[HN Gopher] Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X
___________________________________________________________________
Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-11-13 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| pianoben wrote:
| If for no other reason, this is good news in that it encourages a
| larger number of platforms with a diversity of information and
| opinions. Being centralized on any one platform serves no one
| except for the platform's ownership.
| noncoml wrote:
| I am wondering if the actual reason is the recent change in the
| terms of service:
|
| New terms of service that will take effect on 15 November specify
| that any lawsuits against X by users must be exclusively filed in
| the US district court for the northern district of Texas or state
| courts in Tarrant county, Texas.
| cellwebb wrote:
| Do business accounts have the same ToS as regular users?
| viraptor wrote:
| That doesn't feel likely. 1 because Guardian isn't really in a
| position to enter a legal battle vs ~unlimited spiteful money.
| 2 because this is likely not enforcible if anyone actually has
| a reason to sue them abroad where the company has presence.
| It's just terms of service rather than a contract binding you
| in other ways - they can deny you service after you sue.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Why would the Guardian expect to have to sue X?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Unauthorized AI training on their content?
| stock_toaster wrote:
| > New terms of service that will take effect on 15 November
| specify that any lawsuits against X by users must be
| exclusively filed in the US district court for the northern
| district of Texas or state courts in Tarrant county, Texas.
|
| Is this even something TOS can legally enforce?
| telotortium wrote:
| Google's Terms of Service state that "California law will
| govern all disputes arising out of or relating to these
| terms, service-specific additional terms, or any related
| services, regardless of conflict of laws rules. These
| disputes will be resolved exclusively in the federal or state
| courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA, and you and
| Google consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts."
| [1]. So I suppose as much as any TOS is enforceable.
|
| [1] https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en-US#toc-problems
| mikeryan wrote:
| In related news Bluesky added 700,000 new users in the week after
| the election. Count me in the group who deleted Twitter as soon
| as the election was over - (I had planned to do so however the
| election went)
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/11/24293920/bluesky-700000-...
| nicce wrote:
| Imagine selling Twitter just to create it again. Then some
| desperate billionaire buys this new Twitter as well, because
| the audience escaped the old Twitter.
| pkaye wrote:
| Twitter was a public company so basically the shareholders
| decided to sell it when a good deal came up.
| nicce wrote:
| I think you missed my irony. It does not matter. It is just
| happening, whether there was intent or not.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Bluesky was created before Twitter got sold
| talldayo wrote:
| What ruined Dorsey for me was the crypto nonsense. I didn't
| use Twitter but it seemed like he was the typical asocial
| self-loathing nerd for a while. Then he went full on savior-
| syndrome and tried to use Twitter as a marketing tool for
| NFTs and cryptocurrency, more or less signing the platform's
| death warrant. I don't know a single person that actually
| enjoyed Twitter's brazen embrace of crypto.
|
| If he was still a bumbling nerd with a sympathetic plight
| then people would have an easier time defending him. But his
| aimless endorsement of radical nonsense is basically a mirror
| to Elon's own behavior, unfortunately. I don't trust Dorsey
| with power anymore.
| dools wrote:
| I deleted Twitter as soon as musk took over because he's a
| feudalist
| aliasxneo wrote:
| It's comical reading the referenced post[1]. It sounds identical
| to the posts I would read some years ago (when it was still
| Twitter), except it was from the opposite party (although we
| later found out actual censoring was happening).
|
| I'm a staunch independent, so it's really just fascinating to
| watch the pendulum swing so hard.
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/04/elon-
| musk...
| notahacker wrote:
| And from a slightly different angle, it's pretty amusing to
| watch all the people that were _shocked_ that a platform could
| be so partisan as to consider suppressing a story allegedly
| involving a foreign power trying to swing an election totally
| not bothered as Twitter 's new CEO runs Trump PACs whilst
| accounts running Harris fundraisers find themselves
| mysteriously blocked.
|
| Things I haven't heard on the internet: "I was truly _hoping_
| that Musk would bring about free speech and political
| neutrality so now I 'm pretty disappointed at the outcome"...
| dagurp wrote:
| But why haven't they posted on Mastodon in two years
| https://mstdn.social/@TheGuardian
| EarlKing wrote:
| Because Mastodon and the entire Fediverse is infested with the
| most rabid sort of users that even Twitter couldn't stomach and
| has turned a blind eye to this fact? I mean, there's a reason
| why they keep getting brought up over and over and people
| continually nope out of signing up over there. They've got a
| demographic problem, they refuse to acknowledge it, and it's
| killing growth. Why would any media outlet want to participate
| knowing that?
