X is the best social media platform out there at this point. What are the alternatives? Meta's Facebook, Instagram? TikTok? It's just bollocks. X is where a lot of interesting people post, and where freedom of speech is the most upheld. Community notes is also a super interesting aspect. It's not X's fault someone follows nazis or whatever and don't know where the mute / block buttons are.
This is only true if one defines freedom of speech extremely narrowly; specifically if you want to use racial slurs, or if you want to attack lgbtq folks.
Material criticism of Elon or his endeavors routinely results in bans. This has resulted in him banning numerous high profile journalists.
Elon banned individuals who posted Elon's locations, after Grimes used that info to serve him a custody lawsuit that he'd been dodging. He even banned journalists who talked about the bans, or who asked about ban policy.
He bans with abandon. Joke accounts? banned. promoting other social networks? banned. Advocating for lgbt gun ownership? banned. Paul Graham (the co-founder of YC)? banned.
And when he isn't busy banning, he is using the courts to suppress speech he doesn't like, and creating implicit threats to others who might say something even moderately critical of him or his empire of government subsidized wealth.
you know what isn't banned now? having centrist, or even right wing opinions
you can also see the violence and terrorism that the mainstream media refuses to report on
there's a lot of political voices that are being allowed to speak finally, whereas before they've been stifled due to political persecution coupled with insane deplatforming. X as a free speech platform is doing a great job at showing how widespread political gaslighting has become.
that covid came out of a chinese lab, or showing that the lockdowns didn't work as was shown by Jay Bhattacharya early on
accounts that were censored, shadowbanned, and massively decreased in exposure. just look up the twitter files.
since being owned by elon there's also been a rush of psychometricians into twitter, people who want to share and talk about their scientific data, which was banned before. you couldn't talk about IQ.
there were also people banned for challenging immigration narratives or gender ideology. this was prevalent and obvious. lauren southern was constantly accused of shooting a gun at an immigrant ngo ship that was actually just a flare - incapable of hitting or hurting anyone.
all of this was blatant and widespread on more than just twitter, did you not notice?
I'll agree he changed the (flawed) covid misinformation policy; though there were absolutely people discussing Chinese lab leak theories or the effectiveness of lockdown without getting banned.
I don't know what you're talking about regarding psychometrician... there were always people talking about how some races are categorically dumber than others and drawing broad conclusions; they received social judgment but not bans.
Your comment about Southern is really telling though. You're clearly upset that people are _not_ banned for stating something true. You agree she shot blazing hot fiery incendiary devices at immigrants using a flare gun, and you think people should be muzzled from saying that, simply because you (very wrongly) believe that flares can't start fires or hurt people.
This last part makes clear that you don't actually have any love of free speech; but rather you simply want speech restricted in the way you personally prefer. It's refreshing that you don't bother pretend to have principles beyond a desire for power, and a love of oppressing those you hate.
Even if all she did was sing happy birthday to the immigrants and then welcome them to Greece, Stainablesteel is still advocating for speech he doesn't like to be restrained.
In hindsight, I should've realized that his post was unreliable and untrustworthy. I should not have used a proven liar as a source, and I won't do so again.
I can answer what they meant with "does not follow the program."
The person you replied to is an overt racist who promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish people.[0]
The line "does not follow the program" is an anti-Semitic dog whistle. You should feel really good about yourself that you completely missed the hidden meaning and thought they were referring to billionaires.
[0] "Now is the time to embrace the idea that all humans deserve equal treatment and dignity due to the simple fact that they are humans and abandon the idea that the value of people lies in their attributes, especially when those attributes are about to become much less valuable in the marketplace."
What's funny is that the line you thought you cherry-picked as a gotcha actually tells the story:
> abandon the idea that the value of people lies in their attributes
For anyone reading, the "attribute" that the racist author is referring to is the intelligence of non-white people, which the racist author says is inferior to whites.
It wasn't cherry picked. It was the concluding paragraph.
Additionally, nowhere in the essay does the author say that other ethnic groups are inferior to whites. In fact, it's only mentioned, tangentially, and not expanded upon, that different groups have different average IQs.
As an aside: If someone reaches the correct answer for the wrong reasons, are they wrong? Personally, I'm pragmatic, and don't care how people reach my ideals on the proper treatment of people.
> As an aside: If someone reaches the correct answer for the wrong reasons, are they wrong? Personally, I'm pragmatic, and don't care how people reach my ideals on the proper treatment of people.
Forgot to respond to this part in my other reply so I'll just create a new one.
The entire purpose of the article is to promote anti-Semitic and racist ideas with thinly veiled dog whistles. The author isn't reaching the same conclusion as you at all - their intention is to promote hatred.
That's the whole point of a dog whistle - to promote hate and discrimination to those who would be receptive while maintaining some sliver of deniability.
It's frustrating to see that it worked so well on you in this particular case, but it's a good reminder of how effective dog whistling can be.
It didn't "work" on me. I read the article, picked up on the fact that this guy's is probably conservative, and was pleasantly surprised by the conclusion he drew to the problem of AI making intelligence obsolete.
I can form my own opinions, without people like you insinuating that I've been manipulated.
