands
| for?
| saurik wrote:
| (Maybe-also? <- Just adding stuff, but am unsure if we
| agree or not as we are both just adding stuff I think
| ;P.) FWIW, 1) it was never clear that Grimes actually
| _truly_ "stands for" anything, and 2) she _did_ leave
| him, so clearly _something_ didn 't work out ;P.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2021/10/03/fol
| low...
| dd36 wrote:
| Yeah, so it could be a response to her leaving him. She
| may have left him because of it. I imagine Elon isn't the
| easiest of romantic/parenting partners given his work
| ethic.
| robonerd wrote:
| Only he knows what he really believes. My point is merely
| that somebody can disagree with their spouse's politics
| without hating them for it.
| dd36 wrote:
| I agree with your point. I also don't think Elon is as
| anti-woke as he appears to many to be.
| [deleted]
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Exactly. This is just a money making opportunity for him,
| and possibly to start letting rightwing content easily
| flourish again online which will benefit him in the long
| run. He's not a free speech fan for things he doesn't like.
|
| > When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-
| elon...
| skrbjc wrote:
| Unless you take it as a premise that right wing content
| is bad, then what is wrong with letting it flourish just
| as much as left wing content?
|
| 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.
| dd36 wrote:
| There's plenty of right-wing content on Twitter. Trump
| wasn't even banned until his coup attempt. AFAIK, you can
| lie on Twitter until it causes real world danger.
| xdennis wrote:
| > He says Netflix is woke without any citations
|
| People don't do citations in casual conversations.
|
| Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement is
| weather wokeness is good or bad.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement
| is weather wokeness is good or bad.
|
| 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.
| native_samples wrote:
| Everyone agrees that the word "everyone" in discussions
| is not be taken literally. Citation not needed.
|
| 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.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| > Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and observe how
| half the people in regency England, including the Queen,
| are now black.
|
| 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?
| baq wrote:
| what?
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.)
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| It's a modern reimagining of the regency environment. If
| you pay attention you'll notice that most of the
| soundtrack are covers of pop songs.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Replacing White people in medieval England with black
| people is no different than portraying an African tribe
| as led by White members -- the exact same racism that
| "woke" people pretend to care about.
|
| "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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The show Bridgerton is an alternate reality. I think if
| you wanted to do an alternate reality of slavery with
| white slaves captured in Africa, I don't think you'd get
| complaints from the "woke" except to the extent that it
| takes jobs. But I think you could do a script where
| casting whites in this role made sense.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Replacing White people in medieval England
|
| 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".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > watch Bridgerton (playing on my TV right now) and
| observe how half the people in regency England, including
| the Queen, are now black.
|
| 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.
| morelisp wrote:
| > let's just say none of the characters are suddenly
| espousing the wisdom of Adam Smith.
|
| All streaming platforms are first of all streaming
| capitalism.
| exdsq wrote:
| > Netflix just streams videos
|
| They make a lot of content too
| kenjackson wrote:
| The make content they don't stream, but license it
| elsewhere?
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > Netflix just streams videos?
|
| 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.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| How you read The Witcher book series? The Netflix show
| didn't make up the themes you mention
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| >Everyone agrees that Netflix is woke, the disagreement
| is weather wokeness is good or bad.
|
| I thought conservatives preferred facts to feelings? This
| doesn't seem to be an opinion based on facts.
| dd36 wrote:
| Nobody that defended him could even cite something.
| Somebody mentioned a show about teenage girls from a few
| years ago is all. But why would that affect subscriber
| counts in Q122?
|
| Netflix produces a lot of content. I would venture a
| guess that 99% of it isn't woke or anti-woke.
| sytelus wrote:
| I don't think Netflix is "wok". Their content standard
| has just taken nose dive. Case in point: Stand-up comedy
| specials. Netflix pays out staggering $10M-$20M for this
| one hour stand-up. They used to be high quality and worth
| watching. In recent years, comedians have been using
| Netflix as ATM machine. You need money? Just call your
| buddy there, schedule a special 6 months down the line
| and collect money. This leads to majority of special with
| aweful content that you would probably stop watching in
| few minutes.
|
| 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.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| "Everyone agrees that netflix is woke..."
|
| 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.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| > If Musk fails to deliver on free speech, his persona will
| be on stake.
|
| 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.
| prbuckley wrote:
| Here is a recent interview of Elon speaking about what changes he
| wants to make at twitter, https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM.
|
| TLDW: He wants to open source the ranking algos and make the
| history of each posts ranking transparent.
| [deleted]
| fareesh wrote:
| Twitter is a private company and can do what it wants
|
| I remember the absolute smugness of people who trotted out that
| line when it suited their politics
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Wild guess is that under Musk's ownership, Twitter will be a more
| open platform but a far less anonymous one. You'll be able to
| post more than you're allowed to now but it will be attached to
| your real identity. Should be interesting to see how that pans
| out. Investing in better filtering tools so users can decide for
| themselves what they want in their feeds will change the nature
| of the platform too.
| Kye wrote:
| My real name is not my legal name, so I would have to stop
| using Twitter.
| postalrat wrote:
| Your real name is "Kye".
| bmitc wrote:
| How would that improve anything? Some of the most toxic users
| are people like himself and formerly Trump where everyone
| already knows who they are.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Who said it would be a personal improvement for you? Learn to
| stop seeking out things that upset you instead of demanding
| that such things be made unavailable to you. Unless of course
| your goal isn't really to stop yourself from accessing things
| that upset you and really is about something else. Is it?
| bmitc wrote:
| Where did I say anything about me? I really don't know what
| you're talking about.
| Arcsech wrote:
| My concerns about toxicity on Twitter are less about what I
| want to see (I don't use Twitter anymore myself, even), and
| more about the incitement to violence we've clearly seen is
| possible on the platform. Twitter should not be a platform
| for organizing a mob to invade the capitol and attempt to
| execute the Vice President, for example.
| sendos wrote:
| Does this need any regulatory approval, or will it go through as
| is?
| furyofantares wrote:
| Given the amount of Tesla stock used for backing the financing of
| this deal, deleting your twitter account is now akin to shorting
| Tesla, which as we all know means you hate planet Earth
| lbriner wrote:
| My understanding of the narrative:
|
| * 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.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _...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.
| throwaway658 wrote:
| Why buy? Why not create a new one with way less money?
| downvoted98 wrote:
| [deleted]
| l33t2328 wrote:
| Uhh...this seems like legitimate schizoposting. I hope all
| involved seek and receive help.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Wait a minute. I read the first 20 or so comments and the
| following strikes me. Most comments are about -- Musk could try
| toake Twitter better but will probably fail... This is not the
| first thing that came to mind for me. How 'bout: a very rich man
| is capable of doing what a very powerful man is/was not capable
| of. Being able to influence in a major way the policies of the
| most influential social network in the world. A US president was
| kicked of the very same platform.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| God this is depressing. I'm sure many people are excited about it
| but I feel like this will just make Twitter worse than it already
| is, and the scariest part is that it won't kill off the platform.
| People may say they'll ditch it but, realistically, there's no
| real competitor to it.
| pyaamb wrote:
| I feel like people have invested in Elon in large part because of
| his alignment with i) moving humanity away from fossil fuels and
| ii) making life multi planetary. He is obviously free to do as he
| pleases with this new wealth but I cant help but feel this as a
| huge redirection of resources (in terms of both capital and
| focus) from those goals
| CydeWeys wrote:
| This is what I'm worried about. Owning/running Twitter sounds
| like a huge distraction from SpaceX, which is the most
| important way he can make an impact in my view. His involvement
| in Twitter up until now has consisted of relentless culture war
| shit posting that hasn't added any real value to society, and I
| hate to see him going farther down that road.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Having met Elon, I can tell you that he is not into anything
| for the fame, fortune, or glory. Those are secondary.
|
| 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_.
| hooande wrote:
| nothing says "genuinely wants to make a difference to
| humanity" like buying the #16th ranked social network on a
| lark
| mountainriver wrote:
| Except that he values free speech? What are these comments?
| bmitc wrote:
| His actions say otherwise. Delusion and narcissism are real
| things.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Got some examples?
|
| Delusion and narcissism don't get things done.
| bmitc wrote:
| His Twitter feed. And yes they do.
| aa-jv wrote:
| His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore.
|
| The rapid and visible progress towards the construction
| of a viable space age, not so much.
| bmitc wrote:
| Well of course you don't think someone is delusional or a
| narcissist if you ignore the things they do and say.
| aa-jv wrote:
| On the contrary, I'm not _ignoring what Elon has done_.
| He 's done a lot.
|
| 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.
| ncallaway wrote:
| "His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore."
|
| 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.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Well, it remains to be understood just what will happen
| to Twitter, once it has been de-weaponised. (Twitter is
| already in the hands of the bad guys, btw. Everything
| people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, _has
| already happened_.)
|
| 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.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| They do end up calling others pedophiles.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I can jump in here for the delusions part. My knowledge
| of Musk comes only from watching every video and reading
| anything he said until about a year ago.
|
| 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.
| bmitc wrote:
| > To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished
| more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
|
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > cars are something we should be moving away from...
|
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| I'd argue that.
|
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Those are great examples which are certainly currently
| higher-ranked. I suppose the argument for Musk would only
| make sense in a few decades, if climate change was
| catastrophic and he could be credited with something like
| advancing electrification by 10 years, and a Mars
| settlement was bustling. Then maybe he could be up there
| with the greats.
| aa-jv wrote:
| There are exactly _zero_ examples through human history,
| of individuals who did enormous things for the species,
| although they had their extraordinary or even mundane
| faults.
|
| 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!
| djvdq wrote:
| In topic of "getting things done", how are Teslas
| ventillators? How is his submarine for Thai boys? How is
| his moon tourism which he according to him should've
| started 4 years ago? How's his "fixxed" traffic with
| undedground tunnels? How is full self driving ready in
| two months?
|
| Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his
| worshippers are still telling that his different and he
| meant something different.
| psyc wrote:
| The overall quality of the detractor comments says a lot
| too. There are a lot of generic hater comments. There are
| others that make no sense at all... like, Musk not wanting
| a PR department in his company being anti-speech. Wh...
| wha?? I'm still waiting for a serious and honest reason to
| shit on the guy.
| foobarian wrote:
| I think this is already pretty clear from his work. Nobody
| builds Tesla or SpaceX to get famous or rich - there are much
| easier ways. He is truly a nerd's nerd.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Nobody builds Tesla or SpaceX to get famous or rich_
|
| 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.
| vimy wrote:
| The odds of succeeding with Tesla or SpaceX were
| extremely low. That's not the kind of company you build
| if you want to become rich. There are much safer options.
| minusf wrote:
| > There are much safer options.
|
| 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).
| vimy wrote:
| It's the future now but not when Tesla was founded.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear Elon Musk works hard to cultivate
| his fame
| foobarian wrote:
| If we get SpaceX and Tesla out of it, then so be it.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I'm not criticizing him for that, just pointing out your
| comment saying otherwise is clearly incorrect
| aa-jv wrote:
| 15 years from now, humans are turning off their industry
| on Earth, and moving it all to space.
|
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| Dude your timeline is so incredibly off which seriously
| invalidates your comment - not to mention your
| fundamental understanding of the human condition. Not
| even Elon has put anything out there and his timelines
| are more aggressive than reality (see almost all his
| product roll-outs).
| aa-jv wrote:
| Oh come on, I was literally called a koolaid drinker by
| bootlicking warmongers.
|
| Dreamy fantasies are the only reasonable response in such
| circumstances.
|
| My understanding of the human condition, _led me to
| exactly this moment_ , 'mmkay?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Thanks for the "I drank the kool-aid" perspective.
| aa-jv wrote:
| I mean, the facts on the ground are pretty real. If the
| bootlicking warmongers don't start WW3 in the meantime, we
| very much may make it to Mars in time to watch the shit-
| show from a distance.
|
| 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...
| lolc wrote:
| Thinking a colony on Mars could be viable without support
| from Earth is just escapism.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| What makes you sure that WW3 won't extend to Mars?
| aa-jv wrote:
| Depends if we continue to build a commons, or not, I
| suppose.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| So Mars will be a totalitarian state where conflict is
| verboten?
| aa-jv wrote:
| I dunno, I certainly hope not. Are you gonna stay on
| Earth, with that attitude? Then possibly even less so, I
| would imagine.
|
| Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first
| colony isn't "USA(tm)", you know what I mean?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| BTW I'm thinking that, with the cost of transporting a
| ton of cargo in space, interplanetary invasions might be
| impractical because it will be extremely expensive to
| transport any kind of military force. That does not
| preclude a conflict between the local colonies though.
| aa-jv wrote:
| I'm thinking it'll be more like, once there's a viable
| colony on 16 Psyche, it'll spend its time transmitting
| F/OSS designs to the universe.
|
| 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.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Hmm... Ultimately, people will be people. I don't see why
| we'd stop killing each other only because we moved to
| space.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| No, because it would be WW1 on Mars.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I haven't met Elon, so I dunno if I buy your view. But I do
| thank you for articulating it so clearly.
|
| 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.
| s5300 wrote:
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I feel that most people have invested in Elon because he knows
| how to make a lot of money and they want to be part of it.
|
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| I hate Tesla, it is the Apple of Car Companies, and I hate
| Apple. Their draconian business practices, anti-repair stance,
| and several other things keep me from buying a Tesla the same
| way i will never own an Apple Product.
|
| 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.
| kommstar wrote:
| He just wants the user base. Intends to build a protocol to
| enable free speech.
| autophagian wrote:
| This is perhaps true at a cursory glance, but this will allow
| him to make even more funny posts on the internet, arguably a
| more important goal than decarbonization or martian habitation.
| cduzz wrote:
| I consider "buy twitter" to be musk's retirement plan B.
|
| Ideally, he'll move to mars and take twitter with him.
| senko wrote:
| > this will allow him to make even more funny posts on the
| internet
|
| How so? I hadn't heard of Twitter, or any media (social or
| not), preventing him doing exactly that already? Quite the
| opposite.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| For context, Musk's net worth is the same amount of value that
| the world produces every 32 hours. So him directing all his
| wealth towards those goals would be a huge redirection of
| resources, but not necessarily significant on a global scale.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| Huge amount of that production gets spent on keeping the
| world running - income vs disposable income.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Exactly zero of the people I know who are into Musk are into
| him because of these reasons. Granted, this is a very very very
| tiny corner of Musk's fans but the people I know are into him
| because he is "badass" and "sticks it to the man" and things
| like this.
|
| 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.
| mepiethree wrote:
| Do you know people who work or have worked for him? I work in
| the clean tech industry and know several people who work(ed)
| for solar city or Tesla. Musk is, I hear, a great recruiter,
| but then overworks his talent and eventually they burn out.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| For better or worse, sounds like the average startup life
| except perhaps with a better mission
| boringg wrote:
| Thats part of the sell. Tesla originally gave really low
| comp packages and had super long hard hours for employees
| under the mission status and working for Elon. For a long
| time it really looked like a bad deal but in the end it
| paid out well for employees who held onto their options,
| the long hour were already spent.
|
| 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.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| In the Big 4 I worked with a guy who was once a project
| manager at Tesla. The guy wasn't super talented, but
| mentioned that it would ruin your week if Elon came over to
| you because he had a bad habit of micromanaging people. And
| yeah, he agreed that Elon isn't necessarily super smart but
| is brilliant at finding brilliant people and convincing
| them to work themselves half to death. Which, incidentally,
| is basically the main job of a startup CEO so props to him
| for that.
| sidlls wrote:
| There is a sizeable contingent who are into him because they
| are terribly ignorant of the history of our efforts in space
| and the relationship between NASA and SpaceX, and think he
| has stuck it to the crusty old government man and "disrupted"
| the entire endeavor.
| jhugo wrote:
| > The cult of personality is more important than the actual
| output
|
| 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?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Jobs' output was impressive too! The reality distortion
| field enables Musk to hire extremely effectively. I know
| some really really strong engineers who chose SpaceX
| because Musk is there, despite having higher paying offers
| elsewhere.
|
| 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?
| jhugo wrote:
| > 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.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Who becomes a follower of someone they don't think is cool?
| People who follow ironically?
| nemo wrote:
| He has to keep acting out to maintain the image of coolness
| to his followers and he appears to be hooked on the likes.
| It's a cycle that escalates which is why he's gone off the
| deep end at this point imo.
| boringg wrote:
| Agreed - Twitter self-validation loop. Seems like a lot
| of older guys are getting caught up in it right now -
| maybe older brains are more susceptible?
| samhw wrote:
| In my experience, people who worship money, and the bitch
| goddess 'Success'.
| code_runner wrote:
| a lot of this depends on the definition that we have of
| "follower" and "cool" but I don't disagree.
| figassis wrote:
| Competitors? Journalists?
| eatonphil wrote:
| I didn't mean Twitter follower; when GP said "followers"
| I took it to mean as in follower<>leader relationship.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Anecdotally I definitely know people who are into Musk purely
| because of the SpaceX/Mars colonization stuff.
| [deleted]
| panick21_ wrote:
| That literally the exact opposite of people I know.
|
| 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.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The parent comment is why we need someone to start a
| movement making social media algorithms more transparent.
| The person you are responding to is misinformed about Tesla
| fans because he has been the victim of a social media
| algorithm generated echo chamber. He isn't unique, we all
| are victims of echo chambers and filter bubbles to some
| degree. The only way to fix that is to allow people to
| control their own feeds and disable echo chambers if they
| wish to.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yes, the moment I heard Musk say 'open-source the
| algorithm' I was onboard, although that needs to be
| watched carefully. The algorithmic structure itself is
| one thing and the kind of data that is fed to it to train
| it is another. In particular, how it learns what is an
| 'authoritative source' and what isn't needs to be made
| clear.
| bmitc wrote:
| But yet, that other stuff matters much more than some dick
| measuring contest about going to Mars. Musk has shown time
| and time again that his ideals of climate change or
| whatever are not genuine. He wants to get to play with cool
| toys, make bold but undeliverable promises, and get as much
| attention as possible. And yet, people look up to him as if
| he's some saint bestowed upon us. 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. 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Pretty nonsense take a I have to say.
|
| 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.
| zdkl wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| bmitc wrote:
| Musk does not have a history of acting like a grownup and
| has used Twitter to defame, bully, argue, get involved in
| foreign wars, manipulate markets, etc. all because of
| greed, ego, or because someone disagreed with him. I
| sincerely don't understand how him taking over Twitter
| can be viewed as a good thing. I could be here all day
| listing the people he has publicly insulted on Twitter.
| He has attacked people, often experts in their field like
| Noam Chomsky or the cave rescuer, because they held
| positions that disagreed with his usually amateur and
| attention hogging takes.
|
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don't understand how him taking over Twitter can be
| viewed as a good thing_
|
| Worst case, he runs it into the ground and we live in a
| world without Twitter. Win win.
| bmitc wrote:
| I don't think that's the worst case.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don't think that's the worst case_
|
| 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.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Successful social media is positive, useful, and
| pleasant?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > or twitter's function will eventually be filled by
| other apps, maybe even new ideas
|
| 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?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _has shown time and time again that his ideals of
| climate change or whatever are not genuine_
|
| 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.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| seconded.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| As I said, the world is big.
|
| 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."
| panick21_ wrote:
| Yes but that is because in a Musk company you actually
| get to build rockets, blow them and iterate quickly.
|
| 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.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _doesn 't give a shit about US politics or the SEC or
| whatever other crap people in the US get worked up about_
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| nerdjon wrote:
| To add to this, almost every conversation I have (I am in
| the US so that may be part of it) includes "Elon is cringe
| but..." and likely followed by SpaceX is doing fantastic
| work.
| jackosdev wrote:
| He's an interesting guy who seems straight out of a
| science fiction show. Can't nerds like me just think it's
| kind of cool that someone is actively trying to expand
| humanity to multiple planets?
|
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I don't think there is anything wrong with that, I will
| be the first to give him a lot of credit for the
| companies he has started. Especially Space and Tesla.
| There is no doubt that both of those have pushed forward
| both industries in series ways.
|
| 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.
| basisword wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| And that is totally fine.
|
| 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.
| basisword wrote:
| I think when you care enough to say those things - and
| frankly when you care that people are saying those things
| - you care too much about the person. Focus on the cool
| techy stuff rather than Musk.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| Musk has some interesting goals and amazing
| accomplishments. But I'd also argue he isn't necessarily
| genuine or correct about electric vehicles/batteries
| helping the environment. Now a ton of resources and
| effort get allocated to it and potentially away from
| things that might be more helpful.
| panick21_ wrote:
| What other theortical things could save humanity doesn't
| matter. Unless you can make the argument that these
| things CREDIBLY WOULD HAPPEN without Tesla or EVs then
| its pointless.
|
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| I mean the fact is he is this centuries entrepreneur as
| Schumpeter defines it. If you compare what he has done
| versus the rest of his class he's mopped the floor. So in
| terms of accomplishments he is in his own realm.
|
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm very reluctant to call myself "a Musk fan" (and I've
| never met anyone like you describe, though no doubt they're
| out there somewhere), but I have to admit that the things
| he's done are remarkable: building several large companies
| which are not only commercially successful but advance the
| public interest with much more ambition than any other
| companies I've seen in my lifetime. Previously,
| accomplishments like those of SpaceX were only feasible in a
| Cold War context. I also think he has good political
| instincts (pushing back against regressive leftism without
| indulging in unsavory elements of the right), and I can even
| appreciate the occasional shitpost; however, I think he often
| goes too far and veers into immaturity. But expecting someone
| to accomplish what he has while also having perfect social
| grace is unrealistic; if his critics really want to put him
| in his place, they should do so by example--do something to
| significantly advance the public interest without social
| foibles.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It's just crazy that people fawn over him this much. He's the
| richest guy on earth, he doesn't stick it to the man, he is
| the man.
|
| Good luck to twitter I guess.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Twitter really is the broadcasting social network for the
| intellectual elite, so in that way its an extremely important
| piece of society, however toxic it is right now. Because of
| that I absolutely agree that it's undervalued and under-
| utilised for what it's become.
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Many many people on twitter would happily pay for it
|
| maybe that's the key. $15/month subscription to post, free to
| read.
| hooande wrote:
| snapchat has more monthly active users than twitter does.
| tiktok is over 2x as big as twitter, soon to be 3x. if an
| intelligent person wanted to own the public square, they
| would buy tiktok
| prvc wrote:
| This may seem like a wild take, but perhaps it's worth
| entertaining that social media moderation as it exists today
| could be a significant impediment to the realization of those
| goals.
| rklaehn wrote:
| Indeed. The window of opinion that is allowed on twitter is
| anti space exploration and frankly anti-human. Elon needs a
| way to sway public opinion to allow mars settlement. Twitter
| might be that.
|
| 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.
| krona wrote:
| Musk himself has said as much.
| oblio wrote:
| What's his alternative, though? Just saying "no" is like
| saying nothing, it's worthless.
| oblio wrote:
| What's the alternative though? 0 moderation is what we had
| with email, and that was called spam.
|
| 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.
| foobarian wrote:
| Make posters pay $10/year and/or require government ID.
| Good luck, Russian troll farms!
| kylecordes wrote:
| This version of Twitter would be much better.
|
| But it might also be much, much smaller.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Good.
| prvc wrote:
| Status quo moderation also ignores spam, and I'd expect
| that aspect to change in the direction of more moderation
| under Musk. "0 moderation" was never on the table.
| oblio wrote:
| > "0 moderation" was never on the table.
|
| I don't know how to interpret this, in that case.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344
| boringg wrote:
| He's definitely going to minimal moderation. It lines
| with his stance and it lines with the business cost. The
| risk is people turn off the service because it becomes
| even worse than it's current state.
| spupe wrote:
| Are you saying that we cannot properly address climate change
| because of... _checks notes_ Twitter 's moderation policies?
| hans1729 wrote:
| Are you saying that restricting the flow of information
| does not ... _checks comment_ restrict our flow of
| information?
| spupe wrote:
| Filtering can improve the signal-to-noise ratio
| dramatically. We have always had some moderation/editing
| on books, newspapers, scientific papers and many other
| forums of meaningful exchange for centuries, and we
| progressed just fine. I
| hans1729 wrote:
| Except for when the church decided what's culturally
| appropriate and what's not. Eerily reminding of the
| content moderation teams in SV, _isnt it?_
|
| Improving signal quality != fire walling signals as a
| whole.
| spupe wrote:
| Look, this started with a claim that Twitter moderation
| policies are blocking us from addressing climate change.
| Then a separate claim, that any sort of moderation is
| harmful, was made and I challenged it. Now you are coming
| with a third position, which is that sometimes moderation
| is indeed bad. Which is true, but the real question is
| whether current moderation practices in Twitter are
| blocking us from meaningful discussion, in particular in
| regards to climate change.
| hans1729 wrote:
| >the real question is whether current moderation
| practices in Twitter are blocking us from meaningful
| discussion
|
| And that question is another one than "does twitter
| censor climate change-discussions?", right? My point was:
| yes, it does.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Let me know when you find evidence of some valuable piece
| of climate, energy, or astronautics research that was
| kept under wraps due to the Twitter police.
|
| 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.
| hans1729 wrote:
| I never mentioned censorship, which is a loaded and
| mostly useless (because agonizing and polarizing) term.
|
| 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.
| prvc wrote:
| Wild, huh?
| smt88 wrote:
| Please explain how social media moderation is keeping us
| using fossil fuels.
|
| I would argue the opposite: moderation reduces paid corporate
| shills (when done correctly).
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if half of his wealth was due to his
| online presence. This move makes absolute sense.
| chasd00 wrote:
| personally, i wish he would log out and focus on starship. Let
| me touch the third rail real fast, i felt the same way about
| Trump. Just logout of twitter and focus on the country.
|
| 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.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| A necessary one. The ideologues among the Tw leadership were
| doing a lot of harm to Western society (and therefore more
| generally to democracy and the rule of law). I hope Musk will
| be able to fix it now.
| tfigment wrote:
| He will change it to let all the toxic people back on. It
| will become worse and less pleasant and he will likely lose
| investors money ultimately but maybe not before he exits. We
| shall see.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| The toxic people are currently on Tw while many interesting
| or funny people have been removed. Remember: diversity is
| better than conformity.
| tiahura wrote:
| _let all the toxic people back on_
|
| 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?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Musk is not the right person for this job. He simply lacks
| the skill set for it. Running a large social media platform
| requires nuance and tradeoffs.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| In instances where Musk has power to make speech more open
| and free when has he done so?
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Every time.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| I can't find any reporting to support that position, can
| you provide hints so I can review it?
| coffeeblack wrote:
| When didn't he?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| One would think that you, having made the claim, could
| provide supporting evidence of said claim.
|
| 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.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Probably his security recommending it.
|
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| They made it sound like Starlink was footing the entire
| bill to send them to Ukraine which wasn't factual.
|
| 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?
| bmitc wrote:
| You mean the Elon Musk who just publicly body shamed someone
| because that person did something he didn't like? Get ready
| for a wild ride where Twitter gets even worse, giving a
| megaphone to everyone like himself who wants attention.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| This is an interesting take because it seems to prefer
| either A) publicly visible attributes like weight should be
| ignored when giving your personal opinion on someone or B)
| you should not be allowed to give your personal opinion on
| someone. Regardless of his motivations for pointing it out,
| neglecting one's health is entirely a personal choice. Are
| you advocating for less personal responsibility or less
| freedom to express one's opinions?
|
| 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.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| ...says the person who needs to call others "idiot" to get
| his point across.
| bmitc wrote:
| You're right, I shouldn't have used the word idiot and
| have updated my comment.
| gzer0 wrote:
| This couldn't be further from the truth.
|
| 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].
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/08/elon-musks-spacex-
| valuation-...
|
| [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/key-statistics/
|
| [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/elon-musks-boring-company-
| hi...
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| nerdjon wrote:
| This is kinda how I feel about Elon.
|
| 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.
| minusf wrote:
| > I don't think that would have happened without Tesla.
|
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I should have been more clear about that.
|
| 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).
| jhugo wrote:
| Regardless of what you think of Trump, it is absurd that a
| major medium of public communication has banned a former
| president. I'll concede that a big part of the absurdity is
| the fact that Trump was president, but the idea that people
| need protecting from someone's words, and that Twitter's
| leadership are the appropriate people to make that call,
| really doesn't sit right with me.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I wish Twitter would ban more people and stop being so
| hesitant. I don't care that Trump is no longer president,
| he continuously took actions that would have banned him
| many times over if he had not been president. He then tried
| to circumvent those bans. Anyone else would be banned for
| life.
|
| Twitter is a private company and do whatever they want to
| do. It is their platform.
| jhugo wrote:
| > 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?
| nerdjon wrote:
| Splitting hairs, I will assume you knew what I meant
| because them being public as far as having shares out
| does not change anything about this argument. They are
| not a government system.
|
| 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?
| jhugo wrote:
| The point is that when a social network is large enough
| to become significant in the way people communicate, the
| way thought evolves in society, etc, it becomes a
| societal issue that the owners of that network can (and,
| as you keep pointing out, are completely within their
| rights to) arbitrarily restrict what people can say.
|
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| You don't have to use twitter, Facebook, or any other
| platform. If you are dissatisfied with the rules then
| make your own.
|
| 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.
| jhugo wrote:
| I've tried twice to make it clear that I'm talking about
| the wider societal issue of the growing importance of
| these platforms in public discourse combined with their
| moderation policies (and the arbitrariness of those
| policies -- since they can change at any time without
| notice).
|
| 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.
| nextstep wrote:
| Convincing people he's actually interested in those goals
| (moving humanity of fossil fuels and earth) is going to get
| harder and harder to do. Buying twitter might be a good way for
| Musk to continue to shape the narrative around his businesses
| as they fail to deliver.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| > as they fail to deliver.
|
| 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_.
| jcadam wrote:
| We'll see how many employees leave. Might be some good job
| openings soon...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Could twitter allow real people to stay anonymous?
|
| 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.
| abvdasker wrote:
| If Twitter learns your identity through the verification
| process are you really anonymous, though?
| null_shift wrote:
| why do you need zero trust software for this?
|
| 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?
| V__ wrote:
| Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think Musk
| can even solve one?
|
| 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?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR
| department
|
| 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).
| V__ wrote:
| If someone touts that free speech is important, but tries to
| suppress or penalize it, if it is directed against them. One
| natural conclusion would be, that their commitment is at
| least questionable.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| The point is that your examples are clearly of "suppressing
| free speech". For example, what does not having a PR dept
| supress?
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| > The point is that your examples are clearly of
| "suppressing free speech".
|
| 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?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| sorry, I mis-typed. I meant _not_ clearly.
|
| > 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.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I'm not defending Musk's shutting down of Tesla's PR department
| or cancelling a preorder because he didn't like a journalist's
| article -- and point well taken that those events might
| indicate his behavior/orientation -- but these are hardly
| comparable in the sense that Twitter is fundamentally a speech
| platform - that's what it enables its users to do - whereas
| Tesla is not. To extrapolate from his behavior re Tesla to the
| way he views Twitter or would operate it seems like a stretch
| to me. It's possible for a person to bifurcate.
| airza wrote:
| It seems extremely comparable. If Elon purports to believe
| that free, unmoderated speech is intrinsically valuable in
| society, why would he suddenly do an about face for his own
| companies? Isn't the point of being an absolutist that your
| belief in free speech is, well, absolute?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| No and Elon clarified in his latest TED interview that laws
| of the US would still apply to Twitter in regard to hate
| speech and the like.
| V__ wrote:
| Until Musk changes his mind, or China says, ban all
| mentions off Taiwan or say goodbye to your factory.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'd argue that journalism relies on freedom of speech and
| Elon punished someone for expressing their opinion. If
| journalism doesn't require freedom of speech why would
| twitter?
| gwn7 wrote:
| > If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Twitter HAS a free speech problem.
|
| 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.
| gwn7 wrote:
| > 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".
|
| 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.
| michaelgrosner2 wrote:
| Twitter does not have a free speech problem. Twitter is not
| the US government, it's a private organization, and has no
| obligation to allow any speech it does not want on its
| platform. If it serves the political agenda of some people,
| that is entirely within it's own free speech right and we
| should celebrate its ability to, or found new organizations
| to compete its free speech.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Which political agenda is that? The one that is against hate
| speech, misinformation, and threats of violence?
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Yes, that one. Some people (me included) have strong
| reservations about whether that's an achievable and / or
| desirable goal.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Define misinformation.
|
| 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.
| gwn7 wrote:
| What makes you think that all the censored stuff is about
| hate speech, misinformation and threats of violence? To
| think that you must be either very naive or benefiting from
| that political agenda yourself.
|
| 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.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Suspending the New York Post's account for posting the
| Hunter Biden laptop story.
| staz wrote:
| > Twitter HAS a free speech problem. This is not
| controversial.
|
| Twitter has limitations on free speech, it's totally
| debatable if that's a problem or not.
| gwn7 wrote:
| Ok, fair point. So let's not say that "Twitter has a free
| speech problem".
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| trevorboaconstr wrote:
| Why is Twitters position on what type of content it allows a
| 'problem' given it's a private company? The companies that
| run social media can legally censor and remove publicly, and
| privately, posted content. They can also ban, suspend, or
| limit users, for pretty much any reason.
|
| Have we become so delusional that we can't recognize this
| simple fact?
| psyc wrote:
| Why is it a problem if Uber drivers have to roll a 1D20
| when they pick you up, and drive away laughing "owned!"
| every time they roll 1? They're a private company. It adds
| a little harmless fun and excitement. There's no law saying
| they have to have you as a passenger. Therefore, nobody
| should complain or get upset?
| frebord wrote:
| Will only really matter what problems Musk thinks twitter has,
| and seems weird to doubt musk can fix them at this point.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think
| Musk can even solve one?_
|
| He's solved the full self driving problem. He has more time on
| has hands...
| hacker_newz wrote:
| Have you seen the FSD test videos?
| [deleted]
| ttttttthu66ttt wrote:
| /s ?
| qgin wrote:
| Has to be
| cosmic_quanta wrote:
| The Tesla engineers have solved 95% of the self-driving
| problems, perhaps. The remaining 5% is, of course, _much_
| harder to solve
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| If the remaining 5% is much harder, wouldn't that mean they
| haven't really solved 95% of the problem?
| pdpi wrote:
| Pareto principle sort of thing.
| cosmic_quanta wrote:
| Good point, I was thinking about 95% of the problem in
| terms of time spent on the road
| KMnO4 wrote:
| The infamous 90/90 rule:
|
| > _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._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety_rule
| imtringued wrote:
| He said "full self driving" which is a Tesla marketing term
| that could mean absolutely anything.
| kube-system wrote:
| They don't have a self driving product at all. They have a
| couple variations of a level-2 driver assist product.
| OgAstorga wrote:
| Yeah, sure. He also solved "traffic"[^1].
|
| [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZaRfNjTPx8
| imtringued wrote:
| Singapore solved traffic with congestion pricing. Turns
| out, people have an endless desire to wastefully use free
| stuff.
| thinkxl wrote:
| by solved you mean rushed out a prototype out to production.
| loceng wrote:
| Managing or controlling a private organization is a very
| different thing than a public square.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| It's bad for multinational conglomerate owners to run Twitter
| for obvious reasons. Will the Chinese government force Musk
| to turn over DMs of dissidents as a condition of approving
| Shanghai Gigafactory Phase II? Will President DeSantis coerce
| him to censor "left wing misinformation" in exchange for an
| extension of EV tax credits or a SpaceX contract? Unlike
| Bezos and WaPo, Elon has already said he's purchasing Twitter
| for the express purpose of exerting editorial control.
| chasd00 wrote:
| on the other hand, you're dealign with someone with
| Asperger's. Traditional forms of coercion may not work well
| with Musk. but other forms may...
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Elon Musk values growing his businesses more than
| anything else, which opens up a fairly conventional route
| to coercion
| kylecordes wrote:
| This is a very important and under-appreciated risk. It
| makes Musk perhaps a uniquely unsuitable owner Twitter,
| when measured specifically along the "free speech" and
| related concerns he expresses. A more free Twitter would be
| owned by a person or group with very few other interests
| that could be used as leverage.
| loceng wrote:
| A possibility doesn't mean it's going to happen - and
| baseless fear mongering at this point. And I don't have the
| feeling he'd do such a thing - he's very empathetic and
| would understand the harm/violence that would allow.
|
| 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?
| syshum wrote:
| >Unlike Bezos and WaPo,
|
| So Musk is honest? because intentional or not it clear
| Bezo's ownership of WaPo has impacted editorial positions
| hef19898 wrote:
| I was afraid of that, too. All I've seen so far are
| disclaimers about Bezo's ownership of the WP. Plenty of
| negative articles about Amazon is published by WP.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Ya and also it's clear Elon cares a lot more about
| Twitter than Bezos does about WaPo. He's paying 100x more
| and publicly obsesses about content moderation policies
| daily. If some government regulating Amazon tried
| seriously to coerce Bezos into doing something at WaPo,
| he probably just would have sold it to someone else
| hef19898 wrote:
| Honestly, I'm surprised when it comes to Bezos and the
| WP. Bezos, for all he achieved, is class-A hole when it
| come to labor rights an how employees are treated. Heck,
| the guy bought a second yacht to land his chopper on
| because his primary yacht, being a sail ship and all,
| doesn't have place for a heli pad. He's prime capitalism
| excess. And there he is, having bought WP to prevent it
| from falling into hard times and, as of now, he did not
| interfere with WPs reporting.
|
| 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.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| "he did not interfere with WPs reporting."--this just
| means, Bezos doesn't directly deal with the editorial
| staff and reporters. In other words, you don't see
| legally admissible evidence for his interference. Next
| time, work with c-level execs, and see how they create
| the impression of 'non-interference' and yet interfere.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I read, occasionally, the WP, the NYT, Le Monde and
| Spiegel (don't ask about the latter, it is the major
| "free" online paper in Germany). So far I have yet to see
| a difference between those when it comes to Bezos or
| Amazon (excluding differences between European and US
| reporting), nor do I see any major bias differences
| between NYT and WP.
|
| And that's all the interference I care about when it
| comes to reporting.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Nah
| ui4jd73bdj wrote:
| Very easy to solve the only problems I've had with twitter.
| Stop hiding content behind login prompts. Serverside render
| direct links to tweets (no infinite loaders/generic errors).
| jchw wrote:
| The only thing I can think of is that unlike I would assume
| most executives, he seems to use Twitter much more like the
| average user. That said, I think Yishan Wong just about hit the
| nail on the head as to why Musks approach is likely flawed.
| V__ wrote:
| Yishans take on it was fascinating. For anyone else, I highly
| recommend reading it: https://nitter.net/yishan/status/151493
| 8507407421440?s=21&t=...
| talove wrote:
| Here's the REAL twitter link to that take:
| https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440#m
| ui4jd73bdj wrote:
| What a horrible take that censoring civil truthful
| factbased discussion is ok because some nutjob might draw
| wrong conclusions.
| V__ wrote:
| > civil truthful factbased discussion
|
| 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.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| The caveat, I think, is that what he describes is
| quintessentially American. I'm pretty well travelled and
| have only seen such overt and absolute polarisation in the
| US. I'm sure there are others but I haven't seen it in
| Europe, Africa or the far East. It's quite the source of
| amusement in my circles.
|
| I say this knowing Elon is (was?) South African.
| objektif wrote:
| Which part was fascinating? The part he says social media
| platforms do not care about politics? That is a load of
| bull crap. They do care and they have a preference. Not
| because of their political beliefs but because of money.
| jchw wrote:
| No, they really don't care. The difference is that if
| they did care, they'd care about where the money came
| from. They do not.
|
| 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.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| That is a good read, but being a child of the old internet,
| I agree with his axioms but disagree with his conclusions.
| I would rather Elon let these so called dangerous ideas
| fester into bad behavior, letting twitter turn into 4chan,
| where every day someone successfully advocates for hatred
| and arguably causes multiple deaths, than see a single 140
| character post censored. You can call that naive, but the
| reality is that many of us have aeen speech turn into
| physical violence, and still prefer that to nervously
| polite dialog that avoids ideas that are likely true but
| might make someone act poorly.
| V__ wrote:
| I agree with you in principle, but 4chan doesn't have the
| reach Twitter has, as soon as those platforms start
| having a wide enough reach, they are dangerous. I mean,
| Facebook was used to incite genocide and Twitter nearly
| toppled but damaged a democracy. Maybe the solution is to
| prevent social networks to gain too big of a reach.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| If the landscape was more granular people would be cross
| posting stuff and using aggregation services. That was
| already the case to some extent. I think the answer is to
| let people be people and watch it all burn. Maybe someday
| some future society will learn from the mistakes we are
| making. But I don't think those mistakes include failing
| to protect ourselves from being exposed to inflammatory
| ideas. That sort of track record just gives conspiracy
| theorists more credibility.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I don't think you should be looking at this as a "solution" to
| any problems other than this: Elon Musk has built his net worth
| of $250 billion by saying things to people, and his primary
| bullhorn has been Twitter. Spending $43 billion to secure his
| access to the engine that got him to $250 billion is
| reasonable. Combine that with the fact that he can now put his
| thumb on the scale and get his tweets in front of more
| eyeballs, and that may increase TSLA enough to offset the cost
| of buying Twitter.
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| "Do you want your campaign to get more reach in your
| district? Let's talk about that tax-cut.."
|
| It wouldn't surprise me...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| One problem he can solve is Twitter being worth less than $43B,
| at least temporary.
| cslarson wrote:
| I don't think these anti free speech "examples" have the effect
| that people who cite them expect. Yet they are used a lot which
| points to a striking disconnect in communication.
| V__ wrote:
| May I ask why do you think that? If someone touts that free
| speech is important, but tries to suppress or penalize it, if
| it is directed against them. One natural conclusion would be,
| that their commitment is at least questionable.
| vasco wrote:
| He doesn't have to solve any problems, if he buys it, it's his
| to do whatever he wants with, together with the rest of the up
| to 2000 private investors. And users are free to leave if they
| wish as well.
| LightG wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| 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.
| rklaehn wrote:
| Not sure what is so hard about this.
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| > But the mission of twitter should be free speech within the
| bounds of the law, at least according to Elon.
|
| 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.
| tomschlick wrote:
| > there are countless examples of the left-wing getting
| banned
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| I tried to find a few more or less reputable sources for
| you:
|
| * 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/twit
| ter-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.
| tomschlick wrote:
| It seems that of those, the only one that had anything to
| do with suspensions / bans was the Occupy accounts and
| those (according to the article) seem to have been
| tripping the "might be a bot" thresholds because of how
| they don't post for a long time and then all of a sudden
| all blast the same content from the same protests.
|
| 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).
| mywaifuismeta wrote:
| Twitter is just another social media fad that will go away and
| be replaced by the next one, Musk or not. I don't think anyone
| can "solve" that.
| fortran77 wrote:
| They all fall! It used to be quicker, but they all do. It's
| clear Facebook is fading. And it's a separate issue from
| anything "wrong" the platform does. The userbase simply ages,
| and kids don't want to be where their parents are. I have a
| facebook account that I only use for high school reuinons. My
| classmates post photos of their grandchildren, etc.
| objektif wrote:
| Although I generally agree that most social media platforms
| are fads. I am not sure about Twitter. At least I know that
| it will stay around for a long time. It did so despite all
| it's problems so far.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The timelines here are pretty long. Facebook has been around
| for 18 years, Twitter for 16. That's more than a "fad". These
| companies are lasting as long or longer than other tech
| companies, certainly longer than your average start-up.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think
| Musk can even solve one?
|
| 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.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think
| Musk can even solve one?
|
| Twitter's biggest problem is profitability and Musk doesn't
| seem to care about the economics of Twitter.
| objektif wrote:
| He said similar things about Tesla. It is naive to take his
| word on it. He is just not very good at articulating things.
| DarkCrusader2 wrote:
| Everyone spending $43 billion cares about the economics of
| their investments.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR
| department
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| Musk has a plausible sounding reason for everything. But when
| dismantling a PR department leads to the press not being able
| to ask Tesla any uncomfortable questions, then "organic press
| is better" is just as much bullshit as "self-driving is
| coming next year".
| jlmorton wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand this. Corporate PR departments
| are not the White House Press Office. They don't stand up
| in the briefing room and take questions from the press, or
| hold a press gaggle. The entire point of these departments
| is to deflect uncomfortable questions. It's exactly the
| opposite.
| V__ wrote:
| That's a good point. However, they are the go-to point
| for anyone wanting to ask a company a question. What does
| it say if a publicly traded company (or Musk) doesn't
| even want to do that minimum amount of work to at least
| pretend to be transparent?
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently journalists were pissed because they like PR
| departments giving them the nice treatment and also writing
| their articles for them.
| codaphiliac wrote:
| It might be just a money move: make the company private, make
| it more efficient, monetize better. Then re-introduce in public
| market later.
| nojito wrote:
| The only problem twitter has is with monetization. It's
| absolutely ridiculous that they still can't make money.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Easy solution: Buy CaTcOiN, get bot push cAtciOn, have Musk
| retweet it, sell caTCoIn -> platform monetized
| mikewarot wrote:
| >Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think
| Musk can even solve one?
|
| 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.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Twitter seems to be the most transparent about this already?
|
| 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...
| dghughes wrote:
| Twitter is real-time and the voice of the Internet I think Musk
| just wants to control that. There's no free speech aspect to the
| purchase it's just pure spite. Trump will be back within a week
| and I think the overall Twitter experience will degrade even
| more.
| people_not_bots wrote:
| Alot of huff and a lot of guff the end result will be Elon will
| think of this as buying his version of the washington post and
| then will be relatively hands off.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I wonder if there'll be a clause in the terms of purchase where
| Musk gets to call himself a founder.
| didip wrote:
| My first reaction: Say good bye to Twitter's famous WLB.
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Prediction: Musk will buy it, Twitter will tank, Musk will sell
| it at a loss.
| hooande wrote:
| I'd put the over/under at 365 days before he sells, and take
| the under
| pm90 wrote:
| probably to someone in the house of saud lol
| the_only_law wrote:
| You mean our allies that help us against wicked secular
| regimes in Middle East?
| loceng wrote:
| And what do you base that off of?
|
| 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.
| ronnier wrote:
| Because the people with power, the leaders, big tech,
| advertisers, people with influence, and the media do not like
| musk. They'll just start some new trendy site and go there.
| loceng wrote:
| Are you sure about that? I think you may be conflating
| people with artificial power and those with genuine power.
|
| 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.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Parler, Gab, and Truth Social are all right wing
| extremist sites because they don't moderate and they want
| to attract that demographic. I assume someone creating an
| alternative to Twitter because Musk buys it would
| intentionally not follow that path.
|
| Still, an alternative wouldn't succeed.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| all 3 of those sites do moderate.
| Qub3d wrote:
| That's true, but its a deeper problem with that. The
| moderation is a sort of "in protest" form, with lots of
| deliberate "blind eyes" and slow action so they don't get
| deplatformed by the app stores etc.
|
| 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/134810144340478771
| 8.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)
| seanosaur wrote:
| How does one put that amount of focus into 3 large, highly
| visible companies?
| loceng wrote:
| You seem to have a misconception, or lacking conception, of
| how companies are built and operate: it's a series of small
| decisions, like attracting and then hiring amazing,
| competent, and passionate people to do tasks that the
| company requires - and then different functions run
| autonomously (without you) - so then you can move onto the
| next decisions to be made or be focusing on putting out
| "fires" if that's what urgently and critically demands your
| time.
|
| 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.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| I agree, and not because Elon's not a smart dude.
|
| 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.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Absolutely. If people wanted long form posts, facebook or
| similar were already there (minus the coolness quotient). For
| in-depth stories, a lot of the folks subscribe to medium /
| substack, which goes feature length.
|
| 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.
| kgwgk wrote:
| If that was perceived as a problem, we would see people
| writing ridicously long theeads or including screenshots of
| Word documents as images... Oh, wait!
| Pxtl wrote:
| Imho, success has broken Musk's brain. When he was focused
| 100% on getting his many projects off the ground? He was
| successful and well-loved and wasn't shooting his mouth off
| as often (I mean, not _never_ , but not as often). But now
| that Tesla and SpaceX have "made it" and Musk has delegated
| enough that he can live his "richest man on Earth" life
| without 24/7 grinding on his enterprises? He's choosing to
| spend it on infantile Very Online shit, and it's damaged his
| mental health.
|
| His life is rapidly looking like a cautionary tale about
| social media addiction that we should all learn from.
| sytelus wrote:
| I don't know if this is really the case or if your
| prediction will pan out but I do worry about very rich
| people losing ability to make difference. I was reading the
| book "Happy at Any Cost" which is a story about Zappos
| founder, how he got on drugs and lost focus. If you think
| about it, this is the fate of many billionairs. You no
| longer hear about Larry Page or Sergey Brin for years on
| despite they having all the time and resources in the
| world, for example.
| altacc wrote:
| He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be
| interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining
| free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a
| toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your
| "side".
|
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| Trolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach absolutists"
| are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk will provide
| them to drown out their enemies.
|
| Welcome to Voat 2.0.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _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.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Not even close. Reddit 1.0 was an era where the trolls
| didn't know what was possible. It was a pleasant era where
| extreme events that necessitated the subsequent rules/bans
| didn't yet occur.
| root_axis wrote:
| No? The entire purpose of reddit was to scale bans and site
| moderation by offloading that responsibility to the users
| rather than the site administrators.
| robonerd wrote:
| For years, they tolerated the existence of subreddits
| with names to heinous for me too even dare mention.
| Numerous r/[racial slur]s. Numerous subreddits dedicated
| to sexual violence and harassment. You know what I'm
| talking about, don't try to gaslight me.
| rectang wrote:
| Maybe so! There were big followings for /r/CreepShots and
| /r/rapingwomen. And lots of free-reachers who were
| apoplectic when Reddit at least tried to do something about
| it.
|
| If Musk can dial up the abuse on Twitter, Reddit 1.0 can
| live again.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Then Reddit slowly had its commitment to free speech
| chipped away, starting innocently with banning things like
| /r/jailbait and then abhorrent stuff like /r/coontown and
| then some time passed and they banned /r/chapotraphouse for
| being edgy and to prove they were cool because they banned
| left wingers.
|
| 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.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| And yet stuff like /r/BlackPeopleTwitter exists where if
| you don't "prove" you're black you're not allowed to
| post. There's a fundamental difference between being
| required to comply with a legal order to take something
| down and taking down content because you decided someone
| _might_ not like it.
| WalterSear wrote:
| > if you don't "prove" you're black you're not allowed to
| post.
|
| 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.
| altacc wrote:
| I think many people have made assumptions about what Musk
| means when he talks about free speech. I don't think (and
| greatly hope) it's going to be an uncensored free for all,
| which typically leads to a toxic nightmare. Fingers crossed!
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think he means it for his friends like Trump and Bannon.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Trolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach
| absolutists" are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk
| will provide them to drown out their enemies.
|
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| Impeding unlimited harassment is anti-free-reach. Trolls
| won't get banned under Musk -- they're his soul mates. They
| will have free rein to brigade the posts of their enemies
| and will use massive replying at scale as a megaphone to
| scream others down.
| UberFly wrote:
| Truth is only some of the "trolls" historically have been
| banned on Twitter. The ones the board agreed with were
| allowed to keep at it.
| kodah wrote:
| > defining a healthy culture for your elusive market place of
| ideas
|
| 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.
| avs733 wrote:
| > He's already said that he'd follow all local laws
|
| 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.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Speaking of the SEC [0]:
|
| > 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...
| mulmen wrote:
| Wouldn't he need to buy the SEC then?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'm not saying he would be able to tweet however he
| wants, but perhaps a desire to do so, aka, to not have
| the SEC tell him how to communicate on a platform he
| bought for ~$43B. I just see it as a potential escalating
| standoff between the SEC and Musk.
|
| 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.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I can't see any connection with the SEC issue. Nothing
| would change. Doesn't matter whether he owns the platform
| or not, he's not supposed to tweet market manipulating
| lies or exaggerations, which is why he has to run them by
| legal first.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I agree he's not _supposed to_. Maybe I just think that
| since the SEC thinks he has already broken that rule,
| that if he were to own the platform, he might break that
| rule even more.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You're conflating two issues.
|
| 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.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yes, I imagine it would have been the same on Instagram.
| And yet he posted it on Twitter and they put a ruling on
| how he had to get approval before tweeting specifically.
| I imagine that ruling would still apply if he were to own
| Twitter but I see it as a potential escalation: "You're
| telling me I can't say whatever I want on my own platform
| that I just bought with ~$40B?"
|
| 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.
| nightski wrote:
| Actually yes, it doesn't matter if he paid $50B for
| Twitter. It's still a violation of SEC rules regardless
| of whether he owns the platform or not. This argument
| makes no sense.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'm not saying it _wouldn 't be_ a violation of the SEC
| rules. I'm saying that if he is alleged to have violated
| them already when he didn't own the platform, there may
| be a chance he violates them more if he does own it.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I don't think he's that incomprehensibly stupid, really.
| The only question is whether the SEC has the authority to
| actually create pain for someone whose wealth is so
| outside of the norm.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I don't think he'd be as bold-faced about it, however, he
| does have a tendency to mock people on Twitter, including
| his tweet of "SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is
| Elon's."
|
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| mdoms wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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?
| jlundberg wrote:
| In this recent TED video Elon Musk takes the opportunity to
| clarify things regarding that settlement:
|
| https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM
|
| Also highly recommended for anyone curious about what he
| wants to do with Twitter.
| malfist wrote:
| ChainReaktion wrote:
| But what exactly is "the law?" It's not like this stuff is cut
| and dried even within the US. Posted this elsewhere, but free
| speech laws are some of the trickiest legal issues we grapple
| with in the US, and many statues hinge on the intent behind the
| speech. How is Twitter supposed to implement this
| (hypothetical) new policy? Do they always give posters the
| benefit of the doubt? Seems ripe for abuse. Assume the worst?
| Probably more censorious than it is today. Punt to the courts?
| Great, moderation now takes years and costs thousands of
| dollars. What is the standard of proof to take down a tweet?
| Preponderance of the evidence? What evidence is admissible?
| Does Twitter just internally recreate the US trial court system
| to manage this? What about cross-border disputes? What about
| laws that directly conflict? What about international law?
| Treaties to which the US is not a party (eg Protocols I & II of
| the Geneva Convention)? If "following the law" were easy we
| wouldn't have so many layers and judges
| judge2020 wrote:
| To be fair, 'free speech' isn't even something a company can
| force themselves to follow. Short of selling to the US
| Government (who would have to explicitly accept such an
| offering), being bound by free speech isn't possible without
| making your own rules for what qualifies as free speech and
| what happens when the platform 'violates' it - ie. you can't
| say "take all matters of violating your first amendment to
| civil court" since corporations, by design, cannot violate
| your first amendment rights.
| antiterra wrote:
| It's fair to assume any substantial site with user created
| content has some significant agreements/settlements with
| attorneys general in various jurisdictions. Those will likely
| be the stickiest, outside of ones with direct judicial
| determination.
| xfitm3 wrote:
| Let's hope this is the beginning of rolling back woke culture.
| Epiphany21 wrote:
| >the elusive path of maintaining free speech
|
| 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.
| altacc wrote:
| The full quote is " elusive path of maintaining free speech,
| following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic
| cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your
| "side"."
|
| 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.
| Epiphany21 wrote:
| > The full quote is " elusive path of maintaining free
| speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a
| toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your
| "side"."