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Half of Mastodon seems to be an obsession with what's in your
| trousers or what you prefer to sleep with.
| riffraff wrote:
| Mastodon does not have an automated feed like Twitter does,
| so what you see in your feed is people you follow and their
| boosts. Just don't follow people who are interested in your
| sex life.
| talldayo wrote:
| > Why would any media outlet want to participate knowing
| that?
|
| Presumably for the same reason they find the optics of X
| acceptable but what do I know.
| dom96 wrote:
| > most rabid sort of users
|
| Rabid in what way?
| sigmar wrote:
| that doesn't look official and doesn't have a verified url.
| some random person just put up a bot
| great_tankard wrote:
| About time. Any organization or person actively posting on that
| platform is just lending it undue credibility.
| aeternum wrote:
| Real reason: The Guardian can't handle when readers community
| note them using.. The Guardian.
|
| https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1821189070401249385/p...
| EarlKing wrote:
| This. It's not just The Guardian, though. It's pretty much all
| moss media. They got too used to an era where they could talk
| and the public couldn't talk back (or they could but only
| through letters to the editor which they could conveniently
| filter to just the voices they wanted to hear).
| ryandrake wrote:
| To be fair, Social Media is just like the "Letters to the
| Editor" section, except the social media company is the
| publisher and is the one doing the filtering.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Right, but that's kind of my point: someone else gets to do
| the filtering and they can't stand it.
| devindotcom wrote:
| we get lots of direct and unsolicited feedback actually, much
| more than paper days. a fair amount of it is threats though.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| "They got too used to an era where they could talk and the
| public couldn't talk back"
|
| Maybe--a lot of folks made the same point in the mid 2010s
| when news outlets began shutting down comment sections on
| their sites. They usually said it was the "toxic" atmosphere.
| But I imagine they really didn't like when the top comment
| was pointing out some obvious error (of fact, logic, grammar
| etc) in their article. I actually remember pointing out an
| error of fact on the gaurdian itself back--some review had
| made some ridiculous point because they were confusing the
| Aramaic and Amharic languages--and seeing the article later
| updated and my comment removed.
| reaperman wrote:
| ArsTechnica always handled this well. They promote
| corrections in comments so they're extra visible.
| xnx wrote:
| Twitter could make itself real interesting if it took
| "community notes" web-wide. So many attempts at this have tried
| and failed, but Elon may just have the itch, audience, and
| disposable money to do it. Would also necessitate forking a
| special browser, since there would be no way to support web
| page comments in a first-class way in stock mobile browsers.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Idk, what Twitter has is much better than this since they are
| how people find content. Building some special infra and
| viewer for per-website notes just seems like a downgrade that
| gets worse and worse the more you try to hash out how exactly
| it should work.
| xnx wrote:
| Discoverability of comments/dissenting views is the key
| factor. I would bet that most readers of any given article
| on the Guardian site did not get there from Twitter, and
| therefore could benefit from a browser that displayed
| community notes. The details of knowing how to show what
| comments where are definitely challenging, but certainly
| worth another attempt with the capable AI techniques that
| could address previously intractable problems.
| anunes wrote:
| Are community notes impartial?
| mlboss wrote:
| It is open source: https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes
| fwip wrote:
| Community notes are not impartial, they are written and
| approved by the users who sign up to do so (and actually take
| the time to do this unpaid labor).
|
| Thus, they tend to reflect the biases of the kind of people
| who most want to (and have time to) write and approve
| community notes, drawn from the pool of people who use your
| site.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| In theory, it is designed to be resistant to being partial to
| any one side. And is pretty decent at it. However, being a
| social system it can be gamed, and sometimes is gamed.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It's difficult to tell because the tweet doesn't link to the
| original, screenshotting it instead. But the explanation is
| probably that these are two different meanings of the term
| "two-tier policing".
| llm_trw wrote:
| It's exactly the same meaning but with the sign reversed.
|
| Turns out identity politics is a terrible idea. Now the
| Guardian et al are finding out exactly why when the people
| they disagree with are doing it too.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the other
| does not?
| llm_trw wrote:
| > But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the
| other does not?
|
| Going through the airport between 2001 and 2021 showed
| that having a Muslim sounding name was going to be a
| trigger for a random inspection. The Rotherham child rape
| gangs investigation into the police clearly showed that
| complaints against South Asians by Whites were ignored
| for decades to avoid accusations of racism.
