7 ms·

Xitter is full of spam and fake news. Elon decided to take the company in this direction where everything is fair game. Things just got worse. If Xitter isn't

by dudus 2y ago

Xitter is full of spam and fake news. Elon decided to take the company in this direction where everything is fair game. Things just got worse. If Xitter isn't going to up their game the legal system has to jump in and do it for them. It's not going to be pretty. Now Elon is taking their ball home. Closing the offices, firing hundreds, burning bridges. It's a power move where everyone loses but his ego.

davidmurdoch 2y ago
I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech? Community Notes seems to be highly effective at combatting misinformation, at least of the most popular tweets.
- sroussey 2y ago
  [flagged]
- misiti3780 2y ago
  ya, he/she preferred it when the nypost couldnt share a real article about hunter biden's laptop. I honestly cant believe people want to live in a world where anything (beyond the obvious illegal content like child porn, slander etc) is censored. If you dont like, it ignore it.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - angoragoats 2y ago
      It is also completely ignoring, like most "free speech on social media" proponents do, the fact that what we're talking about is not only free speech, but also free reach, that is, the ability for the algorithms of the platform in question to amplify your "free speech" so that it reaches far more people than it otherwise would were you merely saying it out loud, in person, with your mouth, or publishing it on a regular website. Due to the above, I am adamantly against "free speech" in the context of algorithm-driven social media, and I wish that people complaining about being censored on social media would stop using the term, because they're (knowingly or not) conflating two very different ideas.
      - stctw 2y ago
        There is, in principle, no difference between controlling what people are allowed to say and controlling what people are allowed to hear, including controlling any middlemen who are involved in propagating speech. In the USSR, you could say what you wanted inside your own home, to your own family, but were you to speak it where others could hear it, or publish it so others could read and share it... So, no, you are wrong: the ideas are not different at all, and if you are against one, you are against the other. You judge yourself to be worthy of deciding what others are allowed to hear. Would you allow me to judge what you are allowed to hear? If you would, I would feed you a steady diet of history and philosophy until you discarded such ideas, ideas which enabled much oppression and suffering in the 20th century.
        angoragoats 2y ago
        I’m not saying we should control what people are allowed to hear, and even if I were, banning people from posting garbage on social media hardly rises to that level. I think you’ve got this part drastically wrong, but maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough, so I’m sorry for that. I’m specifically against the amplification of radical content through profit-driven social media algorithms, which has no analogue in the 20th century or indeed any other time in human history. There is no historical or philosophical context that I’m aware of that you could share with me that would be equivalent. This is what I mean by “free reach” — radical content keeps eyeballs on apps/websites, so it gets amplified so that shareholders can make more money via advertisements. The algorithms that do this need to be banned and/or heavily regulated, and until they are I am in favor of banning/silencing entities who use those algorithms to their advantage to spread dangerous content. Any of the above-mentioned entities is free to post whatever content they want on their own sites, blogs, or social media that isn’t profit/algorithm-driven. Therefore, no “free speech” (ugh, again, I hate that term in this context) rights are lost, nor is anyone being deprived of the right to hear something.
    - wredue 2y ago
      They are propagating propaganda pieces in the very comment that you’re asking about their ignorance of these topics. It isn’t that they don’t understand how disinformation and propaganda is powerful and problematic. It is that they actively want to push said propaganda and it is difficult to do so when you have pesky things like technology that can automatically fact check you.
    - nradov 2y ago
      This is such a naive viewpoint. Are you completely unaware of how authoritarian governments falsely label things as "propaganda" or "misinformation" in order to promote their own narratives?
      - stctw 2y ago
        Seriously! And this is the comment that gets downvoted? Who is to say what is misinformation, the KGB? What has gone wrong in the past 30 years that we are pining to be like Soviet Russia was? Are we so historically ignorant of world history one generation previous that we don't understand the problem? Or are we so arrogant that we think we are qualified to decide what information other human beings should be allowed to have?
    - concordDance 2y ago
      That's bad but most of that takes place all the time with centralised media distributors. Its admittedly much worse on social media (for complex reasons), but censors probably aren't going to be much faster than community notes (unless you're happy with a lot of false positive censoring), and centralized government mandated censoring gives an incredibly dangerous amount of power to the censoring body that will inevitably be abused (swapping social media providers, while nontrivial is much easier than swapping government censoring bodies). My hope is that eventually the people will develop habits such as distrusting any information without a clear chain of custody.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  I still remember when Elon was threatening to change how the block function works and how he got a community note saying that Apple's App Store rules would prohibit it, even though they said nothing about it. Good stuff.
- lossolo 2y ago
  > Community Notes seems to be highly effective at combatting misinformation, at least of the most popular tweets. It doesn't, millions of people see it before community notes show up. Musk is sharing fake news himself[1]. This is dangerous, this impacts people emotions and their actions. 1. https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-share-fake-news-uk-rioters-detainment-camp https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-share-fake-news-uk...
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    So what do you propose? We can't just shut off the Internet?
    - smcl 2y ago
      Well you bin the biggest shitheads on the site and make it hard for them to make new accounts. It’s probably impossible to fix but he’s clearly not trying to fix it at all It’s 2024 and we’re all quite “online” people who are aware how Elon is operating Twitter. Let’s not feign ignorance here.
      - davidmurdoch 2y ago
        Who decides who the shitheads are? Do you expect people to self organize, or maybe the US government just gets to choose who to silence again?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        smcl 2y ago
        [flagged]
        davidmurdoch 2y ago