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| TheCondor wrote:
| Aside from the 15minutes when it was just developers and tech
| dorks, was it ever non-toxic? I love how "free speech" comes
| up when these assholes limit what you can say to a tiny few
| bytes, it's fundamentally limited to name calling, slogans,
| sound bites and head lines rather than actual real discourse
| and content.
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws
|
| 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.
| hickimsedenolan wrote:
| It is available in Turkey.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Exactly! And in Turkey people get charged with supporting
| terrorism by tweeting negative stuff about Erdogan. On the
| surface of it, Musk should be against that, free speech and
| all that. Supporting local law would mean supporting
| authorities in finding those users. One way out would be to
| just retreat from, in this example, Turkey.
|
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's better to stick to local rules than getting a clique
| in silicon valley to decide what they think should be
| acceptable to say. He said he wants more free speech, not
| to break the laws of foreign countries. If twitter was
| already doing just the minimum required by law, and Elon
| said he still wanted more free speech you'd have a point.
| But they go far beyond that!
|
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It's better to stick to local rules than getting a
| clique in silicon valley to decide what they think should
| be acceptable to say.
|
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Agreed. I'm not saying they should, just that they have
| to follow the laws. But they don't have to police their
| platform according to what an extremely sheltered SV-
| adjacent elite thinks should be okay. It's not an
| either/or question, they can not bend down to police
| states and also not let that minority have the last say
| over what is okay or not across the entire globe.
| recuter wrote:
| > Exactly! And in Turkey people get charged with
| supporting terrorism by tweeting negative stuff about
| Erdogan.
|
| 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/e
| nac...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_countr
| y
|
| 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?
| kubb wrote:
| > Sadly, not just in Turkey but increasingly in what
| you'd consider developed "western" countries. This is
| concerning.
|
| Bullsh*t alert! Name one western country that charges
| people for terrorism for criticizing Erdogan.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Reagan told a variant of this joke:
|
| > '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...
| kubb wrote:
| the only thing that is funny about that joke is that
| Reagan believed people can just come see the president
| whenever they want
| vincentmarle wrote:
| It's not being charged with terrorism, but you can go to
| jail in the Netherlands for insulting the King:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36799639
|
| > 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; PS16,700).
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| That law has been abolished a couple of years ago.
| kubb wrote:
| hmm, so actually the amount of free speech is INCREASING?
| interesting...
| nailer wrote:
| A Scottish man in the UK was recently charged with saying
| the only good British soldier is a dead one.
| kubb wrote:
| what a legend, what did they charge him with?
| recuter wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-
| user-... Twitter user sentenced to 150
| hours of community service in UK for posting 'offensive'
| tweet
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| In Canada, protestors had their bank accounts frozen for
| saying mean things about Trudeau. It's not exactly the
| same as your example but it does rhyme.
| zht wrote:
| this is a very bad faith representation of what happened.
| earth_walker wrote:
| No-one got their bank accounts frozen for "saying mean
| things".
|
| 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.
| dwater wrote:
| That is incorrect. ~200 bank accounts were frozen for
| refusing to follow police orders to clear illegal
| blockades. Accounts were not frozen for speech, but for
| unlawful actions.
| recuter wrote:
| I am not Canadian and you're going to have to do your own
| fact checking but here is a post from an MP (whom I know
| nothing about but can assume you absolutely hate, try to
| put that aside):
| https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808
| 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.
|
| I think regardless of your political affiliation freezing
| bank accounts and invoking emergency powers is
| controversial for obvious reasons. It is not a good
| precedent. Try to think ahead to a time when your
| political opponents are in power.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| There's more (or less) to that story:
| https://vancouversun.com/news/politics/mark-strahl-
| briane-tr...
|
| 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.
| recuter wrote:
| If you read more carefully (I can not stress enough that
| I am not Canadian, if you ask me the protests were dumb
| 'etc) that does not at all refute the point I am making.
|
| 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| For context: I'm an American living in Canada.
|
| 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.
| recuter wrote:
| > I understand what your point is
|
| Yay
|
| > but Canada has a history of going after left leaning
| protesters in FAR more concerning ways than this
|
| Sigh
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Fine. Ignore that part. But feel free to address the
| actual argument:
|
| 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
| recuter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| It's not even REMOTELY close. They didn't have their bank
| accounts frozen for saying mean things, they were frozen
| because they were blocking roadways, damaging property,
| and making life in general more difficult for innocent
| citizens. You may not agree that they should have been
| frozen but it's absolutely not about saying mean things.
| cmonagle wrote:
| This is false. 200 bank accounts were frozen for
| organizing or significantly financing an illegal blockade
| of our capital.
|
| Nobody had their bank account frozen for "saying mean
| things about Trudeau."
| recuter wrote:
| In England recently there was a teenager that quoted a
| snoop song on her instagram got threatened with an ankle
| bracelet and a $1000 fine for using a slur - post was not
| even directed at anyone in particular but rather in
| memory of her friend that died in a car crash.
|
| Incidentally, Ahmadinejad is quoting 2pac on twitter: htt
| ps://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 PS385 and ordered to pay PS600
| costs. As a consequence he lost his job as an
| administrative and financial supervisor at a car parts
| company.
| kubb wrote:
| if they quoted Erdogan, I might give it to you, but 2Pac
| is too far removed. not everyone has to know all the
| lyrics to every rap song to distinguish between
| participating in pop culture and bomb threats by the way
| recuter wrote:
| Two separate cases. The "bomb threat" I quoted here in
| full, it is right in front of your eyes. Make of it what
| you will of course.
|
| 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...
| kubb wrote:
| the case should have been dropped by the prosecutor
| without going to court, someone was incompetent
|
| how do you think this is on par with Turkey consistently
| persecuting ---dissidents---?
| recuter wrote:
| The legislators were the only ones incompetent -
| otherwise, sadly, no. This is their current system
| working as intended.
|
| 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.
| kubb wrote:
| OK I believe you, the UK is messed up
| baq wrote:
| UK had draconian libel laws used to silence inconvenient
| messages since for all intents and purposes forever,
| though. 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
| recuter wrote:
| Libel laws are at least about false statements. The
| difference is now you can still get in legal trouble for
| speaking the truth or making jokes, just as long as
| somebody was "offended".
| kubb wrote:
| Every single answer to this has moved the goalpost by the
| way. Unbelievable.
| vimy wrote:
| Not terrorism but not a good look for Germany.
|
| > The Bohmermann affair (also known as Erdogate[1]) was a
| political affair following an experimental poem on German
| satirist Jan Bohmermann's satire show Neo Magazin Royale
| in late March 2016 that deliberately insulted Turkish
| president Recep Tayyip Erdogan 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 Bohmermann. German Chancellor Angela
| Merkel further escalated the situation by apologizing for
| Bohmermann'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 Bohmermann'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/Bohmermann_affair
| kubb wrote:
| they actually liberalized this outdated law, so they
| moved towards more freedom of speech, what's your point?
| rileyphone wrote:
| No, but allows them to be subjected his goons' violence:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clashes_at_the_Turkish_Amba
| ssa....
| kubb wrote:
| that's your army and police forces failing to protect
| your citizens from a turkish bodyguard on your own soil.
| nothing to do with persecuting Erdogan's critics
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| The entire point is that the _platform_ should not be
| doing the censoring. The local government can legally,
| according to their bogus laws, jail and censor their own
| population, but the platform should allow those posts to
| appear in the first place. So stuff like "hate speech"
| (what exactly does Twitter define as hate speech?) should
| not be censored.
| Nathanba wrote:
| it really doesn't require such extreme examples. The EU will
| also ask for all kinds of censorship. Germany just made
| wearing the 'Z' illegal, meaning that any kind of pro-russian
| viewpoint will have to be censored. There is only one country
| on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I hope nobody listens to the German government on speech
| rules and nobody should. There should be a rule that you
| have to make it through 1 century without creating 2
| dictatorships before you can even say anything about
| allowed or forbidden speech. And no, none of these
| dictatorships had anything close to free expression like
| some people hilariously and tragically suggested.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Which are the two dictatorships you are thinking about?
|
| 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...
| esyir wrote:
| As far as I can tell, those didn't look like the USA
| applying martial law to large swathes of its populace.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| That's true, but also not the criteria the original
| poster proposed.
| umanwizard wrote:
| They presumably meant the Nazi period (1933-1945) and the
| period of SED rule in East Germany (1949-1990).
| robonerd wrote:
| It's a sliver over a hundred years ago now, but Germany
| was also under a military dictatorship lead by Hindenburg
| and Ludendorff from 1916 through 1918.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Free speech was all but dead between 1914 and 1918
| _everywhere_. Not saying Luddendorff wasn 't defacto
| military dictator, he was, just pointing out that this
| had no additional negative impact on free speech during
| this time.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You should go through at least one to be properly able to
| judgr free speech and its limitations and risks.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The current set of German speech rules were specifically
| designed to keep one of those two dictatorships from
| reasserting control once the Americans and Soviets
| stopped looking. They didn't write the rules themselves;
| _the Allies did_.
| V__ wrote:
| > Germany just made wearing the 'Z' illegal
|
| 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.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Technically true, but without context, easily
| misunderstood._
|
| 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...
| thereddaikon wrote:
| >Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless
| action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets
| interpreted a little different.
|
| 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.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| What about National Security Letters?
| V__ wrote:
| > The US definition is pretty narrow and immediate.
|
| 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?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I'm not the guy you replied to but this springs to mind.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-
| merkel-...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Charges were dropped and the law was changed. The case
| was handled _really_ bad so by Merkel.
| V__ wrote:
| Also, the law was kind of an old remnant, so most legal
| scholars were sure the law would have been declared
| unconstitutional if challenged.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Based on what I'm reading here, U.S. law more than just a
| "little" different from German law in this regard. The
| word "imminent" in the U.S. standard does a huge amount
| of work, restricting liability to things like direct
| incitement (e.g., "Get him!"). And the "Z" itself is a
| perfect example, since it would almost certainly be
| considered protected speech in the U.S.
| V__ wrote:
| I'm not trying to say there are no differences, but I
| find the exaggerations tiresome. When companies or people
| are muzzled by National Security Letters, whistleblowers
| jailed and companies bankrupt people with SLAP suits for
| saying something they don't like, that's somehow not a
| restriction on free speech in the U.S.
|
| 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.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| For better or worse, free-speech ideology in the U.S. is
| very focused on avoiding 1) prior restraint and 2)
| content/viewpoint discrimination by the government. So a
| lot of the things you identified tend not to strike
| people steeped in American legal thinking as free speech
| problems on the same order as categorically banning
| certain symbols or messages. I happen to think that this
| focus is correct, but I could be convinced otherwise. I
| don't think its at all obvious what the best approach is.
|
| But I agree with your more general point that Americans
| should be a bit less smug about the superiority of their
| free-speech rules.
| V__ wrote:
| I agree with you (and thanks for the nice discussion) and
| think it's really a different cultural interpretation. I
| would say that most Germans would say free speech is a
| value in general, which should be upheld by the
| government and for example the work place (and there are
| laws to protect people there) whereas the U.S. is more
| focus on the government part (just an observation).
|
| I think both have their historic reasons, place and
| differences.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Okay, so imagine Germany does not allow gay marriage (not
| so hard, considering it did not do that until 2017, and
| had no legal recognition of same sex partnership at all
| before 2001). This would make gay marriage an illegal
| act. Do you think Germany then should be allowed to
| criminally prosecute people for advocating for the
| illegal act of gay marriage?
|
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| That's a very good observation. I should've made sure to
| say that not all illegal acts are created equal, and
| those which are illegal to advocate for, are specially
| listed [1].
|
| In summary, those basically are high treason,
| murder/manslaughter, assault, robbery, counterfeiting,
| creating fire/explosions/radiation,
| destroying/interference in infrastructure (planes etc.).
|
| [1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/138.html
| [deleted]
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Technically true, but without context, easily
| misunderstood._
|
| 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...
| V__ wrote:
| > some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very
| specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
|
| 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.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z
| symbol as a symbol for this war._
|
| 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://ti
| me.com/...
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-
| the-invert...
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What does "the other side" look like in this case?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Just glancing at his feed, Elon seems to talk about spam
| bots, free speech, making the extreme left and extreme
| right equally unhappy, and shadow banning. Sounds like he
| wants more fairness and transparency in how Twitter
| moderates content.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unfortunately that depends on his _personal_ definitions
| of "extreme left", "extreme right", and "free speech."
| imroot wrote:
| If I am on Twitter's Trust and Safety team, I'm sweating
| bullets today.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They should all be looking for choice B companies. I
| suspect there will be a mass firing/exodus for anything
| involving security or feed algorithm teams.
| otterley wrote:
| This sort of thinking is how wars and genocides get started.
| Being decisive and following through on execution is an
| important skill, but ignoring other stakeholders' opinions
| has downsides that are best not ignored.
| shishy wrote:
| I think he already explained the mindset here by
| differentiating between moderating speech, and moderating
| behavior. So people who say certain things might still be
| banned or violate guidelines because of how they say it, but
| the event would probably be misrepresented as infringing on the
| right to free speech.
| esyir wrote:
| Tone policing good. I unironically believe this, especially
| if tone policing allows actual discussion, rather than
| shouting matches.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Does local = national? what about conflicts legally - or
| ethically as a US corp. China access using CCP rules. Russia
| too.
| mdoms wrote:
| Let's be absolutely clear, Musk does not care about your free
| speech. He has a history of shutting down speech he doesn't
| like and will continue to do so.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| He is basically Thiel with even more "fuck you" money, and
| now he owns a huge megaphone that approaches the size of his
| ego.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| > find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following
| the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used
| mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
|
| 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.
| lucius_verus wrote:
| The bit about "following the law" was so poorly thought out.
| Musk's comments at TED made it seem like he both: (1) confused
| Bill of Rights guarantee that the government won't censor
| speech with some law that prohibits private companies from
| moderating speech on their platforms (not a thing) (2) failed
| to consider what it means to "follow the law" when your
| platform operates in multiple countries with incompatible laws.
| Do you comply with an authoritarian regime that demands you
| take down tweets
| (https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-
| rai...)? How about content that is specifically banned in some
| countries but not others, like Germany's strict hate speech
| laws (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twitter-germany-
| nazis/)? These are actual problems Twitter has had to deal
| with, and I don't get the impression that Musk realizes how
| complicated it it is.
| iloveparis wrote:
| That interview was doublespeak handwaving BS. He doesn't
| understand (or care about) free speech, certainly hasn't
| thought through the 'actual problems' you rightly bring up.
| This is because he doesn't value twitter as a marketplace of
| ideas - it's free promotion and advertising to him, and where
| he commits his SEC violations.
| sidibe wrote:
| Noone could have known social media moderation could be hard!
| Just like in 2017 he had no way of knowing his cars wouldn't
| drive themselves cross country by 2018
| vinay_ys wrote:
| Musk had no qualifications to run a rocket company. He didn't
| have much qualifications to run a car or solar company either.
| But he has done well by any measure of success. The only
| qualification that he seems to need is clear thinking based on
| first principles and genuine conviction and perseverance at
| super hard problems even while facing total personal
| destruction. And total personal destruction is always a real
| possibility with him - as he always seems to be all-in betting
| everything every time. So, if he fails spectacularly at his
| stated goal for twitter, I wouldn't be surprised (and neither
| will he be, I bet), but it would be sad to see that.
| sytelus wrote:
| Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is
| what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it.
| Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. The
| politics and policies are not Musk's forte, at least not yet.
| However, the more concerning part is his continued
| defragmentation of attention. Tesla is now genuinly falling
| behind with massive new competitions rising up. New models
| haven't been on market for a while. Previously announced
| models aren't getting delievered. Pace of growth of
| superchargers is not keeping up. There is a lot at stack
| where Musk can make huge difference.
| standyro wrote:
| Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but
| Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to
| consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not
| anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3
| announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number
| (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the
| Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too
| ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for
| Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to
| various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal
| personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and
| Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great
| figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.
| presentation wrote:
| Definitely not his forte, all his projects in urban
| planning have been so, so bad.
| [deleted]
| Slartie wrote:
| Musk also does not run a rocket company. Musk owns a rocket
| company. Gwynne Shotwell runs it.
| sytelus wrote:
| Shotwell doesn't "run" it. She is president and COO, sure.
| The vision, strategy and engineering is all Musk. Read the
| book Liftoff. Musk doesn't get much credit for his
| engineering work and often gets written off as just
| "investor" type.
| etchalon wrote:
| The "engineering" is not all Musk. Vision and strategy,
| yes.
|
| Musk is not a rocket scientist.
| sytelus wrote:
| At least during initial days, Musk spent 90% of time on
| engineering at SpaceX. He self-thought in rocket
| engineering and can easily match knowledge of many
| experts in the field. Many of big engineering decisions
| were done by Musk, at least until Falcon 9.
| wrycoder wrote:
| It's engineering, at this point.
|
| 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.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Perhaps he's good at getting the right people to run the
| stuff he owns?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Tesla doesn't seem that well run?
| adoxyz wrote:
| By what metric? Love it or hate it, Tesla is a huge
| success story.
| xeromal wrote:
| Tesla is the first U.S. auto company to go public since
| Ford did so in 1956. Is that not good enough?
|
| Seems well run enough to pull that off.
| Certhas wrote:
| To me this is the fascinating thing about Musk that
| really sets him apart: He has succeeded at building
| several companies that make real stuff and tackle hard
| engineering challenges. And it's not just having money to
| throw at the problem, we know that because Bezos also
| wanted a Rocket company and threw tons of Cash at it.
|
| 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).
| Graffur wrote:
| There's a short list of people who can start a rocket
| company and want to: Bezos, Branson and Musk. I think it
| is fair to say that starting a rocket company is hard.
| The small sample size of people trying doesn't really let
| us learn anything from the success or failures.
| Slartie wrote:
| That's a definitive 'yes'. He is extremely good at
| finding great and very qualified people, placing them in
| the right positions and getting 110% out of them.
| kanzenryu2 wrote:
| Musk is the lead designer for the rocket. That's not
| something Bezos does, for example.
| adoxyz wrote:
| He's also the Techno-King of Tesla. If you think he's
| actually doing any of the real science behind rocket
| design, I have a bridge I'd love to sell you.
|
| As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony
| Stark.
| mgfist wrote:
| If you watch any of the starbase videos (part 1:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw)
|
| 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.
| kevinsundar wrote:
| I was going to link these videos too. Its evident he's
| closely involved with technical discussions and
| decisions.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| While he obviously isn't a real world Tony Stark, other
| people who were very definitely involved in the nitty
| gritty have said that he's involved in the design. While
| he likely isn't doing the simulations or directly working
| on the hardware, it's pretty obvious that he participates
| in the design at a high level at minimum
| https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
| Graffur wrote:
| Like at any company, the people at the top aren't the
| ones who do the work. They need to have a broad
| understanding of the problem space, business
| opportunities, challenges and risk. They need to be able
| to understand what work is being done and understand the
| message that comes up to them. With that they can make
| high level decisions. From what I have seen, Musk deeply
| understands the problem space and can suggest engineers
| do low level stuff. I bet he suggests lots of stuff that
| the engineers go "erm no that is not possible". Those
| suggestions will never be seen by us. We will see the
| suggestions that happen like a rocket ship nose being
| changed by Musk.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I think he's more likely to be involved in relatively
| high-level (but still critically important) engineering
| decisions rather than "science". That distinction aside,
| I really wonder what makes people so sure he isn't
| involved, when every indication (interviews, etc.) is
| that he actually has a pretty good understanding of the
| principles SpaceX's rockets are built on, and the reasons
| they're designed the way they are.
|
| Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I'm not sure if he meant that literally. I've heard him
| say everyone working there should consider themselves the
| lead designer (or something to that effect).
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Remember when Blackberry said Alicia Keys was their
| creative director?
| delusional wrote:
| Ironically Kanye west has the perfect take:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA8cUb9uyh4
| mancerayder wrote:
| What's your definition of run? It certainly seems like he's
| calling at least some shots? Are you saying he's a holding
| company?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| He's certainly involved enough in the development process
| to be able to talk about technical details at length with
| even some of his previous top employees confirming that
| he's been heavily involved in development:
| https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 (Tom
| Mueller is one of the leading experts in the world on
| rocket engines due to his work on SpaceX's engines), which
| is a lot more than most of the other big competitors (the
| only exception is ULA's Tory Bruno since he too has a
| strong engineering background).
|
| 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.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _> interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of
| maintaining free speech_
|
| 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
| gameman144 wrote:
| I mean, if we aren't okay with this dataset existing under
| new ownership, why were we okay with it existing under the
| _previous_ ownership?
|
| If this dataset is dangerous, regulation is the way to solve
| that, not relying on the benevolence of corporate boards and
| shareholders.
| mgfist wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| cercatrova wrote:
| No one is forcing those entities to use Twitter. They can
| post on their own website that they control if they so wish.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I'm also utterly gobsmacked how people here think "jump to
| the defense of billionaires" is in any way a substantive
| counter-argument.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > utterly insane how people here jump to the defense of
| billionaires.
|
| The discussion forums hosted by a startup accelerator are
| friendly to major capitalists? Who would have expected it?
| gspr wrote:
| Nice how you swapped "billionaires" for "major capitalists"
| in building your straw man, there!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Because there are a whole bunch of non-haut-bourgeois
| billionaires?
| dfdfsdfasdfsaf wrote:
| jjeaff wrote:
| Startup types are basically the archetype of "temporarily
| inconvenienced billionaires".
| jimbokun wrote:
| I don't see the relevance.
|
| 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.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| There isn't any particularly good reason to trust the old
| management over the new management. It's always been
| unaccountable billionaires.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "trust." A public company has
| more accountability in various ways than a private one.
| overgard wrote:
| > following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic
| cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".
|
| Well, from that perspective I don't think it can get any
| _worse_.
| clint wrote:
| you have noooo idea then :cringe:
| longtimegoogler wrote:
| As an ethnic Jew, pure un-moderated free speech is a frightening
| prospect for me.
|
| 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.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Yeah. I can't help but think his goals for Twitter just already
| describe a few existing platforms. They're all full of vile,
| racist stuff, which advertisers don't want to touch with a 30
| foot pole, and aren't worth anywhere near $40 billion. So I'm
| really not sure what he's going to change, at least not without
| lighting his money on fire.
| hash03x wrote:
| dash2 wrote:
| > pure un-moderated free speech is a frightening prospect for
| me
|
| 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.
| hash07e wrote:
| _" As an ethnic Jew, pure un-moderated free speech is a
| frightening prospect for me."_
|
| Don't worry. Whole MSM bash white people and they are ok.
|
| You will be fine.
| sitic wrote:
| Twitter has a shareholder meeting on May 25th, could/would they
| stop this? Or will it be a done deal by that time?
| dash2 wrote:
| Well, my favourite comment so far comes from Twitter:
|
| https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1518645588350361602?...
| robonerd wrote:
| If he's earnestly serious about colonizing Mars (I have serious
| doubts), then investing in influence over political discourse
| seems prudent. There are many who will oppose any attempt to
| set up colonies on Mars, for numerous reasons.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yglesias of all people shouldn't consider silencing people to
| be a trivial matter, but he wants to remain in his in-group...
| [deleted]
| VonGuard wrote:
| How do you fix Twitter? Why, there's computer science for that:
| https://spritelyproject.org/
| munificent wrote:
| It's hard to imagine anything good coming from the world's
| richest man owning one of the world's largest information
| dissemination systems.
|
| Do we really need to concentrate power even more than it already
| is?
| preordained wrote:
| lol...like Twitter was some kind of bastion of information
| dissemination for the people, rather than a massive narrative
| filter and amplifier. The irony is that a lot of people are
| hoping he can _return_ Twitter to a place of a less restricted
| conversation...
| munificent wrote:
| "bastion of information dissemination" and "massive filter
| and amplifier" are synonymous to me.
|
| 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.
| MarcScott wrote:
| Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm
| careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or
| educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't
| remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me
| in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic
| Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the
| algorithm will skip you over.
| chapium wrote:
| I tend to agree. I've seen things turn bad on my feed pretty
| quickly, so you have to really take an active role in
| unfollowing / delisting content you don't want for the
| algorithm to work.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I got on twitter to follow COVID-19 and then election news, but
| accidentally stumbled across a great community. Lots of bright,
| interesting people -- very y-combinator and slate-star-codex-
| esque.
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I find Twitter a generally enjoyable place. I mostly engage
| with local New Yorkers about YIMBY/transportation alternatives
| subjects, and then recently, with subject matter experts about
| the Russian-Ukraine War. Twitter is generally by far the best
| news source I've found; you'll hear about things way before it
| hits the major network. Admittedly it does require a more
| discriminating approach.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| It's like Reddit, or uh, a billion other things in life. People
| complain about it because they don't have the will or emotional
| health[1] to be disciplined about how they use it. Despite
| following a decent number of econ- and politics-adjacent
| accounts, my feed is high-quality because I keep an extremely
| high bar for intellectual honesty, and remove those who
| violated it, even when accounts were previously high
| quality[2].
|
| 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
| manquer wrote:
| The problem is twitter doesn't have multiple channels for a
| single user[2], very few people create multiple accounts to
| keep their interests separate, inevitably people start posting
| politics social or simply not relevant stuff [1] to their
| accounts.
|
| [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
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| It's only nice if you fully share politics with the moderation
| team. Which currently works in a very mobster-like manner: for
| my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law. The rules
| seem to apply one to some, and many times without any evidence.
| hooande wrote:
| You're confused about this. The current twitter moderation
| guidelines are fairly clear. A tweet cannot target someone
| for what I can describe as "inherent traits". The classic
| example is
|
| "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.
| natsch wrote:
| Why is being muslim an inherent trait? Surely people can
| choose the religion they follow.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Muslim is not inherent. It is a choice.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Yet Twitter is full of hate tweets towards white people and
| men. And they rarely get banned. I've reported hundreds. Do
| you care to guess how many got banned?
|
| Also, Muslim isn't an inherent trait. It's a religion that
| is taught. Even your examples are faulty.
| ygjb wrote:
| That's an interesting take. I will share just a single
| example that flew by earlier this week that is clear
| evidence of this policy not being followed, either by
| algorithms, or by manual followup.
|
| https://twitter.com/ButNotTheCity/status/151805139963178598
| 6
|
| 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.
| hackernewds wrote:
| To be fair this is very anecdotal given the volume of
| very subjective, context-dependent content that is on
| Twitter
| ygjb wrote:
| Yeah, you know, it could be fake, or maybe the owner of
| that account wasn't literally calling to use nuclear
| weapons to kill Jewish people.
|
| But come on, the account name is, literally on it's own,
| a violation of the first rule of the Twitter Safety
| rules.
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| That's not the case. Literally everyone who's dealt in
| inflammatory content (talking about a violent event, say, the
| recent Ukraine war has been filled with this) has had run-ins
| with the moderation process at twitter. They issue
| suspensions for false positives all the time, and everyone
| thinks it's targetted censorship. It's not.
|
| 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.
| wtetzner wrote:
| > No disinformation about a global pandemic
|
| And what exactly constitutes misinformation? I think this
| is the problem.
| briandear wrote:
| Disinformation about the global pandemic? How do we know if
| it's disinformation if it can't even be debated? It's a
| fact that vaccines can cause injury. It's a fact that there
| is a risk of myocarditis. But you can't talk about that.
|
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| if and only if you want to use twitter to discuss politics
|
| 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
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > twitter users that interest me and don't discuss politics
| are usually pretty great
|
| 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).
| snikeris wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Example?
| ralusek wrote:
| It will be something like
|
| "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.
| politician wrote:
| > Other such hateful things.
|
| 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".
| nullc wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
| nullc wrote:
| I don't think the sarcastic response really contributes
| to the discussion. There is enough toxicity on twitter
| that if someone digs hard enough they could find examples
| that aren't twitter-political-bubble-strawmen.
| switchbak wrote:
| I disagree. I find their examples a good collection of
| the kind of viewpoints that get caught in the crossfire
| and disallowed when content moderation goes too far.
|
| 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.
| nullc wrote:
| I think that highlighting would have accomplished that
| better without sarcastically presenting them as "bad
| views".
|
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This isn't what I had in mind (I tried to signal that by
| using "overt"). I don't want to drill into details
| because it seems like it will only invite flame. If there
| was a DM feature on this site, I'd link you to some stuff
| to show you what I'm talking about.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| (4) discussing politics can be very transient. Things
| happen that bring politics to you, it's not simply an
| opt-in discussion.
|
| These things need to be discussed, but it's best left for
| the people with their skin in it to discuss.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I guess I don't think a person owes me a politics-free
| experience, if they say things I don't like then I don't
| like what they say and don't want to follow them. No
| amount of moderation is going to stop people from
| expressing themselves in ways I don't like and I don't
| really blame the platform for people turning toxic, it's
| on the people themselves.
| mjhagen wrote:
| The Internet has always been a terrible place to discuss
| politics and Twitter is even worse because of the short
| format.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I barely use Twitter, but I don't understand using Twitter
| for political discussions. To me it seems that it is a
| horrible platform for it. 280 characters isn't enough space
| to do much actual discussing of politics. It's enough to
| throw meaningless insults at the other side or post
| meaningless virtue-signalling type content, and that's about
| it. Maybe I'm wrong though, because I don't really use the
| platform much.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| It's good for quippy slogans and volume-based
| demonstrations. One of my favorite accounts @TheWarOnCars,
| a pro-cycling and transit urbanist podcast, spends most of
| its timeline retweeting famous people complaining about
| traffic or parking with the phrase "@Person, welcome to the
| war on cars". The idea is to point out that, even people
| who say they love cars and promote suburban-style
| development, pretty clearly hate the everyday reality of
| living in a car-centric city when they're not talking in a
| political context.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It's only nice if you fully share politics with the
| moderation team.
|
| 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.
| and0 wrote:
| That simply isn't true. I'd love an example of how yourself
| or other you follow are censored. I'm deeply familiar with
| the platform and have not witnessed censorship outside of
| threats and direct hate speech, as well as extreme
| disinformation campaigns (ie Trump).
|
| (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...
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| For a vast amount of people (on both sides of the political
| spectrum, oddly enough), referring to Levine as a man is an
| objective statement of reality.
|
| 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.
| and0 wrote:
| For a long time referring to ____ race (or women, etc) as
| having a naturally lower intelligence was "an objective
| statement of reality" to the vast majority of people, so
| I don't that a compelling argument for defining hate
| speech.
|
| 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.
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| > I don't that a compelling argument for defining hate
| speech.
|
| 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.
| honkycat wrote:
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| I _literally_ said I don 't care about the trans debate
| and this is how you reply :D
|
| Seems like even an echo chamber wouldn't make you happy.
|
| > my honest take? I don't really care. If someone feels
| respected and valued if I use their preferred pronouns, I
| will.
|
| So would I, but that's not the point. Misgendering
| someone is a far cry from incitement to violence.
|
| People have different perspectives. TERFs are (or claim
| to be) worried about women's sports, shelters, bathrooms,
| etc., and see pronouns as the thin end of the wedge.
| Conservatives are conservative.
|
| I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Maybe
| it's my male privilege, not having to worry about my
| sports being affected? I'm not sure, it just doesn't
| interest me that much. Ironically, you seem much more
| frothy about it. Shouldn't _you_ be debating healthcare
| if that 's what interests you?
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| Astroturfing 101.
| rolobio wrote:
| The fact that your comment is being downvoted is why we
| need more free speech. The above comment is simply a
| biological fact. Many people are stuck in echo chambers
| that make them think their fringe opinions are from the
| majority, Twitter enables this enormously
| [deleted]
| Gareth321 wrote:
| >The conservative-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, was
| suspended by Twitter for 12 hours, after it had mockingly
| awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the
| title "Man of the Year."
|
| 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.
| EricE wrote:
| What a shock you are getting downvoted - not sure why,
| other than you are challenging people's cherished dogma.
| Which is exactly why if Elon can forced moderation to at
| least be transparent and consistent, and not purely
| through the lens of political ideology we will all be
| better for it. And if it makes people uncomfortable -
| good! If you are fat, dumb and happy then you really
| aren't doing anything. Life without friction is pretty
| meaningless - probably why so many people are pretty
| miserable even if they don't actively realize it. Reading
| some of the comments in here - the lack of self awareness
| by many is pretty amazing.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| "Transparent and consistent" moderation has nothing to do
| with freeing it from "political ideology".
|
| 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.
| chimprich wrote:
| > 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 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...
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Trump should start identifying as a woman so that it
| becomes hate speech to mock him.
| chernevik wrote:
| Banning the Bee is warranted only in the eyes of
| transgender ideologues.
|
| 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.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Are you arguing that Elon Musk should make efforts to
| allow for CSAM on Twitter?
| jaywalk wrote:
| If you think banning the Babylon Bee was 100% warranted,
| then you share the same views as the moderation team.
| gambler wrote:
| _> I'm deeply familiar with the platform and have not
| witnessed censorship outside of threats and direct hate
| speech_
|
| 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?
| honkycat wrote:
| i'm just going to repeat what you said back to you,
| because it also applies to you.
|
| 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.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| vimy wrote:
| Libs of TikTok was temporarily suspended twice for targeted
| harassment. On April 13, 2022, Libs of TikTok was suspended
| for 12 hours from Twitter for "hateful conduct." Hours
| after being reinstated, the account was suspended a second
| time for another 12 hours.
|
| 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.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| That is not all it does, it's posts videos that are
| longer than any of their 'true believer' readers will
| actually watch. Many of which are at best 'cringe'. Then
| labels the videos as evidence of pedophelia/child
| grooming. Which they are clearly not.
| briandear wrote:
| So what if they label videos? Not sure how that matters.
| Mute or block if you are offended. Sticks and stone
| y'know?
|
| 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.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > it's posts videos that are longer than any of their
| 'true believer' readers will actually watch.
|
| 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.
| timkpaine wrote:
| This is a remarkably uninformed comment. Go actually look
| at what they post (some of the thousands they've
| deleted). They lie, slander, misrepresent, and dox
| repeatedly https://github.com/salcoast/deleted-tweets-
| archive/blob/main...
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Looks like just annotating videos. The deleted ones may
| have been forced.
| timkpaine wrote:
| I spent 2 seconds reading through: "This polyamorous
| genderfluid witch is a preschool teacher in Florida.
| She's so proud of herself that she discusses her gender
| and sexuality with 4 year olds"
|
| "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...
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You'll have to link the videos that accompany those texts
| so we can decide.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| > (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.)
|
| 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.
| edm0nd wrote:
| I mean recent Twitter leaks have shown internal tools
| that let them categorize users into blacklists and the
| ability censor their tweets so they dont get much reach
| or engagement by not showing up in Trending lists and
| etc. The screenshots of the tools came out during the big
| hack a year ago that was pushing crypto scams.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| And why is that a bad thing? Trending blacklists are a
| standard moderation tool, basically every social media
| platform uses them nowadays. Without them, bad actors can
| game the algorithm to get their spam promoted through the
| trends system.
|
| 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.
| gambler wrote:
| We quickly went from "Twitter isn't a heavily censored
| platform" to "they have secret blacklists, but it's
| totally normal and not political and a good thing
| anyway". This game of moving goalposts is tiresome and
| clearly disingenuous.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Twitter is a moderated platform. Tooling for moderating
| content existing does not inherently imply it is being
| used for political purposes, but you're more than welcome
| to contradict that with sources.
|
| 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?
| resfirestar wrote:
| I guess it helps to share the moderation team's politics if
| you're on Twitter to talk about politics or other hot button
| stuff, but I thought it was pretty clear that the GP is not
| on Twitter for that.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| This is a good point, however, I would say that the % of
| things which are NOT hot button issues has decreased
| dramatically over the past 5-6 years or so. It's a lot
| harder to avoid now.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Twitter seems to really want everyone to be talking about
| politics though. Every time I click on a trending news
| article "the algorithm" just bombards me with recommends to
| follow every single politician under the sun. It's a
| minefield and it turns me off from the service as a whole.
| john-radio wrote:
| Sorry, the "GP"?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| "grand parent" comment.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I don't think this is true. I think "both sides" are equally
| upset that with Twitter moderation being arbitrary and
| somewhat capricious.
|
| You are always going to fail at moderating millions of users.
| It just depends how bad you fail.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Exactly, if Twitter were biased less people would be
| pissed, not more
| kharak wrote:
| I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about you
| than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's
| because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage with
| toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people.
|
| 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.
| tootie wrote:
| I've only been on Twitter for less than year. I mostly follow
| journalists, some publications and a few industry experts.
| They are mostly rational people who post insightful things,
| but a few will dip their toes into nonsense takes on society
| or just feeding trolls who bark at them. I just unfollow. I
| found that my follows list topped out a little over 100 and
| just stopped because I would delete as quickly as I added. I
| never post and have no followers.
|
| 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.
| bredren wrote:
| It is similar to the constant pruning of unwanted email list
| subscriptions.
|
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| I agree with you very strongly. My Twitter feed, which I cull
| carefully, is deeply rewarding and enriching for me.
|
| 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.
| nullc wrote:
| My twitter using SO has complained that twitter constantly
| suggests tweets to her from people she is specifically not
| following due to their toxicity (and also doesn't care to
| block because doing so would potentially generate drama).
| rlewkov wrote:
| I have so, so may people on my Twitter feed muted for
| this reason. Toxic crap gets immediately muted -
| sometimes blocked. Have practically zero patience for
| crap so Twitter is quite nice for me. If you want to
| engage in a screaming contest you certainly can but
| that's not for me.
| nullc wrote:
| I just asked: Muting would make it so you couldn't see
| their part in conversations, which is a problem for their
| non-toxic content showing up in conversations that you're
| a part of.
|
| 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).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You can mute words. I've banned various crypto keywords
| and it keeps out just the right amount (99%).
| Shank wrote:
| > First, they started showing tweets that people I follow
| simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time.
|
| 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.
| dash2 wrote:
| In my experience, many subreddits that should be healthy
| are too small to engage a serious community. For example,
| r/statistics ends up with teenagers posting homework
| questions. OTOH the big ones are indeed trash. The only
| thing to do is to follow fashion. Wallstreetbets was funny
| and insightful, then funny, now neither. NonCredibleDefense
| is funny and relevant at the moment. Nothing lasts.
| munificent wrote:
| Yes, subreddits really are _communities_ : unique spaces
| populated by real humans and cultivated by actual human
| moderators. Each has its own microclimate and culture.
|
| 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.
| pid-1 wrote:
| That's a moderation problem, not scale problem.
|
| 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.
| slewis wrote:
| Switching to the "latest tweets" view instead of the
| algorithmic "home" view helps.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Also, twitter lists have stood the test of time and seem
| to bypass any changes they've made to force algorithmic
| view. That, or using an alternate client (eg. tweetbot,
| Echofon)
| nmz wrote:
| To add to the annoyances, I always get 2 notifications,
| which in reality are ads. every single time I login.
| billti wrote:
| And likewise with YouTube. I often see folks complain about
| the junk YouTube is feeding to them or their kids, but I
| find nearly all their recommendations are fully in line
| with the stuff the family does regularly seek out and
| watch. To the point where some evenings I'll just visit
| youtube.com and expect to find something interesting,
| versus using many of the streaming services I pay for
| (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc.).
|
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| Yes, I have YouTube Premium and it is, by far, the best
| money I spend every month on video.
|
| 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.
| matt123456789 wrote:
| I would be extremely careful about making introspective
| judgments based on an algorithm that somebody else wrote. It
| can change at any time, and you don't know how it works
| (unless you work at Twitter). You might have some idea about
| the basics, but it can decide to show you crazy shit at any
| time, and it might not be related at all to who you are as a
| person.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My own personal suggestion is to additionally use an add-on
| such as Tweak New Twitter, which (by default at least)
| results in:
|
| 1. you only see direct tweets and commented retweets from
| people you follow 2. no trending 3. no suggested
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > that's because you follow people who post toxic Tweets
|
| 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.
| delecti wrote:
| Turning off retweets is really a killer feature.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| 1. you literally can not control everything in your twitter
| feed if using twitter's apps. it will make things appear
| there which it thinks you'll like (this is obviously ignoring
| ads as that's not something you should expect to really
| control)
|
| 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.
| RDaneel0livaw wrote:
| I agree with most of this except: On the desktop browser I
| still get recommendations in the sidebar for celebrity /
| politics / news bullshit despite not following any accounts
| close to these topics. I hate it. In the mobile official app
| I get just a shitload of ads I hate for all the same style
| stuff. It's just seemingly impossible to get rid of the
| outrage machine fully.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| Consider using the "Minimal Twitter" browser extension.
| That solved for me the issue you're dealing with.
|
| Or try element picker from ublock origin.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| I agree. Most of twitter requires self curation. Before
| following anyone I:
|
| - 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 ;)
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I have a hot take on this topic: Your feed says more about
| you than Twitter in general. If you see toxic Tweets, that's
| because you follow people who post toxic Tweets or engage
| with toxic Tweets. Don't follow these people.
|
| 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.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > ...COVID19-conspiracy theories...
|
| 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960
|
| > 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
|
| ------
|
| 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.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > having an opinion you disagree with
|
| 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.
|
| -------
|
| 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?
| reedjosh wrote:
| I disagree with you about Covid. That said we don't need
| to get into it. Just saying that arguments like:
|
| > ..."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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
|
| -----
|
| 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.
|
| ------
|
| 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.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > Do you even Jan 6th insurrection?
|
| 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > This is gross language. I assume apparently implying
| something so obvious as to make my points absurd?
|
| 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).
|
| -------
|
| 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.
| thelettere wrote:
| Agreed save for the last line - the character limit means
| nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there.
| Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving
| quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform
| for anyone of sense.
|
| Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish
| praise.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Brevity isn't incomposability. If it was, your argument
| applies to sentences. If it did, humans wouldn't be able to
| successfully discuss anything complex.
| jdasdf wrote:
| This.
|
| 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.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I wonder if you use the default Twitter client. Also, what
| you put there is not how Twitter suggests you use Twitter.
| Which says more about Twitter than you.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people
| who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets
|
| Or you follow people who post (relatively innocuous) things
| that enrage the sorts of people who post angry comments in
| response to opinion points.
| runarberg wrote:
| For me positive reactions are way more prominent then
| negative ones--at least for me. Negative reactions are
| often hidden under a "Show more replies" button, or
| relegated quite far down the scroll. And then there is
| always the block feature, which can do wonders in cleaning
| up your feed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people
| who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets.
|
| 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.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| I never see this? All I see are posts and retweets made by
| the people I decided to follow.
| tootie wrote:
| As someone with mostly high-quality follows, the "promoted"
| posts I get in my feed are so utterly trashy and obvious
| it's embarrassing. A lot of the "featured" posts are also
| way outside my interests and frequently posted out of
| context to the point that they don't make sense.
| eropple wrote:
| This depends on how you interact with Twitter too, though.
| I use TweetDeck and I don't see _any_ of that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well, yeah, if you don't use the official client, you
| don't necessarily see Twitter's feed at all.
| kristofferR wrote:
| TweetDeck is an official Twitter client.
|
| https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
| whynotkeithberg wrote:
| I use the official client and don't have any of the
| issues you describe. I'm pretty sure the crowd you follow
| & engage with is the issue.
| javajosh wrote:
| This is my experience as well. Perhaps people use different
| clients and experience it differently. I use the web client
| almost exclusively and I often see toxic replies to people
| I follow or, occasionally, subjects I've engaged with
| before. It would be worth exploring alternative clients
| that show me only tweets from people I follow, and hides
| all responses unless I choose to dig in.
| lucumo wrote:
| > False; Twitter's algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't
| directly follow
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't see any of that, on the official mobile app
| with timeline set to "latest Tweets".
|
| 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.
| lucumo wrote:
| This is the kind of bullshit reaction I don't see on
| Twitter, using supported features.
|
| I had no doubt that somebody who hates Twitter could find
| a facile excuse for that hate. I didn't need the
| demonstration.
| rockbruno wrote:
| Do you happen to not receive Twitter's "recommendations"? I
| follow your steps religiously and I still get constantly
| bombarded by terrible "we think you'll like this"
| notifications that cannot be turned off.
| delecti wrote:
| The app and website both have "latest" feeds. You don't get
| that kind of recommendation in that feed. The closest to
| that kind of thing that I see are the trending topics on
| the right bar, which aren't in the feed.
| rsanheim wrote:
| From what I've heard from people who use Twitter far more
| than me: the only way to avoid them is to use a 3rd party
| client for Twitter.
| scioto wrote:
| I use Tweetbot for both MacOS and iOS. All I see are
| tweets and retweets from people I follow. Occasionally
| someone will go on a rant or tweet incessantly about
| their fantasy football team, and I mute them for a while.
| I can also mute words, hashtags, or people.
|
| 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.
| greedo wrote:
| I use Tweetbot after trying Twitterrific for awhile. My
| only complaint is that sometimes a thread won't work in
| Tweetbot, and I'll have to open it in the website. If I
| had to use the website, or the official Twitter client,
| I'd stop using Twitter completely.
| crazypython wrote:
| I don't receive them on my main account. I do receive them
| on a less active alt.
| cronix wrote:
| Nope, you don't see those while using nitter.net, an
| alternative Twitter front end. You only see the tweets, and
| you don't even have to be forced to login to see them.
| slg wrote:
| > If you see toxic Tweets, that's because you follow people
| who post toxic Tweets or engage with toxic Tweets.
|
| 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.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > too political and so on gets unfollowed.
|
| What's too political for you? Taken too far, this can be
| putting your head in the sand.
| zo1 wrote:
| That only works if the prevalent and approved opinions make
| Twitter a happy place for you. For the rest of us though,
| it's a very political and sometimes evil place.
| snek_case wrote:
| My impression is that twitter has algorithms to try to
| maximize "engagement", and by "engagement", I mean conflict.
| I follow very few people, and the people I follow post things
| that are tech-related... But twitter will regularly try to
| show me inflammatory political tweets. These tweets are not
| coming from people I follow. I'm careful not to take the
| bait, but twitter definitely does try to bait you.
| j4yav wrote:
| I think the other half of the equation is using the recent
| tweets view. Whenever I accidentally end up in the
| algorithm view I can tell right away because of how much
| irrelevant BS appears.
| mjhagen wrote:
| Twitter is the embodiment of "If everyone around you is an
| asshole then you're the asshole."
| nullc wrote:
| One bummer is that you then need to cut off people who were
| perfectly reasonable folks but failed to follow advice like
| yours and fell victim to twitter brain worms-- now spewing
| toxic hot takes themselves because that's all their feed was
| full of. Your answer isn't complete because twitter's
| toxicity tends to be contagious and when someone I know falls
| to it, I suffer too even when I've successfully avoided it
| myself.
|
| 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_.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I'm careful about who I follow
|
| 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.
| mikkergp wrote:
| It might be on me, but they're trying to build a public forum,
| not a niche community. If you want to attract the number of
| people that Twitter wants to attract, it can't be built on
| power users. Hell I'm a 'power user' and I don't want to be
| spending my time to figure out how to curate a community for my
| benefit, I'll just go to reddit or here for that.
| megak1d wrote:
| Agree with this. Twitter is by far and away my favourite
| platform for consuming stuff from (mostly) others in my
| industry and OS intel on things like the Ukrainian war.
|
| 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.
| hooande wrote:
| I can't say that I've ever felt the emotion of rage when using
| twitter. People say things I don't agree with all the time,
| even here. It just doesn't warrant an emotional reaction.
|
| 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.
| fsloth wrote:
| I agree, my twitter view is very nice. Computer graphics, few
| authors, some dry political analysts, space stuff. If someone
| posts something irascible I just unfollow them (but might later
| refollow).
| speedyb wrote:
| Completely agree, you're very much in control of what you see,
| and who you interact with. There's plenty of features in place
| to aid with not seeing things you don't want to.
| tonguez wrote:
| "Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm
| careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or
| educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't
| remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me
| in the slightest."
|
| 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
| fjabre wrote:
| You mean you find your feed to be a nice place.
|
| 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.
| jdrc wrote:
| i believe it becomes a shitshow if you start twitting. Thats
| because twitter will notify you of replies to your posts (it
| shouldn't maybe). there are mobs of political trolls that
| trigger each other and it can become pretty funny. if you can
| ignore it , fine, but most of them are being deliberately
| provocative
|
| twitter should be for top-most posts only.
| rapfaria wrote:
| Problem is, even if you are careful about who you follow, they
| will eventually start tweeting about US politics, world views,
| etc. I follow mostly sports, but can't stand influencer devs,
| etc.
|
| 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.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Most social networks are nice places if you pick the right
| people/topics to follow, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok,
| etc...
|
| 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.
| HikeThe46 wrote:
| I have the same experience, I don't dive into trending "drama"
| I follow people I find funny, companies/athletes/celebrities
| that I am interested in, etc. I prune who I follow probably
| about twice a year to cut back on people I maybe followed
| because I saw one funny thing.
|
| If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on.
| Having the last word means nothing on the internet.
| sebow wrote:
| >I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but
| isn't that on you?
|
| 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.
| pid-1 wrote:
| +1 I have a decent experience. That said I'm really diligent
| with who I follow. If ppl start tweeting random drama, they get
| no second chances.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Twitter so great, I get to see less political bullshit there
| than I do HN now. And I still get to interact and learn from
| very smart people.
| ggepolja234411 wrote:
| >> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but
| isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm
| will skip you over.
|
| 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.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I don't know... freedom of speech? From anyone's points of
| view, I don't see how anyone is exempted from ur points, even
| the white ppl(im poc btw).
| Veen wrote:
| > Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter
| and you get to see how toxic it is.
|
| 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.
| weakfish wrote:
| Ah yes, white moderate men, the historically oppressed
| population, beaten down by years of hardship
|
| I'm sorry but I just don't think those positions are
| comparable - sure, people may give you crap, but there's
| nothing structural working against you
|
| (source: am registered independent white male)
| twofornone wrote:
| >sure, people may give you crap, but there's nothing
| structural working against you
|
| Except rapidly creeping D&I policies which explicitly
| discriminate against white men?
|
| >Ah yes, white moderate men, the historically oppressed
| population, beaten down by years of hardship
|
| This line of reasoning is a toxic non-sequitur. The fact
| that white men weren't "oppressed" historically does not
| mean that they are incapable of being oppressed now or
| should not be allowed to make such claims. Especially
| when you consider that even if "straight white men" are
| in power, the policies of that managing minority can
| absolutely skew our institutions against the rest who
| aren't in management. Which, by the way, is the _entire
| point_ of D &I, so it's incredibly dishonest to pretend
| that oppression isn't happening when the oppressors are
| overtly trying to "level the playing field" by
| reducing/denying opportunity to this demographic.
|
| You don't get to pretend that these policies aren't
| oppressive/discriminatory just because you agree with
| them, but that's what proponents are absolutely doing.
| And without pushback there's nothing stopping an
| overcorrection, which metrics indicate is already
| happening, since no one is bothered by a team that is
| 100% "diverse" (i.e. zero white males).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > The fact that white men weren't "oppressed"
| historically
|
| In addition to which, plenty were. Look into the
| treatment of the Irish in the 1800's. Or the coal miners
| in Virginia.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| >the historically oppressed population
|
| Are we living in the past now, or what is your point? Not
| all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live
| privilieged lives
| weakfish wrote:
| > Not all white "moderate" (whatever that means) live
| privilieged lives
|
| And I didn't say that they did. I'm just saying that
| proclaiming that you're white and male doesn't give me
| any information that would lead me to assume that you are
| marginalized. That doesn't mean you can't be in some
| capacity or that you must be privileged, it just means
| that people who look like that typically are less
| marginalized than people who are, say, Black or Hispanic.
|
| There's a broad spectrum of marginalizations that exist,
| such as disability or economic - you can be marginalized
| as a disabled white guy! That's absolutely true! But when
| speaking purely about race or ethnicity, it's helpful to
| realize that people of color broadly experience far more
| racism.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| What's stranger is you assume every person from other
| categories is marginalized by default if they claim it.
| It's time to stop generalizing and stomp out hate in the
| individual cases it can be found.
| weakfish wrote:
| I didn't say I assume it by default. I just said
| statistically it's more likely
| sgt wrote:
| This is true, but it is definitely being misused and
| claiming you are fighting odds and systemic racism is
| often borderline victim mentality.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| So you've been followed around a department store by
| security because of the way you look?
| difu_disciple wrote:
| You listed groups that have historically:
|
| - 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.
| [deleted]
| sheepybloke wrote:
| I love how you just mentioned this and people jumped in to
| prove your point. You never said these groups were
| oppressed, or anything about being silenced, just that
| interacting with people can be toxic if this is what you
| believe. Suddenly, people are jumping at you, claiming
| you're crying and putting all these words into your mouth.
| Everyone, this is the toxicity he's claiming! Not that he's
| oppressed, or he has no free speech.
| and0 wrote:
| There's a difference between receiving hate for merely
| existing and receiving hate for espousing harmful beliefs.
|
| 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.
| rubslopes wrote:
| It's not that simple with the new algorithms.
|
| 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.
| hintymad wrote:
| I also find Twitter a nice place, as I mainly follow science
| and engineering topics. As for occasional stray into politics
| and culture wars, I simply try to get information and analysis
| but ignore opinions. Take the controversy on the "don't say
| gay" bill, I simply tried to get answers to questions like what
| the bill says, does it target any specific group, was what
| Disney said true, why some people were angry that the bill
| forbids teaching _any_ sex orientation before 3rd grade, why
| sex education is such a divisive topic in the US, and etc.
|
| As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who
| consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.
| GordonS wrote:
| I use it to keep up to date on infosec stuff, and to hear about
| things some high-profile devs are doing etc - and I really like
| it!
|
| 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!
| dudul wrote:
| I tried to mostly follow tech people, but so far I haven't had
| any luck finding someone to follow who doesn't fill 50% of
| their feed with political tweets. I could probably make it work
| with a mute list or something, but I just don't care enough to
| spend the time to be honest.
| 4dahalibut wrote:
| Totally agree. It's incredibly easy for me to simply filter out
| ppl who rage-bait. I am more internet-native than most though?
| Maybe it's harder for the general populace than I might
| otherwise assume?
| grapescheesee wrote:
| Every time I tried to make a Twitter account it was locked and
| needed a phone or email. Never posted just followed, made
| accounts just for Conferences or a city I was going for
| travel.. . It was years ago and years before that as well.
| After getting locked out for just wanting a feed with personal
| data exploitation so many times .. I'll never understand how
| anyone defends Twitter. I would only use it if someone paid me
| at this point.
|
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Just put your phone / email in and it should get unlocked. It
| should take less than a minute. It isn't hard to do.
| orblivion wrote:
| I bet if I followed exclusively capybara accounts my blood
| pressure would drop 5-10 points.
| dawnerd wrote:
| As long as you use latest and not the algorithm view and stay
| away from trending it is very calm and nontoxic.
|
| There's a very very vocal minority of accounts that spam up
| every trending topic to make it as politically divisive as they
| can.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I've been active on Twitter for a while, but I haven't gone
| through the trouble of "curating" which is to say, using a
| third party client to avoid the (often propagandist) spam and
| blocking everyone who says insane shit. And it's not just a
| simple matter of "being careful about who you follow" since you
| can follow people who have reasonably well-articulated
| opinions, but whose followers (or others attracted to their
| Tweets) are toxic and may number into the tens or hundreds of
| thousands (e.g., Matt Yglesias posts a lot of interesting
| stuff, but the comments are often a shit-show). That's a lot of
| shit to wade through.
| jdrc wrote:
| yeah it is , but given this a lot of people are going to leave
| and some others will become very rabid. Smells like trump again
| . And perhaps it's for the best - this kind of service should
| be served by some decentralized protocol so that the chaos is
| warranted
| burlesona wrote:
| I don't really understand this defense. It seems a bit like
| saying, "I don't understand why people don't like this
| neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the national average
| and cars are stolen off my block every week. But I built a big
| wall with razor wire around my house and just use Uber, and I
| have a great life! Why don't more people just do 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean some of the buildings in some major cities are
| starting to look like that.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ...but we can agree that it's not good, right?
| bombcar wrote:
| I would agree, but many people see it as just "part and
| parcel of what's necessary to have a city".
|
| 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".
| floren wrote:
| > It seems a bit like saying, "I don't understand why people
| don't like this neighborhood. Sure the murder rate is 10x the
| national average and cars are stolen off my block every week.
| But I built a big wall with razor wire around my house and
| just use Uber, and I have a great life! Why don't more people
| just do that?"
|
| Oh, so you've visited the Bay Area?
| dundercoder wrote:
| I never got into twitter, but I feel that way about instagram.
| Took me a while, but carefully following and unfollowing, I
| have a nice, non-toxic, interesting pastime when I want it.
|
| 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.
| rockostrich wrote:
| The same can be said of Reddit or any other generally popular
| social media site.
| brightball wrote:
| I think 99.99% of the issue with Twitter is how it seems to be
| the single place that news media, blogs and numerous other
| platforms use to cite and spread inflammatory content.
|
| 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.
| wraptile wrote:
| I've tried to like Twitter a million times over but "the
| algorithm" keeps spewing outrage spam at me through
| recommendations, notifications and basically every free piece
| of white space on the website. The whole social network looks
| like one of those ad-ridden top 5 things spam site - I really
| don't understand how can anyone tolerate this. Especially when
| clean, beautiful alternatives like Mastodon exist.
| tuestuesday wrote:
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| People that are offended at tweets are looking for offense. It
| is an error in the dopamine addiction that compels them towards
| the quest of real justice.
| bromuro wrote:
| I love Twitter! I follow tech stuff there and it's interesting
| and entertaining. Just follow some basic "netiquette".
| seanw444 wrote:
| For some things, Twitter can be cool. I don't subscribe as much
| to the "Twitter is entirely a cesspool" idea that a lot of
| critics have, but I dislike it because it encourages lack of
| context and nuance due to an artificial character limit. What
| are you gonna use up your space for in a tweet: detailed
| information, or something to grab someone's attention? Usually
| and most likely the latter.
|
| 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.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Agreed, I only use it for board game design and discussion. If
| you stay away from politics it is quite valuable and rarely
| toxic. They have recently even added explicit Communities and
| that has been good so far.
| bribri wrote:
| If you follow more than 100 people the signal to noise ratio
| becomes unbearable.
|
| I don't know why there aren't better features to curate/ filter
| feeds.
| fsloth wrote:
| You can just unfollow people I think?
| spike021 wrote:
| I've said it on HN before. You need to be willing to spend some
| effort self-curating your feed. Only follow people you're
| interested in, use the settings feature to mute tweets
| containing certain words or phrases, and make heavy use of the
| lists feature.
|
| 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.
| gabrielgio wrote:
| I also find twitter to be a nice place. I pretty much follow
| other developers and the option to order by datetime pretty
| much removes any attempt from twitter to control what I see.
|
| >> 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.
| resfirestar wrote:
| Same here, I only follow tech and creative people doing work
| that's relevant to my interests and unfollow at the first whiff
| of unrelated political topics. The only problem with this
| approach is that you do have to unfollow a lot of people to
| make it work (or be invested enough in the good stuff on
| Twitter to sift through a timeline full of garbage looking for
| it, which I am not). For some of my interests, like infosec, I
| can't really follow anyone because it's just the norm to use
| your professional account to broadcast your uninsightful
| pro/anti/smugly aloof views on the hot US political topic of
| the week.
|
| 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.
| jdeaton wrote:
| I've been disappointed after following scientists/engineers
| who's work I respect to find that they consistently tweet
| cynical, negative takes on inconsequential topics. For better
| or worse it really degrades my respect for them
| intellectually and has been one of those "don't meet you
| heroes" moments for me.
| bmelton wrote:
| Not at all just you.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| honkycat wrote:
| I had the same thought. Twitter is a lot of jokes and is
| overall pretty chill.
| mrep wrote:
| I'm not on twitter but the Justine Sacco incident doesn't make
| it sound like a nice place to me.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Well of course not; but generally speaking, Twitter is an
| outrage factory as soon as you venture outside of your curated
| experience.
