[HN Gopher] "Twitter will be forming a content moderation counci...
___________________________________________________________________
"Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse
viewpoints"
Author : minimaxir
Score : 205 points
Date : 2022-10-28 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| cr4nberry wrote:
| With facebook dying, twitter getting bought out, reddit's
| eutrophication, and tiktok on the rise, it seems like things have
| unsettled quite a bit
|
| The next couple years are going to be very interesting. Facebook
| will probably get bought out or something. For twitter, I can't
| really say. Reddit is probably going to become even more
| repulsive (and hopefully gets replaced). Hopefully tiktok goes
| away also :/
|
| Also interesting to see the phrase "diversity of viewpoint"
| catching on so quickly
| vehemenz wrote:
| It's been around for a while. "Viewpoint diversity" has been on
| the rise since the early 2010s at least, especially among
| thinktank Republicans and the intellectual/philosophical fringe
| of the liberal elite.
|
| I recall hearing the phrase a lot in the context of overbearing
| DEI initiatives (now commonplace) that were criticized for
| being too superficial in their concern with diversity of "race"
| rather than diversity of opinion.
| mikkergp wrote:
| "Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of
| water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with
| minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus.
| It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in
| phytoplankton productivity"
|
| What is happening to Reddit?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Toxic algal blooms like crimson tide can tend to choke off
| and kill all other life in a body of water that experiences
| eutrophication. It's actually such a regular thing in the
| Salton Sea from nearby fertilizer runoff that you could drive
| by and see rotting fish carcasses littering the shoreline.
| Probably means something analogous to that.
| cr4nberry wrote:
| One missing part of the definition is that the increased
| nutrients cause algae to overgrow and reduce oxygen supply in
| the water, killing the fish
|
| The process is similar to what's happened to reddit: new
| users come in like agricultural runoff, which leads to
| overgrowth of more suffocating aspects of the site culture
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Well you have to keep people in the uniparty otherwise they vote
| for extreme candidates.
|
| The problem if living conditions don't improve, things get
| extreme regardless.
| aksss wrote:
| _typed while reclining on the best living conditions in the
| history of the planet_
| kranke155 wrote:
| It's amazing to me that the HN hive mind has decided that somehow
| one of the most successful people on the planet, who's built a
| successful electric car company, a private rocketry company and
| was part of the people who laid foundation for a "payment system
| for the internet" is somehow doomed to fail in his new venture.
|
| The excitement for this new move seems not just low here but
| overwhelmingly negative.
|
| "It can't be done" is the overall sentiment. Really? Or are we
| just the people saying an electric car company can't be done, a
| private rocketry company can't be done, etc etc.
|
| This one of the most successful people who has ever lived on this
| planet. And yet HN doesn't seem to see any advantage to him
| leading twitter in a new direction, a company that overwhelmingly
| could be agreed before had no real direction and wasn't making
| any progress anywhere.
|
| But somehow a pretty smart billionaire taking it over doesn't
| trigger any outpouring of sympathy and excitement but of disdain
| and condescension. Really? What happened ? When did we become so
| calcified against change?
|
| Also; For anyone who says "twitter/facebook gave us trump" well,
| no. The unleashing of mass cognitive warfare as a consequence of
| the availability of micro targeting in these platforms gave you
| Trump/Bolsonaro/Meloni. For all the details on that, read
| "Mindfuck" by Christopher Wylie and "Targeted" by Brittany
| Kaiser.
| foobarian wrote:
| You know why? Because we want to get off this rock... and
| anything that takes EM's focus off of SpaceX is bad :-)
| kahrl wrote:
| What happened? The "pretty smart billionaire" started calling
| anyone who slighted him a pedophile. The "pretty smart
| billionaire" continues to commit fraud with false promises over
| at Tesla. The "pretty smart billionaire" seems to have a
| disdain for his lowly peasant employees.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Whi else did he call a pedophile? I know of only one person.
|
| Do you have any proof of fraud? If so, you should turn it
| into the SEC.
|
| Musk is not known to give hugs. So what?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Musk already settled with the SEC over his securities
| fraud: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
|
| Not sure what reporting it again would do.
|
| Edit: I'm guessing GP was referring to the continued
| potentially fraudulent FSD promises - there was a lot of HN
| discussion on _that_ yesterday I think.
| Thrymr wrote:
| There's also the minor matter of the $258 billion Doge
| lawsuit.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| There is still animus between musk and certain groups of
| thought. Certain people always see the negative and worst case
| scenario. Others see opportunities with various levels of risk
| aversion.
|
| Clearly Musk is in the latter camp.
|
| I said earlier that twitter has been hemorrhaging money to tune
| of nearly 2 billion over the last 2.5 years.
|
| While possible, its likely that Musk can't possibly do worse
| than the former leadership.
|
| Obviously it is a gamble, but what isn't a gamble? And what do
| such men gain without nothing ventured?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Clearly Musk is in the latter camp.
|
| Is he actually thought? If so, why did he try to maneuver out
| of the deal right up until it was clear he would not be able
| to?
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| I'd imagine Twitter withholding data would make any
| potential buyer have doubts.
|
| He also could have been trying for a better price, which
| any buyer is foolish not to at least try.
|
| Or he wanted to box them into a deal with a take-away,
| forcing twitter to publicly state intentions to complete
| the deal.
|
| All of this, (yours & mine), are still purely speculative.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Because the tech market crashed right after his pledge and
| it makes no good financial sense to go through with a deal
| that includes a massive loss from the outset unless you're
| absolutely compelled to.
|
| I don't see the causal connection people are drawing
| between this and his motivations and his vision for
| twitter, it's purely a financial logical decision to try to
| renegotiate or cancel the deal given the current market
| conditions.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i've said it before, there's much easier money to be made than
| better against Musk. When presenting a big idea he's pretty
| much been laughed out of every room he's ever walked into.
| Then, much to everyone's dismay, he does it. I'm withholding
| judgment for a few years...
| sangnoir wrote:
| I don't think he has presented any big idea regarding
| Twitter. In case I missed it, I'd be happy to learn what his
| big idea for Twitter is. By all impressions, he was dragged
| kicking and screaming into finalizing the deal - that doesn't
| exactly inspire confidence that he has bold ideas he'd like
| to try.
| tristanz wrote:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-elon-musks-x-the-
| every...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I too enjoy commuting to work using my city's hyperloop while
| charging my self-driving cybertruck with my solar roof.
|
| An objective assessment of Musk's batting average requires
| considering the big ideas that flop, never materialize, or
| fall far short of what was promised. Once you do that,
| Twitter seems like it could go either way from here. That's
| not even considering how split his attention must be at this
| point.
| vehemenz wrote:
| To be fair, he hasn't delivered on most of his promises, and
| it's the trade-off for taking risks.
|
| On the other hand, with that amount of wealth, the average
| intelligent person probably feels that they could do better,
| and I'm not sure they'd be completely wrong.
| politician wrote:
| Tesla is a battery company, not a car company. GM, Ford,
| Toyota, and all of the other automakers will be buying
| batteries from Tesla gigafactories, not the other way
| around. The bluster around FSD is a smoke screen. I believe
| that it's just R&D for vehicles operating off planet, like
| the robots.
|
| SpaceX delivers boost to orbit at a cost that beats every
| other major player.
|
| Clearly, he's done nothing. /rolls-eyes
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Firstly, I don't think it's a hive mind. All of the threads
| I've read through have been absolutely split between people who
| broadly think he's over-estimating himelf/underestimating the
| problem and people who think everyone else is over-estimating
| the problem and under-estimating him.
|
| I think the crux of it for me, is that whilst Musk comes at
| this fresh, he's not proposing fresh solutions. He has
| repeatedly suggested things that people have already tried, and
| then pivoted away from - realising the mistakes. It's very
| difficult to see this news today and not say "Oh, ok, so you're
| going to replicate Facebook's oversight board?"
|
| I agree with you, he's acheived a lot. At the end of the day
| though 2+2=4 no matter who you are, and if we're shooting for
| 5, I might hope Elon can produce 5, but if I hope he's going to
| produce 5, and his big idea is 2+2, then I'm going to be
| skeptical. it's not that I think he's an idiot, it's that he's
| proposing things that are well trodden paths.
| foobarian wrote:
| The minute he takes the company private his job there is
| done. Everything else will follow from the new incentive
| structure.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think you need to be more specific than that. Before
| twitter was private, it was run by a group of people who
| were generally pro free speech but who had experience to
| know the real conseuences of inaction, and therefore had
| put in a framework to ensure that they could stay
| advertiser friendly. Musk has declared he also wants to be
| advertiser friendly, but also has big business interests in
| national defence, and in China. Surely, if anything he's
| more prone to being influenced than the previous team.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >It's amazing to me that the HN hive mind has decided that
| somehow one of the most successful people on the planet, who's
| built a successful electric car company, a private rocketry
| company and was part of the people who laid foundation for a
| "payment system for the internet" is somehow doomed to fail in
| his new venture.
|
| It has been interesting to read it today.
|
| Fundamentally elon has simply called for politically neutral
| content moderation. I expect he's never going to allow calls to
| violence or incitement type things; who exactly thinks this is
| a bad decision? This is to solve the ongoing problem of
| censorship.
|
| Yet the people see the above as a nightmare scenario. So what
| exactly are we missing? Is giving the republicans their voice
| back and allowing them to speak really such a nightmare? I
| don't think these people are upset about this. I suspect it's
| not a nightmare scenario if the republicans getting the ability
| to speak back results in landslide elections in their favour.
| Like we are potentially seeing now in midterm polling.
|
| What if that's not the case. What if this is indeed a nightmare
| scenario? What exactly is the unsaid explanation?
|
| I don't see the cause for concern let alone it being a
| nightmare scenario.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > I expect he's never going to allow calls to violence or
| incitement type things; who exactly thinks this is a bad
| decision? ... Is giving the republicans their voice back and
| allowing them to speak really such a nightmare?
|
| Well let's see... last time the former President was using
| his voice on Twitter, he was inciting and directing an
| insurrection against the government. So if Musk wants to
| reverse that ban, and Trump decides to continue his rhetoric
| which already caused violence (which he will because he
| hasn't stopped since 1/6), then yeah, that's a nightmare.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Well let's see... last time the former President was using
| his voice on Twitter, he was inciting and directing an
| insurrection against the government. So if Musk wants to
| reverse that ban, and Trump decides to continue his
| rhetoric which already caused violence (which he will
| because he hasn't stopped since 1/6), then yeah, that's a
| nightmare.
|
| I'm not american and just an outside observer. I believe
| the republicans/trump would not agree with your assessment.
| There is certainly a huge irreconcilable divide on how
| January 6th is viewed on either side.
|
| Here's a left-wing viewpoint on the 'second american civil
| war':
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_American_Civil_War
|
| Which certainly agrees with you. Lets not forget Hillary
| Clinton has always held Trump stole the election and she
| even reiterated a few days ago the republicans are planning
| to do it again: https://twitter.com/IndivisibleTeam/status/
| 15834963547345387...
|
| Lets not forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_ef
| forts_to_restrict...
|
| 425 bills in 49 states the republicans pretty much
| universally didn't believe a free election occurred; so
| they want to restrict the vote and prevent people from
| voting for the democrats.
|
| More importantly the election in mere days will indicate to
| politicians exactly what the populous believes. When the
| democrats win midterms easily, it will be the people
| telling the republicans they aren't popular and democrats
| genuinely represent the will of the people.
|
| Do we even need to consider what the people are saying in
| the unlikely event republicans win midterms?
| augustuspolius wrote:
| It's not that we decided that Elon will fail. It's that there
| is no agreement on what success looks like. More freedom of
| speech for some means more abuse and bigotry for others. Both
| 4chan (no moderation) and HN (moderation) have succeeded by
| some metric and have a loyal audience. Twitter tried to satisfy
| too many parties for too long and now is facing a backlash from
| everyone. If Elon decides to prioritize one of the parties -
| the other groups will protest. And vice versa.
| paxys wrote:
| The second part of the Tweet is equally interesting.
|
| > No major content decisions or account reinstatements will
| happen before that council convenes.
|
| This gives him at least a temporary respite from the Trump
| question.
| lapcat wrote:
| Delay decisions, set up a committee... wow, that was fast, he's
| already becoming Jack.
|
| [EDIT:] The problem is that a "council with widely diverse
| viewpoints" is not going to come to consensus on moderation.
| They're inevitably going to disagree, just like in politics. So
| then what? How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of
| a widely diverse committee?
| [deleted]
| naasking wrote:
| You vote. Have an odd number of voters, and either majority or
| plurality gets their way.
| freen wrote:
| Hard problems, they are hard.
|
| "I can build a twitter clone in a weekend" is famous for a
| reason.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Of course any senior dev can. Isn't being able to design
| Twitter a prerequisite to passing a System Design interview
| at any BigTech company?
|
| Edit: I was being sarcastic. I meant to add /s
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I think what the parent comment is talking about and what
| you might have missed out on (though maybe your remark is
| tongue in cheek as well) is the challenge isn't building
| something with Twitter's functionality, but building
| something with its feature fit, timing, and growth. The
| core platform (while impressive engineering helps keep it
| running) is a fairly rudimentary idea, but execution is
| always a totally different story.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I forgot to add the /s
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| You were probably including the following in your meaning
| for "feature fit, timing, and growth", but just to echo /
| amplify your comment: two extremely difficult things in
| building a community of Twitter's size (neither of which
| are technical / implementation in nature) are a)
| achieving network effects [1], and b) solving the Eternal
| September problem [2]. Both these hurdles are much more
| strategic than technical in nature. Andrew Chen's "The
| Cold Start Problem" goes into some fascinating detail
| about this [3].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September 3.
| https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Start-Problem-Andrew-
| Chen/dp/006...
| superchroma wrote:
| wouldn't be surprised if he went to jack for ideas, we've seen
| how he texts, and not that long ago he didn't even appear to
| have a concrete plan on how to improve twitter
| koolba wrote:
| > How is lack of consensus not the inevitable outcome of a
| widely diverse committee?
|
| That sounds fine to me if there's actually a diverse set of
| view points. Getting censored should require a wide swathe of
| agreement. Not just a vocal minority.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| A whole swathe of agreement will be difficult if your diverse
| viewpoints include racists and bigots.
| yboris wrote:
| They could implement _quadratic voting_ which _may_ solve the
| challenge of getting people to more-correctly express their
| intensity of concern.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_voting
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Imagine trying to explain this complex of a voting system
| to the folks whose argument the election was rigged
| sometimes boiled down to "I saw more Trump signs, so Biden
| can't have gotten votes".
|
| The more complex the system, the less it'll be trusted;
| something with "quadratic" in the name is gonna make eyes
| glaze over.
| esoterica wrote:
| How do you decide which diverse view points are worthy of
| including and which aren't? Do we need a neo-nazi, an ISIS
| supporter, a 9/11 truther, a creationist, and a flat earther
| on the committee for the sake or intellectual diversity? I
| guess people will want conservatives on the committee, but
| are you happy with a normie Reagan republican or do we have
| to add a QAnoner and JFK Jr guy for the sake of
| representation?
| layer8 wrote:
| The tweet also mentions account reinstatements, so it goes
| both ways.
| bryananderson wrote:
| This makes sense, but only in a world where we can trust that
| almost everyone is operating in good faith. Does that sound
| like contemporary American political discourse to you?
|
| Those from "our side" on the committee can just unite to
| block anyone from "our side" from being banned. And those on
| "their side" can do the same. In fact, anyone who doesn't do
| this will probably be branded a sellout. I just don't see how
| to do this in a way that actually functions and also promotes
| broad-based faith that it's a fair system.
| saltminer wrote:
| I feel like this "content moderation council" would be a fine
| idea if there weren't a large segment of the US population
| (the country which will almost certainly dominate the
| council) still living in a complete fantasy land where Trump
| won the 2020 election by a landslide and explaining the
| continuing effects of racist policies of the past is secretly
| a plot to kill off white people.
|
| Those people might not be a majority, but they certainly
| aren't a "vocal minority" that can safely be ignored, either.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The best theory is that this analogous to Facebook's Oversight
| Committee, whose purpose in practice is to serve as a scapegoat
| for the _really_ tough or unpopular moderation decisions. (e.g.
| Trump reinstatement, which ironically the Facebook Oversight
| Committee refused to rule on)
| hn2017 wrote:
| Musk is way over his head.
|
| If you view the 4chan forums, they're already plotting racist,
| anti-semitic content and rejoicing. Advertisers will not be
| happy real quick.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Right wing provocateurs are already having their supporters
| posting the n-word, racist and anti LGBTQ content since Elon
| took over.
|
| It is going to be fun watching it implode.
| MrMan wrote:
| none of this is fun
| concinds wrote:
| You may not have noticed, but they've been posting that for
| years.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| There has been a significant uptick today[1].
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ncri_io/status/1586007698910646272
| concinds wrote:
| Fair enough. I still think conservatives (and liberals,
| for different reasons) are vastly overestimating how much
| Musk will protect free speech. Slurs will obviously still
| be banned (likely automatically; I don't see why the
| platform relies on human moderation in those cases).
| These people are just getting a fast-track ticket to not-
| allowed-on-Twitter.
| rossjudson wrote:
| Advertisers are going to be pretty concerned when their paid
| content is showing up in screenshots mixed in with "questionable"
| content.
|
| Advertising and freedom-for-jackasses doesn't mix well.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Advertisers are going to be pretty concerned when their paid
| content is showing up in screenshots mixed in with
| "questionable" content.
|
| Are you aware Twitter already allows all sort of depraved porn
| on their platform already? Did Advertisers leave the platform
| as a result of this already?
|
| Maybe Twitter should get rid of the hardcore pornography first.
| bergenty wrote:
| What's wrong with hardcore pornography?