I'm going to operate under the assumption that you're replying in good faith and truly don't recognize the racist and anti-Semitic dog whistles all throughout the article. I'll highlight some of them for you.
Here is an anti-Semitic dog whistle that promotes the conspiracy theory that Jews control the media:
>Working with journalists was an enlightening experience. There were some amazing people, but I found many to be arrogant and self-centered. It was frustrating to me that such people were the gatekeepers that millions of people got their news on the world through.
The uses of "arrogant" and "self-centered" are dog whistles for anti-Semitic tropes about Jews being elitists and selfish, respectively, and the part about them being gatekeepers of the news refers to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the media.
Here we have two dog whistles in one sentence:
>I had gotten used to the fake politeness and backstabbing at the newspaper.
The "fake politeness" line is an anti-Semitic dog whistle intended to promote the idea of Jews being sneaky and untrustworthy. The word "backstabbing" is a dog whistle for the anti-Semitic Stab-in-the-back myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
Here is the author getting a little more explicit about what they're talking about:
>After the 2020 “racial reckoning” we saw the rapid increase in new social policies based on this logic.
Here is another dog whistle where the author refers to a person with a traditionally Jewish last name, which they directly associate with having secret evil intentions and hidden political power:
>In additional, activist public intellectuals such as Stephen J Gould sold a willing public on beliefs that were based less on science than egalitarian hopes and dreams.
These explanations have their merit, but I think they are too kind for assuming good intentions. Throughout human history, the powerful have sought to mystify the source of their power, whether it be through religion, divine mandate or royal inheritance.
I could go on, the article is absolutely full of racist and anti-Semitic dog whistles. Do you really not see them?
You are reading way too much into what I was saying. I honestly couldn't say if the people I worked with were Jewish or not - it's not something that crossed my mind. Growing up in Southern California, the only difference I noticed between myself and Jewish friends was that they celebrated Hanukkah instead of Christmas. I honesty didn't even know there was such as thing as Jewish ethnicity until I was in my 30s - I just thought it was another religion.
My essay briefly touches on the fact there are are IQ testing gaps between groups. I'm sure you know that these gaps are one of the primary explanations for Jewish overrepresentation in technical and intellectual fields. A honest appraisal of the situation instead of denial and attacking people who notice things would by hugely beneficial to everyone.
This is a textbook example of the typical response when someone gets their dog whistles called out. Plausible deniability is a key characteristic of dog whistles[0]. The first sentence is as predictable as the sun coming up tomorrow:
>You are reading way too much into what I was saying.
Note also that he ignores every single point that I made in the post he is responding to. Not a single one is addressed. You see, he is nervous because he has been caught, and he is hoping to distance himself from the anti-Semitic venom he was previously so eager to spew.
My friend, since you did indeed ignore every point I made, why don't you take a shot at addressing some of them now?
Also, you never responded to my questions about the comment you made referencing some group of mysterious, powerful people that you seem to think are working in the shadows to attack Musk:
Btw, feel free to skip the part of your essay where you argue that AI is going to cause white people to lose their jobs to non-whites because it will soon allow them to perform jobs they were previously intellectually incapable of performing. I think we all get the gist, no need to go into it further:
>The cognitively gifted have suddenly found their opportunities more limited if they are White or Asian
>What will the world look like when all the unwashed masses each have their own 130+ IQ assistant in their pocket to help them with daily tasks?
That essay had nothing at all do with Jewish people, so I don't want to respond to each of the points. Instead, I will just give you an honest appraisal of my views to answer your questions. Regarding Musk, I was referring to the ADL, Media Matters, political parties and other orgs that have been angry at his lifting of speech restrictions. And yes, some Jewish orgs have been major players in pushing for internet censorship (out in the open - not in the shadows). I don't see any problem with criticizing any politically organized group of people that is pushing their agenda on me. Why are Jewish groups immune from criticism? Imagine a Mormon civil rights org that worked directly with social media companies to censor content, and that many Mormon people were heavily involved in pro-Mormon political orgs (such as supporting a Mormon ethno-state in the Middle East). Now, imagine that any time someone criticized "the Mormons" that someone would accuse them of spreading anti-Mormon conspiracy theories. Pretending that Jews aren't one of the most politically active groups is just silly, which I hope you will agree.
Now a question for you: How does one critique this Jewish political activism phenomenon without being anti-Semitic? How would you do it?
Regarding my essay, my intent was to call out the hypocrisy of people that believe in equality, but only justify their belief based on very dubious scientific claims that all human population groups - after 50,000 years of separation, genetic bottlenecks, selection pressure and interbreeding with other sub-species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans - all have the exactly same brain characteristics. I was trying to say that high IQ people have been taking advantage of their "unearned" privilege in our modern society while denying that such privilege exists, and that this might be coming to an end with AI - and that my own personal experience proved to me that intelligence does not determine the value of a person. Therefore, to me, differences in average IQ between groups is completely irrelevant to their value as human beings, and that associating the value of people with their intelligence is morally wrong.
There has been a discourse on Twitter the last few days about whether or not Ashkenazi Jews have a much higher IQ than the white average. This posited as an explanation of the over-representation of Jews in things such as Fields medals, Nobel prizes, etc. What are your thoughts?