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| The constant whining about Twitter on here makes more sense
| when you understand what the people here might be saying to
| solicit such a response.
| dymk wrote:
| Twitter content is painful to read when interacting with it
| in a read-only mode. No solicitation needed.
| zrail wrote:
| My twitter feed got infinitely better after I blocked lazy
| retweets and suggested tweets[1]. Now I only see things from
| people that I care to follow and the tweets they care enough
| about to quote tweet.
|
| [1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @",
| "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"
| brailsafe wrote:
| Ya, you might actually be the only one. I quit years ago when
| all of the mostly interesting web design ppl I followed started
| unironically outrage baiting their followers. People I had
| largely met in real life. After I unfollowed them, I found that
| Twitter decided it was ok to fill the gaps with content from
| people I didn't follow, but were maybe at best tertiary
| connections, and also embodied the same crap. Every day I'd
| check, and some bullshit would be telling me I don't feel bad
| enough for X or I'm not mad enough about some world issue
| blululu wrote:
| Not by default though and this is terrible UX. Everyone who
| claims that they have a good feed also makes a point of stating
| something like 'you need to curate your feed'. It takes active
| intervention to prevent the app from disintegrating into a
| toxic maelstrom - this is a serious problem. And sometimes it
| is hard to unfollow people you are close with in person but are
| obnoxious online (it can be awkward). The app's default
| behavior is not the responsibility of the users, it belongs to
| the company.
| sytelus wrote:
| No matter how careful you are, you will eventually still end up
| following some new media like New York Times or CNN or Fox News
| or US president or some celebrity. And then it's only a
| slippery slop because for many stories, there are two sides and
| you will identify with one of them. I did not become regular
| Twitter user until I meticulously cleaned up who I follow. I
| removed every single news media, every political personality
| including US president and every non-technical celebrity. Now I
| only follow ML/Ai researchers and scientists and my feed
| couldn't be better. However, Twitter still recommands me to
| follow celebrity or new media once in a while and I have to
| carefully ignore that.
| dmix wrote:
| > I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people
| or educators
|
| 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.
| derekdahmer wrote:
| An underrated feature of twitter is the muted words list. I
| added a bunch of political terms and the anger in my feed
| basically went away.
| soapdog wrote:
| folks, if you're as unhappy with this as I am, you should look
| into being more active in alternative platforms such as Mastodon
| which has the advantage of better moderation tools and
| federation.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Ah yes, a platform where one can recede even further into one's
| own echo chamber! Surely that is the solution to our problems.
| sabertoothed wrote:
| Does anyone know what happens to call warrants in this case?
|
| I have some 48 USD call warrants. I was surprised to see them
| crash in value today. They showed some really weird behaviour.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I can empathise with both ends of the table here, but you have to
| agree that entering such a world of pain as moderating Twitter
| and re-shaping it's dynamics voluntary (and paying $43B for it!)
| is yet another thing done by Musk that you will see once in a
| lifetime. This is "bread and circuses" of our time.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Every really rich guy needs a media company of some description
| to provide their narrative control to maintain their wealth. 30
| years ago a billionaire would have bought a newspaper to exert
| their influence, today you would buy social media sites to
| achieve the same.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| You are right in general case, but I somehow doubt Musk needs
| Twitter to achieve narrative control (maybe, as opposed to
| Bezos with WSJ). It's hardly possible for him to not be able
| to get across the message. Good public image is evidently his
| priority, I am just thinking that buying Twitter is not an
| optimal way to achieve it. He might have something bigger in
| mind.
| andruby wrote:
| > 30 years ago
|
| No need to go that far back. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post
| hooande wrote:
| I do agree. I can't think of a precedent for this. Usually
| wealthy people get that way by making good investments. This is
| like the richest person in the world spending 15% of their net
| worth to buy Blockbuster in 2006
| foolfoolz wrote:
| this is no blockbuster dead end company, elon will have
| significant influence over the 2024 election
| realmod wrote:
| He, undoubtedly, overpaid for Twitter. Also, the blue-check
| allows key users to distinguish themselves and is one major
| reason that "notable" people are using Twitter for essentially
| all their communications. Elon's plan to diminish the blue-check
| by giving it to anyone who has verified themselves by buying
| Twitter Blue would be very destructive and hurt Twitter's moat.
|
| -- Edit --
|
| Actually, disregard the blue-check comment. I oversold it. A
| blue-check is actually not that important.
| WesleyHale wrote:
| the blue check is already meaningless. It's been handed out to
| people with 100's of followers and no names.
| paulgb wrote:
| I kinda doubt it. Notable people were using Twitter long before
| blue checks were a thing, and although people threaten to leave
| twitter for other platforms, they usually come back.
|
| 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.
| realmod wrote:
| I wasn't even considering the people who threatened to leave
| in response to Elon's takeover - the true number would be
| inconsequential.
|
| > 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.
| ericmay wrote:
| He could maybe do different colored "verified" (maybe green?)
| checks.
|
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| I've always wanted a feature that just bins similar reactions
| together, so I don't have to read them. For example, I'd love
| replies to be binned into categories like "cruel disparagement",
| "wilful misunderstanding", "mindless agreement", "fallacious",
| "opinion as fact", and "threats and doxing". Ideally the last
| category would be taken seriously by law enforcement.
|
| 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.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Fantastic idea. Probably doable as well.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _I 've always wanted a feature that just bins similar
| reactions together, so I don't have to read them. For example,
| I'd love replies to be binned into categories like "cruel
| disparagement", "wilful misunderstanding", "mindless
| agreement", "fallacious", "opinion as fact", and "threats and
| doxing"._
|
| 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Crowd-sourcing moderation, including flagging for categories
| you've outlined, will fail utterly.
|
| 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.
| prepend wrote:
| > I think the only way to make crowd-sourced content flagging
| and moderation
|
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> Crowd-sourcing moderation, including flagging for
| categories you've outlined, will fail utterly._
|
| I agree, which is why I didn't suggest it.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Then how do you determine is a post is "cruel
| disparagement", "willful misunderstanding", etc?
| javajosh wrote:
| How do you? You read it, and decide. Eventually I can
| train software to help me so I can delegate some of the
| responsibility to it. Twitter could put such tools in
| people's hands so they can protect themselves. Strictly
| speaking, Twitter doesn't have to do anything for this
| solution. Usenet solved this problem long ago with
| killfiles, which each person maintained. I basically want
| a killfile++ for twitter.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > How do you? You read it, and decide.
|
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| Fair enough, I could have been clearer. It sounds like
| you understand what I'm suggesting now, though. What do
| you think?
| scruple wrote:
| Now I wonder if we'll see Trump back on the platform ahead of the
| 2024 presidential election.
| RockyMcNuts wrote:
| Free speech absolutism isn't really the norm in places where
| people come together for any shared purpose.
|
| 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
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Our laws for copyright and trademarks are pretty broken and
| inhibit innovation more than they protect it. It is still the
| law, but not a good measure.
|
| 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?
| bombcar wrote:
| We need to stop using the term free speech as it literally
| means restricted speech (because everyone agrees there needs to
| be limits).
| RockyMcNuts wrote:
| at risk of stating the obvious, I was not making a straw man
| argument, Musk called himself a 'free speech absolutist', said
| "It's just really important that people have the reality and
| the perception that they're able to speak freely within the
| bounds of the law", was in touch with Babylon Bee folks about
| their getting blocked, pretty clearly wants a hands-off
| approach to moderation, on the other hand he says they need to
| get rid of spam which is not illegal so -\\_(tsu)_/-
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I feel like Musk is spending $108 per Twitter user, in order to
| have access to all of their account data. That he wants to sell
| micro-targeted ads, with the aim of changing the outcomes of
| elections.
|
| That's my hot take.
| [deleted]
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| You are giving twitter far too much credit. 206m users, most of
| them bots, trolls, and spam accounts. For American politics, it
| represents the two polar extremes of our electoral base.
| Twitter is not what it used to be anymore, and all the
| "moderation" has a big part of it. Elon has a long journey
| ahead if he wants the platform to have the same influence it
| once did.
| artur_makly wrote:
| Having the 'richest' man w/ social Asperger fully control the
| largest 'public town square" seems..ironic and frankly dangerous.
|
| To me it feels like twitter or something better should simply be
| a DAO. What are the chances of that?
| Arcsech wrote:
| That's a disgustingly prejudiced statement. While I don't like
| Mr. Musk very much myself, I've known plenty of autistic folks
| who do a great job managing communities.
| artur_makly wrote:
| yes, I'm sure there are many who do a stellar job.
| absolutely!
|
| 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.
| IE6 wrote:
| Not a Musk fan or a Twitter user but is the sentiment here that
| someone with ASD cannot properly create policy or (more likely)
| employ people to create policy? Just curious.
| artur_makly wrote:
| yeah I know that sounds non-PC... but there is some irony
| here.. that's all.
|
| 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.
| nullzzz wrote:
| That's bye bye to Twitter then.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Cool. I'm curious if any real change will come of this or if
| twitter will continue chugging along like it has for years.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| Looking at the multiple threads about Musk/Twitter a clear
| pattern emerges:
|
| 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.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Is "free speech absolutism" something that Twitter's advertisers
| (== paying customers) actually want?
| Miner49er wrote:
| I doubt it, it's been pretty obvious that YouTube and Reddit
| have been censoring at the behest of advertisers for years now.
| earphonesthrow wrote:
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > Musk, the world's richest person according to a tally by
| Forbes, is negotiating to buy Twitter in a personal capacity and
| Tesla is not involved in the deal.
|
| 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.
| nicce wrote:
| That is kinda different thing. Musk owns shares personally and
| can sell them as he likes. Tesla as company is not funding
| anything. But I guess you meant that.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Technically speaking, true. If Musk's margin was called
| though and he was forced to sell shares in Tesla to cover,
| that would most definitely have an effect on the Tesla stock.
| In a way I see that as Tesla being involved, also since it is
| value and trust generated by Tesla that Musk is bargaining
| with.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Ways to improve Twitter:
|
| - Delete it
| metamuas wrote:
| I hope they do something about government officials from random
| nations shitposting with proxy accounts.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| What about the poison pill the board created after Musk announced
| his desire to move ahead earlier?
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Wowza. The engagement in this post might beat Stephen Hawking's
| death announcement.
| sytelus wrote:
| I haven't understood why people obsess so much about someone's
| death. Shouldn't they be thinking about them _more_ when they
| were alive?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I understand the arguments on why some censoring is required but
| I would like to still make a counter argument:
|
| 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.
| aliswe wrote:
| I follow only musk and casey muratori. good mix of unhinged.
| TimPC wrote:
| Musk branded Twitter. He can rename it the warning company.
| politician wrote:
| Article updated: "The transaction was approved by the board and
| is now subject to a shareholder vote."
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It's absolutely wild that many of the same people against Elon
| Musk controlling twitter are okay with the Chinese Government
| controlling an app with literally 10x as many users.
| smegsicle wrote:
| that's just conspiracy theory garbage- there's no way the
| chinese govenment has a political agenda
| FriedPickles wrote:
| So why isn't TWTR trading at $54.20? There must be a significant
| chance this won't go through. Indeed, the deal is "Subject to the
| approval of Twitter stockholders".
|
| 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.
| rkagerer wrote:
| After 16 years I still struggle to concede the value proposition
| of Twitter. I don't think it's the best platform for advancing
| democracy, and I'm convinced we should aim higher.
|
| 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.
| technick wrote:
| As much as I hate twitter and their censorship bullcrap, it's not
| worth that much. Twitter is a bad investment and doesn't have
| "stick" with consumers, as in a consumer can drop twitter easily.
| nathias wrote:
| I hope this really means a return to the free speech absolutism
| of the old internet.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Once Musk lets Trump back on and is freed from all restraint with
| his and his alone god-mode account, Twitter will surely see an
| exodus and it'll fill up with "like minded" people.
|
| 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?
| mellifluousbox wrote:
| It already exists and is called Mastodon.
| themusicgod1 wrote:
| Mastodon is only one server of a whole network of twitter
| alternatives - the fediverse. Pleroma is just fine, too.
|
| https://jointhefedi.com/
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I hope Elon succeeds in his plans here, and that Twitter can once
| again become a place with functioning freedom of speech for all
| sides of the political spectrum once again. Considering the most
| recent trajectory of the west regarding censorship online, this
| is a breath of fresh air. And dare I hope, maybe it even sets a
| new trend?
| mooman219 wrote:
| What side of the political spectrum do you think is currently
| not able to voice their opinions on the platform?
| halyax wrote:
| khazhoux wrote:
| And... Twitter accepted the offer.
| cogogo wrote:
| There are so many comments I may have missed the right thread but
| I hope Twitter doesn't kill all automated and/or anonymous
| accounts.
|
| 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.
| jmkni wrote:
| I don't think banning them is the right move, but making it
| easy to clearly identify who is a real human and who is a
| robot/fake account would improve things a lot imo
|
| I think there is value in robots on Twitter, and there is value
| in anonymous accounts (for whistleblowers etc)
| [deleted]
| nova22033 wrote:
| What if the Chinese government forces Elon to ban criticism of
| China? Nice EV business you have there in Shanghai...be a shame
| if...you know..
| sytelus wrote:
| Or current US administration (whoever it is) forces to him to
| do X. Nice big space company you have there... be a shame if
| you were lose government contracts and face severe delays in
| getting permits...
| cmckn wrote:
| Twitter has not been available in China since 2009. I think the
| CCP is much more interested in controlling what Chinese
| citizens see than what foreigners say in other countries.
| Still, interesting to think about.
| throwaway_1928 wrote:
| A very good point and a likely scenario.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| I'm sure China got Apple to give them all their users' data,
| then /s
| dymk wrote:
| Apple hosts Chinese user data in China, yes.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Just to play devil's advocate, he could also reverse that and
| threaten to promote criticism of China if they don't play ball.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Whoever you are, whatever your politics and positions are, you
| have to admit and appreciate the humor in the saying: "it's a
| private company, they can do what they want".
|
| 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!
| Pxtl wrote:
| Nobody who supports Twitter's (imho responsible) use of
| censorship thinks that Musk's plan to libertarianize Twitter
| should be _illegal_ , unlike the folks who used to shout "First
| amendment! Free speech!" about Twitter's moderation. They're
| just saying that his actions are childish and will make the
| site substantially worse.
|
| 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.
| lukeramsden wrote:
| Hacker News is not a valid comparison. dang is not going
| around telling people what is "right" and what is "wrong" and
| what is "misinformation", or trying to control a narrative.
| Hacker News' heavy-handed moderation is specifically what
| allows a vast array of opinions to be discussed and debated
| honestly and openly, in a way that Twitter and YouTube would
| simply remove as "misinformation".
| robonerd wrote:
| Dang is not without his biases. He seems more willing to
| tolerate nationalist flamebait when America is the target
| of it. And yes, I know his standard response of claiming
| whatever bias seen in him merely reflects your own bias...
| that is another of dang's biases.
| Pxtl wrote:
| My personal "anecdote is not data" has been that I was
| censured for arguing that opposing covid safety measures
| shows how American conservatism is post-truth, and
| delta's hospitalization rates showed the cost of that
| attitude. Repeatedly getting in arguments on this subject
| got me censored. It's his site, it's his prerogative.
|
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| No doubt, dang can moderate this website as he [and his
| employer] sees fit. That much at least seems beyond
| dispute.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| > He seems more willing to tolerate nationalist flamebait
| when America is the target of it.
|
| 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.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I think your first and second sentences contradict each
| other. If content gets removed, it's removed. Why do you
| care if the moderators remove it as "misinformation" (which
| is probably is), or for being hate speech, or being stupid?
| np_tedious wrote:
| I wish 1000 dangs could moderate / set moderation policy on
| most major platforms
| hannasanarion wrote:
| What's the "full 180"? Where is the hypocrisy?
|
| "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.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| It wasn't the response to it was illegal, it was the response
| to it wasn't right.
|
| 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.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| No, it was absolutely in response to the claim that it was
| illegal. All the huxters and fascists who were banned from
| twitter cried "free speech" and filed lawsuits. Thus the
| response: it's legal for a private company to moderate
| their platform.
|
| 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.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > No, it was absolutely in response to the claim that it
| was illegal.
|
| 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:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929780
| noirbot wrote:
| I don't think most of those people are saying Musk can't do
| this, just that it's going to make the whole site worse.
| There's a reason I prefer Twitter to 4chan.
|
| 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.
| vmception wrote:
| Twitter with a proper /b/ section would be great though
|
| Thanks for the idea
| saboot wrote:
| I comment this as a parody last week and it's now being
| promoted as a desired outcome the next week.
| vmception wrote:
| lol, let me check that out
|
| 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.
| dymk wrote:
| 4chan's /b/ is entertaining if you enjoy gore, racial
| epithets, homophobia, and literal nazis
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah its shocking
|
| 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.
| saboot wrote:
| For some mysterious reason, no one, including you, gets
| specific about what type of content and memes will now be
| allowed.
| vmception wrote:
| Because we dont care
| solveit wrote:
| They're looking forward to 4chan but better... do they
| really need to?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I'm focused on how it would be a hilarious meme factory
|
| I'd like to buy an Internet Experience without memes.
| hemreldop wrote:
| peepop6 wrote:
| Honestly I find 4chan much less toxic than Twitter in
| practice. Like I can find some of the most horrible,
| infuriating and potentially illegal content on Twitter
| whereas on 4chan it's relatively rare depending on the board
| and the occasional shooting that gets posted on there first
| or whatever.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I didn't think it would be possible to make Twitter more
| hospitable to trolls and harassers, and I figured Musk's play
| would be minimizing bots, trolls, and extremists in order to
| attract the sane masses and drive up the stock price (sane
| people = better content = more ad/subscription revenue).
| noirbot wrote:
| This is essentially the opposite of everything he's said
| about why he's looking to buy Twitter. It's all about him
| complaining that the "trolls and extremists" are being
| unfairly censored. He's all but said he wants to reverse
| Trump's ban.
|
| There's no world in which Musk is going to be anti-
| trolling. The dude literally started this whole thing BY
| TROLLING.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| "Trolls" is probably too broad a term since it covers
| "far-right trolls" as well as shitposters/clowners. Musk
| is against the former, not the latter. In any case, I'm
| excited about the potential to shake up moderation; my
| politics aren't "unfairly censored" by any means, but I'm
| having the most extreme, caustic positions shoved in my
| face all the time by an algorithm that optimizes for
| en(r|g)agement.
| ggpsv wrote:
| Can you expand on what you're specifically referring to
| regarding TikTok?
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Algo Literacy is just some crappy half-baked term I made up
| on the spot.
|
| 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.
| ggpsv wrote:
| I take TikTok is just an example and that this applies
| equally as well to other social media like
| Instagram/FB/Youtube? Or is there anything particularly
| notorious about TikTok?
|
| 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).
| Avicebron wrote:
| I'm not a behavioral expert, and I don't use tiktok, but
| I know people who do use it daily, almost as soon as they
| wake up even. I think the speed and short blasts of
| visual information acts as sort of a desensitizer to
| certain content, like if I said to you, in short 5 second
| bursts "facts", you might retain the 35th "fact" and not
| question it because you're already on the 50th "fact".
|
| 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"
| root_axis wrote:
| You're claiming there's a 180 but I don't see it. I haven't
| seen anyone arguing that Musk shouldn't be legally allowed to
| operate the site as he sees fit were he the owner.
| [deleted]
| gambler wrote:
| Ellen Pao literally wrote an op-ed arguing this in Washington
| Post. This was _before_ he bid for the company, just because
| he was invited to sit on the board!
|
| 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.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Murdoch isn't already a rich person controlling large
| channels of communication? Bezos isn't already a rich
| person controlling a large channel of communication?
|
| 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.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Yes, we KNOW, we're upset at "yet another billionaire"
| gaining control of a "yet another communication channel".
|
| Why is everybody assuming we are all hypocrites who are
| 100% in support of the status quo?
| Traster wrote:
| That's not a 180. To show a 180 you need to show Ellen Pao
| _also_ saying that "it's a private company, they can do
| what they want".
|
| 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.
| defen wrote:
| https://twitter.com/ekp/status/1322641942463700992
|
| A straightforward reading of that tweet is "It's a
| private company, they can remove hate and harassment if
| they want."
| Traster wrote:
| I read that tweet as "People on this platform say that
| Twitter shouldn't remove hateful content because of the
| first amendment, but here's people _literally_ breaking
| first amendment and you all seem to be quiet ". She's not
| saying "Twitter can do what they want" she's saying "YOU
| say twitter is bound by the first amendment but don't
| actually seem to support the first ammendment"
| defen wrote:
| Her tweet from 1.5 years ago argues that the First
| Amendment does not prevent companies from removing hate
| from their platforms. That is true. Private companies can
| remove hate from their platforms and no one's first
| amendment rights have been violated.
|
| 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?
| Traster wrote:
| I don't think that's right, her tweet was saying "This is
| the standard _you_ set, where are you _". She 's not
| endorsing it, she's saying _you* endorse this standard,
| you defend it.
| [deleted]
| themusicgod1 wrote:
| Don't like it? Join the fediverse!
|
| https://jointhefedi.com/
| [deleted]
| thedrbrian wrote:
| Surely all those blue checks can just go and make their own
| social platform?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's a good offer and the share holders seem to lean towards
| agreeing with that statement now. Of course the question is
| whether Elon Musk can turn this company around. He seems to feel
| that that is something that needs to happen. I tend to agree with
| on that. If nothing happens, Twitter will continue to slowly and
| steadily decline; like Facebook has experienced with their social
| network in recent years as well.
|
| 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.
| wnevets wrote:
| RIP Twitter 2022
| etchalon wrote:
| I am exhausted by literally everything about this.
| dhimes wrote:
| This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One that is
| being discussed here in other threads is basically, "What does
| Musk think he can do that others before him haven't been able
| to?" Are we going to see a stroke of real genius here?
|
| 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.
| dhimes wrote:
| UPDATE: Farther downstream
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31154330 dahfizz explains
| that the poison pill only goes into effect if the board does
| _not_ approve the purchase. If the board accepts the offer, the
| poison pill won 't be an issue.
| axg11 wrote:
| The poison pill is irrelevant if Elon and the Board come to an
| agreement. Any deal would involve a workaround or nullifying of
| the poison pill.
|
| 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.
| furyofantares wrote:
| The poison pill is just to prevent him from buying twitter on
| the open market. It can be removed at any time and any sale
| will be contingent on it being removed.
| dhimes wrote:
| Thank you. I saw something about that downstream.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I wonder what his real motives are, and if they are his motives
| alone.
| ckastner wrote:
| After all the theater about Musk joining the board, then him not
| joining the board as it's "best for all", then refusing the
| $54.20 offer for being too low...
|
| 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.
| shrimpx wrote:
| What's the consequence for employees? People with 3 years left of
| vesting RSUs. Will those keep vesting somehow? Or they'll get an
| upfront payout? 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?
| umeshunni wrote:
| "Voluntary, non-regretted attrition"
| taf2 wrote:
| It sounds like there would be a private investor pool- so
| options would convert?
| airstrike wrote:
| _> What's the consequence for employees? People with 3 years
| left of vesting RSUs. Will those keep vesting somehow? Or
| they'll get an upfront payout?_
|
| 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
| [deleted]
| beebmam wrote:
| Superb question. If I were an employee there, I certainly would
| be sending out applications elsewhere.
| exhaze wrote:
| Periodic liquidity events
| mmastrac wrote:
| Part of me hopes this is the end of the social media age. I've
| been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it feels like
| it's a toxic cesspool on all sides.
|
| I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than
| a decade.
| jdrc wrote:
| It's not , but now social media is mainstream media and can't
| pretend to be cool anymore
| sidcool wrote:
| Unlikely. Twitter, despite of its influence, is a minor part of
| the social media business. Instagram and TikTok are the
| biggest.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Twitter is a big place. I follow a lot of reporters, policy
| analysts, space entrepreneur, etc and don't get much toxicity.
| There are some people whose long form writing I really enjoy
| but who are just too negative on Twitter for me to follow them
| there, I just hope that other people will retweet their good
| stuff.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| > I've been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it
| feels like it's a toxic cesspool on all sides.
|
| > 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I don't consider Linkedin a social network at all any more.
| It's just a spam/announcement/congratulations feed for me.
|
| 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.
| rosndo wrote:
| Twitter is what you make it. If you choose to surround yourself
| in the toxic cesspool parts, perhaps that says more about you
| than Twitter?
|
| 99% of the stuff I see is interesting technical content
| ben_w wrote:
| Cesspools can find you (or the people you follow) even if you
| don't want them to.
| marban wrote:
| I was one of the first users, still have a 3 digit API ID, and
| made some good money from Twitter over the years. The often
| cited cesspool is highly exaggerated among certain peer groups.
| Twitter can be fun and happy and hasn't really changed a lot,
| provided that you follow the right people -- Which can be hard
| for new users given the non-explorative/gradual onboarding.
| Back in the days, we built proprietary blocking into the app --
| all those things, filtering, etc. are now available natively.
| Twitter only gets frustrating if you let it.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I 've been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it
| feels like it's a toxic cesspool on all sides._
|
| Now you know how the old school Useneters feel. Welcome to
| Eternal September.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Also a former usenetter. And former FidoNETter.
| goodoldneon wrote:
| It depends who you follow. I only follow people I think are
| funny so now my Twitter feed is almost entirely toxicity-free.
| If you follow political accounts then you're gonna get hit with
| the toxic firehose
| [deleted]
| hirundo wrote:
| If I could go on Twitter and only see stuff from people I
| follow I'd feel the same as you about it. But they make it
| almost impossible not to be barraged with other stuff too,
| and not just ads, but hate and insanity that I tried hard not
| to follow. Those are the things that drove me away.
|
| Now I exfiltrate the good stuff with Nitter RSS feeds, and
| that way I get the experience you say you like about Twitter.
| jvzr wrote:
| > If I could go on Twitter and only see stuff from people I
| follow I'd feel the same as you about it. But they make it
| almost impossible not to be barraged with other stuff too,
| and not just ads, but hate and insanity that I tried hard
| not to follow. Those are the things that drove me away.
|
| The only sane way to use Twitter is through a 3rd-party
| client: no ads, none of that Notifications spam and other
| recommendations
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Lol what? We're social animals. You realize that forums were
| also social media? Just because the term didn't exist 20 years
| ago doesn't mean it wasn't a thing.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't see how it ever would be. But that said, I remember the
| era of the Arab Spring where everyone said social media would
| liberate us all... of course it never turned out to by true but
| I feel as though Twitter is still pretending that it will.
|
| 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.
| christkv wrote:
| Is this anything different from Facebook or Google?
| afavour wrote:
| I'd argue FB and Google stopped pretending to be about free
| speech and such a long time ago with Twitter being the one
| left that claimed to be a beacon of freedom (while not
| really being one).
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| Any website claiming to be a "beacon of free speech" is
| lying. The very idea of it is nonsensical from the
| outset, it's like a cartoon idea of what a website is
| supposed to be. One person's "free speech" is just
| another person's toxic abuse that makes the site
| unusable. That much is blatantly obvious from spending
| even just a small amount of time on Twitter.
| umanwizard wrote:
| What stops you from deleting your twitter, regardless of
| whether Musk buys it?
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| This is my hope as well. The belief that everyone should be on
| the same social network is misguided, naive, and renders us too
| prone to manipulation and misinformation. I look forward to
| social networks splintering and their cultural influence
| beginning to wane.
|
| 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.
| gbersac wrote:
| I never had anything toxic on my twitter feed and I spend a lot
| of time on it. The quality of your feed depend on who you
| follow.
| nomdep wrote:
| If you don't see the toxic, you probably are the toxic
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| It surely is, the lunatic has purchased the asylum.
| rvz wrote:
| Hardly. What happened to #deletefacebook in 2018,
| #deleteinstagram? Nothing happened. Billions are still using it
| regardless of that.
|
| 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.
| Victerius wrote:
| I agree. Elon Musk taking control of Twitter won't spell the
| end of social media. Social media fills the intrinsic human
| need to be connected to others and recognized by others for a
| lot of people. Network effects make it very hard for a
| competitor to dislodge the incumbents, but as TikTok showed,
| it's not impossible. Social media is here to stay
| indefinitely.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It mimics the satisfaction of that intrinsic social need.
| It's the high fructose corn syrup of socializing, only more
| toxic.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| Prediction: he'll force them to add an edit button, and put
| Twitter up for sale again within 6 months. Like a social media
| fixer-upper
| xyst wrote:
| I was just beginning to like Twitter too...
|
| How long until it becomes a dumpster fire like FB
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| macspoofing wrote:
| How did it go from hostility to acceptance so quickly? I
| understand playing hard-ball to negotiate a higher price, BUT why
| play hard-ball and just accept the initial offer?
|
| Or is there something else at play (maybe expectation is that
| shareholders reject it?) and this is just a PR ploy.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Pure speculation -- Lawyers are scary. Someone with an army of
| lawyers is a formidable opponent.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| possibly the actual financing details made the offer seem real,
| recent market downturn makes the value of twitter less, or they
| didn't get any other better offers.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It seems very likely to me there's a whole backroom drama at
| work here that we're just not hearing about. I strongly suspect
| the full story involves Jack and his departure, for example.
|
| Maybe someday it will all come out.
| im3w1l wrote:
| He said previously he had no confidence in Twitter
| management. Implication: Heads would roll like crazy after
| his purchase. Maybe he did something to reassure them.
| kyruzic wrote:
| Get rid of the mandatory account please. I have no need for a
| twitter account because I have no need to follow people or tweet
| myself. Why do I need an account.
| robonerd wrote:
| Why are accounts needed for following at all? Youtube gives me
| personalized suggestions without an account, just a cookie.
| jdlyga wrote:
| So, looks like Twitter will turn into Parler? Let's hope it
| doesn't become more of a dumpster fire.
| rosenjcb wrote:
| Does anyone else feel like he's going to start doing petty shit
| like banning people he doesn't like (e.g. that musk flight
| tracker account)? He talks a lot about free speech but he has a
| track record of limiting speech on the platform (blocking
| multiple people) and off (making the founders of Tesla sign a
| hush contract).
| clay10 wrote:
| It would be contradicting everything hes currently saying. I
| don't think him blocking people from his account is indicative
| that he would ban those same people from the platform, nor do I
| consider it "limiting speech on the platform".
| memish wrote:
| No.
|
| 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.
| rosenjcb wrote:
| Well, he decided that the whole world shouldn't hear about
| how the original founders of Tesla were removed and replaced
| with Musk. However, I can appreciate the distinction between
| muting people on your own threads vs removing people from the
| entire platform.
| darknavi wrote:
| Perhaps. But it's his (or his investors) 40 billion to burn.
| I'd hope that spending that much money makes you think twice
| about being a petty ass.
| rosenjcb wrote:
| His whole life he's had to listen to shareholders. This is
| his one chance to just say "Fuck it" and just do whatever he
| wants. I would hope the businessman and him would prevent him
| from doing this. However like most gag orders he imposes, it
| would be completely hidden from us. He won't be tweeting
| about it.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| As opposed to petty things like banning the sitting president
| of the united states?
| bezospen15 wrote:
| You mean banning a racist racist president?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Why should a politician get special privileges?
| rosenjcb wrote:
| I'm confused, are you talking about banning Trump (after he
| lost the election)? I'm not saying the decision is right or
| wrong, but Twitter thought a long time about it. I'm pretty
| sure the board wanted him banned even earlier, but they
| waited for the right moment.
| jakemauer wrote:
| He led an insurrection against the current government and
| called for violence many times which is abhorrent and against
| the terms of service. If he was anyone else he would've been
| banned a dozen times over.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If he was anyone else he would've been banned a dozen
| times over.
|
| If he was anyone else, Twitter wouldn't have _rewritten its
| rules_ specifically to retroactively excuse it 's history
| of not enforcing them against him, before yeaes later,
| _after he lost reelection_ , finally seeing it's interests
| no longer served by bending over to enable him.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| They didn't ban the taliban leaders accounts when they took
| over Kabul either. And trust me, they were fully open about
| who they were.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >He led an insurrection against the current government and
| called for violence many times
|
| A case which of course not only has _twitter_ been unable
| to make, but which his opposition party has also been
| unable to make as well.
|
| I would ask you to link me to the places where he is
| calling for an "insurrection" (and not a protest), but
| conveniently the account has been removed, making it much
| more difficult to do.
| lambic2 wrote:
| This documentary might help you see its case:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVUs4dS30c0
| beeboop wrote:
| No
| standyro wrote:
| I tried to make a pull request already, haha.
|
| error forking repo: HTTP 403: The repository exists, but it
| contains no Git content. Empty repositories cannot be forked.
| (https://api.github.com/repos/twitter/the-algorithm/forks)
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| I honestly did not expect this outcome.
| noobermin wrote:
| The level of hero worship on this site is bizarre, not even for
| someone for their technical acumen, but just because they are a
| figure in the broader culture. It's really disappointing,
| actually.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't hate the guy, but I am slightly disappointed that this
| is the best we can get for a real world imitation of Tony
| Stark.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Word salad.
| samstave wrote:
| We have both ends of the extremes of "wanting to seem like
| Stark, but not quite making the cut" ;
|
| 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.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I always found Stark to be a brash, unlikable character. We
| have enough of those in the world already.
| user_7832 wrote:
| (Slightly controversial opinion for this thread) Stark _is_
| an a*hole. Folk(s) imitating him (or imitated by him)
| ironically don 't realize it.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Well, as the parent commenter noted, Stark and Musk
| aren't sufficiently similar to be indistinguishable. Even
| if Stark was modeled after Musk... one of the latter's
| key elements is that he _is_ quite charismatic and
| likable.
| slkdk32 wrote:
| Avicebron wrote:
| He may have been the leader of the people who made that
| spaceship and car, but he didn't do it in his garage, he
| leveraged a previously vast amount of money into getting
| other people to do those things for him, don't belittle,
| it's unbecoming.
| ironmagma wrote:
| > he didn't do it in his garage
|
| No one ever has. You're setting up an unclearable hurdle;
| it's understood when someone says "he created the largest
| software company ever," they don't mean that Bill Gates
| created Windows, Word, Outlook, and Powerpoint
| singlehandedly. The way you do these things is with
| money. The fact money was used doesn't make it less
| impressive.
| robonerd wrote:
| I don't think there is much sense in wishing real life were
| more like comic books.
| ironmagma wrote:
| People often say this, and it's frequently based on a false
| assumption that people don't like Elon for valid reasons. Who
| told you I don't respect him for his technical acumen?
| slkdk32 wrote:
| [deleted]
| pupppet wrote:
| Very interested to see what happens to @ElonJet.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I feel like the world is divided into two kinds of people:
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| nabla9 wrote:
| His offer is funded as follows (from Matt Levine):https://www.blo
| omberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-21/elon-g...
|
| 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?
| InTheArena wrote:
| He is. Tesla, SpaceX, etc all play to win, but they did it by
| almost going bankrupt and out over and over and over.
|
| 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.
| nabla9 wrote:
| He is like a modern Icarus. Just replace wax with leverage.
|
| 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.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is true now, but it certainly wasn't true then.
|
| 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.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Social Media is so horrible. I'm absolutely convinced that humans
| haven't evolved to handle the insanity that is social media. Yet,
| they are the public squares. And isolating myself from the
| cesspools (FB, Twitter, etc) has also isolated me from everyone.
|
| 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.
| rvz wrote:
| Twitter was dying anyway and it needed to be saved from itself.
| With Jack leaving, earnings around the corner and with this final
| offer. It was exactly what they needed as if they rejected this
| only offer, it will certainly crash the stock anyway with little
| room to recover.
|
| 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.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Here's a different perspective: With Jack leaving 6 months ago,
| the company finally had a chance to thrive.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A great way to advertise Tesla would be to fully weave it into
| the very fabric of Twitter. Every tweet then has the potential to
| inject Tesla's brand into eyeballs.
| suction wrote:
| The world today made another big step towards the abyss.
| boredumb wrote:
| People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order
| to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for
| himself.
|
| 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.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I agree with you. Also, it would be great to be able to pay
| $5/month for no advertisements.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If I pay $5/month for social media, I expect more than just
| no advertising. I want strong moderation, a la Hacker News.
| Make some bubbles, let me choose the moderation focus.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > If elon removes bots
|
| 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.
| jen20 wrote:
| You are letting perfect be the enemy of the good here.
|
| 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.
| evan_ wrote:
| you do realize that "word2048962062" is the format of
| username suggested to you when you signup, right?
| notahacker wrote:
| There are also millions of people with low effort accounts
| that mostly just retweet stuff, often precisely the bot-
| amplified political topics that show up in their feed.
| Those people are going to whine just as loudly about
| censorship as the people kicked off because someone
| reported them.
|
| 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
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's not at all trivial, and there's a surprising amount of
| academic research on whether it's even possible.
|
| 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.
| nprateem wrote:
| Comedians like Stephan Fry left exactly because people were
| saying whatever they wanted and being abusive. You can't have
| it both ways.
| macinjosh wrote:
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Do you know who Stephen Fry is?
| oska wrote:
| bombcar wrote:
| Twitter is/was unique in that there was a minuscule
| chance that someone rich and famous would actually read a
| regular response to a tweet, especially if it got a lot
| of traction.
|
| And that is what scares some people.
|
| The only other place I've seen it happen is some Reddit
| AMAs and it was always clear which ones were being
| coordinated by PR and which got unhinged and out of
| control.
| karpierz wrote:
| Yes, but unironically.
| prvc wrote:
| >You can't have it both ways.
|
| What are the two "ways" that supposedly are in conflict?
| dento wrote:
| 1. people can say whatever they want
|
| 2. no abusive comments
|
| Content moderation is difficult.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Not if you make Twitter federated and let people host
| their own instance. For example, let Stephen Fry host his
| own Twitter server and he will choose what is allowed and
| what is not. This Twitter will integrate with other
| Twitter servers over ActivityPub. Something like
| Mastodon.
|
| It's not going to happen because this model is not going
| to generate any revenue unless Elon figures out
| something.
| Fordec wrote:
| > let Stephen Fry host his own server that he has to
| actively curate
|
| I've barely had my coffee, and I've already seen the most
| "HN living in a bubble" comment of the day.
| adolph wrote:
| >> let people host their own instance
|
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You forgot "Clients, of course, should be written only in
| Rust."
| rcoder wrote:
| I literally can't tell if this is a joke. I'm going to
| treat it as earnest, because even if you're trolling this
| is HN and every mention of cryptocurrency will get
| _someone_ nodding along in support.
|
| 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.
| adolph wrote:
| > I literally can't tell if this is a joke.
|
| 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.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Glad this blockchain/crypto thing did not exist over a
| decade ago. Otherwise we would never have something as
| cool as BitTorrent. There are so many people who neither
| understand decentralisation properly nor crypto but wanna
| somehow become part of conversation so they link the two
| and derail the conversation.
| hkt wrote:
| Amen.
|
| But.. Bittorrent is actually about 20 years old. Maybe
| getting on for 25.
| Traster wrote:
| Why on earth would Stephen Fry want to spend his time
| operating and moderating a social media site?
| anthropodie wrote:
| No he won't. Make it so easy that his PR could manage his
| own server instance. That is what originally use to
| happen when actors still had their own websites and
| forums.
| metamet wrote:
| So... a blog?
| Traster wrote:
| Ok so he doesn't have to manage it himself, he could
| employ a team. Great, so how much is Stephen going to be
| paying to this team to moderate the content of his 12.4
| million followers? A dozen people? A hundred maybe? It
| sounds like an expensive venture.
| anthropodie wrote:
| He could just use the tools that come with the service.
| Tools that could filter out words, phrases that he
| chooses to omit or he could choose to disable replies
| altogether. He can also choose who gets to follow him
| based on certain parameters. I'm pretty sure if better
| minds than mine chose to solve this problem, they can.
|
| BTW the site you are currently on has two moderators.
| evan_ wrote:
| Why do any of those things require a "federated Twitter"?
|
| 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.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Even if Fry could run his own instance, how the heck is
| he going to write his own moderation code?
| rco8786 wrote:
| Ok so if you change Twitter entirely to some other thing
| that others have tried and failed at numerous times then
| you will....have it both ways? Wat?
| gitgud wrote:
| So fracture the community into a bunch of moderated
| instances with varying rules?.... Sounds like reddit
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Not if you make Twitter federated and let people host
| their own instance. For example, let Stephen Fry host his
| own Twitter server and he will choose what is allowed and
| what is not. This Twitter will integrate with other
| Twitter servers over ActivityPub. Something like
| Mastodon.
|
| 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.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Wil Wheaton had a disastrous experience with Mastodon,
| much worse than he had with Twitter. He's been made fun
| of on every Internet platform for 30+ years, and found
| Mastodon unusable, apparently
| Bud wrote:
| Doing this would have _zero impact_ on the bedrock fact
| that content moderation is difficult.
|
| You can't wave that away with a wand and an incantation.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think user content moderation should be enforced. If I
| do not want to see tweets that contain certain words or
| phrases, block it. Treat abuse like spam. Block, isolate,
| and it will go away.
|
| If I only want tweets that contain the words "Zaphod
| Beeblebrox" then that's all I want to see, and should
| have that ability.
| LordAtlas wrote:
| > If I do not want to see tweets that contain certain
| words or phrases, block it.
|
| You can already mute words on Twitter.
| robonerd wrote:
| Anybody who stands in front of a crowd to say anything should
| expect some heckling. The bigger the crowd, the greater the
| risk of this. I would have expected a comedian to cope with
| it better than most, but if Stephen Fry decided he no longer
| wanted to tolerate heckling, then it sounds like leaving
| Twitter was the right choice for him.
|
| Can't say I see the problem here.
| core-utility wrote:
| People will be hurtful and abusive no matter how moderated
| the platform is. Even HN has its share of colorful commentary
| from time to time. If individuals here and there decide it's
| best for them to not be on any social media, nothing the
| platform can do - even if it brings more users overall - will
| keep those individuals.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> 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...
|
| >> 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."
| wtetzner wrote:
| > Which only proves the point that the GGP's formula for
| Twitter's success doesn't add up.
|
| I don't think that proves anything. It's an example of
| one person.
| wowokay wrote:
| I think discussion chains like this showcase a lot of
| misunderstandings around how twitter fundamentally works.
|
| 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.
| cywick wrote:
| Is there any evidence that "companies, figures, games,
| movies, etc" have stopped using Twitter to promote their
| products and/or use Twitter as a support channel? And
| doubly so that they did this because of their own
| political views?
|
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
| yvdriess wrote:
| > People will be hurtful and abusive no matter how
| moderated the platform is.
|
| In a well moderated environment, only once. Or at least,
| once in between probations.
| [deleted]
| nullc wrote:
| Not clear to me that you can't have it both ways to at least
| a degree: The corollary of twitter's moderation practices is
| not "at least there is no abuse".
|
| 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.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Now imagine if Twitter gave users like Stephen Fry the option
| to not see toxic comments. Let them live in their happy
| little bubble. But oh no, Twitter got rich off of anger porn,
| so they're stuck in the local maxima where every single
| person is subjected to the worst toxic behavior daily. They
| don't want people like Stephen Fry who would rather leave
| than feed the anger porn machine. Time for a change, I say.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| He's still on Twitter, as recently as this morning.
| [deleted]
| i_like_waiting wrote:
| It's not even that, if he added "lookalike audience" for ad
| publishers, it could bring revenues significantly higher,
| twitters ad platform is disaster compared to other social media
| daenz wrote:
| I've seen people who are angry about Musks actions say that
| they're going to be the most toxic, anger-inducing, irrational
| users they can be to test his limits of speech. Some people
| just want to watch the world burn because they can't get their
| way.
| matchagaucho wrote:
| _> seeing value in advertising on twitter again_
|
| Isn't "remove ads" on his takeover agenda?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Honest question to you and anyone reading:
|
| Is Trump a non-extremist?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| He attempted a coup. I think that qualifies him as an
| extremist.
| EricE wrote:
| Really? When/Where did he attempt this "coup"?
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When/Where did he attempt this "coup"?
|
| 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.)
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Wow. You've really gone down the rabbit hole.
| garbagetime wrote:
| Another question:
|
| Is extremism inherently wrong?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If you have to ask the question you already know the
| answer...
| garbagetime wrote:
| I don't see the logic there, but in case it adds to the
| conversation, I will say that I think that it is fairly
| clear that extremism is not inherently a bad thing,
| unless it is defined as such (rather than literally) - in
| which case I think the word would lose most of its
| utility in conversations like this.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I find "extremism" to be used as a pejorative that is
| better interpreted as "non-mainstream" nowadays. Most
| people labeled as extremist are simply just that, not
| mainstream. Infact it is quite cynical of those within
| the mainstream to use this pejorative, since it by
| sleight of hand assosciates any ideas that the mainstream
| does not hold with what most others see as "violent
| extremists, wearing white robes and/or bombing subway
| stations".
| TMWNN wrote:
| >I would remind you that extremism in the defense of
| liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that
| moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
|
| --Barry Goldwater, 1964
| slg wrote:
| Sure, he could do all those things you list, but I have no idea
| why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to do it
| while no one else could.
|
| 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?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to
| be able to do it while no one else could.
|
| No one else tried. Twitter has been stagnating drinking the
| kool-aid for many years.
| ilaksh wrote:
| That reminds me. I bought Kool-Aid yesterday! Mmmm. I could
| use some cold Kool-Aid about now.
|
| I would argue that not a ton of groups can put together a
| $43 billion offer very easily. So the pool is somewhat
| limited.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Yeah, totally. The thousands of Twitter employees sit and
| twiddle their thumbs all day. Not a single one working on
| spam or various problems Musk has with the company.
| memish wrote:
| They are idle. Here's what Paul Graham, who has a lot of
| experience fighting spam, said:
|
| "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."
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Twitter workers are busy applying band aids when Musk
| proposes a chemo.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean do you actually know anyone working at Twitter
| currently? That's really not that far from reality.....
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Hot take: Most of hate for Elon is because he is not your
| traditional progressive leader. He exudes libertarian,
| progressive and conservative values depending on the context
| and gets to the bottom of truth. He does not care about
| political correctness which rubs progressives hard and deep.
|
| 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.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| the_only_law wrote:
| Oh it was objective? GP must be a mind reader to
| objectively know the intent behind "most" of the
| controversy.
| notahacker wrote:
| Most of Elon's questionable behaviour is 100% apolitical,
| as are most of the criticisms levied at the running of his
| companies. His actual politics isn't discussed all that
| much and probably isn't particularly different from your
| average CEO-in-a-suit, and he's really not exuding nuanced
| political values and getting to the bottom of truth making
| joke tweets about selling Tesla or doubling down on calling
| someone a pedo.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Both, in person with very good friends that I respect and
| others online have responded this cliche argument. If you
| peel the layers of your argument, embedded within it is
| basically political disagreement. Which is perfectly
| fine, but I wish people would cut the chase to it.
|
| 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".
| zbentley wrote:
| Without weighing in on the broader issue, the two options
| you present are a distinction without a difference. If
| someone's actions reflect values that are reprehensible
| to you, you dislike/disagree with that person. If you
| disagree with someone's values, you arrive at that
| disagreement by noticing actions they take which
| represent those values.
|
| 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).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Good response.
|
| 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."
| notahacker wrote:
| That's a very bad distillation of my argument, firstly
| because personally I _don 't_ despise Elon (but do
| attempt to interpret properly articulated criticisms from
| those that do in good faith, and think a lot of them have
| a point), secondly because there is no layer of an
| argument that Elon's politics are not particularly
| prominent or unusual that has disagreement with non-
| prominent or usual politics embedded within it, and
| thirdly because there are a vast number of prominent
| people who are similarly "not your traditional
| progressive leader" (who in business is, frankly?) who
| don't get so much criticism for doing x, y and z on
| account of not doing x, y and z.
| [deleted]
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| Elon Musk's sole political opinion is to further the clout,
| the cult and the wallet of Elon Musk.
|
| > 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.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > He exudes libertarian, progressive and conservative
| values depending on the context and gets to the bottom of
| truth.
|
| 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.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I've heard his message for a decade or more. He has made
| sure his moral compass is heard loud and clear and it is
| always like this:
|
| * Make a better tomorrow
|
| * Solve humanities most pressing problems
|
| * Make humanity a multi-planetary species
| nkozyra wrote:
| First two are slogans, and I'm not sure the last one is
| necessarily a moral goal.
|
| 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?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Please note that I am not condoning or denying the
| support for his moral values, just noting my observations
| from what I've heard repeatedly.
|
| 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.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| > 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.
| mgfist wrote:
| bengale wrote:
| It's an interesting technique that you can see used in
| books for young adults, they leave the protagonist fairly
| blank in many regards so that you can essentially paint
| yourself in there, or fill in the blanks with what you
| wish was there.
|
| It probably explains why he attracts the type of people
| he does and why he has the sort of following he does.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| How does calling a cave diver a pedophile fit into these?
| Words are just marketing. Musk's actions are more
| telling.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You forgot "Building Better Worlds".
| influx wrote:
| Twitter knows that Trump used them to get elected, and they
| are scared Elon will unban him.
|
| It's pretty obvious Trump and Alex Jones tweeting again
| would bring in a lot of eyeballs for better or worse.
| the_only_law wrote:
| No there are plenty of much more conservative leaders I
| don't even think about because they aren't 50 year old men
| trying to shitpost like teenagers on the internet.
| yucky wrote:
| So your concern is he might influence too many people
| with wrongthink?
| the_only_law wrote:
| Cute projection, but neither me nor GP mentioned anything
| about concern.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| This sums up the whole situation. There's really nothing
| else to it.
| smaudet wrote:
| Only if you ignore the repeated documented issues with
| how he runs his companies and the numerous flaws with
| their products...