|
| The average Guardian reader was only going to be exposed
| to the first and not the second. So the Guardian went
| full bore with the basest form of tribalism to explain
| the things its readers saw.
|
| Now the same people who were gleefully destroying the
| social fabric in the name of progress are acting shocked
| at what happens when it unravels completely. I have the
| worlds smallest violin for them.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Exactly: two completely opposing points! I agree that
| identity politics is a terrible idea.
| Vuska wrote:
| I was curious about this. This appears to be the original
| tweet, but I do not see any notes on it when I view it:
| https://x.com/guardian/status/1820788959095529653
|
| There are more screenshots of the note in the replies, but
| none with the complete links to the articles.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Thanks. I think you actually need to be a Community Notes
| 'moderator' to view them until they're approved--I see them
| as "proposed Community Notes".
| dools wrote:
| They said that their content can still be shared there.
|
| Also that community note just says they have been consistently
| saying the same thing for decades which sounds okay to me.
| jmward01 wrote:
| There is power to slow news. Taking time to consider what to
| say next and how to reply, especially if you are wrong, is very
| important. That also applies to when you should stop
| commenting, even if you are wrong. Eventually every story needs
| to end because the resources needed to constantly follow up on
| old stories, and comments on them, need to be balanced with
| keeping up with new things. Basically, I am saying that
| comments sections, even if they occasionally point out
| important things, can be detrimental to keeping a higher level,
| slower paced and more thoughtful approach to journalism.
| dimal wrote:
| A screenshot on X? It must be true! I'm sure those links back
| up the assertion. No one would just post something misleading
| on X, right? /s
|
| Maybe the assertion in the tweet is true and maybe it isn't,
| but to me, this is the real reason that X should be abandoned.
| No one on X can be trusted to engage in honest discourse. I
| don't believe anything, whether it's coming from the right or
| the left if it's posted on X. You might as well have posted
| something from 4Chan.
| dom96 wrote:
| I don't think that's true. But if it is, can you blame them?
| Community notes are not impartial and X has become incredibly
| biased towards the far right.
| lend000 wrote:
| It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber.
| It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that
| challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you
| cannot easily dismiss them.
|
| I haven't seen any of the things the Guardian mentions on my feed
| -- it's mostly startup related, software related, finance news,
| and science/medical stuff with maybe ~10% of posts I come across
| having a political tinge (I do not seek out any political
| discourse in my feed). But this ratio hasn't changed much in the
| last few years, except that the flavor of political content has
| moved rightward (it started off pretty left, which I also did not
| seek out).
| grahamj wrote:
| For me it's not about the content. What would take a
| psychological toll is knowing I'm supporting the orange idiot's
| #1 fluffer.
| result2vino wrote:
| I'm sick to death of everything being described as "opinions
| that challenge one's worldview". There are opinions and there
| are opinions. There are also philosophical differences of
| opinion vs things that blatantly factually untrue. Remember
| "alternative facts"? from the last US election? That was a
| thing that someone legitimately said in response to specific
| tangible factually incorrect statements being made about the
| nature of election fraud. Not wanting to be exposed to content
| from a news organisation that so aggressively promotes this
| "worldview" is not the same thing as being a thin-skinned
| snowflake that only wants to consume content that doesn't
| challenge them.
|
| The notion that I'm meant to ingest some unfiltered firehose of
| utter garbage because of some incorrect notion of "all opinions
| are equally valid" is complete and utter bullshit.
| Sol2Sol wrote:
| I can't high-five this enough.
| standardUser wrote:
| Opinions are one thing. X has become a bastion of conspiracy
| theories and outright fabrications with it's hyper-partisan
| owner leading the charge.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You say "it's wild" and then give a reasonable explanation in
| the next sentence. Is it wild, or not?
|
| And are you implying that the Guardian is being "run off"
| because it wants X to be an echo chamber? You don't think it's
| a bot-infested hellhole of hate, but some den of thoughtful,
| nuanced, balanced discussion?
| throw16180339 wrote:
| > It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo
| chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with
| opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis,
| especially if you cannot easily dismiss them.
|
| As it happens, I can easily dismiss antisemitic conspiracy
| theories, queerphobia, bigotry, and racism. There's an infinite
| stream of garbage positions, why would would I engage with
| them?