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think it's about context. I'm of the persuasion that it
| should not exist within mainstream society. It should be
| sent to the margins and not integrated into normal life. We
| shouldn't have strip clubs or brothels in the town square
| for example. Out to the borders where it's there if you
| need it but it isn't casual.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > What's wrong with hardcore pornography?
|
| What's wrong with what Twitter progressives deem
| questionable opinions?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Hard to say with how vague that is, can you give concrete
| examples of these things that Twitter progressives deem
| questionable opinions?
| hn2017 wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/eu-official-warns-musk-hell-...
|
| will still have to oblige. Definitely no "hate speech, incitement
| to terrorism and child sexual abuse."
|
| For his part, Musk has said he wouldn't allow illegal content on
| the platform.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The EU doesn't have worldwide jurisdiction over prohibited
| speech. Why should an American company have to take down
| anything that's legal here, even if it wouldn't be there?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| At least in the US, there's a lot of noxious speech that's
| legal. The US has very permissive free speech laws overall.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| And conversely the US is one of the most restrictive nations
| on earth when it comes to speech that supposedly infringes
| Copyrights or can be interpreted as defamation/slander. The
| premise that US has anything resembling freedom of speech is
| completely untrue.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > the most restrictive nations on earth when it comes to
| speech that supposedly infringes Copyrights
|
| That's absolutely true.
|
| > or can be interpreted as defamation/slander
|
| That's absolutely false. The United States tends to be much
| harder to press a defamation/slander case than many other
| territories. Perhaps you're thinking of the United Kingdom?
| They have _much_ looser libel laws than the United States.
| [deleted]
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Libel/slander are famously hard to prove in the US. Sure
| you're not thinking of the UK?
|
| Are peer nations substantially more liberal on copyright
| infringement than the US? I haven't really heard of that.
| Really, it seemed like other countries like Japan and
| Germany were stricter.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| Didn't an entertainer in the US recently get sued for
| millions of dollars over Defamation simply for repeating
| a popular internet conspiracy theory on his show-that
| some public figures were supposedly "crisis actors"?
| (Peoples who's names he never even mentioned, at that..)
|
| If calling public figures actors is all it takes for them
| to successfully sue for millions, the bar seems
| incredibly low.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Didn't an entertainer in the US recently get sued for
| millions of dollars over Defamation simply for repeating
| a popular internet conspiracy theory on his show-that
| some public figures were supposedly "crisis actors"?
|
| No.
|
| First, the Sandy Hook parents were not public figures.
|
| Second, Jones and Infowars did _significantly_ more than
| just make claims about people being crisis actors
| (though, that in itself absolutely _can_ be defamatory in
| that it was a false statement of fact). There were also
| claims that some parent 's fabricated their daughter's
| identify and then faked her death in order to steal money
| from hard-working Americans.
|
| Third, this was not a matter of Jones simply making an
| assertion once. He repeated these claims for _years_ ,
| which led to a significant and ongoing harassment of the
| family.
|
| The original complaint is here, though I'll note that
| it's from 2018 and _much_ more evidence was discovered
| since the complaint was filed: https://civilinquiry.jud.c
| t.gov/DocumentInquiry/DocumentInqu....
|
| Fourth, Jones refused to participate in the lawsuit
| itself, deliberately and repeatedly not complying with
| repeated discovery orders. This led to a default
| judgement against him.
|
| Fifth, an entire trial was held on how much damage Jones'
| defamatory statements and unfair trade practices caused.
| A jury of his peers determined that Jones' defamatory
| actions caused $965 Million dollars in damages.
|
| So, I think your characterization of it as "an
| entertainer simply repeating a popular internet
| conspiracy theory on his show" is an absolutely
| incomplete summary of what happened, and why he was found
| to be liable for his actions.
|
| Which jurisdiction(s) do you think would have afforded
| more protections to Jones' defamatory conduct?
|
| The entire docket can be found here: https://civilinquiry
| .jud.ct.gov/CaseDetail/PublicCaseDetail....
| djur wrote:
| Jones didn't bother to show up to court to defend
| himself, so the plaintiffs won by default.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Wait, doesn't the US generally have really high standards
| for what can meet defamation/slander? Esp. compared with
| other western countries?
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| "Very permissive" seems an odd way to put it. It's a human
| right. The way this is stated is just as if giving women the
| right to do everything men can do was "very permissive."
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| We're not just talking about basic political speech
| freedoms, there's plenty of gray area about.
|
| For example, the US and UK both have laws on libel/slander
| (I think most countries do), but the US is much more
| permissive than the UK, in the sense that it's a lot harder
| to prove that someone committed libel/slander.
|
| Is it a "human right" to maliciously and publicly lie about
| whether some other person, say, killed a child for fun? You
| could certainly argue "people should be able to say
| whatever they want whenever they want", but I think most
| people would agree that some restrictions on that kind of
| speech is reasonable, because it ends up harming others.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Fundamentally twitter didn't twirl their moustache and aim to
| shutdown conservatives. There was no conspiracy as it were but
| they didn't consider the consequences of decisions, ultimately
| culminating in shutting down conservatives.
|
| If Elon ran roughshot in making decisions without considering
| consequences, he ends up in the same fundamental root cause
| problem twitter is already in. He understands this and hence why
| he's not making changes on read-only friday.
| abraae wrote:
| I wish that Twitter - or some other social network - would
| experiment with the type of moderation seen on HN. Some would
| maybe call it heavy handed but I think of HN as a place that is
| mercifully relatively free of trolling, outrage culture,
| political bullshit and other toxic behaviors.
|
| In my experience there's no place like HN on the internet, and
| that's due I suspect to having a highly professional moderator
| (@dang) who uses top level communication skills to firmly but
| politely pull people into line.
|
| That in turn creates a virtuous circle where users socially
| moderate each other.
|
| It's hard to describe just how relaxing and pleasant it is
| browsing HN. It's always jarring to read the comments on e.g some
| Facebook groups I belong to, which feel like they're authored by
| a bunch of teenagers that have just found the key to their
| parents liquor cabinet.
|
| If Twitter was like HN I would spend time there.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| The problem I see with that is that it doesn't scale to the
| size Twitter is.
| smeagull wrote:
| HN is pretty much like any subreddit. And there is a line of
| prevailing thought that you can't go against.
| mdeeks wrote:
| I guess it depends on the subreddit and mods, but most
| subreddits I've been to are littered with jokes, memes, and
| various levels of anger. They are usually hilarious but not
| what I want to wade through most of the time. It hides the
| useful info.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| Twitter is more of a platform imo, that has to have more
| permissive policies than a niche forum like HN. Benevolent
| dictatorships (especially opt-in ones) are great for smaller
| discussions. And people literally can go have their own
| discussion about celebrity gossip or whatever that would get
| killed on HN, in another forum.
|
| Twitter is more like a utility, and if it wants to occupy that
| position it should be more open to content that people disagree
| with or don't like.
| mdeeks wrote:
| HN still suffers from what I call the "Everyone is an idiot but
| me" mentality. There is also a bit of outrage from time to time
| about small things. But the fact that it is the worst that
| happens here is saying a lot though. HN really is very well
| moderated and the guidelines are concise, reasonable, and
| simple to understand. It really helps that HN has a narrow set
| of topics. No idea how this could possibly scale to the size of
| twitter.
| pixl97 wrote:
| HN doesn't scale because at the end of the day we can fall
| back to tech and moderate everything else out of existence.
|
| Politics _poof_ gone.
|
| Celebrities _poof_ gone.
|
| Sports _poof_ gone.
|
| Religion _poof_ gone.
|
| HN simply doesn't have to deal with the above in a general
| manner which removes a massive number of issues.
| naet wrote:
| I like HN and the moderators, but this isn't how HN mods imo.
| People aren't just politely reprimanded and falling into
| line...
|
| People get accounts banned every day here. Moderation on HN is
| imo heavier than it is on twitter. Topics and discussion are
| heavily controlled and removed if they become at all sensitive
| or aggressive. You can't call people names or make crass
| offtopic jokes (like people on twitter do constantly).
|
| Moderation is quick and personal, but that doesn't scale to a
| site with the volume of twitter.
| mdeeks wrote:
| > You can't call people names or make crass offtopic jokes
| (like people on twitter do constantly).
|
| I'm not sure how they could pull it off, but if Twitter wants
| to be a real town hall for the world then these are the
| things that DO need to be removed.
|
| But if twitter wants to be the place were anyone can scream
| into the void, then they can't do this.
|
| The weird thing is, I want both. My favorite part of twitter
| is both of these things.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Isn that how it should have been from the start...
| animitronix wrote:
| Sounds like a spectacular waste of time that will never agree on
| anything, so why even bother?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Potentially of intellectual interest: Some people here might be
| wondering about speech that is "harmful," with the famous quote
| about "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." That quote from
| the Supreme Court is commonly used to justify why there need to
| be restraints on free speech.
|
| This is actually a popular misconception. The decision where "you
| can't yell fire in a crowded theater" was from was actually
| overturned in almost entirety in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969. And
| even then, it was only an _analogy_ , and never actually was the
| law. You actually, theoretically, _CAN_ yell fire in a crowded
| theater. Websites on both sides of the isle have admitted it is a
| terrible analogy for defending censoring certain content for
| being potentially harmful. It is, quite literally, a legal myth.
| A legal myth that still affects our Congress today while they
| examine how to prevent the spread of misinformation [1].
|
| https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/why-falsely-claiming-its-ill...
|
| https://reason.com/2022/10/27/yes-you-can-yell-fire-in-a-cro...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f...
|
| https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/legal-mythbusting-series-yel...
|
| https://www.thefire.org/you-can-shout-fire-in-a-burning-thea...
|
| [1] For an example (out of many) of why regulating misinformation
| is legally almost impossible, see United States vs Alvarez, which
| ruled that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 (which criminalized
| _faking having a military honor_ ) is legally protected speech
| and the act was a violation of the constitution. Since then it
| has been extended with a new 2013 act which requires intent to
| gain something by fraud, which hasn't been struck down (yet).
| karmasimida wrote:
| This is good news isn't it, twitter has been this biased this can
| only do good
| [deleted]
| pupppet wrote:
| So if I go off about how awful the Jews and the gays are, is that
| a "diverse viewpoint"?
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| assetlabel wrote:
| Diverse in this context means the different people on the
| council will have very different viewpoints from each other.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm sure that already existed. Unless he intends to expand
| the diversity into the realm of racism or other types of
| bigotry or conspiracy beliefs. In my observation, Twitter is
| extremely permissive in what kind of speech it allows,
| drawing a line only at abject hate speech, threats or
| deliberate disinformation. None of that suffers from lack of
| diversity of viewpoints. Musk is either intending to allow a
| lot more shit flinging or he's really deluding himself that
| he can solve this problem. I'd honestly be more optimistic if
| he was bringing OpenAI in to do moderation.
| Latty wrote:
| Right, so the game becomes making your viewpoint as extreme
| as possible to shift the window of the council in your
| favour. What could possibly go wrong.
|
| Not all viewpoints are equally valid. Just finding the middle
| of the viewpoints that exist isn't moderate because you can't
| just pretend that all sides have equal numbers of extremists
| and that somehow their views automatically "cancel out".
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > What could possibly go wrong.
|
| Simply stating a council will have diverse views is enough
| for people to ring the fire alarm these days.
| infamouscow wrote:
| > Not all viewpoints are equally valid.
|
| What makes you think your viewpoint is valid?
|
| It's intellectually weak and morally dubious to take such a
| stupid position.
| zo1 wrote:
| Do you not see how that same type of hate is already directed
| at white people? Sanity has lost if you have to be some sort of
| "crazy right winger" to see the blatant hate and racism
| directed at white people.
|
| I'm writing this from a country that currently has a giant
| nationwide chain store that has a public "No Whites, Blacks
| Only" hiring policy.
| [deleted]
| pjkundert wrote:
| It will be, if Elon implements effective agent-based
| clustering, such as with K-Means Clustering.
|
| "Solving" content moderation is a losing battle -- there is no
| way to humanly moderate anything at the rate it can be
| produced, and Elon knows this. It's insane, so he probably
| won't do it.
|
| But, allowing content to be produced, but making sure no real
| person ever sees it, until the content producer earns their way
| into "your" group -- now that can be automated. Also, then the
| police and FBI could use all the evil content to "do their job"
| (but, I'm not holding my breath).
|
| Elon has access to Exascale hardware, so K-means Clusters with
| arbitrarily large dimensionality is at his disposal. The
| algorithms are linear in complexity, so should be
| parallelizable.
|
| I figure he might have thought this through...
| etchalon wrote:
| Isn't this just shadow-banning, which is already a thing
| people believe is the same as censorship and enumerate
| numerous conspiracies about?
| pjkundert wrote:
| If you choose to downvote lots of $SOMETHING, you'll move
| further away from groups where they like $SOMETHING, and
| see less tweets about it probably.
|
| Your delicate sensitivites about $SOMETHING don't affect
| anyone else.
| marstall wrote:
| How does that help? The whole problem is that twitter
| provides a platform to legitimize hate speech by spreading it
| to like-minded people and thereby emboldening them.
| clustering does exactly that, but shields bad actors with a
| cloak of secrecy.
| pjkundert wrote:
| There's no secrecy. The FBI can (and should) infiltrate
| these groups (just like their tweets, and you're in), and
| then arrest them for their illegal behavior. And, limited
| in-real-life moderation of illegal posts can be focused on
| where the crazy people hang out. It should be a win.
| MrMan wrote:
| oh no, not k-means clustering
| mchaver wrote:
| My life was going fine until my tweet got too close to
| Agent K's centroid.
| pjkundert wrote:
| I think it'll work more like this.
|
| There are people who enjoy reasoned debate, even if they
| don't agree with the counterparty. They won't downvote
| those tweets. Their cluster weight will be gently moving
| in the direction of others like them, and its weight will
| let through a wide variety of other gently weighted
| groups.
|
| Others are compelled to screech and foam at the mouth if
| someone argues for a $WRONGTHINK - even in jest or as a
| devil's advocate, and will downvote them instantly. Their
| weightings will be heavy, and will exclude most other
| groups. They will see only what they want to see, and
| won't see what they don't want to see -- reasoned debate
| from groups they disagree with, for example.
|
| This is a personal choice, and mirrors physical group
| dynamics.
|
| If someone "in your group" starts talking crazy, they
| will begin to separate from the group (by mutual down-
| voting), and migrate to a different group. You (and the
| rest of your group) won't be affected much.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| If anything is clear from the texts that came up during
| discovery, it's that Elon Musk hasn't thought anything
| through with this deal.
|
| Long Covid brain fog? Marijuana-induced schizophrenia? Has he
| just been stupid and lucky all along? I haven't spent enough
| time thinking about this to figure out why.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Advertisers don't want placement next to "bad" content,
| whether or not the in-group likes that content.
|
| (That's probably a big reason why he wants subscription fees
| to take over advertiser revenue dominance.)
| pjkundert wrote:
| Of course. A wise advertiser would select a subset of the
| K-Means Clusters to advertise to. Like, probably the "not
| insane" ones.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| I'd be interested to learn how you think kmeans helps either
| diversity or hate speech detection.
|
| I don't think it helps with any of either, as people's
| behavior, the context, the language used and sensibilities
| change across cultures and over time. What you call hate
| speech now may not be in the future and may not have been in
| the past.
|
| The best you could hope for is creating a fuzzy
| representation of the most visible problematic behavior and
| try to outrun model-world dealignment by constantly updating
| it.
| pjkundert wrote:
| The clustering responds to which tweets are up- and down-
| voted by the agent.
|
| And, the agent is moved closer to the clusters they like
| tweets from, and further from the clusters they dislike
| tweets from.
|
| The more diverse your likes (likes tweets in many other
| clusters), the broader and less restrictive your cluster
| weighting is -- the more variety you see. The more
| restrictive your selection, the less variety.
|
| You decide how much of an "echo chamber" you're in. But, if
| you don't like $BAD_THING, and you downvote enough tweets
| of $BAD_THING, the less you'll see tweets by people in
| groups where they like $BAD_THING.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| How does this work with things like "ratio-ing" or
| "dunking" or libsoftiktok that intentionally take
| clusters of media from one group and shoving it into
| their group explicitly to hate them?
| pjkundert wrote:
| I'm not sure that shaking your head and laughing at
| someone's crazy-talk is "hating" them... Perhaps that's
| part of the problem.
|
| If you don't want people chuckling at you, don't talk
| crazy.
|
| If you really, really get annoyed at something and mash
| the downvote button, it'll eventually go away, and you'll
| be left in your warm, cozy bubble.
|
| Everyone wins!