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| How can you be "libertarian" - ie keep government out of
| people's lives and a modern day "conservative" that is all
| about pushing religious beliefs on people and supporting
| corrupt law enforcement?
|
| But he is not so "Libertarian" that he refuses to accept
| government subsidies.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > a modern day "conservative" that is all about pushing
| religious beliefs on people and supporting corrupt law
| enforcement
|
| There's no point saying this in a real discussion.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Can you highlight the part that isn't true?
| rayiner wrote:
| Let's stipulate off the bat that many conservative causes
| are religious in nature: if you want schools to teach
| intelligent design instead of evolution, that falls
| within the scope of "imposing religious beliefs on
| people."
|
| 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."
| TMWNN wrote:
| >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?
|
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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/mississ
| ippi-ab...
| rayiner wrote:
| The point is that Mississippi and Denmark agree on the
| core moral question of when a fetus is developed enough
| that the fetal life outweighs individual autonomy _in the
| ordinary case._ Both draw the line at the end of the
| first trimester, when the fetus has a face, hands,
| fingers, and begins sucking its thumb. This is a
| fundamental difference from _Roe_ , which draws the line
| at the end of the second trimester, at viability.
|
| 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://cybe
| r.harvard.edu/population/abortion/Denmark.abo.ht.... They
| are not an open-ended exception to allow second trimester
| abortions in ordinary cases.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The entire idea behind the Constitution is "innocent
| until proven guilty". Not "you're automatically going to
| be assumed to be guilty because you don't look like you
| belong in the neighborhood."
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| No one is trying to "turn your kids gay". But it's
| clearly factual that some people prefer their mates to be
| of the same sex and I don't see any reason to try to
| shelter kids from that.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > So if you should only marry to reproduce
|
| Who said this?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Isn't that the entire argument against gay marriage and
| the gay lifestyle in general - that the purpose of
| marriage is reproduction?
| yucky wrote:
| >Why does it always seem like the people who are on the
| "margin of culpability" always minorities?
|
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| How many "conservatives" would be in favor of giving
| police less power, stopping the war on drugs, legalizing
| weed, letting individual schools decide what to teach,
| letting individual cities decide not to allow religious
| institutions in areas zoned for residential properties
| (they increase traffic), getting rid of tax exemptions
| for religious institutions, etc?
|
| Those are all "Libertarian stances".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Isn't the tax exemption for separation of church and
| state reasons? Remove them and religion will require
| political representation? (Source: vague memory of
| something from the West Wing.)
| nybble41 wrote:
| If that was the intent then it isn't working very well.
| If anything, legal equality between religious
| organizations and similar secular organizations, whether
| for-profit or non-profit, would entail _decreasing_ the
| influence of the former on politics.
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| Exemptions for religious organizations are typically just
| part of a larger framework of exemptions for a wide
| variety of non-profit, civic activities:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501
|
| > 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.
| nybble41 wrote:
| The fact that "religious ... purposes" are sufficient in
| and of themselves to claim tax-exempt status is part of
| the bias in favor of religious organizations. Yes,
| secular organizations can also be tax-exempt--but they
| have to earn it, and not all secular organizations will
| qualify (even ones without a profit motive), whereas
| churches automatically receive tax-exempt status.
| Stripping them of that status is practically unheard of
| so long as they avoid directly campaigning for or against
| specific political candidates.
|
| 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 SS 5000A(d)(2), "Religious
| Exemptions"[1]).
|
| [0] https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-4361
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5000A
| rayiner wrote:
| Secular organizations don't need to "earn" 501(c)(3)
| status. They just need to show that they need to apply
| and show they meet the applicable criteria. For churches,
| that exemption is automatic. Obviously there are a much
| wider range of possible secular organizations that may or
| may not meet the criteria, compared to religious
| organizations.
|
| 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
| the_only_law wrote:
| The ones that are willing to become Paraiahs.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I could, but this really isn't the place for it. Please
| just imagine that the constant emotional conditioning you
| have experienced from one-sided news and opinion pieces
| may not be the best way to understand half of the
| country.
| sfe22 wrote:
| You can be libertarian and accept government subsidies.
| It's not like he could have kept the recent $11B if he
| did not accept the subsidies. If he believes in
| libertarianism and would pick freedom over oppression
| given the choice, then he is a libertarian. He was given
| no choice.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Libertarianism is about letting the free market decide
| and the government not putting its thumb on one
| industries over the other.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Good definition. But we are not a free market country, so
| you gotta play by the current rules.
| rayiner wrote:
| Easy--you recognize that there is no fundamental
| distinction, for purposes of government, between belief
| systems that are based on asserted moral axioms, whether
| or not they're traditionally classified as "religion."
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I purposefully left abortion out off the list because I
| agree with you, the entire idea of when life begins is a
| moral stance and everyone believes in the "right for
| someone not to take someone's else's life". It's just a
| matter of how you define "life". I can argue both sides.
|
| 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.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Thus there is no necessarily libertarian take on
| abortion.
|
| 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.
| akavi wrote:
| As someone who is strongly pro-choice, this strikes me as
| begging the question.
|
| > 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?
| nybble41 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What Conservatives are against school's teaching is that
| gay people exist and they want to teach the "Lost Cause"
| version of the Civil War among other things.
|
| The version of the history of the founding of the US is
| very much a sugar coated version of what actually
| happened.
| rayiner wrote:
| > they want to teach the "Lost Cause" version of the
| Civil War among other things
|
| 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?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| There are no conservative teachers who teach gay people
| do not exist.
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I'm more referring to how the history taught in class
| about the initial settlement of Europeans to America
| glosses over all of the atrocities that were committed.
|
| As far as the "Lost Cause" not being taught..,
|
| https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education
| /20...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The article you're linking in fact says they the Lost
| Cause is not being taught. It is talking how it was being
| taught 40+ years ago.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Well said
| kemiller wrote:
| He is openly pro-sensible-regulation in all of the
| industries he's a part of. If he's a libertarian he's
| certainly not our normal caricature of one.
| scarface74 wrote:
| As long as the "pro sensible" regulation is about
| subsidizing his companies.
| kemiller wrote:
| No, he's been on the record admiring NASA and the FAA,
| even auto regulators, and has called for regulation of
| AI.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Of course he "admires NASA" that pours money into SpaceX.
| nybble41 wrote:
| Regulation favors incumbents, and SpaceX and Tesla are
| the incumbents when it comes to private spaceflight and
| electric vehicles. Companies call for regulation on their
| own industries in order to influence the shapes of those
| regulations to their own advantage and put up barriers to
| future competition.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > How can you be "libertarian" - ie keep government out
| of people's lives and a modern day "conservative" that is
| all about pushing religious beliefs on people and
| supporting corrupt law enforcement?
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Libertarians" are for limiting power of government
| institutions outside of protecting capitalist property
| rights.
|
| "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.
| president wrote:
| What happened to just letting things play out? You don't know
| what's going to happen.
| probIs8 wrote:
| slg wrote:
| >What happened to just letting 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.
| clomond wrote:
| As someone who never got "hooked" onto twitter (turned into
| an active user) each time I viewed Twitter I found two main
| issues:
|
| - 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.
| robofanatic wrote:
| inspite of all those problems Elon Musk seems to be able to
| use the platform effectively given how much noise he gets
| on any of his posts becuase I believe Twitter is the only
| social media platform he is on.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Semantic nitpick
|
| "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)
| creaturemachine wrote:
| It's almost guaranteed they're tesla shareholders, and/or
| passengers on whatever derpcoin pump & dump Elon is
| fancying at this time. If you believe the value of any of
| those ventures is linked to Musk's star power then shill
| seems an apt label.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Which coins has elon pumped? I have mostly seen him talk
| about Dogecoin, I think there was some discussion of
| Bitcoin and Ethereum from him. Has he promoted deep-
| catalog derpcoins as well?
|
| (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?)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I think it's quite naive to assume that someone with
| billions to throw around doesn't have PR and social media
| management companies working for him.
|
| 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.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I would love for an investigative journalist to try to
| find an Elon-funded shill network.
|
| 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.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Such large shill operations would be next to impossible
| to keep secret over the long term. The more people
| involved, the more difficult to keep secret.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| I'd argue that in most cases these people would not be
| "stans" if they hadn't made money investing in Elon's
| businesses. They're almost always Tesla stockholders who
| religiously invest in and benefit financially from every
| financial move their idol makes. They actively shill Elon's
| businesses and even Elon himself because they are
| financially motivated to do so.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think that its quite qualitatively different if they
| aren't being directly funded by Elon's pocketbook.
|
| True shilling feels significantly more morally repugnant
| than these sorts of 'coattail-riders', but their impact
| is certainly similar.
| WesleyHale wrote:
| I think you undervalue how political the corporation of
| Twitter has become. That's where a lot of the red tape for
| changes were, and that red tape gets nuked if Twitter accepts
| his offer.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Musk's "army of shills" are at least real people who believe
| in his companies. I think the parent was commenting about
| account farms that tweet the same thing over and over on
| thousands of accounts. That is a big problem on Twitter, and
| it lets people manufacture consensus artificially (which is
| then picked up by journos).
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| You're 100% right. There are tons of bots on twitter
| spamming the same exact message over and over. Most aren't
| political. Try searching for "4k monitor", you'll find
| thousands of bot accounts tweeting the latest 4k monitor
| deals. It's a form of advertisement that leeches on
| twitter's service without paying twitter the usual
| advertising fee. Not sure why Twitter's ARMY of software
| developers can't figure this one out, but maybe the threat
| of a new boss with an eye for incompetence will get them to
| do some actual work on the issue.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think most people who people think are shills on Twitter
| are actually real people. This is the problem with all of
| the "quick fixes" y'all are suggesting, unless Twitter adds
| a downvote button.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Most comedians are turned off by audiences who cancel. Anyone
| not in tune with that trend in Chappelle's work isn't
| credible to make broad sweeping comments about that.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Ah yes, Dave Chappelle, the cancelled comedian who recently
| got paid $24M to produce a 1-hour set for the biggest
| streaming network.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Ah yes, a failure in reading comprehension coupled with a
| lack of cultural knowledge. No one said he got cancelled.
| He specifically took his audience to task for the way
| they scrutinize performers. https://www.youtube.com/watch
| ?v=2MZZ__5F_-A&ab_channel=Netfl...
|
| You're not credible if you say comedians don't want a
| platform that cracks down on mob cancellation.
| starik36 wrote:
| > Musk himself controls an army of shills
|
| Yes, downright controls. /s
| thejackgoode wrote:
| 1.1 mil likes under "pregnant" Gates reminded me of the
| House of Cards line:
|
| "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"
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Don't forget his "FREE AMERICA NOW" phase in April 2020,
| getting hundreds of thousands of likes when he echoed
| right-wing anti-lockdown talking points. And when he
| claimed the US would likely be down to zero cases within
| a month in March 2020. Or him going after the British
| diver he referred to as "pedo guy". Or his stock market
| manipulation tweets.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I have a completely unbased hypothesis that having
| Aspergers matters when it comes to hostility in social
| context. IMO he clearly oversteps with insults
| starik36 wrote:
| > 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| If posting funny (albeit mean-spirited) things to make
| people laugh constitutes control, then accusations of
| 'controlling people' seem a lot less serious. Every
| comedian is in the business of control by that measure.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| It doesn't, that was my point. It's a gamble in front of
| a shouting crowd that is demanding an emotional release
| duck wrote:
| > I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to
| be able to do it while no one else could
|
| People said the exact same thing before Tesla and SpaceX.
| pionar wrote:
| They also said the same thing when he said he would fix
| Flint's water supply and rescue those kids in Thailand,
| both of which he did not see through.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Flint's water supply is fixed.
| monetus wrote:
| Not yet.
| https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-
| water-...
| rtkwe wrote:
| No thanks to anything Elon did afaik. It was all the slow
| boring fix of state work.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right, and that was the reason the point was raised.
|
| 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.
| qaq wrote:
| no way people who do things don't have 100% success rate
| what a surprise.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Exactly, so why expect him to fix Twitter's issues?
| dorgo wrote:
| What's the argument here? Only people with 100% success
| rate can fix Twitter?
| Aeolun wrote:
| To be fair, nobody _wanted_ him to fix those issues.
|
| 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.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Are the soldiers carrying 32 inch satellite dishes with a
| clear view of the sky?
| beeboop wrote:
| Elon did exactly what he said he'd do about Thailand
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Accuse people of pedophilia and send private
| investigators after them?
| beeboop wrote:
| People like you make it exhausting any time Musk comes up
| in conversations online. Please keep your poor takes on
| Twitter where I can avoid you.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I feel the same way about Elon superfans, if it makes you
| feel any better.
| textadventure wrote:
| I think it would be fair to say that "fixing Twitter"
| would be more in line with Musk's actual experience (ie:
| running a tech company) than rescuing kids in Thailand or
| fixing water supplies.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Yishan does a great job of explaining why social media is a
| different animal[0] and how when people try to fix one
| problem, they invariably create 3 more. It's also unclear
| whether Elon would bring Jack back.
|
| 0. https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440
| memish wrote:
| Some great points, but he's in deep denial about
| censorship. Here's what Paul Graham, who started this
| very forum, said about that thread:
|
| 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.
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1515235822890532864
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Thanks; that was insightful read. I try to be fairly...
| neutral, not objective (as I'm not inhuman) but aware of
| multiple sides, and this helped reinforce that
| perspective.
|
| (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)
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.ht
| ml
| acid__ wrote:
| I think Yishan wrong, at least in the case of Reddit.
|
| > 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.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| I'm curious which community you are talking about,
| although I understand that you had reasons for avoiding
| naming it.
| goatsi wrote:
| That's a very vague comment to make without naming the
| subreddit and the topics being discussed on it. What are
| the "controversial topics" and what are the "truly
| dangerous ideas"?
| acid__ wrote:
| Fair enough. I'm hesitant to name the subreddit because
| mentions of it only hasten its decline.
|
| 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.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Is this the right place for me to raise my gripe about
| reddit's new approach to user bans? As of the most recent
| changes, once User A bans user B, B cannot reply to _any_
| comment replying to _any_ thread or subthread originating
| from User A. So if User A is OP of a crowded post on the
| front page of a sub, User B can 't reply to _any_ comment
| that itself replies to the OP. This means that in the
| case of subreddits like /r/virtualreality (as one
| example), the conspiracy theorists who post hypernegative
| meme takes about facebook are gradually oversaturating
| the front page by simply banning every user who calls
| them out for acting like a wackjob in the comments.
|
| 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.
| pengstrom wrote:
| Any guesses on which subreddit is described? Sounds
| interesting.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Probably /r/themotte, a place where people who think of
| themselves as hyper-rational use polite language to veil
| their abhorrent opinions.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I just looked at that subreddit for the first time. It
| seems completely harmless. I didn't read a single thing
| that was controversial. It does probably contain some of
| the longest and most structured comments I've seen on
| reddit. But I'd be surprised if this was the subreddit
| the original poster was talking about (unless all of the
| "good stuff" was already banned).
| acid__ wrote:
| It sounds like we're aligned that that subreddit is in
| danger because of its political opinions, not its
| communication style? Which is exactly counter to Yishan's
| claims.
| esyir wrote:
| Would said community be something akin to a rhetorical
| castle feature, perchance?
| [deleted]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _People said the exact same thing before Tesla and
| SpaceX._
|
| 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.
| slig wrote:
| > we don't really know how good these companies are...yet
|
| His company made rockets that fly backwards and park
| autonomously.
| runarberg wrote:
| VTVL rockets existed before SpaceX. In fact SpaceX
| started by hiring engineers which had been working on the
| same thing at Blue Origin. SpaceX also got a bunch of
| funding from NASA to develop exactly this thing.
|
| 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.
| kennywinker wrote:
| So did blue origin, and that was started a couple years
| before spacex. I suspect this is more the case of an idea
| that's time came, rather than any particular feat of
| genius or insight by a company founder. Once you have the
| computing power + speed, and the built-up engineering
| knowledge and tools, there's nothing stopping anyone with
| a half a billion in government funding from building
| something like that.
| vimy wrote:
| > In 1999, after watching the rocketry biopic film
| October Sky, Bezos discussed forming a space company with
| science-fiction author Neal Stephenson.[23][24] Blue
| Origin was founded in 2000 in Kent, Washington, and began
| developing both rocket propulsion systems and launch
| vehicles.[25] Since the founding, the company was quite
| secretive about its plans[26][27] and emerged from its
| "self-imposed silence" only after 2015.[25] .... As early
| as 2005, Bezos had discussed plans to create a vertical-
| takeoff and landing spaceship called New Shepard. Plans
| for New Shepard were initially kept quiet, but Blue
| Origin's website indicated Bezos' desire to, "lower the
| cost of spaceflight so that we humans can better continue
| exploring the solar system.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin
|
| I had no idea. I always assumed he was inspired by
| SpaceX. October Sky is a great movie btw.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Their rocket only went up and down. Weather balloons do
| that too. Not the same as an orbital rocket.
| lutorm wrote:
| Delta Clipper landed 25 years ago, too. Vertical landings
| of suborbital rockets aren't anything new. Reuse of
| orbital rockets are.
|
| 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.
| emkoemko wrote:
| they did this in like the 90's why make it out like
| SpaceX is the only one capable of doing this? some of
| those engineers are now working for blue origin
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Apple is not a great place to work, but it's a perfectly
| good company.
| JoshCole wrote:
| His beliefs are irrelevant. Appealing to them shows you
| are using rhetorical technique rather than logic. You are
| attacking his character by implying stupidity for his
| beliefs rather than attacking the core of his ideas. You
| follow up the rhetoric with a straw man: you imply that
| someone must be the very best to lead in order to lead
| rather than merely qualified to do so. This isn't a fair
| position and it definitely wasn't the position expressed
| by the person you quoted.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| twox2 wrote:
| They don't even produce great products. Tesla is
| consistently rated one of the least reliable cars.
| runarberg wrote:
| It is also perfectly feasible for a company to perform
| well _despite_ their CEO not _because of_ them.
| hkt wrote:
| It seems weird to say that Musk did those things. Surely
| the army of engineers, the public subsidies, and the cash
| from his dad's emerald mines helped?
| btilly wrote:
| As soon as someone repeats the old canard about the cash
| from his dad's emerald mines, I know to disregard
| everything else that they have to say.
|
| 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 < $200 million from selling
| PayPal. Most of which were impossible according to
| conventional wisdom in the industries that he
| accomplished them in. Anyone who fails to recognize that,
| has demonstrated a complete lack of comprehension.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| There are no government subsidies to mine for Twitter.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are no government subsidies to mine for Twitter.
|
| Control of media is the _drill_ for mining for government
| subsidies, not the oil field.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| True. I suppose he's stretched a little thin to continue
| chasing subsidies and needs them to come to him now.
| emkoemko wrote:
| he said boring tunnel fair would be 1$.. would have pods
| driving at over 150mph.. would have a elevator from road
| level down to these "tunnels" would give away bricks to
| people building affordable homes, all i seen about that was
| they sold bricks for 200$... boring company would make
| tunnels faster then anyone else..
| vimy wrote:
| > boring company would make tunnels faster then anyone
| else..
|
| That part is true. Their custom tunnel machines dig twice
| as fast as other machines.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
|
| 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.
| vimy wrote:
| > Prufrock is a next generation Tunnel Boring Machine
| designed to construct mega-infrastructure projects in a
| matter of weeks instead of years, and at a fraction of
| the cost. The current iteration of Prufrock, called
| Prufrock-2, is designed to mine at up to 1 mile/week,
| meaning a tunnel the length of the Las Vegas strip
| (approximately 4 miles) can be completed in a month.
| Prufrock-3 is designed to be even faster, with the medium
| term goal of 1/10 human walking speed, or 7 miles/day.
| https://www.boringcompany.com/seriescround
|
| Isn't that faster than existing machines?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| ???
|
| 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).
| slg wrote:
| I think there is a clear distinction between trying
| something new that no one has done before and trying
| something that many other people have attempted before and
| failed.
|
| 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.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| wand3r wrote:
| I don't know why this is such a meme. According to elon
| basically him, jb and martin eberhard founded tesla which
| was a holding company that acquired AC propulsion and the
| basic IP.
|
| 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
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| > According to elon basically him, jb and martin eberhard
| founded tesla which was a holding company that acquired
| AP propulsion (i think it was called) and the basic IP.
|
| 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.
| Melatonic wrote:
| He was definitely not a founder of Tesla - it was a small
| startup in the industrial area of San Carlos.
| dahfizz wrote:
| People get so hung up on this.
|
| 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.
| spurgu wrote:
| > the world's largest car company
|
| Nitpick: The _most valued_ car company. Many larger
| companies in terms of employees and car output.
| Everything else sounds right though!
| dahfizz wrote:
| Are you claiming that nobody had tried to build EVs
| before 2008? Or that nobody had tried commercial
| spaceflight before 2002?
|
| Musk was hardly the first person to try any of this, he
| was the first person to be successful.
| BryantD wrote:
| The commitment is notable, even if he came in later in
| the game.
|
| 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.
| nicce wrote:
| > 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:
|
| 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.
| BryantD wrote:
| That's exactly what I'm getting at; I phrased it poorly.
|
| 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.
| nicce wrote:
| From that point of view, indeed it is good enough then.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > are built like Wayfair furniture. Good enough to do the
| job, but without a high level of quality. Turns out
| consumers will accept that.
|
| See also: fast fashion.
| [deleted]
| adastra22 wrote:
| > I think there is a clear distinction between trying
| something new that no one has done before and trying
| something that many other people have attempted before
| and failed.
|
| 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.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I could turn it around but haven't had the chance yet.
| You might be able to as well. Musk has a better chance
| than both of us.
|
| The group in charge now caused more bleeding. Other
| social networks are doing great.
|
| There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
| slkdk32 wrote:
| No you can't.
| hooande wrote:
| People said the exact same thing before Hyperloop and his
| announcement that he was taking Tesla private
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The difference between his performance when his money is
| at stake versus otherwise may be salient.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Why does he have to be such a pedantic and cringy person
| while doing it though?
|
| 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?
| mgfist wrote:
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > 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.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Those were greenfield developments, however
| throwayayay wrote:
| How does Musk offend a lot of comedians? That sounds
| unbelievable.
|
| 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.
| tonguez wrote:
| "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."
|
| 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.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I try to take a neutral position on Musk. He's essentially an
| Edison. And that comes with the good and the bad. Lots of
| failed businesses, a handful of successful and innovative
| ones. Mostly takes credit himself on the backs of the Tesla's
| he employs. And yes I find the name of his car company
| extremely humorous.
|
| 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.
| lutorm wrote:
| He is absolutely not merely the "public face" of SpaceX,
| not even close.
| golemotron wrote:
| > Sure, he could do all those things you list, but I have no
| idea why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to
| do it while no one else could.
|
| Because he has a track record of doing things no one else
| could.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Because he has a track record of doing things no one else
| could.
|
| Like installing solar panels on people's roofs?
| [deleted]
| qorrect wrote:
| Like building a tunnel ?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| How many projects have you attempted?
| emkoemko wrote:
| yea and its 1$ fair with those amazing 150mph pods that
| bring your car down from road level via a elevator... its
| amazing i wonder why they made their video of it private.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's more interesting looking at what he succeeded in
| doing against the odds.
|
| Anybody who's doing incredible things will fail
| incredibly at least half the time.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>>> I have no idea why anyone would expect him
| specifically to be able to [fix Twitter] while no one
| else could
|
| >>> 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.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Because it is one of a myriad of examples of the ways he
| has taken an uninteresting idea created by others and
| used his preexisting wealth to coerce people and
| institutions into giving him credit for other people's
| work.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And all "things no one else could" are equivalently
| difficult and take the same skills, so if he could do a
| couple of them, _of course_ he can do all the others.
|
| /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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to
| be able to do it while no one else could.
|
| Not him specifically. Just any private owner of Twitter.
| EricE wrote:
| Indeed - if he brings back neutrality to their "content
| moderation" I would even be willing to pay, especially if it
| came with extra tools to filter out the bots and other nuisance
| content - i.e. pay for the blue checkmark and be able to
| restrict my feed to only other blue checkmarks. Or whatever
| they pick to delineate those who pay.
|
| Paywalls are the most effective way to screen out bots and
| frivolous bullshit.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > 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...
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| But this kind of low-grade humor is exactly what people want
| to see. Look at how popular this tweet is compared to any of
| Elon's about actual Tesla or Rocket things.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Rocket enthusiasts rarely look up content on Twitter. It is
| the worst platform for that. The character limits enforces
| some kind of hot take, so I don't really understand the
| complaint.
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There's very little value in elementary-grade humor,
| though. It's not advertiser friendly. If Twitter turns into
| primarily shit posts of this caliber then it ends up being
| worth a lot less money than it is now.
| EricE wrote:
| What an utter joy you must be to live with. The utter
| lack of any sense of humor is something I seriously hope
| Elon can continue to reverse. People seriously need to
| get over themselves and stop seeking out infinite ways to
| be offended. Live and let live! Life is too short to have
| sticks so firmly implanted so deeply.
| nullc wrote:
| That's an unnecessarily personal reply. I've met the
| person you're responding to and think he's a lot of fun.
|
| ... 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| None of this is relevant to whether changing the nature
| of Twitter in this manner will make it worth more than
| $43B. (And I'm just gonna ignore your ad hominems.)
|
| Humor is _very_ hard to monetize.
| solenoidalslide wrote:
| Shit posts are incredibly advertiser friendly. Most
| popular memes that define our current internet culture
| started out as juvenile shit posts.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > Shit posts are incredibly advertiser friendly.
|
| Show me advertisers who are happy to monetize on this
| exact content then.
| solenoidalslide wrote:
| You mean advertisers who would be willing to target
| consumers who dislike how the incredibly rich have
| disproportionately large control of the economy?
|
| 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.
| glenstein wrote:
| The current wave of it started with Old Spice TV
| commercials and Dennys Tumblr.
|
| 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.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The "people want to see me eat shit on live TV so I'll eat
| shit on live TV" mentality. Exactly what this world needs
| indeed
| [deleted]
| shawn-butler wrote:
| It's a joke, yes? Clearly identifiable as such. In bad taste?
| Probably. Sort of like baldness jokes about women with health
| conditions?
|
| 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 naive.
|
| Not an easy problem, but if you're a public figure then the
| rules surrounding satire / humor are different.
| evandale wrote:
| >Indeed, he's one of the main forces hell-bent on making
| Twitter a toxic place
|
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| evandale wrote:
| >People are stooping to his level
|
| 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.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I don't think a sophomoric jab at a billionaire (ha ha he
| looks like an emoji) is what most people think of when they
| hear the word "toxic". I reserve that term for hate,
| discrimination, and so forth.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The joke was he looks like a guy that's pregnant. That's
| funny.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| i thinks it's more about the influence that twitter has with
| the establishment i.e. 'people that matter'. Being able to
| exert influence in these quarters is what power is all about.
|
| 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"
| pkulak wrote:
| > welcomes non-extremists back on
|
| 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.
| parkingrift wrote:
| It is alarming that you, and so many others, talk about
| freedom of speech in such a derogatory or negative manner.
| Humans and human societies are capable of self governance.
| It's worked just fine for speech in the real world.
| [deleted]
| andrew_ wrote:
| It's currently the same, but inverse audience in the
| majority. Whether or not one sees it as favorable depends on
| individual bias.
| tmaly wrote:
| He owns or has a major stake in OpenAI LP ( GPT-3 ) right?
| Maybe he plans on using some of that tech to make moderation
| better.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| I had a moderately successful Twitter profile years ago. Few
| thousand followers, good engagement, etc, but left after
| awhile because of the effort and the fact that I was no
| longer in a position that benefited from minor social media
| stardom. I recently returned with a new account and holy crap
| the toxicity within the crazy-silo'd communities is off the
| chains.
|
| 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...
| nerfhammer wrote:
| only a tiny, tiny percent of users achieve "minor social
| media stardom". solving their problems actually doesn't
| strictly relate to the experience of the vast majority of
| users.
| godot wrote:
| I don't totally disagree with you but that is a pretty purely
| monetary investment point of view. From Musk's position it
| seems unlikely he's viewing it as an investment; there are
| plenty of better investments in the world and he also has
| plenty of room to grow in his own companies already. It seems
| much more likely he has things in mind he wants to do about
| Twitter with regards to it being the de facto town square.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Musk wants to own social media just like Buffet wants to own
| newspapers. It's critical to have a say in what people read
| and think about you and your interests.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the whole "people are getting removed from
| Twitter for expressing themselves" thing is just plain not
| true, and when very little changes on that particular front,
| I'm very curious about how that's going to go.
| sytelus wrote:
| And what is the chance that Twitter's refusal to ban someone in
| future will cause Musk to get "cancelled"?
|
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| >People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in
| order to just post edgy memes
|
| Well, he did reveal the intent to do it with a series of snarky
| tweets.
| adamesque wrote:
| I mean, if that's not evidence he deeply understands Twitter
| then I'm not sure what is.
| evandale wrote:
| >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
|
| I'm most looking forward to Patti Harrison getting back on
| Twitter.
|
| context: https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'd argue the most important of the changes Musk has suggested
| are transparency around the recommendation and ranking
| algorithms and the datasets used to train them, and increasing
| the character count of posts up to 512-1024 characters.
|
| 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.
| interblag wrote:
| There might be some value in opening these algorithms up but,
| also, the moment you reveal how they work you will
| immediately start to see them gamified. Aspects of content
| recommendation/moderation will always be adversarial, and
| there are many good arguments in favour of some opacity in
| these types of systems.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I feel they're already being gamified, but by people with
| an inside line to Twitter, i.e. shareholders and
| advertisers. If you mean something like search engine
| optimization on Google by random people wanting to get
| their content on the front page, I believe there are ways
| to prevent or minimize that. Of course Google has just gone
| and pumped advertiser content to the top of search
| rankings...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > search engine optimization on Google ... there are ways
| to prevent or minimize that
|
| If that was true, I'd imagine you could get quite a nice
| payday from Google.
| moduspol wrote:
| HN's algorithm is open source, right?
|
| That's not to say it's never been gamed, but it doesn't
| seem notably more "gamed" than Reddit, Twitter, Facebook,
| etc.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Gamifying HN doesn't provide anywhere near the return
| that gamifying Twitter would.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| It's also far more simple, no ML involved.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286675223434141697
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Ok but Elon knows there's no chance of passing a UBI
| currently. That just sounds like an excuse to me so that he
| can oppose the legislation that is actually possible while
| claiming to support its "true form."
| EricE wrote:
| After seeing the disaster unleashed by COVID bucks are
| there still people seriously pushing for UBI?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| What disaster?
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Maybe they got pissed because it was still kind of a bad
| take? The imperfect stimulus you can actually achieve is
| indeed sometimes better than the UBI that isn't coming
| anytime soon.
| syshum wrote:
| It was not a bad take, the stimulus packages have
| directly attributed to the massive inflation we have now,
| despite the Biden Administrations attempt to blame
| everything on Putin..
| IX-103 wrote:
| That's unfortunately true, though the the reduced
| productivity from the pandemic was another major factor.
| The increase in money supply provided by the stimulus,
| particularly the portion that went to economic segments
| with significant remaining marginal utility for the goods
| and services included in inflation measures (e.g. poor
| people that haven't been getting enough essentials)
| likely is a large driver of the initial inflationary
| pressure. The additional economic inefficiencies from the
| job-swapping and slow hiring coming out of the pandemic
| were also major factors.
|
| 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).
| robonerd wrote:
| Maybe people should try to be less pissed at bad takes.
| Everybody is wrong about something, and when you're
| dealing with a platform that exposes you to thousands of
| beliefs a day, you'll be constantly exposed to people who
| are wrong about something from your perspective. If you
| let somebody being wrong on the internet whip you up into
| a rage, I think that's a highway to unending Pain Town.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Elon says he is not buying Twitter for economic reasons, he
| doesn't care about that. Hear it from the horses mouth directly
| here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM&t=930s
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > he could see that revenue rise quite a bit through people
| actually seeing value in advertising on twitter again.
|
| 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.
| Melatonic wrote:
| And on top of that the market for Twitter has always seemed
| to be baby boomer aged people. The entire design of the site
| / word limit / text to tweet functionality seemed like it was
| a way to make it easily accessible for those not regularly
| using social media or internet forums in general.
| raydev wrote:
| > gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board
|
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Twitter may have brought in over 5 billion in _revenue_. But
| it's net profit was nothing to write home about.
|
| 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?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I am laughing at the thought that there is a significant amount
| of people out there who seriously think someone tosses 43
| _billion_ dollars around for anything other than a business
| reason, including some sort of expected return. Everything else
| is bonus, but clearly Elon thinks there is something there.
|
| 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".
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| But that's the reason that Twitter is Twitter - the algorithm
| optimizes for engagement, and as it turns out, the most
| engaging thing is conflict.
|
| 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.
| elpakal wrote:
| I totally agree with your points about rage and engagement.
| What I'm skeptical of is
|
| > 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.
| kansface wrote:
| Continual rage and social justice mobs surely keep a ton of
| people off the platform, myself included, even if the vitriol
| drives the existing crowd into a fervor of usage. I don't
| think rage is a prerequisite for engagement in general.
| andrew_ wrote:
| It wasn't like that in the early days. It felt a lot more
| friendly, collaborative, and that was even with manual
| copy/paste retweets. Feeding off of outrage machine is
| awful, and I'm hopeful the ideas for open algos or
| customizable algos is the answer to that.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based
| engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that
| offer that (HN being one of them). I just don't think
| there's a demand for that on the scale that Twitter wants
| and needs to operate.
|
| 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.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based
| engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that
| offer that (HN being one of them).
|
| 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)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > Twitter is so fantastically successful
|
| 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.
| ck2 wrote:
| He's doing it to let a certain specific person back on the
| platform
|
| Because he can, it's a flex
| toephu2 wrote:
| But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover
| is not for economic reasons. He's not doing this for money, he
| has zero desire to turn this into a very profitable company
| (watch his TED talk interview). He's doing this to protect free
| speech.
| emkoemko wrote:
| can't tell if your being sarcastic ?
| toephu2 wrote:
| I do believe he is not doing it for the money. He's already
| the richest man in the world. He doesn't care about
| material goods, he owns no houses, no yachts, the only
| luxury item he has is a private jet but that's to save time
| (and work more).
| unglaublich wrote:
| He is doing this because it's his main communication channel
| and it's of extreme importance that it remains under his
| control.
| bluedays wrote:
| I believe everything billionaires say
| btirnsltuebn wrote:
| You do if they run Pfizer.
| brightball wrote:
| I think a lot of people see the potential that Twitter has but
| it's unattainable in the current structure.
|
| 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.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| > If elon removes bots
|
| Why would he remove bots? Isn't having bots post on my behalf
| covered under my free speech?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't think we can just disregard the fact that he constantly
| shitposts like a 12 year old.
|
| 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?
| EricE wrote:
| lol - what does it do to you, personally? If he can shitpost
| while continuing to be wildly successful then what of it?
| Don't care for his style? Don't follow him. Pretty easy. Life
| is a lot more fun when you stop trying to police others
| thoughts or behaviors. Heck you might even learn something
| new by experiencing true diversity instead of mouthing
| useless platitudes about it.
| autophagian wrote:
| Where did they mouth a useless platitude about diversity? I
| cannot see it in the post you're replying to.
| phatfish wrote:
| Elon's fans really are insufferable.
| probIs8 wrote:
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Elon only started buying twitter stock after someone started
| tweeting where his jet was, so seems pretty spiteful to me.
| sircastor wrote:
| > People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in
| order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media
| for himself.
|
| 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.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| This doesn't seem right. I would think that the SEC would be
| more interested in his Twitter account if he actually owned
| the company. If anything it leads to more scrutiny right?
| toephu2 wrote:
| But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover
| is not for economic reasons. He's not doing this for money, he
| has zero desire to turn this into a very profitable company
| (watch his TED talk interview). He's doing this to protect free
| speech (from his point of view).
| ModernMech wrote:
| > But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the
| takeover is not for economic reasons.
|
| 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.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| He stated the offer isn't for economic reasons. That's not
| mutually exclusive to wanting a profitable company in the
| longer term.
|
| 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.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| > just rage bait again.
|
| 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?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I think his presence will cause more people to leave and he'll
| be left holding a 43 billion dollar potato. Not going to lie,
| tiktok and snap are just better. Twitter is where old people go
| to debate sports and politics like it's their job.
| verisimi wrote:
| I think this is a further 'end of privacy' thing.
|
| 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?
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I find it strange that people assume Elon will get rid of bots
| as though Twitter weren't already trying that.
| jmeister wrote:
| Man, another million comment thread wit the same arguments.
|
| 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.
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| The "showdead" option on HN does something similar and it's
| truly truly awful, I can't imagine why anyone would want to
| apply that at scale.
| elorant wrote:
| Ads on Twitter have very low ROI. And that's not because there
| are bots and toxicity, which certainly play a role, but mostly
| because there are no data points. Twitter doesn't know its
| users, and thus can't provide value to advertisers. I can't see
| how Elon's mindset would improve this.
| rco8786 wrote:
| You're describing an old version of Twitter that _did not_
| bring in over 5 billion dollars.
| apeconmyth wrote:
| Why would someone so successful with productive work take on
| something so unproductive?
|
| 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!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hackernewds wrote:
| Twitter has been immune from being an advertising cesspool, and
| an excellent information source. As much revenue as an Edit
| button would drive, you can imagine the kinds of abuse and
| scams that one will encounter right away.
|
| Being financially sound is not always great for society.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "maybe a billionaire could independently change society" is a
| hell of a take
| cedilla wrote:
| The 4chan model didn't even work for 4chan, but I wish Twitter
| the best of luck should that be the new strategy.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| What do you mean? 4chan as a cesspool has more activity than
| ever, there's no bottom to the bullshit that goes on there
| optimuspaul wrote:
| I think you proved their point.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| ANd how much revenue has that activity earned them?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| 4chan got much more popular again in the last years because
| other platforms banned their worst users. If people would
| just have ignored tasteless internet comments we would
| probably see much less polarization. Suggesting as much will
| summon some wrath itself though.
| phatfish wrote:
| Tasteless trolling is far easier to produce than an
| insightful comment. That is why any platform that allows
| unmoderated "free speech" (with a large enough user base)
| will eventually degenerate into a cesspool.
|
| 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.
| ericls wrote:
| Twitter's toxicity comes from human being human not twitter
| being twitter
| aeturnum wrote:
| I feel like most of the pro-Elon-takeover takes rely on the
| idea that the current Twitter management does not understand
| what would make Twitter better and has not taken a lot of low
| hanging fruit. It's possible! Maybe Elon will just be able to
| "remove the bots" - but like...it seems unlikely?
|
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| It would be depressing to think that current Twitter is the
| best that can be achieved. Twitter is such a mess and has
| been for long enough that I think the risk of making it even
| worse is worth a try letting Elon shake things up, to maybe
| get out of the current local maximum (if that's what it is).
| If Elon fails, it won't be a critical loss IMO. If anything,
| if it fails badly enough that might in turn open up an
| opportunity for a new platform.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I fully agree that twitter has problems and that escaping a
| local maximum might be just what it needs. That said, given
| what Elon has said, I am skeptical that he thinks twitter
| is in a "local maximum" or needs a real shakeup. We'll see
| tho!
| andreilys wrote:
| There are different incentives and dynamics at play for a
| public vs. private company.
|
| 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
| aeturnum wrote:
| The public / private angle is a good point! Though I am a
| little skeptical about magnitude.
|
| > _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.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Have you ever worked at a large corporation or organization?
|
| 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.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Did you look into how much work it would take to allow
| Cisco to accept email addresses longer than 8 chars? That
| is kind of my point. Like, the work to change the internal
| systems at Cisco does not get easier depending on who owns
| the company.
|
| 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.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| My point is that if you made Elon CEO of Cisco, he could
| make e-mail addresses longer than 8 chars within a week.
|
| 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.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think you're really under-estimating the difficulty of
| changing these kinds of things but if Elon buys Twitter
| we'll both see soon!
| efitz wrote:
| The likely reason for this sort of restriction is having to
| maintain compatibility with some legacy or third-party
| system that is too expensive or disruptive to replace.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Okay, think about why that might have happened. Clearly
| they're running their servers on legacy code. What does
| that code do? Well, probably... everything. At this point
| they've been building on it for decades, and nearly
| everyone who was there when it started has retired or died.
| So they have a huge, mission-critical business platform
| that no one truly understands. And everyone is afraid that
| minor changes could have horrible, unforeseen downstream
| consequences, so it probably just gets edited at the
| margins at this point.
|
| 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?
| gitfan86 wrote:
| If you are the CTO of Cisco you don't risk your job,
| because you put in 20 years kissing ass and climbing the
| corporate ladder, and at the end of the day you don't
| give a shit about e-mail servers running legacy code,
| you're here for the executive perks.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Exactly. And if you're Elon Musk, you run amok like a
| bull in a china shop, breaking everything while chasing
| after whatever shiny object caught your eye recently.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| You would prefer that we have more executives that don't
| get things done and instead focus on not getting fired?
|
| 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?
| fundad wrote:
| especially because without content moderation, it's going to
| be ALL BOTS. His money is probably invested in a bot
| provider.
| [deleted]
| Melatonic wrote:
| None of these things would even remotely make me consider using
| Twitter regularly
| cainxinth wrote:
| >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.
| [deleted]
| ballenf wrote:
| The irony is that it was much less a cesspool back when it
| had virtually no limits on speech.
|
| 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.
| Kapura wrote:
| It was less of a cesspool because it was significantly
| smaller. This is a well-understood feature of online
| communities: scale changes them, and not for the better.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| It was also much smaller and news agencies used it a lot
| less as a source of news.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Eternal September rolls onward.
|
| 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.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| What about a way to test that people are "worthy" of it?
| "Only people bothered to go beyond the popular social
| networks go there" is a decent approximation for quality.
| However, it would be nice to have that _and_ a larger
| audience. HN is great, but what if we could scale it up
| and make it more general? We would need some other way to
| measure and filter for that kind of person - shameless
| elitism, yes. I can 't think of any right now, though. IQ
| tests would be a very weak because someone can be
| intelligent but still not civil.
| cedilla wrote:
| It's not completely independent - after Reddit started
| banning subreddits like "Fat People Hate" and anti-trans
| hategroups, the amount of hate posts decreased on the whole
| platform, even in completely unrelated groups. This might
| point to a perception of decreased tolerance of such posts,
| or be simply a function of the banned subreddits being used
| to coordinate attacks.
|
| Either way, reddit is unlike twitter and more like a
| network of networks, so the same result might not occur
| there.
| superkuh wrote:
| You mean when reddit stopped being reddit, pushed out
| their original techy userbase, and invited in the flood
| of Facebook refugees becoming Facebook 2.0? Yeah,
| entirely changing your platform's userbase will do that.
| cedilla wrote:
| I don't know if and when reddit stopped being reddit, but
| I can guarantee that the "techy userbase", whoever that
| was, did not leave because a few thousand people where
| told to fantasize about mass-murdering minorities
| elsewhere.
| superkuh wrote:
| I don't have to guess. I was there since 2008. The
| 2013-2015 time on reddit there was huge uproar and
| discontent due to the corporate VC money being accepted
| and immediate changes in policy thereafter. If you don't
| remember this I'm not sure anything you say about reddit
| can be taken at face value. The CEO literally resigned
| after weeks of protest.
|
| > 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.
| cedilla wrote:
| I was also there. I belonged to the group of people who
| begged the reddit admins to do something about all the
| hate posts, because I didn't want to read about Donald
| Trump and how bad fat people and Ellen Pao are all day. I
| wanted to get back to the tech discussion. We could fix
| /r/theDonald hogging all space on /r/all by not using
| /r/all, but the people advocating the murder of obese
| people, trans people and jews were a constant nuisance
| and invaded every subreddit, and that certainly didn't
| help to attract or retain a techy audience for the subs I
| frequented.
|
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > 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.
| NtGuy25 wrote:
| There's a big difference between moderation on HN and
| sites like Reddit. Reddit completely shadowbans, filters,
| or bans anyone who doesn't post with the hivemind. This
| makes it so you can't have a fair contrarian view and it
| completely pushes out people and makes an echo chamber. I
| would say that Reddit takes it to the level of the Soviet
| Union in wrongthink.
|
| 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.
| jscipione wrote:
| This further confirms my suspicion that the reason
| conservatives are censored on social media is because if
| they were given equal opportunity then they would
| DOMINATE every conversation and every election.
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| >there was huge uproar and discontent due to the
| corporate VC money being accepted and immediate changes
| in policy thereafter.
|
| 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.
| chelical wrote:
| Fun fact. They banned r/fatpeoplehate over a year before
| banning explicitly racist subreddits like r/coontown.
| Really shows where their priorities are.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Well, the obvious/naive connection/correlation would be
| that the increased limits were a _response_ to it becoming
| a "cess pool". And haven't totally succeeded at reversing
| that, but may or may not have kept it from being even worse
| than it would have been without them.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think cesspool-ness is almost entirely dependent on
| community age and cohesion.
|
| 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.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The irony is that it was much less a cesspool back when
| it had virtually no limits on speech.
|
| The irony is that there were far fewer mice running around
| when we didn't set out mousetraps.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be
| removed
|
| Sounds amazing. Maybe then we'll finally have a truly neutral
| platform with no censorship of any kind.
| metamet wrote:
| Amazing? It would be immediately inundated with hateful
| content, driven by bots more than it already is.
|
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > always devolves in to congregations of hate groups,
| which normalize themselves and spread
|
| 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.
| glogla wrote:
| mostertoaster wrote:
| It seems like your emotions are all wrapped up in this, and
| you're not thinking clearly.
|
| Why would he force trans people out? Elon doesn't seem like
| some religious conservative or anything.
|
| This reminds me of how the media and folks fed and ate the
| narrative that Jordan Peterson is a kind of terrible human
| who hates trans people.
| davidbarker wrote:
| > A guest on Joe Rogan's podcast has claimed that being
| transgender is a "contagion" similar to "satanic ritual
| abuse."
|
| > Mr Peterson told him that being trans was a
| "sociological contagion" which he compared to "the
| satanic ritual abuse accusations that emerged in daycares
| in the 1980s."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220206173028/https://www.in
| dep...
| ericmay wrote:
| Sorry, but could you help me connect the dots here. How
| would a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast be relevant here?
| You know that both Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are on
| Twitter now right? Are they forcing trans people to come
| out as trans? Are you suggesting that if Elon Musk takes
| Twitter private, that guests on Joe Rogan's podcast will
| be free to be on Twitter and then make trans people come
| out as trans?
|
| I'm really confused here. Joe Rogan has had other guests
| like Sanjay Gupta and Bernie Sanders on as well. Would
| their comments be further amplified on Twitter (or
| whatever you are envisioning here) as well via a similar
| indirect link to Elon Musk?
| davidbarker wrote:
| I was simply pointing out to the parent commenter that
| Jordan Peterson does indeed have some rather negative
| views on trans people, and that it's not just a narrative
| made by "the media".
| ericmay wrote:
| I see. I was still thinking in the context of how that
| would apply to Twitter/Musk. Don't think it makes a
| difference and Peterson is on Twitter now anyway.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Actually you were reinforcing that this is a narrative
| made by the media, by quoting the exact kind of crappy
| media article that is pushing that very narrative.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| He might have negative views on trans people.
|
| But the whole blow up was because he did not think the
| Canadian government should force people to use the
| correct pronouns. He said he would use them voluntarily
| if someone asked him, but it was wrong to use force to
| require others to do so.
|
| Therefore he is a trans hater and an evil person.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Ah, a chopped-up, out of context quotation in a clickbait
| hit-piece article about a 3 hour podcast. Thanks for
| that. Just the kind of nuanced and thoughtful
| contribution I like to see.
| robonerd wrote:
| It's exactly the amount of nuance twitter was designed
| for tbqh.
| 6510 wrote:
| He simply stated that we already have [national] laws. I'd
| have to agree with that. We should get rid of the dystopian
| privatized legal system and give people their day in court.
| Imagine how even the worse tyrants in history would share
| the reason for punishment. People are increasingly building
| their lives on platforms. With [the potential for] big
| gains comes [the potential for] big losses.
| ericmay wrote:
| This is an emotionally charged topic, apparently, but I
| just do not see any reason to believe that if Elon Musk
| takes Twitter private that they will start banning unions,
| journalists, and forcing people who are trans to come out.
| No evidence of that.
|
| W.r.t removing current limits, again I see no evidence of
| that, except maybe people who were banned for making fun of
| journalists for telling them the same thing they were
| telling other people (learn 2 code) might get reinstated.
| Death threats? No chance. Blatant racism? Nope. Harassment?
| Well does that happen already? It's not clear. Sexism?
| Again no clear lines here. Trump I hope never comes back
| and it may stay that way. I don't think Elon really cares
| about Trump.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| It goes without saying that this is a highly presumptive
| hypothetical. "If" is being asked to do more than its fair
| share here, as it not only bears the weight of these future
| aspirations, but must also disprove and disavow a fairly long
| history of social and managerial incompetence and malfeasance
| on the part of Musk, his following, and his companies.
|
| 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.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| > gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board
|
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| >lets people say what they want
|
| 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.
| peterkos wrote:
| I'd really suggest you read this article to understand why he's
| already starting with little knowledge of how to begin solving
| the problems he claims to be important ("free speech", in his
| eyes) -- https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-
| demonstrates-h...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I do wish he would engage a bit more with the "spam is legal"
| problem. But this article dismisses out of hand what I think
| is the key premise, that existing thought on content
| moderation has large, core components which are inimical to
| conservative thought. Kate Klonick's paper is great and I
| second the Techdirt guy's recommendation to read it, but it
| also reveals some pretty obvious blind spots.
|
| 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?
| EricE wrote:
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people
| avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year.
|
| "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?
