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Musk threatens to sue ADL after blaming it for X ad sales slump
- skyyler 3y agoThis doesn't seem like the greatest idea.
- leetharris 3y agoI am trying to think through this from a neutral standpoint. After all, some of the tech world has put in significant effort to silence conservatives on platforms at scale. It's somewhat painful to see even if I am not a conservative. Personally, I only follow things I like on Twitter which means I don't see any hate speech. It's hard for me to anecdotally say if things have changed. But it's not hard to imagine that chronically-online groups who have hate for Elon and his companies would try to crumble his social network because they don't agree with his approach. This feels like a really slippery slope. Hard to weigh in honestly.
- afavour 3y ago> neutral standpoint > some of the tech world has put in significant effort to silence conservatives That doesn’t strike me as a neutral statement! What does “conservatives” mean in this context? Always reminds me of this tweet: —- Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- animatethrow 3y ago[flagged]
- afavour 3y agoAny examples of the tech world putting in significant effort to silence the viewpoint that men have penises? In any case, that’s not “conservatives”. That’s a very specific issue.
- throw_m239339 3y ago> Any examples of the tech world putting in significant effort to silence the viewpoint that men have penises? Dorsey era's Twitter, Reddit.
- afavour 3y agoAny, you know, actual examples of things that happened?
- animatethrow 3y agoThere's the Babylon Bee deplatforming that led to Musk buying Twitter. The Babylon Bee called a public official who is a biological man a 'man'. So Twitter deplatformed the Babylon Bee.
- afavour 3y ago> Twitter locked the account of a right-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, after it awarded Rachel Levine, the transgender Biden administration official, the title of “man of the year.” https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/twitter-suspends-babylon-bee-over-rachel-levine-man-of-the-year-title/ https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/twitter-suspends-babylon-bee-o... That’s pretty obviously a personal attack. There’s a very obvious difference between holding and expressing a personal opinion on gender identity and launching a public attack against a specific person. This is the way these complaints always go. “conservatives are being censored!” becomes “well sure, they were censored because they violated the terms and conditions of the site in a distasteful way but why is that important?!”
- 3y ago
- Georgelemental 3y agoWhy would a conservative complain about their views being censored, and then self-censor those same views? Seems like a strange straw man
- toofy 3y agothe absurdity of “we’re being censored for our conservative views” is that the primary target of banning hasnt been a “conservative viewpoints”. for example, if someone is banned for saying “death to non-whites”, theres a pretty good chance they’re being banned for advocating genocide, not because they’re conservative. or if someone was banned for denying that covid was real, they weren’t banned for “conservative views”. whether we agree with the reasoning or not, they were banned for denying covid when the sites had made clear this topic would result in a ban. i’ll repeat what i’ve said many times before. this idea that banning is somehow new, or is some creepy definition of censorship is nonsense. site owners and moderators have had rules for their online spaces since the beginnings. and just like real world spaces, people get removed constantly. it’s not new. it’s not weird. it’s not shocking.
- Georgelemental 3y ago> for example, if someone is banned for saying “death to non-whites”, theres a pretty good chance they’re being banned for advocating genocide, not because they’re conservative. I think you will find that people have been getting banned for rather less harsh statements, like "maybe Covid was man-made", "Hunter Biden is corrupt", and "men cannot be women."
- gamblor956 3y agoMost of the tech billionaires are conservatives (Musk, Thiel, Graham, Ellison, etc.)...are you suggesting that they are for some reason conspiring to silence themselves?
- Georgelemental 3y agoThe billionaire executives are much more conservative than middle managers, HR, corporate drones. But even at the top level you have plenty of liberals (Omidyar, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai…)
- mbfg 3y agoyou probably have to differentiate social liberals and fiscal liberals.
- mrguyorama 3y agoWhat makes any of these rich corporate assholes "liberal"?