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Recommender systems for news and social media have been
| tried, and I don't doubt that there may be niches where
| they succeed.
|
| But large platforms have two massive problems:
|
| (1) what people want is popular content, sometimes even
| content they would downvote. This destroys clustering by
| creating fuzzy centralized bridges and erodes the
| usefulness of recommenders
|
| (2) people over time have lost trust and interest in
| highly personalized feeds, see facebook or the revolt
| against instagram's feed sorting.
|
| Two cases that seem to work for now are music
| recommendation and tiktok. I'm not holding my breath
| though, because spotify might end up driving people away
| with too many monetized podcasts and tiktok could succumb
| to the generational migration. But we'll see!
| concinds wrote:
| Sentiment analysis can solve the first. If the algo
| notices that someone only engages negatively with another
| cluster, cut it off; they're not entitled to pollute
| that.
|
| And the second point was a mostly abstract intellectual
| debate in the early 2010s, but people have proven that
| they absolutely prefer to stick with their own, and have
| close-to-zero tolerance for dissent or disagreement (see,
| "the hivemind"). Twitter is far more prone to this than
| Facebook, since it's founded on communities (i.e.
| clusters) rather than just friends. Twitter just needs to
| stop putting junk into people's feeds; and silo them
| better to reduce harassment.
|
| That would also reduce polarization, since a _yuge_ cause
| for polarization (far-right, antifa) is a knee-jerk
| reaction to the very worst content from the other side.
| Stop promoting that, and you 'll stop the "Brainwashing
| Of My Dad" effect (the film), where a conservative from
| Texas gets upset because of bathroom laws in California,
| or where a liberal gets upset because of a few 4chan
| trolls.
|
| It's the psychological phenomenon of "enmeshment": remove
| the boundaries between people, and you make their
| relationship very toxic and conflictual. Enforce better
| boundaries, and their relationship will be far healthier.
| Twitter promoted the former; Musk can avoid most of the
| upcoming "hell" being predicted by doing the latter.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Why not? In my country, these opinions are uttered so openly
| and commonly that it does not even raise an eyebrow. Infact
| these are cherished religious beliefs, even.
|
| Yet, there are viewpoints that would be considered so utterly
| innocent in the west as to be as unnoticeable as punctuation,
| that have led to actual mob violence and lynchings, and I am
| talking this decade, not some old era bygones.
|
| Such speech is considered equivalent to yelling "Fire" in an
| open theater, to use a common internet retort on free speech,
| because of the effect it has on the masses, and we have laws on
| blasphemy specifically for this.
|
| You would think, oh surely _I_ would never say anything
| offensive to any group, but for Funzies, have a scroll here:
| https://twitter.com/search?q=blasphemy%20(from%3ASAMRIReport...
|
| So, whose blasphemies are considered sacred, mine or yours?
|
| Be careful when asking for diversity. You might get it.
|
| ----
|
| Americans do seem to take free speech for granted.
| padjo wrote:
| Yeah it's almost like moderation is a really hard problem
| that requires serious people to think deeply about it, not
| something that can be solved with vague platitudes about
| freedom.
| pupppet wrote:
| Free speech does not mean everyone deserves a soap box.
| Nobody has the inherit right for their views to be publicized
| by a private company.
|
| Try forcing your way in front of a camera at your nearest
| news station and see how that works out for you.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Such speech is considered equivalent to yelling "Fire" in
| an open theater, to use a common internet retort on free
| speech, because of the effect it has on the masses, and we
| have laws on blasphemy specifically for this.
|
| Just FYI, the "fire in a crowded theater" is actually a
| widely-spread yet terrible example, as it was actually
| overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969. So, yelling fire
| in a crowded theater is actually legally not addressed by
| either decision and the famous quote is part of an overturned
| ruling.
| mikkergp wrote:
| It's actually not a _terrible_ example it was partially
| overturned in brandenurg v ohio. It's still applicable if
| it actually inspires lawless action.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > In my country, these opinions are uttered so openly and
| commonly that it does not even raise an eyebrow
|
| I don't think we should frame free speech standards based on
| Pakistan, if your bio is correct.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I am indeed in Pakistan, and the point I am trying to make
| is, why not? "Diverse" council, right? My region comprises
| of a BILLIONS people, and twitter is a global website, why
| do you expect Twitter to ban hate speech acc to what
| average American internet person wants, but not acc to
| rules of other countries?
|
| Remember, I am not talking merely about legally limited
| speech, I am talking about stuff that causes societal
| discomfort.
|
| If it's a "diverse" council, then there are bound to be
| people from this part of the world. And if they give, with
| a straight face, the examples you see in the funzies link
| as example of hate speech they would like to be
| moderated....
|
| How would you feel, if your tweet was blocked, and the
| reason given is something you, and any body from your part
| of the world, would personally consider to be as offense as
| not ending your sentence with a fullstop would be to a
| grammar nazi...but to the council it was considered as
| offensive as perhaps saying the N-word?
|
| I am talking from a purely academic point of view, but you
| have to realise the scope of these matters. Pakistan might
| not be able to affect Twitter moderation, but India?
| definitely, too big a market to ignore. The Gulf Countries
| are already investors alongside Musk, so them too. EU has
| already given the halt signal.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > India? definitely, too big a market to ignore
|
| My personal opinion and absolutely dissociated from my
| employer: I am not going to talk about economic decisions
| or market pressure, but free speech standards should also
| be not framed around India's standards. A diverse council
| shouldn't have to include viewpoints that are wrong.
| Defining wrong is certainly a difficult measure to
| elaborate, but free speech standards that include some
| religious persecution are definitely in that wrong
| category. Bigots will always say that they aren't bigots.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Yes, according to the newly unbanned accounts that were
| originally banned for that.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you are exposed to things on Twitter that are tweeted by
| people not personally known to you, IMHO you are using Twitter
| incorrectly. I have no idea why anyone gives a damn what the
| content moderation policies might be. Speaking for my own account
| I have never once seen anything said by Trump, Kanye, the pillow
| guy, any neo nazis, any anti-vaxxers, or anything like that. In
| what way are people using Twitter that makes them care?
| lapcat wrote:
| Anyone in the world can reply to your tweets. You see replies.
| Harassment is a huge problem on Twitter.
| jeffbee wrote:
| No? You can set your tweets to by replied to by only those
| you follow, or only those you mention.
| lapcat wrote:
| I think you have to do that manually for each tweet. The
| setting isn't persistent.
|
| Anyway, you can also make your account protected, so that
| nobody can see or reply to your tweets unless you approve.
| However, I would say it's not fair to claim that "you are
| using Twitter incorrectly" if you don't make your account
| protected, or if you don't restrict replies to every tweet
| you write.
|
| Even if you restrict replies, people can still quote-tweet
| dunk on you.
|
| What's the point of a "social network" if you use all the
| most "antisocial" settings?
| intrasight wrote:
| It makes it a social network of your social network. I
| don't see what's antisocial about that.
|
| How can someone quote tweet dunk you if your tweets are
| private?
| lapcat wrote:
| How do you even _acquire_ an online social network unless
| you use Twitter "incorrectly" according to the OP?
|
| > How can someone quote tweet dunk you if your tweets are
| private?
|
| They can't. Taking your account private was supposed to
| be the reductio ad absurdum conclusion of using Twitter
| "correctly". I mean that if your account is still public,
| but you restrict replies, people can still QT.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not an actual problem. Just restrict or disable
| replies.
|
| https://www.techadvisor.com/article/741472/how-to-turn-
| off-r...
| lapcat wrote:
| This same exact thing was already being discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377115
| tayo42 wrote:
| Tweets are everywhere, not just on Twitter. Theyre in the news
| as sources, they're on Instagram, Facebook and reddit.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| "But for many women, Twitter is a platform where violence and
| abuse against them flourishes, often with little
| accountability. As a company, Twitter is failing in its
| responsibility to respect women's rights online by inadequately
| investigating and responding to reports of violence and abuse
| in a transparent manner.
|
| The violence and abuse many women experience on Twitter has a
| detrimental effect on their right to express themselves
| equally, freely and without fear. Instead of strengthening
| women's voices, the violence and abuse many women experience on
| the platform leads women to self-censor what they post, limit
| their interactions, and even drives women off Twitter
| completely."
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2018/03/online-vi...
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I have no idea why anyone gives a damn what the content
| moderation policies might be.
|
| Because falling afoul of them doesn't just make your tweets not
| show up in Discover to people who don't know you. It means you
| can't tweet to your friends either.
|
| To be clear, your post has completely valid reasons to not care
| if moderation is too _lax_ , but you do still need to care if
| it's too _strict_.
| concinds wrote:
| Right. The best balance is to be more lenient on speech
| moderation, but have fewer algorithmic recommendations and
| push less "controversial" or popular content onto users'
| feeds.
| jeffbee wrote:
| See, this right here is where you lost me.
|
| > fewer algorithmic recommendations and push less
| "controversial" or popular content onto users' feeds.
|
| There is not ANY 'algorithmic' content on my Twitter feed.
| Zero! What are you referring to?!
| concinds wrote:
| I'm not referring to the "X liked this tweet" feature,
| which _is_ from my circle.
|
| Twitter added a Topics feature, where it promotes popular
| tweets. I'll often see random tweets with >100k likes
| inserted into my feed, though none of the people I follow
| liked it, and it's not in my interests.
|
| You'll also see such "popular tweets" when you click on
| any tweet and scroll past the replies. Doesn't always
| show (especially when there's tons of replies), but it
| gives you random tweets from outside your circle.
|
| One interesting feature is the "What's happening"
| (formerly Trends/Hashtags) section on the right, which
| shows random news stories. They're not determined by
| popularity, but by fiat; the list is now manually
| populated by Twitter employees. (They removed plain
| hashtags and switched to an editorialized list because
| Trump supporters managed to get "too many" hashtags going
| during the 2016 campaign. It still shows hashtags
| occasionally, but they have to get pre-approved before
| they appear IIRC.) Many of these new Trends don't show
| all tweets that match a keword; they just show you tweets
| from a few people selected by Twitter. These[0] is a good
| example from today. It's a great feature. Musk could
| create a Twitter News service (like Google News) and
| expand on that; it would cut off the "cross-silo"
| communication further, and would reduce polarization and
| controversy.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/i/events/1585823974868414464 and
| https://twitter.com/i/events/1586015934141153284
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Twitter added a Topics feature, where it promotes
| popular tweets.
|
| I have never seen this. It turns out to be buried under a
| "more" menu, so I maintain that this is a niche feature
| that you'd need to go out of your way to suffer.
|
| > You'll also see such "popular tweets" when you click on
| any tweet and scroll past the replies.
|
| No, I don't. I don't see anything like that. I just get
| to the bottom of the replies. When do you see this? I
| don't even see it on a tweet with zero replies. No random
| tweets, just blank space.
| concinds wrote:
| > It turns out to be buried under a "more" menu, so I
| maintain that this is a niche feature that you'd need to
| go out of your way to suffer.
|
| I never turned it on or tapped on it, and don't follow
| any topics. It still intersperses "Comedy", "Crypto", and
| "Movies" tweets (labelled as such) into my main timeline.
|
| And I don't know why you don't see "popular tweets" (it's
| actually "More tweets", I misspoke). I've been seeing
| those for years in the exact same context I described.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Oh! I know what the difference is. You are using the
| Twitter "Home" view and I am using the "Latest Tweets"
| view. I highly recommend switching, at least if you want
| to not see things from outside your followed accounts.
| karmasimida wrote:
| This can only be good than bad. Twitter had let it loose for too
| long.
| intrasight wrote:
| Twitter is not a megaphone. So tired of news sites using that
| analogy. I can choose what I see on Twitter.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I only follow about 25 people on Twitter, Elon Musk is not one
| of them. Yet the first tweet in my feed when I just opened up
| the homepage is Elon Musk said "let the good times roll" 8
| hours ago.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| I keep mine on chronological sort so I only see people I
| follow.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Why haven't you muted Elon Musk yet? Do you want to see or
| not see Elon Musk's tweets? If you don't want to see Elon
| Musk's tweets, mute him right now. If you want to see Elon
| Musk's tweets, it's mighty strange to complain.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I would amend GPs statement to say "Twitter _doesn't have to
| be_ a megaphone" but then I guess their only /biggest revenue
| stream would dry up if people truly could curate their feed
| to only show what they actually wanted to see.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Am I missing something? I guess with a custom browser, but I
| can't close the "what's happening" box and I often see retweets
| and likes from the people I follow. You can individually turn
| off retweets but that's hate-UX, is there a way to do this in
| bulk? (I already changed the "show me tweets in order" setting
| or whatever.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| that's one of the things i never understood. twitter gives you
| SO MANY TOOLS to avoid seeing what you don't want to see. you
| can lock your account, lock replies, block accounts, mute
| accounts, filter keywords and that's not without mentioning the
| granularity of notifications.
|
| i, myself, almost never see what i consider hateful content.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Maybe I'm just not willing to put in as much effort as you,
| but despite everything I tried I could not stop unwanted
| content from meeting my eyes. Except for the step of not
| using it any longer, of course.
| cm42 wrote:
| I feel like "unwanted" and "hateful" content are
| potentially two very different circles in a Venn diagram.
| j-bos wrote:
| I think it is for journalists because that seems to be why
| they're there.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Not only that, such services - unlike a megaphone or the agora
| - are a) incentivised to keep you there, b) algorithmically
| curate the content that you view, and c) are businesses and
| their responsibility is first and foremost the shareholders and
| not the public.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Nice to see inaction being taken against hacked verified accounts
| promoting scams:
|
| https://twitter.com/carlyodellnews/status/158610304420216832...
|
| https://twitter.com/SSSINGHDHIRAJ/status/1586070067476840453
|
| https://twitter.com/IllingworthCC/status/1586086464730824707
|
| https://twitter.com/TishaCustodio/status/1586103112263094272
|
| https://twitter.com/chscott8/status/1586102966582661120
|
| https://twitter.com/AlianaNieves/status/1586086297906446336
|
| right on musk's post. This person is hacking into 10+ verified
| accounts/day. Did it yesterday too
|
| some things never change
| [deleted]
| smcl wrote:
| Guess his fans celebrating their newly acquired "free speech" by
| spamming the n-word were wrong
| rat87 wrote:
| Might theoretically work as long as you have no Trumpers/MAGA
| types on the council.
|
| If you put them on the council they'll try to ban their political
| opponents and allow every kooky antivax and racist far right
| tweet.
| icare_1er wrote:
| Might probably happen.
|
| But what DID happen though, is the opposite team doing the same
| and banning anything or anyone right-wing.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| Twitter can largely be ruled by financial incentives.
| 1. Add a cost for tweeting, like a gas fee. This fee is paid to
| Twitter. 2. Add a cost to subscribing to a channel. This
| fee is paid to the channel owner.
|
| We need financial incentives around tweeting. Letting people
| tweet freely gives them no incentive for quality. Twitter should
| be exploring ad-less business models like the one above. If it
| cost a few DOGE to tweet, people would think twice before posting
| inflammatory content.
| [deleted]
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Finally, diversity of ideas, and not diversity of skin color.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Looking forward to the diverse and valuable ideas on whether or
| not the Earth is round, climate change is real, and jewish
| people should or should not have people going death con on
| them.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| You cannot have the former without the latter.
| memish wrote:
| You can't be serious. Ideas are not attached to skin color.
| That's a regressive, racist belief.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| So your interest in elon musk and free speech is just the
| objectively correct thing to be interested in, and isn't
| attached to your biography at all?
| memish wrote:
| Correct.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Idiot
| memish wrote:
| I may not agree with your assessment of my intelligence,
| but I defend your right to say it.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Can you tell me what me being an arab and a muslim has
| anything to with my reaction to musk's purchase? Try
| answering without resorting to racial essentialism
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| You can have the latter and have a echo chamber of a single
| narrative, which is exactly twitter was. Then pat your self
| on the back "OH we are so inclusive look at the the different
| skin tones!" Yeah but everyone has the same boring ideas so
| what the fuck does that matter?
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| If the same boring ideas of that diverse group of men,
| women, LBGTQ people and PoC are that we need to strive for
| equality between all of these groups... that is exactly the
| point.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| > that we need to strive for equality between all of
| these groups
|
| That is fucking terrifying and most centrality
| undesirable, unless you mean equality of opportunity,
| then absolutely. But equality of outcome is the worst
| possible thing anyone could ever strive for.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Yes, I am saying we need to neurally castrate every
| intelligent person to be no smarter than the dumbest
| person. We need to cut the tendons of every person who is
| more athletically capable than the most disabled person.
| We need to burn down everyone's houses so that we can all
| share cardboard boxes alongside the homeless.
|
| Yes. Yes. This is what the position is. Don't let anyone
| ever try to tell you otherwise.
|
| There is no equality of opportunity for groups of people
| that have had generation after generation of systemic
| oppression, exclusion and poverty.
|
| You don't do that to an entire subculture of people for
| hundreds of years, and then think you can snap your
| fingers and say "Okay cool, segregation is over so now we
| all have equal opportunity!"
|
| There is so much that goes into being a successful person
| that is subtle, environmental, learned through exposure,
| enabled by connections and passed down through
| generations. Same goes for the flipside which is called
| the cycle of poverty.
|
| There's a lot of damage that needs to be undone, which
| will take active investment on behalf of society at large
| to accomplish.
|
| I'm too tired to write out an essay on the history of
| racism in the US and why that history is still a massive
| burden on the descendants of those people today. This
| information is widely available if you genuinely want to
| understand.
| drstewart wrote:
| Thank you. I hope this is a truly diverse council composed of
| different races and ages. Maybe Trump, Rubio, Thomas,
| Crenshaw, Boebert would be diverse enough for you?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Sure you can.
| Lonestar1440 wrote:
| You quite obviously can. For what idea can you not find a
| person with Black skin who supports it?
|
| You've got Black centre-rightists like me, Far Rightists like
| Clarence Thomas, Barack Obama in the middle, and quite a
| range of voices on the Left - I'll pick Ta-Nehisi Coates as a
| very talented example over there.
| drewrv wrote:
| There is more to life than a left/right spectrum.
| icare_1er wrote:
| Are you saying that ideas depend on skin colors ?
| negamax wrote:
| As a PoC imo diversity of ideas/viewpoints is much more
| important
| jasonlotito wrote:
| And yet... "As a PoC"
|
| I think it's fair to say that ideas/viewpoints are very
| important, but to ignore the reality of groups of people
| frequently targeted is silly.
| such12 wrote:
| > to ignore the reality of groups of people frequently
| targeted is silly.
|
| He clearly isn't.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| They are downplaying them, which is clearly my point.
| such12 wrote:
| I don't think so. As a PoC, their comment _is by
| definition_ a reflection of the reality of a targeted
| group.
| cman1444 wrote:
| Why not?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Because a bunch of white men can't mansplain and understand
| the challenges women and PoC go through.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| This is the most ignorant thing I have read in awhile.
| Adversity is adversity, white males face it, women face
| it, PoC face it.
|
| What you don't think there are white kids with single
| moms? Or white kids that had dads that beat them? Or
| white kids that were molested? Or white kids that got
| harassed by police? Or white kids that were told to give
| up, or that they wouldn't amount to anything?
|
| Your view of white people is completely detached from
| reality. Anyone who has been through adversity (most
| people), can empathize with anyone else who has gone
| through adversity even if the circumstances of that
| adversity weren't exactly the same.
| cauch wrote:
| What you say is far from being obvious. What is the
| ground mechanism that, according to you, will make
| "adversity recognize adversity even if the circumstances
| are different"? In fact, from what I see, it's usually
| the opposite: people who have faced adversity will have a
| strong bias to consider their adversity was worse than
| the adversity of others who face a different kind of
| adversity. This is the same kind of bias as "the grass is
| always greener ...": it is very difficult to understand
| the bad aspect of the situation when from the outside,
| and when someone has faced adversity, this will be
| amplified by that: they had first hand experience vs. an
| adversity that they need to just imagine. It reminds me
| of, for example, those guys who are saying "if women were
| whistling at me in the street, I would take it as a
| complement": amongst those guys, a bunch have probably
| faced strong adversity. Still, they cannot understand why
| women dislike being whistled at and jump to the
| conclusion that these women don't know how good they have
| it. The fact that they have faced adversity amplify the
| fact that they don't recognize adversity: "why are they
| telling it's adversity, they are just soft, if they lived
| what I've lived, they will know what real adversity is".
|
| edit: hm, while I'm not a fan of the "systemic racism"
| thing, depicting it as a "boogie man in the sky" does not
| make you look like prone to really open to understand
| adversity of others. I'm sure you decided that "they are
| just complaining, they don't know "real adversity"" while
| you have no idea what it is really like.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Interesting. I imagine that means you're a real champion
| of improving opportunities for minorities, and spend a
| substantial amount of your time taking action to try and
| solve that problem, since adversity is adversity.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I'll happily oppose any racist law or coporate policy. Do
| you care to point me to any? And not just some "systemic
| racist" boogie man in the sky?
