whenever something like this happens you have to ask yourself why now and what’s in it for Musk (let’s be real: nobody spends this much without an agenda). My fear is that Musk’s endgame is to reinstate a specific account that was banned after some specific events around a specific election. If this is what’s happening he can frack off.
I don't buy this line. Twitter used to be "the free speech wing of the free speech party." So your theory is that this happened:
1. Twitter is totally open free speech
2. This scares people away and user counts drop
3. Twitter censors and users come back
But this didn't happen. Twitter and other, at the time, free speech platforms like Reddit were experiencing rapid user growth throughout their free speech phases. The "this will scare away users" justification for censorship is used entirely as an ex post facto justification.
No, this is the route that literally every popular social media platform goes through if they want to make money. Having an 'absolutist' stance on free speech is only tenable at smaller scales. As your platform scales up and more people join, so does the amount of people posting things that are borderline illegal, chase off advertisers/other users and so forth.
There's a reason why none of the other purported full free speech platforms ever taking off and it's because they end up so odious that advertisers never go near them and the userbase stalls out. Personally I think most of the people that believe full freedom of speech is possible have never been a moderator of even a small social media platform. If you have two users and one of them is harassing, stalking etc another user you eventually have to make a decision which of the two you want to keep around, and it inevitably involves you censoring one of them.
This is not the argument I was responding to. That was the argument that the platform will lose users, which objectively didn't happen. You are talking about losing advertisers, which is a reasonable theory, but also incorrect. Twitter and Reddit to this day are full of content, e.g. porn, that is absolutely toxic to advertisers, but it doesn't drive advertisers away from the platform as a whole because they have segregated their platforms and allow advertisers to pick and choose where they advertise. An example of this is Google search and Youtube demonetization of controversial videos. Advertisers are certainly an explanation of those policies, but it doesn't explain outright banning content from the platform.
why don’t these “unfairly” censored people build their own platform? oh! it’s hard. much harder than spouting their bs and complaining about “free speech”
> why don’t these “unfairly” censored people build their own platform?
Don't you recognize that this is exactly what happens?
They do end up going to their own corners of the web, and idealogical-activists refuse to leave them alone and try and shut them down wherever they go. Look at how many times Gab, Parler, and other more free speech sites have been shut down.
I wonder if the world can support a conservative Twitter. I think the problem is that if you're going to spout offensive nonsense it's not as much fun if there is no one around to be offended by it. And while those who are offended will fight it when it's a percentage of their platform, there will be a wave as people abandon what they see as a toxic platform. I mean sure there are platforms like 4chan and The Donald but 4chan's traffic is a fraction of what reddit's is.
Given Elon's predilection for trolling it's odd he doesn't realize those people who are banned don't want to build anything, they just want to watch the world burn.
The unfairly banned people have made several platforms, they just never blow up and you don't hear about them. It's like an employee gets fired from target, a well known and established company, so they make their own pseudo target and you're shocked that you've never heard of their small one
Edit: corrected autocorrect miswording
why don’t the platforms blow up? you’d think if these people are banned based on ideological issues only they would accumulate and thrive on these new platforms
the reason twitter works and is successful is that you have people from all backgrounds and walks of life. people that get banned don't follow the rules that Twitter has (if the rules are fair, etc, is another discussion, but everyone has to follow the rules)
exactly! the gist of it is that they need people from the “other camp” and they need to get into shouting matches to feel like they matter and their crackpot ideas are valuable.
Sure. But if Elon Musk buys twitter, a private corporation, then he can decide who he platforms. Yet you see tons of people complaining exactly about that possibility here. So your comment is pretty ironic in the context of an entire thread filled with complaints about Musk getting his own platform.
it's in the direction of "I don't want Musk to mess with Twitter". I personally cannot do anything about it but watch and voice concern, but if enough people see the concern I am voicing maybe this will lead to a better outcome. who knows?
I totally agree with that! The thing is, that's exactly what people have been doing only to be constantly dismissed because hey it's a private corporation and they shouldn't complain. The comment I replied to was literally doing just that, mocking people and calling them annoying because they kept voicing their concern for free speech, because they apparently shouldn't even complain since it's not their platform.
