Twitter?

[Grandpa Frank]

Any excitement in Japan over the sale of Twitter to a conservative?

 

[thomas]

Oh, is he a conservative? I thought he was just an eccentric nutter with too much cash.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

I'm contacting him about buying JREF , how much do you want? It has to be part of the deal that he keeps you on running it though.

 

[thomas]

I'm contacting him about buying JREF , how much do you want? It has to be part of the deal that he keeps you on running it though.

Wait, need to edit my first post into "eccentric genius".

 

[nice gaijin]

What about Musk makes him a conservative, aside from being rich? He is seemingly friendly with Peter Thiel, but that always struck me more as class solidarity? Being vocally supportive of a notion of "free speech" does not a conservative make, although I can understand why someone would think that way as the actual meaning of words in the constitution are ground into dust and reformed into caricatures of their original intent.

Seems most likely to me that Musk will renege on the most inspiring promises like making the algorithms open-source, and will either realize what a bad idea unmoderated social spaces are and use his new power to cool speech he doesn't like and be forced to continue "censoring" the worst of things, or he'll really try to deliver his libertarian utopia, and everyone will bear witness to Twitter's transformation from public square to 4-alarm dumpster fire filled with bots, nazis and porn. At best, I expect things to only get a little bit worse. I'll be surprised if his interference makes anything better.

But to think the answer to bad moderation is no moderation — a digital wild west where anything goes — is like saying that since FDA guidelines are cumbersome, we should junk them and let anyone who wants to make meds in their garage have a go at it. Then, let the buyer beware.

Which, come to think of it, is also something libertarian asshats believe in.

Maximum unregulated expression actually stifles speech in the long run

If Twitter moves towards no meaningful moderation — save for perhaps banning kiddie porn, which even a douche like Elon Musk would agree is a necessary limitation of "freedom" — America and the world will be the worse for it.

In an environment like that, where the most racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and just plain mean-spirited trolling would be allowed, the loudest and cruelest voices would always win.

Those willing to bully, and allowed to do so in such an unregulated space, would inevitably push out those who have better things to do than being abused for their views or just because of their race, sex, gender identity, sexuality, religion, nationality, or whatever.

The idea that unregulated speech will allow the truth to emerge as good speech pushes back on the bad is a libertarian fantasy.

If that were true, 4chan and 8chan would have eventually become paragons of enlightened discourse rather than permanent playgrounds for anti-social bottom-feeding incels. That didn't happen.

And it wouldn't happen on Twitter.

Source:

I don't have any use for Twitter so this only affects me tangentially, as Twitter shapes public discourse whether you participate directly or not. But I don't feel like this will end well for anyone. And when it goes sour, everyone who is excited for this move will cast about for better-sounding reasons the genius plan failed.

I think the most likely outcome is a quick increase in toxicity as the floodgates reopen. Sequestered in their own safe spaces like Gab, Telegram, Gettr, Truth Social, and so on, the trolls don't get the dopamine hit when they preach to the choir: they thrive only through evoking outrage in others, so echo chambers quickly become boring. Twitter became the de facto space where they could find some libs to trigger; all the interaction and engagement were the metrics that measure success for the plaftorm, so this would seem to be a good thing at first, but would then lead to a decline in Twitter's market share as good faith users move elsewhere. The hostile takeover might not pay off, but that's not the primary motivation...

It seems like a big draw to own Twitter outright is to have sole discretion over whether users like Trump gets reinstated; if he's allowed to return to his throne as king troll, Trump would have much more disruptive power coming into midterms and the 2024 elections. Getting booted off the platform was the only consequence that really mattered to him the past few years, and Musk could leverage his king-making power to get what he's really after (and what he knows Trump would readily provide): carte blanche to do whatever he wants in an unregulated libertarian utopia. This sounds wonderful for the nihilist billionaire, not so much for the rest of us.

And the world continues to burn as we all focus on our petty squabbles and the ego of rich men.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

I've never tried anything but Facebook , so I know very little about Twitter. I do like when big things happen in the news that generate new "memes" which I find entertaining.

 

[thomas]

Elon Musk and the freedom of speech. Interesting thread on Twitter.



I'd be more worried if he acquired Reddit or Quora.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

At first I thought it was to bring Trump back , but Trump says he has no plans to go back.(bet that could change). Then it seems he just wanted to make the left/woke bunch angry. That's a lot of money just to anger people you don't like? It will be interesting to see how all the Twitter employees react and are treated in the future.

 

[Yama Imo]

It will be interesting to see how all the Twitter employees react and are treated in the future

Interesting indeed ... perhaps the first big test for the Twitter employees be their willingness to relocate to Texas.

 

[mdchachi]

I doubt Musk will be very hands on with the company beyond setting policies at the top. It will be interesting if he turns it into a trash heap or evolves it into something better. Regardless, he will still get sued for not being able to keep his mouth shut.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

It seems he wants to expose their evil leftist ways of unfair censorship to the world. Other than that would allow the right wing to say ha ha we told you so , I don't think anyone will care. Be interesting to see where Twitter will be 6 months from now. It strikes me as weird that the maker of electric cars would not be a left leaning liberal to sell more of his product. My guess is another big news story will come along in a day or two and the Twitter story will fade away. I see a story in the making lately about food processing plants all over the US are burning down and the conspiracy theory people are going nuts over it. We had a major potato processing plant burn recently here in Maine.

 

[Yama Imo]

It will be interesting if he turns it into a trash heap or evolves it into something bette

Being one who has a general contempt for large scale social media platforms, I wouldn't put much hope in any improvement. But then I am certainly not a social media expert in that my personal experience with Twitter and Facebook is very limited. A few years ago, I joined both for a few months, finding FB to be overly intrusive and Twitter to be somewhat of a roving food fight.

However, I do think that one can appreciate the innate humor of the situation where a social media company that uses a bird as its logo, provides its users with a regurgitation feature.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

Maybe a new bird will fly in , LOL.

 

[Yama Imo]

In time, the new bird will probably nod to Orwell confirming that "all birds are equal, but some are more equal than others".

 

[salyavin]

Wonder how they will deal with Russian and Chinese spam bots, free speech right?

 

[Grandpa Frank]

 

[bentenmusume]

Just to cite one of my favorite journalists working in my industry: