6 ms·

Real reason: The Guardian can't handle when readers community note them using.. The Guardian. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1821189070401249385/photo/

Real reason: The Guardian can't handle when readers community note them using.. The Guardian. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1821189070401249385/photo/1 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1821189070401249385/p...

EarlKing 2y ago
This. It's not just The Guardian, though. It's pretty much all moss media. They got too used to an era where they could talk and the public couldn't talk back (or they could but only through letters to the editor which they could conveniently filter to just the voices they wanted to hear).
- ryandrake 2y ago
  To be fair, Social Media is just like the "Letters to the Editor" section, except the social media company is the publisher and is the one doing the filtering.
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    Right, but that's kind of my point: someone else gets to do the filtering and they can't stand it.
- devindotcom 2y ago
  we get lots of direct and unsolicited feedback actually, much more than paper days. a fair amount of it is threats though.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- jasonfarnon 2y ago
  "They got too used to an era where they could talk and the public couldn't talk back" Maybe--a lot of folks made the same point in the mid 2010s when news outlets began shutting down comment sections on their sites. They usually said it was the "toxic" atmosphere. But I imagine they really didn't like when the top comment was pointing out some obvious error (of fact, logic, grammar etc) in their article. I actually remember pointing out an error of fact on the gaurdian itself back--some review had made some ridiculous point because they were confusing the Aramaic and Amharic languages--and seeing the article later updated and my comment removed.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    ArsTechnica always handled this well. They promote corrections in comments so they’re extra visible.
  - nicbou 2y ago
    Comments are user generated content that you host. They require a certain level of moderation just to avoid spam and illegal or deeply unpleasant comments.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    IME the comments almost universally had no value, and were very often toxic. I wouldn't want that on my website - why? What value do they add for anyone? Nobody allows that on their website now - that was before many lessons were learned. HN doesn't allow anything like it (and never has, afaik).
    - incog_nit0 2y ago
      > What value do they add for anyone? Counterpoints are useful to help negate echo chambers where we end up clicking on the articles which validate our world view. In addition the most upvoted comments (at least on the Financial Times website) are sometimes more informed and nuanced than the articles themselves. The article often gets the debate rolling - come for the articles, stay for the comments (so to speak).
      - mmooss 2y ago
        > Counterpoints In the comments section of news websites, it wasn't counterpoints. It was just aggression, lies, toxicity, etc. The Financial Times is pretty rarefied air. Everyone must be subscribed, so no anonymity (I would guesss). How much does a subscription cost? $300+ per year?
        poobear22 2y ago
        i think about $600 a year and the comments are much higher quality.
- tzs 2y ago
  Most mainstream newspapers and magazines publish letters to the editor and guest editorials or opinion pieces from those who disagree with the publication's reporting or editorial opinions. What they filter out is the utter crap that invariably comes to completely dominate any unfiltered comment section that is open to the general public and takes effectively anonymous submissions via the internet.
xnx 2y ago
Twitter could make itself real interesting if it took "community notes" web-wide. So many attempts at this have tried and failed, but Elon may just have the itch, audience, and disposable money to do it. Would also necessitate forking a special browser, since there would be no way to support web page comments in a first-class way in stock mobile browsers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Idk, what Twitter has is much better than this since they are how people find content. Building some special infra and viewer for per-website notes just seems like a downgrade that gets worse and worse the more you try to hash out how exactly it should work.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Discoverability of comments/dissenting views is the key factor. I would bet that most readers of any given article on the Guardian site did not get there from Twitter, and therefore could benefit from a browser that displayed community notes. The details of knowing how to show what comments where are definitely challenging, but certainly worth another attempt with the capable AI techniques that could address previously intractable problems.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  My recollection is that Gab made a plugin for browsers called Dissenter that did something like this, but they were banned from the Mozilla and Chrome stores under their moderation/censorship policies. I’ve never used it but I think it created a discussion on top of any URL. They ended up making a browser fork of Chrome but it probably went nowhere.
anunes 2y ago
Are community notes impartial?
- mlboss 2y ago
  It is open source: https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes
- cringelibs 2y ago
  [dead]
- fwip 2y ago
  Community notes are not impartial, they are written and approved by the users who sign up to do so (and actually take the time to do this unpaid labor). Thus, they tend to reflect the biases of the kind of people who most want to (and have time to) write and approve community notes, drawn from the pool of people who use your site.
