4 ms·

Hmmm, wonder if it’s a freedom of speech issue if a coalition of companies effectively prevent public discussion of issues that might significantly upset the s

by marvin 4y ago

Hmmm, wonder if it’s a freedom of speech issue if a coalition of companies effectively prevent public discussion of issues that might significantly upset the status quo? Loud, blatant lies that are repeated by authority figures continuously is one thing. That this is bad is almost universally agreed on. But does this advertiser worry really stop at that? I think this is a very interesting question, hitting at the heart of the Twitter controversy. Advertisers have an incredibly strong influence on contemporary discourse; their concerns influence almost all publicly-visible discussion, opinion and debate. The attention economy, eyeball-and-click-hunting is just the tip of the spear, and this dominates almost every public communication platform in the world. Elon Musk and his $44 billion «fuck this shit» purchase is the only significant challenge to this model. It will obviously upset the advertisers; it’s tautological. Maybe the result is that it won’t work, but if it does, Twitter will be the only public communications platform that isn’t very heavily influenced by advertisers’ interests.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
He who pays the fiddler, calls the tune. Want to broadcast whatever you want? Fine, pay for it. Want advertisers to subsidize your costs? Don't be surprised that their money comes with strings attached.
- marvin 4y ago
  Judging by the downvotes, I don't think I'm getting my point across. Absolutely every fiddler that currently has an audience of non-negligible size is paid by a consortium of advertisers that have aligning interests. The strings, so to speak, all pull in the same direction. This is largely invisible, since everyone must play by these rules. TV, newspapers, social media. Audience of 5 billion. We do complain about polarization, clickbait, negative emotion amplification and dark patterns a lot, but we accept it as the economic laws of gravity. Shareholder duty cements this. It molds our entire society. Elon Musk has removed Twitter from this regime, by burning 20 billion dollars and stating a willingness to burn the remaining 24. Assuming he can make the economics work out, Twitter will be the only global media platform that doesn't have to bow to the advertisers' every whim. A lot of the contention comes from the fact that if this succeeds, Twitter will no longer have to follow the moderation- and censorship rules that advertisers have quietly implemented everywhere else. This might apply to the extremes that the majority want to censor (whether sensibly or not), but it also applies to lots of discourse that vocal minorities wants to censor. Regardless of whether one likes this development, it's super interesting.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Remind me again, which major brands advertise on 4chan?
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > I don't think I'm getting my point across. Alternate proposal: you got your point across and people disagree with you. Any ideas for how he's going to keep the lights on at twitter? Your suggestion that advertisers fleeing the platform is a "free speech issue" is highly questionable. What remedy would you propose? Forcing advertisers to spend, and how much should the government force them to spend, propping up political speech they disagree with? Boycotts are protected speech. Even if you find that speech deplorable.
    - marvin 4y ago
      I still think you didn't get my point, since you seem to be arguing a point I didn't make :) I'll boil it down to just a couple of sentences: It's a democratic problem that 99% of all public discourse is subject to veto and policy from advertisers and payment processers, and the drive to maximize income from these. Even if you disagree on everything else, at least the consequent polarization should be bad enough to concede this point. Solution? Well, obviously the advertisers are free to do what they want, but that doesn't make their pervasive influence any smaller. A problem doesn't disappear just because solutions are elusive. My guess is that Musk wins the battle of the wills here; he no longer needs to maximize advertiser income, just get enough to make the wheels turn. I wouldn't bet the farm on him resolving the issues I've highlighted; he's far too mercurial to have any confidence on that. But he does have a shot, as opposed to everyone else.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        >It's a democratic problem that 99% of all public discourse is subject to veto and policy from advertisers and payment processers In the sense we don't want to fund actual public places for discourse online and instead have pushed this off to private servers ran by private companies, yes. When a large portion of the voter base says "reduce taxes beyond all else" don't expect funding to show up for this. More so the advertising industries are also apt to fund political campaigns so it's unlikely most politicians are going to go out of the way to change status quo. And in that sense the average user is going to be aligned with providing most online interactions as 'somewhat' safe spaces until safety is not aligned with their political sensibilities. I personally don't think that Elon is going to do much other than crash the value of Twitter and lose and epic amount of cash doing so. It's possible that the whole ordeal may push more people to federated social media, but it seems to unlikely to do so in numbers that matter.

by marvin 4y ago

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

He who pays the fiddler, calls the tune. Want to broadcast whatever you want? Fine, pay for it. Want advertisers to subsidize your costs? Don't be surprised that their money comes with strings attached.

marvin 4y ago
Judging by the downvotes, I don't think I'm getting my point across. Absolutely every fiddler that currently has an audience of non-negligible size is paid by a consortium of advertisers that have aligning interests. The strings, so to speak, all pull in the same direction. This is largely invisible, since everyone must play by these rules. TV, newspapers, social media. Audience of 5 billion. We do complain about polarization, clickbait, negative emotion amplification and dark patterns a lot, but we accept it as the economic laws of gravity. Shareholder duty cements this. It molds our entire society. Elon Musk has removed Twitter from this regime, by burning 20 billion dollars and stating a willingness to burn the remaining 24. Assuming he can make the economics work out, Twitter will be the only global media platform that doesn't have to bow to the advertisers' every whim. A lot of the contention comes from the fact that if this succeeds, Twitter will no longer have to follow the moderation- and censorship rules that advertisers have quietly implemented everywhere else. This might apply to the extremes that the majority want to censor (whether sensibly or not), but it also applies to lots of discourse that vocal minorities wants to censor. Regardless of whether one likes this development, it's super interesting.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Remind me again, which major brands advertise on 4chan?
- klyrs 4y ago
  > I don't think I'm getting my point across. Alternate proposal: you got your point across and people disagree with you. Any ideas for how he's going to keep the lights on at twitter? Your suggestion that advertisers fleeing the platform is a "free speech issue" is highly questionable. What remedy would you propose? Forcing advertisers to spend, and how much should the government force them to spend, propping up political speech they disagree with? Boycotts are protected speech. Even if you find that speech deplorable.
  - marvin 4y ago
    I still think you didn't get my point, since you seem to be arguing a point I didn't make :) I'll boil it down to just a couple of sentences: It's a democratic problem that 99% of all public discourse is subject to veto and policy from advertisers and payment processers, and the drive to maximize income from these. Even if you disagree on everything else, at least the consequent polarization should be bad enough to concede this point. Solution? Well, obviously the advertisers are free to do what they want, but that doesn't make their pervasive influence any smaller. A problem doesn't disappear just because solutions are elusive. My guess is that Musk wins the battle of the wills here; he no longer needs to maximize advertiser income, just get enough to make the wheels turn. I wouldn't bet the farm on him resolving the issues I've highlighted; he's far too mercurial to have any confidence on that. But he does have a shot, as opposed to everyone else.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      >It's a democratic problem that 99% of all public discourse is subject to veto and policy from advertisers and payment processers In the sense we don't want to fund actual public places for discourse online and instead have pushed this off to private servers ran by private companies, yes. When a large portion of the voter base says "reduce taxes beyond all else" don't expect funding to show up for this. More so the advertising industries are also apt to fund political campaigns so it's unlikely most politicians are going to go out of the way to change status quo. And in that sense the average user is going to be aligned with providing most online interactions as 'somewhat' safe spaces until safety is not aligned with their political sensibilities. I personally don't think that Elon is going to do much other than crash the value of Twitter and lose and epic amount of cash doing so. It's possible that the whole ordeal may push more people to federated social media, but it seems to unlikely to do so in numbers that matter.