[0] https://twitter.com/nathancofnas/status/1729562933238059235
I'm a little preturbed, though. When the author talked about his time working with journalists, and when he described some of them negatively, you assumed he was talking about Jews.
When he talked about Stephen Gould, a widely read pop-sci academic, you zeroed in on his last name's "Jewish-ness".
It just seems like you're reading a lot into what he's saying, rather than what he's saying.
Also, FYI, on hacker news you're supposed to assume good faith.
>When he talked about Stephen Gould, a widely read pop-sci academic, you zeroed in on his last name's "Jewish-ness".
Replying to this separately because I feel like you mischaracterized my point about Stephen Gould, and I think you're aware of that.
I did not simply zero in on his last name, as your comment says. I pointed out that the author directly links a Jewish person to having secret evil intentions and hidden political power:
>These explanations have their merit, but I think they are too kind for assuming good intentions. Throughout human history, the powerful have sought to mystify the source of their power, whether it be through religion, divine mandate or royal inheritance.
By the way, did you notice that "divine mandate" line? Why don't you take a guess on that one, too.
The account that posted the article also posted an explicitly anti-Semitic comment that promotes the conspiracy theory that Jews are secretly in control of the media[0]:
>Uh, yes. Elon does not follow the program, and doesn't have the kind of pull Gates has, even though he's richer. Gates is the poster child for state initiatives. Elon is out on his own agenda.
Edit: Using Gates as an example. Check Media Matters' donors and get back to me. (Spoiler alert, tons of huge Jewish NGOs. Who did Elon piss off by correctly claiming had outsized influence, again?)
Does knowing that the author explicitly promotes anti-Semitism change your opinion? I'm also curious if this information changes your opinion that I'm reading too much into the article.
Edit: I linked the wrong one, there were two anti-Semites in the same thread. Here is the correct comment that was removed for violating HN policies:
Here is what it said (I had it open in another window before it was removed):
>I wish people were a little more skeptical about the negative claims about Twitter/X in the press the last few days, knowing that Elon Musk has pissed off some very powerful people with his recent comments.
Different person, same anti-Semitism, same conspiracy theories being promoted.
You could make an actual argument with real points that people could consider and evaluate rather than pretending like everyone else is an idiot and you have some grand truth that is simultaneously so obvious that you don’t need to state it and is somehow something that nobody else has a clue what you’re talking about.
Yes you can replicate it by following very controversial accounts and business accounts and scrolling a lot until you find an ad and a controversial statement beside each other, as the logs show they did.
It doesn't represent an actual experience though, it's deliberate and misleading since that curation was left out of the report.
It turns out large companies don't like to see their brand near hateful things and they were probably able to verify that internally. Apple has quite a few more resources than Media Matters.
> In this case it was specifically intentionally misleading (something they have logs to prove)
No such logs have been produced, FWIW. They made some vague claims in the original suit, but haven't backed it up. Broadly the claim amounts to: Media Matters created burner accounts that follow a bunch of nazis, racists, and other hateful accounts, and did it so that they could embarrass X when it got served ads for Disney products or whatever.
And, maybe that's true. Media Matters is an in-the-trenches democratic political organ, and Musk has coded himself conservative in his current incarnation. He's an enemy, and they're going to go after him. That's just politics.
But I don't see how you get from there to damages. It's certainly not libel; Media Matters did, after all, tell the truth. Nor is it fraud. X really did serve the ads, and the content really was hateful. Anyone else following those hate accounts would get the same content, Media Matters didn't "hack the algorithm", they just followed a lot of evil nonsense.
You're making a lot of claims ITT about the Media Matters case. Do you have sources for those claims? I haven't noticed you posting any sources to back up any of your claims. If you're going to make a factual assertion, it helps to offer a source for others to verify that you aren't just making it up or parroting something that you didn't verify.
> In this case it was specifically intentionally misleading
Exactly. What people don’t seem to realize is that neo-Nazi content is allowed, and there is not a extant mechanism for Twitter advertisers to make sure that their ads do not appear next to that allowed neo-Nazi content — this is why Twitter verified that fact in their lawsuit.
The lawsuit is meritorious because while there was no malfunction on Twitter’s part, they contend that accepting advertisers’ money and occasionally showing it next to neo-Nazi content simply isn’t that big of a deal. The misleading part is introducing the idea that advertisers should expect that not to happen.
I look forward to further lawsuits against users such as these
I'm a bit confused by your comment, because the link shows that they were indeed showing 'bad' content, but you say the lawsuit is 'meritorious' ie having merit.
The lawsuit doesn’t contend that the reporting is inaccurate, the complaint hinges on it being correct. Twitter is suing under the “who cares” and “shut up” doctrine.
> You're saying that the lawsuit is meritorious, while conceding that there is no legal basis for the lawsuit? Am I missing something?
No. Twitter is suing under the “who cares”, “shut up” and “no u” doctrine, which you can do in courts that do not have anti-SLAPP rules in place.
>The company filed its lawsuit in Texas, which is neither its nor Media Matters’ primary place of business. As legal blogger Ken White noted, a Texas filing protects X from claims that it filed a strategic lawsuit against public participation (or SLAPP), something it might face in its home base of California.
