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It's frustrating that anything related to X/Twitter is such a predictably-partisan tinderbox because this is really interesting technical information. Thank you

It's frustrating that anything related to X/Twitter is such a predictably-partisan tinderbox because this is really interesting technical information. Thank you for sharing it!

kstenerud 2y ago
It's partisan/political because Musk is partisan/political. And it's not just Musk. We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in. So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tech giants join the political fray in full force, dragging their follower armies along for the ride. And it works, too. Just look at the comments here.
- hereme888 2y ago
  yup, just read the comment.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >once again When has the rich not been more or less 1:1 with The Powers That Be(tm)? The form changes with the sands of time, but the essence is always the same.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades Which "we" are you speaking for? That doesn't sound like the tech world, we've had a lot of explicitly political tech movements over the years. Off the top of my head some of the more successful and major ones were: - Cryptography. - Free Software. - Cryptocurrency. The Silicon Valley based companies have been politically active since at least 2016, there have been a couple of political exoduses by various groups to alternative platforms. The non-Silicon-Valley companies have been worse and generally suspect to the point where nobody expected political apathy (is anyone going to claim that Chinese social media are not politically subordinate to the state?).
  - diffeomorphism 2y ago
    "Politically affiliated" is something very different than "political".
    - roenxi 2y ago
      If you figure out what that difference is, let me know. The tech scene has been decidedly liberal (old school liberal, nowadays people maybe call that libertarian) and as political as it can be since the start. There has been a trend where other political cultures are getting involved too since ... probably the Obama campaign was when politicians really started noticing that spreading messages through the internet was more effective than going through the corporate news. But that is just a change of affiliations (maybe more accurately a broadening), tech has always been affiliated with someone.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ben_w 2y ago
        "Political" is anything related to inter-personal power in society, and can be anything from maintaining a homeowner's association bylaws to international spy-craft and assassinations, and is so broad as to be unavoidable in human behaviour. "Political affiliation" is much narrower and comes with a specific named politician or political party — even if they're not going to get in, such as Lord Buckethead or the Green Party of America.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Which "we" are you speaking for? That doesn't sound like the tech world...Silicon Valley based companies have been politically active since at least 2016 That was the tipping point. Before Trump, it was common to hear techies in the Bay Area proudly proclaim that they didn't concern themselves with politics. (Reminds me of the way aristocratic Europeans talk about commerce.) Tech always had views on policy. But it wasn't outwardly opinionated on politics, certainly not partisan politics, in the overt (and influential) way that it is today.
- nox101 2y ago
  so strange for you to blame this on Musk. Twitter was already super partisan long before he took it over
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Twitter was already super partisan long before he took it over Sure. But Elon changed teams. He used to be bipartisan. But he chose a champion in the aftermath of Covid and--by the looks of it--he's chosen a bad one. (In an alternate universe where Musk stuck to what he's good at, I could see the entire Artemis programme being delegated to SpaceX and a bipartisan adoption of Tesla as America's EV standard bearer. Instead, there is real political capital in creating a rival to SpaceX. And Tesla is going to have to constantly be on the defence against cheap Chinese imports from the Democrats and establishment Republicans.)
    - pfannkuchen 2y ago
      I think people see Musk differently from how he actually is. Or at least how he sees himself. He has always said, for many years, that he got into SpaceX to work towards the goal of making humans a multiplanetary species, and he got into electric cars to work towards the goal of having a sustainable energy society. I think he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society, and if that threat isn’t addressed then the other goals don’t matter because society will collapse before they can be realized. From a near term business perspective his political actions are dumb, but from a personal motivation perspective they make total sense. Or in other words, Musk is primarily driven by a savior complex, not greed (which is unfortunate for investors).