        Just FYI, this comment will be flagged soon (not by me). You can't call anyone nasty names on here. In other news, I'd be more than happy to never have another discussion with you.
- energy123 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    I've just tweeted with the word cisgender. I'll try to remember to check back in tomorrow and let you know if it got any engagement.
    - Izkata 2y ago
      Would you mind also trying just "cis"? That's the version that's sometimes used as a slur.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - concordDance 2y ago
    > "cisgender" is banned but there are people posting the N-word and inciting racial hatred to millions of views Don't both words get equally restricted views?
- troupo 2y ago
  > I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech? Is Musk such a proponent? His professed absolutist views have been shown to be a lie and farce many times over
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    Eh, better than Jack Dorsey, and almost certainly better than the government of Brazil and the UK.
    - smcl 2y ago
      He’s made “cisgender” a banned word, c’mon
      - davidmurdoch 2y ago
        I don't think he did. I just tweeted with the word and it's getting views and some engagement
      - xdennis 2y ago
        If you ban slurs against minorities you should ban slurs against majorities. And, yes, c**ender is a slur. It's only ever used by its opponents and in a negative context.
        kibwen 2y ago
        > And, yes, c*ender is a slur. It's only ever used by its opponents and in a negative context. What on earth... "Cisgender" is as much of a slur as "cislunar" or "cisalpine". And who are "its opponents"? The opponents of being cisgender? Are you trying to suggest that trans people are against the existence of cis people? Have you considered spending less time on Twitter?
        davidmurdoch 2y ago
        It's used as an insult it to make fun of people over on TikTok sometimes. It's typically just harmless in-group banter not directly aimed at someone, but it occasionally leaks over to "the other side" and people get mad.
- angoragoats 2y ago
  Please clearly define what you mean when you say "free speech." It's an overloaded term that confuses people every time I see it in this context. I don't support the artificial broadcast/amplification of content that is hateful, bigoted, misinformation, etc to thousands or millions of people that otherwise wouldn't see it, were it not for an algorithm that picks it up due to it generating more eyeballs to sell advertisements to. If we, as a society, can manage to muster the courage to regulate social media algorithms, then we can start talking broadly about free speech rights. Until then, people who want to post vile garbage should be banned permanently and forever from participating in social media sites that use unregulated and opaque algorithms. They are, of course, still free to post whatever they want on their own sites, blogs, or on social media that doesn't make use of opaque algorithms (e.g. some Fediverse sites).
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    I mean it in the context of being able to criticize the US government and its officials. I think that's what most from the US think is why free speech is so important. Hate speech is a slippery slope that I'm not knowledgeable enough in to speak to more in depth.
    - angoragoats 2y ago
      Who is preventing someone from criticizing the US government? Maybe I’m dense but I don’t understand what that has to do with anything being discussed here. Also, once again, even if you’re banned from saying something on social media, no free speech rights (in any sense of the term) are lost. You are free to say it elsewhere via a mechanism that does not give you automatic free reach.
      - davidmurdoch 2y ago
        The context of the whole conversation is related to the Brazilian government silencing it's opponents: > Brazil’s Supreme Court has drastically expanded its power to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. https://archive.is/plQFT https://archive.is/plQFT Being allowed to criticize our government (and any government) is precisely the "free speech" Americans hold dear. Brazil doesn't seem to find that to be of value, hence the comment I made in response to someone saying X should comply with the government of Brazil: "I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech".
gruez 2y ago
>Now Elon is taking their ball home. Closing the offices, firing hundreds, burning bridges. Google did the same thing for China in the 2000s. Should they be castigated for the same reason? How are the circumstances different aside from "google is good and musk/x is bad?"
- soerxpso 2y ago
  Opinion here basically seems to depend on whether a "fascism!!" fascist regime or a "democracy!!" fascist regime is doing the censorship. Brazil is run by a "democracy!!" fascist regime so any government overreach there is good. China is run by a "fascism!!" fascist regime so government overreach there is bad.
- dudus 2y ago
  They are both entitled to their decision. And I certainly wouldn't blame either X or Google for leaving in that situation. Even though I disagree with you it's the same circumstances. What I'm saying is that everyone loses when that happens.
  - knallfrosch 2y ago
    Google won quite handsomely by shutting down in China. Remember that this was 2018, shortly before the social justice movement reached its fever pitch. At the time, Google employees would have burned the place down over project Dragonfly. As for Chinese customers, I believe their tech giants are competitive regarding Google search. But if the Chinsese tech giants werent competitive at least the Chinese consumers would be shielded from Google's monopolistic abuse ;)
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    Nobody in Brazil loses with one badly managed social network leaving the country, it is not as if we don't have other 100 better tools to communicate than the tar pit Xitter is
- ahiknsr 2y ago
  > How are the circumstances different aside from "google is good and musk/x is bad?" You forgot to mention the Chinese government literally hacked google. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
Teocali 2y ago
If Elon and X thinks they cannot in good faith comply with the laws of a country in which X operate, they are right to leave it. I personnaly see the attacks against the judiciary of Brazil more troublesome that this move.
akira2501 2y ago
> Things just got worse. I hated twitter 5 years ago, and I hate twitter today. People act as if Elon's presence changed anything. From an outside point of view, it changed nothing, the site never had any value to begin with. It's original existential proposition was: "Artists can now talk to fans directly instead of going through third party media companies." It really has done a _fantastic_ job with that. It was never possible that it could effectively do more. Unsurprisingly, the people who need this media exposure, are the most devoted to pretending that it could be, as it would mean their time spent there is not just naval gazing but somehow "social activism." It's typical lazy American politick.
- tim333 2y ago
  > Things just got worse I quite like twitter now. I wasn't enough of a user five years ago to judge if it's better or worse. Even the 'free speech' stuff is not so bad. The mainstream media can be a bit prone to blocking things at times.
deisteve 2y ago
[flagged]