  - aeternum 2y ago
    Now do democracy and voting. Or how about serving on a jury. Or serving on a school board. By your definition those also must not be impartial and maybe that is a fair definition but what does it imply? Do you similarly distrust democratic outcomes, jury decisions, etc.?
    - wezdog1 2y ago
      Would you prefer a trial by community notes or by jury.
    - fwip 2y ago
      Jurors do not self-select into jury duty, though some try harder than others to get out of it. So the effect is less. Voters are partial to the candidates they vote for; that's why they vote for them.
      - 2y ago
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
It's difficult to tell because the tweet doesn't link to the original, screenshotting it instead. But the explanation is probably that these are two different meanings of the term "two-tier policing".
- llm_trw 2y ago
  It's exactly the same meaning but with the sign reversed. Turns out identity politics is a terrible idea. Now the Guardian et al are finding out exactly why when the people they disagree with are doing it too.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the other does not?
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      > But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the other does not? Going through the airport between 2001 and 2021 showed that having a Muslim sounding name was going to be a trigger for a random inspection. The Rotherham child rape gangs investigation into the police clearly showed that complaints against South Asians by Whites were ignored for decades to avoid accusations of racism. The average Guardian reader was only going to be exposed to the first and not the second. So the Guardian went full bore with the basest form of tribalism to explain the things its readers saw. Now the same people who were gleefully destroying the social fabric in the name of progress are acting shocked at what happens when it unravels completely. I have the worlds smallest violin for them.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - tim333 2y ago
        >The average Guardian reader was only going to be exposed to the first and not the second Brief googling showed >30 articles in the Guardian on the second.
dools 2y ago
They said that their content can still be shared there. Also that community note just says they have been consistently saying the same thing for decades which sounds okay to me.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  The community note is saying that they have not been consistent. In the past they seemed to be saying it is real and in the post they are calling it a myth.
  - dools 2y ago
    Ah okay. So I searched for the article which is here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/england-riots-two-tier-policing-myth-widespread https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/engl... The myth it is referring to is that there is a two-tiered system targeting white people. That's obviously a myth -- the notes are probably referring to instances where the Guardian has claimed that police treat racial minorities differently which is quite probably the case (happens everywhere else in the old British Empire so not sure why Britain would be any different). I found the post on ex-Twitter: https://x.com/guardian/status/1820788959095529653 https://x.com/guardian/status/1820788959095529653 But that's from 6 August, not 8 August as per the screenshot and there is no community note on it. I can't find a post by the Guardian about this on 8 August, maybe they deleted it? Does seem weird that they would delete one and not the other. It also seems that one would get community noted and not the other (especially since the 6 August post has 1.6m views and the 8 August post screenshotted has 60k views). I tried to find the articles shown in the community note in the screenshot, and I can find some about two-tier policing that don't really seem directly related to this. Maybe I can't find the one that's screenshotted because I don't have an account, maybe they deleted that one but not the 6 August one, maybe the screenshot is fabricated. Either way, I'm quite sure that this "two-tier policing" claim is of the same ilk that equates rejecting racism with being racist; ie. the "leftist bullies" idea. That violent right-wing protests are being "treated differently" because they're white, rather than treated differently because they're a bunch of psychos being whipped into a frenzy by lies spread on ex-Twitter by influencers, including Elon Musk. I wouldn't say that's the same as claims that, for example, black people are more likely to be subject to police brutality. But right-wingers love to make claims about "reverse racism".
jmward01 2y ago
There is power to slow news. Taking time to consider what to say next and how to reply, especially if you are wrong, is very important. That also applies to when you should stop commenting, even if you are wrong. Eventually every story needs to end because the resources needed to constantly follow up on old stories, and comments on them, need to be balanced with keeping up with new things. Basically, I am saying that comments sections, even if they occasionally point out important things, can be detrimental to keeping a higher level, slower paced and more thoughtful approach to journalism.
- briandear 2y ago
  “Journalism” isn’t failing to report a story because of who it might offend. If it happened, it’s valid. Even worse, journalism isn’t telling the opposite story because the real story might offend. That’s the problem with the Guardian. They spend a lot of this time writing defensive stories, while missing the real ones. Didn’t Guardian write a single story about how Kamala Harris got her political start under the patronage of Willie Brown? I don’t recall a single Guardian story critical of anything Kamala Harris did once she became the candidate.