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Good for you. Do you spend time actually researching
| systematic racism? Since we're all just people perfectly
| capable of advocating for the same justice im sure you
| do.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| To echo the person you're responding to, what have you
| actually done to date to "improv[e] opportunities for
| minorities, and spend a substantial amount of your time
| taking action to try and solve that problem"?
|
| Saying you will take hypothetical action is easy, but all
| that matters is what you've actually done and are doing.
|
| If you haven't taken any substantial action to date then
| perhaps consider that may be a sign that you are not as
| motivated and understanding about the oppression of
| others as your initial comment may have indicated.
|
| If on the other hand you have been involved in a
| significant amount of anti-racist activism that's
| genuinely awesome.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I am not saying I will take hypothetical action. I will
| take real action. But I need evidence that systemic
| racism exists, you need to point to something and say
| "that right there is a racist law/policy". I have thus
| far seen no such laws or policies. And please, don't
| start with a conclusion (there are only X number of PoC
| CEO's or something) and then go on a witch hunt to prove
| your conclusion. That is not how reason and science
| works. Until evidence is brought forth I cannot accept
| the systematic racism theory (and that is all it is
| without evidence). And since I suspect no such evidence
| actually exists, and since I am not inclined to go in
| witch hunts, why is the burden of proof on me? No, you
| show me the proof, I have enough things to worry about.
| Not to mention, laws and policies are public information,
| if there were racist ones it shouldn't be hard to find
| and would have likely already come to light, yet no one
| can point me to one.
|
| This is no different than when someone claims God is
| real, the burden of proof is on the person making the
| claim, not the person denying the existence of God.
|
| What you're doing is essentially demanding I prove God
| doesn't exist.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| So you went from saying that those who have experienced
| adversity can naturally empathize with the adversity
| others have faced, to now saying you do not accept that
| systemic racism exists?
|
| Do you see how those two statements strongly contradict
| one another?
|
| Anyway, if your position is genuinely that systemic
| racism doesn't exist, given all the information you have
| access to in this day, then I don't think there's any
| evidence I could show you that would ever sway you. That
| said, it's worth a shot, here's a tiny grain of sand on
| the nearly infinite beach of facts supporting the
| continued existence of racism - people with white
| sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a callback
| for a job interview.[1]
|
| [1]https://archive.is/fdUuy
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Have you spent any time researching it at all? Do you
| have any curiosity about it? You're delusional.
| icare_1er wrote:
| Pretty racist to imply that your thoughts and opinion are
| tied so strictly to your skin color.
|
| "That's ok when WE do it".
| valtism wrote:
| Why not diversity of skin color?
|
| Diversity is both of these things. It is true that you can have
| more diversity in a room of people of one race than a room of
| people of all different races, but it's more common that you
| will find diversity across lines like race, gender, age, etc.
| drstewart wrote:
| >It is true that you can have more diversity in a room of
| people of one race than a room of people of all different
| races
|
| Since it's clear that diversity without race differences can
| exist, but diversity without different ideas can't exist,
| then why care about race at all?
| jungturk wrote:
| Because being representative of the community you serve is
| useful in establishing credibility.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Because people have major blindspots to experiences they
| haven't lived through themselves. The sum total of all
| human experience has not yet been recorded in books, and
| those hypothetical books are not required reading for all
| humans, and even if they were, some people just wouldn't
| absorb the information due to their own biases.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I am not against diversity of skin color, but I also don't
| think that should be the goal. You assemble a group of people
| that have a diversity of ideas, if the group you end up with
| happens to be diverse in skin color and sexual orientation,
| then fine who cares? But those aren't the defining
| characteristics or the ultimate goal, a broad spectrum of
| ideas is.
| lob_it wrote:
| deanCommie wrote:
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >The word "Diverse" has been successfully appropriated and
| destroyed by the right.
|
| >It USED to mean "include representation of those not from the
| mainstream - those that don't typically have major
| representation, but whose opinions are valuable to be included"
|
| The majority of Twitter moderation staff appear to be more left
| wing than the mainstream. Allowing more center and right wing
| people on the decision making would be allowing a marginalized
| group within Twitter to have a voice.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _So anyone that is celebrating this Musk announcement is
| telling on themselves_
|
| This is exactly the sort of tone that improving balance is
| intended to counter.
| delecti wrote:
| If you take a quick scroll through the quote-retweets of
| Musk's "the bird is freed" tweet [1], there are a _lot_ of
| slurs and bigotry. Musk might or might not be bigoted
| himself, but lots of bigots seem awfully happy at the
| prospect of him in charge.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585841080431321088
| naasking wrote:
| Lots of people get happy when their "enemies" are unhappy
| and whinging about it. This implies nothing about whether
| the changes will be good for them too.
| rvz wrote:
| > The only "diverse" opinion that has not been represented in
| Twitter moderation is the opinion of straight white males upset
| they can't spread vaccine misinformation, election
| misinformation, and deadnaming trans people without being
| reported and muted.
|
| There is evidence that Twitter has been actively colluding with
| large pharmaceutical giants to target and purposefully ban
| those for being skeptical of them and the vaccine. [0] So one
| is not allowed to be skeptical and criticize that?
|
| Perhaps _everything_ on what is being read out on the news is
| the absolute truth then. Surely they can never be wrong. /s If
| we question the media and companies like PayPal or Twitter
| dislike that, then say goodbye to your account without giving a
| reason of what was violated [1] and in the case of the former
| you must pay a $2,500 fine for what they call _'
| misinformation'_.
|
| Exciting times ahead! /s
|
| [0] https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/pfizer-board-member-
| scot...
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/llsceptics/status/1567658400573448192
| scarmig wrote:
| Thank God we have Twitter to protect us against Evil Ideas like
| the lab leak hypothesis. Only an evil Trump supporter would
| oppose such a policy.
| cr4nberry wrote:
| > The word "Diverse" has been successfully appropriated and
| destroyed by the right.
|
| I don't think one political coalition has a monopoly over the
| words it uses
|
| Looking at college campuses, I see a lack of diversity of
| perspective
|
| Looking at executive boards, I see a lack of ethnic diversity
| (and also diversity of perspective)
|
| > So anyone that is celebrating this Musk announcement is
| telling on themselves
|
| Just like how anyone who's upset about it is upset that they
| have less space to shove their insipid beliefs down the throats
| of others. Maybe reddit is a better choice for them?
| uniqueuid wrote:
| This is the most important worry.
|
| Populism from the far right has adopted a strategy of re-
| defining key terms such as nation, citizen, fairness,
| representation.
|
| Under these conditions, a highly diverse council will either
| not be able to decide or will need to decide in favor of
| maximum leniency.
|
| By the way, Adam Curtis made this point in his documentary
| "HyperNormalisation", where he argued that Trump had hijacked
| "fair and balanced" reporting.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Redefining terms seems new, but it's a traditional rhetorical
| tactic. I think it's on the uprise. I think it's a sneaky,
| deceptive tactic.
|
| I'm a big admirer of Adam Curtis's films!
| uniqueuid wrote:
| True, it's not entirely new. But re-defining concepts that
| are fundamental to democracy has bad consequences. Jan-
| Werner Muller has written about this in his book "Democracy
| Works":
|
| "Now, it's true that populists, when in opposition,
| criticize sitting governments (and, usually, also other
| parties). But, above all, they do something else, and that
| is crucial: in one way or another, they claim that they,
| and only they, represent what they often refer to as the
| "real people" or also the "silent majority." At first
| sight, this might not look particularly nefarious; it does
| not immediately amount to, let's say, racism or a fanatical
| hatred of the European Union or, for that matter, the
| declaring of judges and particular media "enemies of the
| people." And yet this claim to a distinctly moral monopoly
| of representation has two detrimental consequences for
| democracy. Rather obviously, once populists assert that
| only they represent the people, they also charge that all
| other contenders for office are fundamentally illegitimate.
| This is never just a matter of disputes about policy, or
| even about values; such disagreements, after all, are
| completely normal and, ideally, even productive in a
| democratic polity. Rather, populists assert that their
| rivals are corrupt and simply fail to serve the interests
| of the people on account of their bad, or indeed "crooked,"
| character. "
| [deleted]
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I think this (at least the first part) is fairly bang-on.
|
| There is a difference between diversity of "the place where you
| are forming an opinion", and diversity of what that opinion is.
|
| By saying that a council needs to equally represent diversity
| of opinions completely ignores how widespread those opinions
| actually are. Decisions about action to take about going
| "defcon 3 on the jews" should not need to be decided by a
| council where you're focusing on equity of diverse _opinions_ ;
| ie, 50% of people think anti-semitism is bad, and 50% think
| anti-semitism is good. It's a bastardization of the word
| "diversity" in order to support whatever fringe belief is up
| for discussion.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's important to note here, and to the comment you replied
| to, that Trump won an election, and currently has higher
| approval ratings than Biden. That's a problem if your belief
| system relies on your being part of an oppressed majority, or
| to use the original term, a "moral majority."
|
| That's why it's important to remove appeals to popularity
| from moral reasoning.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| Please point to where in my comment I used the word "Trump"
| or tried to make this a political debate.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > The word "Diverse" has been successfully appropriated and
| destroyed by the right.
|
| If anything, it has been successfully appropriated and
| destroyed by intersectionalists on the left, where diverse
| means anything but diversity of opinions and where people's
| diversity is just evaluated by racial, religious, sexual and
| sexual orientation characteristics.
|
| The fact that the "head of diversity" of Apple, a black woman
| was fired for pointing that out is a proof of the existence of
| that monopoly by the left.
|
| https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/apples-diversity-chief-lasts-j...
| concinds wrote:
| The term was popularized by leftists, but coopted by
| corporations and oligarch-media who have emptied the word of
| its meaning, turning it into a buzzword that is said in every
| press release and at every opportunity.
|
| The news of Ms Smith being fired pained me when it came out;
| the people behind that "outcry" should be ashamed. The mob
| won again.
| listenallyall wrote:
| dang wrote:
| > _The HN story about Babylon Bee is off the top 5 pages
| despite generating 100+ points and 300 comments in 4 hours. HN
| seems to have its own "moderation council"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371795_
|
| It set off the flamewar detector.
| z7 wrote:
| I hope the detector does more than decreasing the visibility
| of topics on which there is more disagreement than usual
| (higher quantity of downvotes?). I think quite a few
| important discussions would have that feature (but also
| flamewars, which probably makes the distinction difficult).
| listenallyall wrote:
| I hear you, and I appreciate you stepping in to explain. But
| I think if you read the comments, they were quite respectful
| considering the level of controversy about this topic.
| Certainly a more civil treatment than Reddit or Twitter. If
| we can't debate here, the only outlets become much more toxic
| communities.
| dang wrote:
| We moderate HN threads by the HN guidelines, not by what's
| going on on the rest of the internet. By HN standards it is
| certainly a flamewar. Hard-nosed ideological battle and
| name-calling are not what we want here. The flamewar
| detector got it right.
| abnry wrote:
| I think it is unverified, that is the issue.
| superchroma wrote:
| There's no real point discussing the way the site is run -
| they're not interested in user input and a lot of people like
| the idea of "reddit for professionals and VC bros". Causing
| trouble will just net you getting rate limited or a shadow ban.
| listenallyall wrote:
| I'm surprised because I thought there was a passionate but
| healthy debate about the matter, unlike what you'd see on
| Twitter or Reddit. A lot of opinions were expressed but I
| didn't see anybody calling out names, using epithets,
| shutting people down, etc.
|
| HN's treatment of controversial topics generally is more
| respectful than elsewhere, which is why it is disappointing
| to see them shut down or buried here, when much more toxic
| discussions get promoted on other sites.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Shutting down discussions when they start to get
| disrespectful is what ensures that you only see respectful
| discussions here.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Fair enough, good point.
| dang wrote:
| Of course we're interested in user input. I spend most of my
| time talking to HN users in one form or another.
| genmud wrote:
| As someone who sits on some local boards and some
| committees, some people will never be happy and
| unfortunately people like that tend to be _loud_. However,
| I feel like the vast majority of people not only enjoy, but
| love the way HN is run & managed.
|
| I would like to say thanks for all the work you guys do,
| few folks take the time to say thank you.
| lapcat wrote:
| The account itself was not suspended:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33373377
|
| It may or may not be suspended from tweeting. There are still
| no tweets since March.
| blast wrote:
| The post you're linking to says that it _was_ suspended.
| lapcat wrote:
| Suspended from posting.
|
| Compare the Wayback Machine link from that comment to
| @realDonaldTrump, which still says "Account suspended".
| a-dub wrote:
| but what about "full self moderating?!"
|
| jokes aside. there actually could be some opportunity to do some
| really cool stuff like some kind of experimental political
| science. like, mechanisms for population clustering and
| distribution of representation.
|
| like, running human clustering algorithms and then using the size
| of those clusters to allocate representation. a blueprint for
| future attempts at stable democracy that don't rely on
| gerrymanderable geographic hand drawn borders or hand picked
| classifications.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Twitter isn't a government entity. If anything, simply removing
| algorithms and stop suggesting content and let people set rules
| on how much or what type of content by other users is seen is
| sufficient.
| a-dub wrote:
| content moderation in any form is policy, is political, is
| governance. they're talking about setting up a council with
| diverse viewpoints, that's an attempt at representative
| government!
|
| they already support blocklists and most of the content it
| suggests is directly related to your activity on the site. it
| seems they have a small random factor, but it's pretty easy
| to ignore or block if you don't like it.
|
| but honestly, that's not really the issue. i think it's more
| a matter of a change in the fabric of how humans communicate
| and organize. everyone can see that it's powerful, nobody is
| quite sure or agrees on what the adoption curve looks like.
| some think you just throw it out there and wait for the dust
| to settle, others think that's a path to armageddon and that
| a dampened rollout is necessary. who knows what's right, but
| there's a good chance we're about to find out.
| wexomania wrote:
| I wonder who will decide what diverse viewpoints means exactly.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yes - the boundaries on it. I'm sure the most woke collective
| believes they are diverse. So what does diverse mean? What's
| included in that?
|
| Far left anarchists? Far right fascists? Do Furries get a voice
| in the council?
| sass_muffin wrote:
| The Ministry of Truth?
| addingadimensio wrote:
| It would be amazing if a council with diverse viewpoints could
| even sit together without killing each other in this day and age.
| Does this exist anywhere?
| themagician wrote:
| Maybe that's part of the plan. They can livestream the council
| meetings on Twitter's new streaming service. That's their first
| show. Every season starts in the boardroom but ends on Twitter
| Island. It's a real life hybrid of _The Hunger Games_ and
| _Squid Game_.
|
| The future of entertainment is a modern twist on old school
| gladiators. Elon Musk is our Augustus.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Diverse is pretty vague, maybe it's just Elon and not Elon.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In the real world, sure. The Internet would have us believe
| that civil war is imminent. We need to stop letting the 1% of
| people who bother to post online drive our national dialog. We
| have put the crazies in charge of the asylum.
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| > The Internet would have us believe that civil war is
| imminent.
|
| The person who could arguably be considered the third most
| powerful politician in the US just had their own broken into
| and their spouse assaulted in a suspected act of domestic
| terrorism. I wouldn't say "imminent" but if you don't think
| the possibility is at least somewhere on the table I would
| consider that being naive.
| MrMan wrote:
| I just read about this, its crazy. "diverse" viewpoints
| indeed
| retrac wrote:
| In 2020 in Ottawa, a man rammed through the gates of the
| Prime Minister's residence with a vehicle. He was in body
| armour and carrying multiple firearms. He claims he just
| wanted to meet with the PM, who thankfully wasn't home at
| the time. Is Canada on the verge of civil war?
|
| Multiple US presidents have been assassinated! Political
| violence is shocking but not actually so rare that we
| should latch on to any specific incident with particular
| meaning. It's particularly meaningless when it is the act
| of a single person who is somewhat deranged. If an
| organized group takes out a politician or other official,
| and this act had some support with the public, then we
| should start worrying.
| rossjudson wrote:
| In Arizona, bands of visibly-armed thugs are parking
| themselves around mail-in voting points taking videos and
| pictures...and even following people in their cars to see
| where they go. There's a 75 foot distance law, but that
| doesn't mean much.
|
| What happens if the also-armed liberals get sick of this
| crap, and the confrontations escalate?
|
| It's not civil war, but it can lead to ugly conflicts.
| vkou wrote:
| > Is Canada on the verge of civil war?
|
| So, the difference between the two countries is that this
| viewpoint in Canada is a fringe one, while in the United
| States, it enjoys popular support among mainstream
| politicians and media. Oh, they don't directly endorse
| violence, but they are very happy to call for _someone_
| to 'remove this turbulent priest'.
|
| That's the difference between fringe lunacy (present in
| every country, shit happens, you deal with it and move
| on), and the peaceful political process unraveling.
|
| Just a reminder - one of the presidential candidates in
| the past two elections has yet to concede that he lost
| the popular vote in 2016, as well as the popular vote
| _and_ the electoral college in 2020[1]. This sort of
| insanity is so far beyond the political pale in Canada, I
| can 't even envision it.
|
| [1] My state's gubernatorial candidate has also yet to
| concede that he lost 43-56 in 2020. Why even have
| elections if the losers don't accept the results?
