4 ms·

Not to defend Musk but it's not like "X" was a bastion of neutrality and even-handedness before he took over (the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story b

Not to defend Musk but it's not like "X" was a bastion of neutrality and even-handedness before he took over (the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story being one prominent example.) Nor are the platforms Musk doesn't own yet. Does the author of this piece take a principled stand against censorship and bias? Or is he just upset that the censorship and bias isn't going in his preferred direction?

trollied 1y ago
HN certainly leans one way. X has gone more central. BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow.
- selectodude 1y ago
  If twitter is “central”, what on gods earth do you consider “right of center”?
  - dpedu 1y ago
    4chan or any of the chans, or the site the /r/the_donald folks moved to after reddit banned it? Or Voat, but that's gone now?
  - rayiner 1y ago
    X users say that the content they see is roughly equally likely to be liberal or conservative: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/06/12/how-x-users-view-experience-the-platform/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/06/12/how-x-users-... (look at the chart: Political content users see on X)
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      This was last June. As of March 2024 Musk was still saying he wouldn't donate to either candidate. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-wont-donate-either-us-presidential-candidate-2024-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-wont-donate-ei... and it wasn't until July that Elon made himself a liar and endorsed/funded Trump. Not sure how relevant your link is in light of Elon effectively going back on everything he said/committed to previously and buying the Presidency.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 1y ago
  > BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow. It would be nice if this were true, but I did an experiment where I created a new account on a VM with a new IP not previously connected to me and it almost immediately started serving me right wing slop regardless of who I followed. It seems obvious to me from this anecdote that it’s not as simple as following or unfollowing.
  - trollied 1y ago
    Really? Crikey. I am happy to be wrong.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    My exact experience. I spent months trimming my follow list down from hundreds to about 25 very carefully selected people and blocking and muting words and accounts, all trying to make my feed about the people I followed instead of what ever the so-called influencers and Musk toadies were peddling. It didn't help much so I created a brand new account from an email address on a different domain using a different web browser on a different machine and the content was no different except that new account also got and about a dozen Tesla sycophants occupying every 4th or 5th post in the feed. So, new accounts get all the same garbage as old accounts with the added benefit of a bunch of Tesla simp pseudo-ads.
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  That's what my liberal friends told me from 2017 to approximately the day Musk bought Twitter: "They're private companies, bro, they can do what they want. Just don't use them if you don't like it." They never said that before 2017, and they've stopped saying it now. Welcome back to the "censorship is bad" side, I guess; just don't tell me it was ever about a principle.
  - arrowsmith 1y ago
    Exactly.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    The difference is that "liberals" never even attempted to censor conservatives. Rather, what happens is that conservatives pretty much can't articulate their views without employing slurs. And, well, that gets you censored. The reality is that if I talk like Kamala at work then nobody gives a flying fuck. If I talk like Trump, I'm going straight to HR. It's not that conservative voices are incapable of being rational or are being purposefully targeted or anything. It's that American conservatives are far-right populists so of course their messaging follows that notion. They appeal to emotion, they berate, they gloom and doom, and they have very Nazi-like rhetoric just by their nature. That's how populist messaging works - it wouldn't be populism if you weren't trying to convince people that monsters are coming to eat their babies or something. Point being, yes conservatives are obviously targeted more by censorship. It can be very easily avoided by not lying, not saying slurs, not calling for the decimation of peoples, etc. Our own President cannot meet that standard. So, predictably, outrage populists on places like Twitter certainly cannot. It seems to be that conservatives have no voice of reason, no person to look up to.
miltonlost 1y ago
If your complaint is that the right-wing lies of the laptop story weren’t amplified, then you desire propaganda to be spread. We should, as a society, want to stop liars from lying.
- dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  I thought the entire story was suppressed at the request of a government agency, not just specific opinions about it.
  - bikezen 1y ago
    Unconsensually shared graphic images of Hunter Biden were removed, there were lots of people covering the laptop story, mostly about how it was a non-story when looking at the actual chain of custody and its contents.
- jsbg 1y ago
  > We should, as a society, want to stop liars from lying. Does that include the lie that the story was "Russian propaganda"?
dec0dedab0de 1y ago
People don't want neutrality and even-handedness. They used to think that they did, but at some point in my lifetime they stopped lying to themselves.
xp84 1y ago
Idk about the author but I don’t even think it’s a problem. It’s just Elon Musk’s website. It is as important as readers of it want it to be. As someone else said, expecting real social interaction or authenticity on a for-profit website is folly. Of course at best it’ll be optimized for clickbait/rage bait etc, and in practice probably that plus the pure bias of whoever controls it. If people want to post their ideas on the internet, they can do so on their own websites for nearly nothing. Getting someone to listen to you? That’s much more expensive… everyone who’s been used to getting that free from social media should consider that it used to be much harder to get attention for one’s ideas, which used to be assumed to be uninteresting by default.
jsbg 1y ago
> Does the author of this piece take a principled stand against censorship and bias? Or is he just upset that the censorship and bias isn't going in his preferred direction? Right. Did everyone forget about the twitter files already?