- sassy_quat 3y ago[dead]
- freejazz 3y agoWeird how this contemplates anything but there being a significant rise in the antisemitism voiced on twitter
- noduerme 3y ago>> some of the tech world has put in significant effort to silence conservatives It's true, but that would be within Twitter and Meta's rights. The real issue was that they did so at the behest of the incoming administration, in behind-the-scenes meetings. It's the involvement of government officials that may have broken laws and trampled the First Amendment. Also egregious and painful to see was that they shadow-banned accounts rather than banning them outright. But I don't see how that has anything to do with a private, non-government advocacy group making their feelings known to advertisers. It happens all the time. Conservative groups call to boycott Budweiser, liberal groups call to boycott Chik-fil-A. It's not illegal. However, it's effective as a stunt for Elon, because saying that a Jewish advocacy group has the power to shut down his business implies, as subtext, the unspoken bit about Jews controlling the world. The statement and the choice of target leans on that implication. And the quote where he jokes that they're a defamation organization, as opposed to "anti-", reminds me of Sartre's quote which is worth repeating in full: "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
- Georgelemental 3y ago> But I don't see how that has anything to do with a private, non-government advocacy group making their feelings known to advertisers. It happens all the time. Conservative groups call to boycott Budweiser, liberal groups call to boycott Chik-fil-A. It's not illegal. Definitely not. But if (not asserting this happened) the ADL threatened to defame as antisemitic any advertiser that didn't participate in a boycott, that could be illegal.
- xenadu02 3y ago> It's true, but that would be within Twitter and Meta's rights. The real issue was that they did so at the behest of the incoming administration, in behind-the-scenes meetings. It's the involvement of government officials that may have broken laws and trampled the First Amendment. Also egregious and painful to see was that they shadow-banned accounts rather than banning them outright. I don't believe there is any evidence for any of these claims. Rather the opposite: pro-freedom pro-business anti-regulation conservatives have been crying wolf for years now, demanding special meetings with tech companies, demanding special treatment, demanding government intervention, demanding that they be allowed to say anything without consequences. Modern US conservatives are a minority. How big of a minority depends on how you draw the lines. Republican policy proposals are often (but not always) even more unpopular. Cognitive dissonance (or just good old fashioned politicking) demands some conservatives insist otherwise and see everything as some kind of suppression effort or conspiracy. It's the whole "conservatism can't ever fail... it can only be failed" thing at work. Or the Simpsons Skinner meme: "Am I Out of Touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong!" If only the big mean tech companies weren't suppressing my clearly superior views everyone would agree with me. No... maybe your views are just way less popular than you think. Maybe instead of being shadow banned people just think you're an asshole.
- nitwit005 3y ago> But it's not hard to imagine that chronically-online groups who have hate for Elon and his companies would try to crumble his social network because they don't agree with his approach. You're imagining a vast anti-Elon conspiracy (with no apparent motive), instead of the much more boring explanation that an organization that tries to combat antisemitism is upset at antisemitism.
- Georgelemental 3y ago[flagged]
- skyyler 3y ago>An organization (ADL) >dedicated to advancing a certain political agenda (antisemitism bad) >is upset that a major platform (site formerly known as twitter) >allows speech opposing that angenda. (calls for another holocaust) Yeah, that's what they do. They oppose antisemitism.
- mrguyorama 3y ago>pogrom leader Al Sharpton What pogrom has Al sharpton lead pray tell?
- Georgelemental 3y agohttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/al-sharpton-jonathan-greenblatt-adl https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/al-sharpton...
- havblue 3y agoTreating this neutrally is difficult when we can't agree on what constitutes anti-Semitism. We aren't debating it in this comment section at least.
- throwaway4220 3y agoRespectfully you’re expecting the reader to fall for this informal logical fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definist_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definist_fallacy
- Georgelemental 3y agoLetter from the ADL to the Parliament of Iceland: https://www.althingi.is/altext/erindi/148/148-787.pdf https://www.althingi.is/altext/erindi/148/148-787.pdf > We are confident that the vast majority of American tourists will avoid a country whose reputation is associated with Nazism, even if that association is not justified.