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Also a reminder - a left-wing nut shot Scalise during a
| baseball game. Rand Paul was attacked at his home and had
| his ribs broken. There was an assassination plot against
| a conservative-leaning Supreme Court justice.
|
| The right does not own the monopoly on violent nutjobs
| among their ranks. Sadly, they exist everywhere, left,
| right, and center.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And you've got MAGA "prophets" out there "prophesying"
| about the "Angel of Death" visiting their political
| opponents before the end of 2022.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Wtf, pls go on
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/pro-trump-rally-warns-lindsey-
| graha...
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| And you have Bernie supporters shooting up GOP softball
| games, democrats setting fire to court houses, and
| radical groups running over Christmas parades attendees
| because they were white.
|
| Still not as bad or unstable as the 1960s.
| jsterSC wrote:
| You have GOP party members actively supporting a coup.
| And intend to do so again.
|
| Worse than the 1960s.
| acdha wrote:
| There's a key difference: Darrell Brooks didn't launch
| his attack for Democratic goals and no Democrat supports
| his actions. The protesters in Portland did not have the
| support of Democratic leaders and tended to criticize
| them almost as heavily they do Republicans. James
| Hodgkinson was definitely a leftist but his actions got
| immediate and complete rejection from Democratic leaders,
| including Bernie Sanders unequivocal condemnation.
|
| Contrast this with the way Republican politicians and
| media are hesitant to condemn the January 6th attack or
| cross Trump on almost any topic, and calls for political
| violence have been the subject of jokes and outright
| support from leaders & candidates for years. Those topics
| poll favorably with far too many Republicans to consider
| them fringe issues.
|
| That's scary for anyone who believes in fair elections or
| the rule of law because, as we've seen, those people feel
| emboldened and are expanding. There are a large number of
| election deniers running for office this year and they're
| all members of one party, with almost no internal
| pushback.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I really don't think there's a straight line from this kind
| of lone-wolf domestic terrorism to civil war. A civil war
| happens when people who _aren 't_ mentally unstable, normal
| people just like you and I, decide that suchandsuch
| political objective is so important that our fellow
| citizens have to be shot in order to achieve it. If that
| seems like a crazy idea to you (it certianly does to me!)
| then a civil war isn't yet on the table.
|
| A period of severe unrest like we had in the 60s? That's
| definitely a possibility.
| hedora wrote:
| It's not lone wolf terrorism though, it's an organized +
| well funded movement to end US democracy. They control a
| bit over 50% of the Republican party, and a growing
| percentage of the courts (including the supreme court).
|
| Heck; Biden is would be considered right wing in most
| developing countries, and here's his take:
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-
| remarks/20...
|
| > _Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an
| extremism that threatens the very foundations of our
| republic._
|
| _Now, I want to be very clear -- (applause) -- very
| clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the
| majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every
| Republican embraces their extreme ideology._
|
| _I know because I've been able to work with these
| mainstream Republicans._
|
| _But there is no question that the Republican Party
| today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald
| Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to
| this country._
|
| _These are hard things._
|
| _But I'm an American President -- not the President of
| red America or blue America, but of all America._
|
| _And I believe it is my duty -- my duty to level with
| you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter
| how painful._
|
| _And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans
| do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in
| the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the
| people._
|
| _They refuse to accept the results of a free election.
| And they're working right now, as I speak, in state after
| state to give power to decide elections in America to
| partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to
| undermine democracy itself._
|
| (Sept 1, 2022)
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Again, this sounds very different from a scenario where a
| civil war is on the table. Biden's concern with "MAGA
| Republicans" is that they might win political power
| locally and use it to subvert national election results,
| not that they might shoot him and seize power by force.
| (Scare quotes because I find the term unhelpful, not
| because I disagree that such a group exists.)
| hedora wrote:
| Read the whole speech:
|
| > _They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the
| flames of political violence that are a threat to our
| personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule
| of law, to the very soul of this country._
|
| _They look at the mob that stormed the United States
| Capitol on January 6th -- brutally attacking law
| enforcement -- not as insurrectionists who placed a
| dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at
| them as patriots._
|
| _And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful
| transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation
| for the 2022 and 2024 elections._
|
| _They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of
| 81 million people. This time, they're determined to
| succeed in thwarting the will of the people._
|
| _That's why respected conservatives, like Federal
| Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and
| the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a "clear and present
| danger" to our democracy._
| such12 wrote:
| > (including the supreme court)
|
| This seems like paranoid thinking. The Supreme Court has
| shifted ideologically to the right, but I haven't seen
| any evidence they are part of a conspiracy to end
| democracy.
| hedora wrote:
| Here's some evidence.
|
| They ruled to allow state legislatures to override voters
| by changing state law to allow that:
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/analysis-supreme-court-tilted-
| electio...
|
| and an upcoming case to watch, where they're expected to
| further undermine laws:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1106866830/supreme-court-
| to-t...
| such12 wrote:
| > Here's some evidence.
|
| These are opinion pieces.
|
| > They ruled to allow state legislatures to override
| voters by changing state law to allow that
|
| No they didn't. Nothing in the pieces linked states this.
|
| > and an upcoming case to watch, where they're expected
| to further undermine laws:
|
| This isn't a meaningful sentence.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't want to call it insignificant, but the US has a
| long history of more significant political violence that
| did not signal impending civil war. With a nation of 330M
| people, there are going to be a rather large number (in
| absolute numbers) that are unhinged.
|
| If anything, it's kind of amazing that the combination of a
| large population, low regulation, and easy access to
| firearms hasn't resulted in more violence than it has.
| twblalock wrote:
| American society was far closer to breaking down in 1968
| than it is today. Riots in multiple cities, political
| assassinations, the polarization over the war in Vietnam,
| violence in the south over segregation and civil rights,
| crime waves in most large cities, and urban decay that was
| so bad people don't believe it when they see the photos
| today...
| acdha wrote:
| There's merit in that comparison but there was nothing
| like an armed group storming the Capitol with a goal of
| preventing a fair and honest election. What makes the
| civil war questions more worrisome to me is how bare-
| knuckle politics has become so accepted by mainstream
| Republicans: when Nixon's misconduct came out, his party
| support eventually declined and had he not resigned, most
| members of his party would almost certainly have voted
| for impeachment. Today we're seeing the results of a
| generation of ideological purges where more significant
| acts have been met instead with near-unanimous agreement
| to hold the line and the few dissenters have been evicted
| from the party.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > In the real world, sure.
|
| Can you point at one? A council with "widely diverse
| viewpoints" that is actually an effective, tie-braking
| decision maker?
| selwynii wrote:
| Sure. The Oversight Board. Facebook did exactly this years
| ago.
|
| oversightboard.com/decisions
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Judge panels (like SCOTUS), county boards, city councils,
| school boards, non-profit boards and councils, corporate
| boards.
| least wrote:
| I actually don't think this is the case. Almost all of
| these in the US are largely bipartisan, not nonpartisan.
| In some cases they also tend to self select for people
| that favor certain viewpoints. NIMBYism is prevalent in
| local government, for example.
|
| They're optimized to serve the interests of the two
| prevailing parties in the US, which aren't the only two
| legitimate viewpoints.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I've had better experiences and I also find that issues
| that aren't neatly D or R weigh more heavily on them in
| smaller or more local jurisdictions. I think there is a
| good case to be made for a similar dynamic on a social
| media's board, where the mechanics of good moderation and
| guidance, combined with cordial operating principles,
| should be too front-and-center to ignore.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Supreme Court justices, despite their huge partisan
| differences and passionate disagreements on many individual
| cases, often talk about how they personally enjoy working
| with each other. My impression is that this is true of many
| Congressional committees as well, although it's less
| legible there because most congressmembers find it
| politically advantageous to talk about how mad they are at
| the other party.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| There's a huge amount of history there, though. It didn't
| just get formed this week. It's got some members who have
| been on the court since the early 90s. Some since the
| late 90s and others in the aughts. The SCOTUS has long-
| lived institutional memory and norms of behavior. It's
| members also tend to become somewhat isolated from what's
| going on in the culture outside.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Every institution was new at some point.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Surprisingly enough, the need for such things has been
| perceived and addressed before. A recent method that's widely
| used for organizing such things is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%27s_Rules_of_Order
| pjkundert wrote:
| In the real world, sane people have diverse opinions and are
| civil all the time.
|
| It's the politicians and similar race-baiters who benefit from
| convincing citizens that they should hate eachother.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Yes, this is how social interaction in the real world, or even
| smaller online communities, has worked for ages.
|
| It's only on pseudonymous mega-sites like Twitter, Reddit and
| HN where jumping down people's throats for having an opposing
| viewpoint is even a thing.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Boy oh boy, I should take you to some Board of Education
| meetings.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| These are actually fine in most places.
|
| You only see videos of the out of control ones because
| they're the weird ones.
|
| If you only view the world through the snippets that are
| noteworthy enough to make headlines or get a lot of votes
| on Reddit, you end up with a very skewed view of what the
| world is like.
| cm42 wrote:
| "I should take you to some meetings"
|
| "Acktchually, the reason your news feed is all stupid is
| because you're a sucker for clickbait, which is why you
| _think_ some meetings you go to border on bar fights,
| when actually a meta-analysis of national averages
| shows.... "
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Ah, I see you're doing your part to help make the online
| world a better place
|
| /s
| watwut wrote:
| People beat others or kill others over difference of opinion.
| And sometimes, the "difference of opinion" is that some
| people think a this or that minority should be killed while
| minority disagree.
| lob_it wrote:
| cm42 wrote:
| Also, <sportsball>
| IshKebab wrote:
| No it isn't. Small online communities are generally run as a
| dictatorship. If you disagree with the mods, well screw you.
|
| In the real world it's a bit more nuanced because people care
| more about conflict in the real world. But even so there's
| usually a core group of people with similar beliefs and
| outsiders are pushed away.
|
| In the corporate world conflicting viewpoints in e.g.
| religion or politics are generally dealt with by making
| talking about them taboo or explicitly banning it.
|
| When you don't do that you get the mess that Google has found
| itself in several times recently where someone makes some
| comment that the majority disagree with (positive
| discrimination is bad, AI is sentient, etc) and other
| employees call for them to be fired.
|
| I can't think of many groups that actually manage to get
| people with opposing viewpoints to get on with each other
| without just banning talking about them. Universities maybe.
| The army perhaps?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Facebook seems to be the most politically divisive to me and
| it's not pseudonymous.
| eastbound wrote:
| So it seems people don't say in public what they really
| think? Would that explain why we have very different votes
| during democratic elections compared to what media wants?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Have you been anywhere near a university lately? There's a
| contingent of super militant students, supported by certain
| faculty, that spend their time policing who is allowed to
| have a "platform" and what's acceptable speech.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| the hypothesis that attaching real names to posts improves
| civility is over ten years out of date
| mjr00 wrote:
| "With real names" is _not_ the same as "in the real
| world."
|
| There is a massive difference between me seeing a
| stranger's real name next to a Facebook post about how
| abortion is evil, and me having a conversation with a good
| friend of 10 years, or my mom, and it comes up that they're
| pro-life.
|
| We might have a long debate, but in the end, they're still
| my friend or family.
| winter_blue wrote:
| Tbh, it's worse in the real world, at least in the U.S., with
| the Democratic-Republican divide. I've personally witnessed
| extreme rage, foul language yelled at very loud voices, when
| folks from these two sides met (and talked about anything
| that was even slightly contentious).
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You know, there are best practices for moderating
| discussions.
|
| https://coralproject.net/blog/five-myths-of-community-
| design...
| wslack wrote:
| Yes, and it's been written up. It doesn't have a moderating
| effect, at least on its own:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/02/upshot/these-...
|
| (It was covered by the Times but paid for by a non-partisan
| group, with researchers participating)
| saurik wrote:
| The article you linked seems to show that it did, in fact,
| have a moderating effect?
|
| > NORC surveyed the group before the conference, and again on
| the same questions at the end; the results were compared with
| a similar panel of voters who did not get an intense dose of
| deliberative democracy in the interim. Voters at the event on
| both the left and the right appeared to edge toward the
| center. Democratic support receded for a $15 federal minimum
| wage and for "Medicare for all"; Republican support grew for
| rejoining the Paris climate agreement and for protecting from
| deportation immigrants brought to the United States as
| children.
| dereg wrote:
| 526 people is not what I'd consider a "council". That's the
| size of a large high school graduating class.
| sbate1987 wrote:
| dpflan wrote:
| This cross-post seems pretty relevant to have here given the
| amount of discussion about this whole acquisition -- one of the
| key points in the submitted article is that "content moderation
| is the product":
|
| - HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371297
|
| - Submitted article:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
| knorker wrote:
| Good. Most such councils are echo chambers, because people who
| want to be on such councils are activists who want to destroy
| "the other".
|
| Which makes for a stable state of echo chamber extremists.
| northisup wrote:
| "how can twitter be truly unbiased in how we allow our most
| wealthy users to go 'death com 3' on all marginalized people and
| not just one small group of marginalized people"
| cowtools wrote:
| [deleted]
| drewrv wrote:
| You should go ask people at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
| mikkergp wrote:
| This sort of justifies the viewpoint that despite all his
| bluster, Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable
| executive" would. Not just release the hounds.
|
| Keep the advertisers happy, but try to reduce the reliance on
| advertisers. Keep moderating content to reduce abuse, maybe
| eliminate the high profile banning but a person on the ground
| will have largely the same experience. (probably less action on
| more contentious issues, but you still can't use racial epithets
| and call for violence). Evaluate most employees or teams on the
| merits, there will be layoffs, probably big layoffs but they'll
| be managed incremental and strategic. Build more products and
| pivot the product strongly but again, not in the image of a
| Parler or a Truth Social. Twitter won't become a cesspool because
| he understands that people need to be able to control what they
| see or they'll leave. Essentially try to create more safe spaces
| on twitter, not less.
| wwweston wrote:
| > Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable
| executive" would.
|
| Take your originally intended actions and obscure
| responsibility for them until risks of accountability are
| sufficiently mitigated?
| mikkergp wrote:
| I mean maybe, I sort of literally just mean not drive his
| investment into the ground by opening the floodgates, that
| could take a lot of forms.
| foobarian wrote:
| You're hired!
| cwkoss wrote:
| He already tweeted something groveling to the importance of
| advertisers asking them to not leave yet.
| [deleted]
| Krasnol wrote:
| Based upon his build up, this will be a fig leaf/scapegoat .
|
| I don't see anything in his behaviour which would justify your
| "optimistic" outlook. Sure it won't degenerate in one of those
| gutter platforms right away but I doubt he'll be able to
| maintain an acceptable level as long as he's directly involved.
| He just doesn't make the the impression of an adult person.
|
| imho this may end up being really good for the rest of the
| internet if it drives away interesting and important people to
| other platforms.
|
| > scapegoat
| mikkergp wrote:
| This might be true, in which case maybe he brings jack nack
| or another executive in? I think jack expressed he wasn't
| interested.
| matwood wrote:
| Musk had to borrow quite a bit of money to close the deal.
| Those looming debt payments will force real business
| decisions.
| Krasnol wrote:
| He lost money before on his childish outbursts. Why is this
| supposed to be different?
| matwood wrote:
| The scale. A million here and there for him is nothing,
| but billions is real money, even for him.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Obviously not or he wouldn't have gone so far in the
| first place.
| throw101010 wrote:
| > Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable
| executive" would. Not just release the hounds.
|
| Isn't this his duty to shareholders as long as Twitter is
| (still) a publicly traded company?
| CDRdude wrote:
| Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company. Elon Musk
| owns it now.
| mikkergp wrote:
| He still has a fiduciary duty since he's not the sole
| shareholder though.
| bmitc wrote:
| Who are the other shareholders? I thought the entire
| point of the purchase is that he bought out all the
| shareholders.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Maybe shareholders was the wrong term, doesn't he have a
| duty to like the banks and Saudis and other investors
| bmitc wrote:
| Oh, I see. I have no idea. My intuition is that it's like
| a standard loan, as in he can do whatever he wants but if
| he doesn't pay it back then they'll come after his other
| assets he supposedly put up as collateral. That's just me
| guessing. I have no idea how that works at that scale of
| financing.
| delecti wrote:
| I'm not sure that's an enormous restriction since that ends
| in only about a week.
| duxup wrote:
| >maybe eliminate the high profile banning but a person on the
| ground will have largely the same experience
|
| It's either going to be a double standard or not. I moderated a
| busy gaming site for years. Users have nothing to do but re-
| post what got someone else banned and then complain things
| aren't consistent.
|
| I would find the idea that a politician gets to say things, but
| I don't completely absurd.
| eastbound wrote:
| If you moderated the 18-25, huge respect, I'm just adding
| background info: it's a huge piece of French culture among
| geeks, like the 4chan, except most of the interesting website
| exists within the lapse between posting and being censored.
| It's everything-ist and very bad taste. The rest is
| uninteresting, if it stays on, then it means it doesn't say
| anything of any relevance. Moderators are kept to believe
| they're administering a gaming forum with occasional slip-
| ups, whereas "being 410ed" became a colloquial word among
| teens (410 means your post returns HTTP-410, i.e. it was
| deleted). It's like Snapchat, nothing lives for eternity
| (18-25 stands for the age, it's not a 13-52 ratio, that would
| be banned). The 18-25 is a piece of ephemeral art.
