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> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagi

by danans 4y ago

> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today. Yes, that would mean a majority of people would have to adopt those perspectives - to the detriment of society at large - but it's happened before in many parts of the world, and could happen again. That is a long-term goal of fascists anyways - to re-normalize that kind of thing, and to re-combine industry and media with a religious ethnostate. At the very least, the previously quiet pre-existing enjoyment of malevolent speech has been exposed for all to see over the last several years. The question is whether it has a growing audience. I'm not saying that's Elon's goal, but accelerationism seems to be something he is aligned with as long as it doesn't come at a cost to him.

mikkergp 4y ago
Ironically? I think in order for this to happen we would have to be _less_ polarized. I don't think in the current state you could _increase_ revenue from it's current place by splitting the customer base. On the one hand if this keeps going bad maybe he just says fuck it and goes accelerationist like you said. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who put money into this. I truly hope it remains sensible, and do still have faith that our nation isn't this bad off.
ethbr0 4y ago
My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it. If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"... ... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle. You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath. Or just... more transparency. Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.
- Koshkin 4y ago
  > libertarian, free-speech Incidentally, in the US at least, the idea of “free speech” is now firmly associated with the far right conservatives.
  - Uhhrrr 4y ago
    Lifelong US resident here - this is not remotely true.
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist, for example. Regardless of whether this has merit or not, whenever you say that you “support free speech” (without a “but”) you’ll be now suspected of being one of them.
      - danans 4y ago
        > Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist, You have that backwards. White supremacist rallies have labeled themselves as "free speech" rallies in an attempt to normalize their cause. This is a well documented strategy [1] However, exercising one's free speech rights by rallying for a cause (i.e. Charlottesville's "You will not replace us") does not automatically make that cause synonymous with supporting "free speech". 1. https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/im-not-racist-examining-white-nationalist-efforts-normalize-hate https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/im-not-racist-examining-white-...
        smsm42 4y ago
        True, but before about 10 years ago, the reaction to that was mostly "well, those people are wrong in everything, but they right in this - this is free speech, and we value it, even if we hate those people". Now the reaction is "well, everybody knows "free speech" is a code word for "Nazi" so no wonder...".
josteink 4y ago
> Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. > Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today. I may be sidetracking the conversation here, but I must admit I find it fascinating how “hatefulness” online is almost always assumed to be right-wing extremism. Have everyone forgotten the BLM and Antifa riots going on for months where innocent people had their property, livelihood and in some cases even their lives taken? That was fully encouraged and endorsed by the left, en masse, and especially so on Twitter. Was that not “hate”? If not, what is?
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  You are correct. There is no difference between oppressing people, and fighting against oppression. Nazis are the same as anti-Nazis, racists are the same as anti-racists. Remember when India rebelled and cast out the British? Literally no difference between the two sides. Racist police versus civil rights marchers in the 1960s? Hey, both sides were mad. Totally the same.
  - josteink 4y ago
    It may be obvious, but just in case it isn't: Everyone think they are fighting the good fight. Nobody sets out to be evil. Liberals thinks they are fighting for positive change. Conservatives wants to preserve what they think is good. Ofcourse the people burning the city down and looting think they are doing the right thing, or at least doing it for the right reasons. Ofcourse the black people "taking the streets back" feel entitled to it, after whatever backstory there was. But during the Antifa and BLM riots, actual businesses, owned by innocents bystanders got ruined. Innocent people got murdered. There were real tragedies to real people, mostly white. When that gets cheered on at social media-sites like twitter (or live on CNN!), it's hard to frame it as anything except hate against white people. Maybe they thought they were fighting oppression. But at the same time they were oppressing. They became what they claimed to fight. Who are to say they are better than the people they claimed to be fighting, which didn't burn down cities, didn't kill innocent civilians? The ends does not justify the means. Not in a lawful society at least. These were hateful acts. EOT.
smsm42 4y ago
> Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Why imagine? Twitter is full of malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech on any day of the week. That has long been the case. True, some instances of such speech which went contrary to political ideology of Twitter employees and management was deleted, but other instances, that aligned with their ideology, were flourishing. And consumers of Twitter and advertisers don't seem to mind too much.