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > he could see that revenue rise quite a bit
|
| 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).
| tcmb wrote:
| "If" he can do all that, you might be right. But why will he be
| able to do what current Twitter is not capable of? It's not
| like these are deep secrets to success nobody but Musk knows.
| kansface wrote:
| It doesn't feel like twitter wants to change.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Current Twitter is probably, like most large organizations,
| deeply dysfunctional.
|
| With a fresh start with new people where needed, it can have
| very different capabilities.
| dd36 wrote:
| Ask jack.
| bombcar wrote:
| Likely because outside of external force a leaderless board
| is going to just slowly continue what they've done before
| until everything goes away.
|
| Very few companies make major changes without a major
| champion. Could apple have turned around without Jobs? Maybe.
| Did it? No.
| dannyr wrote:
| "let people say what they want"
|
| 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.
| ixtli wrote:
| "Elon" is going to jam through some changes that disrupt the
| company and get a lot of press for n months then get bored and
| go do something else.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| > and welcomes non-extremists back on
|
| 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.
| Aunche wrote:
| > lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills
| repeating verbatim over and over and over
|
| 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.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| > removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on ... hope he
| truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just
| rage bait again.
|
| 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.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Perhaps it's partially a bid to get a wiretap on all twitter
| dms.
| mzs wrote:
| >Elon Musk told the United Nations he would give them $6 billion
| to end world hunger if they showed him a detailed plan of how
| they would use the money. They called his bluff and gave him
| their plan-- and then they never got the money. Now he's buying
| Twitter for $45 billion.
|
| 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...
| pieter_mj wrote:
| Nobody is ready for US style free speech.
|
| 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.
| quirino wrote:
| I wonder about the potential for Twitter to improve as a product
| with a little shakeup/different priorities.
|
| 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.
| newobj wrote:
| That's cute
| layer8 wrote:
| Judging by Tesla, Elon isn't big on UX.
| napolux wrote:
| I bet 5 dogecoins that we won't get anything of this.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I bet 5 dogecoins that we won't get anything of this.
|
| I bet you get Donald Trump back on Twitter.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I bet you get an edit button
| SlonBog wrote:
| I bet spams will be removed.
| illwrks wrote:
| ...or a pay-to-edit button.
| memish wrote:
| Looks like we already have. Your 5 dogecoin is worth 25% more
| on the news.
| SZJX wrote:
| ... and? That's not related to whether the said
| functionalities get implemented or not is it.
| Raineer wrote:
| My hunch is we will get exactly zero new features, but Musk
| will be able to ensure any and all of his rich buddies will
| be back on the platform.
|
| I don't think he gives a damn about the product or how it
| functions.
| TimPC wrote:
| Every dogecoin transferred kills a dog. It's part of a fancy
| new crypto mechanism called proof of jerk.
| TedShiller wrote:
| aka Twitter about to become useful
| afavour wrote:
| One random side thought: Elon has, from time to time, shown that
| he can be a little petty. He will now have access to every DM
| sent on Twitter. I'm genuinely interested to know if he'll be
| able to resist doing something wild.
| icare_1er wrote:
| This is a great news for freedom of speech.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > The sale would represent an admission by Twitter that its new
| chief executive Parag Agrawal, who took the helm in November, is
| not making enough traction in making the company more profitable
|
| Is this so? Or just that the offered price is too good to pass
| up? Real questions.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Best news in a minute
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Looks like the deal is done:
|
| https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1518664847768006656
| tomatowurst wrote:
| Yeah I mean Parag was not going to make it. He was a lame duck
| but the product itself can't be changed much as it is still
| about amplifying status updates.
|
| 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.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > Elon threatening to bring free speech back (hopefully
| addressing the toxic witch hunts, cancelling)
|
| how is he supposed to address these without restricting
| speech?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There are a lot of potential strategies. One big suggestion
| I've seen is to ensure that pileons aren't artificially
| amplified by the "what's happening" sidebar.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Canceling is a good thing. People should be held to account
| for their actions. Further, people should be willing to take
| responsibility for their actions.
| glerk wrote:
| Let's be honest, cancelling is a good thing as long as you
| are in power and doing the cancelling.
| Banana699 wrote:
| No, cancelling is a bad thing. It represents a barabaric
| and ignorant Hobbesian paradigm of "justice" by the mob.
| The people who praise cancelling only do so out of
| ideological agreement with the dominant cancelling mobs and
| will be the first to cry if a mob of opposite ideological
| polarity did the same to them.
|
| 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.
| switchbak wrote:
| "Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a mob of
| knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of a fruit
| fly.
|
| "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.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| > "Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a
| mob of knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of
| a fruit fly.
|
| 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.
| switchbak wrote:
| As a great example - the Covington kid video.
|
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think problem is that 10 million people take 15 seconds
| to repeat something without verifying, the target can
| lose their job and housing, only to be proven innocent
| months later.
|
| 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.
| avs733 wrote:
| >"Cancelling" is not a good thing when it's done by a mob
| of knee-jerk reactionaries with the attention span of a
| fruit fly.
|
| _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.
| Banana699 wrote:
| It's hilarious to me when cancellation defenders call it
| "being held accountable", as if the she\her anime-
| profile-picture pronouns-in-the-bio low-IQ types doing
| the cancelling are some sort of neutral indifferent court
| that persecutes all equally and without regards to wealth
| or power. As if the result of all that impotent rage is
| actually more order and justice and not random lone
| heretics being burned at the stake and more and more
| silent mass of people hating the inquisition ever more.
| adamisom wrote:
| > canceling is a label applied to play the victim
|
| 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.)
| nsriv wrote:
| There's a middle ground here, but the argument you're
| making is essentially the same for the rule of elites as
| arbiters on what constitutes good faith and rationality
| on a society. These are emergent properties that come
| from free speech, and it's frustrating to me that free
| speech advocates aren't making this argument. I'm
| cognizant of Twitter occupying this mindshare as a
| "public forum" while being private, but even then,
| "canceling" is an emergent seizure of power, and while
| damaging, all the arguments decrying it seem off the mark
| to me.
| asojfdowgh wrote:
| > Elon threatening to bring free speech back (hopefully
| addressing the toxic witch hunts, cancelling)
|
| How would those two things not increase under absolute
| freedom of speech?
| aluminum96 wrote:
| > Pushbacks on Elon threatening to bring free speech back ...
| were seemingly orchestrated by incumbent billionaires with
| their own mainstream media outlets feeling threatened
|
| 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.
| avs733 wrote:
| The fact that the comment you are responding to seems to
| represent a mainstream and legitimized perception of
| twitter and the broader concept of free speech gives me
| zero confidence that we are headed towards more free
| speech.
|
| 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.
| switchbak wrote:
| Once you install "guardrails" (ie: limits to acceptable
| speech), they then immediately become the lever of power
| that the extremes vie to control.
|
| "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.
| [deleted]
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Speech has always had guardrails...
|
| "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."
| nomel wrote:
| Then read his comment as "more restrictive guardrails" or
| "moving the guardrails", to understand his point.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| His point is moot because twitter has never claimed to be
| a free speech platform and I wouldn't expect rights
| guaranteed to protect me from the US government apply to
| a private corporate entity.
| switchbak wrote:
| That Twitter never claimed to be a free speech platform?
| Please check the history of Jack Dorsey's statements, he
| was very much a proponent of free speech on his platform.
|
| 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.
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| notabee wrote:
| I think a much better guardrail would be better context.
| Unfortunately much of the average population may not be
| interested in that so much as getting their rage or cute
| animal picture hit, and that's going to be a huge
| societal challenge going forward as misinformation itself
| is now its own lever of power. Just muddying the water
| exerts a powerful influence on societal stability. But a
| platform designed explicitly to fill in the details
| surrounding an issue so that simple mistruths lose some
| of their power could help. Using dark algorithms and UI
| for light instead, and using all those carefully
| researched nudges to get people to find facts instead of
| rage mob.
| switchbak wrote:
| That's an interesting proposition. I'm interested in the
| platforms out there to add in the missing nuance, but I
| must say I'm sad by what's happened with both Snopes and
| these 'fact checker' sites.
|
| 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 :)
| Raptor22 wrote:
| > You're opening the floodgates to massive governmental
| and corporate control.
|
| The irony of this statement in a discussion about taking
| a public company private
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Can you please explain the irony?
| 14 wrote:
| Wasn't YouTube deleting content that suggested covid was
| airborne transmitted? Now we are seeing the scientific
| community agree it is in fact airborne. We should not have
| guard rails it only leads to censoring and whenever there
| is censorship there will be abuse of it.
| op00to wrote:
| Do you think it's possible for the understanding of
| complex scientific phenomena like the type of spread of a
| novel virus to change as scientists gain more knowledge?
| Or do you just get one shot, and that's the final answer
| forever?
| brigandish wrote:
| Isn't that supporting their point? If things change then
| surely differing views should be allowed, if not
| encouraged.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| Yes, scientific consensus can change, which lends support
| to the idea that platforms shouldn't be banning ideas
| that aren't the current scientific consensus.
| nomel wrote:
| What's your suggestion for censorship then? How do you
| know the current understanding is correct?
|
| 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?
| toraway1234 wrote:
| qiskit wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| logifail wrote:
| > Parag was not going to make it. He was a lame duck [..]
|
| 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.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I'm not sure why anyone would trust corporate leadership in
| crisis times, and Twitter's board was completely divorced
| from any negative outcomes to twitter in terms of their
| holdings. They never had skin in the game except as a
| platform for improving their resumes or social networking.
| [deleted]
| mullingitover wrote:
| I feel like we're going to look back in a couple years and mark
| this as the beginning of the collapse of Tesla. 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > now he's so unfocused and undisciplined
|
| 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.
| cma wrote:
| He uses one company to bail out another, in a major conflict
| of interest (see SolarCity and SpaceX's use of NASA funding
| to buy junky bonds, then Tesla purchase with song and dance
| of fake solar shingles that couldn't economically work as
| designed).
| panick21_ wrote:
| There is so much complete nonsense in those to lines that
| untangling it is actually impossible.
|
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| You mean, before Tesla? Like PayPal?
|
| 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Same old bad take I see.
|
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Seems like Elon cashed out quite nicely, and meanwhile
| PayPal grew quite aggressively.
|
| So maybe it was more about Elon.
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> People said the same thing about Neurolink and the Boring
| Company
|
| And both failed.
| belval wrote:
| If you standard for successful moonshot entrepreneurs is
| "no failures", it's probably hard to find any.
|
| Risky businesses are risky.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This person is just making up his own facts. They didn't
| fail.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Why are people who hate Elon Musk so insistent on just
| making up facts.
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Oh, I am one of those people that don't see raising money
| as anythng else than success in raising money. Which is
| success, but doesn't mean that the company is successful,
| yet.
| 4eleven7 wrote:
| How has Neurolink failed? They've successfully implanted
| within a chimp, allowing the animal to control a game
| (pong) via its brain. They're now moving onto human trials
| before the end of the year.
|
| 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'.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I don't think they did fail just yet, but even if they did
| Tesla is still well and alive. It's actually doing better
| than ever I think. The point was that this is not the
| beginning of the end for Tesla or SpaceX, just like it
| wasn't when he started doing those other projects too.
| supernt wrote:
| Pressure groups will whip up a tesla boycott on the basis that
| Elon's not censoring things they don't like.
| bequanna wrote:
| I think "collapse" is a bit dramatic. We're not talking about
| WeWork here.
|
| Revenue will continue to increase, but at a slowing rate.
|
| Stock price correction != company collapse.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| How could you possibly know the personal limits of another
| person? How do you know he's unfocused and undisciplined?
| sixQuarks wrote:
| So are you admitting that Elon musk is solely responsible for
| Tesla's success?
|
| 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.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| He is almost certainly responsible for Tesla not having filed
| for chapter 11 yet, but they have gotten close a few times.
| Every time they get close, he does something in the media
| that raises the stock price by 200% so they can quietly sell
| shares to cover the shortfall.
|
| 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.
| strainer wrote:
| As far as I have been able to gather he is an engineer of
| historic significance like Brunel and Stevenson. He does
| get involved in engineering, and quite evidently "gets
| involved" way better than any other hands on technology
| investor alive. Starts up a reusable rocket company after
| Blue Origin has started with the same basic ambitions -
| achieves it and remains the _only_ reusable space launch
| system in the World for 7 years and counting... and is a
| good way through building a model carrying 150 tonnes to
| orbit, made out of stainless steel. I cant appreciate how
| to chalk that exceptional success up to an ability to hire
| talent that can push him of the way at the right time, but
| even that alone would be a great gift and demonstrated in
| multiple super successful technology ventures. Telsa 's
| self driving is while incomplete, also the most capable
| that has yet been produced or revealed to the world. The
| idea that Lidar is the secret of the final success is
| _your_ hunch, I 'm inclined to agree with Elon that its a
| software achievement - it certainly is in humans.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Every time they get close, he does something in the media
| that raises the stock price by 200%
|
| 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.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Look at the events that saved Tesla:
|
| - 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > - And after each one of these, there is a huge bump in
| stock price. 200% is hyperbole.
|
| 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.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I want to just clarify that I think that Tesla the
| company has done some amazing engineering work. However,
| _Elon Musk_ himself has not been a great contributor to
| that work, and he is not a good engineer. He is good at
| hiring people and holding them accountable to a vision.
| He is good at raising money from both investors and
| average people. He is good at selling dreams. He is
| clearly not particularly good at actually building
| things.
|
| 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.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Very common mistake to assume he is exactly like Steve
| Jobs. Jobs was not technical, he had great design
| awareness and marketing skills. Musk is an engineer at
| heart AND a great marketer.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not able
| to produce vehicles as fast
|
| 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".
| panick21_ wrote:
| So what? If they target 20 or 10h doesn't matter. The
| fundamental point is that they clearly outperform VW
| there their CEO admits it and they are doing major
| investments to catch up.
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> where literally the CEO of VW said that VW was not
| able to produce vehicles as fast
|
| 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.
| InTheArena wrote:
| https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-electric-
| vehicle-10-hours...
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Even if you want to make the most pessimistic possible
| attitude.
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Musk still is an idiot when it comes to car
| manufacturing. Why? Because he gives a fuck about first
| pass yield and those things. Plus, Tesla is still almost
| a factor 10 away from production volumes of VW, Toyota
| and the like.
|
| 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.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Ford is on track to deliver 1.6 million cars this year.
| Tesla is doing 300k a quarter with two factories and
| about to open two more factories. Volkswagen is targeting
| 2.4 million this year. Consensus from the street (not
| provided by Tesla) is that Tesla will deliver around 1.5
| million as it works through the Germany and Texas ramp
| up.
|
| You may want to true up your perceptions.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So non EV cars don't count anynore or what? VW is just a
| tad above 10 M cars per year, that is without Audi,
| Skoda, SEAT and the trucks under MAN / Scania. Ford is at
| 6.4 M cars.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Not sure where you get your numbers from, but they are
| incorrect per WSJ / NYT. A quick Google doesn't validate
| your 6.4 million number anwhere.
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| e.g. here:
|
| 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...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| He did say that, but see my sister comment. It was
| actually a disparaging remark about Tesla QC, and how
| even VW's plans to improve their line productivity would
| still see their vehicles spend twice as long as a Tesla
| on the line (but hey, you would at least feel pretty
| confident your car would be delivered with four brake
| pads, so that's a bonus).
| hef19898 wrote:
| _Four_ brake pads? Sounds like something from the options
| list.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| "Dinosaurs nickel and dime you for everything!"
| 4eleven7 wrote:
| Was The Washington Post the tipping point where Amazon started
| to collapse?
|
| 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.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Kind of, yeah? A few years later I deleted my Amazon account
| because Amazon became the new AliExpress and I could usually
| find everything for cheaper on eBay.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| This is peak Hacker News contrarianism right here
| stupidcar wrote:
| I hate to tell you, but that momentous setback has not yet
| caused Amazon to collapse.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Yes, of course. But that's when Amazon died for me, as a
| product.
| panick21_ wrote:
| stupidcar wrote:
| Which is not an answer to the question "Was The
| Washington Post the tipping point where Amazon started to
| collapse?", which you were responding to.
|
| 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.
| chii wrote:
| your one anecdotal situation is in no way indicative of
| amazon's business. They are much bigger today than it was
| before!
| [deleted]
| thehappypm wrote:
| I doubt it because Twitter is so fundamentally simpler than
| companies like Tesla or SpaceX this won't be the straw that
| breaks the camel's back.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| If you view it as a pure engineering problem, sure, but the
| problem with managing social media companies hasn't been "we
| can't figure out how to store and display 280 character
| messages at high scale" in a long, long time. How to properly
| moderate social media to control some of its worst tendencies
| has been a very visible and very difficult issue for pretty
| much every social media company for the past 10 years.
| tomrod wrote:
| Musk brings a highly ideological approach to this already,
| giving it a de facto resolution.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| There's a resolution, but any resolution will bring
| additional problems. If Musk's approach brings increased
| radicalization along with it, that's not a solved
| problem, even if you don't particularly care about
| radicalization (since the media definitely will and
| you're painting a bullseye on yourself).
| pyronik19 wrote:
| >How to properly moderate social media to control some of
| its worst tendencies has been a very visible and very
| difficult issue for pretty much every social media company
| for the past 10 years.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Nobody really cares about doxing as long as it is down
| against people they don't like.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I doubt it. Tesla is so established at this point that it is
| successful regardless what Musk does in his free time.
| chii wrote:
| in fact, the less Musk interferes with Tesla, the more
| successful it would be!
| Ekaros wrote:
| Depends on how you define success. Market share very
| likely, the stock price is probably going to crater without
| him and hype bullshit...
| panick21_ wrote:
| Are you basing this 'analysis' on anything other then 'I
| don't like Musk'.
|
| 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?
| leesec wrote:
| Twitter is not "irrelevant" in any sense of the word. Also they
| have no direction from the current leadership as is.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| He may have someone in mind who he will appoint CEO.
|
| 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.
| marban wrote:
| Imagine Tim Cook were to take a loan on his Apple stock to take
| over Whole Foods because he doesn't like their avocados.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Cant imagine Tim Cook doing that, but sure sounds like
| something Steve Jobs would do
| marban wrote:
| Since Avocados are fruits you're technically correct
| natch wrote:
| Free speech, avocados... slight difference, wouldn't you say?
| incomingpain wrote:
| Elon is already rather uninvolved with tesla because of the
| fight with the SEC.
|
| 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.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >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?
|
| 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.
| mjs7231 wrote:
| You're being down voted because your comments came off very
| angry and ranty. However, you are not wrong. His twitter
| usage is often hate filled or bullying. The one that stands
| out most is calling the scuba diver a pedo because he
| called Elon's submarine idea a PR stunt, which it totally
| was. Or when he trolls Bernie by saying he forgot he was
| still alive, because he doesn't agree with his stance on
| taxation. Elon is not really the best example or leader of
| free speech I would hope for.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >your comments came off very angry and ranty
|
| They didn't "come off", they absolutely are. Don't really
| care about being downvoted.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Is it the goal ? To be the richest ? Amazing perspective
| for our world ahead, let people amass cash, it's going to
| go _great_
|
| 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.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| > Controversial guy eh. Crazy how much society is
| rewarding him so much.
|
| Ah. The red pill argument. I'm surprised I didn't connect
| these dots more clearly until now.
|
| You worship a false god.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Elon is already rather uninvolved with tesla because of the
| fight with the SEC.
|
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > He's basically the world's first trillionaire.
|
| What?
| incomingpain wrote:
| Latest figures put him around $270 billion USD. That's
| mainly based on him owning ~20% of tesla. Whose market cap
| is around a trillion.
|
| 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.
| bidirectional wrote:
| His Tesla stake is worth ~190bn and the rest of his
| estimated net worth is comprised of SpaceX etc. Not sure
| why you think that is his Tesla equity only.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >His Tesla stake is worth ~190bn and the rest of his
| estimated net worth is comprised of SpaceX etc. Not sure
| why you think that is his Tesla equity only.
|
| 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.
| bidirectional wrote:
| It's not my estimate, wherever you sourced your 270bn
| figure for his net worth will explain their reasoning.
| kderbyma wrote:
| MMT is a wild thing ain't it.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Yes it is.
|
| "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."
| rvz wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| crmd wrote:
| Less than three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was giving speeches[0]
| on the importance of freedom of speech on social media. I like
| Elon but don't think this will end well.
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...
| skoczko wrote:
| Elon Musk is a manipulative internet troll with little respect
| for others. His Twitter will not be dissimilar.
| Gelob wrote:
| maybe i can get my twitter unsuspended now. the fact that there
| are monthly reddit megathreads for people to complain about
| random suspensions/bans by the algorithm and that reaching out to
| twitter to even asked for a reason why go un-answered and auto-
| replied is really annoying.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/comments/rtr4t6/january_202...
| rammy1234 wrote:
| Bring in NFT :)
| afavour wrote:
| I feel for the employees of Twitter. Years with a part time CEO
| whose time was dedicated elsewhere... now they'll have a new part
| time owner whose time will be dedicated elsewhere _and_ has a
| propensity to do weird things for the online lulz.
| jdrc wrote:
| Having aloof bosses is now bad?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Having an aloof CEO not running the company absolutely is
| bad. Case in point: Twitter.
| sudhirj wrote:
| Obligatory reminder that SpaceX has its own CEO, think the
| other companies do too. Think Musk actually staffs the orgs
| pretty well other than Tesla the other companies seem like
| they'd do fine without him, but him pushing seems to help.
| sudhirj wrote:
| Ah, no, Gwynne Shotwell is the COO.
| ykevinator2 wrote:
| mardifoufs wrote:
| An owner is not a always the CEO. If anything he will make sure
| that the CEO that will actually focus on twitter.
|
| 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
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Laremere wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if he gave himself the CEO title, but
| actually had a president take on almost all normal CEO
| duties. Eg, as far as I can tell with SpaceX from interviews
| and such, Gwynne Shotwell really runs SpaceX. Elon jumps
| between whatever he thinks needs his attention most at the
| moment, rooting out problems.
|
| 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.)
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Should they feel bad for creating value for Saudi royalty?
| onychomys wrote:
| Yes, in general you should feel bad if your job makes it
| easier for murderous despots to murder and be despotic.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Living in America entails your daily expenses and
| significant portions of your tax money go to China and
| other dystopian dictatorships around the world. It's
| implausible to live ethically - like the meme of personal
| recycling, the problem is corporations and regulatory
| capture. Citizens don't make a dent.
| onychomys wrote:
| True, but just because I'm typing this on a machine made
| in Chinese sweatshops doesn't mean that I have to spend
| my days actively making their government more money. We
| can solve problems a little bit at a time even if bigger
| problems exist elsewhere, after all.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Right, but at some point it's like trying to keep back
| the tide with a pushbroom. If you're Elon, maybe you can
| get a big enough broom, or build a sea wall, but a
| million individuals with brooms are just going to be
| wasting their energy.
|
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| It didn't seem to bother Musk when they invested in
| Tesla.
|
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/saudi-arabia-
| invests-2b-...
| onychomys wrote:
| He should feel bad too. He doesn't, because even the cool
| billionaires are somewhat sociopathic, but he should.
| SXX wrote:
| Yeah certainly why should they? After all Saudi's regime
| only does mass executions on it's own territory and only
| rarely kill opposition inside it's own embassy.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Because it didn't bother Musk when they invested in
| Tesla, it's only now he calls them out.
| chii wrote:
| which means the employees aren't monitored closely by upper
| management then? I don't see why it's "bad".
|
| 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.
| Dobbs wrote:
| I've was at a company that had an absentee CEO. One who would
| swoop in every few months and make strong declarations about
| direction, product, and so on; but was otherwise never there.
| It was a nightmare. We suffered constantly from his
| eccentrics, it constantly hurt our product, and destroyed
| morale and the ability to feel like you had no power over
| your work.
| panick21_ wrote:
| If he can could manage SpaceX and Tesla around 2017 when shit
| was going down, this isn't that crazy.
| Rzor wrote:
| I think you are underestimating the legendary level of
| importance that Gwynne Shotwell has on SpaceX success.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its legendary because everybody who hates Musk has spend
| the last 5 years attributing all success of SpaceX to
| Shotwell in order to keep claiming that Musk is useless.
|
| She is certainty great, but Musk still has to (and wants
| to) spend a huge amount of time working on SpaceX.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That's what the money is for.
| shafyy wrote:
| Musk for sure will hire a CEO, I can't imagine that he will
| spend more than a few hours a week a month on Twitter (once the
| deal has closed and he hired a new management).
| notacoward wrote:
| But what kind of CEO will he hire? One that broadly shares
| his views, and will not push back in the slightest when he
| (inevitably) interferes from his board seat. What he'll
| _really_ hire is a COO, regardless of the actual title.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| He'll hire Donald Trump as CEO of Twitter }:-)
| syshum wrote:
| No, he would never take that, Trump Jr. though.......
| shafyy wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to get Jack Dorsey back
| (emphasis on "tried").
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Not that musk considers those titles of any value. He can
| have a CEO and still be running the company. Not from a
| board seat. Because CEO as a title is just a title.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm imagining an NFL owner situation. Most owners were
| already wealthy from other businesses when they bought a
| team. They always hire executives to run the business. But
| they also spend an inordinate amount of time sticking their
| nose into team business because it's fun and exciting and
| glamorous. Musk isn't doing this because it's fiscally
| sensible. He's doing it because he wants to own a popular
| social network and exploit it for his own ego. He will name a
| CEO but he will keep them on a short leash and assert his own
| ideas whenever he has them.
| smt88 wrote:
| He already spends hours a week just _posting_ on Twitter (and
| reading it, liking posts, etc.)
|
| I think he's obsessed with his growing celebrity and Twitter
| is his megaphone.
| ben_w wrote:
| Using it for hours a week sounds to me like he's a fairly
| normal person, at least with regard to social media use.
|
| (20 years ago I'd have said the same about watching "hours"
| of TV each week).
| smt88 wrote:
| > _Using it for hours a week sounds to me like he's a
| fairly normal person, at least with regard to social
| media use._
|
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| Oh ok -- I thought you were saying his pattern of usage
| of the platform indicated narcissism, and I was
| disagreeing with that. That you're saying here "he gets
| armies of worshippers responding to every tweet" still
| gives me this impression about what you're trying to
| communicate, FWIW.
|
| > 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).
| cambaceres wrote:
| I'm sure many of them are excited to get a chance to work for
| him.
| blantonl wrote:
| I'm curious, how long until the mean tweets are back? Anyone want
| to place bets?
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is just Elons version of the uber rich dude buying /
| starting a newspaper.
| Sol- wrote:
| Kind of weird to sink such a significant chunk of his wealth into
| a toy for his libertarian whims (where it's hard to tell how
| serious he even is about them), but I such squandering of wealth
| is nothing new for billionaires.
|
| 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).
| ensan wrote:
| I don't like Mr. Musk but the highly upvoted and analytical takes
| about how he is not serious with the offer or is just trolling
| did not age well at all.
| Vladimof wrote:
| lol, poison pill...
| Linda703 wrote:
| robbomacrae wrote:
| This could be dangerous for democracy. The worlds richest man can
| influence whether a politician is de-platformed or re-instated to
| Twitter whilst legally protected in such decision making by
| section 230. We have seen him act petty when offense is taken
| [0]. We have seen him be quite opinionated on tax proposals [1].
| Is no one else concerned by this? It seems a more powerful
| control of the narrative and politics than Bezos owning
| Washington Post.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-
| musk...
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-democrats-
| billiona...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Some other rich men already had that control.
| TbobbyZ wrote:
| The danger is already there. Banning a former US president is
| dangerous.
| cwkoss wrote:
| That danger is already present in the entirety of mainstream
| media, and twitter before this announcement.
|
| Why do you think Elon is uniquely dangerous in this regard?
| ulkesh wrote:
| I'm concerned, but there's effectively nothing I can do about
| it. I vote based on issues mostly and also vote based on
| whether or not I feel the person or people are saying and doing
| what I want to see, for the public good.
|
| 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.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| This is what I am expecting will happen:
|
| * 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/t
| rum...
| lvl102 wrote:
| I am going to guess Elon brings back Trump back on Twitter with
| Thiel's push.
|
| That could be the end of Twitter.
| snowman-yelling wrote:
| I think Trump is what kept Twitter relevant for the better part
| of the 2010s.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Trump is nothing but good for Twitter. He generates tons of
| engagement from his fans and his haters
| bannedbybros wrote:
| taubek wrote:
| Twitter PR has released that the offer was accepted.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquir...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Crazy that musk will spend billions on something I can get on the
| App Store for free.
|
| On that note excited to see if ads go away.
| mzs wrote:
| main points from all-hands
|
| https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1518706644124721152
| vincentpants wrote:
| Gilded Age 2.0
| shusaku wrote:
| It's interesting to me because someone like Trump gets
| frustrated with Twitter, and the best he can do is raise
| capital for a social network which seems doomed to fail. Musk
| can just buy twitter. Trump was the president and one of the
| most influential political figures in the world, but in this
| regard Musk dwarfs him in terms of power.
| notacoward wrote:
| Speaking of Trump, what are the chances he'll get un-banned?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Non-zero. But I wouldn't be surprised neither if Musk
| doesn't want any competition on his private social network.
| koolba wrote:
| I'd bet on it.
| slackfan wrote:
| We've been there since the late 90s.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I'd argue it started with the PC revolution and the
| lionization of CEOS in the 80s
| panick21_ wrote:
| The fastest age of economic and technology growth of any
| country in the history of the world?
| [deleted]
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| blu0rca wrote:
| Everyone is scared of what he is going to do to twitter; why? We
| have zuck in control of meta so it can't be any worse than that,
| right?
| qgin wrote:
| "Everything that isn't illegal is allowed" sounds great until you
| see what that actually means on the internet.
|
| 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.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Yaknow, I've helped build sites for Nazis and furries and
| fisting fans and others who were not anticipating a broad
| welcome; and their boards were remarkably civil places. Even
| with the inevitable and never ending "yall are sinners and need
| jesus" crews such places attract.
|
| Just maybe its the enforcement of orthodoxy that makes "content
| moderation" so toxic?
| zja wrote:
| The Nazi's boards were remarkably civil?
| Closi wrote:
| I assume they are referring to the word to mean 'courteous
| and polite'.
|
| I personally believe you can hold abhorrent views and still
| be polite, so I don't see why there is a necessary
| contradiction here.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Yes. The discourse was courteous and polite, usually;
| folks would calmly discuss the most heinous horseshit and
| could actually in that setting be open to education about
| facts where available.
|
| Its very hard to get people to learn things by shouting
| at them
| ssully wrote:
| It's hard to give a shit about educating people when they
| openly discuss wanting to murder you or eradicate people
| like you.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Yes. But at that point either you change their minds, or
| you gear up to kill them first.
| krapp wrote:
| It's weird how "change their mind or kill them before
| they kill you" is now widely considered a more just and
| equitable solution than simply not giving such people a
| platform to politely discuss your murder on to begin
| with. Much less the biggest possible platform.
| ssully wrote:
| I think there are other options that have worked pretty
| well in the past.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I would imagine they're civil to other Nazis but probably
| not so much to anyone else.
| cptaj wrote:
| Yeah, nazis are always civil and polite until you call them
| out on their bullshit, dude
| evan_ wrote:
| > I've helped build sites for Nazis
|
| Very weird to lead with this and then expect anyone to take
| anything else you say seriously!
| h2odragon wrote:
| At the time, the trannies were the most reviled group.
| tokai wrote:
| Those places are civil because they are homogenic. Most minor
| boards with a narrow subjects are civil. Mix in anti-
| nazis/furries/etc. and everything will quickly devolve. It
| requires surprisingly few hostile users to destroy the tone
| of a board for some time. As anyone that have taken part in
| raids, or seen them happen, can attest to.
| contravariant wrote:
| Personally I'd consider it an improvement, but that might be
| because of my naive assumption that people will finally stop
| mistaking twitter for a sensible way of communicating.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Its not so much that twitter is a sensible way of
| communicating its that twitter gives you such wide access to
| such a massive array of people and topics. For example its
| how I get my news, I just follow a ton of journalists from
| different companies and countries. As 1:1 communication you
| are right its not built for that but it does what I use it
| for really well.
| ragnese wrote:
| I can't tell you how depressing I found it when Musk
| described Twitter as the "town square" and his whole
| rhetorical take on it needing to be a place for free and open
| discussion as per the "market place of ideas" concept (I
| don't recall him referencing the quoted term directly- that's
| my editorial).
|
| 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.
| cle wrote:
| Relax, broad social discourse has never been particularly
| nuanced or long-form, and has always been partially driven
| by catch phrases, headlines, and incisive, memorable
| quotes.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The market place of ideas that fit within a tweet, which is
| a pretty limited set of ideas. Most of the ideas Elon has
| don't fit into a tweet, almost nothing of value does.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _we really want TWITTER, of all things, to be the place for
| important social discourse?_
|
| 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.
| remram wrote:
| Twitter makes it impossible to dig in replies past a very
| low number of them. Hell, if the tweet is not the last in a
| chain, you often can't see any replies at all. It is
| explicitly optimized for very different things than public
| discussion.
| dash2 wrote:
| That's not really how it works. The most important tweets
| are links to long-form discussions. It's a discovery
| platform. Sometimes the poster will include an executive
| summary in a thread. That's helpful, too, for deciding if
| you want to follow the link.
|
| 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.
| orblivion wrote:
| > I can't tell you how depressing I found it when Musk
| described Twitter as the "town square"
|
| I'm now imagining a medieval town in an all-out drunken
| brawl.
| totetsu wrote:
| Musk's town square by Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Bruegel
| papito wrote:
| It's almost like this kind of thing does not exist. Just go to
| 8chan or whatever it is called now. You will want to pour
| Clorox in your eyes. Feel free - enjoy "free speech".
|
| 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.
| mavhc wrote:
| Until usenet got flooded with spam, and had no tools to deal
| with it and died
| papito wrote:
| Well, it's still there. Google's Deja probably did not
| help, "democratizing" Usenet. That said, here we go -
| another point in favor of strict moderation.
| mbar84 wrote:
| This is a straw-man argument. Everybody knows there is an issue
| with a deluge of spam, obnoxious, content etc. The issue is
| trust/control. Whom do you trust to have control over who sees
| what content? A public platform should be beyond reproach in
| terms of its political bias, which is not the case for Twitter.
| A way to get closer to that would be to devolve the control
| over content moderation as close to each user as possible.
| DaltonCoffee wrote:
| >"Everything that isn't illegal is allowed" sounds great until
| you see what that actually means on the internet.
|
| >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.
| mchusma wrote:
| Just because you want to allow people to speak, doesn't mean
| you need to force people to listen. The current moderation
| scheme, which is to provide essentially 1 moderator with no
| ability to customize it.
|
| 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".
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| Except it already is exactly that way, anyone can block
| anyone else they want. It turns out blocking people does
| nothing when you're being harassed by big groups of people,
| the damage was already done before you got the chance to hit
| block. And also it doesn't stop people from trash talking you
| behind your back and furthering the damage.
|
| 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.
| dionian wrote:
| Unfortunately moderation will always be abused
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Surely, spam bots aren't _illegal_ , are they?
|
| 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.
| dbbk wrote:
| They are not. His position is entirely contradictory.
| tested23 wrote:
| Its not contradictory when you realize his rhetoric is
| about individual rights and not bot rights...
| [deleted]
| dbbk wrote:
| So free speech only applies to humans? I thought in the
| US it also applied to corporations?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Corporations are just groups of humans represented by a
| legal entity.
|
| 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?
| jasonshaev wrote:
| In the United States, corporations have 1st amendment
| protections. The Supreme Court codified this in CITIZENS
| UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION
| (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-
| court/08-205.html)
|
| "... 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....]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Supreme Court codified this in CITIZENS UNITED
|
| 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.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| And the course of Web 2.0 so far makes for a perfect case study
| of this form of community dynamics.
|
| Regardless of how this goes, it'll go down in history, and Musk
| is well aware of that.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Everything that isn't illegal is allowed_
|
| This won't actually happen though. Content moderation,
| censorship, and bans will continue on Twitter unabated.
| orblivion wrote:
| I agree that people take for granted just how much spam there
| could be if the flood gates were opened.
|
| 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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > Is there a reason you can't turn all of the bans (of legal
| stuff) into filters?
|
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| At this time, however Elon is a populist and his "base" of
| fanboys do lean in that direction.
| jordiburgos wrote:
| Or do the opposite. Change the options to show only flagged
| content.
| cxgjnli wrote:
| This is a reality today in the Mastodon world where some
| self appointed hall monitors created Fediblock to create a
| list of bad instances which created a shadow network of
| instances on the list that subscribe to each other and
| discover new instances to federate with using the Fediblock
| list
| oauea wrote:
| Now you need to flag each post individually instead of just
| banning troublesome users.
| orblivion wrote:
| Or flag the users. Of course they'll complain about being
| painted with a label but it's better than being banned.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's essentially a hard AI problem of making something not
| human that can categorize any post in a rapidly changing
| cultural environment. For probably the most mutagenic
| category look at some of the Q nonsense that will rapidly
| swing from topic to topic and coopt existing conversations
| like "Save the Children" for their own insane ends.
| orblivion wrote:
| You can filter accounts instead of posts and recreate the
| current scenario. Those accounts will complain about it,
| but it at least brings them back on board without hurting
| the experience of people who don't want to see them.
|
| That said, they are already auto-flagging posts to some
| extent.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Maintaining that list is extremely tedious work and
| pushing that down to the individual user just drives
| people away. Users don't want to constantly filter and
| block an ever growing list of spam, bot, and troll
| accounts. Parlor/Gab/et al essentially tried this "let
| the users block" method and it failed practically
| immediately and they've all instituted some sort of
| content moderation or just disappeared.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| The solution to this problem is AdBlock. Everything that
| AdBlock needs to be the success that it is today is
| exactly what we need for social platforms as well. Both
| for moderation(filters), and for the
| 'algorithm'(sorting).
|
| 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.
| orblivion wrote:
| I'm saying let Twitter do the work of blocking those
| users. Instead of hitting the "ban" button as they do
| now, they hit the "Nazi" button. Now they're Nazis and
| everyone who says "I don't want to see Nazis" won't see
| them. It's not any more work on the user's part.
|
| 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.
| rtkwe wrote:
| People already abuse flagging systems to try to push
| people off Twitter and Youtube so Twitter will need
| something to deal with people false flagging posts or the
| "no XXXX" filter will be useless.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The "guy tracking Elon's private jet" isn't tracking Elon's
| jet. He's posting links to adsbexchange. Posts like this:
| https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1515530730742427652
|
| (Elon got a new transponder ID to hid from "me") are
| ridiculously self important, and a complete misrepresentation
| of what he is doing.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| I could be wrong but I feel like Elon is a little more savvy
| than this
| softcactus wrote:
| He called that cave rescuer a pedo
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Every politician recorded betraying their professed morals
| is supporting evidence that power, intelligence and
| resources don't automatically transmute into shrewdness.
| Also, he likely believes that sort of consideration is
| beneath commanding his attention.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| OK, before you go any further with that idea you should
| check this out:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496
| hef19898 wrote:
| You got me to, literally, look at Musk tweet for the
| first time in my life. How old is he? Twelve?
| bombcar wrote:
| Twelve year olds would have much hotter memes. Musk's are
| straight up boomer-class, it's just rare you see
| billionaires fielding any memes at all.
| drcode wrote:
| He has 83M followers, mainly because of his memes. He
| isn't interested in your super hot memes that only 5
| people in the world understand.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly - it's not how well the bear dances, it's that it
| dances at all.
| hef19898 wrote:
| True, my 13 year old probably doesn't even recognize Bill
| Gates, or know who he is. And if I explained it to him,
| he wouldn't care.
| drcode wrote:
| I think he's an obnoxious twerp overall, but his lack of
| respect for conventional mores in his twitter game is not
| one of his problems, in my opinion
| sumedh wrote:
| There is a context behind that tweet, apparently Gates
| has shorted Tesla.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which makes it even worse...
| evandale wrote:
| >apparently Gates has shorted Tesla
|
| There's a couple of these "apparently" or he "maybe"
| shorted Tesla giving "context"
|
| If you really want to offer context here it is:
|
| - Gates asked Musk to meet up to discuss clime change
| philanthropy
|
| - Musk asked if Gates still had a half billion Tesla
| short
|
| - Gates confirmed he does
|
| - Musk told him to screw off because he can't take
| philanthropy on climate change seriously with someone
| trying to cash in on the failure of Tesla
|
| So, no, he didn't "maybe" or "apparently" short Tesla -
| he actively is shorting Tesla to the tune of $500 million
| as of a few days ago.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What if I think Tesla is a great company, but also that
| its stock is overpriced (its P/E ratio is > 200, so
| that's not a stretch). Am I allowed to short TSLA or does
| that automatically mean I'm "trying to cash in on the
| failure of Tesla"?
|
| This kind of thing doesn't give me confidence that Musk
| will respect differing opinions as the owner of Twitter.
| evandale wrote:
| >Am I allowed to short TSLA or does that automatically
| mean I'm "trying to cash in on the failure of Tesla"?
|
| Anybody is allowed to short TSLA, and yes, if you short
| them you want the value of the company to drop and you're
| trying to cash in on that. TSLA should continue growing
| if it's a successful company. I'm not aware of companies
| that lose stock value year after year and are considered
| successful.
|
| >This kind of thing doesn't give me confidence that Musk
| will respect differing opinions as the owner of Twitter.
|
| I don't think Musk's goal with the Twitter buyout is to
| respect opinions. He's buying Twitter so disrespectful
| opinions won't be taken down.
|
| Now if he starts banning things he personally disagrees
| with, like the famous plane account, I'll turn on him and
| call him a bad guy. But I'm not going to speculate
| nefarious reasons he's buying Twitter because I have no
| reason to believe he'll do anything other than what he
| said he'll do.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| The implication here is Tesla is doing something about
| climate change.
|
| The irony is that Tesla worsens climate change by selling
| billions of dollars of carbon credits which enable
| polluters.
|
| If it actually wanted to make a difference it would forgo
| those credits which would force polluters to actually
| reduce pollution. Instead it's just a wash.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| That's important, because it reveals Musk's insecurity
| and fragile ego.
|
| Anyone else would just say "Great, I'm going to make you
| lose all your money!"
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| I am aware what his twitter is like - but he can just
| shoot those off from the hip with no oversight - would he
| just be able to ban some person without someone pushing
| back, or explaining to him why it might be a bad idea? I
| would imagine he would be at least a couple of steps
| removed from being able to do that.
| drcode wrote:
| That post seems very savvy to me: If you admit to
| shorting TSLA stock, expect to be savaged
| hef19898 wrote:
| From the outside, this was what triggered Musks bid for
| Twitter in the first place
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Given the timing, I do believe that.
|
| He could have just given the kid a car and been done with
| it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Twitter shareholders should give ElonsJet a bonus then.
| LNSY wrote:
| My bet is you're very wrong.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Honestly, I think "Everything that isn't illegal is allowed" is
| fine as long as Twitter only shows me content from people I
| follow. I think the whole "content moderation" problem is
| something Twitter has brought on itself. I am perfectly happy
| moderating my own content if they would only let me.
| psyc wrote:
| This is all I've ever asked for. Just give me the tools to
| moderate for myself / choose my own filters, and I could not
| care less who deserves to have what sized megaphone FFS.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Michael Saylor had an idea he discussed on a recent Lex Fridman
| podcast. People should be able to post $10 collatoral via the
| Bitcoin Lightning network for safe passage on the web. This can
| be done by your browser via HTTP. Bad behaviour (such as
| causing abuse) results in a penalty being applied to the
| collatoral. You get what's left back when you leave. Because it
| uses Lighting, it's super fast and cheap, far faster and
| cheaper than a typical 2.5% credit card.
|
| 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.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| We're still at the stage of trying to apply the crypto
| solution to more non-problems when the existing solutions
| would completely suffice. Crypto adds nothing to the original
| thought outside of shilling.
| bubersson wrote:
| What existing solution? The point here is that no one found
| a good solution yet...
| LegitShady wrote:
| You're talking about a 'universal' ban system predicated
| on crypto. Whatever system you think is a good or bad
| solution, I don't think I want a universal social credit
| score system on the internet that lets all sites ban me
| on the credibility on individual sites with different
| moderation abilities. Whatever it is you think it solves,
| it creates huge problems on societal level.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Bad behaviour (such as causing abuse) results in a penalty
| being applied to the collatoral.
|
| Cool. Who decides when I visit a random website that my
| request was abusive?
| the_only_law wrote:
| In my experience: some security appliance installed
| somewhere.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| So false positives cost me money?
| ssl232 wrote:
| Yes. If that happens, you shouldn't give that website
| your business.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Won't I only know that _after_ it happened?
|
| What if they deem me abusive after several months of
| using the website?
| the_only_law wrote:
| This is actually pretty common. Won't be long before we
| see another HN post about someone getting banned from a
| platform with no idea why and no recourse forward.
|
| Actually similar happened to me recently. I woke up to
| find my PayPal account close and no one can tell me why.
| MrJohz wrote:
| The problem with this idea (aside from the gratuitous use of
| bitcoin, and the pricing out of people who can't pay) is that
| punishing people isn't the hard part of online moderation.
| For most simple cases, a system of warnings, temporary
| suspensions, and permabans _mostly_ works. Yes, you 've got
| to deal with sockpuppets, but my understanding is that
| they're usually fairly easy to recognise, and the extreme
| cases are usually rare and notorious figures. Nothing in this
| process is so complex that it requires a stake system to be
| fixed.
|
| 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.
| ssl232 wrote:
| It's not trying to solve the problem of assessing whether
| rules were broken, it's attempting to add friction to bad
| behaviour. If you get banned and lose your deposit, it's
| going to cost you another $N to try again. Right now
| there's practically zero cost to signing up to a website
| again with a new account to continue the bad behaviour. At
| least this way, only the richest and most determined trolls
| will continue to have an impact on services.
|
| 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.
| amalcon wrote:
| It's neither a completely crazy nor completely new idea. E.g.
| Metafilter charges (charged? I haven't checked in a while) a
| $5 one-time sign-up fee that's less for revenue generation
| and more intended to make it sting a bit if you're banned
| (which Metafilter is notoriously hesitant to do).
|
| 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.
| jcomis wrote:
| Somethingawful did the same. I think it probably led to
| it's success and also kept it going a few extra years.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| That is my literal nightmare for the future of the web.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's brilliant for people who think Twitter bans too much
| to ... give them a monetary reason to ban more?
|
| Crypto won't solve the problem only make it worse.
| ansible wrote:
| That may work.
|
| 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.
| ssl232 wrote:
| It's not $10 per site, it's $10 one off. You would get the
| money back almost immediately if your request is not
| abusive. I'd be interested to know how many twitter users
| couldn't scrape together a once off $10.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| So who's going to fund this adjudicatory system? Because
| lots of little $10 deposits, that are fully refundable,
| won't do it.
| ssl232 wrote:
| You should ask Michael Saylor to be sure how he proposes
| this will all work, but he did mention his company
| (MicroStrategy) spends $1M/year on DDOS mitigation. I
| expect if Lightning ends up as cheap and fast as he and
| others are saying it will be, it could be funded by
| companies as a cost of doing business in the same way
| they fund the electricity and hardware for serving their
| websites.
|
| It's actually the sort of thing I could see CloudFlare
| etc. providing, so each website doesn't need to implement
| it themselves.
| devteambravo wrote:
| Who decides whether your request is abusive?
| ssl232 wrote:
| The site. They stake their reputation on being fair.
| Unfair sites will lose users. This is basically what
| happens already with moderation, it's just adding a small
| monetary penalty to bad actors to discourage them.
| mmastrac wrote:
| And then there's the perfect exit scam when you collect a
| bunch of abuse bonds from your users on the way out and run
| with the money.
| the_duke wrote:
| That sounds like a social credit dystopia, only that the
| credit is actual money.
| ssl232 wrote:
| It's not linked to your identity. You can make a new wallet
| any time, but it'll cost another $10. In that sense it
| makes a pretty awful social credit system.
| enneff wrote:
| So rich people can be obnoxious online with impunity
| while poor people have to watch their every move? Sounds
| awesome.
| whiddershins wrote:
| It's weird that no one thinks algorithms can make a big dent in
| this without banning people.
| soabeb wrote:
| The old tenant of the internet was "if you don't like
| something, block it". All of these people saying that this
| doesn't work in practice on their social media websites have
| not provided an explanation as to why this is the case.
| phphphphp wrote:
| because community is defined by people not content. A person
| who posts overtly racist content probably also posts about
| visiting Disney with their kid, or how much they love Spider-
| Man. You can't filter out certain aspects of a persons
| personality within a community. Either you want to share a
| space with people, or you don't, you can't share a space with
| people without knowing they're there.
| polski-g wrote:
| Yes you can. Twitter lets you blacklist Tweets with certain
| words from showing up.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Why not? It seems like some kind of categorization system
| (even a really naive keyword-based one) is already used for
| things like advertisements. If such a system was surfaced,
| and you can filter out specific categories, you are then
| able to see what the hypothetical racist $relation posts
| about the family, without having to see their hot political
| takes.
|
| 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).
| cedilla wrote:
| It's a question of scale. In the old internet, I subscribed
| to a few news groups that got tens to hundreds of posts a
| day. You could easily plonk the few people you didn't like.
|
| 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.
| Timpy wrote:
| Massive social media sites are affecting public discourse,
| elections, international politics. I don't have a Twitter
| account, but I don't have any choice but to participate in a
| society that has polarizing hot takes boiled down to 280
| characters.
| wurit wrote:
| Simple asymmetry. Scammers can generate junk faster than I as
| an individual can block it. My choices are to either use a
| moderated platform or abandon social media altogether.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| > if you don't like something, block it
|
| 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".
| angus-prune wrote:
| If you're in a marginalised community then the objectional
| content comes to you and can't be avoided. We simply aren't
| provided with the tools to block this.
|
| 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.
| onpensionsterm wrote:
| Nit: it's 'tenet'.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > have not provided an explanation as to why this is the case
|
| Perhaps because they realize it effectively boils down to
| thought policing at some level and do not want to undermine
| their own intentions.
| trynewideas wrote:
| No, the old tenet of the internet was "if you don't like
| something, don't subscribe to it". Usenet, Web 1.0 forums,
| news feeds, email lists didn't have block features; if you
| wanted to see something, you subscribed to it. If you didn't,
| unsubscribe. Even if someone on a mailing list was shit, you
| didn't (and couldn't) block them, you'd either filter out
| their messages or bail.
|
| 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.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > Usenet, Web 1.0 forums, news feeds, email lists didn't
| have block features
|
| Plonk! [1, 2]
|
| [1] https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Killfile
|
| [2] https://infogalactic.com/info/Plonk_(Usenet)
| alex_sf wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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).
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Make it so people can say whatever they want, but it's easy to
| decide what level of discourse you're personally willing to
| listen to. You have the right to say what you want and other
| people have the right not to listen.
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i think a big problem is monetization. You have to identify
| the conversations with the most participants in order to get
| ads there for sales. You have to design feed algorithms and
| promote certain users to drive views and adclicks in order to
| sell more ads.
|
| 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
| midislack wrote:
| Twitter's already a huge shit hole, it's just that the fascists
| are going to rejoin the Marxists so everybody can excrete into
| the common hole together. Three is no reason to believe
| anything will happen other than more "journalists" getting
| abused, and let's face it - they deserve it. Learn to code
| being bannable was, for me, the last straw and I stopped using
| Twitter after being banned for saying it to a journalist.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I'm not understanding your comment. You got banned for saying
| "learn to code" to "a journalist"? Surely there must be some
| missing context here.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Some context: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I see. Sounds like they were cracking down on targeted
| harassment.
| jandrusk wrote:
| Isn't that what the block, mute, and muted wordlist options are
| for? If these were not available options I could see the
| argument, but they are, so why isn't this sufficient for users
| to moderate their own content?
| WesleyHale wrote:
| Twitter is already a cesspool. I doubt it could get any worse.
| The only real change I see is more users crying that theres
| more "transphobia" on the platform.
|
| We're about to see a digital clash of cultures.
| nradov wrote:
| You don't have to follow anyone who tweets obnoxious content.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| You are 100% correct and most of us think that way. There are
| some people though that think just the ability to say
| terrible things or even just things they strongly disagree
| with is proof of the collapse of society and will lead to the
| end of all things. This is not meant as an attack on these
| people that feel this way as I think they are just unable to
| control themselves, and I think have just never been able to
| adapt to the concept of social media. They ruin their lives
| obsessing over what others may be posting or saying and how
| dare the rest of us not be outraged as well. I had a sibling
| disown my entire family over something like this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, because Twitter'll show it to you anyways.
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I mentioned this in another reply but maybe taking Twitter
| private enables Musk to make changes to the timeline that
| hurt profit (ad sales) but produce a better community or
| "public square". If you don't have to answer to a stock
| price then options open up.
| dangerface wrote:
| We could just filter that stuff the same way we filter email.
| Naive Bayes works at email scale why not comment scale? It
| should all be done on a per user basis so the filters only
| filter out language you personally find offensive.
|
| It never made sense why try to force me to use the same filter
| as the Karen that complains about kids skateboarding.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > It seems so easy from a distance
|
| You seem to assume it's a binary answer. Either allow
| everything or nothing?
| zarzavat wrote:
| Musk has a reputation for craziness but if you look at his
| engineering decisions at SpaceX his record there is _highly_
| pragmatic. So the question is: which Musk is buying Twitter?
|
| 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.
| archhn wrote:
| Then have filters that allow people to customize their
| experience. Don't want to see content about race? Filter it
| out. Only interested in science? Filter for only that subject.
|
| The user should be the one who is given the tools of
| censorship.
|
| What's wrong with this idea?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That obviously isn't true. Musk already uses the platform as a
| tool for financial fraud.
| dijit wrote:
| Well, I'm going to be somewhat controversial here and say: What
| the fuck were people expecting?
|
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I was thinking about forums and how much better they were the
| other day. One reason, the main reason, was because they
| learned lessons from Usenet and stopped any flame wars in
| their tracks. These social media networks didn't and have let
| our entire society devolve into a giant flame war. We need
| systems to force people out of heated conversations and
| ensure they are engaging in good faith. This requires human
| moderation but we could surely build tooling to detect if a
| conversation is heated and force people to take a breather.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| It's possible. As a thought exercise, I'm sure Amazon has
| figured out some sort of formula to prevent the sale of
| illegal items on it's marketplace, which it has to operate at
| scale. At the very minimum a structure like that could be put
| in place. Another approach is the community of moderators
| that Reddit uses.
|
| 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.
| dash2 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| dijit wrote:
| You're thinking of 1:1 communications, I would guess.
|
| 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.
| xtracto wrote:
| > This is why things like the "Eternal September" exist, a
| deluge of new users is basically impossible to moderate at
| scale.
|
| 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.
| elpakal wrote:
| If moderators are good, why cant you just hire more
| moderators?
| wffurr wrote:
| As the GP stated repeatedly, it doesn't scale. Number of
| interactions scales with the factorial of users. The
| moderation team itself also doesn't scale. Good moderation
| is very difficult and requires trust. More moderators
| spreads the trust thin and greatly increases the chance
| that you end up with one or more bad moderators, who in
| turn damage that trust.
| remram wrote:
| > Number of interactions scales with the factorial of
| users.
|
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Because moderators need to be competent, understanding and
| honest. They will not come cheap and these apps have
| billions of users in some cases.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Moderators are not identical. One moderator's ban is
| another moderator's timeout.
|
| C'mon. You know this.
| [deleted]
| rtkwe wrote:
| Money. Moderators are expensive and if you want it to be
| any good you need people from the culture you're moderating
| to understand the context of what is and isn't abusive in a
| given language. It's also an absolutely terrible job
| because you're just sifting through the absolute worst of
| the content on the platform all day.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Reddit has free moderators
| rtkwe wrote:
| Generally either the users or the admins are unhappy with
| the moderators of any given subreddit. They're on
| possible way around it but not a particularly good one
| and it's less likely to scale because there's not the
| same "ownership of a community" feeling you can engender
| in Twitter where there's not really an equivalent to
| subreddits to give volunteer mods control over.
| skrbjc wrote:
| And reddit has not solved the problem.
|
| To many, reddit is just as unpleasant, and in some cases
| worse than twitter.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Moderators on forums had to handle maybe 100 messages per
| day. They knew the context of each discussion thread and
| could make pretty well-considered and nuanced moderating
| decisions.
|
| 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.
| bleair wrote:
| The motivations are different, but I think wikipeida is an
| interesting example where editing / moderation does
| (mostly) work. Again, I can't see how that could ever work
| on twitter, but wikipedia is the only large-user-base
| example of "social media" that isn't horrible.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think that is because every contributor is responsible
| for the whole, and thus they are also all moderators, and
| all responsible for any content digressions.
|
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| The combinatorial explosion mentioned in the above post -
| it would be bad enough if the requirement for moderators
| expanded linearly with users, but it actually expands
| exponentially, more like with interactions.
|
| 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.
| strofcon wrote:
| If one woman can make a baby in 9 months, why can't 9 women
| do it in one?
| the_only_law wrote:
| Facebook does this no? I thought the issue was you
| effectively have to be a psychopath to do the job because
| of how horrific the unmoderated internet get.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Well, I'm going to be somewhat controversial here and say:
| What the fuck were people expecting?
|
| Everytime some idiotic thread shoots up with 1500 comment I
| just assume it can all be summed up with a line like this.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I just hope the free speech absolutists consume their daily
| dose of asbestos shavings to exercise their freedom
| cslarson wrote:
| let people filter for themselves. someone is offended by
| pornography so chooses an algo that accounts for that, another
| is offended by anti-trans sentiment and another algo accounts
| for that. everyone should be more broadly free to speak but we
| are not all forced to listen.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Then using the platform becomes work. People realise it's not
| worth the effort and everyone apart from the nutjobs quit.
| cslarson wrote:
| It does not need to be more work. There is a default algo.
| Users can also opt for alternatives.
| ChainReaktion wrote:
| There's one obvious flaw in "Everything that isn't illegal is
| allowed": determining what is illegal. Free speech laws are
| some of the trickiest legal issues we grapple with in the US,
| and many statues hinge on the intent behind the speech. How is
| Twitter supposed to implement this (hypothetical) new policy?
| Do they always give posters the benefit of the doubt? Seems
| ripe for abuse. Assume the worst? Probably more censorious than
| it is today. Punt to the courts? Great, moderation now takes
| years and costs thousands of dollars. What is the standard of
| proof to take down a tweet? Preponderance of the evidence? What
| evidence is admissible? Does Twitter just internally recreate
| the US trial court system to manage this? Do they do that for
| every country? The point is, the law on these issues is complex
| and frequently requires significant interpretation. Maximalism
| is no silver bullet.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They won't or if they do not for long. Gab, Parlor, and all
| the other right-wing "we're getting censored on Twitter come
| here where we won't censor anything (legal)" Twitter clones
| have all figured out rapidly why content moderation exists
| and that it's basically a necessity on the web as they get
| mercilessly trolled and spammed.
|
| 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.
| alex_sf wrote:
| The only reason those spaces implemented content moderation
| was because they couldn't get hosting anywhere. Not because
| of 'merciless trolling and spam'.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Hard to say exactly why it happened, but users of those
| sites were quite unhappy with the lack of moderation from
| what I saw at the time.
| alex_sf wrote:
| This isn't that complicated. Twitter can just take down
| content in response to court orders, unless their review team
| decides to fight it on whatever grounds.
|
| 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?
| ChainReaktion wrote:
| Sure, but that relies on someone's ability to secure the
| court order. That takes days at minimum, possibly much
| longer. It costs money, possibly thousands of dollars or
| more. And what about cases that cross borders? Is someone
| from from South Africa supposed to seek injunctive relief
| from a U.S. court? Maybe this is better than the status quo
| ante, but it's not obvious to me that that's the case and
| it doesn't seem like anyone is asking the hard questions.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| This is peak modern Silicon Valley: privatize the revenue
| for the product, socialize[0] the costs (by clogging up
| courts, in this case). It's not remotely scalable.
|
| 0: I don't agree with this vernacular, it's just what the
| kids say.
| pyaamb wrote:
| Absolutely, well put.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah it's not even a mysterious lesson. A handful of "we won't
| censor or moderate except illegal activity" twitter clones have
| popped up and rapidly learned why moderation exists.
| natly wrote:
| Elon has never said this is what he wants to do with twitter.
| This is just something people keep assuming.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm quickly discovering that people see in Elon Musk whatever
| they want. Somehow he's going to both stop freedom of speech
| suppression AND shit-posting.
| chasd00 wrote:
| he definitely has overly obsessive fans and critics. I
| suppose it's the perfect recipe for a social media
| addiction.
| stack_framer wrote:
| In his TED interview with Chris Anderson last week, Elon
| said:
|
| "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)
| jmeister wrote:
| Man, another million comment thread with the same arguments.
|
| 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.
| strofcon wrote:
| But what if - and just hear me out here - there are _not_
| ways around the fundamental problems of social media
| platforms as they exist today?
|
| 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.
| api wrote:
| He said that moderation is working well if "the most extreme
| 10% of the left and the right are equally frustrated."
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > "the most extreme 10% of the left and the right are
| equally frustrated."
|
| 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.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Sounds like enlightened centrism to me. Which is itself an
| ideology.
| k1ko wrote:
| I only see that term used by the left as an insult when
| it is a perfectly reasonable take.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That is two unsubstantiated claims in one sentence :)
| root_axis wrote:
| That's a totally unquantifiable metric.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _said that moderation is working well if "the most
| extreme 10% of the left and the right are equally
| frustrated."_
|
| The problem occurs when those ten percents use the ensuing
| outrage to recruit.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And those 10% are the most vocal and loud ones. So if
| your platform has those 10% _on both sides_ pissed I don
| 't want to see the results...
| wtetzner wrote:
| Maybe the reason they're pissed is that Twitter is
| downplaying their tweets, making them less loud.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| At the very very terrible TED interview last week:
|
| _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_
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Just to elaborate on how uneducated these people are on the
| topic of "free speech" and running something like twitter:
|
| _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_fi
| re_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.
| anon946 wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but it seems that intentionally and
| falsely shouting fire to cause panic would not have any
| kind of blanket 1A protection. From
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
| conspiracy/wp/201...:
|
| > 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.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "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.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| My stance is "these people don't know what they're
| talking about".
|
| 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_speec
| h_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.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Really, what are the attempts to make hate speech illegal
| in the U.S.? That would come up against the first
| amendment really quick. New constitutional amendments are
| unlikely to succeed in todays polarized political
| environment.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm.
|
| 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 ).
| kmonsen wrote:
| Whatever efforts are happening here will be shut down by
| the courts unless they managed to do something about the
| first amendment. I am not saying these efforts are good
| or bad, just that they are (I guess in my opinion)
| extremely unlikely to succeed.
| bitwize wrote:
| That would come up against _the interpretation of the
| First Amendment espoused by the Supreme Court in 1969_ ,
| in the case _Brandenburg v. Ohio_. Before then, the First
| Amendment was not interpreted nearly so broadly, and
| speech regulations at the federal and state levels were
| common, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts soon
| after the Constitution was ratified.
|
| 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.
| kmonsen wrote:
| First part I agree with. The second part, maybe I guess?
| But that is, if ever, decades away so we can worry about
| that when it becomes a realistic prospect.
|
| I don't think any of the current sitting life time
| appointed supreme court justices have expressed any will
| at overturning that decision.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| The spinach example is so bad it's either such gross
| misunderstanding as to disqualify that interviewer from
| any future interviews, or it's an example deliberately
| designed to conflate issues.
|
| 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.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| > obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the
| bottom of the lizard brain stuff
|
| 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.
| hemreldop wrote:
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I like this article on the trouble with not censoring:
| 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.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
| thejackgoode wrote:
| thank you for the article!
| bombcar wrote:
| I think an important thing about that CW thread is you get a
| strong group of regulars. Any fora with a strong group of
| regulars can survive almost anything thrown at it - except an
| influx Eternal September style of newcomers that overwhelms
| the group.
|
| 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".
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Fascinating read. Thank you for sharing it.
|
| 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.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Yeah, maybe Musk can take it on. But I'm not certain.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| chrisstanchak wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember that internet. It was better.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It was smaller. That's the part that matters.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It also sounds great until you consider _other countries_. Most
| people on Twitter are not in the US.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Can you elaborate on your point? Are you talking about
| Russian bot accounts, or that people in other countries may
| have views which are not suitable for Americans, or what
| exactly?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| If your only rule for how to moderate your platform is
| "what is legal", how do you scale that out internationally
| where there are significantly varying standard for what
| legal speech is?
|
| 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...
| dbbk wrote:
| Many countries actually have very restrictive legal limits
| on speech
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Indeed; China doesn't like references to a certain
| children's cartoon / book character, and nearly two
| billion people do not take kindly to any kind of
| disrespect aimed at their prophet.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| You can also look north to Canada where the American
| notion of "free speech" does not apply. There are
| reasonable limits on hate speech, obscenity, defamation
| and the like.
| alex_sf wrote:
| How does Canada define hate speech and obscenity? Both of
| those are categories of speech ripe for 'think of the
| children' authoritarianism.
| zarzavat wrote:
| But who is suggesting that Musk is going to enforce non-
| US laws on Twitter _more_ than it currently does? He
| seems to be for the opposite of that.
| pieter_mj wrote:
| US has by far the most liberal freedom of speech (and I
| consider it very much superior compared to other
| countries' implementation)
|
| Musk's Twitter is certainly going to clash hard with
| Europe's recently adopted Digital Services Act.
| akmarinov wrote:
| They're not? I feel like Twitter is wildly unpopular outside
| the US.
|
| The US has more than 30% of its population on there, the
| third highest- India has about 20 million of its 1 billion+
| people.
| CharlesW wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/countries-most-people-twitter-
| socia...
| akmarinov wrote:
| I was looking at this one -
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-
| active-...
| Someone wrote:
| That supports the claim _"Most people on Twitter are not
| in the US"_.
|
| It says there are 206 million active Twitter users, 77
| million of them in the USA. That's less than half of
| them.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's a significant plurality though and Twitter is most
| exposed to US laws.
| thealfreds wrote:
| Are these active usage numbers? I wonder how many of us
| have created one in the past but never use it. Or what the
| monthly actives are.
|
| Of my family and friends I only know of 2 who use it
| actively though most have an account.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| What would make it more _un_ popular outside the US than
| inside the US?
| akmarinov wrote:
| It just never caught on outside the US like
| Facebook/Instagram did.
|
| From my small Eastern European country - no one I know
| uses Twitter, Reddit is more popular than it. That's
| anecdotal, of course.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| I believe there's a middle ground that doesn't involve the
| forced adoption of a single subjective viewpoint of
| "correctness", while preserving the benefits of moderation to
| whoever desires it. I refer to the following approach as
| "moderation lenses", although it's certainly been thought of
| before under some other name.
|
| "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.
| Miner49er wrote:
| As another commenter pointed out, it actually doesn't matter
| too much what the users want, from a business perspective.
|
| 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.
| drcross wrote:
| > Twitter's true customers are its advertisers.
|
| You're basing your assumption that advertisers will be the
| main source of revenue in the future.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| It's true. However, if toxic users drive out all the non-
| toxic users, will those toxic users pay real money for the
| platform? Will they even remain at all if they can't get
| the reactions they (seem to) thrive on?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > As another commenter pointed out, it actually doesn't
| matter too much what the users want, from a business
| perspective.
|
| Looking back at Tumblr, I'd say that's not a rule.
| Miner49er wrote:
| True, but wasn't the porn ban to appease advertisers to try
| and actually make Tumblr profitable? Of course it probably
| failed, but it seems like it may have been a no-win
| situation.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _As another commenter pointed out, it actually doesn 't
| matter too much what the users want, from a business
| perspective. Twitter's true customers are its advertisers._
|
| Users matter the most because if non-toxic users flee the
| platform, Twitter has no value to advertisers.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Do toxic users not need to buy things?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| What are the ads like on 4chan or truth social?
| shitlord wrote:
| I opened /g/ in incognito mode without an ad blocker, and
| I was actually surprised by the ads. There are no lowest
| common denominator "horny babes near you" ads or viagra
| ads. But there are ads for a crypto lottery, ads for a
| cryptocurrency, ads for a niche forum, etc. These aren't
| that different from the shitcoin ads on Twitter or
| reddit.
|
| Then I opened /wg/ and there were anime porn ads.
| skrbjc wrote:
| On 4chan it's mostly ads for other 4chan boards, lol
| [deleted]
| fundad wrote:
| lots of Sheep drench
| AtreidesTyrant wrote:
| facebook disagrees with you
| dundarious wrote:
| Sketchy pornographic websites do have advertisers, just
| extremely low value ones. Twitter wants to maintain a
| pleasant environment for the medium to high value
| advertisers, because advertisers are its revenue stream,
| and primarily it is not an ideological entity, it is a
| profit seeking one. Ideology is a variable in the equation,
| but it is primarily and significantly bound by profit
| seeking.
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Sketchy pornographic websites do have advertisers,
| just extremely low value ones._
|
| Somehow other websites with copious amounts of
| pornographic content, like twitter and reddit, get a pass
| on this "sketchy" characterization.
| dundarious wrote:
| There are non-sketchy pornographic websites, which is why
| the adjective pairing "sketchy pornographic" is not
| redundant.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _There are non-sketchy pornographic websites_
|
| Maybe, but twitter and reddit are not among them. Both
| are known for hosting very extreme content.
| dundarious wrote:
| I think we're mostly disagreeing on the meaning of
| sketchy, but it has many meanings. I'm using it to mean
| "legally dubious, in the sense of being full of scams,
| blatantly false promises, malware, etc." (I'm also
| ignoring issues around copied/pirated content). I'm sure
| Twitter contains some of the above, but they try to
| minimize/eliminate it.
|
| 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,
| [...]
| citilife wrote:
| That's simply not true. Think of a slightly different model.
|
| > 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.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That only really applies if you believe the advertisers see
| Twitter as a neatly divided entity, but they don't; they'll
| see it as a site that does A, B, C, X, Y and Z, all of the
| above.
|
| 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.
| citilife wrote:
| > if you believe the advertisers see Twitter as a neatly
| divided entity, but they don't
|
| 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.
| phphphphp wrote:
| You're totally naive to how advertising works, just look at
| how quickly advertisers abandoned YouTube following the
| wall street journal reporting.
|
| From an advertiser perspective, if Twitter allows nazis,
| advertisers will be funding the distribution of nazi
| content -- UI framing means nothing.
| citilife wrote:
| Yeah "abandoned" --
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/289657/youtube-
| global-qu...
| phphphphp wrote:
| You're proving the point: following abandonment, YouTube
| took a hard line against the content and advertisers
| returned.
| citilife wrote:
| > just look at how quickly advertisers abandoned YouTube
| following the wall street journal reporting.
|
| 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.
| phphphphp wrote:
| There's lots of evidence around from people reporting
| their YouTube revenue falling 80%+. At the time it was
| colloquially known as the "adpocalypse" so you can find
| lots of evidence associated with that search term.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the users think. The companies
| clearly care what kind of content their ads are placed next
| to.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > Just give advertisers different options.
|
| 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.
| tested23 wrote:
| Twitter literally has hookers and other sex workers on the
| platform. If advertisers really cared about brand safety they
| would have already left.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Advertisers care that the market doesn't primarily see that
| as the point of twitter - i.e. the average user doesn't
| think that Twitter is primarily about that.
| hanselot wrote:
| edgyquant wrote:
| Incorrect, advertisers very much care about brand safety
| this is like saying mathematicians don't care about
| numbers. It's the foundation of the craft
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| halotrope wrote:
| Very curious to see how this plays out. One thing that I would
| love to see is stopping these obnoxious login and "show in app"
| nags. The web would be a better place if the social platforms
| behaved like normal websites with optional login instead of using
| any public surfaces just as a funnel to suck you into their silo.
| Maybe it would have been better if twitter and possibly reddit
| where owned by Wikimedia or Mozilla? Not that they would have had
| the change for that anyways.
| josefresco wrote:
| How long before Trump is allowed back? I'm not joking. Elon has
| said several times his "line" for what is acceptable speech is
| different than what Twitter has now. My guess is it will be timed
| to happen after the "dust settles" but within a few months of the
| US 2022 midterms. This will give Trump enough time to gain
| followers back, and start to use the platform (again) to regain
| power. Thoughts? Anyone else on the shortlist for re-instatement?
| tootie wrote:
| I think it would spur a revolt. Too many users were begging for
| it. This would confirm their worst fears about what Musk wants
| for the platform and take it as a sign to leave. Related note,
| Truth Social (Trump's semi-abandoned competitor) is rumored to
| be merging with Rumble. Rumble being a more established social
| network with Trump-friendly content. Trump going back to
| Twitter would also mean he admits defeat on his attempt to
| defeat it.
| overthemoon wrote:
| Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. Trump is a black hole of
| attention. He warps the discourse around himself. If he's on
| Twitter, people have to go there to find out what he says.
| Moreover, Musk is a bit more immune to public outcry on the
| Trump axis than previous owners, in my opinion. It doesn't
| seem hard to brand it as a triumphant return, and distance
| himself from Truth Social. His fans will happily eat that up,
| the people who hated him will keep hating him, and Musk will
| enjoy making people mad. He's coming back for sure, if only
| because it's going to juice Twitter's numbers.
|
| 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.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm not sure. For one, it's not Musk whose reputation is on
| the line, it's Twitter. Secondly I think their position
| isn't as strong as it seems. They own a few niches but
| don't have nearly the same stickiness that FB/Insta/TikTok
| have right now. Competitors are going to smell blood and
| try to steal their market share the first chance they get.
|
| 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.
| josefresco wrote:
| > 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > Trump going back to Twitter would also mean he admits
| defeat on his attempt to defeat it.
|
| 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.
| hacker_newz wrote:
| Didn't Elon say he wants to get rid of the bots though? I don't
| see how that would work in Trump's favor.
| ABraidotti wrote:
| I welcome this. Twitter is overrun with bots and anonymous
| shitposting. He's either going to make it better or invigorate
| the competition.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Isn't anonymous shitposting kinda the point of Twitter?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Elon already is a big shit poster himself. You think he's gonna
| make this better? I think a lot of people will follow the
| owner's example and make things worse.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Given that bots and anonymous shitposting would both fit the
| ideals of free speech, why would a champion of said free speech
| do anything to make it better?
| tootie wrote:
| In related news, there is a rumor that Truth Social is
| "merging" at some level with Rumble. How Musk's Twitter
| responds to that will be, uh, interesting.
| davesque wrote:
| Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And
| call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who
| has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be
| the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on
| the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my
| concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about
| all this.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I don't mean this as the attack it's going to sound like, but
| your comfort isn't a concern.
|
| 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.
| nailer wrote:
| Pedo guy wasn't a troll. Musk believed that a man of a certain
| age that lives alone in Thailand might be a paedophile and this
| wouldn't be the first example.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It wasn't a troll, that is true. It was an attack. He wasn't
| making a generalized accusation, he levied it at an
| individual. Someone who had been critical of him. The saddest
| part is that he got away with it.
| munk-a wrote:
| He's got money and in theory he can float the existence of
| Twitter in an unprofitable state for a while. The fact that
| he's borrowing so much for the purchase means it's unlikely
| that's how it will actually work but Twitter feels much more
| utility-like than a profitable business. Some rando rich guy
| stepping in to float the bill for a decade or so seems
| reasonable to me.
| hackernewds wrote:
| If Twitter were unmotivated my money and functioned more as a
| utility under the moral compass of Jack, that seems like a
| better outcome than a rich guy who deeply cares about money
| and the stock beholden to capitalistic profit driven
| investors, no?
| munk-a wrote:
| I'm not well versed enough on their influences to really
| comment on their relative moral compasses. I'm more focused
| on the monetization side of things. My understanding is
| that the bot-fury we've got going on on Twitter right now
| is largely a result of a monetization goal being misaligned
| with a usability goal. Removing the question of
| monetization and having it sustained purely and openly as a
| money burning pit seems like a better state.
|
| 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.
| psychlops wrote:
| What qualities does the "right" person have? Is the goal of a
| financial takeover actually finding the right people to run it?
| Are the current people the right people?
| Pxtl wrote:
| > The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind
|
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| Another approach is to look at all the people you admire, and I
| mean ALL of them, and read up on the things they've done, and
| recognize that you either take the good with the bad, or you
| end up alone. Musk was wrong about the "pedo guy" thing. There
| are also stories of him firing people for no reason, to satisfy
| his own petty emotional needs. None of this is okay.
|
| 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.
| davesque wrote:
| This is a great reply actually and does help to make me feel
| better. A lot of history's imperfections become lost in the
| distance.
|
| 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."
| [deleted]
| qwertygnu wrote:
| What's this about Ben Franklin being anti-Semitic? All the
| search results I see are articles dispelling that myth. e.g.
| https://www.jewishboston.com/read/how-benjamin-franklin-
| beca...
| javajosh wrote:
| From that same article:
|
| _> 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.
| autophagian wrote:
| I think it's absolutely fair to ask whether Musk is the right
| person to improve discourse on Twitter given his behaviour on
| the topic in the past, and I don't think this has anything to
| do with not enjoying works made by flawed people. The latter
| is a much broader argument, the former is specifically on
| Musk's behaviour on a specific topic (whether you think he
| did shitty things on that topic or not).
| DodgyEggplant wrote:
| It took years, sometimes centuries, to understand that in some
| industries a take over should get a regulatory approval. Maybe
| a central social media platform with enormous influence on
| public opinions, should be too.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| "Oh he was just joking when he said that"
| la6472 wrote:
| Mr T will be tweeting again!!
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| enjoy the end of democracy, i hope it makes you feel whole.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| You invented a fake mental hurdle that you can't jump over. You
| setup a strawman argument that you yourself can't see past?
|
| 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?
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I like this. We love to frame every news story as a key
| battle in the epic struggle of Good vs Evil.
|
| But sometimes, there is something happening that is just
| random... stuff.
| hackernewds wrote:
| If you're positing Twitter does not influence political power
| and reach, it's hard to accept any other arguments seriously
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Good thing that I didn't do that.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| >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?
|
| 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).
| davesque wrote:
| I think you're taking some of my language too literally. I
| wasn't necessarily claiming that Twitter has some yet to be
| found soul mate in the form of a perfect owner. I was more
| suggesting that someone whose behavior has at times seemed
| erratic and immature might not provide the best leadership
| for a company like Twitter. Especially since, ostensibly,
| their business is all about how people present themselves and
| communicate on the internet.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the
| only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net
| improvement to the world.
|
| 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.
| drnonsense42 wrote:
| This, in a nutshell, is the ivory tower conversation silicon
| valley liberals have been having with themselves for the past
| few years to justify their ever-creeping censorship. 90% of the
| people on the site should not have been banned in the first
| place. Obviously the overwhelming majority of people having
| this conversation at these companies are liberal and it just
| happens to turn out that everyone who needs to be banned is a
| conservative, and we'll throw in a few people like Farrakhan
| who give the democrats bad optics.
| rnk wrote:
| I disagree with your idea, that basically conservatives think
| only they get banned from twitter. I'd describe it as people
| making repeated hate speech, threatening, and/or misleading
| information that leads to death. A liberal example of a
| banned twitter person is Naomi Wolfe, writer of the "Beauty
| Myth". The problem for facebook and twitter and similar
| things is that accelerating inflammatory speech that outrages
| increases people's use of the system. It's really hard for
| them to get a lot of use without just resending the outrage
| of the day.
| fleddr wrote:
| The problem with this binary thinking is that centrists as
| well as moderate progressives and moderate conservatives
| play no role in any of 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.
| [deleted]
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Do you know Elon Musk? I feel like this is the opposite take I
| would expect.
| fleddr wrote:
| I don't. I think this interview gives away a lot about his
| plans, as well as his character:
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_elon_musk_talks_twitter_.
| ..
| tayo42 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is how uninformed internet people think things work. I
| think you'll all be disappointed
| kashkhan wrote:
| wikipedia moderation system works.
| alexfoo wrote:
| [citation needed]
| the_only_law wrote:
| That's a pretty controversial opinion here.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Wikipedia moderation system is hidden by default (meaning:
| you have to hit the history link and wade through a wall of
| technical conversations) and Wikipedia is asymmetric: users
| who create content are a fraction of user that consume
| content. The latter can't get moderated directly. It works
| in the sense that less people have the scope to be caught
| in it and those who do have no in-platform way of
| communicating it to other users, but Wikipedia is more a
| collaborative platform than a social network.
| andrepd wrote:
| Really, what planet do these people live in? Musk has sued
| people he disagrees with, has sued whistleblowers, has sued a
| kid for making a twitter bot. They expect him to be some kind
| of free speech paragon? Fuck me...
| [deleted]
| emteycz wrote:
| > has sued a kid for making a twitter bot
|
| 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.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Tweeting about aircraft N628TS's publicly available ADS-B
| information isn't doxxing.
| emteycz wrote:
| It is doxxing the same way tweeting "Little Billy is
| going to his school now" every time he does so is.
| Doesn't matter you saw Little Billy from your window.
| nawgz wrote:
| This is a false equivalence.
|
| 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.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Yeah, nah. First, that information isn't posted publicly
| and accessible via a public API. Second, it's tracking a
| plane from one airport to another. Not Elon from door to
| door.
| gnulinux wrote:
| No, it is not. It is public information. The only thing
| kid did is tweet information that can be accessed by all
| persons in the US. Do you mind not being stubborn on
| things you don't know about?
| holmesworcester wrote:
| Let's say that in the near future there exists a Google
| Maps API that gives real-time satellite imagery of the
| entire planet. We seem to be headed in this direction.
|
| 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.)
| andrepd wrote:
| We're not talking legal, if we're talking legal he can do
| whatever he wants with twitter, can't he. What I'm saying
| is that this clearly establishes that he doesn't give two
| shits about "free speech" or whatever, as long as he or
| his business concerns are on the receiving end.
| emteycz wrote:
| I don't think even Musk thinks doxxing falls under free
| speech. That would be like saying "I never committed
| fraud, it was free speech" when stealing from someone
| online. Bullshit, not a single free speech absolutist
| thinks that's how it should work, I don't see why Musk
| should.
| gnulinux wrote:
| The information shared was perfectly public, in this case
| there is no such thing as doxxing.
|
| 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.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| But Musk didn't sue them so that's irrelevant.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Doxxing is not generally illegal, though the way wealth
| plays into the legal system makes it impractical for a
| non-rich defendant to assert that against Musk.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| Or maybe you're misinformed about his free speech claims.
|
| 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"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Or maybe you're misinformed about his free speech
| claims.
|
| 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.
| yes_i_can wrote:
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Actually I can.
|
| Sure, in the normal sense of the phrase. But the argument
| for Musk at Twitter about "free speech" relies on a
| different definition:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31161156
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Doxxing isn't illegal. Assuming the kid had enough money
| to fight Musk in court, he'd run up the score on Elon and
| his entire legal team.
| emteycz wrote:
| Well that's a problem for sure, good thing Musk has more
| money then.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| He also never doxxed Musk, given that all the airline
| data is freely available online and Musk is a public
| figure.
| monkeywork wrote:
| What is the threshold for someone to become a"public
| figure" and lose the right to basic privacy?
| aserdf wrote:
| > has sued a kid for making a twitter bot
|
| the @elonjet account?
| belter wrote:
| He is going to allow back the rule on calling pedo guy to
| divers saving kids...
| talideon wrote:
| It's _really_ easy to disempower extremists.
|
| (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.
| aftbit wrote:
| (f) Allow people to easily get read-only API access for their
| own clients, and make the firehose more accessible
| fleddr wrote:
| I like your thinking, this is the correct direction. As
| cherry on top I'd remove the retweet button entirely or
| severely rate-limit it.
|
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| (a) Require login
|
| (b) Present each person with the fake reality that is least
| likely to offend them
| mFixman wrote:
| (b) sounds like the kind of thing The Guardian claims
| radicalised people and got Trump elected.
| talideon wrote:
| (a) Requiring login would reduce what little utility
| Twitter has.
|
| (b) That's impossible, but a linear timeline with people
| who I actually know comes close.
| tyingq wrote:
| It was somewhat tongue in cheek, but roughly what
| Facebook seems to be doing.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Add a downvote button so the rabid folks of either extreme
| will downvote each other into oblivion.
| talideon wrote:
| No, because voting in the form of likes and retweets are
| part of the problem.
| fleddr wrote:
| Downvoting is to desperately needed that Twitter users
| invented their own way: a ratio. To those that don't know,
| an unpopular tweet will have many more comments than likes,
| which is considered downvoting.
| Graffur wrote:
| Thanks for explaining. I always thought it was that a
| reply to the comment got more likes than the main
| comment.
| skulk wrote:
| It's also that. In general, getting "ratiod" is when two
| metrics about any given online posting have a ratio that
| is on the (perceived) wrong side of 1.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Add a downvote button so the rabid folks of either
| extreme will downvote each other into oblivion.
|
| 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.
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| Works pretty well on Reddit.
|
| 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?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I predict Elon changes nothing but letting people like Trump
| and Thomas back on there, otherwise he won't interfere much. He
| might step in occassionally but he'll mostly be a silent
| partner. He just didn't want his tweets blocked because that is
| rough on his ego.
| ROARosen wrote:
| I think Musk might just make it public again, or turn it into a
| nonprofit.
|
| 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.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| I am also optimistic before of these 3 D's.
|
| 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!
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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).
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I think allowing both extremes makes it clearer where
| precisely the center is located. Look at it this way -
|
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> 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 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 non-responsive.
|
| 2) I think you're likely basing your reasoning on false
| assumptions about the distribution.
| narrator wrote:
| What's funny is that the people who are threatening to leave
| for other platforms don't understand what an enormous amount of
| engineering effort it is to build AI at scale to control
| wrongthink. They think it's something that the platform owner
| turns up and down like a thermostat.
| ouid wrote:
| I don't think people threatening to leave are doing so out of
| a desire to exist in a more censored world, just one in which
| the censorship isn't controlled by Elon.
| fleddr wrote:
| Further, they have no other platform to go to.
|
| 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.
| version_five wrote:
| I don't see how Twitter can be changed away from what it is and
| still be a place people are interested in going to.
|
| 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.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways.
|
| 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?
| fleddr wrote:
| Twitter being toxic is one flaw that would be very
| complicated to address, but I'm talking about flaws at the
| feature level.
|
| 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.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Thanks for answering directly. I agree that Twitter's UI is
| not great for contextual reading (and therefore
| discussion), but I wonder if it might result in a greater
| diversity of content when browsing? A "better" UI might
| lead people down more rabbit holes and echo chambers.
|
| 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.
| mikeryan wrote:
| My take on all these "fixes" for a "broken" Twitter is that
| pretty much everyone has a point of view of what is broken
| _to them_ and frequently the fixes for solving them are
| contradictory. A lot of Twitter's bugs for some set people
| are features for another.
|
| 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.
| glenstein wrote:
| >My take on all these "fixes" for a "broken" Twitter is
| that pretty much everyone has a point of view of what is
| broken to them and frequently the fixes for solving them
| are contradictory.
|
| 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.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| The problem with Twitter (and Elon, this one is free) is
| that Tik Tok exists.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| The things I mentioned in my comment above seem pretty
| neutral to me, benefiting all users when fixed.
| itronitron wrote:
| Twitter should charge every account a monthly fee based on the
| number of followers they have, unless they have fewer than 100
| (or some other n) followers.
| fleddr wrote:
| So buying influence, not sold on this idea.
| water-your-self wrote:
| This just looks like a bezos acquisition of Washington Post but
| more modern if you ask me. Given sentiment from subordinates
| and Elon's affinity for doing drugs with pop stars i don't
| expect his ownership of twitter to be anything other than
| abusive at best.
| monkeywork wrote:
| Honestly what diff if he does drugs with pop stars, How does
| that neg impact his contribution over someone else?
| farias0 wrote:
| I for one am very sympathetic towards Elon Musk. I know there
| are dozens of ways to problematize him, and I'm not being
| dismissive towards them, but unlike most billionaires I think
| he's ultimately a well intentioned idealistic at his core,
| and most of his projects seem to come from a place of trying
| to make a positive difference in the world (electric cars,
| space exploration, alleviating urban hell, human
| augmentation, now free speech). So, I believe he has the
| means, the will and the competence to make a difference. If
| billionaires will keep existing this is the kind I want to
| see more of.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm thinking Twitter is in dire need for a little of his
| "abuse". It's a dysfunctional company, product and community.
|
| 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.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| It's really hard explaining to people how the brain of an
| autistic person works. Most people are quite happy to
| accommodate the special needs of a person with one leg. But
| you show them a person whose disability means they don't
| comply with your social rituals and have an abrasive
| personality and suddenly it's time to moralize.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Elon Musk is a personality that gets full credit for all
| successes he participates in and receives little criticism
| for the things he fails at. Like the time he pledged $6B to
| the EU to solve world hunger but then fell off the face of
| the Earth when it came time to collect.
|
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| I feel silly to have to defend him again, but you
| misrepresented what happened. Grossly.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| strulovich wrote:
| Bezos paid $250M for WaPo, for an old fashioned thing.
|
| Musk is paying $44B, 176 times more.
|
| Seems different.
| chasd00 wrote:
| hopefully not being beholden to wallst as a public company
| opens up options that may be good for the twitter community but
| would not be so great for the stock price. Instead of an
| increasing stock price driving every LOC written maybe making
| twitter a better place will drive where effort is spent.
|
| / lots of "hopefully" and "maybe" in the above
| op00to wrote:
| I am looking forward to stop using Twitter myself, but there
| are so many communities not related to politics and social
| division on there. Amateur Radio is a big one that I'll miss.
| type0 wrote:
| Someone tell me if it's true but it seems Twitter is becoming
| more and more like Google+ in certain areas?!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B
| wrycoder wrote:
| Why not just stick to that part, then?
| brewdad wrote:
| Because, at least in its current form, it becomes
| inevitable that the ugly stuff leaks in.
| notabee wrote:
| It might empty out if that happens and be the end of it, but I
| know that the prospect of a forum for discussion that isn't
| constantly trying to poke the outrage center of my brain sounds
| very appealing and I think that would be the case for many
| people. What would be even more magical would be a complete
| outing of all the dark PR that's going on. Flip over and show
| the filthy astroturfing underbelly of so much of the internet
| these days. That's probably not going to happen in the way that
| I wish but I'll still hope for it.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >but I know that the prospect of a forum for discussion that
| isn't constantly trying to poke the outrage center of my
| brain sounds very appealing and I think that would be the
| case for many people
|
| I would be utterly shocked if he adjusted it from this path.
| Hell he personally revels in stirring the pot on twitter.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Would be cool to do a deep analysis of all of the dark PR and
| astroturfing, then once they have solid data, make all the
| data about it public. Expose who is paying for shills and
| what the shills are saying.
|
| Could be a wikileaks-level society shaking revelation.
| fleddr wrote:
| Same. The dynamic that not everybody understands is that harm
| in social media is not about people saying toxic or extreme
| things. They'll continue to do so.
|
| 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.
| therouwboat wrote:
| How do you reject crazy people without them thinking they
| are being censored? If their bot followers are removed and
| nobody sees their posts, isnt it just the same as if they
| were banned?
| fleddr wrote:
| To be perfectly honest, I hope that happens. Even better
| is if they leave.
| giarc wrote:
| Honest question, why can Elon, and only Elon solve the bot
| problem? Software devs have been trying to solve this problem
| since the beginning of the internet and yet bots still fill every
| space on the web.
| [deleted]
| comboy wrote:
| I don't think that he and only he can solve the bot problem,
| but with question stated this way - Tesla may currently have
| the best machine learning hardware on the planet. With people
| reports + second wave of hired people for marking what is spam
| and what is not, this seems like a fantastic place to shine for
| ML - especially when you have all accounts data and full graph
| available.
|
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Tesla isn't Stark or Wayne Enterprises. You know that?
| comboy wrote:
| Yes. But they have Dojo.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Someone might've said, how is Elon going to make space flight
| far more affordable?
|
| 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.
| twox2 wrote:
| I don't really think they are trying to solve this problem as
| much as being reactive to complaints.
| RaymondDeWitt wrote:
| Because it's almost impossible to differentiate between a
| person posting a tweet and a bot doing the same. There is
| nothing humans do on Twitter than bots cannot automate.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| If this were truly the case, then bots wouldn't be a problem!
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| zenron wrote:
| If Twitter wanted to solve the problem they would have. Simple
| as that. Elon is the one who is putting his money where his
| mouth is to get the company to tackle the issues plaguing the
| company.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| The problem is not a software issue others can't solve but
| Elon's team. It's a cultural issue that the current Twitter
| team accepted in their comfort zone because it fits their bias
| (that does not defend freedom of speech).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Honest question, why can Elon, and only Elon solve the bot
| problem?
|
| He can't and he is unlikely to want to.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| The only software devs that in a reasonable position to solve
| the problem work at large social media companies, and those
| companies are financially incentivized to not solve the
| problem. I don't think this is a software capability issue.
| soabeb wrote:
| No, they haven't been trying to solve the problem. They want
| the bots on there for financial and political reasons. It is
| easy to solve the problem - require identification to use the
| site. I mentioned the advantages of social media doing this
| about 10 years ago and was downvoted on this very website
| because of "privacy and anonymity on the internet is great!".
| comboy wrote:
| Privacy and anonymity are great and it doesn't even solve the
| problem until your ID is associated with some form of public
| key in every country.
|
| Why is this comment not signed with your full name?
|
| How do you feel about inevitable leaks and your identity
| being stolen?
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I do think that would work but I think twitter probably could
| detect bot actions if they wanted to in a more nuanced way.
| Swarms of new accounts making similar comments has to be
| detectable on their end.
| interblag wrote:
| Just to note, there are _many_ reasons to not want to
| "require identification to use the site" that aren't related
| to "[wanting] bots on there". Cost, friction,
| safety/protection, etc. - the list gets quite long with a
| trivial brainstorm.
|
| 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".
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| TikTok does a pretty good job with its ridiculous security
| ecosystem hyperfocused on prohibiting any third-party clients.
|
| APIs need to use actual headless browsers in order to generate
| the appropriate signature.[1]
|
| Maybe some of that 43B can go towards a similar system 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/davidteather/TikTok-Api
| kmeisthax wrote:
| This makes automated posting difficult, but not sock-
| puppeting. When people say "bots", they probably don't mean
| automated posting, they mean creating lots of accounts to
| swarm other users with. You don't need much automation to do
| this; a device farm of old phones and some ability to remote-
| control each one would be enough to maintain hundreds to
| thousands of sock-puppets.
| andai wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder if VMs would also work for this
| purpose?
| golergka wrote:
| $1 per hour manual labour would be cheaper more effective
| than updating scripts against a determined adversary.
| djbusby wrote:
| Android in a VM.
| karatinversion wrote:
| The 43B goes to Twitter's shareholders in exchange for their
| shares (and financiers who arrange the deal), not Twitter
| itself.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| Very true, that's my bad.
|
| Hopefully the rise in valuation, and Elon's involvement,
| can bring in some more money for the company itself for
| these kinds of endeavors.
| Sol- wrote:
| On the contrary, Twitter is going to be saddled with some
| debt that will be used to finance the takeover. But perhaps
| this doesn't matter to Musk.
| makeworld wrote:
| Notably yt-dlp is able to extract from TikTok well, without
| using a headless browser.
|
| https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-
| dlp/blob/master/yt_dlp/extracto...
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| He has experience with it but he's not the only one. I'm sure
| Max Levchin would be very capable of putting together a team
| and fighting off the bots.
|
| 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.
| cguess wrote:
| What experience does he have with it? He's a capitalist, not
| a sociologist, programmer or even economist.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I don't know if you're talking about levchin or Elon but
| please do a google search before throwing around communist
| propaganda that is blatantly untrue. For both people.
| cguess wrote:
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Musk was CEO of PayPal and definitely has a deep background
| in programming. He made his initial fortune through writing
| video games and then another software startup called Zip2
| (a forerunner of Map Quest and Google Maps).
|
| Levchin was PayPal's CTO and is also deeply technical.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I thought Musk was fired from both paypal and Zip2 for
| incompetence? Not something to brag about.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| If you're genuinely interested in the history, Jimmy
| Soni's new book, _The Founders_ , is a great starting
| point.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I thought he made his initial fortune by being the son of
| the owner of an emerald mine in Zambia[0]
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www
| .forbes...
| all2 wrote:
| What's wrong with being a capitalist?
| cguess wrote:
| Politics aside it gives him no expertise in moderation
| queue management?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| If skills worked like official titles and acquiring one
| meant losing another, this would be a serious problem.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| bengale wrote:
| It also seems an odd thing for him to be solving since a lot of
| the marketing noise for his companies is bot driven. Perhaps
| he's more interested in "solving" the problem in specific ways.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-of...
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| > Honest question, why can Elon, and only Elon solve the bot
| problem?
|
| 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%.
| dstroot wrote:
| This nailed it. Public companies have to "grow" and if growth
| is bot-driven then combating it is not goin to happen. By
| taking the company private Elon could (in theory) throw out
| MAU metrics, engagement metrics, etc.
|
| 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.
| chaostheory wrote:
| If Elon makes it subscription based in addition to being
| private, I'm confident that the bot problem will be solved.
|
| Publicly traded companies are too often affected by short
| sighted investors.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Doesn't advertising revenue require the same metric to be
| high? Assuming he wants to make money or just be self-
| sufficient, not operate at too much of a loss.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| If you can improve the general signal/noise ratio I think
| that'd be big for advertisers. I think it's one of snap's
| strengths actually.
| brightball wrote:
| Everything I've read says he's taking it private. Yes.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I worked for a social media management app company
| (Sprinklr/Hootsuite/Sprout-esque) and we had the exact same
| problem. My ballpark estimate is that at least 90% of the
| messages that went through our system were extremely obvious
| spam or scams. However, there was a huge focus on MAU growth,
| so there was no way in hell we were going to attempt to
| combat this.
|
| 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.
| ilaksh wrote:
| The core problem them was a lack of integrity on the part
| of the executives. Which I am not saying they were
| especially unethical. Lack of integrity is very common in
| executives. But still, that is the root cause there.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Did you try to introduce a new measure "MAU excluding
| bots"? Then over time the company could refocus around that
| and better policies be made
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| That seems like a good idea, but I suspect introducing a
| "MAU excluding bots" metric would look to investors like
| a sudden drop in MAU by 90%.
| mc32 wrote:
| It would seem reasonable for large investors, -those who
| have influence on a company, to require MAU excluding
| bots figures as part of their due diligence. On the other
| hand: FOMO, guess.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| The only economic actor directly hurt by bots is the
| advertiser, right? To some degree, it's against
| investors' incentives to attempt to strictly exclude
| bots.
|
| 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".
| ridaj wrote:
| Then more bots come in undetected and you have to rebase
| again when you find them. It's a continuous process. You
| need very understanding investors to pull this off. At
| the same time there's only so long you can sweep
| inauthentic engagement under the rug until someone calls
| you out for it.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I wasn't nearly senior enough to have any influence in
| something like that, but in the internal culture, MAU was
| seen as such a strong proxy for success that suggesting
| the metric was flawed would have been sacrilege. The
| company had big parties and put out press releases every
| time a multiple of 1 million MAU was hit. To point out
| that most of those users were bots abusing our service's
| free tier would be noticing the emperor had no clothes
| on.
| akudha wrote:
| I don't understand why investors don't ask for numbers
| that exclude bots. Or maybe they do, and we just don't
| hear about it? This isn't some unknown problem, right?
| Bots have been around forever and they are a problem in
| many platforms, not just Twitter-like platforms.
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31154051. We detached it
| to prune the thread, which was getting too top-heavy.)
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| the bot problem can be solved if there's political will. Elon's
| power isn't being the guy who solves the problem (though he is
| pretty good at tackling technical issues directly), Its
| creating the political will to solve problems other people find
| intractable and clearing a path and providing resources for
| smart people to solve it.
|
| frankly I'm jelous and wish I could do that.
| bezospen15 wrote:
| Lol Elon has no interest in solving a bot problems. Elon wants
| to allow the alt right back in Twitter after they've been
| banned and failed to start a rival competition.
|
| This is the official death of Twitter.
| antattack wrote:
| I can think of couple of reasons:
|
| 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
| ehnto wrote:
| Genuine curiosity, what would someone have a bot post for
| them that they wouldn't post for themselves? I can think of
| edge cases, and genuinely good use cases, but what is the
| general purpose use you're thinking of that would see
| everyone use one?
| antattack wrote:
| Some wars for public opinion, are lost and won on social
| media.
|
| 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.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious as to why you think the bot would
| be posting "faster" to someone's opinion or statement
| than a person who can read the statement and respond as
| fast as they can type..
|
| 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
| Chico75 wrote:
| Why would you want to have a bot post for you? Once we have
| general AI available, there will be much better applications
| than posting for you on social networks.
| JoshCole wrote:
| He isn't the only one who can solve the bot problem.
| tomp wrote:
| Elon has the ability (and motivation) to look beyond next
| quarter. Bots increase "monthly active users" metric, so short-
| term thinking management likes them.
|
| Elon can afford to think long-term.
| giarc wrote:
| Twitters stock price has been flat since IPO... I think the
| board and shareholders have been ok with them thinking long-
| term seeing as how they have 0 returns.
| EricE wrote:
| The board barely owns any stock, and all collect a pretty
| healthy salary for basically doing nothing. I think I saw
| Elon tweet eliminating the board would save $3M a year and
| looking at the chart of board members and their payments it
| seems about right.
|
| Judging by their past actions they were far more interested
| in using Twitter as a propaganda platform than worrying
| about it making money.
| harambae wrote:
| The prevailing opinion on HN seems to be that it can't be
| solved. Of course, less than a week ago the prevailing opinion
| on HN was that Elon wasn't serious about buying Twitter, and
| didn't have the money, and it was all fake and part of a pump-
| and-dump
|
| Just see the top comments here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31109355
| kansface wrote:
| Part of the answer has to be that companies don't want to solve
| it because it would destroy metrics that buoy ad prices. Charge
| per tweet or per account and the problem would be gone
| overnight.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| If you talk about social bots influencing opinions that's a
| problem that doesn't seem to exist, or at least gets vastly
| exaggerated. Here's an interesting paper from a German scholar
| who investigated this and wasn't able to reproduce any of the
| findings of other research in that area.
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Most large companies have trouble breaking out of a local
| maximum. The incentives align to just keep climbing the
| gradient and never go down.
|
| 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.
| max599 wrote:
| Twitter is not "trying to solve this problem", they are
| embracing it and benefiting from it. They are strongly
| incentivised to keep the bots because it gives them a massive
| boost in their number of active users and the valuation of
| their company.
|
| 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.
| verisimi wrote:
| And not just twitter!
|
| Surely the biggest outgoing for marketing departments is
| paying for 'active users'.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Are you suggesting fraud? If not what? (I also suspect many
| MAU numbers are fraudulent)
|
| Edit: spelling
| te_chris wrote:
| Elon isn't paying for this out of his own pocket. He's not
| transferring it to some perpetual trust a la the Guardian and
| the Scott Trust. He's taking it private but there will still
| be pressure from everyone he's raised money from to make sure
| they make good.
|
| 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.
| strainer wrote:
| > "Moar free speech lmao" doesn't sound measureable
|
| Did you just make up a ridiculous quotation and then
| attribute the sound of it to Musk ?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| "one of the most expensive acts of individual hubris in
| history" is what people have been saying about everything
| Elon does for a while now.
| dhc02 wrote:
| The money he's secured is mostly loans, not venture
| capital, so that sort of pressure to grow or pad numbers
| should indeed be diminished.
| randcraw wrote:
| Bloomberg mentioned two loans to cover the shortfall in
| his equity swap (one external and one drawn on his Tesla
| stock), with annual interest payments in the ballpark of
| $1B each. So Twitter's take home pay just lost $2B of the
| $4B it nets annually. Losing further market share by re-
| engineering retweet algorithms to be kinder/gentler looks
| like a better bet to bury Twitter than raise it.
|
| But mature media giants are supposed to lose money,
| right?
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| I don't think that the biggest benefits that Musk is bringing
| are technical ones, although he can surely afford to mobilize
| a lot of technical power, but policy ideas. Twitter will be
| run differently, become less toxic, and hopefully in addition
| to that game-changing attitude the bot problem can be
| addressed as well. I don't see how it can get worse, but
| there's a lot of potential for it to get better. Who knows? I
| might actually start using it.
| nindalf wrote:
| Overnight it'll become less toxic because he'll "run it
| differently"? I'm skeptical.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Twitter will be run differently, become less toxic, and
| hopefully in addition to that game-changing attitude the
| bot problem can be addressed as well. I don't see how it
| can get worse, but there's a lot of potential for it to get
| better.
|
| 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.)
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > surely afford to mobilize a lot of technical power
|
| How do you reckon he'll do that?
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I think one of his strongest skills is recruiting young
| engineers who are ready to work harder for him than they
| should for less pay than they could get elsewhere.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| My amateur opinion is that it's not very difficult but it hurts
| subscriber count, clicks, engagement metrics etc. If he takes
| Twitter private there will be incentive to fix this because
| there won't be shareholders to please.
|
| 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!
| evandale wrote:
| >why can Elon, and only Elon solve the bot problem
|
| To me it seems that he's the only one who wants to.
| EricE wrote:
| Bingo. Google and everyone else makes money on volume, not
| quality of content. They don't care if the majority of the
| volume of content is garbage as long as they get their
| clicks/impressions on ads.
| matthew40 wrote:
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Reposting this because unsure why it was flagged, as it is
| perfectly valid and based in objective reality:
|
| They (twitter) remove a lot of volume because it doesn't
| fit with their political narrative, even though this is
| financially detrimental to them.
| jfk13 wrote:
| What's "a lot" of volume in the context of this claim? Do
| you have a source for the proportion of would-be active
| tweeters they block, or proportion of tweets they take
| down, or anything like that?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| In this case you don't even need a source. You just need
| to have your head out of the sand, but outside of that,
| you can look at all the users who have left the platform
| or became entirely inactive after Donald Trump was
| banned, then look at the surge of users the alternative
| Twitter platforms gained, and pretty much make a safe
| assumption they lost _at least_ that. You can also take a
| look at Twitter 's stock price in Jan 2021, where it was
| close to 77 dollars, and rising at the time, and compare
| it to the pre-Elon hype price of 39 dollars, with Goldman
| rating it as being closer to 30 dollars in true value.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > you can look at all the users who have left the
| platform or became entirely inactive after Donald Trump
| was banned, then look at the surge of users the
| alternative Twitter platforms gained
|
| 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.
| nailer wrote:
| Donald trump had a large amount of followers and did not
| threaten violence beyond his role as us commander in
| chief, much like his predecessors and successors have.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Trump was prompinent on twitter and violated their TOS
| for years. He was banned on Jan. 8th. If Twitter were
| protecting some political narrative, it wasn't reflected
| in their ban.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| I find the violating TOS argument for why Trump was
| banned flawed because the TOS allows for very vague
| interpretation. For example the tweets that supposedly
| got him banned said something to the line of "fight for
| democracy" and that was interpreted as encouraging actual
| fighting and the illegal activities on January 6th. It
| also ignores the fact that he said along the lines of "we
| need to go and march peacefully, don't cause problems,
| that's exactly what they want" and as everything was
| happening was tweeting that everyone needed to respect
| police, be peaceful and go home. Good luck even finding
| the tweets from January 6th because only a couple outlets
| even reported what they were, only that they violated TOS
| which is also very suspicious. Edit: typos/grammar.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This argument holds zero water. You have Iranian
| officials openly calling for revolution, Chinese foreign
| officials spreading literal propaganda, and Saudis
| calling for actual executions, which I would think also
| consistently violate their TOS, and yet have seen no
| similar measures taken against their accounts.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| That only demonstrates lax enforcement, not that Twitters
| mission is pushing politics in lieu of money and active
| users. Trumps politics haven't changed since he started
| his right-wing schtick.
| nailer wrote:
| It does seem odd that the example of enforcement is a
| very interpretative reading of a center right view, and
| the examples of non enforcement are every other direct
| call to violence.
| [deleted]
| dqpb wrote:
| Meta answer: the ultimate point of money is that it gives you
| the opportunity to make decisions without convincing everyone
| that you deserve to make decisions.
| emteycz wrote:
| Because he has money and so can easily make everyone listen to
| him, unlike most other programmers who are stuck behind
| business/product/finance/management guys.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Taking Twitter private will give him more flexibility to
| implement structural changes to the business which may take
| time to see returns.
| gmadsen wrote:
| because its not a technical problem. its a political problem
| dd36 wrote:
| He wants to charge for a checkmark. This both increases the
| cost of bots and is a form of authentication. It's much easier
| to compare payment methods between accounts.
| malfist wrote:
| How does charging for a checkmark prevent bots? Forgive me if
| I'm wrong, I'm not a twitter user, but typically, aren't bots
| not verified?
| rdtwo wrote:
| Send them a 2fa key token with their fee and call it a day
| DrBoring wrote:
| Once upon a time, I was on a dev team which had to share
| an RSA 2FA token for accessing a client's VPN. Rather
| than pass it around to whoever needed it, we just pointed
| a webcam at it.
| dd36 wrote:
| The idea is that you can filter out the unpaid.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I still don't underatand why paying would help. Wouldn't
| simply filtering out the unverified work the same way?
| dd36 wrote:
| Paying verifies.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Obviously, but verification already exists. For your
| answer to make sense, one needs to assume that there's a
| non-trivial problem of verified bot accounts.
|
| Is that assumption correct? It seems incredibly wrong to
| me, but I may be misinformed.
| dd36 wrote:
| Verification only exists for a small group not the
| general public.
| XorNot wrote:
| How many accounts are needed to meaningfully influence a
| Twitter story? How much can you charge for a checkmark
| that people will pay for?
|
| 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.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| What if it cost $2 a month plus a scanned copy of a
| government-issued ID?
| nindalf wrote:
| It's possible to generate realistic looking IDs. It's not
| that hard, any person reading this comment can do it.
|
| 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"
| sangnoir wrote:
| Governments can generate IDs for thier sock-puppets for
| online influence campaigns.
|
| 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"
| Jensson wrote:
| Now you are committing extremely serious crimes instead
| of just spamming though, few would risk that. So this
| might not solve all spam, but it would probably solve
| 99.9% of it.
|
| > 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?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Now you are committing extremely serious crimes instead
| of just spamming though, few would risk that.
|
| 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.
| lrae wrote:
| They aren't. There are sometimes hacked verified accounts
| being abused, and I guess charging for the checkmark would
| result in less verified accounts and thus less hacked
| accounts... but bit of a reach :)
|
| Those are also not really the problem.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| 1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up video
| cards, PlayStations, etc.
|
| 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.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| 1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up
| video cards, PlayStations, etc.
|
| 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.
| dd36 wrote:
| I agree with dannyw. Also, Twitter influencing requires
| scale. You can fake some but patterns will emerge that make
| it harder and harder.
|
| 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.
| dannyw wrote:
| Retailers didn't really care. A sale is a sale, and
| scalpers are less likely to return or ask for a refund.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| They care a little, because establishing relationships
| with (and gathering data on) real customers is more
| valuable than having single entities hoovering up all the
| supply. Further, real people often buy more than one
| item. I'm sure you've noticed retailers putting limits on
| specific items before.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > Further, real people often buy more than one item.
|
| But... scalpers do this, especially so. As far as a
| retailer is concerned, a scalper is every bit as 'real'
| as any other customer.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _He wants to charge for a checkmark. This both increases
| the cost of bots and is a form of authentication. It's much
| easier to compare payment methods between accounts._
|
| 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.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Go follow all the big crypto/NFT accounts on a fresh
| twitter account. You'll be able to see all of the _easily_
| solved bot abuse.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I've often thought that if they 1) allow anyone to verify
| their account and 2) let verified accounts choose to only
| (or mainly) interact with other verified accounts, it can
| make it more obvious which accounts are anonymous or bots.
| I think it should work unless/until the anonymous and bot
| accounts figure out how to break the KYC process.
| dd36 wrote:
| Right. It's like removing spam.
|
| 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.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I remember reading an article where the CEO of Myspace
| said one of the main reasons Facebook won was because of
| its real name policy.
|
| <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.
| dd36 wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks!
| lrae wrote:
| > 2) let verified accounts choose to only (or mainly)
| interact with other verified accounts
|
| 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.
| briandear wrote:
| Yes. But the opacity on how to get verified is
| ridiculous. And Twitter has used revoking a blue check
| mark as a punishment. As if the person that was once
| verified is no longer verified. It's ridiculous.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yeah, it has confused me that it's easier to verify one's
| humanity on dating apps than it is on Twitter.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think the challenge is "verified" = celebrity, or
| verified fame, and really I want it to equal verified
| humanity. Maybe that means the verified humanity gets a
| different name, who knows. There could be two tiers,
| allowing the verified famous people to interact with each
| other and others to just know who went through the KYC
| process.
| dd36 wrote:
| Hence different color. I also don't agree. I think most
| blue checkmarks equally hate the spam and anonymous hate.
| In a public square, we can tell you're a robot or if
| you're not and say vile things, you're unlikely to stay
| anonymous.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yes, I'm all for adding layers of social friction, or
| frankly, reducing the emotional distance. I remember
| reading a book, I think called On Killing, talking about
| the psychology of war and violence. In it, he mentioned
| how it gets easier to kill from a larger emotional
| distance. Or in other words, it can be harder and harder
| to harm someone the closer we feel to them. Being able to
| put on a digital mask and act as a persona can lead to
| this (it can also lead to opening up more, too), but I at
| least want to know if someone is wearing a mask or not.
| dd36 wrote:
| Elon said this. I don't know what anyone else is saying.
|
| He must think it will work?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I find this to be a great idea personally. I will totally
| give Twitter a few bucks a month for less bot BS and a blue
| checkmark.
| neurobot123 wrote:
| Yep, as long as they restore Trump and BabylonBee i might
| give Twitter another try
| sangnoir wrote:
| ...and your government ID?
| dymk wrote:
| You give the grocery store your government ID when you
| buy oreos?
| pueblito wrote:
| Well there are the cameras in the parking lot logging my
| license plate, facial recognition tracking my course
| through the store on the way to get the cookies and to
| pay for them, probably at a self-checkout terminal with a
| camera right in your face. Then you pay for it with your
| Visa and that Oreo (automatically capitalized by my
| iPhone) purchase data is sold by Visa. Then that data
| gets consolidated with the data secured from Verizon and
| their Custom Experience badged reading of your text
| messages.
|
| Then THAT gets sold to the Depts of Defense, Homeland
| Security, and whoever else wants.
|
| I feel it's fair to say we do.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| huh?
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| Damn, now it'll be even more of a good idea to immediately
| block every bluecheck.
| XorNot wrote:
| Who is going to pay? There's at most a few tens of thousands
| of people who care about their identity being verified on
| Twitter (because they're journalists, company leaders,
| politicians). How much is Twitter worth to those people?
| Probably not $10,000 per year, so we're talking about a
| _very_ limited additional revenue source.
|
| For _a lot_ of other people on Twitter, the pseudo-anonymity
| is a feature not a bug.
| dd36 wrote:
| WhatsApp charged a few dollars a year and did fine.
|
| 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.
| qwytw wrote:
| Twitter has over 7000 employees, for WhatsApp's business
| model to work they'd need to cut this by 10x or so and
| there is no way they justify the 45 billion valuation if
| they do that.
| dd36 wrote:
| Huh? I'm not following. Why would this hurt revenue?
|
| Authenticated real people are more valuable to
| advertisers.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| Did WhatsApp have Ads? I thought all their income was
| from subscriptions?
|
| If it's only for verification they, yeah, they might be
| fine as long as the verification fee is optional.
| dd36 wrote:
| I do not believe they are literally applying the WhatsApp
| model. The point was that small amounts of money are
| tolerable in a network effect.
| Bud wrote:
| Remember for a moment that we live in a world where people
| drop $20 for a virtual Sword of Wounding +4. Often more
| than monthly in a single game.
|
| A few bucks a month is nothing these days for dedicated
| netizens who want their social drug of choice.
| lawn wrote:
| In the same way that Elon, and only Elon, can solve self
| driving.
| sytelus wrote:
| I would wish Musk would just focus on Tesla and SpaceX and not
| throw himself in this snake pit. There is so much to do at Tesla
| (primarily cheaper EVs, FSD and 10X more super chargers). There
| is even more to do at SpaceX. Twitter is political issue and
| cannot be solved using tech or features. If one is not good at
| politics, they should stay out of it. We don't have replacement
| for Musk if he gets burned in this little adventure and there is
| a lot at stack for humanity.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Lol, you make it sounds like we're about to lose Einstein due
| to overwork. Musk is an opportunistic man-baby, not the second
| coming, let him burn out...
| oxplot wrote:
| > Lol, you make it sounds like we're about to lose Einstein
| due to overwork.
|
| 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.
| asd88 wrote:
| They are probably TSLA shareholders. Otherwise, who cares?
| sytelus wrote:
| If Musk dies tomorrow, I don't see anyone else leading up
| charge for all the progress in space exploration. No one is
| gutsy enough to go after Mars landing as much as Musk. I
| would fear that Mars mission will die out if Musk goes away
| and we won't see it happening in our life time. All the EV
| race is also purely due to Tesla lead. No car manufacturer
| wanted this change and they are all now getting dragged into
| it. If Musk dies and Tesla goes stagnant, I can bet car
| manufactured will return to same-old same-old in no time.
|
| 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".
| Zanneth wrote:
| He is a big source of inspiration for a lot of people,
| especially those in the science and tech industries. Not just
| anyone can build multiple successful companies, let alone
| ones that work on hugely ambitious problems.
| sfmike wrote:
| i'm skeptical. we can't see the future, but if Denial Of Service
| has happened with Tesla Cars that same power dynamic could be
| applied to Twitter.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce
| a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all
| users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-
| verified accounts in their feeds)
|
| 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.
| JimmaDaRustla wrote:
| I've been conceptualizing an open and decentralized identity
| system that would be based on the person's enrolment within
| organizations. Each organization participating in the identity
| system would provision something like an OAuth token to its'
| users for the duration of their memberships. These
| organizations could be employers, volunteer groups, schools,
| etc. Third-parties could then leverage a user's collection of
| tokens as a "strength" of identity and build that into their
| platform.
|
| 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.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Wouldn't that make it simpler to group people within certain
| organizations they use to verify.."two same strings creating
| the same hash value"? suddenly everyone who goes to the same
| school is grouped and being able to isolate someone because
| more and more trivial, as well as target certain groups.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Nope. There is another way!
|
| 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.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Do you know how many Aadhar verifications I can buy for a
| dollar each here in India? Not a billion but it's still a lot.
| Just saying.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| speaking remotely related to the topic, do you know of any
| good Aadhar verification service (not providers, I do not
| need Aadhar verifications) - All I need is a way for my users
| to verify themselves (KYC), preferably via Aadhar.
|
| Searched a lot but either I Am doing them wrong or unable to
| locate the exact thing I am looking for.
| musingsole wrote:
| The problem with rigid systems of control is they are often
| terribly blind at even recognizing what enables exploitation
| due to faulty boundary conditions.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Thank you for your smug, hand-wavy, holier-than-thou dismissal
| of online free speech on behalf of the entire human race.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| You are 100% welcome. Free speech means I'm entitled to my
| opinion, just as you are to yours. I stand by my statement,
| that most people can't use free speech responsibly.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Sure. I'll accept your speech as soon as you reply with a
| scanned copy of your government issued identification.
|
| Right now you're just an anonymous account, and by your own
| rules, part of the problem.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Am I though? You clearly haven't read my profile.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Touche!
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but other
| people can absolutely call out what that opinion stems
| from: Narcissism.
|
| 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?
| baq wrote:
| that's a good question. how do i know who speaks the
| truth? should i believe everything? should i believe
| nothing? should i vet everything i read on the internet
| myself?
|
| 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?
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| At the end of the day, it's your choice how you determine
| what's true, but I don't believe anyone has the right to
| tell you how to do that -- that the screening should
| happen between you and the content, not between the
| submitter and the platform -- kind of like XSS prevention
| (you must assume anything can get into the database, but
| all that matters is how it's executed by the end user).
|
| 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.
| pid-1 wrote:
| Reddit tackled that by allowing communities to self moderate
| while providing a baseline of what's platform wide acceptable.
|
| 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.
| david422 wrote:
| I used to think having my real name attached to things would be
| a good way for _me_ to be constructive online.
|
| What I learned is that there are plenty of crazy people online.
| And I do not want them to have my real identity.
| [deleted]
| tomcam wrote:
| What about whistleblowers, human trafficking victims, and
| dissidents who require anonymity?
| [deleted]
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _What about whistleblowers_
|
| We know how Musk feels about whistleblowers:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-
| elon...
| tzs wrote:
| Whistleblowers generally do not need anonymous public
| platforms. The generally can go through an intermediary that
| is not anonymous and that has a reputation for being
| trustworthy, that intermediary can look at their evidence and
| perhaps do some independent verification, and then can
| publish.
|
| 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.
| matthew40 wrote:
| Usually, authoritarian regimes indeed love real names policies
| and hate that anonymous people are able to have a voice. Should
| probably consult with China or Iran, they have some expertise
| around this.
| Fervicus wrote:
| I have a bad feeling that this is exactly what's coming after
| this deal. I hope I am wrong.
| matthew40 wrote:
| meerita wrote:
| No. You must be able to remain anonymous.
| yc-kraln wrote:
| Real name policy destroys Twitter the way the no-pornography
| rules destroyed tumblr. It's a position from a place of
| privilege and is actively harmful, but don't take my word for
| it, here is a link to the EFF's position:
| https://www.eff.org/de/issues/anonymity
|
| Which is besides the point; why do you think Elon will do any
| of this, when the previous board/company/ownershop did not?
| lkbm wrote:
| Identity validation doesn't mean public real name. It means
| that _Twitter_ has my real name so I want to create 1,000
| spam accounts, it can internally see they 're all one person.
| They could then trivially enforce a per-identity account
| limit, prevent trolls from re-signing up a thousand times,
| etc.
| lazyier wrote:
| Musk has indicated that he will do a pay-for blue checkmark.
|
| 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.
| pooper wrote:
| > Musk has indicated that he will do a pay-for blue
| checkmark.
|
| 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).
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| lazyier wrote:
| If you are dealing with individuals that know and care
| enough to circumvent the tracking built into our
| financial system then that is also probably not a person
| that advertisers are very interested in.
|
| 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.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I agree that a real-name policy would help prevent hate and
| abuse on the platform (though not at all eradicate it). But I
| absolutely don't think Musk will do that. He'll either do
| nothing, best case, or worst case make moves that help
| misinformation, hate speech, and abuse spread.
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| Cynically speaking : Twitter is a useful tool for
| broadcasting the ruling class' narrative and pass it off as
| the mainstream one - as long as this function is not _too_
| apparent. Yielding to Musk 's requests would be a clever way
| for the platform to regain some credit with non-elites and
| unbelievers.
| Fervicus wrote:
| I am cautiously optimistic of this deal, but the cynic in
| me also thinks that the same broadcasting of the ruling
| class' narrative will continue, now under the guise of
| "Elon defeated the bad guys". Same hands, different puppet.
| tck42 wrote:
| Musk is a multi billionaire whose companies reap billions
| in government subsidies. He is a part of the ruling class.
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| Precisely. I don't think he intend to rock the boat too
| deeply - just enough to appear to stick to his personal
| brand.
| emn13 wrote:
| I think there's a chance that there's some amount of
| intrinsic tension here; i.e. that if you want to hold people
| to account for spreading lies; then you'll be similarly
| enabling dunking on minorities. But dis+misinformation are so
| problematic that I don't think we should immediately
| disregard an idea merely because it has some potential
| collateral damage - especially if a pragmatic approach might
| exist that at least tries to minimize that collateral damage.
|
| 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.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| I don't buy this. If people want to make the argument that
| Twitter is the new public square then we need real
| identities. No one in an actual public square is going to get
| away with spouting bigotry precisely because there are
| consequences to free speech which require identifiability.
| skoskie wrote:
| I'm fine with Twitter knowing my identity if I can keep my
| account publicly anonymous ... for the reasons stated in the
| linked article. Seems like a good balance.
| WHA8m wrote:
| First sentence of your linked article: Many people don't want
| the things they say online to be connected with their offline
| identities.
|
| 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?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Disagree. AI text generation is going to ruin stylometric
| analysis as anonymous online communities get spammed by
| ever increasing amounts of automated content based on
| inputs learned from random subsets of users. A good,
| helpful AI generation bot is an easy way to harvest up-
| votes on content platforms like Reddit or HN and
| subsequently manipulate content.
| WHA8m wrote:
| good point and I agree with the effect, but I'm not sure
| about the scope. I'm not sure if it will be enough noice
| to equalize it.
|
| 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).
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >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.
|
| Are you basing this on writing-style analysis?
| prewett wrote:
| > It's a position from a place of privilege and is actively
| harmful
|
| 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.
| gyam wrote:
| I don't know what the original commenter meant, but a
| simple example is that tweeting (or following) things that
| I believe in while using my real name could cause a lot of
| issues to me an my family in my home country (even if I
| live abroad) So, in this case it's a privilege of living
| and being born in a place with decent democracy.
|
| 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.
| sgift wrote:
| It's not about influence.
|
| 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.
| bodono wrote:
| To me the best option would be to massively expand the blue
| tick / verified accounts to include anyone who can prove their
| real world identity (and tie their actual name to their
| accounts), but continue to allow anonymous accounts, and allow
| users to only view verified accounts and anonymous accounts
| they follow if they wish. This would cut off trolls, disinfo
| bots, and spam at the knees while still allowing people who
| want or need anonymity to have it.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I don't see evidence that it's the only way, Twitter is
| unmatched in toxicity in the social media landscape yet most
| other platforms allow anonymous accounts.
| Laremere wrote:
| Youtube tried this years ago and then later quietly rolled it
| back. Turns out many people don't have a problem having their
| name attached to them being awful people on the internet, and
| it exposes others to real world harassment. (It also had to do
| with Google+'s pressure on the rest of Google, but Youtube
| could've kept it after Google+ failed if the real name policy
| was actually working.)
| macNchz wrote:
| The impact of a real name policy on any individual's behavior
| also really depends on how common their name is. For someone
| with a unique name it means others can instantly know their
| real identity. For someone whose name is shared by tens or
| hundreds of thousands of others around the world, they are
| effectively still totally anonymous.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Even a common name can be helpful when trying to locate
| someone. I've given some sparse personal information on
| Hacker News that would definitely allow someone to find me
| should they know my name, even though there are thousands
| of people in the US alone that share it.
| mariodiana wrote:
| It's not a question of being an _objectively_ awful person;
| it 's a question of being an "awful" person in the eyes of
| rabid ideologue activists looking to dox and cancel anyone
| who _blasphemes_ their beliefs.
| WHA8m wrote:
| 'real name policy' could also mean kyc and then you'd still
| be able to appear under a pseudonym.
| javajosh wrote:
| I don't agree that real names matter. You would think people
| would be ashamed of their views, of their trolling and cruelty,
| but they aren't. Just the opposite. The only solution is a more
| comprehensive sentiment analysis and binning procedure that
| gives users a way to filter out undesirable speech which isn't
| based on content. see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31155516
| president wrote:
| Agreed. At the very least, fully verified identities on the
| backend and anonymity on the frontend.
| hardware2win wrote:
| I see worse things on fb with real names than on anonymouse
| reddit,hn,discord.
|
| Real names is not good solution
| ok123456 wrote:
| No. No one wants 'real names' online.
|
| 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.
| blincoln wrote:
| <i>No one wants 'real names' online.</i>
|
| 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.
| ok123456 wrote:
| We shouldn't let dull people with nothing to lose dictate
| which freedoms are important.
| dwringer wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Good analogy.
| kd913 wrote:
| >The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to
| enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1]
| identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default
| filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds)
|
| 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..
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Anonymous speech works... until it doesn't. And it doesn't at
| scale. At that point, you require active moderation by admins
| and/or users to keep an semblance of usefulness.
|
| 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.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Anonymous speech works... until it doesn't. And it doesn't
| at scale.
|
| It's not a question of scale, it's a question of culture.
| Also, Reddit and HN do have active moderation.
| baq wrote:
| > The best of reddit and HN can only exist because they're
| niche subcommunities.
|
| 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).
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I think it is working quite well and is preferable. Depends
| on the community and I am not a Twitter user. But the
| problems began with social networks, not with anonymity,
| even at great scales.
| kd913 wrote:
| Reddit isn't a niche subcommunity. It has 430 million
| monthly active users.
|
| 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.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Subreddits are niche subcommunities.
|
| Nobody subscribes to all of Reddit.
| kd913 wrote:
| Youtube are a niche collection of youtubers.
|
| 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.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Youtube's moderators are youtube employees.
|
| 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.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Admins get involved in TOS violations, not direct
| moderation.
|
| That's false, admins do get involved in direct
| moderation, and Reddit has a whole team of admins (Reddit
| employees).
| kd913 wrote:
| > Youtube's moderators are youtube employees.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The reason why reddit/HN are a thousand times better than
| twitter/FB is because they are heavily moderated, not because
| they don't have a real names policy.
| kd913 wrote:
| The lack of real names enables people to give honest
| opinions.
|
| 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).
| causi wrote:
| Yeah, it's easier to ignore racist tirades and death threats
| when they come from xX_BonerLord420_Xx. Frankly I'd enjoy a
| platform that outright banned the use or disclosure of real
| names.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| On the other hand, if someone _is_ giving you death threats
| and you 're afraid they're credible, a real-name policy
| gives you someone to report.
| silvestrov wrote:
| You assume a "real name" is a unique identifier (or
| almost unique).
|
| In some countries _a lot_ of people share the same _full
| name_.
| causi wrote:
| Have _you_ ever had productive results from reporting
| harassment and threats? I haven 't. I know people who've
| been stalked for years with the police having full
| knowledge of their identity and behavior without
| prosecuting them.
| kd913 wrote:
| Sure, but that is why you aren't supposed to use a
| username tied to your real world identity.
|
| 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.
| kvetching wrote:
| geodel wrote:
| Well, that's just your opinion. If you do not like them
| block and move on. But yea, it is not likely that anyone
| of them would be following you.
| kd913 wrote:
| It is my opinion. The beauty of my comment is it either
| holds or it doesn't in absence of my identity. I don't
| care if anyone follows me or not because I am not a vapid
| shallow person.
|
| 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.
| extr wrote:
| Part of the reason I and many others love twitter is precisely
| because it retains a spark of that early internet forum style
| community, with pseudonymity for those who want it and "Real
| ID" for those who want to treat it like LinkedIn or Facebook or
| whatever. Awful suggestion.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Now this surprises me. To me Twitter is the polar opposite to
| an oldschool internet forum: unmoderated, no structure, a
| post length limit that acts as hurdle to meaningful content,
| and a lack of any common interest between members.
|
| Twitter is the most toxic "mainstream" community I've ever
| seen.
| civilized wrote:
| Hidden real identity verification is an interesting idea.
| Limits bots and abuse without curtailing legitimate free
| expression.
|
| The question is whether people can trust Twitter with that
| information.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Real identity is usually a very bad idea for most platforms
| with few exceptions in my opinion. Wouldn't help Twitter if
| exchanges get even more personal and the bottom quality content
| is almost always people whose identity is known anyway.
|
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > the human race isn't quite ready for anonymous 'free speech'
| online
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to
| enforce a)a real name policy
|
| Facebook has real names and the messages are just as bad if not
| often worse.
|
| Extremely naive to think this will solve anything.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| The trick is the trending algorithm. Not identities.
| hongloumeng wrote:
| I agree that a real name policy would help remove the bots and
| anonymous hate speech. But there is plenty of non-anonymous
| hate speech that still make Twitter toxic.
|
| 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.
| some_random wrote:
| I'm used to really privileged and ignorant takes on here, but
| somehow I'm still surprised to see this.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Being verified isn't going to solve the problem of shouty
| nutjobs and political shills. We are in a post-truth
| environment, where people spreading misinformation and flat-out
| lies don't feel an obligation to issue retractions or
| corrections. They just shamelessly move onto the next lie.
| Public opinion or consequences other than being deplatformed
| just don't matter to the likes of Trump and his acolytes.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to
| enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1]
| identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default
| filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds)
|
| 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.
| anthropodie wrote:
| > The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to
| enforce a)a real name policy
|
| 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.
| hongloumeng wrote:
| I agree that a real name policy would help remove the bots and
| anonymous hate speech. But there is plenty of non-anonymous
| hate speech that still make Twitter toxic. Those people would
| have an easier time harassing other people if they knew real
| names.
|
| 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.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Speaking from my personal position, trans people like me will
| be harassed more because our names will be public, and bigots
| will continue hate speech under their real names. Instead
| we'll be forced to make a decision, reveal our names and risk
| real life danger in many cases, or abandon the platform and
| the vibrant community of support that also exists there.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >relies on attention
|
| The success of most things in the world relies on attention.
| This is not unique to ad-revenue models of social media
| companies.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Eh. Older folks on social media don't seem to have any qualms
| with associating their real identities with toxic posting
| behavior.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Real name policies have done nothing to make Facebook less
| toxic, because bigots in general don't mind their real names
| being out there. This is what happens when you ignore systemic
| power imbalances. The bigots have that power and as a result
| they don't fear consequences.
|
| The Republicans announcing public lynching of trans kids are
| doing it under their real names.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| A real name policy mainly hurts privacy and not much else.
|
| 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.
| bluescrn wrote:
| You could go part-way and just limit anonymous accounts a bit
| more.
|
| Currently users can choose to only let followers/mentioned
| users reply. Maybe add an option to only allow real-name users
| to reply.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that verified accounts on
| Twitter can flip a toggle so that ALL they see is other
| verified accounts[1]. Which is why media outlets and celebs
| think Twitter is a way nicer place than it really is.
|
| ---
|
| [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.
| zionic wrote:
| >The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to
| enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1]
| identities for all users/bots
|
| Have you uh, seen "NextDoor"?
| chapium wrote:
| Real name policy just leads to threats. I'd rather the place be
| toxic than exposing people who want to speak up.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > REAL verification for all
|
| ... is how you crush political dissidents.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The weird thing about the blue checkmark was that it was
| originally supposed to be just a "we validated this user
| identity" indicator. But then someone decided that it's
| supposed to be a status symbol (or, more likely, Twitter
| couldn't figure out how to scale ID verification) and started
| handing out special Verified privileges... and taking them back
| when they found out they had handed them to a user that was too
| toxic for them.
|
| 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.
| hbn wrote:
| Enforcing a real-name policy means the only users you'll have
| is:
|
| 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
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| 3. The vast majority of normal, current users who make no
| attempt to hide their identity and in fact frequently share
| it along with plenty of other personal info- as well as
| sharing links to their twitter profile on other real name
| identified social platforms.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| That seems not to be the case with Facebook. Real name
| policy, plenty of reasonable people remaining. And plenty of
| nutters whose opinions aren't "perfectly in line with the
| corporate-backed, advertiser-friendly status quo".
| hbn wrote:
| I definitely would not call the people I know who still
| actively use Facebook to be on the reasonable side of
| things. For me it seems to be mostly people who got really
| into deranged politics and are constantly posting insane
| garbage (on every extreme of the spectrum), as well as
| housewives shilling MLM scams to each other.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Maybe that's the case for you, but I keep up with family,
| friends, and multiple groups on Facebook and I rarely
| encounter insane garbage. It's mostly cute animal pics,
| really. I've dropped (or never connected at all) with
| family I don't like, so that helps.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Amen. Basically, only pros will participate.
|
| The school of "we'll destroy your livelihood" freedom of
| expression made sure of that.
| m1117 wrote:
| Twitter needs a strong leader with a vision, IMHO
| Thorentis wrote:
| > will shift control of the social media platform populated by
| millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest
| person
|
| 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.
| SteveDR wrote:
| That quote doesn't imply anything about Twitter being ran "by
| the people"
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| "imply" is a rather strict term from logics, and you're
| right, no it doesn't imply that.
|
| "suggest"/"insinuate" is a less strict term, however, and
| that definitely applies here!
| mmaunder wrote:
| Don't underestimate the power that Twitter confers on a private
| owner. It has become the de facto public square for the highest
| level politicians and executives. It is where embassies, CEOs and
| presidents publicly squabble. While Instagram and Tik Tok provide
| entertainment and distraction, the powerful influence the masses
| on Twitter.
|
| 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.
| khazhoux wrote:
| What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper
| limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a
| single person can eventually directly control enough funds to
| simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest
| communication channels.
|
| 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.
| honkycat wrote:
| This has already happened.
|
| 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.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation ... But the
| power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-
| billionaires) is effectively unstoppable
|
| 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.
| nyxtom wrote:
| I hear what you're saying, but on the other hand, it's because
| of people like Elon Musk, the Saudi Royalty, and dozens of
| other wealthy individuals and funds that many of us even have
| high paying jobs at a number of high profile tech companies.
| soperj wrote:
| Seriously? Anyone can just not use their product. Did you feel
| this way when NewsCorp bought MySpace?
| khazhoux wrote:
| My point is not at all actually about Twitter itself. It's
| simply this: once an individual amasses a certain _billions_
| of dollars in wealth, their power is effectively permanent
| for the rest of their (and our) lifetimes. And that power
| --concentrated into the hands of a few individuals-- is
| enormous. I claim that his is "not ok."
| pfarrell wrote:
| Yes, an individual can protest in this fashion, but that
| doesn't negate the unchecked influence Twitter has and the
| GP's concerns over how the rich and powerful are able to
| acquire this influence without any limit. It's a good point
| about NewsCorp, but I think the world has changed
| considerably since the MySpace purchase happened.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Agree with all your points and I share your concerns. If this
| deal goes through, I'll cancel my (almost completely unused)
| Twitter account. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.
| ec109685 wrote:
| We do have the ability to enact laws to reduce power though.
| E.g. the antitrust laws that limited JP Morgan at a certain
| point.
| aetherson wrote:
| _Over twenty years ago_. Veritably ancient.
|
| 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.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| In what way do you believe the powerful people you've cited
| have negatively effected you personally (i.e. restricted your
| freedom, etc.)?
|
| 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.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > In what way do you believe the powerful people you've cited
| have negatively effected you personally (i.e. restricted your
| freedom, etc.)?
|
| 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).
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > _That 's not my criteria for how much power one should be
| allowed to wield._
|
| 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.
| dumpHero2 wrote:
| The idea is that they have control over how and where they
| invest their money. If they make stupid decisions, they lose
| that wealth. So you still have some checks and balances there.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Human beings need to be less lazy in switching communication
| platforms. It used to cost money to change cable subscriptions.
| It costs nothing to switch to a new platform, except for small
| businesses who rely on their presence online. For individual
| conversations, just switch. Not a big deal. It's fairly easy.
| The problem is lazy competitors who don't do what they need to
| make their services as easy to access as Twitter. Invest up
| front, offer a free, low barrier way for people to share the
| content they want to share and in the format they prefer. Boom.
| robonerd wrote:
| Even if this deal goes through, Elon Musk will still own much
| less media than several other billionaires do. He's scarcely on
| the leading edge of this trend.
| nipponese wrote:
| Not sure what you want to do about this. In our system, every
| governmental action to ease poverty and spur economic activity
| has a knock-on effect of increasing the wealth of the 1%, and
| every wealth redistribution action has the effect of decreasing
| non-governmental economic activity making the middle-class more
| poor and forcing people already on the margins into poverty.
| sytelus wrote:
| > Bill Gates, e.g., still sits at the top of the money-power
| pile, even though his own success peaked 25 years ago.
|
| 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!
| wedowhatwedo wrote:
| "No one here seems to have a problem with this." That is not
| true. A true statement is "Not enough people seems to have a
| problem with this." The American political system is setup so
| one vote is not equal so those with more voting power can win
| with fewer votes. I would argue that a majority care about
| these issues and would like to fix it, but the votes of the
| minority count more. Look at the US Senate and count the number
| of people each senator represents. The electoral college
| guarantees inequality in votes for the president.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Something that gets missed a lot, is how much the news media
| relies on Twitter now. The percentage of stories that get run on
| online news sites which are built entirely on a few Twitter hot
| takes is astonishing.
|
| 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.
| primozk wrote:
| Good, it means that "journalists" will have to do some actual
| research before writing their articles.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If Elon Musk can reform the bluecheck system to stop lending
| 'journalist' credibility to 'professional take-havers', he
| will have done society a great service.
| [deleted]
| hstan4 wrote:
| This is spot on. It's pretty absurd to constantly see the top
| "news" articles be "_____ says that _____" with the entire
| article just mentioning context of a tweet of some famous
| person.
| ng12 wrote:
| Man, I hope so. I really think this makes Twitter more toxic
| than Facebook ever was. Somehow the vocal minority on Twitter
| getting riled up about something always gets treated as "real
| news".
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Since he is using a chunk of Tesla stock to secure loans to fund
| a large portion of this deal what happens when, not if, Tesla
| stock falls to more rational levels?
| brasic wrote:
| Presumably this possibility is part of the risk the lenders are
| taking into account and charging for. If loan collateral was
| subject to constantly being marked-to-market and lenders could
| "margin call" to get more in scenarios like this, lending would
| be quite a bit safer.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| In very hot markets such as the one we are currently in
| rational long term thinking is brushed aside rather more
| often then is responsible so the assumption they correctly
| quantified the risk in this transaction isn't fully supported
| by their past history of actions.
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| Will Musk let Trump back on Twitter? I dislike the latter but was
| under the impression both are kind of buddys? It's just I thought
| a lot of advertising revenue was driven by polarization of issues
| and both have used Twitter to push the boundaries on that...
| FYYFFF wrote:
| The value of Twitter is the amplification by media. It has very
| little actual traction in the whole, without the amplification
| its worthless to anyone but narcissist and PR folk.
|
| 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...
| conqueso wrote:
| It is the go-to source for breaking information - how is that
| not a news source?
| FYYFFF wrote:
| Define news. Is it anything new? Is it factual information?
| Is it any information by anyone?
|
| 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.
| urmish wrote:
| One example of Twitter's obvious role in election meddling is
| this: before 2020 elections, posting new york post's article on
| Hunter Biden's laptop leaks would result in an error. At the time
| all the msm said this was fake news. The New York Times, more
| than a year later accepted that the laptop indeed belonged to
| Hunter Biden. Twitter is heavily biased towards promoting
| progressive 'ideals' and hollywood propaganda. It's trending
| section, even after muting and blocking several accounts and
| words, keeps suggesting biased 'news'. It also played a huge role
| in the Arab Springs which arguably is the largest criminal act in
| 12 years. I'm glad censorship is being taken seriously. Hope Musk
| is a true libertarian when it comes to free speech.
| DrBoring wrote:
| I liked it when StackOverflow introduced features to elicit
| better community manners. For example, the prompt that say
| something to the effect of "BobUserXYZ is new to SO, he may not
| know all the social rules of our community, please take that into
| consideration and try to be welcoming and polite".
|
| 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.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Most importantly, StackOverflow has a goal -- they are creating
| a collaborative QA collection. The focus is on the content, not
| on user interaction. I'm afraid that what works on SO may not
| work at all on Twitter.
| anovikov wrote:
| We will soon find out what's harder: settle Mars or make a public
| place where everyone can post, anything but a cesspool of
| bullshit. I think we will see Mars colony first.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I don't know if we should blame Twitter for the toxicity that
| Trump rained down upon the US for 4 years, or the big media
| companies for front-page reporting his daily ragers.
| overgard wrote:
| I don't really love the notion of billionaires buying up media;
| but given how incredibly important twitter has become to media
| and its influence on democracy and politics, I think it's a huge
| improvement that a free speech advocate will be in charge at
| least. I don't buy that content "moderation" (ahem, or as it
| should be called, censorship) is desirable when a tech company
| can silence people that have legit-if-undesirable influence on
| the world.
| pavlov wrote:
| The problem with this line of thought is that there are sites
| like Gab that serve the exact same purpose as Twitter but
| without content moderation. And the problems there are pretty
| obvious. How does Musk-Twitter avoid becoming Gab? Or is that
| actually somehow a desirable outcome?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I think it 's a huge improvement that a free speech advocate
| will be in charge at least_
|
| 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...
| asdf3243245q wrote:
| I read that article with interest, but there's nothing in
| there that says "Musk tried to have an employee whistleblower
| murdered by the police by falsely accusing him of being a
| mass shooter".
|
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > _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.'"_
| saila wrote:
| There is a 0% chance that all moderation will be removed from
| Twitter. It would turn into a complete cesspool if that
| happened and alienate large segments of the user base. So the
| only question is how the moderation will differ from what they
| do now. It's easy to say it should be better, which I agree
| with generally, but it's an extremely hard problem to solve
| well.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I agree that there's a 0% chance that 100% of moderation will
| go away, but isn't it the basic idea of communication that
| someone will always be alienated? Large segments of any user
| base are always alienated from things they aren't a part of
| by necessity.
| mhoad wrote:
| His words might suggest free speech advocate but his actions do
| not
| xwdv wrote:
| ulkesh wrote:
| > people that have legit-if-undesirable influence on the world
|
| 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.
| overgard wrote:
| There are plenty of other people besides Trump that have been
| banned by twitter. I'm more interested in the people that
| were silenced for "COVID misinformation" and/or other forms
| of "misinformation" that turned out not to be misinformation
| at all but rather just didn't run in line with the mainstream
| consensus.
|
| 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.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| The main use of Twitter, to me, is that it gets news out of
| places that have poor, slow or no mainstream coverage, and does
| it _fast_ - seconds after the event, in some cases. That won 't
| be helped at all by unblocking the howling id of the right wing
| and (barely distinguishable) the paid and volunteer troll farms
| of every (would-be) dictator with a hate-on for reality. That
| will just adjust the ratio of piss to pool sharply in the wrong
| direction. To the point it may lose its utility.
| jmpman wrote:
| Twitter is a place for D list celebrities attempting to become C
| list celebrities, and a place for politicians to post their
| accomplishments, only to turn a deaf ear to the responses.
| samstave wrote:
| > _D list celebrities attempting to become C list celebrities,
| and a place for politicians to post their accomplishments_
|
| Now, stop being redundant.
|
| -- The Department of Redundancy Department.
| known wrote:
| timcavel wrote:
| Twitter will have to subscribe to the Science Ministry's USA
| Fact-Check Algorithm to ensure absolute truth on the Internet.
| fredgrott wrote:
| It does not mean what you THINK it MEANS...
|
| 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.
| distrill wrote:
| i wonder if musk will finally get out of my news cycle for 10
| minutes now
| whateveracct wrote:
| Wonder if it'll be able to compare to Tumblr from a social media-
| quality perspective now that it's private like Tumblr has been.
|
| 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.
| scop wrote:
| I wish him and the team the very best. Social media is an
| incredibly _hard_ problem that by no means has been solved. I
| raise a glass to a man who has successfully tackled _hard_
| problems and seeks to make the future better.
| hooande wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there's anyone here who thinks he'll
| succeed
| fullshark wrote:
| Define success? I think he will help twitter a lot cause they
| have been suffering from a leadership void for years. I don't
| think Twitter will become a trillion dollar company but they
| will be around a long time and be profitable, and there's a
| decent chance Musk could go public again and recoup some of
| the acquistion price and remain in control.
| ausbah wrote:
| that's an optimistic take, as much as I dislike Musk it would
| be nice if he managed to make Twitter a better experience for
| the average user. given that social media is more of a people
| problem than a engineering problem, I'm not as hopeful
| defterGoose wrote:
| The idea that a social media company is capable of making a
| dent in "making the future better" is kind of laughable if you
| have any sort of rational ideas for what makes a good life...
| JoshCole wrote:
| I'll show you are wrong by showing that your ideas aren't
| consistent. I'll show your ideas aren't consistent by showing
| your ideas are self-refuting. Your post denies its own
| utility. Observe: Lets say you are correct. As a direct
| result of being on a social media product you are claiming
| that it is "kind of laughable" that anyone with "rational
| ideas" would think your comment is "capable" of "making a
| dent" in "making the future better." Your polemic against the
| conceptual framework of socially derived value is self
| refuting in that it attacks itself. It can't stand.
|
| 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.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Maybe they could make the future slightly less worse, though.
|
| (Just turning the thing off would do that)
| gallerdude wrote:
| I think that saying social media can't make the future better
| is like saying the internet itself can't make the future
| better. It seems obvious to me that both can improve
| humanity.
| john-radio wrote:
| > I raise a glass to a man who has successfully tackled hard
| problems and seeks to make the future better.
|
| But what is your comment on billionaire Elon Musk buying
| Twitter.com?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I know a lot of people disagree but I really do think killing
| the ad side and killing all bots will solve 90% of the
| problems.
|
| 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.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Serious question: what does "solving" social media even mean?
| peter_retief wrote:
| He has already increased its value by buying it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Question: Twitter is currently trading at 51.something USD.
|
| > 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.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Its now been accepted: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/twitter-
| accepts-elon-musks-b...
| kul wrote:
| I wonder how much this will distract him from Tesla and SpaceX.
|
| Also, social media is now an attack vector for misinformation
| from hostile foreign adversaries. How will he fight that?
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| People are going to implode when Trump is unbanned.
| mikevm wrote:
| What about that poison pill?
| danadannecy wrote:
| The poison pill prevents Musk from taking over by simply buying
| 51% of stock, and allows him to proceed only by giving the
| board an offer they agree to, in which case they'll remove the
| poison pill.
| LegitShady wrote:
| It activates when someone gets 15%...but musk will acquire the
| entire company at once effectively bypassing it.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| Has any other submission got so many votes and comment on HN
| before ?
| paradite wrote:
| This currently has 2.2k comments.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993 3.8k
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003 3.2k
| agumonkey wrote:
| Interesting
| smm11 wrote:
| If our last president is again given a voice on this platform,
| I'm deleting my account.
| throwaway_1928 wrote:
| If Elon takes over, it is likely he will be back on Twitter.
| jypepin wrote:
| So, how does that work for current stock holders and employees?
| If you own Twitter stock, will it be automatically sold at 43b
| val? And twitter will get out of public markets?
|
| 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?
| draaglom wrote:
| I've seen two options floated:
|
| - 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)
| yupper32 wrote:
| What is "regular liquidity events"?
| carlosdp wrote:
| Every 6 mos, SpaceX goes to investors, determines a price,
| and allows employees and other investors to sell shares to
| these investors if they'd like to get some liquidity.
|
| Lets them stay private longer term while still allowing
| employees to benefit from stock appreciation.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I thought as a private company Twitter (and SpaceX) would be
| limited to 999 shareholders. Is that not then case?
| eklitzke wrote:
| Why would this be the case? There are tons of tech
| companies (possibly even most?) that have more than 1000
| employees at the time of IPO. As far as I know there are no
| limits on the number of shareholders for C-corps, private
| or not.
| mlinsey wrote:
| It's 2,000 shareholders, and you are allowed to go above
| the limit, it's just that if you do, then you have to make
| public financial statements and in general follow all the
| disclosure rules and reporting requirements of a public
| company. Since it can be expensive to follow these
| requirements, especially for a startup that's not setup to
| do those sort of disclosures, startups will carefully avoid
| going over the limit. But since Twitter has already been
| public up until now, all the processes and institutional
| know-how to comply with those requirements is already in
| place, so continuing to comply shouldn't be too hard.
| lutorm wrote:
| It was also my impression that holders of employee stock
| are not counted in the same way as normal shareholders,
| hence the tendency to limit third-party transactions of
| RSU shares. But I might be mistaken.
| draaglom wrote:
| I'm no financier and I don't know anything about a 999
| limit, but apparently SpaceX has been doing something to
| make it possible:
|
| https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1518408959022968833
| julienb_sea wrote:
| No, I can say from personal experience receiving RSUs from
| private companies that there was no arbitrary limit on how
| many people could receive them. I don't fully understand
| why that is the case, my suspicion is that employees
| receive share units, i.e. are not "shareholders"
| technically. The share units can be converted to cash at
| liquidity events or will convert to actual shares at an IPO
| event.
| fundad wrote:
| The money is going to be a big problem for retention. They'll
| then be limited to right-wingers but maybe they wanted to
| outsource the software engineering anyway.
| colechristensen wrote:
| For stockholders I believe it would happen as a "corporate
| action" like a stock split but instead overnight the shares in
| your account would be exchanged for cash. Not exactly the same
| workflow as a sell.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If the deal goes through, ever share of Twitter will be sold to
| Elon Musk for $54.20. It's like eminent domain, you don't get a
| choice, you just get cash instead of your property.
|
| 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.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I personally think Twitter's long-term prospects looked grim.
| I think realistically this is one of the better outcomes for
| Twitter's ability to remain viable well into the future. All
| the recent feature releases seemed like half effort attempts
| to keep the water from seeping in.
| mettamage wrote:
| I wonder how this works for options. I bought a couple of
| calls.
| valleyer wrote:
| Presumably they'll be cash-settled, like most options are
| anyway.
| chalst wrote:
| The company has a fiduciary duty to treat minority shareholders
| to the owning block and the major stock exchanges have rules
| protecting their interests.
|
| This is one area of the the law that works well.
| jordemort wrote:
| I'd delete my Twitter account now, but I already deleted it in
| 2016.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I'm confused about the series of events here. What happened to
| the poison pill?
| dahfizz wrote:
| The poison pill only takes effect during a hostile takeover.
|
| 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.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Ohh right, thank you!
| dhimes wrote:
| Thank you. I was also confused.
| rinze wrote:
| Elon, if you're reading: this is yours now. Kill it.
| vonsydov wrote:
| jprd wrote:
| Pulling for dang over this thread, server must be on fire at this
| point.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Last time this happened, dang asked us to log out while
| browsing and not commenting/voting which greatly eases the
| server strain.
| h2odragon wrote:
| flood of "what will/should happen to twitter now?" bloviation
| incoming.
|
| 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.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Elon Musk, that famous lover of public goods, will totally make
| his $43 billion investment a public utility.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| God if I could pay $2/m for Twitter with an option to only see
| tweets from people who pay. Twitter would be the best social
| media experience by a long shot.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I completely agree!
| asasidh wrote:
| feeling bad for the employees who will have to work under
| Dogefather now.
| generalizations wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Twitter is probably the
| best social media platform for interplanetary communication,
| where low bandwidth and delayed transmission are fundamental
| bottlenecks, and both limitations are considered part of the
| appeal (character limitations and a format where you simply
| disperse messages and have no real notion of when they'll be
| received).
|
| 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.
| ljm wrote:
| If I move to Mars and my only contact with Earth is via Twitter
| over Starlink in Elon's Hyperverse, then I think I'll take my
| chances with the climate catastrophe on Earth. Death would be
| more merciful.
| _justinfunk wrote:
| Off topic, but I heard it said that Earth in the worst case
| of climate catastrophe would still be far more habitable than
| Mars. Seems to make sense.
|
| 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.
| ebiester wrote:
| A bubbled city on mars will not be immune to climate
| refugees. It's about how many bubbles we would need, and
| how many people might not fit.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| It's a bit depressing that Zardoz[1] might suddenly
| become a relevant piece of social commentary. If we get
| to the point where we need to choose who gets to be
| inside or outside of the bubble our ethical codes are
| going to collapse.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
| pfarrell wrote:
| Follow up to off-topic. I have also thought the arcologies
| of Sim City 3000 or the unexplained environment in the
| Black Mirror episode "15 million merits"[1] are likely in
| our future.
|
| 0: https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
| boringg wrote:
| Interplanetary communication is actually an interesting angle
| though I don't think he's bringing into his portfolio of
| companies for that angle.
|
| 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.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of KBs of metadata with each
| tweet. For comparison, each page on Subreply takes 5 KB of data
| transfer and server response is around 100ms.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Reason Twitter's messages were so small was because they were
| originally sent over SMS. I suppose formats like SMS could be
| sent that far, but it's more likely that protocols built for
| that exact purpose would succeed.
| sampo wrote:
| > I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Twitter is probably
| the best social media platform for interplanetary
| communication, where low bandwidth and delayed transmission are
| fundamental bottlenecks
|
| In a Vernon Vinge's novel, they used a kind of galaxy-wide
| Usenet.
| noobermin wrote:
| Is this really a serious take? The best means of interplanetary
| communication one way messages and a delayed confirmation. The
| distances with the speed of light disallows anything else.
| generalizations wrote:
| > The best means of interplanetary communication one way
| messages and a delayed confirmation.
|
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| Twitter is RESTful (I think, not web expert) so they are
| just get requests, but the low latency makes it appear as
| live communication because you can just keep sending gets
| and update the client. Over an interplanetary scale with
| minutes to hours of delay between sending and recieving a
| signal, it would just be infeasible to create the same
| experience. It would be much better to just use one way
| messages, like that of video recordings or sets of texts
| that are recieved in full, with whatever losses would have
| to be simply accepted as part of the cost of communicating
| in space. Confirming receipt and communicating errors to
| the sender (like that of TCP) would just mean now you have
| to wait 2x times more to get the next chuck of the message
| again and hope that that too isn't degraded, so it would be
| pretty lossy, pretty "slow" level of communication, very
| much _unlike_ the internet here on earth.
|
| Social media in general would be infeasible on an
| interplanetary scale.
| generalizations wrote:
| I think the entire architecture would have to be
| rewritten. Talking about the protocols involved is
| getting lost in the weeds.
|
| 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.
| usrn wrote:
| Nah, social media is plenty feasible and the Twitter
| UI/abstraction is probably ideal like GP says (although I
| think the implementation would be different than you're
| imagining.) They'd just colocate on the other planets and
| replicate the database. Stuff like that is a solved
| problem (in the case of TCP, just increase the window
| size. Although you'd probably want to make sure
| transaction boundaries and packet boundaries line up to
| minimize latency/jitter. If they wanted to _minimize_ the
| latency they 'd make large media available as a merkle
| tree and make blocks available as they arrived correctly
| a la Bittorent or IPFS (heh.))
|
| 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>."
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know if Twitter's particular length limit is applicable
| to interplanetary communication. It was originally dictated by
| the arbitrarily chosen data packet size for communicating with
| cell towers which in turn impacted how large SMSes could be.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It was originally dictated by the arbitrarily chosen data
| packet size for communicating with cell towers which in turn
| impacted how large SMSes could be.
|
| The current limit was not.
| munk-a wrote:
| The current limit was still arbitrarily chosen and image
| macros are still legion on twitter.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The current limit was still arbitrarily chosen
|
| Right, it was even more arbitrarily chosen based on
| stylistic preferences not any communication system
| constraint.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > both limitations are considered part of the appeal
|
| 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.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I would like to see an option to turn off all images by
| default, and possibly enable them per user followed.
| krono wrote:
| It would work fine for those purposes if it weren't for the
| confusing and unreliable order in which these tweets are
| rendered, and all the unrelated crap they've put everywhere
| in between, over top, and all around the actual content.
|
| It's so terrible that it must have been implemented this way
| on purpose.
| worker_person wrote:
| But is it worse than any recipe site?
| krono wrote:
| Asking the real questions :)
|
| 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.
| mateo1 wrote:
| This is either peak sarcasm or post-peak hn.
| disqard wrote:
| It's hard to tell whether you're being serious....
|
| 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."
|
| (https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)
| scrumbledober wrote:
| right but the content of the tweet is much smaller than the
| javascript bundle that twitter.com sends users...
| kradeelav wrote:
| I might be remembering wrong but I think early on (pre 2015?)
| twitter had the capability to send tweets via SMS texts. I
| wouldn't know the size comparison, but if they re-added that
| feature, it feels like an easy way to cut the bloat.
| motoboi wrote:
| Yeah, but nothing stops you from serving twitter.com from a
| CDN on Mars for Mars users, right?
|
| They'll even have netflix, if you think about it. Not youtube
| thought.
| munk-a wrote:
| Unfortunately they'll only have access to the old style
| disk Netflix and those envelopes will come with a hell of a
| postage cost on them. /s
|
| 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.
| memetomancer wrote:
| because Netflix data is measure in GB / week, while
| Youtube is measure in TB / second.
| munk-a wrote:
| I assume that the primary conveyance of data would just
| be a hard drive (or other storage method) actually sent
| to mars with the mission. Just like the bundle of
| wikipedia you could order on a CD, curate stuff of
| particularly high quality and send it with the crew.
|
| 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).
| motoboi wrote:
| Netflix is served from a Netflix openconnect appliance
| inside your ISP datacenter, not from the cloud.
|
| They just send one to Mars and it's good to go.
| teawrecks wrote:
| It's hard to tell whether you're being serious. This site is
| criticizing the response size of an http request to view one
| tweet, not the size of the actual tweet.
|
| 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.
| rory wrote:
| Cool dunk on the GP but it seems obvious that they didn't
| mean literally send the tweet to Mars as an HTML page with
| full Javascript bundle.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know if that seems obvious. They were talking about
| twitter the social media platform... I can't think of a
| single thing twitter has got going for it outside of the
| size of the message, and the size of the message isn't a
| huge advantage considering often times users use image
| macros rather than text (which completely destroys the
| space efficiency) and you could easily just have, say, size
| limited facebook posts or something similar.
|
| Honestly, I stand by my estimation that interplanetary
| communication will probably primarily be done over email.
| rory wrote:
| I'm not defending the central point-- I agree with you
| that the primary means of interplanetary communication
| will be email.
|
| It's just helpful to discussion if we don't assume others
| are expressing the stupidest possible iteration of the
| ideas they describe.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| The problem with a centralized service like Twitter is that
| there is absolutely no guarantee that you will be able to
| access it through any particular means.
|
| 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.
| smotched wrote:
| hes talking about just the text. Why on earth would anyone
| send that whole bundle back and forth. It would live on mars
| and you just update new tweets(texts).