| imgabe wrote:
| I don't understand. Are you saying that they repost something
| that got someone banned, they don't get banned, and then they
| complain that it's inconsistent? Why not ban the reposters?
| duxup wrote:
| Kids upset about moderation are not logical.
|
| Every scenario you can imagine happens.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I mean, if you think that "everyone is happy with Elon's
| content moderation strategies" was one of the possible
| outcomes, well then I disagree, I think Elon is going to take
| heat for content moderation across the political spectrum.
| duxup wrote:
| I was thinking of it just from a moderation perspective.
| Elon, who knows.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| This is rather confusing to me.
|
| Earlier this year he seemed pretty set on the idea of allowing
| whatever's legal, making Twitter all about free speech. But now
| it'll just get some minor changes? If it's true, why the change
| of heart?
| mikkergp wrote:
| I think his goal is to figure out how to do this and keep it
| sane and keep the advertisers and grow the membership. It
| will take a long time to get there, and Twitter will have to
| look very different to get there.
| vkou wrote:
| Because as an outsider, he doesn't like any restriction of
| his speech, but as an insider, he doesn't like speech
| critical of him.
|
| I expect Twitter to continue canceling people for holding the
| wrong opinions, it's just that the definition of wrong will
| flip.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| He didn't Twitter profitability required partners that would
| demand more.
| tomcam wrote:
| As your namesake understood intimately, we can't know it's in
| someone's heart. And as a reasonable modern observer should
| understand, Elon makes frequent course adjustments. Not only
| don't we know how it's going to work out, my guess is he
| doesn't know either at the moment.
| sangnoir wrote:
| _His_ money is now on the line: He has sunk $44B and has to
| get it back somehow. It is no longer a cute thought
| experiment, but cold, harsh reality.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Elon will probably run Twitter the way a "reasonable
| executive" would. Not just release the hounds._
|
| Is there a list of how many different institutions and
| investors have money in Twitter now? Because I remember Musk
| taking in a lot of money for this takeover. And those people
| probably had the smarts to give them an exit in case Musk
| decided to release the hounds.
| LastTrain wrote:
| What hounds?
| mikkergp wrote:
| https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Hell%20Hound#content
| josh_carterPDX wrote:
| "Keep the advertisers happy, but try to reduce the reliance on
| advertisers."
|
| I actually think the opposite is going to happen. He's already
| said he wants Twitter to be the most prolific site for
| advertisers saying that he thinks advertising can "delight,
| entertain, and inform you."
|
| If he introduces a subscription model TikTok will pull ahead
| and take over the entire social media space.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Yeah, I'll be curious to see, now this is not first hand, but
| I was referencing this pitch deck to investors which seems
| like the most honest version of Elon? Since it's directly
| connected to the money, but who knows.
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2022/musks-
| pi...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't see anything in Elon Musk's past operation of
| businesses as CEO that suggests to me he's going to have a
| better sense of how to run a social network than the previous
| operators.
|
| I predict the best case scenario is that he does no worse.
| jszymborski wrote:
| A bunch of accounts like The Babylon Bee and Ye have been
| unbanned w/o input from any such committee of diverse
| viewpoints. I don't have much faith that Musk will not act
| unilaterally in service of his friends and allies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There have to be grades between banning and free for all.
| trophycase wrote:
| According to sources he was unbanned before Musk got there
| denton-scratch wrote:
| What sources?
| jonas21 wrote:
| Source: Elon Musk
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586073042534297601
| vkou wrote:
| He's been dishonest (in both small, and large things)
| with such frequency, that we're going to need independent
| verification before anything he says can be believed.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Perhaps someone has independent corroboration?
| partiallypro wrote:
| Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things the
| previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site, it's
| right leaning, nothing in the piece they said was hateful or
| even an unpopular view. Kanye's ban, he's just a mentally ill
| person. I don't think he meant "death con" he just didn't
| know that it's actually "def con." His remarks are still
| reprehensible.
|
| Twitter's whole moderation problem has been it is very, very
| inconsistent. I've seen accounts from certain political
| persuasions be banned or suspended, but then I have seen
| someone openly tell someone to kill themselves (or that they
| deserve to be killed or beaten) and the tweet was never
| removed, and the person was never suspended/banned because of
| the account it was aimed at. The Onion has had some
| questionable pieces that weren't any better than what Babylon
| Bee had, and they were never touched. The moderation has to
| be consistent; I don't think a council is a bad idea,
| especially for bigger account bans.
|
| All that said, I hope Trump is never allowed back, but he
| probably will be. In any case, things have to be equally
| applied and that has not been the case to anyone paying
| attention. Even the doxing rules have basically been
| completely ignored if it were aimed at -some- people.
|
| Then, there are things like the Taliban, Russia, China, etc
| which have at times actively cheered on social media about
| the death of Americans or an American defeat... having active
| accounts but then you ban sitting members of the US
| government? (I think Trump deserved it, but there are
| others.) How does that make any sense at all?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| "he's just a mentally ill person"
|
| That has very large influence and is spreading and
| inspiring hate [1]. Mentally ill or not, he's causing real-
| world damage.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/banner-kanye-
| right-los-...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The premise of speech is damaging, unless it's slander /
| libel, is I think the main thing Elon Musk wants to
| change at Twitter.
| floober wrote:
| What about incitement to violence?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's already illegal, report it to the police
| pixl97 wrote:
| "Some guy in Russia told all the white men to rise up and
| kill all the jews and blacks"
|
| The police "again, that's the 23rd time today"
|
| This kinda breaks down at the global scale. I can call
| for violent acts at your front door from a continent away
| with impunity.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't think a bunch of attention seeking lunatics
| holding a banner over a bridge counts as "real-world
| damage". Especially when it seems to have galvanized
| everyone in power to denounce them and pledge their
| support to fight against similar groups.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Isn't this just a long way to saying you think this is the
| right decision, but doesn't change the fact that it was
| arbitrary? Except I'm not even sure the decision actually
| happened. There still aren't any recent posts from them.
| You might need to wait a bit to know
| slg wrote:
| >Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things
| the previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site,
| it's right leaning, nothing in the piece they said was
| hateful or even an unpopular view.
|
| Twitter banned the Babylon Bee for targeting a random and
| rather anonymous bureaucrat that likely isn't among the
| 1000 most powerful people in government in the US for the
| sole purpose that she is trans. This targeting by the
| Babylon Bee and other conservative media has led to her
| getting death threats. Being a satire site doesn't mean we
| can laugh off all their behavior as a joke. Their behavior
| was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is
| largely a private citizen in this instance. Stopping that
| doesn't seem like a mistake to me.
| partiallypro wrote:
| The piece satirized the confusion between sex and gender.
| It has only been very, very recently that we have gone
| from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social
| construct." It's still a highly debated topic and well
| within the public sphere of debate. Also, this person was
| a public official and was in the news from general news
| outlets (named Woman of the Year) which puts them well
| within the public realm of ridicule, even if you or I
| don't agree with it. If the piece had advocated physical
| harm that would be much much different.
| slg wrote:
| >It has only been very, very recently that we have gone
| from...
|
| Would you have said the same thing about ridiculing
| someone for being openly gay in government 30 years ago,
| being Catholic in government 60 years ago, or being Black
| in government 80 years ago?
| partiallypro wrote:
| No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It
| wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a
| Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black
| person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them
| rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate
| crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x,
| even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-
| trans woman a man or a non-trans man a woman, that's not
| a hate crime. So, the whole idea is fairly inconsistent.
|
| I still think it's very much up for debate, unlike the
| instances you listed. I have trans friends, and while I
| can't speak for them, I don't believe they think the
| debate is as settled on some of these issues, especially
| in regard to "misgendering" being a hate crime. Hell,
| I've misgendered one of my non-binary friends constantly
| by accident and we're still friends. I'm not banned and
| haven't been charged with a hate crime. Would I want
| someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to
| them? No, I think that's cruel, and I'd defend my friend;
| but I don't think that person should automatically lose
| their account or be arrested (which has happened outside
| the US.) There's an important distinction there and it's
| an important debate.
| [deleted]
| 49531 wrote:
| I think the debate on misgendering being a "hate crime"
| is a bit pedantic. A lot of normal things between
| friends, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues pr strangers
| can be considered criminal or normal depending on
| circumstances / context. The idea that you're going to be
| jailed by accidentally misgendering your buddy is just
| moral panic at the expense of trans folks.
|
| If I walked around the office calling my male co-worker
| by some random female name as a form of ridicule I'd end
| up on those cheesy videos they make you watch for sexual
| harassment training.
| ajross wrote:
| > In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying
| someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are
| y.
|
| That's mischaracterizing what was said. Here's the actual
| article: https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-
| man-of-the-year...
|
| This is ridicule, quite clearly. I won't get into the "is
| it or is it not a hate crime" bit, but this isn't
| "merely" stating anything. The term "biological sex"
| doesn't even appear in the article. The point the reader
| is supposed to take from this article is quite clearly
| not "mere" information about Rachel Levine's gender
| and/or "biological sex". It's that Rachel Levine's
| presented gender was very funny to the authors and that
| we should laugh at her for it.
|
| > Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them
| just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel
|
| Seems like you're putting an awful lot of weight on the
| distinction between "hate" and "cruel" to me.
|
| What about here on HN? Do you think it's OK for users
| here to be "cruel" to others, or should dang ban them?
| Because HN bans people for being cruel, probably every
| day. Why is Twitter different?
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| I'm going to reply to my own comment to extend the last
| point, because I think it's important to point out:
|
| I think it's clear, and that everyone would agree, that
| if you showed up here on HN making fun of another
| commenter for their gender in exactly the way that the
| Bee did, using exactly the same words, that you'd be
| banned. And we'd all agree that you should be banned.
|
| I think the logical trap that the "free speech" folks are
| falling into here is that this doesn't "feel" targetted
| in the same way. It's a "media organization" making fun
| of a "public figure" and neither the Bee nor Levine are
| part of "your community". So Twitter banning them doesn't
| feel like community enforcement of norms, it feels
| political. And since the Bee is on "your side" you feel
| like they must have been wronged.
|
| So maybe you should be constructing arguments around
| whether or not Twitter consitutes a "community" with
| "norms"? Maybe it doesn't, I'm willing to hear arguments.
| But the idea that the article wasn't hateful jut doesn't
| fly as I see it. It was awful, and the only way to see
| otherwise is to get into a headspace where Levine isn't
| part of "your community" and thus her feelings don't
| matter.
| slg wrote:
| What do you think is the fundamental joke the article is
| making?
|
| The only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The
| article isn't about her policies, her performance in her
| job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of
| either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is
| that this person is trans. The message of that joke is
| the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of
| mockery. Therefore the only way to stop the mockery is to
| stop being trans or retreat from public life. I think
| refusing to stop that mockery until the target does one
| of those two things qualifies as harassment.
| catiopatio wrote:
| > What do you think is the fundamental joke the article
| is making?
|
| That a man was voted "Woman of the Year".
|
| By any non-tautological definition of "woman" and "man",
| that's objectively true.
|
| Are we not allowed to point out obvious truths when
| people claim the opposite?
| panarky wrote:
| It's cool how HN discussions predictably get distracted
| from the main point.
|
| The main point was that the claims made by the new owner
| are demonstrably false.
|
| The new owner claimed that unbanning decisions would be
| made by a new moderation council. While he was saying
| this, a slew of right-wing and conspiracy accounts were
| reinstated even though the council does not yet exist.
|
| Meanwhile here we are, debating gender and sexuality.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| We've been laughing about gay jokes, religious jokes and
| racist jokes since the beginning of time.
|
| I don't see what's wrong with them. Dealing with this
| crap is part of being a public figure.
|
| Left wing media consistently make fun of religious
| conservatives and it's all cool and dandy (I find it
| pretty fun too).
|
| I understand transgender people are mentally ill [1] and
| are at a high risk of suicide, but I still don't think
| it's a good idea to silence everyone else not to hurt
| their feelings.
|
| Individuals will never become strong if you just remove
| all the obstacles from their life.
|
| [1] Even if they're not categorised as such anymore for
| political reasons, gender dysphoria is a close relative
| of body integrity dysphoria - people who believe they
| should be amputees - which is a mental disorder
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria
| freemrkt8 wrote:
| There is no right to zero consequences for speaking
| freely.
|
| I say give users the moderation power and let aggregate
| voting dictate content that remains visible.
|
| No one wants public control of democracy though. What
| these guys want is a business friendly soapbox.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Where did I claim there was? You can philosophically
| believe that free speech (and also know that the 1st
| Amendment does not apply to private companies, but that
| the "right" to it is a general philosophy outside of
| government) should exist while holding the position that
| you can be held accountable for some things.
|
| The question is how much a public forum should allow or
| not, especially one that has advertisers but is also an
| important forum for our democracy. That's very important
| and just saying everything under the sun is hate speech
| is not a good debate starter, especially when it's
| unevenly applied, and the rules are written by one
| viewpoint.
|
| I think the "downvote" system which does eventually hide
| comments (until you request them) is a feature that
| already exists in beta. I think that's better than the
| "shadow banning" and suspensions in some instances.
| Obviously, you still can't tolerate some things, such as
| calls for violence, rioting, etc. Moderation is very
| difficult, but I err on the side of more openness than
| locking things down and stifling speech and debate.
| freemrkt8 wrote:
| squidbeak wrote:
| Even if none of those things were true, satire and
| pisstaking shouldn't ever be banned.
| mbesto wrote:
| > It has only been very, very recently that we have gone
| from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social
| construct."
|
| What? Since when is sex a social construct?
| jl6 wrote:
| Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be
| changed, but it's super-fringe and mostly reflects
| ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather
| than being a serious philosophical position.
| hexis wrote:
| This is the random and anonymous person, right? One of
| USA Today's 2022 Women of the Year?
| https://www.usatoday.com/in-
| depth/opinion/2022/03/13/rachel-...
| slg wrote:
| That list looks pretty "random and anonymous" to me. How
| many people on that list do you think an average person
| would recognize? I can't imagine it is more than 2 out of
| the 11 award recipients and many won't know a single one?
| themitigating wrote:
| Are they known to the public is what's important
| concinds wrote:
| Levine was very prominent among conservative media, not
| due to being trans, but due to being a prominent part of
| Biden's Covid response alongside Fauci. It wasn't a
| random targeting.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| She's involved in politics at a fairly high level; that's
| not "a private citizen" or "just a bureaucrat".
| Furthermore, making a few jokes is neither "harassment"
| nor "a campaign"; by that standard Twitter should ban a
| hell of a lot of folk. That people can't be jokes about
| folks merely because _other people_ are also excessively
| mean-spirited about them is one of the more baffling
| ideas of the modern American left.
|
| The real problem, however, is that you don't need to dig
| very far to see people engage in all sorts of behaviour
| that's not exactly in accordance with the Twitter rules,
| ranging from stuff like "just fucking deport the
| Christians already!!" to "would be a real shame if their
| face got smashed in with a brick _wink_ _wink_ " and that
| ... doesn't get moderated. I've reported a bunch of posts
| like that: always "no action needed, doesn't violate our
| community terms".
|
| I think a lot of people would have significantly less
| trouble with Babylon Bee's ban if Twitter didn't let the
| platform be such a quagmire of nastiness, and then
| occasionally cherry-pick an example.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Babylon Bee was not first to "target" Levine. Washington
| Post, for example, has run an article on Levine before
| Bee, also for the sole purpose of Levine being trans:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/19/levine-
| tran...
|
| If WaPo can bring out "random bureaucrats" to public
| attention for sole reason of being trans, why can't Bee
| do the same?
| slg wrote:
| Giving an award to a Black person has slightly different
| connotations when it is done at a NAACP meeting compared
| to a Klan meeting.
| solveit wrote:
| But I absolutely don't want Twitter to decide which
| organisations are like the NAACP and which are like the
| Klan. This is regardless of who runs Twitter.
| freejazz wrote:
| Well, good luck having a readable twitter then
| noptd wrote:
| What a ridiculous comparison. Let's stick to arguing in
| good faith, shall we?
| DoctorNick wrote:
| > Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things
| the previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site,
| it's right leaning, nothing in the piece they said was
| hateful or even an unpopular view.
|
| They didn't even make a joke. They just called trans woman
| a man. It was hate speech, pure and simple.
|
| I am very afraid for the future of twitter now. Hate speech
| is going to run rampant on that platform now.
| vdnkh wrote:
| Not to mention that the person who attacked Pelosi's
| husband with a hammer was also posting transphobic crap
| (along with a lot of other right-wing garbage). Hate
| online definitely has real world impact.
| gffrd wrote:
| Hate anywhere has real world impact.
|
| There's a lot of hate in the history books, 99% of it
| predating the internet.
|
| Are those that engage in hate online more or less likely
| to act on it than those who engage in person? Are these
| interactions compelling them to use their voice off-line?
| khazhoux wrote:
| Is there any evidence he was specifically influenced and
| motivated by online rhetoric?
| sarlalian wrote:
| Yes
| hackerlight wrote:
| That's very common. There are a number of mass shooters
| in the US that targeted minorities who explicitly say in
| their manifesto or interrogation tape, that they were
| radicalized in online forums, and not offline.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| They were satirizing the confusion between sex and
| gender. Disagreement isn't necessarily hate speech.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > They just called trans woman a man. It was hate speech,
| pure and simple.
|
| This perfectly encapsulates the problem. So-called 'hate
| speech' is in the eye of the beholder and incredibly,
| just incredibly subjective.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| saying it's hate speech gives me Alice in Wonderland and
| 1984 vibes, 2+2=5 or you're guilty and must be punished,
| regardless of what your senses tell you
| mildmotive wrote:
| > They didn't even make a joke. They just called trans
| woman a man. It was hate speech, pure and simple.
|
| It's not a crime nor hate speech to acknowledge someone's
| biological sex. That's what we do in sports and when we
| select partners for example. Most, if not all
| heterosexual men would not consider a "trans woman" to be
| an actual woman. Our way of selecting partners is proof
| of that. To punish a natural, and biologically based
| viewpoint that most of humanity hold and follow is
| tyrannical and unsustainable.
