4 ms·

There seems to be an extreme obsession with blocking, banning, censoring, demonetizing, deplatforming, firing, unbanking, un-personing. And this is from people

There seems to be an extreme obsession with blocking, banning, censoring, demonetizing, deplatforming, firing, unbanking, un-personing. And this is from people whose opininions already completely dominate mainstream media and all of public life. This is not healthy.

fourside 2y ago
> whose opininions already completely dominate mainstream media and all of public life How do they completely dominate mainstream media? Twitter is mainstream.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Even twitter is kind of fringe. Fox News is "mainstream" in the US.
troad 2y ago
There is no site more perfectly suited to turning people off the fundamental democratic value of free speech than Elon Musk's Twitter, circa 2024. The front page is just brazen anti-Semitism and racism at this point. And no, I am not referring to some reasoned debate of the Gaza War or social issues, I mean literal memes with hook-nosed men, their captions explicitly referring to the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. I mean photos of black children with captions about low IQs. It's truly abhorrent. Open a no-follows, no-cookies Twitter account right now, and see how long it takes you to get something like this on the front page of Twitter. It won't be more than 30 seconds. I have truly never seen anything like it. Perhaps it's old hat for some of you 4Chan types, but it's profoundly shocking to the average person. If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Twitter is an echo chamber that offers direct financial incentives for being the most vociferous hater, the most demented racist, the most extremist politician. That's a thumb on the scales, which kills off any notion that what emerges out of Twitter is the product of open and free discourse.
- kortilla 2y ago
  >If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Cut the melodrama. This isn’t the first time there has been racism on the Internet. MySpace and then Facebook were both loaded with it and 4chan has been there all along. The Internet in the late 2000s was far less filtered than X today. You’re just dealing with coming down from a massive swing to extreme censorship in the 2010s so it seems scary.
  - troad 2y ago
    Bull. You can't lie to me about ordinary Internet in the 2000s, because I was there. For context, this is a sampling of literal front page content from Twitter, on an new account with no cookies or follows, via a VPN, from a day in late August when I ran this little experiment: - A meme of a dark-skinned man saying 'You never wuz been judged by yo skeen cola' and a white man replying 'How are you in college?' - 'The Mirror Test: White Babies Recognize Themselves at 15 Months, Black Children Not Until 6 Years (Science Video)', with the caption: 'I'm guessing this is what a 30 point higher IQ average does' - A still from a Hilter speech, Nazi flag visisble in the background, caption 'the world owes this man an apology' - An image of "Fr. Leonard Feeny" with the quote 'Having a television in your home is like having a Jew in your living room'. - A meme of Sully from Monsters Inc. smiling, with the caption 'Mfs entering heaven when they see Adolf' Again, I want to stress this, this is the Twitter front page. To suggest that Facebook and MySpace were suggesting content anywhere near this revolting to average accounts on Facebook or MySpace is just a lie. They were not. Did racist content exist somewhere in the dark recesses of those websites? Probably. Was it being suggested to the average person within thirty seconds of opening the equivalent to the front page? Absolutely not. Convincing the average American that ordinary moderation of content like the above is 'extreme censorship' is how you get Americans who decide they're actually OK with that.
    - beaglesss 2y ago
      Before Twitter the nazis would go to the town square of Jew filled towns and march. Americans have been dealing with this for ages and found it legally tolerable.
pjc50 2y ago
> And this is from people whose opininions already completely dominate mainstream media and all of public life Which people and which opinions? Be specific here.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  Media literacy in 2024 needs to include being aware of (((dog whistles))).

fourside 2y ago

> whose opininions already completely dominate mainstream media and all of public life How do they completely dominate mainstream media? Twitter is mainstream.

pjc50 2y ago
Even twitter is kind of fringe. Fox News is "mainstream" in the US.

troad 2y ago

There is no site more perfectly suited to turning people off the fundamental democratic value of free speech than Elon Musk's Twitter, circa 2024. The front page is just brazen anti-Semitism and racism at this point. And no, I am not referring to some reasoned debate of the Gaza War or social issues, I mean literal memes with hook-nosed men, their captions explicitly referring to the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. I mean photos of black children with captions about low IQs. It's truly abhorrent. Open a no-follows, no-cookies Twitter account right now, and see how long it takes you to get something like this on the front page of Twitter. It won't be more than 30 seconds. I have truly never seen anything like it. Perhaps it's old hat for some of you 4Chan types, but it's profoundly shocking to the average person. If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Twitter is an echo chamber that offers direct financial incentives for being the most vociferous hater, the most demented racist, the most extremist politician. That's a thumb on the scales, which kills off any notion that what emerges out of Twitter is the product of open and free discourse.

kortilla 2y ago
>If Gen Z or their successors kill the First Amendment, it will be because Elon groomed them to think that this deluge of darkness is what free speech is all about. It is not. Cut the melodrama. This isn’t the first time there has been racism on the Internet. MySpace and then Facebook were both loaded with it and 4chan has been there all along. The Internet in the late 2000s was far less filtered than X today. You’re just dealing with coming down from a massive swing to extreme censorship in the 2010s so it seems scary.
- troad 2y ago
  Bull. You can't lie to me about ordinary Internet in the 2000s, because I was there. For context, this is a sampling of literal front page content from Twitter, on an new account with no cookies or follows, via a VPN, from a day in late August when I ran this little experiment: - A meme of a dark-skinned man saying 'You never wuz been judged by yo skeen cola' and a white man replying 'How are you in college?' - 'The Mirror Test: White Babies Recognize Themselves at 15 Months, Black Children Not Until 6 Years (Science Video)', with the caption: 'I'm guessing this is what a 30 point higher IQ average does' - A still from a Hilter speech, Nazi flag visisble in the background, caption 'the world owes this man an apology' - An image of "Fr. Leonard Feeny" with the quote 'Having a television in your home is like having a Jew in your living room'. - A meme of Sully from Monsters Inc. smiling, with the caption 'Mfs entering heaven when they see Adolf' Again, I want to stress this, this is the Twitter front page. To suggest that Facebook and MySpace were suggesting content anywhere near this revolting to average accounts on Facebook or MySpace is just a lie. They were not. Did racist content exist somewhere in the dark recesses of those websites? Probably. Was it being suggested to the average person within thirty seconds of opening the equivalent to the front page? Absolutely not. Convincing the average American that ordinary moderation of content like the above is 'extreme censorship' is how you get Americans who decide they're actually OK with that.
  - beaglesss 2y ago
    Before Twitter the nazis would go to the town square of Jew filled towns and march. Americans have been dealing with this for ages and found it legally tolerable.

pjc50 2y ago

> And this is from people whose opininions already completely dominate mainstream media and all of public life Which people and which opinions? Be specific here.

NoGravitas 2y ago
Media literacy in 2024 needs to include being aware of (((dog whistles))).