Afaik, he views Twitter as the closest thing we have to a genuine public square on the web, and he thinks it’s poorly managed and ideologically captured. Musk also uses Twitter a lot, so it’s believable that he wants it to be something better than what it currently is.
> Afaik, he views Twitter as the closest thing we have to a genuine public square on the web, and he thinks it’s poorly managed and ideologically captured.
For me, this is the thing that bothers me the most: if he thinks it is the closest we have to a public square, why does he think that the richest private individual in the world should decide how it is run?
It seems he's saying "the oligarchy is not running this well so we should make it a dictatorship, not a democracy," which is in his right to say or believe, I just wonder how much we have lost faith in democracy if we agree.
Who is running it now? A Saudi prince and a bunch of other tech oligarchs? Why would Elon be worse than that? How is twitter a democracy now? Did you cry this much when Bezos (the then richest person) bought the Washington Post?
Isn't the fact that twitter is NOT part of our democracy the crying call of the left? "It's not censorship because it's a private company and they can do what they want (as long as they only censor anything I don't agree with)!"
Oh NO, Elon might make twitter a free speech platform where differing views can be expressed!
I was talking about the structure of its governance, which I think is currently more like an oligarchy and if Musk buys it, might be more like a monarchy or dictatorship, not like a democracy.
I don't claim that the current oligarchy is doing it well, I don't claim that a Musk monarchy would not do it better, and I don't claim that even a democratic structure would do it well.
I was merely trying to point out the different governance structures and question our collective faith in democratic structures.
To be honest, I think you are exactly on the right track. We _do_ have reduced faith in democratic structures.
Allow me to steelman this position a bit for you though. I think the root, gut feel that many Americans have is that they are sick of being pushed around and mismanaged by ineffective, small-minded, out-of-touch bureaucrats. This affliction seems to affect every aspect of our lives. If you have a problem with Comcast, you have to go through a robo call center that makes it physically impossible to actually talk to the people that are authoring your pain. You can't get mad at the person on the phone, because they can rightly say that it's not their fault your bill doubled. And yet, what's left unsaid is that things are specifically arranged this way on purpose.
The social architecture of our society is so "democratic" that there is no responsibility, no human spirit, no .. humanity in the way we deal with things. You can bet that Twitters internals follow this rule, and I'm sure when they talk about the failings they've had as a company, the blame is blandly smeared around. As a democracy fades into a bureaucracy, politics and corporate culture just descends into tee-totalling, cover-your-ass box checking that you're doing everything "by the book". It is the soulless HR department in place of actual values and kinship.
So you might see this newfound lack of faith in democratic structures less as a vote against democracy and more like a vote _for_ humanity. If you put Musk in charge, one thing you know is that there is a dude - a fully human dude, foibles and negative qualities included - who is running things. Looked at from this perspective, you can almost even get your head around what it would be like voting for trump. Okay, maybe not, but maybe you can get a few steps closer.
I appreciate you taking it further and I think I can relate. The frustration with things being too ineffective and the drive to have a human responsible for something. I believe monarchies can be highly efficient, as many other top-down hierarchies. I think the challenge lies in that while one can efficiently help, one can also efficiently harm.
So, yeah, a part of me loves that a human could come in and make it more structured, more "the buck stops here" (ironically from the US President, the leader of a democratic republic), and I also worry about what happens when that person goes in a direction we don't like or a direction that harms or kills us. May seem like an exaggeration for a social media company, however, many genocides have been fueled by language through mass media.
> The social architecture of our society is so "democratic" that there is no responsibility, no human spirit, no .. humanity in the way we deal with things.
This is why I actually believe more in the idea of representative democracy than direct democracy. Yes, not as much responsibility as a single owner, but allocated responsibility to a few while being owned by many.
> Isn't the fact that twitter is NOT part of our democracy the crying call of the left? "It's not censorship because it's a private company and they can do what they want (as long as they only censor anything I don't agree with)!"
Lol, if you think the left is genuinely defending the rights of private corporations, I don't think you know much about the left...