| Zagill wrote:
| How are we this far into the modern trans rights movement
| and people still haven't wrapped their brains around sex
| and gender being two distinct concepts?
| bt4u wrote:
| catiopatio wrote:
| I "still" haven't wrapped my head around it because not
| once have I been presented with non-tautological
| replacement definitions for "man", and "woman".
|
| I will literally change my mind, here and now, if someone
| provides:
|
| - A _specific_ definition of what "gender" is, if not a
| synonym for "sex"
|
| - Non-tautological definitions of "man" and "woman" that
| are consistent with your definition of "gender"
| peyton wrote:
| It's a distinction some guy just made up not too long
| ago. I can see why some people might not consider it a
| fact of the universe.
| hackerlight wrote:
| All categories are arbitrary distinctions that someone
| made up at some point, including the categories of
| biological sex, race, and your birth name. At the very
| least it would be bullying behavior for me to single you
| out and call you a different name or different racial
| group to what you actually are (as defined by the
| constructs that society has agreed upon).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Most people are not on-board with that at all. Most
| people also feel you can do whatever, including be a man
| or woman if you so desire, but the whole ideological
| stuff surrounding that: yeah ... not really. This
| includes many progressives on the left.
|
| The entire concept of "treating me as a {man,woman} and
| also agree to my particular ideas about sex and gender or
| otherwise you're a hateful bigot!" is quite remarkable.
| It's like "you must agree with my preferred theory about
| the origins of homosexuality or else you're homophobic!"
| smcl wrote:
| klipt wrote:
| It's funny how "KillAllMen" trended on Twitter and that
| wasn't considered hate speech, but calling a woman a man
| is?
|
| Actually I guess that's consistent, if you think men are
| lesser beings who deserve to be killed, then it makes
| sense you would also think that the worst possible thing
| you can do to a woman is call them a man.
| [deleted]
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm not sure most people here have seen the corner of
| Twitter known as "black Twitter." This is the part of
| Twitter where people (most of them from racial minorities)
| discuss things like "the Jews are keeping minorities poor,"
| and "abortion is racist eugenics."
|
| I don't know how they don't all get banned, but they
| somehow have a very vibrant community.
|
| The level of antisemitism that Kanye (no, I will not call
| him "Ye") posted is not beyond the pale for people in black
| Twitter. I'm not sure he ever expected it to go this viral
| or get this much backlash.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Anti-Semitism and anti-Asian views are pretty popular in
| the black community (I can't say to what degree but high
| enough that it shows up in hate crime stats), just as
| much as it exists in the white community. It gets swept
| under the rug and never really addressed; I've even seen
| that the idea that minorities can't be racist (even
| towards other minorities) being actively perpetuated on
| social media. I think that should change. Kanye is a big
| voice, but he's hardly a lone voice.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| If only we could all agree that the idea that only one
| race can be bigoted and racist is in itself racist.
| bt4u wrote:
| concinds wrote:
| > Then, there are things like the Taliban, Russia, China,
| etc which have at times actively cheered on social media
| about the death of Americans or an American defeat
|
| Soleimani. He helped the U.S. fight the Taliban. The U.S.
| later killed him in "self-defense" (no, really, that's what
| the U.S. Ambassador to the UN said). Scholars and the UN
| said the assassination was illegal. Do people who cheered
| his death deserve a ban?
|
| That's not a trick question or whataboutism. At an
| international scale, principles have to be rigorously and
| fairly applied.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I really don't think Kanye is mentally ill or anti-Semitic,
| people are just claiming both or either of those as a way
| of "poisoning the well" about what he's actually saying,
| check out this recent interview with ex-CNN Cuomo:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kQwaOfBb-s8
| dleslie wrote:
| Ok, I bit. At 6:50 he explicitly decides to "call out"
| all Jewish people, and makes a claim that he's a victim
| of their behaviour.
|
| > "And what I'm doing, I'm calling out the Jewish
| community as a whole to say. People say to me, all, we
| grew up on Ye. Talk to your brother, ask him why is Ye
| upset? Everybody, all they [the Jewish Community] want to
| do is silence and shoot the messenger."
|
| That's plainly antisemitism.
| concinds wrote:
| I'm Jewish (feel free to believe me or not) and I
| disagree. I choose to ignore the overt bigotry and focus
| on addressing the underlying distrust.
|
| What he said represents quite common black nationalist
| views and were espoused by most Black Power activists in
| the 60s. Those views are still highly relevant in the
| black community today, due to things like this[0],
| promoted by popular thinkers like Prof. James Small. Yes,
| they can be hurtful, but I believe the proper response is
| to make the sports and music contracts transparent and
| re-do them so they don't screw over black talent, as
| Kanye says, to address the underlying distrust, and
| rebuild proper ties between the Jewish and Black
| communities. Conflict is sometimes healthier when it's
| out in the open and gets addressed, rather than repressed
| and buried.
|
| There's enormous dangers in following the "destroy Kanye"
| route; it makes everything worse, and the impulse to ban
| anyone who doesn't "talk right" will eventually lead to
| historic catastrophe as resentments get buried and build
| up, rather than getting hashed out.
|
| There's a huge difference to me between people with zero
| grievances (except being incels) turning to hate, versus
| being with huge legitimate historical and current
| grievances where I just disagree with how they express
| it. I still view it as my (and our) duty to address those
| grievances; we can address the distrust between
| communities afterwards once they're solved.
|
| [0]: https://www.972mag.com/%E2%80%9C2pac-killed-by-
| jewish-gangst...
| hackerlight wrote:
| > I believe the proper response is to make the sports and
| music contracts transparent and re-do them so they don't
| screw over black talent
|
| Why would you assume there's anything wrong with the
| contracts? He has the burden of proof and he hasn't shown
| it. Kanye believes he is being victimized by _everyone_.
| It 's typical narcissist behavior. When someone says that
| _everyone_ is an asshole, then they 're probably the
| asshole.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| At the end of the interview he clarifies what he meant,
| he's frustrated with apparent nepotism within an
| industry. I would be shocked if he claimed that he had a
| problem with a randomly chosen person who happened to be
| Jewish, it doesn't make sense.
| dleslie wrote:
| This is fairly clear to me, I don't need to hear his
| later equivocations:
|
| > And what I'm doing, I'm calling out the Jewish
| community as a whole ...
|
| Imagine calling out an entire ethnicity for your woes,
| and being surprised that people find that offensive.
| gffrd wrote:
| "You people" never got anyone worked up, right?
| wowokay wrote:
| If it is I think the term needs to be reviewed. In fact
| if people want to get sensitive about their racial
| identity then they need to focus on the actual words and
| tone.
|
| Especially when it seems like alot of the time people are
| called racist or sexist for sharing a viewpoint that in
| their view is accurate.
|
| For example, whenever I run into drivers that don't react
| to a light change I have noticed it tends to be a woman
| with a phone in her hand.
|
| I'm sure someone would take issue with my experience
| listed above, but I feel like I should have the right to
| make such a comment without backlash, because in my
| experience that observation holds true.
|
| My point is I feel like context and history are
| important.
| [deleted]
| partiallypro wrote:
| He's definitely mentally ill, he has admitted so himself.
|
| He also seems to basically cites a lot of things that
| Black Israelites and Farrakhan say/believe, who are
| openly anti-Semitic.
| pbreit wrote:
| "I hope Trump is never allowed back,"
|
| Why?
| sg47 wrote:
| base698 wrote:
| If democracy got you Trump why would more democracy be
| the solution?
| khuey wrote:
| Democracy didn't get us Trump. The Electoral College got
| us Trump.
| solveit wrote:
| The popular vote being 2% away from giving us Trump does
| not say particularly good things about the popular vote
| either.
| partiallypro wrote:
| The electoral college is still democratic. You're
| confusing direct democracy with democracy in general. The
| US is a Republic, which is democratic with general
| safeguards to prevent mob rule. I can't stand Trump but
| this is and always will be such a weak argument. If you
| can control the Senate you can win the electoral college
| and both parties have done so in the past 20 years back
| and forth very consistently. Trump would have lost to
| basically any other candidate, the Democrats have only
| themselves to blame.
| zamalek wrote:
| This is the reason:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
|
| Trump is an autocrat with goals to become a monarch. He
| proactively eroded democracy during his term, and
| continues to attempt to.
| munchler wrote:
| If a fish gets through a net, why would you need a better
| net?
| mvc wrote:
| Because only democracy gives us the chance to recover
| from our mistakes. This seems clearer to me in this last
| year than in any other year of my >40 on this earth.
| [deleted]
| bitdestroyer wrote:
| _gestures broadly_
| AustinDev wrote:
| Unsuspended and Kanye's happened before he got there
| precisely for this framing if I had to guess. Likely a
| malicious employee.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Likely a malicious employee.
|
| ...or an employee who felt unshackled from the previous
| management and knew they would have air-support by the time
| anyone else realized what had happened.
| bergenty wrote:
| I will support anything that kills gender politics and
| restore sanity to science and biology based cultural
| agreement.
| mikkergp wrote:
| This is vague, but you're hoping to end the political
| oppression of trans people?
|
| > restore sanity to science and biology based cultural
| agreement
|
| What does this mean, like scientific studies on how to get
| people to agree?
| [deleted]
| mikkergp wrote:
| Were they? I know I can see their pages, but I don't see any
| new content from them. realdonaldtrump is still suspended, I
| imagine we'll just have to wait to see what happens.
| MBCook wrote:
| Many of the "unbanned" accounts weren't banned before and
| that didn't change.
|
| They were in Twitter jail (or whatever the term is). The
| account is there but they couldn't publish new tweets.
|
| That's the change to watch for.
|
| He could unban Trump, say he kept his promise, but keep the
| account locked so that Trump couldn't actually tweet.
|
| As a hypothetical example.
| topynate wrote:
| It's called a temporary suspension. Twitter asks you to
| acknowledge your tweet was bad by deleting it yourself.
| If you do, you get a time-out in the naughty corner for
| 12 hours, or a week, or whatever, and then you can tweet
| again. If you don't, you stay in the naughty corner.
| Whoever designed this process could stand to learn how to
| treat people like adults, in my opinion.
| [deleted]
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| She has already been fired so the lesson is moot.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Whoever designed this process could stand to learn how
| to treat people like adults, in my opinion.
|
| So, simply shadow ban them, then?
| topynate wrote:
| If you're referring to HN policy then for an established
| account it's not really shadowbanning, because dang will
| tell you that you're banned and why. Being treated as a
| useless noob until proven otherwise _is_ being treated as
| an adult.
|
| Twitter is different (although perhaps more different
| than it needs to be). Seeing as you ask, here is how to
| handle content deletion on Twitter without infantilizing
| users.
|
| Don't ask a user to "delete" a tweet - something which
| has no effect on that tweet's visibility anyway. Just
| hide it and tell him why. If the user chooses to appeal,
| that appeal can go forward without restricting the use of
| the account. Give time-outs sparingly. They should be
| more of a final warning than a routine measure. If it's
| necessary to give a time-out, start the clock
| immediately, not when the user takes some action.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Why is banned vs Twitter jail (or whatever the term is) a
| meaningful distinction?
| elpool2 wrote:
| It only matters when you're trying to determine if Musk
| or someone else at Twitter actually un-banned or un-
| twitter-jailed someone. If the account was merely
| restricted then it's possible the account owner
| themselves did whatever is required to un-restrict their
| own account (i.e., deleted some offending tweet).
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I think one reasonable policy could be "form a council of
| diverse viewpoints and only ban someone if they all (or
| mostly all) agree the person should be kicked off" and
| another reasonable policy could be "form a council fo diverse
| viewpoints and ban someone if one (or a couple) think the
| person should be kicked off.
|
| I think its fair to say the committee will end up being a
| scapegoat - but to be charitable to the idea in general its
| pretty clear that not 100% or even 75% of the population
| thinks that Babylon Bee should be banned. If you have a
| system where one voice on the committee can ban someone then
| most liberal comedians would be banned for played up reasons,
| too.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Your first policy is reasonable, but your second is
| definitely not.
| orblivion wrote:
| You could use the second standard to flag a user as
| "spicy" and hide them for users who prefer to be exposed
| to more "normal" opinions.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| Sure. But ultimately there is some level of arbitrary
| lines where you have a trade-off of overbanning or
| underbanning.
|
| Say you have a committee of 9 people? What's your cut-
| off? There isn't a clear answer - especially as norms
| change a bit and the committee members change.
| mbreese wrote:
| I honestly don't think it matters. The committee will
| answer to one person who can arbitrarily overrule the
| committee, whether formally or not.
|
| It's his company and he can do what he wants with it. Any
| rules can be changed at any time without recourse.
|
| I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Well, it
| might be bad for Twitter the service, but as far as legal
| governance, it's the way it works. The only limit will
| really be what advertisers will support. It is a business
| after all.
|
| But any type of council should be considered advisory at
| best.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Twitter has become the de facto standard, so IMHO
| moderation should only ask one question: "is this tweet
| legal?" If the answer is 'yes' then it should be allowed.
|
| Of course, a corollary is that they should be able to
| filter content on a per country basis because, obviously,
| what's legal differs from country to country, but I think
| there is no escaping that for any platforms which claim to
| be global.
| fckgw wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to foster a community filled with
| racist, unwelcoming, and generally toxic but perfectly
| legal content. Just like every other "free speech"
| platform devolves into.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Can we stick to a grown-up discussion, please? You are
| not replying to my points in any meaningful way.
|
| It's shocking that HN commenters could be so toxic,
| indeed.
| fckgw wrote:
| Not sure what there is to discuss? I wholly disagree with
| your idea. There's plenty of other social network sites
| that have a similar moderation policy and they are
| overrun by people who wish to turn it into a platform to
| spread hate.
|
| Any content moderation needs to extend beyond "Legal?
| (Y/N)" unless your main goal is to drive any real
| community away.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You're obviously ignoring 'de facto standard', which
| makes Twitter pretty much a utility in my opinion, hence
| my comment.
|
| Anyway, it is simply shocking that so many think it is
| the 'correct way' to disallow what they don't agree with
| and that they are, like you, so aggressive about it to
| the point of shutting down any dissenting opinions, as is
| happening here.
|
| It's a big regression from the heights of the
| enlightenment, or just the recent past, IMHO.
|
| Some would go as far as claiming that this is "little red
| guard" behaviour and they wouldn't be completely wrong.
|
| Good day.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| What is your opinion on Parler deleting anti-Trump
| messages? Or liberal viewpoints?
|
| Or r/conservative banning people who have posted on any
| one of a number of other subreddits, sometimes before
| they've even posted in r/conservative?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Whataboutism...
|
| Edit:
|
| Not only that but also transparently disingenuous. I
| don't know r/conservative (my comments are not about
| liberal vs conservative and I find odd that you and
| others immediately frame them that way) but a dedicated
| 'conservative' subreddit is obviously not the same as
| Twitter, which, again as become the _de facto_ standard
| for most political and news communication.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not even remotely. I didn't agree or disagree with your
| statement on Twitter allowing all legal posts. I
| expressly chose not to.
|
| What I'm asking you is if you think that those forums
| should also be required to say "Legal (Y/N)?" and if not,
| why not?
| sarlalian wrote:
| It's a fair assumption. The free speech absolutist crowd
| very much tends to trend conservative.
|
| I think most reasonable people would reject the assertion
| that twitter is the _de facto_ standard. It isn 't even
| in the top 10 for social media platforms by active
| monthly users, and usage and value of a platform varies
| way too much depending on age and gender. While twitter
| is possibly the _de facto_ standard for gen-x +
| millennials and certain career groups such as politicians
| and journalists, it certainly won 't be for 18-25 year
| olds. Facebook still has nearly 10x the monthly active
| users of twitter, in fact Twitter barely beats out Quora.
|
| Ignoring the argument about it being the de facto
| standard, Twitter is a business. I expect that Elon would
| like to make money off of his $44B investment. In the
| battle between the free market and free speech, the free
| market will almost always win. If twitter goes the
| extreme free speech route, users who are often targeted
| by loud jerks, trolls and harassers will leave the
| platform. It will create bad press both in the form of
| people complaining about harassment as well as other
| businesses pulling ads where their customers or potential
| customers were harassed.
| fckgw wrote:
| I disagree with your assertion that Twitter is a public
| utility then. There's plenty of ways to communication
| with other people on the internet. Twitter has less daily
| active users than Pinterest, if you want to shout out
| your opinion on the internet then play by Twitter's rules
| or find another platform.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Allow me to coin a hyperstitious and eponymous law.
|
| Frog's Law of Social Media: free speech or advertising
| revenue - choose one.
| mikkergp wrote:
| What about "this pattern of tweets is sufficiently
| correlated with declining user engagement". Should
| Twitter make decisions based on the health of the
| business?
| [deleted]
| yibg wrote:
| Do you have any example of an open forum that only
| removes illegal content and nothing else that isn't also
| a complete cesspool?
| pbreit wrote:
| As long as it's legal, why ban anyone? The bar should be
| VERY high.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| If you don't ban anyone, pretty soon the people who
| advertisers like leave the platform and you're left with
| free speech purists, hatemongers, and not too much else.
| Those people don't bring $$.
|
| So in this case, free speech and the free market are at
| odds.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Ostensibly Twitter has to make money, and most companies
| do not want their ads to be seen next to blatant
| antisemitic messages.
|
| In the crazy clown world in which we live, Twitter could
| theoretically kick off all the advertisers and become
| Elon Musk's self-promotion platform (which it already
| is), but I doubt the other investors would go along with
| this.
| Dobbs wrote:
| Legal according to who? Different countries have
| different laws. As we see with India and Signal this
| week.
| moralestapia wrote:
| It seems the "private company can do what they want" argument
| is becoming quite unpopular all of a sudden :^)
| mikkergp wrote:
| Is it? I haven't seen that yet, did someone put out a poll
| recently?
| dereg wrote:
| He was unbanned prior to musk's arrival, according to musk.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| "Funding secured."
| bogota wrote:
| That happened before elon officially took over. He replied to
| a question about it on Twitter and i really don't see him
| lying about it.
|
| Im not a elon fan. At all. but the knee jerk reaction he gets
| at this point is kind of deserved... however you're better
| off not falling into that trap.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > and i really don't see him lying about it.
|
| Why? He's lied about plenty of things, including on
| Twitter. What makes this particular statement inherently
| immune or unlikely to be a lie?
| bogota wrote:
| Just my opinion. But why would you lie about what will
| become a fairly big piece of news right before you are
| about to go through and be cutting a bunch of jobs. It
| would be almost certain to leak.
| [deleted]
| LastTrain wrote:
| I would imagine the committee is not bound by past decisions,
| so it would follow that we'd see accounts getting unbanned at
| first.
| mlindner wrote:
| Babylon Bee was never unbanned (because they were never
| banned in the first place, just suspended and continue to be
| suspended) and Ye was unbanned before Elon Musk ever took
| over.
| judah wrote:
| Babylon Bee's Seth Dillon put it[0] this way:
|
| > "The Babylon Bee was tossed in Twitter jail 7 months ago
| for a joke that referred to an adult male as a man. We
| could have restored our account at any time by deleting the
| tweet, but we refused. It was the right call. Never censor
| yourself, and never apologize for speaking truth."