trollied 1y ago

HN certainly leans one way. X has gone more central. BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow.

selectodude 1y ago
If twitter is “central”, what on gods earth do you consider “right of center”?
- dpedu 1y ago
  4chan or any of the chans, or the site the /r/the_donald folks moved to after reddit banned it? Or Voat, but that's gone now?
- rayiner 1y ago
  X users say that the content they see is roughly equally likely to be liberal or conservative: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/06/12/how-x-users-view-experience-the-platform/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/06/12/how-x-users-... (look at the chart: Political content users see on X)
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    This was last June. As of March 2024 Musk was still saying he wouldn't donate to either candidate. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-wont-donate-either-us-presidential-candidate-2024-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-wont-donate-ei... and it wasn't until July that Elon made himself a liar and endorsed/funded Trump. Not sure how relevant your link is in light of Elon effectively going back on everything he said/committed to previously and buying the Presidency.
MOARDONGZPLZ 1y ago
> BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow. It would be nice if this were true, but I did an experiment where I created a new account on a VM with a new IP not previously connected to me and it almost immediately started serving me right wing slop regardless of who I followed. It seems obvious to me from this anecdote that it’s not as simple as following or unfollowing.
- trollied 1y ago
  Really? Crikey. I am happy to be wrong.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  My exact experience. I spent months trimming my follow list down from hundreds to about 25 very carefully selected people and blocking and muting words and accounts, all trying to make my feed about the people I followed instead of what ever the so-called influencers and Musk toadies were peddling. It didn't help much so I created a brand new account from an email address on a different domain using a different web browser on a different machine and the content was no different except that new account also got and about a dozen Tesla sycophants occupying every 4th or 5th post in the feed. So, new accounts get all the same garbage as old accounts with the added benefit of a bunch of Tesla simp pseudo-ads.
aaronbaugher 1y ago
That's what my liberal friends told me from 2017 to approximately the day Musk bought Twitter: "They're private companies, bro, they can do what they want. Just don't use them if you don't like it." They never said that before 2017, and they've stopped saying it now. Welcome back to the "censorship is bad" side, I guess; just don't tell me it was ever about a principle.
- arrowsmith 1y ago
  Exactly.
- const_cast 1y ago
  The difference is that "liberals" never even attempted to censor conservatives. Rather, what happens is that conservatives pretty much can't articulate their views without employing slurs. And, well, that gets you censored. The reality is that if I talk like Kamala at work then nobody gives a flying fuck. If I talk like Trump, I'm going straight to HR. It's not that conservative voices are incapable of being rational or are being purposefully targeted or anything. It's that American conservatives are far-right populists so of course their messaging follows that notion. They appeal to emotion, they berate, they gloom and doom, and they have very Nazi-like rhetoric just by their nature. That's how populist messaging works - it wouldn't be populism if you weren't trying to convince people that monsters are coming to eat their babies or something. Point being, yes conservatives are obviously targeted more by censorship. It can be very easily avoided by not lying, not saying slurs, not calling for the decimation of peoples, etc. Our own President cannot meet that standard. So, predictably, outrage populists on places like Twitter certainly cannot. It seems to be that conservatives have no voice of reason, no person to look up to.

miltonlost 1y ago

If your complaint is that the right-wing lies of the laptop story weren’t amplified, then you desire propaganda to be spread. We should, as a society, want to stop liars from lying.

dec0dedab0de 1y ago
I thought the entire story was suppressed at the request of a government agency, not just specific opinions about it.
- bikezen 1y ago
  Unconsensually shared graphic images of Hunter Biden were removed, there were lots of people covering the laptop story, mostly about how it was a non-story when looking at the actual chain of custody and its contents.
jsbg 1y ago
> We should, as a society, want to stop liars from lying. Does that include the lie that the story was "Russian propaganda"?

dec0dedab0de 1y ago

People don't want neutrality and even-handedness. They used to think that they did, but at some point in my lifetime they stopped lying to themselves.

xp84 1y ago

Idk about the author but I don’t even think it’s a problem. It’s just Elon Musk’s website. It is as important as readers of it want it to be. As someone else said, expecting real social interaction or authenticity on a for-profit website is folly. Of course at best it’ll be optimized for clickbait/rage bait etc, and in practice probably that plus the pure bias of whoever controls it. If people want to post their ideas on the internet, they can do so on their own websites for nearly nothing. Getting someone to listen to you? That’s much more expensive… everyone who’s been used to getting that free from social media should consider that it used to be much harder to get attention for one’s ideas, which used to be assumed to be uninteresting by default.

jsbg 1y ago

> Does the author of this piece take a principled stand against censorship and bias? Or is he just upset that the censorship and bias isn't going in his preferred direction? Right. Did everyone forget about the twitter files already?