Probably the defining ideological organizing principle of the left is social equality, which is the exact opposite organizing principle of corporations, that being profit over all. Corporations are organized as dictatorships; leftists prefer them to be organized as democracies of, by, and for workers. Corporations censor the free speech of their workers, restricting what they say and how they can organize themselves; leftists want to take away the power corporations have to do this.
Insofar you are hearing anyone you perceive to be on the left supporting the rights of corporations like twitter to do what they want, perhaps consider they are throwing the argument in the face of corporate friendly Democrats and Republicans who have created this situation themselves by granting corporations such power over our lives, and are now only complaining when it hurts them politically.
I'm waiting for the day when that's tackled honestly by those groups, because right now it seems to me that politicians want to force specific companies like Twitter to stop hurting them politically while still maintaining corporate power and the inflow of corporate cash into their reelection campaigns. Thy want to call Twitter a "town square" and a "public good", and carve out exceptions that would specifically limit its power while still maintaining the power of the corporations they prefer to wield it. Meanwhile they will argue vociferously that healthcare, education, housing, even roads and broadband aren't public goods and must be kept privatized or turned into private ventures.
Under our current system (not created by leftists), corporations are people too and have more rights and power than natural humans. Leftists will stop pointing out that corporations have this power as soon everyone else stops arguing that corporations should have this power.
I have some good memories of using Twitter in the pre-IPO days. Of course we can’t say that the former private ownership was necessary to create an open platform, but I don’t think it was a hindrance in that regard, either. (Would it be different for a megabillionaire to buy the company today? Definitely. Still, there shouldn’t be an unchecked assumption that it’s indispensable for Twitter to be publicly traded.)
I'm not saying the current publicly traded, previous/future private ownership, publicly regulated utility, non-profit, or any other form of ownership and governance would necessarily yield a better result than others. There can be benevolent dictatorships and oligarchies and malevolent democracies and republics. I'm more interested in why we (US specifically) celebrate democracy in public governance but seem to prefer oligarchy or autocracy in corporate governance.
I'd be fine with bringing back most of these banned accounts if the algorithm also died.
Without an engagement-maximizing algorithm that promotes the most divisive content, those accounts would just be preaching to their own choirs. Meanwhile other people could pop in and see just how unhinged and ridiculous they are.
Maximizing engagement means maximizing dishonest trolling, hate, fear, controversy for the sake of controversy, and catchy tabloid bullshit. The most engaging content is basically an adversarial attack on higher human cognition. It typically works by bypassing the rational mind and shooting for the amygdala.
Make it a simple timeline again. Nix recommendations in favor of search. Make it just a forum, not an inherently biased Skinner box that sucks out peoples' brains.
I'd support that regardless of who he lets back on the platform, because algorithmic social media is the real problem. Algorithmic social media is what got Donald Trump into the presidency, among many other things.
isn’t it convenient to blame everything on the algorithm?
why spend time actually educating people and giving them the tool of critical thinking when you can create a cesspool that enables and amplifies xenophobia, racism, sexism, you name it.
why call out certain behaviors that are horrendous when you can normalize them and pretend this is part of the normal public forum?
Person A walks past you and smiles. Person B walks past and punches you in the face. Which maximizes engagement?
Person A tells you about a new discovery at NASA. Person B tells you the Earth is flat and bombards you with "irrefutable" proof. Which maximizes engagement?
I really do think engagement maximizing algorithms explain much (but not all) of our collective descent into insanity since about 2010-2012 when they became popular.
the algo amplifies nasty things. that’s for sure. i guess my point is that those nasty things exist independently and have backing (and we should not normalize them).
He should reinstate all accounts that were banned for political or ideological reasons. Or just straight up do a jubilee of all accounts unless they posted illegal content.
It is absolutely trivial to get banned on Twitter. My favorite example is someone I know getting banned for posting pitbull fatality statistics. They were banned for “racism”. Against dogs.
Not going to dox myself via sharing their @. It's banned now so you can't see it anyways. They were attacked by some pitbull advocacy club and likely mass-reported.
The replies were full of people saying things like "this is exactly like how white people post statistics to say black people commit more crime! Report this person for racism!"
It was charts of dog fatalities per year broken down by breed.