  - class3shock 2y ago
    Some but certainly not as much criticism as was written about Trump. Mentioned negatives include her support for Israel, lackluster interview performance, poor performance in 2020 primaries, and previous stances as a prosecutor. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/rashida-tlaib-decline-endorsement-kamala-harris https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/rashida-tlai... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/kamala-harris-pros-cons-democrats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/kama... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kamala-harris-california-record-election https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kama... Edited to be less opinionated / more factual
    - jmward01 2y ago
      Quantity vs quality. Journalism faces the question of 'how to present in an unbiased way' and the answer often comes out as 'equal coverage' which is, as answers go, terrible. Most of the time one 'side' isn't equal to the other when comparing statistics and doesn't deserved to be covered 'equally'.
dimal 2y ago
A screenshot on X? It must be true! I’m sure those links back up the assertion. No one would just post something misleading on X, right? /s Maybe the assertion in the tweet is true and maybe it isn’t, but to me, this is the real reason that X should be abandoned. No one on X can be trusted to engage in honest discourse. I don’t believe anything, whether it’s coming from the right or the left if it’s posted on X. You might as well have posted something from 4Chan.
- iszomer 2y ago
  And Wikipedia.
  - dimal 2y ago
    Wikipedia isn’t the cesspool that X is, but yeah, it’s not as reliable as many people think it is.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Trust, reliability, bias are things that have a scale. I'm always skeptical of things I read, the advantage Wikipedia has is that it's easy enough to see what references are used and how active community edits and debate on an article is. Nuggets of "information" posted to X, Faceook, and the like are often much harder to dig into and peer behind the curtain of.
dom96 2y ago
I don't think that's true. But if it is, can you blame them? Community notes are not impartial and X has become incredibly biased towards the far right.
- valval 2y ago
  X is pretty moderate to be honest. At least the popular opinions are the same moderates held in the 00s.
  - consteval 2y ago
    I don't think this is true, popular tweeters, including Elon, often spread misinformation that functions as right-wing propaganda. Typically they just quote tweet someone else, add on nothing like "interesting..." or "wow..." and then post it. Of course, they're quote tweeting actual far-right pundits or sometimes neo-nazis. There're some arguments about plausible deniability - I don't know if someone like Elon is aware that some of the people he's quote tweeted are neo-nazis.
MrSkelter 2y ago
This is incorrect. The example you give is perfect. Twitters community notes reflect the received wisdom of a mob. Not the truth. They stand when the Twitter user base thinks they should. As a right wing hub they oppose realities which don’t fit their world view. Using the example you linked there is a long documented history of minorities in the Uk, including the Irish, being treated much more harshly by British police. Stop and search laws and multiple incidents of innocent people being framed for crimes. The rights which to pretend this is targeted at the white majority, simply because multiply convicted criminals like Tommy Robinson are being jailed, is a myth. No British policeman can stop you on the street by psychically intuiting your political views. They can stop you if you are breaking windows, chanting slogans, or have a different skin color. The Guardian publishing real journalism (the paper has broken more significant news stories in recent decades than any other British outlet) into a toilet of right wing opinion doesn’t make sense. As there is no way to rebut a community note the last word is always with the mob.
- nickpp 2y ago
  > Twitters community notes reflect the received wisdom of a mob. Not the truth. Do you have an example of such flawed community notes? The ones I encountered were pretty sane and middle of the road, often correcting Elon himself.
  - ribadeo 2y ago
    Let's flip your script: The Guardian broke the Edward Snowden story. The Guardian supported Assange before it was hip with the "new right" to do so. The Guardian has more rights to the label "populist" than the recent wave of astroturf turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. All i have ever seen on Twitter was posturing and sniping. The fact that many folks consider social media propagation of one-sided polemics posing as news does not persuade me of the value of this sewage flow of emotion and bile. Elon Musk uses his cudgel to attempt to topple the governments of nations. The vast power he wields is due to a purchase: $70 billion or ao, including $13 billion in investments from an opaque fund we now know includes sanctioned oligarchs and Saudi royalty. Using the weaknesses of democracy to destroy the democratic world, and funded by repressive types who want us to worship the raw power of money like royalty, no really; those seeking to return humanity to feudalism! I do not see any positive side to Twitter or Facebook circa 2024. I find it disturbing that those who seek to destroy our society is running it. This is not populism, but merely zombie pawn-ism. Why on earth would you stand up for a spineless man that would never stand up for you?
nswest23 2y ago
that is a screenshot that I can't click on to verify if those community notes at all support what they claim to. this is nonsense.

