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1) Who ever trusted X about anything at any time period either before or after Musk? The very premise seems absurd. 2) The example given in this article, that

1) Who ever trusted X about anything at any time period either before or after Musk? The very premise seems absurd. 2) The example given in this article, that Musk posted links to allegedly bad news sources and then retracted them once he realized that he made a bad recommendation, should be seen as a positive sign. Musk is human, and like all humans, he makes mistakes. The important thing is that he realized he was wrong and tried to fix it. 3) The lesson taken from this isn't that "Musk is bad" it's that skepticism about all information should reign, regardless of source. It doesn't matter if Obama, Musk, Biden, Trump, Fauci, Gates, Alex Jones, or whoever tells the world some alleged fact. You should verify everything that anybody tells you about anything and trust nobody to be the sole arbiter of truth. 4) I think a good journalist would post more information about the endorsement that Musk gave by posting screenshots or something. I'd like to get a better sense of Musk's judgement by seeing their feed for myself, but this article doesn't give that important information. I think that a big problem with modern journalism is that it treats you as if you're not a big boy that can be trusted to make up his own mind and have to be told what to think rather than being shown the facts and giving you the opportunity to make up your own mind. 5) Speaking of responsible journalism, I'd like to point out that motives do matter. And while you can't read minds, it does seem that a lot of journalists' feelings about Musk are peppered by having their elite blue checkmark statuses ripped away from them and hypothetically being available to everybody. That should be a factor that weighs into anybody's analysis when reading journalists about Musk's activity.

rsynnott 3y ago
While I'd agree that stuff on Twitter was never particularly trustworthy, the conversion of the blueticks into a monetisation/paid status thing has certainly made it a bit riskier; Twitter no longer has a clear meaningful form of provenance verification. Is that actually a Reuters tweet, or a 'REuters' tweet with a paid bluetick? Most users will be (and are) fooled by this sort of thing, which was largely impossible under the old regime. On (2), he should perhaps check _before_ promoting anti-Semitic fake news accounts; absurd to make excuses for him here.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  What are the handles of these fake news accounts? I'd like to try and see for myself why Musk made a mistake and if he just made a minor mistake or if he has bad judgement.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Not sure why I should do your homework for you, but here you go, an article about the incident which contains the account names: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-disinfo-musk-twitter-x/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-...
    - logicalmonster 3y ago
      1) Thank you for the link, however it is pay walled. 2) I'm not asking you to do homework. It should be the journalist's job to provide the relevant facts, but the linked article was lacking. 3) I asked because I thought you knew since you evaluated them closely enough to be certain that they're anti-semitic. 4) Forget the request. I'll look on Twitter and try and find that myself. That's the strategy that everybody should take to look into things that matter to them.
      - WithinReason 3y ago
        “For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk posted on the platform formerly called Twitter on Sunday morning to 150 million follower accounts
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        Here's an un-paywalled example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/09/x-twitter-elon-musk-disinformation-israel-hamas https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/09/x-twitter... On number (3), er, it should be pretty obvious if you take a glance at that article. This is, generally a fascinating example of a weird tendency in modern personality cults. Musk is, in this system, _both_ a magical super-genius _and_ so incompetent that he can't be expected to identify obvious nonsense before promoting it to a hundred million people, and is thus not culpable. You see this most often for Musk and Trump, but it's pretty widespread. Perhaps a response to the internet age; in the 20th century it was more common for devotees to simply claim that the cult figure didn't say the thing, but that's so easy to disprove these days that presumably the super-position of visionary leader and helpless incompetent has become necessary.

rsynnott 3y ago

While I'd agree that stuff on Twitter was never particularly trustworthy, the conversion of the blueticks into a monetisation/paid status thing has certainly made it a bit riskier; Twitter no longer has a clear meaningful form of provenance verification. Is that actually a Reuters tweet, or a 'REuters' tweet with a paid bluetick? Most users will be (and are) fooled by this sort of thing, which was largely impossible under the old regime. On (2), he should perhaps check _before_ promoting anti-Semitic fake news accounts; absurd to make excuses for him here.

logicalmonster 3y ago
What are the handles of these fake news accounts? I'd like to try and see for myself why Musk made a mistake and if he just made a minor mistake or if he has bad judgement.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Not sure why I should do your homework for you, but here you go, an article about the incident which contains the account names: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-disinfo-musk-twitter-x/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/08/israel-...
  - logicalmonster 3y ago
    1) Thank you for the link, however it is pay walled. 2) I'm not asking you to do homework. It should be the journalist's job to provide the relevant facts, but the linked article was lacking. 3) I asked because I thought you knew since you evaluated them closely enough to be certain that they're anti-semitic. 4) Forget the request. I'll look on Twitter and try and find that myself. That's the strategy that everybody should take to look into things that matter to them.
    - WithinReason 3y ago
      “For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk posted on the platform formerly called Twitter on Sunday morning to 150 million follower accounts
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Here's an un-paywalled example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/09/x-twitter-elon-musk-disinformation-israel-hamas https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/09/x-twitter... On number (3), er, it should be pretty obvious if you take a glance at that article. This is, generally a fascinating example of a weird tendency in modern personality cults. Musk is, in this system, _both_ a magical super-genius _and_ so incompetent that he can't be expected to identify obvious nonsense before promoting it to a hundred million people, and is thus not culpable. You see this most often for Musk and Trump, but it's pretty widespread. Perhaps a response to the internet age; in the 20th century it was more common for devotees to simply claim that the cult figure didn't say the thing, but that's so easy to disprove these days that presumably the super-position of visionary leader and helpless incompetent has become necessary.