- gamblor956 3y agoFor context behind that letter: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iceland-s-proposed-ban-circumcision-rattles-jews-muslims-n910541 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iceland-s-proposed-ban-ci... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/europe/circumcision-ban-iceland.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/europe/circumcision... The NBC News article quotes Jews and Muslims living in Iceland at the time of the proposal. The NYT article notes that even the Roman Catholic church was opposed to the proposal.
- animatethrow 3y agoThe ADL has been successfully sued for defamation before. Back in 2000 the ADL lost $10.5 million for defaming a Colorado couple: https://jweekly.com/2000/05/12/judge-fines-adl-10-5-million-in-colorado-defamation-suit/ https://jweekly.com/2000/05/12/judge-fines-adl-10-5-million-... "On April 28 [2000], the jury found most of the charges leveled by the ADL, based on the tapes, to be 'not substantially true.'"
- mritun 3y agoThis is one of those cases where saying really shitty things is still not considered “legally” wrong. “It was just a joke” smh “ In various conversations, the Quigleys refer to attaching images of oven doors to the Aronsons' house, of burning their children and of wishing their Jewish neighbors had been blown up in a terrorist attack in Israel.”
- ambrozk 3y agoThe Quigleys may have been assholes but getting into a feud with your neighbors, wiretapping their phone, and then publicizing the contents of their conversations about you should probably be discouraged by the law.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Dudelander 3y agoThe facts of that case are radically different from Musk's accusations.
- sarcasmatwork 3y ago[flagged]
- gottorf 3y agoBe that as it may, your comment runs the risk of being contrary to the HN guidelines ("eschew flamebait"). It is interesting to see how different organizations eventually get subsumed by those more interested in the power and prestige of the organization itself (and by extension, their own power and prestige), rather than the stated, foundational values of the organization.
- freejazz 3y agoWho does the ADL hate? antisemites?
- nvm0n2 3y agoThey explain that in their report: > CTS has previously written about the phenomenon of “stochastic harassment” on Twitter, or how influential accounts act as nodes for harassment even when not explicitly directing their followers to harass anyone. > CTS found 60 examples of direct replies to reinstated accounts and 127 examples of threaded replies (i.e., replies to tweets in the same conversation, but not directly replying to the reinstated account’s tweet) that our machine learning classifier assigned high antisemitism scores to during the period we collected data So, they hate people who aren't actually harassing anyone, nor calling for any harassment, but who get replies that their machine learning classifier thinks are anti-semitic. This is absurd. They literally call you an anti-semite if you say something mundane and then someone else replies with something that a machine thinks is anti-semitic, at any point in a thread, even if the reply is to someone else entirely. By that standard they deserve to lose any lawsuits heading their way, and lose them badly. I thought they couldn't make themselves look any worse, but then they presented their examples of "anti-semitic tweets". It's a guy who was involved in conservative politics, who replied to one of the ADLs tweets and criticized them. The ADL post he was replying to was calling Trump an anti-semite. For disagreeing with this he himself is now supposedly an anti-semite. This is a blatant attempt to shut down criticism of the ADL itself, as an institution. They aren't even trying to hide what they're doing here. Unfortunately that is all totally standard nowadays. Many groups have complained about this. Left wing activist orgs go after newspapers, TV channels, social networks, all of it. Any organization that isn't explicitly left wing gets attacked like this. They have a goal of making disagreement either outright illegal or impossible via private sector control, hence why they always go after advertisers, payment processors and other "nodes" as they put it. Their goal is very clear by now, it is the obliteration of any and all ideological disagreement. Am rooting for Musk in this fight.
- afavour 3y ago> still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL Sounds like something he ought to be able to substantiate pretty simply, so why not do so? I normally hesitate any comparisons between Musk and Trump but the lack of self reflection and baseless threats of legal action are a real commonality. He surely knows he’d have no leg to stand on but still wants to drum up some drama.
- rsynnott 3y ago> Sounds like something he ought to be able to substantiate pretty simply, so why not do so? _Because it is nonsense_, come on, we all know this.