by danans 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago

Ironically? I think in order for this to happen we would have to be _less_ polarized. I don't think in the current state you could _increase_ revenue from it's current place by splitting the customer base. On the one hand if this keeps going bad maybe he just says fuck it and goes accelerationist like you said. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who put money into this. I truly hope it remains sensible, and do still have faith that our nation isn't this bad off.

ethbr0 4y ago

My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it. If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"... ... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle. You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath. Or just... more transparency. Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.

Koshkin 4y ago
> libertarian, free-speech Incidentally, in the US at least, the idea of “free speech” is now firmly associated with the far right conservatives.
- Uhhrrr 4y ago
  Lifelong US resident here - this is not remotely true.
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist, for example. Regardless of whether this has merit or not, whenever you say that you “support free speech” (without a “but”) you’ll be now suspected of being one of them.
    - danans 4y ago
      > Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist, You have that backwards. White supremacist rallies have labeled themselves as "free speech" rallies in an attempt to normalize their cause. This is a well documented strategy [1] However, exercising one's free speech rights by rallying for a cause (i.e. Charlottesville's "You will not replace us") does not automatically make that cause synonymous with supporting "free speech". 1. https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/im-not-racist-examining-white-nationalist-efforts-normalize-hate https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/im-not-racist-examining-white-...
      - smsm42 4y ago
        True, but before about 10 years ago, the reaction to that was mostly "well, those people are wrong in everything, but they right in this - this is free speech, and we value it, even if we hate those people". Now the reaction is "well, everybody knows "free speech" is a code word for "Nazi" so no wonder...".

josteink 4y ago

> Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. > Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today. I may be sidetracking the conversation here, but I must admit I find it fascinating how “hatefulness” online is almost always assumed to be right-wing extremism. Have everyone forgotten the BLM and Antifa riots going on for months where innocent people had their property, livelihood and in some cases even their lives taken? That was fully encouraged and endorsed by the left, en masse, and especially so on Twitter. Was that not “hate”? If not, what is?

JohnBooty 4y ago
You are correct. There is no difference between oppressing people, and fighting against oppression. Nazis are the same as anti-Nazis, racists are the same as anti-racists. Remember when India rebelled and cast out the British? Literally no difference between the two sides. Racist police versus civil rights marchers in the 1960s? Hey, both sides were mad. Totally the same.
- josteink 4y ago
  It may be obvious, but just in case it isn't: Everyone think they are fighting the good fight. Nobody sets out to be evil. Liberals thinks they are fighting for positive change. Conservatives wants to preserve what they think is good. Ofcourse the people burning the city down and looting think they are doing the right thing, or at least doing it for the right reasons. Ofcourse the black people "taking the streets back" feel entitled to it, after whatever backstory there was. But during the Antifa and BLM riots, actual businesses, owned by innocents bystanders got ruined. Innocent people got murdered. There were real tragedies to real people, mostly white. When that gets cheered on at social media-sites like twitter (or live on CNN!), it's hard to frame it as anything except hate against white people. Maybe they thought they were fighting oppression. But at the same time they were oppressing. They became what they claimed to fight. Who are to say they are better than the people they claimed to be fighting, which didn't burn down cities, didn't kill innocent civilians? The ends does not justify the means. Not in a lawful society at least. These were hateful acts. EOT.

smsm42 4y ago

> Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Why imagine? Twitter is full of malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech on any day of the week. That has long been the case. True, some instances of such speech which went contrary to political ideology of Twitter employees and management was deleted, but other instances, that aligned with their ideology, were flourishing. And consumers of Twitter and advertisers don't seem to mind too much.