| brink wrote:
| I have yet to be on a social media platform that isn't toxic in
| some form.
|
| I think it's more likely that they'll find people who agree with
| their biases on Bluesky, and that's the real reason they're
| switching.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Are you including Hacker News in that?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The Guardian isn't posting there because they get called out all
| the time on their bad and biased reporting. The notes feature has
| been a nightmare for them. Also their bias is apparent based on
| their own messaging when they ask for donations - and this move
| is just another action that falls under the same bias.
| luddit3 wrote:
| Musk has one of the highest community note rates on his tweets.
| Has not stopped him one bit.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Exactly, says a lot about the fragility of the Guardian
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Or the community notes are not actually the reason.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Can you explain that?
| vitiral wrote:
| Musk is stress testing his service's features /s
| seydor wrote:
| Yann Lecun is also telling everyone on Twitter very loudly that
| he won't be posting on Twitter.
|
| The Guardian in another article explains that they are annoyed
| because Musk used twitter to promote his preferred candidate.
|
| The Guardian itself used their own platform to publicly endorse
| Harris.
|
| This deja-vu of childish antics is just comical in 2024
| adastra22 wrote:
| > The Guardian itself used their own platform to publicly
| endorse Harris.
|
| Isn't The Guardian a UK publication?
| seydor wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-
| interactive/202...
| skissane wrote:
| > Isn't The Guardian a UK publication?
|
| Yes and no. For many decades they only operated in the UK.
| More recently they have launched digital-only US and
| Australia editions, whose editors are based in the US and
| Australia respectively, creating content aimed at each
| country's audience using local journalists, but the three
| editions share content for stories of global significance.
| But still their HQ is in the UK, and I believe their UK staff
| and readerships are significantly larger than their US or
| Australia operations
| jfengel wrote:
| Yes, they are a UK publication. But they cover a lot of US
| news and have a significant American readership. So, like
| American newspapers, they have an informed opinion and an
| audience that wishes to hear that opinion.
|
| That's how newspaper endorsements work. In this case the
| writer of the endorsement cannot themselves vote, but their
| opinion can still have weight.
|
| The Economist, another UK-based periodical with a more right-
| wing stance, explains why it endorses candidates:
|
| https://www.economist.com/the-economist-
| explains/2024/10/31/...
| grahamj wrote:
| I think it's much more reasonable for a news outlet to have a
| political opinion than a social platform.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I agree, and this comes with the responsibility of being a
| "publisher" rather than a "carrier".
| jmull wrote:
| Is it "childish antics" for the Guardian to have their own
| political viewpoint?
|
| Musk can have a preferred candidate and political stance. And
| he can run Twitter accordingly.
|
| The Guardian can have a preferred candidate and political
| stance. And they can choose the platforms they use accordingly.
|
| It all seems perfectly reasonable to me.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Is it "childish antics" for the Guardian to have their own
| political viewpoint?
|
| When a journal is biased... it is biased.
|
| Objectivism is one thing. Bias is another. Bias at the US
| elections shit is just another level.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > When a journal is biased... it is biased.
|
| I would like to know which newspaper or journal is not
| biased.
| secstate wrote:
| This. Goddamn am I sick of people claiming bias on a news
| organization with tacit expectation that somewhere the
| platonic form of news information exists which is
| objectively true and unbiased.
|
| It does not exist, it never will exist, and if Serenity
| has taught us anything, it's that you can't stop the
| signal, Mal.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I remembering learning at school, at about the age of 12,
| that all sources are biased.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Yes but, a new organization should at least _strive_ to
| be objective, even if the journalists have subconscious
| bias.
|
| If you lean in to your biases you stop being news and
| start being entertainment.
| cguess wrote:
| "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" There's a
| difference between being objective and being unbiased.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They all are. But they can do something like Firing Line,
| where people of opposing viewpoints are invited to
| debate. The editorial board can also hire a cross section
| of political views.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| While possible it does not absolve the reader of ensuring
| that they are consuming information from a range of
| sources.
| amrocha wrote:
| Journalism's responsibility is to the truth, not to some
| perceived notion of fairness. The right in the US has
| been living in their own reality for a while now. Media
| does not owe liars any time of day.
|
| Don't take this to mean the democrats are the left and
| aren't guilty of the same thing. They're also right wing,
| and they lie, but to a lesser extent.
| seneca wrote:
| This lazy "everyone is bias, therefore bias doesn't
| exist" argument is nonsense, and is just FUD thrown about
| to cover for extremists when people point out their
| extremism.