- throw310822 3y ago> Sounds like something he ought to be able to substantiate pretty simply, so why not do so? Isn't that exactly what he's going to do if he sues the ADL? Or where did you expect him to substantiate it first? Seems a bit strange to accuse him of not doing what he just started doing.
- nvm0n2 3y agoHow would it be simple to substantiate that? He'll be hearing this from advertisers probably via back channels or in verbal conversation only. To understand what the ADL is doing would require discovery, which requires a lawsuit.
- speak_plainly 3y agoMusk posted a few articles of note: [Background on the new leader of the ADL and some suspicious activity with Al Sharpton] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/al-sharpton-jonathan-greenblatt-adl https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/al-sharpton... [A review of a documentary on anti-semitism that touches on political influence from the ADL] https://www.npr.org/2009/11/24/120452232/exploring-the-politics-of-defamation https://www.npr.org/2009/11/24/120452232/exploring-the-polit... [An article on how Facebook caved to leftist groups like the ADL] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/03/activists-advertising-boycott-facebook-348528 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/03/activists-...
- Racing0461 3y agoWe need to reform section 230. Either you are a public square and you gain protection from your users commenting but you can't delete or moderate their content (sans actual spam/child p/etc), or you can moderate/curate your users content but you are no longer protected/can be held liable for things your users post. This worse of both worlds we have going on here results in these alphabet soup agencies/ngos having a place on the boardroom directly affecting people's speech.
- freejazz 3y agoWhat does 230 have to do with this at all? 230 is pretty limited in regards to what it protects against anyway. and the ADL isn't threatening him with action, so what does 230 have to do with it?
- Racing0461 3y agoThe ADL is getting advertisers to drop Twitter since Twitter won't delete the posts they don't like. That seems like action to me. Also the ADL and similar orgs had a direct line of access to content moderation teams in the previous twitter leadership. Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue.
- freejazz 3y agoI meant a legal action, to which 230 would be a defense. Perhaps you should re-read 230 if you think it has relevance outside of legal actions. >Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue. There's no circumstance here where twitter is being attempted to be made liable for their users posts, so what relevance is 230?
- mrguyorama 3y agoThis is just more of the same "Independent entities invoking their legal right to free speech and association in a way I don't like is an impingement on my free speech" bullshit. It's telling they don't understand section 230 since they don't seem to understand 2/3rds of the first amendment either, and that's only a few sentences. If you want to require private companies to publish your content, you have to overturn the first amendment, or at the very least, replace the current supreme court with one open to extreme "interpretation" of the text, but maybe don't then complain when they ban guns.
- rsynnott 3y agoAt this rate of escalation, he'll be ranting about precious bodily fluids by November. "Have you ever seen a microservice drink a glass of water, Mandrake?"
- justin66 3y agoI'd venture to guess he's already drinking his fair share of grain alcohol and rainwater.
- shadowgovt 3y agoI'm sure X has nothing to worry about. Maybe a very public fight with the ADL over whether X is, at best, Nazi-user-apologetic will hurt their advertising revenue, but I don't imagine it'll hurt their other business model... ... collecting biometric and employment history on every user. ... uh oh!
- tibbydudeza 3y agohttps://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-09-05/elon-musk-blames-jews-threatens-adl https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-09-05/elon-musk-... "Elon Musk comes around to blaming the Jews" as a headline. Yep this will work really well :).
- meaningjoj 3y agoI'm not seeing how threatening to sue the anti-defamation league is in and of itself antisemitic? Or did he say something else? I think I remember he said something about Soros once, and Soros conspiracies seem way more antisemitic than saying you want to sue the ADL...
- mikestew 3y agoI'm not seeing how threatening to sue the anti-defamation league is in and of itself antisemitic? The suing? Nah, that's probably not it. But blaming "the Jews" because your advertising revenue is down? Eh, it's gets a little more questionable at that point. In isolation, maybe not. But come...on...given past behavior and everything else going on with xitter, you're willing to give benefit of the doubt? I'm not. My ears might not be what they used to be (thanks, rock n' roll!), but I can still hear dog whistles.
- popilewiz 3y ago[dead]