Elon wants free speech for the dumb.

  On 12/12/2022 at 10:35 PM, zazen said:

I have stuck up for musk in the past so feel like I should come and say that he does seem to have lost it.

Burnt out or something.

At least he's being a modern, relatable arsehole? Boomer billionaries like the Koch brothers and Murdoch lurk in the background being arseholes. Pulling the strings of their media empires from behind the scenes. Musk is like just posting his random thoughts straight to twitter.

I can sortof see the sense in what he said he was trying to do - reclaim the middle ground for the 80% who aren't at either the extremes of left and right. the 'Community Notes' thing was a good idea (not his idea, but he did expand it). But he's just being a massive dick about it all.

I miss this Elon Musk (from 2015)

Like when Trump got banned, I was relieved, but also feeling 'eh.... kinda convenient, how exactly did they justify that?' so I can see why examining those decisions might be important.

Maybe if Musk had bought Fox News and Twitter and then pushed them both back towards the middle that might have made more sense. Like if you're going to take the left bias out of Twitter you should also take the right bias out of Fox?

But then trying to balance out left and right reminds me I'm a bit exhausted by USA politics, the ante upped so much that both sides are now constantly screaming 'the other side are mad! they will destroy everything'. Thats what you get with a heavily money oriented two party state I guess? It would be nice if some of that went away.

 

Expand  

this is all quite a reach, brother. 

for starters, there is not evidence that there is a left-bias on twitter. elon certain has provided none. sure, he says there is overwhelming evidence of this, but that's it - he's simply saying it but not demonstrating it. it's the same thing as him saying "technically, 90% percent of the crowd was cheering for me and only 10% was booing." yeah man, i love technicalities. he has one of the best scientific brains here.

if we take the "Twitter Files" (lol) as an attempt to demonstrate such a bias, we come out empty-handed. so far the Files (lol) have been a hodge-podge assortment of anecdotes which do not in any way paint a picture with broad implications. they are almost entirely without context, the "journalists" have not done any real reporting (for example, interviewing the relevant subjects), and often their smoking gun examples are little more than internal emails among twitter staff letting right-wing accounts remain on the platform despite repeated violations. what is more, they ignore essential information about what they are discussing: taibbi refusing to acknowledge the censored links he provided were literally photos of hunter biden's dick stolen from his laptop; an entire The Files (lol) about removing Trump from the platform that does not mention Jan 6 and devolves into anti-muslim bullshit, etc. I mean the whole things is beyond cringe on its face: a billionaire ceo handpicks journalists who he will share certain private information with, they are only allowed to share this information in the form of twitter threads, and there is no transparency whatsoever about this process. This is not an attempt to "balance" anything, it's brute propaganda. indeed, this is way more like the behavior of fox news than the kind of liberal internal politics of twitter before musk bc he actually needs there to be divisive political biases for him to conduct himself in this manner.

additionally, musk is consistently using the platform to spread falsehoods and conspiracies about this and many other things. he's doing the same trumpian thing of just blatantly lying about stuff and slandering people in a completely unaccountable manner. he is (again!) calling someone a pedophile on twitter, in this case in what can only be seen as an openly homophobic manner. and this is after sharing an openly homophobic conspiracy about paul pelosi being attacked by his gay lover. there is not even a semblance of balance to any of this, not a shred of evidence that he's being serious at all. he's acting like a cartoon bully and using his massive money and influence to target "the left" for the same reason people like trump or jd vance or MTG do this - it makes them feel powerful and it puts cash in their hands. he's no more sincere about this than he is about creating a "hyperloop" or any of the other bullshit developments he's always lying about. he knows very well that divisive politics is all america has and he knows that there is never any accountability for using politics to incite people and, importantly, keep them hooked to social media apps. he's not "just posting his random thoughts" he's being a massive asshole by using his billions and increased power over social media to manipulate people and act like a demagogue. 

edit: imo

i’ve been largely ignoring the Twitter Files mess, assuming it was just all bullshit but your description of it makes it sound actually more annoying and shitty than i’d expected.

delete Twitter and quit linking to it everybody, ffs. starve the beast is all you can do.