|
| Many news organizations pursue as unbiased a voice as
| they can. The Guardian is not one of them. Here's an
| organization attempting an objective rating of media
| bias, if you're actually interested in the topic:
| https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| That chart doesn't show any one organisation being 'less
| biased' than any other. It shows every organisation being
| biased in a different direction. Centrism is no 'less
| biased' than the far left or the far right.
| pharrington wrote:
| The poster never implied that bias's ubiquity means bias
| doesn't exist.
| DrBazza wrote:
| This may help
|
| https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
| wtcactus wrote:
| It's childish antics to attack a media platform for taking a
| political position, when they also openly and covertly took a
| political position. It just happened to be the opposite
| political position.
| seydor wrote:
| Antics refers to the passiveaggressiveness.
|
| It remains to be seen what will happen if Trump goes back to
| posting on twitter
| davorak wrote:
| Normally when I think of passive aggressiveness I think of
| a contradiction in between what someone says and what they
| mean or only communicating something negative indirectly
| rather than directly.
|
| The Guardian is being direct as far as I can tell about
| what they do not like and why they are leaving.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > It remains to be seen what will happen if Trump goes back
| to posting on twitter
|
| I have a strong suspicion that he will, but it'll be
| because "Truth" Social and Xitter have merged. They're
| pretty much both the same thing now so why not merge? It
| would also be a way for Musk to pass a lot of $$$ to Trump.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| It only seems reasonable until this thinking eventually gets
| you to the point where the next platform you choose to leave
| is called Earth. It's pretty dumb because there is nothing
| like X at the moment. Just for context, the Guardian had
| almost 11 million followers on X and Bluesky has only just
| crossed 15 million total users, of which many signed up
| months ago when it was opened to the public and never logged
| back in since again.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > eventually gets you to the point where the next platform
| you choose to leave is called Earth
|
| On the other hand, that's the express goal of the owner of
| X.
| stonogo wrote:
| And who exactly controls the Earth, such that I would want
| to leave the platform due to mismanagement?
|
| Also, the "nothing else is like twitter" argument is both
| wrong (lots of social media platforms are bigger) and
| irrelevant (it assumes that having something like twitter
| is a net positive -- the validity of which assumption I am
| not convinced).
| n0id34 wrote:
| It's ridiculous for any media to have a political bias,
| defeats the entire purpose of the media if it's already
| skewed when it's consumed.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| Journalism should have a bias for the truth. But one
| political camp has spent decades working the refs, calling
| truth-telling "bias", and even building parallel media
| ecosystems that project a message completely detached from
| factual reality. I don't know how we come back from this.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Your comment is so vague I can't tell which political
| camp you're talking about. I suspect you'll get upvotes
| from all sides :)
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| It will never not be wild to me that vast swathes of the
| American public consume Fox News as news when Fox itself
| asserted it was merely "entertainment" in court
| documents/arguments and all but called their own audience
| idiots for believing what they say, and they somehow _are
| still operating._
|
| That is _commitment_ to maintaining your echo chamber.
| threatofrain wrote:
| What if I specifically want to consume media that is biased
| towards technological exploration and advancement?
| pharrington wrote:
| There's no such thing as unbiased media. The inescapabilty
| of bias isn't a problem - the problems are undue bias,
| lying about one's bias, and letting your bias erode
| journalistic integrity.
|
| (edited to add last part about journalistic integrity)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I think the parent is saying that the guardian is being
| hypocritical.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| The Guardian is a newspaper with a long-proclaimed left-wing
| bias. Musk has claimed that X is politically neutral.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| X is hundreds of millions of people so it's hard to claim
| it's anything
| crabmusket wrote:
| X refers to the company itself, not every user. And by
| extension naturally it should refer to the algorithms
| developed by the company.
| rurp wrote:
| Musk claims a lot of things. Amplifying right wing propaganda
| and conspiracy theories, often from his own twitter account,
| is not politically neutral.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Well, it is the Guardian leaving rather than being banned. If
| they think the site is unbalanced, then they've just made it
| worse.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > If they think the site is unbalanced, then they've just
| made it worse.
|
| Great point, and I think that's totally true. However, an
| organisation has to make the judgement call between staying
| on a failing (as they see it) platform in an attempt to
| rescue it, and leaving for an alternative that is less
| flawed. Clearly the Guardian thinks they stand little
| chance in affecting X in any meaningful way.
