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From what I understand, Twitter's moderation is noticeably more left-wing than that of Facebook. And yet Facebook makes a lot of ad dollars. So I do think the

From what I understand, Twitter's moderation is noticeably more left-wing than that of Facebook. And yet Facebook makes a lot of ad dollars. So I do think there's a discretionary element there. I agree that Musk hasn't been behaving in a way that's advertiser-friendly. Jack Dorsey is super familiar with Twitter and said Elon was the best solution for it if it was gonna stay a company: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/25/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk-is-the-singular-solution-i-trust/#:~:text=Solving%20for%20the%20problem%20of,extend%20the%20light%20of%20consciousness.%E2%80%9D&text=The%20idea%20and%20service%20is,it%20takes%20to%20protect%20both https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/25/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk.... I'm sure we can find someone, somewhere who correctly predicted in advance how things could go down, but I'm skeptical that it was a widespread prediction. Certainly feel free to prove me wrong.

SilverBirch 4y ago
Facebook is a very different business from Twitter in 3 ways - firstly scale, they're more than 5x the size, secondly in engagement - they have enormous amounts of demographic and behaviour data about their users and they track them extensively across the web, and finally business model - Twitter does brand advertising whereas Facebook is much closer to point of sale, an advert on Facebook is likely to directly convert to a sale, whereas an advert on twitter is just mainly brand advertising - Facebook's type of advert is far more valuable. So it's difficult to directly compare them. But more importantly there's a big difference between how Facebook and Twitter work - Facebook is default closed, people can't interact with you unless you're putting yourself out there - either by friending people or joining a group, so there's a natural barrier against the spread of harassment, brigading and the toxic behaviour becoming public. There is a whole load of toxic neo-nazi stuff on Facebook, but it's out of view, and because ads are highly targetted there's no concern about brand safety. On Twitter it's default open, so if people are going around loudly spreading far right homophobic conspiracy theories about a violent attack on an elected official everyone is going to know about it - that's why Twitter has to be so careful. There were a lot of people who have been in social media who explained in a lot of detail about how these things work when Elon first got involved. For example, Yishan Wong ran reddit back in 2012, at the time he had an extremely similar free speech maximalist view similar to Musk's current view. He did a very clear explanation of the dynamics of why that approach simply doesn't work - https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 .
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  >But more importantly there's a big difference between how Facebook and Twitter work - Facebook is default closed, people can't interact with you unless you're putting yourself out there - either by friending people or joining a group, so there's a natural barrier against the spread of harassment, brigading and the toxic behaviour becoming public. There is a whole load of toxic neo-nazi stuff on Facebook, but it's out of view, and because ads are highly targetted there's no concern about brand safety. On Twitter it's default open, so if people are going around loudly spreading far right homophobic conspiracy theories about a violent attack on an elected official everyone is going to know about it - that's why Twitter has to be so careful. Interesting point! I'm not totally convinced though, I'd expect there are a lot of neo-nazis on Facebook who make their posts publicly viewable. "Hey look guys, there's this terrible neo-nazi post!" -> some FB users see an ad for their fav brand above the post.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Public neo nazi accounts are moderated and closed on Facebook. They operate in private ones.
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    It's also worth remembering, Facebook has about 15,000 paid moderators. Because they print money they can just solve the moderation problem with brute force. It's pretty funny when you think Facebook employs twice as many people just for moderation than Twitter employed in total at its peak, obviously the moderators are cheap, but still funny.
watwut 4y ago
Facebook seems to be literally biased toward right wing and intentionally so. But, they do contain nazi in their own private bubbles, so the risk of your ad being next to that content is significantly smaller.
Avshalom 4y ago
Both internal and external review of twitter shows a bias towards the right. It is probably still "more left-wing than that of facebook" but still distinctly rightwing.

SilverBirch 4y ago

Facebook is a very different business from Twitter in 3 ways - firstly scale, they're more than 5x the size, secondly in engagement - they have enormous amounts of demographic and behaviour data about their users and they track them extensively across the web, and finally business model - Twitter does brand advertising whereas Facebook is much closer to point of sale, an advert on Facebook is likely to directly convert to a sale, whereas an advert on twitter is just mainly brand advertising - Facebook's type of advert is far more valuable. So it's difficult to directly compare them. But more importantly there's a big difference between how Facebook and Twitter work - Facebook is default closed, people can't interact with you unless you're putting yourself out there - either by friending people or joining a group, so there's a natural barrier against the spread of harassment, brigading and the toxic behaviour becoming public. There is a whole load of toxic neo-nazi stuff on Facebook, but it's out of view, and because ads are highly targetted there's no concern about brand safety. On Twitter it's default open, so if people are going around loudly spreading far right homophobic conspiracy theories about a violent attack on an elected official everyone is going to know about it - that's why Twitter has to be so careful. There were a lot of people who have been in social media who explained in a lot of detail about how these things work when Elon first got involved. For example, Yishan Wong ran reddit back in 2012, at the time he had an extremely similar free speech maximalist view similar to Musk's current view. He did a very clear explanation of the dynamics of why that approach simply doesn't work - https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 .

ShredKazoo 4y ago
>But more importantly there's a big difference between how Facebook and Twitter work - Facebook is default closed, people can't interact with you unless you're putting yourself out there - either by friending people or joining a group, so there's a natural barrier against the spread of harassment, brigading and the toxic behaviour becoming public. There is a whole load of toxic neo-nazi stuff on Facebook, but it's out of view, and because ads are highly targetted there's no concern about brand safety. On Twitter it's default open, so if people are going around loudly spreading far right homophobic conspiracy theories about a violent attack on an elected official everyone is going to know about it - that's why Twitter has to be so careful. Interesting point! I'm not totally convinced though, I'd expect there are a lot of neo-nazis on Facebook who make their posts publicly viewable. "Hey look guys, there's this terrible neo-nazi post!" -> some FB users see an ad for their fav brand above the post.
- watwut 4y ago
  Public neo nazi accounts are moderated and closed on Facebook. They operate in private ones.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  It's also worth remembering, Facebook has about 15,000 paid moderators. Because they print money they can just solve the moderation problem with brute force. It's pretty funny when you think Facebook employs twice as many people just for moderation than Twitter employed in total at its peak, obviously the moderators are cheap, but still funny.

watwut 4y ago

Facebook seems to be literally biased toward right wing and intentionally so. But, they do contain nazi in their own private bubbles, so the risk of your ad being next to that content is significantly smaller.

Avshalom 4y ago

Both internal and external review of twitter shows a bias towards the right. It is probably still "more left-wing than that of facebook" but still distinctly rightwing.