> which you can do in courts that do not have anti-SLAPP rules in place.
No, this is incorrect. I believe you're unintentionally conflating two things. Not having an anti-SLAPP law just means that Media Matters won't have the luxury of quickly striking the complaint before having to respond to it.
It does not mean that vexatious litigants are free to file a lawsuit without making actual legal claims recognized by the courts.
Media Matters can (and will) still file a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the complaint, and will almost certainly prevail based on the clear deficiency of the complaint which doesn't even bother to cite the legal elements of the three claims it lists.
I like that you say that they cannot file a suit without making actual legal claims in the sentence before you say that the lawsuit that was filed didn’t even bother to cite the legal elements of the claims.
When I say that they can't file a suit without making actual legal claims, I obviously meant that the suit would be dismissed. Anyone can go down to the court clerk's office and pay the fee to submit a court filing. There is no mechanism to review whether a filing is frivolous before it gets filed with the clerk.
So yes, my statement was correct, you just aren't familiar with how it works.
The lawsuit doesn't allege that Media Matters lied. Twitter/X (effectively) admit that the report was accurate, but that Media Matters followed users that post objectionable content and saw ads by companies that probably don't want to be associated with nazis et al, and reported on that factual outcome.
>The lawsuit doesn't allege that Media Matters lied.
Incorrect. For example, from the complaint[0]:
> As extensively explained above, these statements made by Defendant Media
Matters were false.
Though to be fair, the lawsuit never bothers to explain how they're false or offer any actual evidence to that effect. It doesn't even attempt to cite the legal elements of any of the claims that are listed, nor does it establish any facts that one could even tangentially connect to the claims asserted.
I have a law degree (though I don't currently practice law). I doubt this lawsuit will survive a motion for summary judgment. I would even go so far as to expect that Elon/Twitter will probably be paying for Media Matters' attorney's fees for the utterly frivolous nature of the complaint.
Musk has explicitly and repeatedly said that his standard for free speech is that which complies with the law in any given country. The logic is that domestic laws represent the will of their citizens and it shouldn't be a corporation's (or a billionaire's) responsibility to second guess this.
Quote — "By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people." [0]
Quote — "Like I said, my preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates. If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed." [1]
Personally I think this the only sane stance for a corporation like Twitter/X. We shouldn't be looking to capitalist non-democratic corporations as an end-run around governments — especially democratic governments.
If someone tweets "I hate trans people" nothing happens, if someone tweets "I hate cis people" the tweet gets immediately hidden and flagged for hateful content
I saw dozens replicating it last week and I was able to replicate it myself
> Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension.
I don't disagree with this stance... I need some substantial proof that posting your opinion without calling for extreme violence is going to get your suspended.
I like how you quoted that part, but not the part where he clearly stated that the term decolonization necessary implies genocide.
To my knowledge genocide pretty much requires "extreme violence".
For the record, no, decolonization [1] does not mean Jewish genocide, that's his own fever dream, but he's clearly stated that X's position is it does.
It in fact does not require extreme violence. For instance: the Indian Boarding School programs of the early 20th century didn't involve extreme violence (ostensibly, they didn't involve any more coercive force than any other mandatory schooling program; of course, in reality, that wasn't at all true) and didn't have as an organizing goal the death of students/inmates. At the same time, the program was clearly genocidal, and would have fit the UN convention: it was a systemic program undertaken with a goal of destroying an ethnic group, using one of the explicit actions (e) of Article II of the charter.
At the same time: I don't think it's that straightforward to dismiss concerns about "decolonization", especially not with a simple link to Wikipedia. That decolonization could represent programs known to their authors as means of eradicating Jewish people (and, in particular, the plurality Mizrahim population of Israel) is not a fever dream. That doesn't make it true, but it's not a facially invalid concern.
That advocates of "decolonization" widely responded to the October 7th Hamas Al Aqsa Flood attacks with "decolonization is not a metaphor" does your "fever dream" arguments no favors; those attacks were overtly, expressly genocidal.
Musk didn't say some radicals used the term as a euphemism for genocide. He said "Yes, “decolonization” necessarily implies a Jewish genocide". He didn't say it was banned in that context, he said it would result in suspension period, because again "decolonization necessarily implies a Jewish genocide"
Lots of terms have been used as euphemism for lots of things. It makes no sense to declare a word used in many contexts now means only this one thing, because one group of people used it this way. As I said in another thread I'm against allowing people to hide behind euphemism and dog whistles, by all means if someone is talking about decolonization of Israel, take action! But claiming this is the only meaning and a blanket ban is nonsense.
I don't much care. You made two claims I felt worth rebutting: that genocide was in practice always extremely violent, and that decolonization could be genocidal only in fever dreams.
I stand corrected on the first. As usual, people's creativity for doing awful things exceeds my imagination, and, on reflection, I can think of a few other historical programs that indeed should be called genocidal, but one would be hard-pressed to call them violent.