  On 12/13/2022 at 1:41 PM, xox said:

Yeah beautiful! Let’s find an extreme exception that we can apply to all to justify our own extremism; radicalism 101 = same shit, different packaging 

extreme exception? widespread hate speech and calls for violence are well documented online, I guess you don't care about marginalized communities and the effects this "free" speech has on them

  On 12/13/2022 at 6:02 PM, Alcofribas said:

this is all quite a reach, brother. 

for starters, there is not evidence that there is a left-bias on twitter. elon certain has provided none. sure, he says there is overwhelming evidence of this, but that's it - he's simply saying it but not demonstrating it. it's the same thing as him saying "technically, 90% percent of the crowd was cheering for me and only 10% was booing." yeah man, i love technicalities. he has one of the best scientific brains here.

if we take the "Twitter Files" (lol) as an attempt to demonstrate such a bias, we come out empty-handed. so far the Files (lol) have been a hodge-podge assortment of anecdotes which do not in any way paint a picture with broad implications. they are almost entirely without context, the "journalists" have not done any real reporting (for example, interviewing the relevant subjects), and often their smoking gun examples are little more than internal emails among twitter staff letting right-wing accounts remain on the platform despite repeated violations. what is more, they ignore essential information about what they are discussing: taibbi refusing to acknowledge the censored links he provided were literally photos of hunter biden's dick stolen from his laptop; an entire The Files (lol) about removing Trump from the platform that does not mention Jan 6 and devolves into anti-muslim bullshit, etc. I mean the whole things is beyond cringe on its face: a billionaire ceo handpicks journalists who he will share certain private information with, they are only allowed to share this information in the form of twitter threads, and there is no transparency whatsoever about this process. This is not an attempt to "balance" anything, it's brute propaganda. indeed, this is way more like the behavior of fox news than the kind of liberal internal politics of twitter before musk bc he actually needs there to be divisive political biases for him to conduct himself in this manner.

additionally, musk is consistently using the platform to spread falsehoods and conspiracies about this and many other things. he's doing the same trumpian thing of just blatantly lying about stuff and slandering people in a completely unaccountable manner. he is (again!) calling someone a pedophile on twitter, in this case in what can only be seen as an openly homophobic manner. and this is after sharing an openly homophobic conspiracy about paul pelosi being attacked by his gay lover. there is not even a semblance of balance to any of this, not a shred of evidence that he's being serious at all. he's acting like a cartoon bully and using his massive money and influence to target "the left" for the same reason people like trump or jd vance or MTG do this - it makes them feel powerful and it puts cash in their hands. he's no more sincere about this than he is about creating a "hyperloop" or any of the other bullshit developments he's always lying about. he knows very well that divisive politics is all america has and he knows that there is never any accountability for using politics to incite people and, importantly, keep them hooked to social media apps. he's not "just posting his random thoughts" he's being a massive asshole by using his billions and increased power over social media to manipulate people and act like a demagogue. 

 

edit: imo

Expand  

reality has a well known left wing bias, and musk cant handle that leftist teenagers who love stalin drop harder bangers than his dotard right wing followers

  On 12/13/2022 at 8:21 PM, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

extreme exception? widespread hate speech and calls for violence are well documented online, I guess you don't care about marginalized communities and the effects this "free" speech has on them

Ofc i care but we do have laws against violence and police to handle violence.

Freedom of thought and free speech above all!

  On 12/13/2022 at 8:21 PM, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

reality has a well known left wing bias, and musk cant handle that leftist teenagers who love stalin drop harder bangers than his dotard right wing followers

"stalin bangers" lmao

  On 12/13/2022 at 8:21 PM, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

extreme exception? widespread hate speech and calls for violence are well documented online, I guess you don't care about marginalized communities and the effects this "free" speech has on them

reality has a well known left wing bias, and musk cant handle that leftist teenagers who love stalin drop harder bangers than his dotard right wing followers

 i bet  you like to get spit on during sex.