EarlKing 2y ago

This. It's not just The Guardian, though. It's pretty much all moss media. They got too used to an era where they could talk and the public couldn't talk back (or they could but only through letters to the editor which they could conveniently filter to just the voices they wanted to hear).

ryandrake 2y ago
To be fair, Social Media is just like the "Letters to the Editor" section, except the social media company is the publisher and is the one doing the filtering.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  Right, but that's kind of my point: someone else gets to do the filtering and they can't stand it.
devindotcom 2y ago
we get lots of direct and unsolicited feedback actually, much more than paper days. a fair amount of it is threats though.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jasonfarnon 2y ago
"They got too used to an era where they could talk and the public couldn't talk back" Maybe--a lot of folks made the same point in the mid 2010s when news outlets began shutting down comment sections on their sites. They usually said it was the "toxic" atmosphere. But I imagine they really didn't like when the top comment was pointing out some obvious error (of fact, logic, grammar etc) in their article. I actually remember pointing out an error of fact on the gaurdian itself back--some review had made some ridiculous point because they were confusing the Aramaic and Amharic languages--and seeing the article later updated and my comment removed.
- reaperman 2y ago
  ArsTechnica always handled this well. They promote corrections in comments so they’re extra visible.
- nicbou 2y ago
  Comments are user generated content that you host. They require a certain level of moderation just to avoid spam and illegal or deeply unpleasant comments.
- mmooss 2y ago
  IME the comments almost universally had no value, and were very often toxic. I wouldn't want that on my website - why? What value do they add for anyone? Nobody allows that on their website now - that was before many lessons were learned. HN doesn't allow anything like it (and never has, afaik).
  - incog_nit0 2y ago
    > What value do they add for anyone? Counterpoints are useful to help negate echo chambers where we end up clicking on the articles which validate our world view. In addition the most upvoted comments (at least on the Financial Times website) are sometimes more informed and nuanced than the articles themselves. The article often gets the debate rolling - come for the articles, stay for the comments (so to speak).
    - mmooss 2y ago
      > Counterpoints In the comments section of news websites, it wasn't counterpoints. It was just aggression, lies, toxicity, etc. The Financial Times is pretty rarefied air. Everyone must be subscribed, so no anonymity (I would guesss). How much does a subscription cost? $300+ per year?
      - poobear22 2y ago
        i think about $600 a year and the comments are much higher quality.
tzs 2y ago
Most mainstream newspapers and magazines publish letters to the editor and guest editorials or opinion pieces from those who disagree with the publication's reporting or editorial opinions. What they filter out is the utter crap that invariably comes to completely dominate any unfiltered comment section that is open to the general public and takes effectively anonymous submissions via the internet.

xnx 2y ago

Twitter could make itself real interesting if it took "community notes" web-wide. So many attempts at this have tried and failed, but Elon may just have the itch, audience, and disposable money to do it. Would also necessitate forking a special browser, since there would be no way to support web page comments in a first-class way in stock mobile browsers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hombre_fatal 2y ago
Idk, what Twitter has is much better than this since they are how people find content. Building some special infra and viewer for per-website notes just seems like a downgrade that gets worse and worse the more you try to hash out how exactly it should work.
- xnx 2y ago
  Discoverability of comments/dissenting views is the key factor. I would bet that most readers of any given article on the Guardian site did not get there from Twitter, and therefore could benefit from a browser that displayed community notes. The details of knowing how to show what comments where are definitely challenging, but certainly worth another attempt with the capable AI techniques that could address previously intractable problems.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
My recollection is that Gab made a plugin for browsers called Dissenter that did something like this, but they were banned from the Mozilla and Chrome stores under their moderation/censorship policies. I’ve never used it but I think it created a discussion on top of any URL. They ended up making a browser fork of Chrome but it probably went nowhere.

anunes 2y ago

Are community notes impartial?

mlboss 2y ago
It is open source: https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes
cringelibs 2y ago
[dead]
fwip 2y ago
Community notes are not impartial, they are written and approved by the users who sign up to do so (and actually take the time to do this unpaid labor). Thus, they tend to reflect the biases of the kind of people who most want to (and have time to) write and approve community notes, drawn from the pool of people who use your site.
- aeternum 2y ago
  Now do democracy and voting. Or how about serving on a jury. Or serving on a school board. By your definition those also must not be impartial and maybe that is a fair definition but what does it imply? Do you similarly distrust democratic outcomes, jury decisions, etc.?
  - wezdog1 2y ago
    Would you prefer a trial by community notes or by jury.
  - fwip 2y ago
    Jurors do not self-select into jury duty, though some try harder than others to get out of it. So the effect is less. Voters are partial to the candidates they vote for; that's why they vote for them.
    - 2y ago