The second, "that decolonization could be genocidal only in fever dreams." is not what I said. I can also think of a few instances of decolonization in history that certainly pushed those boundaries. What I said was that the word decolonization does not inherently mean genocide, much less specifically Jewish genocide, and the belief that it does is a Musk fever dream. I also acknowledge that it would have been clearer if I had clarified that some (Hamas, their supporters) are using it that way and that emotional language, as usual, does little to add to a conversation.
Don't let me sound like I think Elon Musk is coherent. We might not actually disagree about anything here, including Musk. It seems pretty clear what he's referring to when he uses the term "decolonization", but Musk unreasonably flattening a term for his own convenience would be unsurprising.
the cis thing is whatever, it should be allowed and it is. but if you use it to harass someone, same as if you used other slurs, it would be taken as harassment. this isn't insane for an online platform.
It may surprise you to know, there is more to the world than one particular conflict.
Edit: to be clear I take no issue with banning calls for violence and genocide, including instances where they are attempting to be obscured by careful use of language. I take issue with claiming that the word, which has been used for decades, in a wide variety of contexts, suddenly inherently means genocide.
In practice, though, this turns into a motte-and-bailey, whether or not that is your intent.
When someone today talks about "decolonization", what are the odds that they're talking about Palestine? What are the odds that they're talking about the Belgian Congo? This is especially true if it shows up on Twitter rather than in an obscure journal about the 20th century history of Africa.
So (many) people are using "decolonization" to mean the destruction of Israel. And then (some, and maybe not the same) people are saying "you can't say decolonization means genocide, because there's all this history of Africa and India and the Caribbean and so on - it doesn't necessarily mean that." OK, fine, but these days, on Twitter, what percentage of it does mean wiping out Israel? 95%? 99%?
So, yes, as a matter of definition, you have a point. In practice, Twitter has a point.
> When someone today talks about "decolonization", what are the odds that they're talking about Palestine?
In my particular bubble? Essentially zero. It's pretty much always going to be in the context of a past or present British colony, or a person's mental state aka "decolonize the mind". I readily admit my personal experience may not line up with whatever is trending on Twitter/X. And now we can't discuss those things on Twitter/X apparently. Is Twitter/X such a mess that this kind of limit is for the best? Maybe, I haven't been around in a long time, but it seems pretty damn toxic from the outside, but "freedom of speech" it ain't.
the odds people are [not] talking about something are subject to influence by censorship and political ideology. I disagree with your characterization of it as a motte-and-bailey fallacy, because the definition is based on conflating easy/not-easy to defend ideas. You haven't shown that one form of colonization is defensible and the other is not. Rather, you (or the side of that argument you are representing) are attempting to just redefine the word colonization ! I dont know if there's a fallacy name for "redefining words" but there should be.
I've seen cis used in a dehumanizing way, as a slur. He's clearly right about this. Don't call out people's unchangeable identities by terms they don't want you to.
I started using X just recently. My feed is entirely related to the people I follow and topics I'm interested in. I had a bit of garbage after I joined, but "show less like this" solved it very quickly. The only "garbage" is ads, but they're topical and annoyingly effective at catching my attention.
The people I follow have a very high signal to noise ratio, so maybe that helps.
Everything from incessant discussion of tempests in a teacup to spam, generic financial influencer garbage, political content I find distasteful... hard to sort the wheat from the chaff and they've only become more aggressive about showing you people you don't follow.
That's definitely not my experience, and I wonder if it's because I joined late, after some alg change. The only semi "aggressive" things were posts about war. I clicked "not interested" a few times and haven't seen any since. I actually have zero political content on my feed, beyond AI law stuffs going on in the EU, which I'm interested in. I usually end up following the people I see in my feed, that I'm not following. For the others, I just click "not interested".
It's easily been the most on-point social media experience I've had.
I was skeptical about much of the "Big Brother" censorship claims about Facebook until Facebook started censoring certain URLs in my facebook private messages with friends when we were talking about the Ukraine war
My parents, and their generation, are getting so much shit shoved down their throats with the Facebook algorithms that I can't in good conscience consider it a better place than X.
A sewer is the best way to flood crap. "Shitposting" is a term popularized within this medium of exchange. People have been conditioned and encouraged to share their momentary disposable thoughts on the platform in an impulsive manner for over a decade.
As a result: outrage, controversy, demagoguery and subsequent deleting of such impulsive and unfiltered crap is very common. A lot of it is also unintelligible drivel that is presented with no context. And common opinion is that this is basically the best planet earth has to offer. In a way this is embarrassing and that mayor would have my permanent vote had I lived in France.
It's not hard to think of other alternatives...? KakaoTalk, LINE, WeChat / 小红书? These are all used where tons of interesting people post, and freedom of speech isn't really upheld on X (formerly Twitter) anyway.
Nonsense, if your tweet includes swear words of any kind (regardless of whether the sentiment expressed is positive or negative) it will be quietly hidden and your placement score will go down.
Edit: Pointing this out seems to have upset some folk.
Ultimately, we choose what we consume. Do I want a dumpster with pepperoni or not? I'm taking the pepperoni one. I don't get the moral highground of people without alternatives.
> My point is: why are you choosing to consume from a dumpster at all?
My choices are as follows:
Meta vs. X, I choose X
Reddit vs. Hackernews, I choose Hackernews
I couldn't say why I choose either, I guess it's a thirst for content and ultimately, there's a visceral choice that I make that results in X / Hackernews as opposed to Meta / Reddit.
Good riddance to X. There's a reason why people and companies are leaving a place and an owner that amplifies neo-Nazi expression and conspiracy theories like QAnon.
I disagree. I have a pretty cool set of accounts I follow on X that give me a lot more value than gouging my eyes out with a screwdriver and / or sticking my dick into a blender.
As a Parisian closely following Mayor Hidalgo's activities, her departure from Twitter amidst this controversy doesn't surprise me. The details about her Tahiti trip, costing €60,000 from our taxes, emerged on Twitter, during which she could not perform any official duties but instead visited her daughter and enjoyed a long vacation with her staff. [1]
The trip, supposedly for inspecting Olympic facilities even though this was revealed to be impossible due to local conditions, now seems like a gross misappropriation of public funds. This does not sit well with many of us concerned about how our taxes are spent, and there's been a formal complaint by an Anticorruption NGO. [2]
When confronted about this she deflected by pointing out that every year her first trip with her whole team is at Auschwitz, and she accused her detractors of not being willing to go there with her next year. The obvious instrumentalization scandalized the opposition.
The free speech thing is a red herring. Musk said 'freedom of speech' but not necessarily 'freedom of reach', which seems reasonable. This is not the problem. The problem is that the algorithms simply don't work. The sewer analogy is good - shit seems to float to the top, rather than the other way around. Places like HN and even reddit nailed this a long time ago, but any given X feed just looks like an append-only list of trash. Or a quick-moving stream of turds, to stay within the analogy.
HN is heavily moderated by very knowledgeable people and that's part of what makes it continue to work well.
It's like if you go into a bar and there's a guy screaming a bunch of curse words and racist crap in the corner at everyone near him. Normal people are going to leave if no one kicks the guy out.
Anyone can unfollow those people. Nobody on my timeline is screaming curse words or racist crap.
The real reason X is being attacked is because the Following tab doesn't inject propaganda like every other social media / news website does, other than ads of course.
I think a big part of the problem is the 'For You' feed, which has been trash since the day it was implemented (on practically every social media platform). I remember it being a big pain to get to the chronological feed years ago when they first implemented the curated feed as a default. It may not have been quite so full of ignorance and hate back then, but it was still full of things I had no interest in.
I still use X/Twitter weekly and I don't have any problem with the posts I see. My problem is with comments, which are usually where I will see hate and spam.
Yeah replies are a mixed bag. Some are funny, some are sad, some are just downright scary, but I like being treated like an adult and being able to choose which I spend time with, something that Americans haven't enjoyed from any other social media site in many years now.
HN posts/users are flagged/banned all the time - that's part of what makes it work relatively well. But the removed content is often exactly the kind that Musk et al argue should be allowed on Twitter.
> The sewer analogy is good - shit seems to float to the top, rather than the other way around
There are two distinct twitter feeds: 'for you' feed and 'following' feed. The former's like a sewer, but there's no excuse for the 'following' feed being anything but pristine (since it's curated by the user).
Something Musk discussed when he bought twitter was how users didn't always know the difference between the two feeds since the labelling was not clear - there was a 'stars' (?) icon to switch between the two.
The other problem (and where I see the worst content) are the replies to any tweet that has achieved significant popularity. Twitter preferentially surfaces subscribers in these replies, which tend to be diehard Elon fans who often behave badly.
And if you want to find somebody saying that some people should not exist on the planet, you can find the CEO retweeting it, or replying with something like "this is the actual truth".
Have you really gained or learned anything from this?
They just benefit from the conflict between opposing, incompatible viewpoints. Musk especially seems to like it. It's primarily a for-profit enterprise fueled by hate and propaganda, just like those "legacy" things it's supposed to replace.
Based on the proliferation of smaller Discords for example, I think people are re-learning why being in a public space with all other humans is not desirable. I may want access to observe that public space, but from a distance... with friends I respect and like.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I suppose I need to add that I'm not talking (and don't care) about your position on Muskness, Xness, or anything else. I'm just responding to a pattern of unsubstantive/flamey/snarky comments in your account history. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
To be clear though — Musk acknowledged it was worth a fraction of what he paid for it many months before he paid for it. In his view, the company's value crashed in early 2022 and that more information came to light during the acquisition process which further changed his view of the company's value.
This is objectively true, since every other tech company's stock prices dropped dramatically. Twitter's stock price was pinned because Musk made a commitment.
> more information came to light during the acquisition process which further changed his view of the company's value
This is objectively false, he misread Twitter's quarterly statements and didn't understand what mDAU meant, he wasted months and millions of dollars dragging Twitter through court, only to be forced to follow through on his commitment or get a worse judgment from the court.
> This is objectively false, he misread Twitter's quarterly statements...
Whether it's objectively true or false is irrelevant. What I said was it changed his view of the company's value which resulted in him acknowledging that his estimation of Twitter's worth had dropped.
And while I don't disagree that Musk had a different interpretation of mDAU than Twitter did, I don't sign onto the assertion that how 2022 Twitter's view of the world is anything like objective. These numbers have been considered controversial and suspicious long before Musk's interest in Twitter.[0] Twitter had a history of dodgy numbers.[1] And there was substantial evidence that Twitter was turning a blind eye to bot traffic in their mDAU analyses.[2]
The reason the previous owners were eager to dump Twitter was because Elon offered far more than it was worth, despite it being a cash flow positive business.
He backed out because he was foolish enough to think that the legally binding offer was not in fact binding.
There is sewage in X, sewage in your city, and sewage in your home.
X is what you make it to be. I spend little enough time on it that the small amount of content I do consume from it doesn't offend me.
What I have noticed is the vast amount of criticism of X during the FB Threads rollout. Unsurprisingly, it's dead. Threads has no reason to be immune to the alleged dysfunction that's seen on X. My theory is that it would be no different had it been able to attract sufficient market share.
That is somewhat true for a low-profile account. When mostly reading.
It is a lot less true for a high-profile account, which is receiving tons of replies and other interactions, where the sewage swamps out and flows towards you.
I dunno, I have one account with a few hundred k followers and the quality stuff’s in the DMs, same as always. You can’t really keep up with the replies anyways.
To be honest, Twitter/X has been a sewer for a good decade or so. The only thing that has changed is the kind of sewage that is allowed or encouraged to flow through it.
And the fact that sewage is now the content that is prioritised. Blue checkmarks went from being a flawed, but useful signal of interest, to being a symbol for the most garbage content on the internet. And I have to wade through the filth if I want to make it to anything interesting.
Elon's checkmark system is the equivalent to the hot weather that caused the Great Stink [0].
Twitter of late is blue-checked bot replying to trending topic with copy-pasted text, to which bunch of another bots doing the same, creating fabricated and monetized reply trees. A lot has Arabic profile too. It's money laundering in the open, weird that no actions are being taken.
Which is natural when you effectively disband the safety teams and allow all previous banned accounts back onto the platform. Also where as Twitter at least tried to comply with codes of practice, X has simply just given up.
Also a lot of it has to do with Musk being the face of the platform and endlessly trying to start culture wars.
Why not just say "nazi stuff" or "white supremacist views" if they are so unobjectionable that they should occupy our public spaces? Afraid of defending those things?
the only conservative views I've ever seen get "censored" are those pertaining to race, gender, and sexual orientation. You know, areas where some modern conservatives like being discriminatory assholes.
I've never seen someone get censored for promoting small government or low taxes.
And in fact many people complaining about censorship before the takeover and shouting their hateful views still ended up in trending all the time. IMO there wasn’t enough moderation and there’d be times accounts very clearly in violation of the terms not get suspended.
neither are the claims that intersex people don't exist, or that homosexuality is some choice that goes against what nature intends.
my dad makes a lot of these dumb arguments, and then doesn't believe me when i explain that there are disorders which cause people to have a missing sex chromosome, or body parts that don't match their chromosomes, or try to explain how gender dysphoria works and is treated, or even that gender as a social construct is separate from sex as a biological facet. he's not using science to back up these opinions, he's just an old man with dated views and hides behind the "basic biology" rhetoric.
it's funny how the real world consensus among actual scientists and doctors does not conform with conservative politics here.
I wonder if there are measurements to prove that it is "objectively much worse" - besides the decrease in traffic, decrease in users, and decrease in advertising that can be mainly attributed to a period of adjustment & political bias.
I would rather say that Twitter had a sewer, but you didn't have to climb into it if you didn't want to, and it mostly didn't back up into everyone's homes and onto the streets.
The new mayor of Twitter/X has decided that he likes the smell of his own shit and that everyone else should be forced to experience it, so we get piles of vapid idiotic blue check marks dominating discussion rather than the comments that are considered best by the crowd.
Despite all the shit flowing in the streets, it can still be somewhat avoided, and there is valuable information on Twitter that I can not find from any other source. High quality curators of information about computational biology, energy, housing politics, etc. do not have as large a presence on any other social network yet. I just need to avoid any viral tweets or anything from the "For You" or trending topics, and I can avoid stepping in the worst of it.
Then she should be off of all social media, rather than joining into a different sewer location.
It always has been for decades, long before Musk bought the company, but again hundreds of millions still use the platform after all the nonsensical predictions of complete shutdown one year ago and the continuing active campaigns to bring it down.
There are much more larger global sewers such as Instagram and TikTok that who's algorithms are much worse than Twitter / X, so let us not believe that this 'global sewage' is exclusive to Twitter / X and especially the words of someone who still needs to clean up their own city.
I'm a supporter of free speech, and like most free speech supporters I tend to believe the suppression of speech leads to a paradoxical effect: the metastasis of the suppressed ideas.
Of course there is a but coming! When twitter launched, I immediately felt like Twitter itself was a distillation of a fascistic impulse: the idea that a curt and pithy phrase, stripped of nuance, is not only a superior way to communicate, but the only way to communicate. (I'm using "fascistic" here not to incite, but for lack of a better term: I think everyone has an impulse towards the safety of political simplicity, and that modern democracy is founded on complexity, i.e. lots of opinions, lots of checks and balances, lots of persuasive argument required to achieve things). I feel that the very structure of throttled meaning is what made Twitter in particular such a platform for mass outrage and negativity.