  On 12/13/2022 at 8:54 PM, xox said:

Ofc i care but we do have laws against violence and police to handle violence.

Freedom of thought and free speech above all!

free speech = hate speech and threats of hate crime going ignored

muskrat is literally such a bad parent his transgender daughter disowned him once she turned 18 and he blamed it on "communists" and said "you win some you lose some" then started ranting on twitter about how he thinks "pronouns suck" what a snowflake

  On 12/13/2022 at 9:19 PM, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

free speech = hate speech and threats of hate crime going ignored

If some actions are against the law then we have the penalty system to deal with that. 
People are free to hate what ever they want, you can’t censor emotions and you can’t censor talk… unless we’re living in a totalitarian society, but I guess youd prefer that instead! 

  On 12/13/2022 at 9:42 PM, xox said:

If some actions are against the law then we have the penalty system to deal with that. 
People are free to hate what ever they want, you can’t censor emotions and you can’t censor talk… unless we’re living in a totalitarian society, but I guess youd prefer that instead! 

yeah, only a "totalitarian" society is capable of censoring those who call for political oppression of vulnerable minority groups.  give me a break with this horseshoe shit

  On 12/13/2022 at 6:02 PM, Alcofribas said:

this is all quite a reach, brother. 

for starters, there is not evidence that there is a left-bias on twitter. elon certain has provided none. sure, he says there is overwhelming evidence of this, but that's it - he's simply saying it but not demonstrating it. it's the same thing as him saying "technically, 90% percent of the crowd was cheering for me and only 10% was booing." yeah man, i love technicalities. he has one of the best scientific brains here.

if we take the "Twitter Files" (lol) as an attempt to demonstrate such a bias, we come out empty-handed. so far the Files (lol) have been a hodge-podge assortment of anecdotes which do not in any way paint a picture with broad implications. they are almost entirely without context, the "journalists" have not done any real reporting (for example, interviewing the relevant subjects), and often their smoking gun examples are little more than internal emails among twitter staff letting right-wing accounts remain on the platform despite repeated violations. what is more, they ignore essential information about what they are discussing: taibbi refusing to acknowledge the censored links he provided were literally photos of hunter biden's dick stolen from his laptop; an entire The Files (lol) about removing Trump from the platform that does not mention Jan 6 and devolves into anti-muslim bullshit, etc. I mean the whole things is beyond cringe on its face: a billionaire ceo handpicks journalists who he will share certain private information with, they are only allowed to share this information in the form of twitter threads, and there is no transparency whatsoever about this process. This is not an attempt to "balance" anything, it's brute propaganda. indeed, this is way more like the behavior of fox news than the kind of liberal internal politics of twitter before musk bc he actually needs there to be divisive political biases for him to conduct himself in this manner.

additionally, musk is consistently using the platform to spread falsehoods and conspiracies about this and many other things. he's doing the same trumpian thing of just blatantly lying about stuff and slandering people in a completely unaccountable manner. he is (again!) calling someone a pedophile on twitter, in this case in what can only be seen as an openly homophobic manner. and this is after sharing an openly homophobic conspiracy about paul pelosi being attacked by his gay lover. there is not even a semblance of balance to any of this, not a shred of evidence that he's being serious at all. he's acting like a cartoon bully and using his massive money and influence to target "the left" for the same reason people like trump or jd vance or MTG do this - it makes them feel powerful and it puts cash in their hands. he's no more sincere about this than he is about creating a "hyperloop" or any of the other bullshit developments he's always lying about. he knows very well that divisive politics is all america has and he knows that there is never any accountability for using politics to incite people and, importantly, keep them hooked to social media apps. he's not "just posting his random thoughts" he's being a massive asshole by using his billions and increased power over social media to manipulate people and act like a demagogue. 