| dools wrote:
| Musk claims he is trying to be an open and free speech town
| square. I don't have an opinion on whether he did this or not
| but it is certainly the case that if he put his finger on the
| scales that goes against his claims.
| briandear wrote:
| Did X suppress support of the other side? The Hunter Biden
| laptop story is a prime example of the difference between X
| and Twitter. The suppression of Covid debate is another
| example.
|
| On old Twitter you could call someone a Nazi and accuse them
| (falsely) of genocide. But if you "dead name" a celebrity,
| you'd get banned.
| 1986 wrote:
| Yes, a user was banned for sharing the Vance dossier
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/91198871/why-x-suspended-
| journal...
| dools wrote:
| I'm not sure about the veracity of your claims of bias pre-
| Musk (I have heard of the NY Post story issue, as far as
| I'm aware they suppressed it on advice from law enforcement
| that it was foreign propaganda, which was later withdrawn
| and the block removed).
|
| However in answer to this question:
|
| > Did X suppress support of the other side?
|
| If you have 2 options and you promote one artificially then
| that is the same as suppressing the other option, in either
| case you're making sure more people see one option than the
| other.
| montagg wrote:
| Maybe this isn't something you believe, but actual adults can
| have different opinions and then choose not to associate with
| one another. There's nothing childish about that.
|
| Help me understand, though: what are you actually proposing?
| That The Guardian, while feeling they can't get their own
| message out given how Musk runs Twitter, should stay on
| Twitter? Should anyone disadvantaged by how Twitter is run stay
| there?
| maxilevi wrote:
| They can have different opinions, it's still plain hypocrisy
| from the guardian
| JSDevOps wrote:
| peak TDS
| alsetmusic wrote:
| X doesn't control algorithms that promote content and suppress
| dissenting views on a major social network.
| stonogo wrote:
| No, its owner does that.
| EGreg wrote:
| Looking past the childish antics, don't you think it's kind of
| rich that;
|
| 1) The party which has been kvetching the most about being
| deplatformed and canceled by mainstream media and colleges etc.
| is now in power and in the name of promoting free speech
| promises to go after institutions in academia etc. that are
| full of their political opponents (who lean left) for "claming
| down on free speech and calling it disinformation"
|
| 2) One man bought Twitter and controls everything about the
| platform, some things definitely increase freedom of speech (eg
| proliferation of neo nazi and openly antisemitic viewpoints)
| and some of his own decisions clamp down on it (eg overnight
| declaring that "cis", the opposite if "trans", is a slur and
| cannot be said on Twitter anymore)
|
| 3) The same man will now be heading up D.O.G.E., the bureau of
| government efficiency, together with another private sectir
| billionaire (who got public sector money) to defund many public
| sector things, or at least make them more efficient
|
| To sum up, we'll be in the strange situation where the party in
| power is concerned about increasing freedom of speech (usually
| the counterculture wants this freedom while the ones in power
| want to repress dissent). We will have the world's "most free
| social network" actually OWNED AND CONTROLLED by one guy, who
| happens to also work for the government, in fact head up a new
| government agency tasked with defunding others, and is a super-
| Fed.
|
| People on the left will start to question the optics and
| unusualness of all this. Will the MAGA party (the acronym GOP
| seems very outdated) in good faith encourage speech against
| themselves, and will the owner of X, while heading up a major
| new agency in the federal government, also encourage loud
| criticism of their own activities?
|
| Or will their algorithms -- which one man will continue to
| ultimately control -- silently (and maybe only as an emergent
| behavior) prioritize what they want and suppress what they
| don't?
|
| As long as Zuck controls Facebook (sorry, "Meta"), Elon
| controls Twitter (sorry, "X"), and a few on the top control
| Google, YouTube, TikTok etc. I do not see true power for the
| people. "Freedom of speech" is just another expression the
| owners and corporations co-opted and hijacked to mean
| "controlling a platform" and "owning an audience".
|
| Why do we simply donate our audience and content to these
| platforms? Because they have the backend software
| infrastructure and we don't.
|
| I believe that we need open source alternatives that anyone can
| host, that no one can own the entire network. Not even Durov.