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago

It's difficult to tell because the tweet doesn't link to the original, screenshotting it instead. But the explanation is probably that these are two different meanings of the term "two-tier policing".

llm_trw 2y ago
It's exactly the same meaning but with the sign reversed. Turns out identity politics is a terrible idea. Now the Guardian et al are finding out exactly why when the people they disagree with are doing it too.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the other does not?
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    > But uh... isn't it possible that one exists and the other does not? Going through the airport between 2001 and 2021 showed that having a Muslim sounding name was going to be a trigger for a random inspection. The Rotherham child rape gangs investigation into the police clearly showed that complaints against South Asians by Whites were ignored for decades to avoid accusations of racism. The average Guardian reader was only going to be exposed to the first and not the second. So the Guardian went full bore with the basest form of tribalism to explain the things its readers saw. Now the same people who were gleefully destroying the social fabric in the name of progress are acting shocked at what happens when it unravels completely. I have the worlds smallest violin for them.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tim333 2y ago
      >The average Guardian reader was only going to be exposed to the first and not the second Brief googling showed >30 articles in the Guardian on the second.

dools 2y ago

They said that their content can still be shared there. Also that community note just says they have been consistently saying the same thing for decades which sounds okay to me.

ImJamal 2y ago
The community note is saying that they have not been consistent. In the past they seemed to be saying it is real and in the post they are calling it a myth.
- dools 2y ago
  Ah okay. So I searched for the article which is here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/england-riots-two-tier-policing-myth-widespread https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/engl... The myth it is referring to is that there is a two-tiered system targeting white people. That's obviously a myth -- the notes are probably referring to instances where the Guardian has claimed that police treat racial minorities differently which is quite probably the case (happens everywhere else in the old British Empire so not sure why Britain would be any different). I found the post on ex-Twitter: https://x.com/guardian/status/1820788959095529653 https://x.com/guardian/status/1820788959095529653 But that's from 6 August, not 8 August as per the screenshot and there is no community note on it. I can't find a post by the Guardian about this on 8 August, maybe they deleted it? Does seem weird that they would delete one and not the other. It also seems that one would get community noted and not the other (especially since the 6 August post has 1.6m views and the 8 August post screenshotted has 60k views). I tried to find the articles shown in the community note in the screenshot, and I can find some about two-tier policing that don't really seem directly related to this. Maybe I can't find the one that's screenshotted because I don't have an account, maybe they deleted that one but not the 6 August one, maybe the screenshot is fabricated. Either way, I'm quite sure that this "two-tier policing" claim is of the same ilk that equates rejecting racism with being racist; ie. the "leftist bullies" idea. That violent right-wing protests are being "treated differently" because they're white, rather than treated differently because they're a bunch of psychos being whipped into a frenzy by lies spread on ex-Twitter by influencers, including Elon Musk. I wouldn't say that's the same as claims that, for example, black people are more likely to be subject to police brutality. But right-wingers love to make claims about "reverse racism".

jmward01 2y ago

There is power to slow news. Taking time to consider what to say next and how to reply, especially if you are wrong, is very important. That also applies to when you should stop commenting, even if you are wrong. Eventually every story needs to end because the resources needed to constantly follow up on old stories, and comments on them, need to be balanced with keeping up with new things. Basically, I am saying that comments sections, even if they occasionally point out important things, can be detrimental to keeping a higher level, slower paced and more thoughtful approach to journalism.