 

edit: imo

Expand  

Thanks. I agree with you that Musk is being an arsehole. And systematically, I didn't really mean 'random thoughts' but that is what I wrote so fair enough on that one.

When I spoke of left bias at Twitter I was thinking more of the general twitter userbase, I imagine it skewing to the left - but perhaps thats just my perception based on the bubble that I am in. But then I suppose my thesis would be that twitter as a corporation also skews to the left (which seems perfectly natural given its from silicon valley, I'd assume the same about reddit) which then reflects in the userbase. So you are addressing that.

I agree that the twitter files seem a bit thin. The original thread by Matt Taibbi I thought was quite good, and he does say that he has talked to twitter executives about it, e.g. this tweet. The overall thesis of the first part is that twitter responsed to takedown requests from both sides but was 'naturally' better at responding to democrats requests. This seems to be to be pretty obvious?

You're right that the examples he actually gives of takedowns from democrats turned out to be dick pics.

But its interesting that when the twitter files were published the narrative from democrats was 'dick pics are not a smoking gun', I saw that sentiment all over the place. Having looked into it a bit more, I see this as a sortof misdirection, because the crux of the original New York Post story was that the laptop contained (apart from dick pics) emails showing that Hunter may have used his influence with his Dad to benefit his ukrainian business. Twitters reason for burying it at the time was that it might be russian psyops. But later on, as far as anyone can tell, it does seem that the laptop info was genuine. Or at least not obviously faked.

So I think there is a story there, at the height of the election, democrat friendly execs at twitter used the fog of war to justify buying a story that looked quite bad for Biden.
I mean the people involved do now say that they made mistakes.

So then the question is were they genuine mistakes, or bias?

I mean if I was in their position, I absolutely would have used whatever wriggle room I had to interpret whatever rules were there to try and stack things against trump. Its all about plausible deniability at that level - if you're not taking advanatage of whatever leeway you've got you'd have to be some sort of angel.

So to me it all seems pretty plausible.

There's so much information warfare going on it just takes ages to unpick this stuff.

e.g. the idea that Elon deleted accounts with that video of him being booed - it seems unlikely given that it was all over twitter that whole day. Snopes had a look at it. (but then I've just been saying I expect people to take advantage of leeway, lol, but in this case it seems too obvious, I dont think Elon would bother).
 

But in summary, yes Elon is being a dick. And being a dick while in a position of great power, which is bad. The way hes treated Yoel is disgusting and dangerous.

"But then I suppose my thesis would be that twitter as a corporation also skews to the left (which seems perfectly natural given its from silicon valley"

god please no

Well I mean the american version of left hermolia. You are proper far left. Democrats are what passes as left in mainstream usa politics.

It boggles my mind that the USA is a country where hardly anyone gets paid vacation or parental leave. Or sick pay. Or guaranteed healthcare, of course.

  On 12/12/2022 at 10:55 PM, Wunderbar said:

Imagine working hard saving up for a long time just so you can buy the cheapest dave chappelle tickets. 

in san francisco nobody who does that is going to a chappelle show. the peeps at that show are all rich, it's just some couldn't afford better seats at the front and got ridiculed accordingly. 

  On 12/13/2022 at 10:06 PM, zazen said:

Thanks. I agree with you that Musk is being an arsehole. And systematically, I didn't really mean 'random thoughts' but that is what I wrote so fair enough on that one.

When I spoke of left bias at Twitter I was thinking more of the general twitter userbase, I imagine it skewing to the left - but perhaps thats just my perception based on the bubble that I am in. But then I suppose my thesis would be that twitter as a corporation also skews to the left (which seems perfectly natural given its from silicon valley, I'd assume the same about reddit) which then reflects in the userbase. So you are addressing that.