by dudus 2y ago

davidmurdoch 2y ago

I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech? Community Notes seems to be highly effective at combatting misinformation, at least of the most popular tweets.

sroussey 2y ago
[flagged]
misiti3780 2y ago
ya, he/she preferred it when the nypost couldnt share a real article about hunter biden's laptop. I honestly cant believe people want to live in a world where anything (beyond the obvious illegal content like child porn, slander etc) is censored. If you dont like, it ignore it.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - angoragoats 2y ago
    It is also completely ignoring, like most "free speech on social media" proponents do, the fact that what we're talking about is not only free speech, but also free reach, that is, the ability for the algorithms of the platform in question to amplify your "free speech" so that it reaches far more people than it otherwise would were you merely saying it out loud, in person, with your mouth, or publishing it on a regular website. Due to the above, I am adamantly against "free speech" in the context of algorithm-driven social media, and I wish that people complaining about being censored on social media would stop using the term, because they're (knowingly or not) conflating two very different ideas.
    - stctw 2y ago
      There is, in principle, no difference between controlling what people are allowed to say and controlling what people are allowed to hear, including controlling any middlemen who are involved in propagating speech. In the USSR, you could say what you wanted inside your own home, to your own family, but were you to speak it where others could hear it, or publish it so others could read and share it... So, no, you are wrong: the ideas are not different at all, and if you are against one, you are against the other. You judge yourself to be worthy of deciding what others are allowed to hear. Would you allow me to judge what you are allowed to hear? If you would, I would feed you a steady diet of history and philosophy until you discarded such ideas, ideas which enabled much oppression and suffering in the 20th century.
      - angoragoats 2y ago
        I’m not saying we should control what people are allowed to hear, and even if I were, banning people from posting garbage on social media hardly rises to that level. I think you’ve got this part drastically wrong, but maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough, so I’m sorry for that. I’m specifically against the amplification of radical content through profit-driven social media algorithms, which has no analogue in the 20th century or indeed any other time in human history. There is no historical or philosophical context that I’m aware of that you could share with me that would be equivalent. This is what I mean by “free reach” — radical content keeps eyeballs on apps/websites, so it gets amplified so that shareholders can make more money via advertisements. The algorithms that do this need to be banned and/or heavily regulated, and until they are I am in favor of banning/silencing entities who use those algorithms to their advantage to spread dangerous content. Any of the above-mentioned entities is free to post whatever content they want on their own sites, blogs, or social media that isn’t profit/algorithm-driven. Therefore, no “free speech” (ugh, again, I hate that term in this context) rights are lost, nor is anyone being deprived of the right to hear something.
  - wredue 2y ago
    They are propagating propaganda pieces in the very comment that you’re asking about their ignorance of these topics. It isn’t that they don’t understand how disinformation and propaganda is powerful and problematic. It is that they actively want to push said propaganda and it is difficult to do so when you have pesky things like technology that can automatically fact check you.
  - nradov 2y ago
    This is such a naive viewpoint. Are you completely unaware of how authoritarian governments falsely label things as "propaganda" or "misinformation" in order to promote their own narratives?
    - stctw 2y ago
      Seriously! And this is the comment that gets downvoted? Who is to say what is misinformation, the KGB? What has gone wrong in the past 30 years that we are pining to be like Soviet Russia was? Are we so historically ignorant of world history one generation previous that we don't understand the problem? Or are we so arrogant that we think we are qualified to decide what information other human beings should be allowed to have?
  - concordDance 2y ago
    That's bad but most of that takes place all the time with centralised media distributors. Its admittedly much worse on social media (for complex reasons), but censors probably aren't going to be much faster than community notes (unless you're happy with a lot of false positive censoring), and centralized government mandated censoring gives an incredibly dangerous amount of power to the censoring body that will inevitably be abused (swapping social media providers, while nontrivial is much easier than swapping government censoring bodies). My hope is that eventually the people will develop habits such as distrusting any information without a clear chain of custody.
Hamuko 2y ago
I still remember when Elon was threatening to change how the block function works and how he got a community note saying that Apple's App Store rules would prohibit it, even though they said nothing about it. Good stuff.
lossolo 2y ago
> Community Notes seems to be highly effective at combatting misinformation, at least of the most popular tweets. It doesn't, millions of people see it before community notes show up. Musk is sharing fake news himself[1]. This is dangerous, this impacts people emotions and their actions. 1. https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-share-fake-news-uk-rioters-detainment-camp https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-share-fake-news-uk...
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  So what do you propose? We can't just shut off the Internet?
  - smcl 2y ago
    Well you bin the biggest shitheads on the site and make it hard for them to make new accounts. It’s probably impossible to fix but he’s clearly not trying to fix it at all It’s 2024 and we’re all quite “online” people who are aware how Elon is operating Twitter. Let’s not feign ignorance here.
    - davidmurdoch 2y ago
      Who decides who the shitheads are? Do you expect people to self organize, or maybe the US government just gets to choose who to silence again?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - smcl 2y ago
        [flagged]
        davidmurdoch 2y ago
        Just FYI, this comment will be flagged soon (not by me). You can't call anyone nasty names on here. In other news, I'd be more than happy to never have another discussion with you.
energy123 2y ago
[flagged]
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  I've just tweeted with the word cisgender. I'll try to remember to check back in tomorrow and let you know if it got any engagement.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    Would you mind also trying just "cis"? That's the version that's sometimes used as a slur.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- concordDance 2y ago
  > "cisgender" is banned but there are people posting the N-word and inciting racial hatred to millions of views Don't both words get equally restricted views?
troupo 2y ago
> I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech? Is Musk such a proponent? His professed absolutist views have been shown to be a lie and farce many times over
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  Eh, better than Jack Dorsey, and almost certainly better than the government of Brazil and the UK.
  - smcl 2y ago
    He’s made “cisgender” a banned word, c’mon
    - davidmurdoch 2y ago
      I don't think he did. I just tweeted with the word and it's getting views and some engagement
    - xdennis 2y ago
      If you ban slurs against minorities you should ban slurs against majorities. And, yes, c**ender is a slur. It's only ever used by its opponents and in a negative context.
      - kibwen 2y ago
        > And, yes, c*ender is a slur. It's only ever used by its opponents and in a negative context. What on earth... "Cisgender" is as much of a slur as "cislunar" or "cisalpine". And who are "its opponents"? The opponents of being cisgender? Are you trying to suggest that trans people are against the existence of cis people? Have you considered spending less time on Twitter?
        davidmurdoch 2y ago
        It's used as an insult it to make fun of people over on TikTok sometimes. It's typically just harmless in-group banter not directly aimed at someone, but it occasionally leaks over to "the other side" and people get mad.
angoragoats 2y ago
Please clearly define what you mean when you say "free speech." It's an overloaded term that confuses people every time I see it in this context. I don't support the artificial broadcast/amplification of content that is hateful, bigoted, misinformation, etc to thousands or millions of people that otherwise wouldn't see it, were it not for an algorithm that picks it up due to it generating more eyeballs to sell advertisements to. If we, as a society, can manage to muster the courage to regulate social media algorithms, then we can start talking broadly about free speech rights. Until then, people who want to post vile garbage should be banned permanently and forever from participating in social media sites that use unregulated and opaque algorithms. They are, of course, still free to post whatever they want on their own sites, blogs, or on social media that doesn't make use of opaque algorithms (e.g. some Fediverse sites).
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  I mean it in the context of being able to criticize the US government and its officials. I think that's what most from the US think is why free speech is so important. Hate speech is a slippery slope that I'm not knowledgeable enough in to speak to more in depth.
  - angoragoats 2y ago
    Who is preventing someone from criticizing the US government? Maybe I’m dense but I don’t understand what that has to do with anything being discussed here. Also, once again, even if you’re banned from saying something on social media, no free speech rights (in any sense of the term) are lost. You are free to say it elsewhere via a mechanism that does not give you automatic free reach.
    - davidmurdoch 2y ago
      The context of the whole conversation is related to the Brazilian government silencing it's opponents: > Brazil’s Supreme Court has drastically expanded its power to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. https://archive.is/plQFT https://archive.is/plQFT Being allowed to criticize our government (and any government) is precisely the "free speech" Americans hold dear. Brazil doesn't seem to find that to be of value, hence the comment I made in response to someone saying X should comply with the government of Brazil: "I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech".