Fast foward a decade, and the twitter model of simplicity is now the normal mode of discourse on social media. If something is not a few seconds long, its reach is quite limited. This means that simple things, like propaganda, are easier to articulate, and complex things that acknowledge the subtlety of actual life get buried.
Taken out of political context, a good example is videos of altercations between people (fights, arguments, etc) that become viral. As a viewer, I almost immediately feel outrage and righteous anger against the perceived victim of the altercation. But sometimes some context comes to light: the perceived victim is actually the aggressor, or the situation is much more complicated than it seemed. Putting this back in the political context, I see quick videos getting passed around that do a similar thing: take an event quite out of context in order to manufacture outrage against a particular group. Of course there is a word for this: propaganda.
I'm not a technological doomer: I'm quite intrigued as to what is happening, and my impulse is not to shackle it. But what I'm witnessing is that propaganda (or otherwise, events taken out of context) spread like lightning on social media, and I am sympathetic to attempts by platforms to somehow provide context or moderation to that spread. The mob mentality is real. I share the Mayor's concern about Twitter, because even though it was a sewer from the start, in my estimation, by its platformization of epistemological constraint, the fact that it is walking back attempts to staunch the spread of its own demons is concerning.
I do think a healthy public debate in a functioning, free speech democracy, is essential to its lifeblood. But for that debate to function, it must be done in good faith, and with some shared understanding of truth and context. While I see that happening in some places on social media, it's generally on well moderated forums in which people accept that bad faith arguers will be banned.
Like I said I don't have a clear sense of the solution to all this. State sponsored propaganda was all too effective before social media, and I can see social media undermining the monopoly of the state on the dissemination of that propaganda. But perhaps the pendulum will swing too far to the other side, where blatant bad faith, grassroots propaganda, and untruth successfully steer public opinion.
I take this as a compliment for X and Musk, seeing as this comes from Ann Hidalgo, the lady who brought the Socialist Party to under 5% of the vote at the last presidential elections in France.
What should we be more skeptical about, specifically? The negative claims I've heard are all easily verifiable. I saw the Elon tweet myself, and the lawsuit against Media Matters fully concedes that ads were being served next to Nazi content. Which part should we not be believing?
> Elon Musk has pissed off some very powerful people with his recent comments.
Which very powerful people are you referring to, specifically?
I've been growing increasingly skeptical of Musk for years now, and his unhinged behavior at twitter has really cemented my negative opinion of him.
If he didn't want people like me to start ignoring him, and dismissing whatever nonsense products he wants to shill, then he shouldn't have started attaching his name to bullshit culture wars. Now, it doesn't matter if a claim made about him is true or not, I no longer give him the benefit of the doubt, and I don't have the desire or the energy to thoroughly investigate every stupid little fight he gets in anymore. This is a problem of his own making.
Which is a pretty stupid comment to make given they are hosting the Olympics next year.
A ridiculous amount of effort has been made to clean up the city even going so far as to make the Seine swimmable by athletes and the general public. Not sure of any major city where that is possible.
It's funny how cities clean themselves up only when the rest of the world is looking at them, e.g Olympics, only to fall into disrepair the moment that's gone, because why would the government ever care about its own people, right?
Because it costs an epic fuckload of money and effort to perform the cleanup. Quite often the cities are in worse shape as they take no debt to perform said building/cleanups and then are left without the funds to perform the basic level of maintenance they were before the olympics.
That's interesting to hear. I thought we paid taxes for that. Or what am I paying half my salary to the government for then? Should I start paying the remaining half as well?
The US could clean up certain parts of the City that was hosting the APAC event at some weeks ago. Now that the Asian leaders are gone the drugs and garbage on the streets have returned from what i heard..
So cleaning up a city for a big event is not something new or permanent.
never, but from her perspective she probably means it wasn't a sewer back when "the good guys" were the only ones using it to manipulate public opinion to sway elections and foment civil unrest in foreign countries.
Which could be true, but not what the article claims. The title says "has become" and the first paragraph says "had devolved". It makes it sound like it wasn't complete garbage before.
To be fair to Musk, it isn't his fault. It has been a sewer since 2016+ and the growth period ended.
Also he made the team release community notes well ahead of schedule, and this is probably the best feature of Twitter. If that was created in 2017, I probably would still be addict.
About 20 years ago we found a true villain in France, when they dared to suggest that destroying Iraq was not a worthy response to 9/11
It was wild. Your below-average American went so far as rewriting their menus so they wouldn’t have to order “French fries” any longer. The pettiness was bottomless.
More recently the Paris accord has given these same below-average Americans angst because it dares offer introspection on the F150 lifestyle that will soon be coming to an end.
Paris is truly evil to dare challenge such mediocrity
Twitter was definitely always bad, but it's also definitely worse now. There are no adults in the room, it's obvious. I'm not sure I would describe the unique amalgamation of neo-fascists and bots that swarm every post on there now as political dissidents who finally have a crumb of a voice.