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society Sure. I don't think he's a hypocrite. He has, however, hyper fixated on a topic that's in vogue in tech circles but totally irrelevant elsewhere. Unlike in technology, where one can credibly fail upwards, doing that in politics comes at the cost of influence. And in this block order we're seeing, tangibly, the consequences of Elon Musk's deteriorating influence.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  To be honest with the current polarisation levels in politics it's no longer possible to be neutral. The conservative side is now even strongarming companies into abandoning their diversity programs! This is just really not ok, I'm part of the LGBTIQ+ support network in our company and this kind of thing is really making waves. People are worried, even though we're a Europe based company where this is not a contested topic (though we do have many offices in the US). See what happened to Ford, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, and many others. Decades of progress are being thrown out the window. Many US companies are now feeling forced to choose a side. At least I now know which to boycott..
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    It's absolutely contested in Europe. "Why is the NHS spending so much money on diversity officials when they don't have enough doctors" is a long standing complaint by many people and politicians in the UK, for example.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      True there's some exceptions. The UK has indeed fallen to American-style polarisation. As have the Netherlands where an extreme-right regime now reigns. But most of Europe is still sane, luckily. Ps rather than blaming transsexualism it might be smarter to blame the Tories who have been skimming (and selling off to their own companies) the NHS until there was nothing left.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Hi! I'm neutral. DEI was a political statement—one that you agreed with and felt was necessary. Abandoning DEI is also a political statement—one that you disagree with and think is not okay. You're welcome to disagree with the people who disagree with DEI, but I'd hesitate to claim that these companies were "strongarmed" into it—the programs always existed as a political tool for the company to curry favor, not as something that was added for its intrinsic practical or moral value. The political climate has changed, which means they no longer serve their true purpose. The important takeaway from this reversal is that the progressive theory of change that's been leaned on for the past few decades was a bad one. We thought that a lot of progress had been made, but it turns out it was all surface level and easy to undo when the pressure to keep up appearances went away or reversed. "We need to do this because it will look bad if we don't" is a very fickle tool for motivating real change.
- kstenerud 2y ago
  Looking at the responses, I can see that people are still viewing this through the limited lens of left vs right. This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitations of governments by forming their own rich-people-only worlds. For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-honduras-crypto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura... So long as you continue fighting left vs right, you're fighting the wrong enemy.
  - mikrotikker 2y ago
    Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. Which is what Twitter should have been doing, instead of kowtowing to the likes of the German and Saudi govts among others...
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      But Musk doesn't care about free speech, he is actively and eagerly suppressing it as well, just for the other team.
      - namaria 2y ago
        That man will say anything, I don't know why anyone would pay attention to it.
      - itsoktocry 2y ago
        Yes, no one is truly "unbiased" or without opinions. This is not new. But giving the "other team" a voice (my team, in some ways) is valuable, and we aren't going to give it up easily. And please, don't point to the fact that there are right-wing loons on Twitter, because there are crazies from all sides all over the internet.
- dspillett 2y ago
  > And it's not just Musk. You are definitely correct there. Twitter was a shit-show in this regard long before Musk came along and made it worse. They did far too little to enforce their own policies (let alone common decency) on things like bullying and hate content for far too long, for fear of losing users and therefore advertising money or being punished because some of those openly breaking those rules were in high power at the time, and this led to an “open season” feeling for all sides. [for the avoidance of doubt: I've never had a twitter account, after the initial novelty stage it has always been far too full of the sort of people that think twitter is a good idea]
- kcmastrpc 2y ago
  As opposed to its previous owners? Don't let those shades get too dark, friend.
- motbus3 2y ago
  I am talking about sonic the movie obviously. I don't think dr Eggman should be able to attack in that way. There is no proof but there was a threat and retaliation which is a terrible precedent. It is like Eggman attacking Sonic for something that Shadow did.