I agree that the twitter files seem a bit thin. The original thread by Matt Taibbi I thought was quite good, and he does say that he has talked to twitter executives about it, e.g. this tweet. The overall thesis of the first part is that twitter responsed to takedown requests from both sides but was 'naturally' better at responding to democrats requests. This seems to be to be pretty obvious?

You're right that the examples he actually gives of takedowns from democrats turned out to be dick pics.

But its interesting that when the twitter files were published the narrative from democrats was 'dick pics are not a smoking gun', I saw that sentiment all over the place. Having looked into it a bit more, I see this as a sortof misdirection, because the crux of the original New York Post story was that the laptop contained (apart from dick pics) emails showing that Hunter may have used his influence with his Dad to benefit his ukrainian business. Twitters reason for burying it at the time was that it might be russian psyops. But later on, as far as anyone can tell, it does seem that the laptop info was genuine. Or at least not obviously faked.

So I think there is a story there, at the height of the election, democrat friendly execs at twitter used the fog of war to justify buying a story that looked quite bad for Biden.
I mean the people involved do now say that they made mistakes.

So then the question is were they genuine mistakes, or bias?

I mean if I was in their position, I absolutely would have used whatever wriggle room I had to interpret whatever rules were there to try and stack things against trump. Its all about plausible deniability at that level - if you're not taking advanatage of whatever leeway you've got you'd have to be some sort of angel.

So to me it all seems pretty plausible.

There's so much information warfare going on it just takes ages to unpick this stuff.

e.g. the idea that Elon deleted accounts with that video of him being booed - it seems unlikely given that it was all over twitter that whole day. Snopes had a look at it. (but then I've just been saying I expect people to take advantage of leeway, lol, but in this case it seems too obvious, I dont think Elon would bother).
 

But in summary, yes Elon is being a dick. And being a dick while in a position of great power, which is bad. The way hes treated Yoel is disgusting and dangerous.

Expand  

Thanks for the reply. A few things I’d like to observe. First of all, the notion that Silicon Valley or the MSM is left wing is demonstrably false. Technocrats might lean liberal democrat (idk) but in no way is this a community concerned with basic tenants of leftist politics. 
 

The premise of Taibbi’s and Weissms threads, that twitter is more likely or willing to take down content if asked by dems - this simply isn’t demonstrated. Providing a handful of examples that they sort of did this proves nothing at all. Even with the Biden laptop stuff, they made a call to remove it, then after talking back and forth, they reversed this decision literally the next day. This just doesn’t amount to a bias, because it’s extremely selective data, we don’t have anything like the full picture whatsoever. If we did, I am confident we would see leftist content getting removed constantly, probably even more so than right wing stuff. Bc let’s face it, the right wing is way more popular than the left. 
 

furthermore, to me this is not even a scandal or anything. The idea that corporate executives are making such calls is totally normal and twitter has been very open that they restrict content. If Elon wants to end so-called “secret groups” of executives colluding with journalists to control content on social media, well fuck me he’s doing the exact same thing!

If he and he journalist lackeys are serious, they should be transparent and release the information, not filter highly controlled morsels to boost traction on social media. 

  On 12/13/2022 at 10:14 PM, zazen said:

It boggles my mind that the USA is a country where hardly anyone gets paid vacation or parental leave. Or sick pay. Or guaranteed healthcare, of course.

sidebar here I know...but wanted to slightly correct the hardly anyone part above. at any gig I've had in the US working for a mid/large company, paid vacation is always part of the deal. sick pay as well. it usually has to be accrued based upon time at the company, but it's there. parental leave isn't common for guys here of course, you have to provide proof as to why you need to take off. obviously with women that isn't an issue. but for any small business employee, yeah, I think those things you mentioned above are not a guarantee. healthcare...yeah that's another beast entirely. it is a completely broken system here...IMO it's a massive scam bigger than all the crypto bro shenanigans combined worldwide. 

