[HN Gopher] Twitter Agrees to Be Taken Over
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Twitter Agrees to Be Taken Over
Author : cube2222
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-04-25 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| sschueller wrote:
| I love the arrogance of Elon and all these people who think it's
| so easy to make Twitter better.
|
| If it where so easy why hasn't Facebook, Reddit, YouTube or any
| one else figured it out?
|
| I have seen this over and over again. Once you reach mass global
| adaption it becomes practically impossible to operate a "fair"
| and clean platform.
|
| This idea that one platform works for the whole world is like
| believing in one world government. It doesn't work. It doesn't
| even work within the United States. People are just too
| different.
|
| IMO, if anything will ever work it's a federated platform that is
| self governed by its regions. Reddit is somewhat that but there
| is a single US centric company in control and they ultimately
| decide which subreddit get deleted.
| zackees wrote:
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > why hasn't Facebook, Reddit, YouTube
|
| Well, until today, Facebook, Reddit, Youtube and Twitter are
| all doing exactly the same things with regards to content
| moderation so at least Elon can try doing something different
| for a change.
| afavour wrote:
| There's a reason all these sites have come to the same
| solution: it's the most feasible one. If Musk orders Twitter
| to relax content moderation it'll fill to the brim with
| absolute garbage (at best, at worst it'll be child porn) and
| they'll backtrack. Nothing new here.
| yucky wrote:
| >There's a reason all these sites have come to the same
| solution: it's the most feasible one.
|
| Are you sure the reason isn't ideological? After all, the
| people running them are all ideological cousins.
| mc32 wrote:
| At least the system can aim to be less selective in its
| application and apply all across the spectrum rather than
| target some groups and not others.
| weezin wrote:
| Why does everyone use child porn as an argument against
| freedom of speech? Child porn is legally required to be
| taken down per section 230.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| the argument isn't against freedom of speech, it's
| against this mythical implementation of free speech in
| which content moderation is magnitudes better than what
| is known.
| blagie wrote:
| > If it where so easy why hasn't Facebook, Reddit, YouTube or
| any one else figured it out?
|
| The hard part isn't the technical part, but the human part.
| Human systems are hard. Beyond around a hundred people, the
| hard problem is the organizational one. I (and many of the
| other people on HN) can tell you what Facebook, Google,
| Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, or many other organizations ought to
| do. If they did it, they'd be wildly more successful. On the
| other hand, if you made me the CEO, I (and the other armchair
| generals) wouldn't be able to make them do it.
|
| * Beyond the original founder, the CEO usually doesn't care
| about the company, but about their annual bonus, their next
| job, their golden parachute, keeping the board happy, and
| setting up for their next job.
|
| * Employees don't care about the abstract company. They often
| want to make the world a better place, a decent pay check,
| interesting work, and good work-life balance
|
| ... and so on.
|
| Facebook is a bunch of people working on pet projects from
| monopoly profits. If you make me the CEO, I won't be able to
| fix that. Google is managed in crazy ways around short-term
| objectives which don't align to overall success. Can I tell you
| what it ought to do better? Sure. Could I make it do it? Heck
| no. Microsoft, I haven't followed in a while, but used to be
| torn apart by internal feuds. Etc.
|
| The upsides Elon has are:
|
| - He owns the thing, and has aligned incentives for himself, at
| least.
|
| - He has a pretty good track record with actually getting
| things like this done in organizations he's been at.
|
| From a technical perspective, I know a few people as good as
| Elon. That's hard, but not that hard. Elon is top 0.01%,
| probably, which means 1:10,000, which means I can find 30k
| Americans as good at him, and many more people worldwide.
|
| On the other hand, managing thousands of people in a coherent
| direction? That's * _HARD*_.
| olliej wrote:
| Could someone tell me what things "woke" Twitter has removed that
| were wrong to be removed?
|
| I am genuinely curious - because I recall terrorists, white
| supremacists, Nazis, homophobic, transphobic, and antisemitic
| content.
|
| I recall them stopping promotion of the violent overthrow of the
| US
|
| None of this seems bad, unless you are a free speech
| absolutionist, in which case you also have to publish Al Qaeda,
| ISIS, child abuse, etc, alongside your storm front streams
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| checkmate right?
| [deleted]
| uncomputation wrote:
| There is none, or at least no more than any other site. In
| fact, Twitter moderation is leagues better than old forum style
| moderation (dang is an exception :)). I waited for years
| post-2016 to see any real evidence of the "fake" news that is
| demonstrably false and has somehow infiltrated the world and...
| there is none. People just don't like the ideological spin of
| the headlines and moderation decisions which, I mean, what's
| new?
|
| My advice is don't hold your breath. This is exactly what you
| think it is.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| To counter your anecdote, I've seen fake news on the platform
| dozens of times (at the "Obama was born in Iraq" level).
| Usually someone parroting it from a partisan media vehicle.
| weezin wrote:
| Do you honestly think it was ok to stop the spread of the
| hunter biden story and suspend people for spreading it?
| olliej wrote:
| You mean the one with a few leaked emails used to promulgate
| at repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory? That one?
|
| Once it became clear that the conspiracy theory was just
| that, repeatedly promoting said conspiracy seems to be of
| questionable value, to anyone other than the GOP, who
| themselves repeatedly sued twitter for the identity of
| critics.
|
| So yeah, I do think it was reasonable to stop that propaganda
| after it became clear the conspiracy was false, and
| "reporting" on the laptop was being used solely to continue
| promoting that conspiracy. Is that a more borderline case,
| sure, I'll accept that. Is the literal president promoting
| the overthrow of the elected US government something that is
| debatable? nope. Is that something the anti-woke people say
| was wrong? yup.
|
| So I generally equate "anti-woke" with: anti-law, anti-
| democracy, pro-violence, pro-bigotry, pro-segregation, pro-
| conspiracy, etc and I have yet to see any evidence that the
| anti-woke/pro-"free speech" people clamoring for changes to
| twitter do not fall into those buckets.
|
| I have never seen any evidence in fact of an "anti-woke"
| person not defending hate speech, I have however seen many
| vigorously demanding that all LGBT content be silenced to
| "protect children", or that American history be censored or
| rewritten in school.
|
| Given that track record it is hard to see that the "anti-
| twitter-censorship" folk are operating out of a position of
| good-faith.
| weezin wrote:
| Ok well I'm going to remain on topic to your original (now
| obviously rhetorical) question. The article was not
| propaganda. It was disproving Biden's previous statement
| that he "never spoken to my son about his overseas business
| dealings".
|
| I would invite you to read the article again if you think
| its propaganda:
|
| https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-
| biden...
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I'm sure you can come up with more phones and ists, it's like
| you're not even trying.
|
| Of those you listed, only terrorism should be removed by law in
| the U.S. while the others are all things you, the reader,
| attribute to others and ascribe intent behind. You cannot prove
| intent, no matter how many mental gymnastics you perform. And
| then even if somebody expressly admitted to intent for those
| topics, they're not illegal. I don't care if you want them to
| be, they aren't. Get over it.
| blagie wrote:
| Personally, I think the value of Twitter will be much higher
| under Elon Musk than under old management. I don't know if it was
| undervalued or overvalued, so I don't know if he's going to make
| money on it, but from the outside, it felt mismanaged.
|
| I do think employees will scream "bloody murder," but it will be
| the wrong employees screaming the hardest. Twitter should be
| neutral, and support diversity. Twitter employees can't tolerate
| red states, let alone the diversity of the broader world. Muslims
| constitute over a billion people. Chinese are over a billion.
| Toss in Latin America, Slavic countries, and so on, and you have
| a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke
| Twitter employees.
|
| If Elon can make Twitter less progressive, white, affluent,
| Western, blue state value aligned, that's a bigger, broader
| userbase.
|
| On the other side, Twitter hasn't really improved since coming
| out. The number of employees has more than doubled since 2017,
| and it's not quite clear why. There's a lot of work to be done on
| either the cost side or the product improvement side. I don't
| feel like it has much beyond momentum.
|
| A key question is whether Elon will be able to make a workplace
| environment competitive with FAANG. He's not known as a great guy
| to work for. He will need that calibre of talent (if not the
| current quantity).