| Mastodon and Matric and Bluesky are a good start. I'm working
| on my own too:
|
| https://community.qbix.com/t/growing-your-community/305
|
| And yes, it is possible for the entire ecosystem to make money
| serving the people with open source infrastructure, just like
| Wordpress, Drupal etc. Here is how it could work:
|
| https://qbix.com/ecosystem
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| As long as Zuck controls Facebook (sorry, "Meta"), Elon
| controls Twitter (sorry, "X"),
|
| off topic, but one thing I always wonder is why the press
| goes along with company re-branding? If everyone knows it as
| Twitter or Meta, wouldn't the easiest thing be to just keep
| referring to it that way in your articles etc and not help
| the company in its massive undertaking of changing everyone's
| name for the product?
| EGreg wrote:
| Yeah the Google -> Alphabet, Facebook -> Meta, Twitter -> X
| happened all pretty close to one another.
|
| I mean hey, I can understand why someone like Blackwater
| renamed themselves to the more innocuous-sounding "Academi"
| LOL. But why does the media go along with it?
|
| For the same reason they go along with other things, like
| covering Trump 24/7 in 2015-2016 even though they hated
| him. The incentives push them that way. A lot of things
| just go on autopilot. "This is what everyone is doing so we
| must too. This is the controversy so we must cover it
| before others do".
|
| I had a conversation about Capitalism and Freedom of Speech
| with Noam Chomsky twice on my show:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_JtMSpMrOw
|
| (Earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPZ8rSESZo)
|
| It's an emergent behavior of the system. Here is George
| Carlin with a darker take than me:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0OJEFlq7A
| NewJazz wrote:
| The Guardian is not a platform, it is editorialized content.
| jmyeet wrote:
| That's a very silly conflation.
|
| The Guardian is a newspaper. They broadly have two sections:
| reporting and editorial. Reporting is basically that. Now you
| can (correctly) argue that there is bias on the reporting side
| in how they choose to cover certain stories, how they choose
| what stories to cover, etc but there are still minimum
| standards they adhere to, like they won't knowingly print
| anything objectively false. They'll issue corrections and
| retractions if necessary.
|
| The editorial side is quite literally opinion. The Guardian,
| like any publication, can issue their opinion on a given
| political race. But you know that's opinion. They'll argue why
| for their position. You can agree or disagree with their
| reasoning or conclusions. But it's intellectually honest.
|
| Now compare that to Elon and Twitter. It's not even remotely
| the same. Twitter has an algorithm to decide what to show
| people. He's used it to push his own posts [1]. His own posts
| have openly pushed conspiracy theories [2], things that are
| provably false. This can go as far as pushing literal Nazi
| conspiracy theories (aka the Great Replacement [3]) and make
| sure as many people as possible see it.
|
| It is utterly disingenuous to conflate the two.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-
| tweets...
|
| [2]: https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/20/23730607/elon-
| musk-...
|
| [3]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-
| musk-...
| pupppet wrote:
| Not quite the same.
|
| There's a bit of difference between encouraging votes for the
| good of the people and encouraging votes to help you
| personally.
|
| But if I'm mistaken and Harris promised the Guardian a govt
| position they could use to pass laws to help them personally,
| do tell.
| prvc wrote:
| >We will stop posting from our official editorial accounts on the
| platform, but X users can still share our articles
|
| How very gracious of them to allow X users to do this!
| result2vino wrote:
| They were stating a technical reality for those that have less
| of an understanding of how the internet works. The target
| audience is more than...you.
| Sol2Sol wrote:
| I don't have a problem with Musk supporting one candidate or the
| other. But I do have a problem with Musk apparently tweaking the
| algorithm to specifically promote one candidate and to bombard me
| with political content that skews a certain way even when I
| selected other interests or never used the platform to engage in
| political discourse. This while bellowing about X being a
| platform for free and open speech.
|
| I realize that in this epoch we are living in the only rule is
| that money and power gives you the right to do as you please.
| This may be old school but I think that values, honesty and
| ethics matter too and should guide our behaviors in life and in
| business. Kudos to the Guardian for taking a stand even if it
| costs them a few dollars.
| selivanovp wrote:
| I do not know if Musk tweaked the algorithm in favor of Trump
| as I've left Twitter several years ago due to getting tired of
| propaganda bots. But what I do know is that Google and Facebook
| (as well as previous Twitter owners) practicing targeted
| propaganda for years already, pushing political agenda in your
| throat no matter how you ask them to not recommend you specific
| authors, channels or topics. I don't think we actually have any
| social platform for free and open speech.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Don't forget youtube. Of course, when they were doing that,
| it wasn't "pushing political agenda" it was just "doing
| what's right" and "respecting the rights of others".