  On 12/14/2022 at 12:02 AM, zero said:

sidebar here I know...but wanted to slightly correct the hardly anyone part above. at any gig I've had in the US working for a mid/large company, paid vacation is always part of the deal. sick pay as well. it usually has to be accrued based upon time at the company, but it's there. parental leave isn't common for guys here of course, you have to provide proof as to why you need to take off. obviously with women that isn't an issue. but for any small business employee, yeah, I think those things you mentioned above are not a guarantee. healthcare...yeah that's another beast entirely. it is a completely broken system here...IMO it's a massive scam bigger than all the crypto bro shenanigans combined worldwide. 

railroad workers have entered the chat

also re: parental leave, it's a total crapshoot ime. as a worker in my 30s i've seen more than one woman my age leave a job because the company had absolutely no plan for how to take care of them or offer them maternity leave. one of my bosses even told a coworker something like "maybe just don't get knocked up" (which naturally deeply offended my coworker with the ticking biological clock. and the boss was also a woman lolwtf)

calling reddit left leaning is a joke they ban every single communist sub that gets above a certain level, top executives also are "ex" US intelligence agency members

  Quote

How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg

https://www.theverge.com/23506085/wordpress-twitter-tumblr-ceo-matt-mullenweg-elon-musk

  On 12/13/2022 at 11:08 PM, Alcofribas said:

Thanks for the reply. A few things I’d like to observe. First of all, the notion that Silicon Valley or the MSM is left wing is demonstrably false. Technocrats might lean liberal democrat (idk) but in no way is this a community concerned with basic tenants of leftist politics. 
 

The premise of Taibbi’s and Weissms threads, that twitter is more likely or willing to take down content if asked by dems - this simply isn’t demonstrated. Providing a handful of examples that they sort of did this proves nothing at all. Even with the Biden laptop stuff, they made a call to remove it, then after talking back and forth, they reversed this decision literally the next day. This just doesn’t amount to a bias, because it’s extremely selective data, we don’t have anything like the full picture whatsoever. If we did, I am confident we would see leftist content getting removed constantly, probably even more so than right wing stuff. Bc let’s face it, the right wing is way more popular than the left. 
 

furthermore, to me this is not even a scandal or anything. The idea that corporate executives are making such calls is totally normal and twitter has been very open that they restrict content. If Elon wants to end so-called “secret groups” of executives colluding with journalists to control content on social media, well fuck me he’s doing the exact same thing!

If he and he journalist lackeys are serious, they should be transparent and release the information, not filter highly controlled morsels to boost traction on social media. 

Expand  

I agree with all of that

  On 12/14/2022 at 12:02 AM, zero said:

sidebar here I know...but wanted to slightly correct the hardly anyone part above. at any gig I've had in the US working for a mid/large company, paid vacation is always part of the deal. sick pay as well. it usually has to be accrued based upon time at the company, but it's there. parental leave isn't common for guys here of course, you have to provide proof as to why you need to take off. obviously with women that isn't an issue. but for any small business employee, yeah, I think those things you mentioned above are not a guarantee. healthcare...yeah that's another beast entirely. it is a completely broken system here...IMO it's a massive scam bigger than all the crypto bro shenanigans combined worldwide. 

Right, I had misremembered, so it does sortof exist.

US Bureau of Labor statistics: In 2021, more than one–third of private industry workers received 10 to 14 days of paid vacation after one year of service. After 10 years of service, 33 percent of private industry workers received between 15 and 19 days of paid vacation

Wow after 10 years you get 5 more days? lol

In the UK (and I think Europe is the same) its protected by law, Employers have to give 28 days paid holiday per year. From day one. Also, from what I've read, in the USA you have this weird culture where people feel guilty for taking vacation . We dont have that problem in Europe, we're very happy to take time off.

Anyway I know you guys all know that in the USA you're a bit fucked, but I was mentioning this to put context to what I said about twitter and reddit. When I talk about things in the USA being on the 'left' really I mean 'slightly less right'.

The toilet vortex is accelerating...