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Muslims constitute over a billion people. Chinese are over a
| billion. Toss in Latin America, Slavic countries, and so on,
| and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line
| with woke Twitter employees.
|
| The same could be said if you compared these groups to
| Republican Trump voting god fearing peoples. Thats how we ended
| up with things like the Muslim ban and evidently a response to
| that mentality in the form of the extreme left(Twitter woke
| mob, Antifa, etc.)
|
| On sites like HN and popular commentary like Joe Rogan I only
| ever hear this argument in one direction: against Leftists and
| never hear the criticism of the same being done (for a lot
| longer) by the Right.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line
| with woke Twitter employees.
|
| I hope you realize they're also out of line with Elon's
| eclectic libertarianism, and that those cultures not only
| disagree with woke employees but also with his 'free speech
| absolutism' and I hope Elon recognizes this because I have no
| interest in having American 'free speech' imported.
| olliej wrote:
| Elon has classic tech/rich person "libertarianism".
|
| He has benefited his entire life by massive government
| support: his early money largely coming through growing up
| with access to what was essentially slave labour, to his
| modern successes in which he took _massive_ amounts of money
| from the government, while also refusing to pay taxes. He
| demands law enforcement protect his interests, while
| intentionally and repeatedly ignoring the law himself.
|
| That is his "libertarianism" is a return to his heritage: he
| should be a part of a privileged society, where the core cost
| of keeping the country running should be borne by people have
| as few rights and resources as possible. Anything he can do
| to create his childhood utopia he will do.
| olliej wrote:
| So to be clear, you believe the Twitter should be unbiased
| towards terrorist videos, Child abuse, etc?
|
| Or is it just the white supremacy, antisemitism, homophobia,
| transphobia that you want back?
|
| This is a very simple question. You either want _unbiased_ or
| you are saying that the stuff that "wokeness" limited is good,
| and should be given a large platform.
|
| Yes or no? This is a very simple binary question
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Why do all your comments read like they're straight out of a
| training manual for how to be disingenuous in debate and
| activism to get your way?
| blagie wrote:
| It's not a binary question.
|
| 1) You listed a broad range of issues.
|
| 2) Each of those issues have different definitions. "White
| supremacy" means KKK in red states, and "the dominance of
| white culture in the design of American institutions" in woke
| culture. "Child abuse" can mean paedophilia or to spanking.
|
| My experience with these questions is that one answer leads
| to one definition, and another to the other. I've been down
| this road with woke individuals before. "Yes" takes you to a
| definition which makes you look like a KKK-supporting
| pedophile, and "No" to a definition which leads to policies
| offensive to most people in the world.
|
| And that's about where I think Twitter should place
| standards:
|
| - Algorithms should poorly rank inflammatory, polarizing
| content. This is the bulk of where Twitter's market cap comes
| from, so Elon loses money.
|
| - Humans should remove content which _most_ people in the
| world would find _grossly_ offensive. Not woke white
| Westerners, but _most_ people.
| lurquer wrote:
| > Yes or no? This is a very simple binary question
|
| It's triggering to a lot of people to use the term 'binary'
| in that manner. You need to check your Hetero-privilege. It's
| hateful and hurtful to non-binary posters.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, it's not binary. There are plenty of answers beside "yes"
| and "no".
| mellosouls wrote:
| Sheesh, of all the millions of news sources covering this, could
| we not have picked a paywalled one?
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(page generated 2022-04-25 23:02 UTC)