gruez 2y ago

>Now Elon is taking their ball home. Closing the offices, firing hundreds, burning bridges. Google did the same thing for China in the 2000s. Should they be castigated for the same reason? How are the circumstances different aside from "google is good and musk/x is bad?"

soerxpso 2y ago
Opinion here basically seems to depend on whether a "fascism!!" fascist regime or a "democracy!!" fascist regime is doing the censorship. Brazil is run by a "democracy!!" fascist regime so any government overreach there is good. China is run by a "fascism!!" fascist regime so government overreach there is bad.
dudus 2y ago
They are both entitled to their decision. And I certainly wouldn't blame either X or Google for leaving in that situation. Even though I disagree with you it's the same circumstances. What I'm saying is that everyone loses when that happens.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Google won quite handsomely by shutting down in China. Remember that this was 2018, shortly before the social justice movement reached its fever pitch. At the time, Google employees would have burned the place down over project Dragonfly. As for Chinese customers, I believe their tech giants are competitive regarding Google search. But if the Chinsese tech giants werent competitive at least the Chinese consumers would be shielded from Google's monopolistic abuse ;)
- meiraleal 2y ago
  Nobody in Brazil loses with one badly managed social network leaving the country, it is not as if we don't have other 100 better tools to communicate than the tar pit Xitter is
ahiknsr 2y ago
> How are the circumstances different aside from "google is good and musk/x is bad?" You forgot to mention the Chinese government literally hacked google. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

Teocali 2y ago

If Elon and X thinks they cannot in good faith comply with the laws of a country in which X operate, they are right to leave it. I personnaly see the attacks against the judiciary of Brazil more troublesome that this move.

akira2501 2y ago

> Things just got worse. I hated twitter 5 years ago, and I hate twitter today. People act as if Elon's presence changed anything. From an outside point of view, it changed nothing, the site never had any value to begin with. It's original existential proposition was: "Artists can now talk to fans directly instead of going through third party media companies." It really has done a _fantastic_ job with that. It was never possible that it could effectively do more. Unsurprisingly, the people who need this media exposure, are the most devoted to pretending that it could be, as it would mean their time spent there is not just naval gazing but somehow "social activism." It's typical lazy American politick.

tim333 2y ago
> Things just got worse I quite like twitter now. I wasn't enough of a user five years ago to judge if it's better or worse. Even the 'free speech' stuff is not so bad. The mainstream media can be a bit prone to blocking things at times.

deisteve 2y ago

[flagged]