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1585633678977544
| 192?s=...
| mlindner wrote:
| That's not the topic I'm talking about. I'm talking about
| the factual events of what occurred. The comment is
| neutral on whether it should have been suspended or not.
| The comment is just stating that Babylon Bee was never
| banned, the account still exists and it's status has not
| changed since that initial event and Elon Musk has had
| nothing to do with it.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| > Ye's account was restored by Twitter before the
| acquisition. They did not consult with or inform me.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586073042534297601
| concinds wrote:
| Let's avoid disinfo. Neither account was banned to begin
| with. Both accounts were restricted, which could be lifted
| after the user deletes the offending tweet. It's
| overwhelmingly likely Musk had nothing to do with either case
| (and he said so himself).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/technology/kanye-ye-
| twitt...
| mwint wrote:
| Oh come on, that's like saying someone isn't being
| tortured, just temporarily having their pleasure removed
| until they confess.
| concinds wrote:
| It seems you're coming at it from the other side. If it
| were up to me, I'd remove the "lock" feature that seems
| too much like a struggle session (as noted in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371795), and just
| have tweets be taken down without needing users to admit
| guilt. I also would oppose banning either Kanye or the
| Bee.
|
| But if someone is arguing that it _was_ a ban, and that
| it shows Musk unbanned them and is lying, then that 's
| wrong. I was addressing that argument.
| klyrs wrote:
| Is it actually anything like torture, though?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| No, that is like saying someone should remove some
| obscene clothing before entering a private establishment
| and here you are comparing it to be tortured.
| fazfq wrote:
| "You may not enter" is the literal definition of banning
| someone
| paulmd wrote:
| If you can come back by removing the offending element,
| you aren't really banned.
|
| "No offensive t-shirts" is not the same thing as being
| banned lol
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| If the offending element is one's personality or one's
| beliefs, then yes, one can come back by removing that,
| but it's the same thing as not coming back.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Removing a tweet and removing a belief are two very
| different things.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Not really: we see on Reddit all the time how subreddits
| quickly descend into herds that can only upvote accepted
| ideas and instantly downvote to oblivion or ban anything
| even neutral (much less antagonistic to the subreddit's
| worldview).
|
| Anybody who comes by with a different take immediately
| loses interest in the group and so there's a self-
| perpetuating system that makes the group more and more
| fanatical about right-think and wrong-think.
|
| On Twitter, deleting tweets for wrong-think has largely
| the same chilling effect and self-perpetuating descent
| into an echo chamber.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| "deleting tweets for wrong-think"
|
| When did this happen? Are you referring to tweets that
| promote anti-semetism like Ye's? Or to tweets advocating
| for political violence, like Trump's?
| themitigating wrote:
| You're not removing your belief
| joshuamorton wrote:
| "You cannot believe in Christianity" and "You cannot hold
| mass in my house" are two very different statements.
| freejazz wrote:
| No shirt, no shoes, no service.
| verisimi wrote:
| Whereas the previous crew were magnanimous?
| koonsolo wrote:
| I'm mostly curious what will happen to this account:
| https://twitter.com/ElonJet
| cloutchaser wrote:
| So, create a court system basically that decides on free speech
| issues. Got it. Likely will arrive at the same conclusion as
| the legal system that's been operating for over 200 years.
|
| There's a reason the legal system said free speech is out to
| the point of direct imminent harm. It was the arrogance of 20
| year old programmers in silicon valley who thought they could
| create a better legal system.
| mikkergp wrote:
| The legal system largely doesn't have to worry about
| advertisers and users fleeing the country.
| greenthrow wrote:
| You are taking him at his word when he has demonstrated time
| and time again that he should not be taken at his word.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I think I'm taking him at his incentives. 44 billion is a lot
| of incentive.
| monksy wrote:
| This is going to be an interesting claim considering that he's
| pro letting Trump back on the platform.
|
| That guy, despite being the president, repeatedly said things
| that got other people banned with their rules. Some how other
| leaders claimed this was a said day that he finally got punished
| for it.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I think Twitter should have a concept of silent ban i.e. only
| people that are following the account can see someone's tweet
| and other's could see that only by opening full link and not
| through search. While it was obvious that Trump's tweet was
| causing negative emotions in people, it is also clear that
| Trump had other sources in which he could express opinions and
| it was liberal newspaper who are the first to report that he
| said something wrong.
| tootie wrote:
| Borrowing the best failed ideas of Mark Zuckerberg
|
| https://radiolab.org/episodes/facebooks-supreme-court
| [deleted]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| rw operatives at fb were allowed to bypass their "court's"
| oversight
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| since i'm getting heavily downvoted, here are sources to this
| FACT of rw bias:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-
| zuckerberg... https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-joel-
| kaplan-washington-...
| jimjimjim wrote:
| Cannibalism? Shocking or untapped resource? Not all viewpoints
| are equal
| koonsolo wrote:
| The real question is what will happen to this account:
| https://twitter.com/ElonJet
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| "In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules."
| unknownaccount wrote:
| Let's see how popular that policy is once they make the site
| completely unavailable in Europe.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| God, stop, don't give me that much hope. Elon blowing 44
| billions on a site worth maybe 5, before making it
| unavailable to half its userbase ? As well as reducing the
| amount of russian propaganda (that Elon does like to
| regurgitate all on his own anyways) that can be spewed on
| social networks ? This could be the biggest waste of money
| since the Tumblr acquisition, I'd love to help set records.
|
| Can we nuke Facebook on the way too ?
| vesinisa wrote:
| Facebook also touted this. But they would never do it, as it
| would almost immediately spawn a competing copycat substitute
| service that would receive a massive userbase for free at its
| inception, risking creating a formidable competitor.
|
| Or even worse - no substitute service would even spring up,
| giving a strong signal that people don't actually need the
| service FB/Twitter offer at all!
|
| They only stand to loose for exiting a market as a protest.
| synu wrote:
| Honestly that would be wonderful
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Given that approximately 5% of Germans use Twitter, I don't
| think many people would care or even notice.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's not like twitter is rocket science. And Europe is
| alright at rocket science anyway.
|
| It twitter abandons the European market, people will use
| something else.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > It twitter abandons the European market, people will use
| something else.
|
| Yes, and then be disconnected from the rest of the world.
| MrMan wrote:
| haha funny.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Thankfully the world doesn't run in Twitter.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If this is a reference to twitter following European law, I
| don't see why they wouldn't.
|
| People's complaints about Twitter moderation aren't about the
| law, they're about governments being able to indirectly make de
| facto, unconstitutional law through either informal demands and
| threats to, or overly chummy and profitable relationships with,
| media companies. It's not hard to figure out why media and
| payment consolidation and monopolies are allowed/encouraged.
| They're ideal for government.
|
| I don't understand how orchestrated bans across media companies
| and payment processors can be allowed when price-fixing isn't.
| They're behaving as trusts.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I got a 7 day ban for a tweet that included "political suicide
| pact" as an idiom.
|
| I then got permanently banned for including the line, "sending
| their children to die in Ukraine" in a tweet.
|
| The "appeal" button causes me to get a denied email within one
| minute. This tells me no humans are in the loop on any of this.
|
| I don't think these tweets were controversial or require any
| diversity of viewpoints. They just require appreciation that you
| cannot automatically moderate anything accurately unless you are
| prepared to be very very VERY relaxed about the rules.
|
| I'm not sure Elon is even interested in fixing this kind of
| problem. He seems focused on the politics and "cancel culture"
| type issues (whether they're real or imagined).
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I got a permanent ban for quoting a video which contained "when
| do start killing white people" and said that this was bad.
| Banned for inciting violence, upheld on appeal and told it
| would not be looked at again. Twitter's current moderation
| policy is extremist ideological garbage.
| smcl wrote:
| On the other hand, I've reported posts for using racial slurs
| (you know the one) and for calling for genocide ... and been
| cheerfully told they didn't break any rules but that I can
| block the user if my feelings were hurt. These sites aren't
| moderated ideologically, they're moderated randomly
| gpm wrote:
| And really, random moderation is inevitable at scale. It's
| always going to be a judgment call made by different people
| in different moods.
|
| You can spend more money to reduce the std deviation, and
| spend less while increasing it, but you can't eliminate the
| randomness.
| concinds wrote:
| Twitter ignored multiple reports of personal threats directed
| at me specifically (involving concentration camps and general
| death threats, etc.) "This tweet doesn't violate Twitter
| rules." People I didn't know, who I had zero negative
| interactions with before. That was way before Musk.
|
| You just can't have human moderation at that scale. They have
| to brainstorm how to prevent these tweets in the first place,
| rather than how to catch and delete them.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's awful. And I've also witnessed the same kind of abuse
| that goes ignored.
|
| Has any large social media site ever solved this?
|
| 4chan does by having no rules: if you show up, expect the
| absolute worst of humanity.
|
| Reddit does by having countless volunteer moderators who
| basically do 98% of the moderation.
|
| Facebook suffers from the same problems as Twitter.
| concinds wrote:
| The way I'd solve it is here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377423
|
| Basically, more siloed converations would ironically create
| a better "public town square", because it would reduce the
| need for moderation and allow freer speech.
|
| > That's awful. And I've also witnessed the same kind of
| abuse that goes ignored.
|
| Honestly, it wasn't. Maybe due to my temperament (and I
| certainly received far less hate than high-profile people
| do) but I could never empathize with the "online bullying"
| concerns. It's the nature of the internet, and you just
| develop the mental strength to tune it out, or use it to
| your advantage as fuel. Even after those experiences I'd
| still be much happier with Musk's content policies, or
| Dorsey'd blockchain-free-for-all with users being able to
| choose the moderation algorithm they want. I have friends
| who were suspended for BS reasons and that's a far bigger
| concern to me.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Hmmm. Would you consider that to be similar to the Reddit
| model of cloistering themes so that unlike-minded people
| aren't artificially pushed together?
| concinds wrote:
| The problem is that reddit clusters based on topic,
| rather than social group. If I'm a bad state actor who
| wants to influence America on a mass-scale, I buy a bunch
| of accounts, and buy upvotes, and can shift the hivemind.
| Or I just infiltrate the mod team. Obviously you'd need
| to be relatively sophisticated to not get caught.
|
| But Twitter is based on social circles, not topics; those
| concerns don't apply. Instead of having an entire
| topic/subreddit be biased one way or another, you'd have
| small friends groups and small communities, that have
| social dynamics that are as close to real life as
| possible. Hence all the scale-related problems don't
| occur. The radicalization rabbit hole? Doesn't happen
| with siloes. Harassment? There'll be much less with
| siloes, where someone needs to "add" you (like on
| Facebook) to interact with you, rather than a drive-by
| quote-tweet. Ideological censorship? Again, with siloes,
| there's less need for moderation, so people who aren't
| harming any others get to communicate with each other.
| It's more organic.
|
| Obviously implementing that isn't as easy, but there's
| good ideas for clustering in this thread.
| moojd wrote:
| Fairly moderating a single massive global community is an
| unsolvable problem for both scale and cultural reasons.
| The current dominate model for social media will not work
| in the long run. Breaking down the task into sub-
| communities that are given moderator power helps with
| both the scale and cultural problems. Reddit however
| seems to be moving away from this model by deemphasizing
| the autonomy and identity of individual communities for a
| broader, singular reddit community.
| matsemann wrote:
| I got a 48 hour ban recently for sharing a quote from an
| article we were discussing. The quote was nothing special, just
| a statement from a spokesperson for a company. The "problem"
| was that I included the name+title of the person I quoted, and
| that somehow got flagged as me "doxxing" that person and their
| place of work. Whose job it was was to be a public spokesperson
| for this company..
|
| It wasn't any political or contentious topic, so no idea what
| set it off. Basically along the lines of "as X working at Y
| said in the article, they want to do Z soon".
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yeah buggy ais plague twitter and facebook. Something similar
| happened to me on facebook, apparently i violated a french law
| when using a harmless idiom. Was unbanned within the hour tho
| because it was obvious i wouldn't really sell my own kidney to
| buy ethereum if it dropped at 200 usd despite its ai thinking i
| am involved in human traffiking. They even apologised which was
| nice.
|
| Having said that i think relying solely on the judgement and
| discretion of rich powerful ceos to regulate political
| discourse is dangerous. Its how oligarchies are born. We need
| clear laws on how such platforms and news sources or
| distribution mediums work.
| twtw99 wrote:
| Meta did this in 2019[0]. I guess Elon realized that it's better
| to copy the largest social media company out there?
|
| [0] https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/facebook-
| oversigh...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| By going private he doesn't need to show numbers to investors
| every quarter to justify himself. He can play a longer game if
| he's competent enough to
| nnopepe wrote:
| as long as it's not homogenously american it'll be a good thing
| aliswe wrote:
| americans are pretty heterogenous, in all ways relevant to this
| situation.
| skyyler wrote:
| There are many more viewpoints than the American's.
| papito wrote:
| "The election was stolen by Italian spy satellites" _is not a
| viewpoint_.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| So he's not a free speech absolutist.
| krapp wrote:
| Never has been.
| bergenty wrote:
| Which is a sane viewpoint.
| estebarb wrote:
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| If there aren't any flat earthers on the council, it's a sham.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| "I believe nicotine is not addictive."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6B1q22R438
| _the_inflator wrote:
| After all there are no facts, only "diverse viewpoints".
|
| Big Tech is doing great.
| aliqot wrote:
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant, lad.
| monksy wrote:
| That's the case if they aren't a group. Propaganda bots,
| state sponosored propoganda (look at the Chinese officals on
| covid.. you'll need to see the archives for that.. they'll
| directly claim that covid is the fault of the US Navy),
| professional troll army, state sponsored stalking groups, and
| extremist groups have been running rampant and in the open on
| twitter. (They have also been on Hacker News, Reddit, and
| Facebook)
| judahmeek wrote:
| No, giving idiots equal voice reduces their shame & public
| shaming is likely the highest mitigating pressure against
| idiocy.
|
| It obviously isn't anywhere near as effective as we would
| like, but I can't think of any legal tactic that actually
| works better.
| drngdds wrote:
| This is a catchphrase, not a thing that's actually true.
| spot wrote:
| Sunlight allows us to look (and kills bacteria). Unbanning
| accounts gives them a megaphone. Totally different.
| lovich wrote:
| That makes so much sense as to why the OG nazis were only
| stopped once they ended their long standing stance of keeping
| their rhetoric on the undermensch hidden from the world
| MrMan wrote:
| definitely a statement that is false
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| "Everyone that disagrees with me is a Nazi."
| thekashifmalik wrote:
| Please follow the HN guidelines:
|
| > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet
| tropes.
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community.
|
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. It tramples curiosity.
| kevinh wrote:
| Please follow the HN guidelines:
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Neonazis on social media is an ACTUAL PROBLEM that is
| relevant in a lot of contexts today, for example one of
| Putin's absurd false justifications for his invasion is to
| 'clean nazis out'. Don't just see the word 'nazi' and flip
| out. Nazis are back and making real strides in many countries
| and spaces.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| In which case, silencing them makes them martyrs and makes
| them feel important, which generally never works. People
| love being members of a secret "in-group" - just look at
| cults. Plus, it's not like it won't stop them - after all,
| the original Nazis did not need social media, or the
| internet, to obtain power.
|
| I say bring it out in daylight, and let them loose every
| debate they have so they look like idiots instead of
| martyrs.
| judahmeek wrote:
| I've never heard about anyone banned from Twitter just
| for losing a debate.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > for example one of Putin's absurd false justifications
| for his invasion is to 'clean nazis out'.
|
| False accusations of Nazism are indeed really common and a
| big problem today. Actual Nazism is next to nonexistent.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Neonazis on social media is an ACTUAL PROBLEM
|
| No, it's just easy ratings when the media can find examples
| of Neo-Nazis.
| unicornmama wrote:
| Probably a honeypot from Elon. He will solicit volunteers to self
| identify across the company and then fire them.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm curious what diverse viewpoints even means. Is it "diverse"
| for twitter?
|
| Is that even diverse?
|
| In the US there's a very defined almost meme level concept of
| right or left and folks absolutely want to toss people into those
| buckets and make all the usual assumptions. Online it's almost
| impossible for me not to be told what group I fit into ... I'm
| often told one way one day, the other the next.
|
| Is that all there will be? What happens if say 6 people perceived
| as on the left and 3 on the right and 4 other people are on
| there? Will it be credible, or does this al have to match some
| twitter-ish concept of "diverse"?
|
| A rando executive making decisions and some twitter-ish idea of
| "diverse" doesn't seem any more likely to be "fair".
| [deleted]
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