|
| Are there books recounting the history of editorial positions
| put forth by these platforms? I really had no idea where
| google stood on political issues in the 2000s. I remember
| thinking they were quite pro-free speech sometimes callously
| so through that decade. I do remember them putting forth
| issues on gay marriage when it was a live political issue,
| though.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| > I do have a problem with Musk apparently tweaking the
| algorithm to specifically promote one candidate and to bombard
| me with political content that skews a certain way even when I
| selected other interests
|
| He has been doing that since almost a year. The "For you" page
| would be filled with content you don't like, and clicking "not
| interested" doesn't help. The only solution I found was to mute
| the accounts that were showing up there that I didn't like.
| This was a major factor that led me to leave X / Twitter
| karaterobot wrote:
| > X users will still be able to share our articles, and the
| nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally
| embed content from X within our article pages.
|
| I wonder if that'll turn out to be true. There's no reason Musk
| has to let them, and I could see him just blocking links from The
| Guardian in retaliation.
|
| For the record, I don't support temper tantrums on either side,
| and it feels like this is a very politely stated temper tantrum.
| But, I also think everyone _should_ get off Twitter. Maybe what I
| don 't like is just that everybody should have gotten off Twitter
| many years ago, because it's bad for journalism and the human
| brain in general, and not suddenly pretend to realize it's a bad
| place now that it's coincidentally less popular, and there's less
| incentive to hold your nose and stay. Seems hypocritical.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| The issue is that a huge chunk of journalists have been
| horrifically addicted to Twitter from long before Musk's time.
|
| Realistically everyone in that field should've bailed the
| second subscribers got bumped to the top of replies across the
| website.
| bparsons wrote:
| Most sane people left the platform several years ago.
| 50208 wrote:
| Long overdue. There is no good reason for any jounalists, honest
| organizations ... or people ... to use twitter.com (you can call
| it "X" ... but it's still twitter.com).
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The traditional news in their assessments on why the Democrats
| lost and Trump won seem to be focusing on platforms and sites.
| They think the content of a message and where the message appears
| is more important than the messaging or how a message is
| conveyed.
|
| The guardian will no longer post to twitter but they will keep on
| harvesting news from it and about it.
|
| On average every 3 days someone submits to HN an article against
| Elon Musk written by The Guardian. I imagine there are more
| articles written than are submitted. Musk and Twitter provide a
| huge amount of material for them.
|
| Past year HN submissions (111):
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
| thruway516 wrote:
| I don't follow Musk on any social media, do not engage with any
| of his posts, or any even mildly related posts. Yet everytime I
| login, there he is again at the top of my timeline usually
| promoting some inane conspiracy theory. Does he think so little
| of my intelligence that he doesn't think he needs to be even a
| little bit subtle about manipulating the content I consume or he
| just doesn't care? Yeah I too have left for good. Not that anyone
| cares, but maybe someone will care about the Guardian.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| I don't think he needs to care. The election demonstrated that
| most people will believe anything they're told.
| sagolikasoppor wrote:
| Just own the real reason, theguardian is a leftist newspaper and
| now that Elon Musk has sided with the wrong party he must be
| punished for his actions.
|
| I think it's sad when organisations play pretend.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I'm wondering if it's just economics. Are they losing money
| from X existing? Are they trying to start some "let's all move
| away from X" trend?
| rakfhG wrote:
| So, the Guardian is probably community-noted on beautiful hit
| pieces like this one:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/04/is-trump-a-f...
|
| _Stanley continued: "Trump and the people behind him have
| already promised to replace the government at all levels with
| loyalists. [LGBTQ+] citizens, particularly trans citizens and
| their families, will have to leave the country. Political
| opponents will be targeted in some way ranging from financial
| penalties to prison."_
|
| Dear Guardian: Hitler got to power in large part because of Ernst
| Rohm, the leader of the paramilitary SA organization _who was
| openly gay_. Hitler supported Rohm 's LGBTQ membership until
| 1934, when the size of the SA surged to 4,000,000 and Rohm became
| too powerful. Himmler and others intrigued against Rohm, purged
| him and then suddenly LGBTQ was persecuted. Selectively
| persecuted, since well-known gay people like Reichsminister
| Rudolf Hess, who was known gay, stayed in power.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I haven't used social media in years, so it's a trip to me that
| people still voluntarily wade into a cesspool of inane quips on a
| daily basis
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-13 23:01 UTC)