I still don’t believe that’s the whole story. Maybe it was automatic due to the large number of reportings. But I’m certain nobody at twitter said “yep, let’s ban him for racism against pit bulls”.
Wouldn't that be a violation of his fiduciary duty, at least in the same way that other people in this conversation have defined fiduciary duty when criticizing the board for adopting the poison pill?
Bringing back the accounts that spew stuff which pushes advertisers away will not make Twitter more financially successful than they are today.
That's true, if his intent is to take it private, he could run it into the ground on purpose.
Hell, maybe that's his intent. What if it turns out that rather than being a free speech absolutist, he thinks social media is destroying the world and the best way to solve that is to crush it out of existence, starting with Twitter.
That wouldn't work, of course, but it would be entertaining.
If his agenda is polar opposite of the current agenda, I can't wait to see it. I would love to see him turn Twitter into a free-for-all where all LEGAL under US law material is allowed. Where YOU as an individual can mute/block things you do not want to see. It's incredible this idea today is considered "dangerous".
There are already Twitter alternatives that operate as a free-for-all. So we don't even need to speculate on how that plays out. It is interesting to ponder how Elon thinks that would make him any richer. Or maybe he values the free-for-all concept so highly that he's willing to burn billions of his own money on it when Twitter loses most of its advertisers.
Of course, he may just do the opposite, and start banning people on the left. That would align more closely with how he runs the companies he is currently in control of.
Unfortunately your first sentence isn't true. There is no uncensored microblogging platform or protocol that is even a tiny fraction of Twitter's scale.
Twitter isn't just a US platform. It's a global one. As part of a global platform that means it has to adhere to laws in countries other than the US. Thing's like EU's anti-terrorism laws or data privacy laws. You could argue that they should strictly adhere only to US laws, but you're effectively arguing for Twitter to outright remove a large portion of its international audience and censor them as well.
have you ever defended your ideas? against someone that does not do this in good faith? and makes shit up on the fly? and lies when caught? and uses mental gymnastics when shown their are plain wrong?
how many times would you try to debate that person before deciding it’s a waste if time?
That's some sick shit but I can't see why Twitter cannot allow you to block that garbage from YOUR perspective. I want personal controls for my content.
It's EASY to counter Holocaust deniers because there is so much evidence that it happened. It's like debating flat earthers. No problem. Why be threatened by things that are easily debunked in day light?
It's not hard to defeat bad ideas with good ideas. Or you can just ignore it by turning off the channel. That's always an option.
huh. this naive approach is cute. but here is the thing: the amount of effort required to refute bullshit is at least an order of magnitude higher than the effort required to produce it.
we don’t have unlimited time an unlimited attention spans. we also deal with uneducated, easily manipulated people that will just discard anything that does not match their world view and just amplify the bs.
Correct. No one can deal with all that shit. But it's distributed. You can ignore most of it, or all of it if you want. There are plenty of us autists to overwhelm it.
Sending Flat Earthers off to their own dark corner is how they become entrenched. Leave them in the public square, in broad daylight, so they are exposed to evidence to the contrary. That's how you defeat bad ideas over time.
Empirically, that doesn’t work. Bringing misinformation into the public square simply allows it to spread. It’s almost immune to “evidence to the contrary”, at least for those who are apt to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Empirically, the church is still here, and yet we mostly now hold heliocentric beliefs.
We didn't need to censor anyone to get here.
On longer timescales, the truth wins, because it is real, and everything else is not. False beliefs are persistent but simply can't compete with reality.
this approach of letting people air bs and having them be shamed by the level-headed individuals may work if the people airing the bs are just misinformed but
are open to a discussion and changing their mind.
a lot of people, on the internet, are not open to this and will chose the bs over any fact, argument, reason.
The problem is that those ideas spread because it’s not in most peoples best interest to challenge them intellectually. It’s in their self interest to promote that material because it feels good emotionally.
whenever something like this happens you have to ask yourself why now and what’s in it for Musk (let’s be real: nobody spends this much without an agenda). My fear is that Musk’s endgame is to reinstate a specific account that was banned after some specific events around a specific election. If this is what’s happening he can frack off.