briandear 2y ago
“Journalism” isn’t failing to report a story because of who it might offend. If it happened, it’s valid. Even worse, journalism isn’t telling the opposite story because the real story might offend. That’s the problem with the Guardian. They spend a lot of this time writing defensive stories, while missing the real ones. Didn’t Guardian write a single story about how Kamala Harris got her political start under the patronage of Willie Brown? I don’t recall a single Guardian story critical of anything Kamala Harris did once she became the candidate.
- class3shock 2y ago
  Some but certainly not as much criticism as was written about Trump. Mentioned negatives include her support for Israel, lackluster interview performance, poor performance in 2020 primaries, and previous stances as a prosecutor. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/rashida-tlaib-decline-endorsement-kamala-harris https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/rashida-tlai... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/kamala-harris-pros-cons-democrats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/kama... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kamala-harris-california-record-election https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kama... Edited to be less opinionated / more factual
  - jmward01 2y ago
    Quantity vs quality. Journalism faces the question of 'how to present in an unbiased way' and the answer often comes out as 'equal coverage' which is, as answers go, terrible. Most of the time one 'side' isn't equal to the other when comparing statistics and doesn't deserved to be covered 'equally'.

dimal 2y ago

A screenshot on X? It must be true! I’m sure those links back up the assertion. No one would just post something misleading on X, right? /s Maybe the assertion in the tweet is true and maybe it isn’t, but to me, this is the real reason that X should be abandoned. No one on X can be trusted to engage in honest discourse. I don’t believe anything, whether it’s coming from the right or the left if it’s posted on X. You might as well have posted something from 4Chan.

iszomer 2y ago
And Wikipedia.
- dimal 2y ago
  Wikipedia isn’t the cesspool that X is, but yeah, it’s not as reliable as many people think it is.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Trust, reliability, bias are things that have a scale. I'm always skeptical of things I read, the advantage Wikipedia has is that it's easy enough to see what references are used and how active community edits and debate on an article is. Nuggets of "information" posted to X, Faceook, and the like are often much harder to dig into and peer behind the curtain of.

dom96 2y ago

I don't think that's true. But if it is, can you blame them? Community notes are not impartial and X has become incredibly biased towards the far right.

valval 2y ago
X is pretty moderate to be honest. At least the popular opinions are the same moderates held in the 00s.
- consteval 2y ago
  I don't think this is true, popular tweeters, including Elon, often spread misinformation that functions as right-wing propaganda. Typically they just quote tweet someone else, add on nothing like "interesting..." or "wow..." and then post it. Of course, they're quote tweeting actual far-right pundits or sometimes neo-nazis. There're some arguments about plausible deniability - I don't know if someone like Elon is aware that some of the people he's quote tweeted are neo-nazis.

MrSkelter 2y ago

This is incorrect. The example you give is perfect. Twitters community notes reflect the received wisdom of a mob. Not the truth. They stand when the Twitter user base thinks they should. As a right wing hub they oppose realities which don’t fit their world view. Using the example you linked there is a long documented history of minorities in the Uk, including the Irish, being treated much more harshly by British police. Stop and search laws and multiple incidents of innocent people being framed for crimes. The rights which to pretend this is targeted at the white majority, simply because multiply convicted criminals like Tommy Robinson are being jailed, is a myth. No British policeman can stop you on the street by psychically intuiting your political views. They can stop you if you are breaking windows, chanting slogans, or have a different skin color. The Guardian publishing real journalism (the paper has broken more significant news stories in recent decades than any other British outlet) into a toilet of right wing opinion doesn’t make sense. As there is no way to rebut a community note the last word is always with the mob.

nickpp 2y ago
> Twitters community notes reflect the received wisdom of a mob. Not the truth. Do you have an example of such flawed community notes? The ones I encountered were pretty sane and middle of the road, often correcting Elon himself.
- ribadeo 2y ago
  Let's flip your script: The Guardian broke the Edward Snowden story. The Guardian supported Assange before it was hip with the "new right" to do so. The Guardian has more rights to the label "populist" than the recent wave of astroturf turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. All i have ever seen on Twitter was posturing and sniping. The fact that many folks consider social media propagation of one-sided polemics posing as news does not persuade me of the value of this sewage flow of emotion and bile. Elon Musk uses his cudgel to attempt to topple the governments of nations. The vast power he wields is due to a purchase: $70 billion or ao, including $13 billion in investments from an opaque fund we now know includes sanctioned oligarchs and Saudi royalty. Using the weaknesses of democracy to destroy the democratic world, and funded by repressive types who want us to worship the raw power of money like royalty, no really; those seeking to return humanity to feudalism! I do not see any positive side to Twitter or Facebook circa 2024. I find it disturbing that those who seek to destroy our society is running it. This is not populism, but merely zombie pawn-ism. Why on earth would you stand up for a spineless man that would never stand up for you?

nswest23 2y ago

that is a screenshot that I can't click on to verify if those community notes at all support what they claim to. this is nonsense.