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I strongly suspect that the New Twitter will fairly rapidly turn
| into the world's biggest toxic waste-dump fire - when everyone on
| Gab, Parler etc. piles back in along with Trump and his
| associates. Perfect timing for the US mid-terms. I can't see how
| they'll be able to keep a lid on it as a functioning community
| _and_ live up to Musk 's publicly-stated ambitions.
|
| 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.
| n-i-g-g-e-r wrote:
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| sidcool wrote:
| I m a Musk fan boy, but I feel Twitter should remain public and
| not under Musk. He's brilliant but a private company cannot be
| claimed as a bastion of free speech. Even if it's my idol Musk.
| esarbe wrote:
| No company can ever be a 'bastion of free speech' since it's
| always beholden to the interests of the investors.
| jwmoz wrote:
| No desire for musk to run twitter. Watch it turn to a shitshow.
| dboreham wrote:
| The sound of thousands of gallons of Kool-Aid being slurped.
| [deleted]
| mrkramer wrote:
| Zuck offered $500m for Twitter 14 years ago and they refused it
| so I guess it paid off looking at the price but man Twitter
| sucks. They have incompetent management that destroyed $100bn
| opportunity called Vine and that can't get their shit together.
| Elon might help but Twitter is doomed in the long term imo.
| ng12 wrote:
| I'm still mad about Vine, it had such a cool community of
| creators. I was shocked when they shut it down.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Vine was awesome.
| abnry wrote:
| Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the
| perspective of users:
|
| - 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.
| syshum wrote:
| I have never understood this aversion to Anonymous Speech, free
| speech requires Anonymous Speech. Some of the most important
| events in history (like the Founding of the United States)
| would never have happened with out Anonymous Speech.
|
| 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
| EricE wrote:
| >We should debate idea's not authors.
|
| How can you cancel anyone with a better idea than you have if
| you don't know who they are?
| shawn-butler wrote:
| It's not anonymous speech though but pseudonymous. The
| "profile" can get trusted over time without knowing the real
| identity by establishing a reputation for good content.
|
| Although this will probably get derailed now by GPT3-esque
| astroturfing/trolling.
|
| Anonymous speech is like graffiti, pseudonymous is like
| Banksy.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Verification and anonymity aren't mutually exclusive.
| Spooky23 is a persona on HN. If I were to post under my real
| name, I would want a way to verify who I am.
|
| Facebook pushes "real names" because Zuck thought it was a
| good idea, and it makes them more money.
| selcuka wrote:
| > 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.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I don't think HN is a good example of verification
| considering SWIM made an account with a disposable email
| address to segregate shitposting/anything-interesting from
| the sterile corporate persona that the account bearing
| their actual online handle uses.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| > I have never understood this aversion to Anonymous Speech,
| free speech requires Anonymous Speech. Some of the most
| important events in history (like the Founding of the United
| States) would never have happened with out Anonymous Speech.
|
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| >>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.
|
| 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
| bsder wrote:
| > Respecting speech you approve of is easy, respecting
| speech you find offensive is what requires protection.
|
| 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, 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_.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > We should debate idea's not authors.
|
| 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?
| tunesmith wrote:
| Trolls existed back in the days of Aristotle as well, so
| "the existence of trolls" is not quite sufficient. The part
| that is new is the ability for trolling to have hugely
| asymmetric impact. Before it was a voice in the town square
| everyone knew to ignore, now it's troll farms from the
| other side of the world.
|
| 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.
| EricE wrote:
| lol - sunlight is the best disinfectant.
|
| If your ideas can't stand up to anonymous criticism I'd
| postulate your ideas are the problem, not the anonymous
| speech.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| We've had anonymous speech for a long time, at least in the
| West, and things haven't exactly fallen apart. Quite the
| contrary, the last 50 years have seen unprecedented
| reduction in poverty and violence. You could easily gesture
| at the world, and say it wouldn't have been better had
| anonymous speech been suppressed.
| syshum wrote:
| We have real life examples of "Real names" polices simply
| creating further extreme rhetoric canceling out Moderate
| voices. Anonymous Speech enables moderate voices, contrary
| to the popular narrative that is only enables extreme
| voices.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Or more realistically, the first thing he'll do is re-platform
| all those that got de-platformed.
|
| Trump 2024, here we go.
| mgiannopoulos wrote:
| Honest question : In which ways has Musk given the impression
| he is pro-Trump?
| truncate wrote:
| He probably isn't. But IIRC he also didn't like the the
| billionaire tax plan. There is this incentive. I dunno
| enough to say if that's worth $43 billion.
| crate_barre wrote:
| He hates liberals.
| api wrote:
| There are quite a few libertarians, old school
| conservatives, and neoliberals that strongly dislike both
| new-generation liberalism/leftism and Trump and alt-
| right/NatCon ideology.
|
| People have this idea that there are only two possible
| points of view.
| tomlin wrote:
| Hating liberals and hating liberalism are two different
| things. You can yourself be a liberal and dislike the
| train you're riding on. I would count myself as one. I
| think a rational person would argue actions > words.
| Actions: building the world's largest EV fleet/tech,
| building alternative energy sources, investing in
| renewable tech.
|
| You're actually advocating for the "other investors",
| like the Saudi Prince. Imagine being a real, actual
| liberal and advocating for a government that behead women
| for "cheating" on their "husbands" - OVER - a billionaire
| building EVs.
|
| And if you are into words over actions, watch his TED
| talk. I don't see any reason why he would bring Trump
| back on. His main talking points were the invisibility of
| Twitter's algorithm. When pressed on being a "free speech
| absolutist", he conceded several points where it doesn't
| make sense to be an absolutist.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _... actions > words. Actions: building the world's
| largest EV fleet/tech, building alternative energy
| sources, investing in renewable tech._
|
| It's possible, of course, to hold different political
| views on different aspects of society.
|
| Musk might believe that we need to take better care of
| our planet, and also hedge against the possibility that
| we destroy it and need to find a new home.
|
| He can also believe that freedom of speech should be
| near-absolute, and that Trump (et al.) deserve to be
| allowed to be on Twitter.
|
| He can also believe that high taxes, large government,
| and business regulation of any kind is bad.
|
| None of these views are necessarily in conflict with each
| other, and many of them might be considered liberal, but
| they can still result in a dystopian future.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Many Liberals are openly against Liberalism.
| Specifically, we're told that people 'hide behind'
| freedom of speech and that 'misinformation' and 'hate
| speech' are of high priority for corporations (and
| possibly government) to address. That's not Liberalism,
| it's Orwellian. Putin would support these views.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Liberals != left wing, at least in philosophy. They don't
| even have to be related at all, like communism was
| thought of as left wing and is certainly not liberal.
|
| For some insane reason in the US left and liberal have
| become synonyms. Now, I am both, but I want the
| separation to be there so I can be both and distance
| myself from the illiberal left.
| mancerayder wrote:
| I'm with you. Lifelong Democrat and now confronted with
| people calling themselves liberals who are trying to
| dismantle democratic ideals like freedom of speech and
| equal treatment under the law, and they fancy themselves
| Progressives.
| mrkstu wrote:
| It is right there in the name- Progressives are first and
| foremost for 'progress'- which by it's very nature is
| going to be subject to the whims of intellectual fashion.
| Just like sterilization of certain groups in the US was
| progressive before the Nazis made is unfashionable.
|
| Look at the un-moored mess the ACLU has turned into-
| instead of a bedrock of American freedom they've turned
| into another issue oriented pressure group.
| kmonsen wrote:
| What I am saying is that liberal has nothing to do with
| left-wing or right-wing, conservative or progressive.
|
| The first line of wikipedia for liberalism is:
| "Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on
| the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the
| governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a
| wide array of views depending on their understanding of
| these principles, but they generally support individual
| rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal
| democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and
| political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the
| press, freedom of religion, private property and a market
| economy."
|
| I sincerely hope that is something we can come together
| and agree are important in the US. Even though it sounds
| like you and me have very different political views it
| also sounds like we agree that all of these are good.
| That means we have a wide array of items we agree on, but
| that are in danger at the moment. It seems to me there is
| a common platform most of us could agree to, but both
| parties have been to some degree hijacked by extremist so
| both of us to some extent are supporting illiberal
| candidates when we really don't agree with that.
| mrkstu wrote:
| I've been voting Libertarian since the Republican Party
| decided to decamp into MAGA-land.
|
| Which is also not much of a home, since it generally is
| inhabited by non-serious people- but at this point at
| least I can morally live with a platform of you stay out
| of my way and I'll stay out of yours. The other options
| have too many compromises right now.
| kmonsen wrote:
| The US badly need more than two political parties.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I don't see how there can be a functioning democracy
| without freedom of speech (with very few limitations) and
| equal treatment under the law.
|
| What I find really scary is that since left-wing has
| become to mean the same as liberal, a large part of the
| US population has come to define themselves as anti-
| liberal when I really hope that is not true.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| liberals =/= progressives.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Disliking liberals doesn't equate to being pro-Trump.
| mholm wrote:
| He hasn't directly, but he has just mentioned Twitter
| becoming a free speech platform:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518623997054918657
|
| "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.
| mancerayder wrote:
| You associated here free speech with Trump and
| criminality?
|
| That's a deeply depressing take.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| As a progressive/liberal, I am totally amazed at what the
| term "Free speech" has become. Remember, we used to stand
| by, stand for Free Speech in the most absolute terms not
| more than 10 years ago.
|
| What the fuck happened to us? I am looking inwards and
| trying to understand why my party wants to crush any
| political dissent in the name of hate speech and
| misinformation. Even the slightest deviation from
| progressive talking points appears to be punishing in the
| society. In fact it is making me judge whether I should
| defect and not vote for Democrats in the next election.
|
| We need a reality check and read up on some goddamn
| history.
| whatever1 wrote:
| We are in uncharted waters. Never in history the barrier
| of entry and the cost to spread an idea has been so low.
|
| I can start a campaign reaching hundreds of millions of
| people claiming insane things like that the earth is flat
| and dominate the mindshare because nobody on the opposite
| side has the time or will to counter me.
|
| Then I can have groups of followers propagating my
| nonsense and keep expanding the insanity bubble.
| Eventually the average Joe will observe the size of the
| bubble and conclude "hey everyone believes that the earth
| is flat, so it must be true"
|
| The closest to that was the TV but TV does not have that
| interactivity multiplier that the internet has.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What the fuck happened to us?_
|
| The system appears to have come under existential
| pressure.
|
| I used to be a free speech absolutist. I'm wondering,
| now, if absolute free speech is like direct democracy.
| It's fine in theory. But if we look at its history, the
| track record consistently veers towards chaos. (Much more
| for direct democracies than free speech, though.) A value
| set can be laudable but useless if any attempt at
| manifesting it tears its host apart.
|
| I haven't made up my mind one way or the other. But the
| debate unfolding across society doesn't seem
| unreasonable. (My hunch is the problem is dark-box
| amplification algorithms married to ad-supported business
| models. Not Billy Bob tweeting KKK NFTs or whatever.)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think absolute free speech and direct democracy are
| very different. DD results in disastrous consequences if
| the public is not informed and media is owned by
| corporations or worse, by the state. If US had DD, it
| would be untenable. It is a direct coupling between laws
| and zeitgeist of the people. Representative democracy is
| sort of a "buffer" or acts as a damping factor.
| Otherwise, US would become an instant
| socialist/communist/facist/leninist nation based on who
| controls the media sphere.
|
| Free speech ensures we can talk about pros/cons of
| lockdowns. It ensures there is space to discuss COVID
| origins. It ensures people in power are held accountable.
| It ensures people are able to challenge the status quo
| and debate.
|
| While there is a clear line IMO when it comes to speech -
| that line has been moved quite a bit far in CCP-like
| censorship by the kinds of Google/Apple.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _DD results in disastrous consequences if the public is
| not informed and media is owned by corporations or worse,
| by the state_
|
| The problem is more fundamental in a way that is
| relevant. Direct democracy's failings predate the concept
| of the corporation. (The concepts of democracy and
| statehood could be argued to be contemporaneous.)
| Independent of the media environment, the crowd
| autocorrelates and devolves into self-extinguishing mob
| rule.
|
| The problem is the autocorrelation. People aligning for
| the sake of alignment and then torching opposing views.
| Leaders emerge through this process of alignment. In a
| political context, they are unavoidable. In a discussion,
| however, they are not. They _do_ become unavoidable when
| two sides pick a totem whose insults get retweeted,
| thoughtlessly, zealously, inside an echo chamber.
|
| I think that's what we're trying to get away from. Forum
| for discussion versus prematurely collapsing conversation
| to tests of fealty.
| btirnsltuebn wrote:
| api wrote:
| My take is that there was a radical loss of confidence in
| humanity's ability to think reasonably, honestly, or
| independently.
|
| Conventional wisdom today seems to be that most people
| are mindless meme relay bots that simply believe and
| propagate whatever they read if it's presented in the
| right way or pushes the right emotional buttons. Sure
| there are _some_ people you might describe that way, but
| is it really most people?
|
| Personally I've been on the fence for a long time. I am
| not ready to throw in the towel on the idea of a global
| radically open conversation, but I have certainly had my
| faith in humanity shaken profoundly by things like Qanon.
| A disturbingly large number of people are frighteningly
| gullible. Are there people who simply can't mentally
| handle unfiltered information?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| > What happened to us? Got too focused on genitalia and
| skin tone, and how they're used or referred to. Even the
| ones that "don't care" got dragged in. And there's no
| escape.
| [deleted]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| 'Free Speech' is a lie. Anyone that's lived through the
| early internet, or has moderated social media platforms
| of any size or shape understands that as an ideal it is
| unobtainable.
|
| It's useful as a framework for governments to prevent
| jailing people for critique, to prevent throwing
| reporters into jail for dissident and so forth. But as a
| private platform it simply cannot work nor will it ever
| work. It falls apart at scale because as a platform you
| MUST make a decision as to whom you decide to support or
| not. Some users will inevitably harass or stalk or make
| the most vile comments to other users and will chase off
| people. If you do nothing, then the most toxic users of
| your platform will run the asylum.
|
| This was true of Usenet. This was true of IRC channels,
| forums, Digg and many more smaller sites. Sites like
| Parler, Gab and so forth pride themselves on being 'Free
| Speech' platforms but prove the dynamic I mention above.
|
| The reality check is that people should learn from the
| past, but I have a feeling the cycle of people thinking
| free-er speech will solve the problem will continue into
| infinity. And I have a feeling the people intent on
| believing that they're free speech absolutists will never
| be in a position to learn this lesson.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Calling what Trump was banned for as "political dissent"
| is extremely reductionist and naive. He was banned
| because he was inciting violence and insurrection.
| incrudible wrote:
| Arguably, but is that against the terms of service?
|
| https://twitter.com/hashtag/DeathToAmerica
| PierceJoy wrote:
| > In fact it is making me judge whether I should defect
| and not vote for Democrats in the next election.
|
| While I don't think your position on free speech is
| unreasonable, to overlook the harmful things the right is
| doing and base your vote on Twitter's moderation policies
| seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Off
| the top of my head:
|
| * Don't say gay bill * Huge restrictions on abortions
| that have been enacted recently and will undoubtedly be
| upheld by the SCOTUS. Even in cases of rape and incest. *
| Gerrymandering, ensuring the right will stay in control
| even if they are not supported by the electorate. *
| Restrictions placed on voting that target minorities
|
| I also think phrasing this as crushing political dissent
| is a gross exaggeration. We're talking about very extreme
| people being suspended from a social media website. No
| one is getting arrested. If you want to see examples of
| people being arrested, look at Texas where a woman was
| recently arrested for suspicion of having an abortion, or
| Florida where Desantis had a researcher arrested for
| releasing COVID data.
| ameister14 wrote:
| You should remove this part: " or Florida where Desantis
| had a researcher arrested for releasing COVID data. "
|
| She wasn't a researcher, she was an admin for the GIS
| dashboard.
|
| She was arrested because she misused her access
| credentials, mass-emailed everyone then took 19,000
| personnel files and transferred them to her home
| computer.
|
| She did the classic thing when she was removed from being
| in charge of the dashboard (not fired, just reassigned) -
| she crashed the dashboard while her permissions were
| still active by creating a new admin account and
| transferring a boatload of data to it. She refused to
| make the new admin an admin for 'security reasons' and
| then told the media she was removed from being in charge
| of the dashboard because they wanted to lie about the
| data. THAT is what they fired her for.
|
| Florida didn't have her manually falsify data - there is
| no evidence that they falsified data at all. She's just
| nuts.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| * Don't Say Gay * is a smear campaign by the media.
|
| Here is the actual bill, I really urge you to read it
| yourself without resorting to media's image which seems
| to have formed your opinions.
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-
| news/article259859150.ece...
|
| > # Lines 66-81 in the bill: School districts must "adopt
| procedures for notifying a student's parent if there is a
| change in the student's services or monitoring related to
| the student's mental, emotional, or physical health or
| well-being and the school's ability to provide a safe and
| supportive learning environment for the student. The
| procedures must reinforce the fundamental right of
| parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and
| control of their children by requiring school district
| personnel to encourage a student to discuss issues
| relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent
| or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent.
| The procedures may not prohibit parents from accessing
| any of their student's education and health records
| created, maintained, or used by the school district."
|
| I would support this bill. It makes sense to leave this
| topic to parents and not teachers. I wouldn't want my
| kids to be schooled in a place where gender/race takes
| precedence over math/science.
|
| Meanwhile, what's going on in Oakland schools is
| absolutely horrifying. Diluting mathematics education,
| claims it promotes white supremacy. Actual source:
| https://equitablemath.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Lines 97-101 say that you can't even legally teach a
| child sex-specific pronouns until they hit 4th grade.
|
| So strange that you would miss what people are actually
| upset about.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| You quoted one small part of the bill, and not the part
| people are concerned about.
|
| Care to address any of my other examples, or the people
| actually arrested due to right wing laws?
|
| > Diluting mathematics education, claims it promotes
| white supremacy.
|
| And Florida recently rejected math textbooks claiming
| they push critical race theory.
|
| > I wouldn't want my kids to be schooled in a place where
| gender/race takes precedence over math/science.
|
| But that wasn't happening. Do you have any evidence these
| things resulted a worse mathematics education?
| baskethead wrote:
| > And Florida recently rejected math textbooks claiming
| they push critical race theory.
|
| It wasn't just a claim. One example shown was a math
| textbook that showed a graph saying that conservatives
| were more racist than liberals. I'm a staunch liberal but
| I found that to be pretty shocking. I would love to see
| more examples from the other textbooks, but for that
| particular textbook, I myself would have no qualms
| telling the published to change that graph to something
| less divisive.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| This is an interesting comment on a thread which is
| essentially about free speech. If the data shows that
| conservatives are more racist than liberals, why should
| that be censored?
| baskethead wrote:
| Because the charge that this is indoctrinating young
| children to be anti-conservative would be valid. This
| isn't a free speech issue, it's a question of
| appropriateness. Having a graph showing about oranges vs
| lemons is appropriate for a math textbook. Making an
| comment about how conservatives are more racist than
| liberals is not appropriate for a math textbook.
|
| How would you feel if that graph instead showed "56% of
| all crimes are committed by African Americans"? That
| statistic is true, but is that appropriate for a math
| textbook without a deeper conversation about underlying
| causes?
| PierceJoy wrote:
| > Because the charge that this is indoctrinating young
| children to be anti-conservative would be valid.
|
| Is a hard truth indoctrination?
|
| > This isn't a free speech issue, it's a question of
| appropriateness.
|
| Excellent point. Doesn't this apply to the so-called
| censorship on Twitter as well? No one is getting
| arrested, and thus is cannot be a free speech issue.
| Should Twitter not get to decide what is appropriate on
| their platform?
|
| > Making an comment about how conservatives are more
| racist than liberals is not appropriate for a math
| textbook.
|
| What if the purpose of math textbooks should be to teach
| how math is applied in the real world? A graph of oranges
| vs lemons isn't going to be good at that.
|
| This sounds like the same argument used to justify
| "shielding" kids from homosexuality.
|
| > How would you feel if that graph instead showed "56% of
| all crimes are committed by African Americans"? That
| statistic is true, but is that appropriate for a math
| textbook without a deeper conversation about underlying
| causes?
|
| This is a great rebuttal. Alone, I would agree it's not
| appropriate. But if the textbook then proceeded to use
| math to show why that might be the case, then I would
| fully support it. In fact, that would be an excellent
| addition to a statistics lesson for kids.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| The only other "concerning" portion I could find in GP's
| link was:
|
| > Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
| parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not
| occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that
| is not age appropriate
|
| This seems reasonable given we usually don't teach sex-ed
| until 5th or 6th grade.
|
| > But that wasn't happening
|
| I can tell you with certainty that this is definitely
| happening in California schools, no clue about Florida.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Both of my children have or had classmates in their
| second grade classrooms that are openly transgender. The
| idea that sexual or gender orientation is or should be a
| taboo topic at that age is harmful to those children, and
| that kids that age are too young to talk about it is not,
| to my knowledge, backed by empirical evidence. Forcing
| schools to silence these kids' identities is hateful and
| reactionary.
| twofornone wrote:
| >Both of my children have or had classmates in their
| second grade classrooms that are openly transgender.
|
| What does that even mean? That a boy prefers to play with
| dolls? How can a prepubescent second grade child be
| trans!?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How can a prepubescent second grade child be trans!?
|
| Do you mean "how can they have a gender identity"? or
| "how can it be different than their assigned gender at
| birth"?
|
| I'm trying to figure out what you don't understand here.
| Do cisgender identities in children that age surprise
| you?
| LargeWu wrote:
| Let us try a thought experiment. Let's suppose you have
| male genitals, and everybody called you a girl in your
| early elementary years. Would that have caused you to
| feel confused? angry? depressed? If so, why?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The idea that second graders have "open" sexual
| identities should be absolutely horrifying, and is
| exactly why Florida is trying to pass it's bill to
| protect kids from this sort of thing.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| > The idea that second graders have "open" sexual
| identities should be absolutely horrifying
|
| So you find it horrifying if a young male openly
| identifies as a boy, and a young female openly identifies
| as a girl?
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| _Girl and Boy_ are not sexual identities and should not
| be misconstrued as such.
|
| Those terms in this context refer to prepubescent
| children.
|
| If a girl likes to dress in what is traditionally
| recognised as boys clothes and play with trucks, that
| just kids being kids, there's nothing transgendered to be
| found there.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| Transgender is also not a sexual identity, so then what
| exactly is the parent horrified about? If they misspoke
| and meant to say open gender identities, then my question
| still applies.
|
| > If a girl likes to dress in what is traditionally
| recognised as boys clothes and play with trucks, that
| just kids being kids, there's nothing transgendered to be
| found there.
|
| There is nothing *necessarily* transgendered about this.
| However, the grandparent stated there are openly
| transgendered kids in a second grade class. Are you
| saying it's impossible for a child to know if they're
| trans or not? I think we generally accept that some gay
| people knew they were gay at that age, why can't the same
| be true for trans people?
| LargeWu wrote:
| For clarification, the children I mentioned changed their
| names, appearances, and pronouns to match their own
| gender identities. It's not just "boys playing with
| dolls, girls playing with trucks".
| LargeWu wrote:
| As others below have pointed out, gender identity is
| distinct from sexual identities.
|
| But, this does not preclude young children to not have
| sexual identities! My wife's best friend knew he was gay
| when he was 6. He didn't have the understanding to know
| this precisely, but he did know he was different from the
| other boys. This is not an uncommon experience.
|
| If there's anything this thread indicates, based on
| demonstrated ignorance of these topics, it's that clearly
| schools should in fact be spending more time teaching
| this subject.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The idea that second graders have "open" sexual
| identities
|
| "Transgender" is not a sexual identity, it is a
| relationship of gender identity to gender socially
| ascribed at birth, usually on the basis of the appearance
| of external genitalia (but possibly on the basis of
| genetics where that has been previously tested.)
|
| And people usually have an open gender identity by second
| grade.
|
| (Second grade also isn't particularly early for children
| to have an established sexual orientation, though it's a
| bit earlier than the median age for that.)
| PierceJoy wrote:
| > or in a manner that is not age appropriate
|
| What do you think the odds are the Florida republicans
| will deem homosexuality to be age-inappropriate no matter
| the age?
|
| What about the grade 2 kid who has two dads or moms.
| Don't they deserve a peer group that is educated as to
| why that is normal and ok?
|
| > I can tell you with certainty that this is definitely
| happening in California schools, no clue about Florida.
|
| As I asked the parent, do you have any evidence this has
| resulted in a worse mathematics education? Also, how to
| you know gender/race was prioritized over math/sciene? Is
| it possible that is just your perception as a person who
| may not support education on gender and race?
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > do you have any evidence this has resulted in a worse
| mathematics education
|
| Yes. Holding back advanced kids from taking Algebra I or
| other higher level classes until high school materially
| harms their progression and ability to learn college
| level math as teenagers, which in turn harms their
| ability to learn higher math in college. When I was in
| middle school I took the equivalent of Algebra I in 6th
| grade. That's a 3 year gap to taking it in high school.
|
| In China they teach Algebra I in elementary school. How
| does mandating everyone stick to the same track of
| mediocrity help America's competitiveness?
|
| > Is it possible that is just your perception as a person
| who may not support education on gender and race?
|
| Modern woke "education" on race/gender focuses
| exclusively on black/latino races and LGBT peoples. There
| is no discussion of other races which have historically
| been, as woke people say, oppressed, such as Middle
| Eastern or Asian people. There is a single minded idea
| that black/latino/LGBT/women must be the only oppressed
| groups and that anyone else with a dissenting opinion to
| this is invalid or privileged. That lack of critical
| thinking and discussion is not what our kids should be
| learning.
|
| For example, no discussion is given to the fact that Jews
| were historically discriminated against by Harvard and
| other prestigious schools, because Jews are mostly white.
| Similarly no discussion is given to the fact that Asians
| today are discriminated against by Harvard and other
| prestigious schools and corporations. There is no
| discussion on the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese
| concentration camps of WWII. Why? Because Asians are
| "overrepresented" and serve as a counterexample to the
| narrative that systemic discrimination can't be overcome
| with hard work.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| Regarding the first part, I don't disagree. However, that
| has nothing to do with gender or race. The question was
| whether gender/race education has been prioritized over
| math/science, and if so, did it result in worse
| math/science education.
|
| What you described has been happening long before anyone
| cared about gender and race.
|
| > Modern woke "education" on race/gender focuses
| exclusively on black/latino races and LGBT peoples.
|
| Because those are the groups who have historically been
| most oppressed in North America. I'm sure students will
| have discussion at some point about Asians being
| discriminated against by Harvard, but it's clear that
| slavery and gay bashing has had a much worse effect on
| black and gay people than being rejected by Harvard has
| had on Asian people, and I say this as an Asian person.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| The person you're responded to stated: "There is no
| discussion on the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese
| concentration camps of WWII." You're making their point
| by disregarding that bit.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| I can't speak to the CEA, but we do teach kids about
| Japanese internment. Let's assume that we focus more on
| black and gay issues though. The parent answered his own
| question as to why we might focus more on black and gay
| issues
|
| > Because Asians are "overrepresented"
|
| It makes more sense focus on underrepresented groups than
| overrepresented groups when trying to address systemic
| issues. It's more efficient.
| brigandish wrote:
| Supporting everyone's right to speak does not make
| someone pro-Trump any more than it makes them anti-Trump.
| It's simply an entirely different concern.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| it's the definition of speech and arguments of what is
| protected vs dangerous.
|
| 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)
| rastignack wrote:
| Did a judge confirm your allegations ? Are we still
| governed by the law ?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Yes and yes he was impeached. the law of the constitution
| was followed.
|
| 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
| brigandish wrote:
| Dangerous speech, under US law, is that which is a
| credible and imminent danger to a person.
|
| > 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?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| You can not lump all lies together. There are different
| degrees. And most important a difference in who is
| telling the lie.
|
| 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.
| the_doctah wrote:
| That's not the same as being pro-Trump.
| yccs27 wrote:
| Re-platforming Trump is also not the same as being pro-
| Trump.
|
| 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.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| It is though. Being removed from twitter isn't being
| censored. Twitter is a megaphone, not a public square. If
| I take _my_ megaphone away from someone in the public
| square I 'm not censoring them. They just need to find
| another, or get their own, or stand on a box and shout.
| They are still in the public square. If I hand my
| megaphone to someone I am explicitly endorsing them.
| brigandish wrote:
| > Twitter is a megaphone, not a public square.
|
| 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.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Phone networks don't really have any sort of fan-out
| speech amplification though (unless you're talking about
| things like robocalling, which generally are regulated
| and aren't considered protected the same as individuals).
| brigandish wrote:
| That amplification is the choice of the users (or should
| be, obviously Twitter likes to try and shape this). It's
| like me calling you and you liking what I have to say and
| then calling all your friends to tell them, modern tech
| makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin to running a
| script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you say?
|
| 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.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > 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.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It's like me calling you and you liking what I have to
| say and then calling all your friends to tell them,
| modern tech makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin
| to running a script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you
| say?
|
| 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.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Where does this end ? If twitter is not a public square
| but a megaphone, then a public square is also not a
| public square but a megaphone, technically speaking I
| (possibly with the support of a mob) can ban you from
| entering the public square and you can still stand on the
| roof of a nearby house and shout your ideas. Your
| internet connection is also not a public square but a
| megaphone, your electricity is not a public square but a
| megaphone, and your mobile connection is not a public
| square but a megaphone. I can lobby gas station companies
| to never service you and that wouldn't be harrasment, you
| just need to find another gas station not controlled by
| all the ones I lobbied, or possibly start one of your own
| :).
|
| 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.
| donmcronald wrote:
| Yeah. IMHO the thing people don't realize is that all of
| the wealth elite are only in it for themselves. They
| don't go against each other because ultimately they all
| have the same goal - more money for the wealthy elite no
| matter what the cost to the planet and everyone else, so
| a lot of their attitudes and goals are going to align
| regardless of political ideology.
|
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| Correct. Just like Amazon selling the _Communist
| Manifesto_ doesn 't make Bezos a communist.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Incorrect. There is no equivalence. Selling books is
| different than actively targeting and lying to people you
| know will believe you.
| ameister14 wrote:
| It appears you are mistaking 're-platforming Trump' (more
| similar to selling books) with actually being Trump (more
| similar to lying to people).
| robonerd wrote:
| Wait you lost me, who's lies are you talking about?
| Trump's, or Musk's? They've both lied a lot, but that
| similarity doesn't make Musk a Trump supporter.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I'm saying selling books that promote controversial or
| even heinous ideas is not the same thing as allowing
| someone to broadcast those ideas at will in real time.
| robonerd wrote:
| Neither would make him a Trump supporter.
| kelnos wrote:
| Parent upthread never claimed Musk was pro-Trump, just
| that Musk's views on freedom of speech and censorship
| would likely re-platform Trump, regardless of Musk's
| politics.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It is, though. There's no need to re-platform Trump for
| "free speech" reasons. He can speak at ay time and people
| will hear him regardless of the forum.
|
| The asymmetry of the disinformation war markedly benefits
| the fascists. There is no need to bow down to them
| "because free speech."
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It can be a hedge for favorable treatment in the future.
| You think Google and Apple have dodged government scrutiny
| by luck alone?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You think Google and Apple have dodged government
| scrutiny
|
| No. I think they've been frequent, intense subjects of
| government scrutiny, including antitrust litigation.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Musk is radically pro-free speech. Free speech necessarily
| includes speech that might be unpopular, or popular only
| with the "wrong" kind of people.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Musk is radically pro-free speech
|
| 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.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Just like people who cheered Twitter and other social
| media companies swinging the ban-hammer left and right in
| the last few years, I would like to remind you that
| freedom of speech does not mean absence of consequences.
|
| I still would be surprised if we saw Musk abusing his
| powers to make user-generated things disappear from
| Twitter.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Just like people who cheered Twitter and other social
| media companies swinging the ban-hammer left and right in
| the last few years, I would like to remind you that
| freedom of speech does not mean absence of consequences
|
| 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.
| Wistar wrote:
| The NYT doesn't seem to know.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/16/business/elon-musk-
| politi...
| dsl wrote:
| Birds of a feather flock together.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| He is certainly a big fan of using Twitter to illegally
| manipulate markets for personal gain.
|
| He may not be a supporter, but certainly has similar
| methods. Using mobs of useful idiots to flaunt the law is a
| bad thing.
| inasio wrote:
| I think that would objectively be bad for Trump, what's the
| point then of his Truth Social app, the whole SPAC crazy
| valuation. Getting the popcorn ready.
| layer8 wrote:
| Trump already said he won't rejoin Twitter even if Elon
| reinstantiates his account. Of course, one shouldn't be
| surprised if he changes his mind at some point.
| alex_young wrote:
| I think removing Trump was an objectively positive move for a
| number of reasons, but Twitter's bottom line isn't one of
| them.
|
| 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.
| LightG wrote:
| Probably, even just the prospect of it and the similar
| nonsense has encouraged me to leave the platform.
|
| They can have at it.
|
| Freedom of speech also means freedom to leave.
| brigandish wrote:
| > 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?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| what about your friends retweeting.
|
| 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.
| brigandish wrote:
| > what about your friends retweeting.
|
| 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?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I am not - and I hope no one seriously is - talking about
| stopping or curtailing speech for everyone.
|
| 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.
| LightG wrote:
| Of course. I'm just n=1. Everyone can do what they want.
|
| But I will not contribute 1 cent/penny/vote in
| advertising revenue towards a platform that hosts that
| horsesh!t.
| brigandish wrote:
| I certainly don't blame you, I haven't logged in to
| Twitter in God knows how long, and for similar feelings,
| though mine was specifically against the censorship I was
| seeing that then amplifies a certain type of horseshit. I
| believe you'll either get truth and horseshit, or much
| less truth with some kinds of horseshit but horseshit all
| the same, so I go with equal opportunity horseshit.
| ratsmack wrote:
| I don't see why that would be a problem as long as he
| complies with all rules... or do you believe that Trump needs
| to be treated differently?
| slg wrote:
| Well he didn't follow the rules the first time and we
| should all know by now that Trump is going to change. So
| what does change, the rules or the equal application of the
| rules?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Pretty sure Elon will change the rules.
| ratsmack wrote:
| I suspect they will be more fairly applied than what is
| currently done.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| If you have this crazy guy in town who keeps buying dozens
| of raw chickens and stuffing them into trash cans in the
| town square on the hottest summer days... and you are the
| one store in town selling raw chickens... you probably just
| ban the crazy guy, right?
|
| 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.
| brigandish wrote:
| You have a guy in town that is powerful because many
| people support him. His opponents call him the "crazy
| chicken guy" and get him banned from the town square.
| They also try, and sometimes succeed, to get other people
| in the town banned from the square. Several business
| owners are fearful of this illiberal group. 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.
|
| 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?
| andrepd wrote:
| So because Saudi prince + rich investors are bad, it's
| better to have one centibillionaire own it instead?
| xmprt wrote:
| > you're comparing speech to actions other than speech in
| order to justify that speech being curtailed because you
| don't like it
|
| 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.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Thank you for the thoughtful rebuttal. It's definitely
| making me rethink my analogy within your framework.
|
| Long live HN.
| bduerst wrote:
| Please cite how you can't criticize Saudi families on
| Twitter.
| brigandish wrote:
| > Please cite how you can't criticize Saudi families on
| Twitter.
|
| 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.
| andrepd wrote:
| >Musk's wish to increase transparency
|
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| The chances of him actually complying with any rules? (Well
| maybe after Musk sets his new rules I guess...).
|
| 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.
| monksy wrote:
| He didn't before, still behaved badly, and finally got
| removed for demonstrating significant harm to the US.
|
| There is no reason to believe that he's changed.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| His toxic behavior is bad for society and for the brand.
|
| Why would Twitter want to be associated with a guy who
| attempted to overthrow the US government?
| MrMan wrote:
| Because if he succeeds next time you don't want to get
| executed with the other liberals
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Why would Twitter want to be associated with a guy who
| attempted to overthrow the US government?
|
| Because there's a better than even odds chance he'll be
| the next POTUS and if you're a billionaire with a
| reputation (deserved or no) for sketchiness, why
| antagonise the party that explicitly supports sketchy
| billionaires?
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Trump will not be eligible to run in 2024 because he
| engaged in seditious conspiracy against the government.
| He will be disqualified under the 14th amendment along
| with his sycophants.
|
| "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."
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/sec
| tio...
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Offer "real person" twitter filter._
|
| 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.
| toephu2 wrote:
| > Return to a reverse chronological time
|
| They've had this for years. Press the "swish" (stars) button
| top right.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but what percentage of users know about it? Of those,
| what percentage remember it?
|
| 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.
| remram wrote:
| This applies to your feed but not to replies in a thread.
| grishka wrote:
| I've never seen the algorithmic one in the first place.
| Probably because I have an old enough account?
| zippergz wrote:
| Unlikely. I've been a regular user since 2006 and both on
| the web and the apps, the algo timeline has been there for
| a long time but I never use it.
| grishka wrote:
| I mean it's _there_ , as in, there's a button to switch
| to it, but I don't think I've ever had it switch
| automatically.
|
| 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.
| yupper32 wrote:
| We have to remember that a lot of people who criticize
| twitter don't actually use twitter.
|
| 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!"
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| The problem with this approach is that they frequently revert
| you back to algorithmic order.
|
| 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.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I think it stopped doing that a year or two ago, certainly
| I can't remember the last time I had to change back to
| chrono order.
| antiterra wrote:
| Social media sites do this because all their stats show
| that users actually 'like' non chronological order even
| when they say they don't. Telling people what they want
| when they ask for something else is a big nono, so they
| just change it for you on the sly.
|
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| Most people wanting chronological quickly find out they
| don't really like it anyways, is my guess. Most twitter
| users I see now follow over a thousand people, scrolling
| through all that every day is impossible, it needs to be
| curated somehow.
| brailsafe wrote:
| That seems far from impossible actually. Especially if
| you consider the likelihood of all of their followers
| posting even once per day. You can scroll pretty quickly
| if it never stops.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > Social media sites do this because all their stats show
| that users actually 'like' non chronological order even
| when they say they don't.
|
| 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.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Even beyond "compulsion", it might just take longer to
| see what I want to see because there is other junk mixed
| in. If they are just measuring how long I scrolled and
| how many ads I accidentally clicked in the processed,
| they might be measuring inefficiency and mistaking it for
| engagement.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Hence instead should just be url, like /latest. Bookmark
| it, occasionally check mainline when bored.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Making the UX worse so it takes a longer time and more
| clicks to get what you want out of a site could look like
| improved engagement. What if I just want to quickly
| check-in, see what's new, then bounce?
| [deleted]
| homonculus1 wrote:
| I have a deep hunch that it gets far stupider even than
| measuring compulsion.
|
| 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.
| lewispollard wrote:
| My guess was actually that it's more efficient to show
| users a bunch of popular, cached content than it is to
| show them a truly chronological timeline full of new and
| unpopular content, which is unlikely to hit their cache
| so readily.
| tantaman wrote:
| If social networks worked like TV and there were only a
| few popular channels / pieces of content, sure.
|
| But algorithmic feeds are endlessly unique and composing
| them is vastly more difficult than doing chronological
| order.
| jrockway wrote:
| I kind of doubt that it's a caching issue. Twitter feels
| a lot like email to me -- sending a tweet is a lot like
| emailing to a group of followers. (Though it's unlikely
| they implement it that way because of the number of
| tweets that go unread.) Email providers operate at a
| scale similar to Twitter and don't replace your email
| with popular emails to increase cache hits.
|
| 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!)
| maxerickson wrote:
| I certainly engage with content more when 'the algorithm'
| shows it to me repeatedly, which is what happens on
| Twitter. Of course I don't necessarily like that.
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| I have literally never had it reset.
| jghn wrote:
| It happens to me once in a blue moon. Enough that I know
| the folks complaining aren't making things up, but yet
| something is different between their setup and my own.
|
| 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.
| josefresco wrote:
| It's reset on me 6 times across two accounts. I know
| because I complained ... on Twitter
| remram wrote:
| It used to happen every ~5 days, it did for at least a
| year. It hasn't reset for me for months though, I guess
| they stopped doing that.
| runjake wrote:
| I have it reset just about every day.
|
| Perhaps I'm on the wrong end of Twitter's A/B testing.
| ifaxmycodetok8s wrote:
| I set my timeline to chronological order years ago and have
| never had this issue.
| josefresco wrote:
| I set it two years ago too, and then a couple months ago
| they changed the app and again tried to foist it on me
| twice. I changed back twice, and had it changed once
| again - this last time seems to have stuck. I have
| another Twitter account (newer) that I don't log into
| frequently and it's happened on that one 3 times for a
| total of 6 between my two accounts. Oddly, I have one biz
| account that's never changed.
| msh wrote:
| But it would keep resetting to the algo Timeline until
| recently.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I've been using twitter for years and had no idea this was an
| option. This is clearly deliberate - the option is nowhere in
| the settings menu, where one would look for this. The star
| icon gives no indication it is even clickable, and does not
| communicate "sort order". There are fairly standard icons for
| that.
| caslon wrote:
| Every time I have made a twitter account, I have seen a box
| along the lines of "Viewing your Home feed. For the latest
| tweets, switch to Latest."
|
| I think in this case it might be that you clicked through a
| pretty hard to miss box.
| layer8 wrote:
| People tend to not create new Twitter accounts all the
| time.
| caslon wrote:
| It also appeared on multiple of my accounts that were
| made before the switch, so that also is irrelevant.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I did not. The algorithmic feed was not an option when I
| joined twitter. They were still basically a group sms
| system, and probably still running on Rails! Also I was
| not given the option to switch to it when it became
| available. They just switched everyone.
| caslon wrote:
| > They just switched everyone.
|
| It also appeared on multiple of my accounts that were
| made before the switch, so this hypothesis also seems
| wrong.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's in the same place it was for Facebook.
| qwertox wrote:
| Many of us don't use Facebook.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) Why would it be in the Settings menu ? For many of us
| it's a feature you change multiple times a day whilst using
| the app.
|
| 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.
| giobox wrote:
| I only learned what the "Sparkle Button" (that really does
| appear to be its actual name) does the other week in an
| article discussing its terrible design too. Instantly
| earned a spot in my personal UX Hall of Shame.
|
| Click the "Sparkle Button" to change the timeline sort
| algorithm. Right, totally obvious...
| [deleted]
| spurgu wrote:
| You can also use Tweetdeck.
| [deleted]
| Trias11 wrote:
| Biggest upcoming improvement - less wokeness
| andrepd wrote:
| >More free speech
|
| >Less of [thing you like most]
|
| How does that work?
| donmcronald wrote:
| How does that work? Isn't it "woke culture", not "woke
| policy"? I don't understand how Twitter can change that. Do
| they ban people for using the wrong pronoun or saying the
| word "landlord"? Assuming they don't, how can they control a
| subset of users that act in unison to "cancel" someone? Ban
| them all?
|
| It's a really hard problem IMO.
| Graffur wrote:
| At the very least they can stop putting woke tweets in my
| feed. That would make Twitter x10 better instantly for me.
| tompt wrote:
| What does less wokeness mean? Does it mean being more
| tolerant of abusive language? Does it mean being less
| tolerant of inclusive language? Both? Something else?
|
| I've heard folks ask for less wokeness, but I don't know what
| that would look like.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I wonder what the support % of allowing Trump back on is.
|
| At least it would make his social media scam/grift less
| valuable. but big societal damage imho
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Musk's primary reason for the twitter buyout is to allow
| Trump, Bannon, Musk, Thomas etc to speak freely on there, I
| suspect the amount of vitriol on twitter will go up at
| least one order of magnitude when these type of people are
| allowed free rein to do whatever they like on there. Elon
| is killing the golden goose with this buyout.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I know who Trump and Bannon are, but who is Thomas?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I meant taylor-greene. that's a swype typo. I was
| multitasking and didn't catch it
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| As much as wokeness is about inclusivity, it is also about
| redefining out-groups and, usually implicitly but often
| explicitly, justifying prejudice against them. I'd
| personally be appreciative of less of that negative
| activity.
| antisyzygy wrote:
| Normally in civilized society we don't go around abusing,
| insulting, and offending random strangers. "Wokeness" is
| the desire to treat others with some respect in public
| forums and the belief individuals have the right to
| disassociate themselves from those that do not abide by
| common decorum.
|
| I felt like I had to say it because the people complaining
| the loudest about "wokeness" have no clue what they're
| talking about. It's just a label they co-opted for some
| other behavior they don't like, and they need to get more
| specific about it because they're arguing using a totally
| different definition of "woke" than everyone else is using.
| fsflover wrote:
| Twitter could just switch to ActivityPub [0] and everything
| will be immediately improved for the users.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
| EarlKing wrote:
| No, it really wouldn't, since Twitter has a
| social/psychological problem, not a technological problem.
| fsflover wrote:
| Twitter has many problems. Some of them will be solved by
| an open, interoperable standard.
| rectang wrote:
| [deleted]
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I personally would love to see how many people a person has
| Blocked, similar to Following/Followers number.
|
| would find it very informative about a tweeter
| ar_lan wrote:
| I have been blocked by so many people solely because of
| people I follow - many of whom I don't follow because I like
| them, but they have an effect on broader communities and it's
| good to keep tabs on them.
|
| 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.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| How do you notice when a notable actor/actress has blocked
| you?
| swader999 wrote:
| Agree. Anonymous dissent has a real place in a functioning
| democracy.
| tensor wrote:
| What does blocking someone have to do with anonymous
| dissent?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I don't know why, my block list is over 60k.
|
| Why? We used to be able to import block lists, so I have
| 59,990 or whatever accounts blocked that spam.
| runako wrote:
| In general, I would expect a person's blocklist to correlate
| roughly with how active they are on the site, and how long
| they have been on the site. More activity leads to more
| interactions with spam and other undesirable accounts.
|
| I'm not sure how that confers much useful information about a
| user.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Well in Elon's ideal world the spam bots would be purged so
| they'd have no presence on block lists.
|
| 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.
| runako wrote:
| Spam extends beyond bots! Besides, there's also still the
| "and other undesirable" accounts part.
|
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think that would be a bad idea because it might make the
| person a target for haters.
| guerrilla wrote:
| So you can judge how much they are harassed? Why would you
| care?
| pastor_bob wrote:
| This assumes that people only block others because they are
| harassed by them.
|
| 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.
| sytelus wrote:
| I would add an ability to follow more than 5000 people. I
| follow mostly AI/ML researchers in the field and this limit is
| nausiating. Why can't there be more than 5000 interesting
| people in the world?
|
| 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.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them.
| Throw out the Blue Check status symbol
|
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440
| paconbork wrote:
| I mean that ambiguity does exist currently (see
| https://twitter.com/willsmith) but would certainly get worse.
| And it would be way too easy to get a verified account and
| then just change a few things to look like some famous person
| paulgb wrote:
| > And it would be way too easy to get a verified account
| and then just change a few things to look like some famous
| person
|
| 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
| chx wrote:
| Every time Yishan's thread comes up, I feel I need to add
| while he says Elon is behind he is _also_ behind: one half of
| the debaters left facts and reality behind. This means any
| fair moderation will be seen as left leaning.
| sanedigital wrote:
| > "...one half of the debaters left facts and reality
| behind."
|
| You can make this argument about the extremists on either
| side.
| FL410 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Sounds like one to verify identity, one to verify a
| "position"
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That's a great way of putting it. Maybe something like
| Reddit's user flairs could make sense, where the check mark
| would accompany a label verifying some aspect of the person
| it's attached to (e.g. "@emmanuelmacron, President of
| France")
| hooande wrote:
| this is/was important because people can copy someone's
| profile pic and come up with a username that's close ie
| @elonmmusk
|
| 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
| qwertox wrote:
| - Let the main feed be the main feed and not some attempt to
| recommend 4 new persons/things to subscribe to after every 2
| tweets.
| zelon88 wrote:
| > - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants
| them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real
| person" twitter filter.
|
| 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.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| propaganda, spam, shilling, bots. If they have a see only
| verified (maybe ideally as a default) it would help a huge
| amount with the big societal problems that have been created
| by government sponsored lies.
| andruc wrote:
| You and I have very different experiences with Twitter and
| how it is used.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Billionaires tweet, wannabe billionaire bootlickers
| retweet. It's a pretty straightforward concept.
| etchalon wrote:
| That's not at all the way the product is used.
|
| 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.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Do you really think that is what Elon sees in Twitter?
| The diversity of opinion?
|
| 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.
| etchalon wrote:
| In this chain of replies you talked about how the product
| was used by broad sets of people.
|
| Not Musk specifically.
| matt-attack wrote:
| How about also remove user hostile obsession with diverting
| users to the app?
| imgabe wrote:
| The problem with reverse chronological time is it doesn't show
| threads properly. They need a way to mark a tweet as part of a
| thread and still group all the thread replies from the author
| after it.
| rammy1234 wrote:
| Can they have verified bots :) Better filter for porno and
| explicit handles
| runako wrote:
| - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are
| inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to
| figure out.
|
| 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."
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That's why you set vague site policies like "no personal
| attacks or tweets inciting violence in public or against
| individuals"
| runako wrote:
| Exactly. Unfortunately, so much of the misunderstanding
| about Twitter's enforcement actions boils down to
| disagreements at the adjudication stage. Where Twitter may
| think X activity was inciting violence, other people may
| disagree. Making all the data more transparent won't change
| the fact that Twitter may interpret a given fact pattern in
| a different way than a critic.
| EricE wrote:
| When 90% of the "content moderation" decisions lean
| towards one end of the political spectrum that's hardly a
| mere disagreement at the adjudication stage.
|
| 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?
| Lendal wrote:
| Interesting. So dark money can remain secret, but on Twitter
| you'll be forced to doc yourself to prove you're human. I don't
| see how that's improved anything.
| tomlin wrote:
| Oh? So you don't see any benefit in an account having to
| prove its identity, or purchase a blue check with identity?
| How about bots? You will have to do cartwheels and backflips
| to convince anyone that someone will be willing to
| micromanage millions of bots, and their identity and payment
| profiles.
| shuckles wrote:
| Facebook has had an official real name policy for a decade
| and was the primary source of online misinformation in the
| 2016 US Presidential election. How do you think Twitter
| will pull this off and actually improve?
| hattmall wrote:
| Look at Amazon. Fake accounts are hard, so hard to make
| that they sell in the $1000s. Then it's still incredibly
| hard to actually use that fake account because so many
| actions will get them suspended. That's not to say Amazon
| isn't rampant with scams because the profit incentives
| from a single account are so great. You can sell a couple
| hundred 2TB Thumb drives for $30 per day and it will take
| a month or longer to accumulate enough bad reviews to
| have the account shutdown.
|
| I don't think the profit motivations on Twitter will be
| similar enough.
| tomlin wrote:
| That's not really a 1:1 comparison. You don't go through
| any identify verification process, other than "First name
| Last name." Go on Facebook Marketplace, there are dozens
| upon dozens of dup accounts solely for the purposes of
| evading a bad review, or to scam people outright.
|
| 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.
| hooande wrote:
| how many applications could this hypothetical process
| handle in a day? 100? 1000?
|
| twitter has 213 million active users. imagine if 20% of
| them want to get verified. it would take decades
| tomlin wrote:
| I dunno, but coinbase is doing it pretty effectively. So
| it is objectively not impossible, unless you want it to
| be.
|
| > Coinbase has more than 89 million registered and
| verified users
|
| https://earthweb.com/coinbase-
| statistics/#:~:text=4.1)%20Rel....
| nerfhammer wrote:
| I have a feeling facebook's real name policy is because
| it's somehow better for ad profiling
| wwweston wrote:
| "Human" and "pseudonymous" aren't exclusive, and there's a
| number of ways to verify the former w/o documenting real
| identity.
|
| Keeping things as human only as possible means that you can't
| scale-up apparent vocality of opinion via automation.
| schrodinger wrote:
| Interesting approach I learned about today...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm a human who can create a bot to tweet on my account.
| Are you suggesting that Twitter would require a captcha on
| every tweet?
| crisdux wrote:
| I envision they would implement a strategy that strengthens
| digital identity while not affecting those who wish to stay
| anonymous. Basically they would grant digital identity to
| those who want it, with that would come additional digital
| rights. Twitter could contribute a lot to this space.
| tensor wrote:
| Mine is this, if you want twitter blue to be at all appealing,
| make it so that you can eliminate all ads, _including_ promoted
| tweets. Getting rid of ads is my #1 ask. I 'd pay for it.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Install an adblocker. I literally never see ads on twitter...
| tensor wrote:
| Harder to do on mobile.
| 13415 wrote:
| I've tried Twitter recently for the first time to get more
| recent information about the Ukraine war. Maybe long-term
| twitter users see it differently because they've fine-tuned it
| and got used to it, but to me Twitter looks like a horrible and
| awful medium. I just can't see any purpose for it. People on
| Twitter post opinions and are subsequently mocked and insulted
| by other people who also value their opinions above all else.
| As far as I can see, Twitter is the most passive-aggressive
| place on the web. I'd go nuts if I read it daily.
|
| 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?
| epolanski wrote:
| It's the de facto only place you can get lots of useful
| information in tech twitter. The overwhelming majority of
| good posts I find about interesting snippets, articles about
| anything from css to typescript and haskell I find them in
| tweets.
|
| 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.
| internetvin wrote:
| Perhaps in an ideal sense, it's like a group chat of people
| that you find interesting, sharing their thoughts and ideas.
| It's also useful as a mechanism for distributing your own
| work and ideas.
|
| 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.
| bdefore wrote:
| Twitter's gambit since its inception has been the ability to
| magnify your audience more than a blog. This is _despite_ its
| counterproductive format for actual discussion and debate.
| All the critiques for how broken Twitter is now bemuse me.
| Compared to the blogs it supplanted, it's been broken since
| the start as a medium of informed communication. You're just
| not going to educate me of much of anything in 140
| characters.
| [deleted]
| jschulenklopper wrote:
| - Better search. Not necessarily in all of Twitter, but better
| search in a user's own tweet history.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I don't have many complaints with this currently. Appreciate
| the more power-user type syntax they have in the interface.
|
| Also searching users with curl and the api works great too.
| jasonwilk wrote:
| While I don't advocate for anyone losing their job, my partial
| view on what Elon will do with Twitter once he takes it private
| is to shut down their ad business and focus on Twitter Blue (or
| some variation of subscription based product announcements). This
| will have several benefits.
|
| 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.
| avs733 wrote:
| the innate value of Twitter is that it is open to the public
| and the interaction basically drives (sadly) a lot of public
| discourse.
|
| 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.
| newsclues wrote:
| The content moderation team needs to be fired
| fullshark wrote:
| Whatever the case, if I worked at twitter I'd be very worried
| about downsizing, his ambitions are not what the board was
| likely put in place to accomplish (growth growth growth).
| prepend wrote:
| That seems reasonable. But as a user, that seems to make
| sense. I don't understand Twitter's staffing given their
| profitability and while downsizing may be rough on the
| downsized, it might help out the org.
| Kye wrote:
| If it's like most companies with huge employee numbers,
| most of that staff is sales. Self-serve advertising is a
| neat concept, but actually making money at the scale of
| Twitter requires someone to go out and land deals to match.
| axg11 wrote:
| Without the ads business, Twitter will be operating at huge
| loss, much larger than recent times. The best way to monetize
| attention is through ads. I'm not saying that I am happy with
| that, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that
| subscriptions will lead to much lower revenue/profit than ads.
| There's a reason why no other social media platform has ever
| succeeded through a subscription model.
| corobo wrote:
| Have any tried? The only one I can think of close to social
| is the forum Something Awful, which did (does?) pretty good
| for itself
| nerfhammer wrote:
| app dot net
| bombcar wrote:
| Something Awful ended pretty awfully, at least for the
| founder.
| drawfloat wrote:
| It was making a lot of revenue and even got a (for the
| time) huge buyout offer. Lowtax being a mangosteen addict
| with a deeply troubled personal life who couldn't be
| bothered to take advantage of any of these
| opportunities/organise an effective was the main issue.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| And for that moderator who was killed in the attack on
| Benghazi.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You could have just said he planned to throw away 40+ billion
| dollars, because that's far more accurate given the reality of
| social media subscriptions and the internet.
| natly wrote:
| I have a feeling the server cost to run twitter is pretty
| miniscule. The major costs are probably headcount (and they
| don't seem to be doing very much). I wouldn't be surprised if
| you didn't require that many subscriptions to keep twitter
| alive (and as long as it's still running it won't die down).
| heartbreak wrote:
| The major costs after this deal closes will be about $1
| billion per year in interest payments on the debt Twitter
| is incurring to go private. In addition to that Elon
| himself will have about another $1 billion per year in
| interest payments in his own debt for this deal.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There's no amount of subscription revenue that will
| approach even a small fraction of ad support. That's a pipe
| dream.
| natly wrote:
| I'm not saying subscription would equal ad revenue I'm
| saying cut out the fat in the form of supurflous PMs and
| the C and B player fraction of the 7,500 employees at
| twitter (each probably 100k or more a year) and I don't
| think it's infeasible the same amount of profit would
| remain on the table (or at least enough to keep it going
| - without the negative dependencies musk thinks an ad
| income is associated to).
| jasonwilk wrote:
| That's the point. Musk doesn't need to maintain the ad
| business. Reduce the headcount, get enough subscriptions
| to break even and take a write off on the deflated value
| of the business. Just making it a great product, free of
| ads and better at spam.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| Fun two years ahead!
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Can I finally get verified now?
| jdrc wrote:
| Next stop Reddit
| marban wrote:
| Fun to own, terrible to operate, even harder to sell.
| Victerius wrote:
| Hacker News when? /s
| georgehill wrote:
| Hacker News is already a good place to speak freely.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm so confused why people think this. There are countless
| things I could put as a direct response to you that would
| have Dang letting me know my behaviour is uncalled for, and
| I would agree that they are, but uncalled for speech is
| still speech. If you have to choose your words is it really
| speaking freely?
| xdennis wrote:
| That's true that HN is moderated, but when people
| complain about free speech, they care more about banning
| content that's inconvenient vs content that's off topic
| or in a bad tone.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That seems silly - now you can just topic police to
| prevent people from speaking freely.
| jdrc wrote:
| It's already private , sadly no chance of drama
| moffkalast wrote:
| Someone needs to buy them and shelf out for up a second
| Raspberry Pi so they can double the amount of comments they
| can process per minute :D
| SXX wrote:
| Okay. Now actually let's see how "free speech absolutist" Musk
| will deal with this account:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmuskjet
|
| It's will tell us a lot about his plans with Twitter.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| You can check if twitter is silently oppressing your account
| here: https://taishin-miyamoto.com/ShadowBan/
|
| 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.
| oauea wrote:
| My HN account is rate limited by @dang, if I post more than an
| unspecified amount of comments in an unspecified time frame I
| get a message telling me to go away.
| nicksiscoe wrote:
| Does the green check mean the ban is or isn't being applied?
| hbn wrote:
| Yeah the UI is confusing. I think green check means "you
| passed, this doesn't apply" and red x is "the restriction is
| applied"
| dado3212 wrote:
| How does this work?
| xeromal wrote:
| Damn, I have reply deboosting and search ban. I post rarely to
| complain about services being down or for customer support.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Sounds like negativity to me! Silence!
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