It's frustrating that anything related to X/Twitter is such a predictably-partisan tinderbox because this is really interesting technical information. Thank you for sharing it!

kstenerud 2y ago

It's partisan/political because Musk is partisan/political. And it's not just Musk. We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in. So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tech giants join the political fray in full force, dragging their follower armies along for the ride. And it works, too. Just look at the comments here.

hereme888 2y ago
yup, just read the comment.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>once again When has the rich not been more or less 1:1 with The Powers That Be(tm)? The form changes with the sands of time, but the essence is always the same.
roenxi 2y ago
> We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades Which "we" are you speaking for? That doesn't sound like the tech world, we've had a lot of explicitly political tech movements over the years. Off the top of my head some of the more successful and major ones were: - Cryptography. - Free Software. - Cryptocurrency. The Silicon Valley based companies have been politically active since at least 2016, there have been a couple of political exoduses by various groups to alternative platforms. The non-Silicon-Valley companies have been worse and generally suspect to the point where nobody expected political apathy (is anyone going to claim that Chinese social media are not politically subordinate to the state?).
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  "Politically affiliated" is something very different than "political".
  - roenxi 2y ago
    If you figure out what that difference is, let me know. The tech scene has been decidedly liberal (old school liberal, nowadays people maybe call that libertarian) and as political as it can be since the start. There has been a trend where other political cultures are getting involved too since ... probably the Obama campaign was when politicians really started noticing that spreading messages through the internet was more effective than going through the corporate news. But that is just a change of affiliations (maybe more accurately a broadening), tech has always been affiliated with someone.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 2y ago
      "Political" is anything related to inter-personal power in society, and can be anything from maintaining a homeowner's association bylaws to international spy-craft and assassinations, and is so broad as to be unavoidable in human behaviour. "Political affiliation" is much narrower and comes with a specific named politician or political party — even if they're not going to get in, such as Lord Buckethead or the Green Party of America.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Which "we" are you speaking for? That doesn't sound like the tech world...Silicon Valley based companies have been politically active since at least 2016 That was the tipping point. Before Trump, it was common to hear techies in the Bay Area proudly proclaim that they didn't concern themselves with politics. (Reminds me of the way aristocratic Europeans talk about commerce.) Tech always had views on policy. But it wasn't outwardly opinionated on politics, certainly not partisan politics, in the overt (and influential) way that it is today.
nox101 2y ago
so strange for you to blame this on Musk. Twitter was already super partisan long before he took it over
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Twitter was already super partisan long before he took it over Sure. But Elon changed teams. He used to be bipartisan. But he chose a champion in the aftermath of Covid and--by the looks of it--he's chosen a bad one. (In an alternate universe where Musk stuck to what he's good at, I could see the entire Artemis programme being delegated to SpaceX and a bipartisan adoption of Tesla as America's EV standard bearer. Instead, there is real political capital in creating a rival to SpaceX. And Tesla is going to have to constantly be on the defence against cheap Chinese imports from the Democrats and establishment Republicans.)
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    I think people see Musk differently from how he actually is. Or at least how he sees himself. He has always said, for many years, that he got into SpaceX to work towards the goal of making humans a multiplanetary species, and he got into electric cars to work towards the goal of having a sustainable energy society. I think he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society, and if that threat isn’t addressed then the other goals don’t matter because society will collapse before they can be realized. From a near term business perspective his political actions are dumb, but from a personal motivation perspective they make total sense. Or in other words, Musk is primarily driven by a savior complex, not greed (which is unfortunate for investors).
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society Sure. I don't think he's a hypocrite. He has, however, hyper fixated on a topic that's in vogue in tech circles but totally irrelevant elsewhere. Unlike in technology, where one can credibly fail upwards, doing that in politics comes at the cost of influence. And in this block order we're seeing, tangibly, the consequences of Elon Musk's deteriorating influence.
wkat4242 2y ago
To be honest with the current polarisation levels in politics it's no longer possible to be neutral. The conservative side is now even strongarming companies into abandoning their diversity programs! This is just really not ok, I'm part of the LGBTIQ+ support network in our company and this kind of thing is really making waves. People are worried, even though we're a Europe based company where this is not a contested topic (though we do have many offices in the US). See what happened to Ford, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, and many others. Decades of progress are being thrown out the window. Many US companies are now feeling forced to choose a side. At least I now know which to boycott..
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  It's absolutely contested in Europe. "Why is the NHS spending so much money on diversity officials when they don't have enough doctors" is a long standing complaint by many people and politicians in the UK, for example.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    True there's some exceptions. The UK has indeed fallen to American-style polarisation. As have the Netherlands where an extreme-right regime now reigns. But most of Europe is still sane, luckily. Ps rather than blaming transsexualism it might be smarter to blame the Tories who have been skimming (and selling off to their own companies) the NHS until there was nothing left.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Hi! I'm neutral. DEI was a political statement—one that you agreed with and felt was necessary. Abandoning DEI is also a political statement—one that you disagree with and think is not okay. You're welcome to disagree with the people who disagree with DEI, but I'd hesitate to claim that these companies were "strongarmed" into it—the programs always existed as a political tool for the company to curry favor, not as something that was added for its intrinsic practical or moral value. The political climate has changed, which means they no longer serve their true purpose. The important takeaway from this reversal is that the progressive theory of change that's been leaned on for the past few decades was a bad one. We thought that a lot of progress had been made, but it turns out it was all surface level and easy to undo when the pressure to keep up appearances went away or reversed. "We need to do this because it will look bad if we don't" is a very fickle tool for motivating real change.
kstenerud 2y ago
Looking at the responses, I can see that people are still viewing this through the limited lens of left vs right. This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitations of governments by forming their own rich-people-only worlds. For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-honduras-crypto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura... So long as you continue fighting left vs right, you're fighting the wrong enemy.
- mikrotikker 2y ago
  Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. Which is what Twitter should have been doing, instead of kowtowing to the likes of the German and Saudi govts among others...
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    But Musk doesn't care about free speech, he is actively and eagerly suppressing it as well, just for the other team.
    - namaria 2y ago
      That man will say anything, I don't know why anyone would pay attention to it.
    - itsoktocry 2y ago
      Yes, no one is truly "unbiased" or without opinions. This is not new. But giving the "other team" a voice (my team, in some ways) is valuable, and we aren't going to give it up easily. And please, don't point to the fact that there are right-wing loons on Twitter, because there are crazies from all sides all over the internet.
dspillett 2y ago
> And it's not just Musk. You are definitely correct there. Twitter was a shit-show in this regard long before Musk came along and made it worse. They did far too little to enforce their own policies (let alone common decency) on things like bullying and hate content for far too long, for fear of losing users and therefore advertising money or being punished because some of those openly breaking those rules were in high power at the time, and this led to an “open season” feeling for all sides. [for the avoidance of doubt: I've never had a twitter account, after the initial novelty stage it has always been far too full of the sort of people that think twitter is a good idea]
kcmastrpc 2y ago
As opposed to its previous owners? Don't let those shades get too dark, friend.
motbus3 2y ago
I am talking about sonic the movie obviously. I don't think dr Eggman should be able to attack in that way. There is no proof but there was a threat and retaliation which is a terrible precedent. It is like Eggman attacking Sonic for something that Shadow did.