[Brazelton] Twitter

Dave

Staff member
Twitter was necessary and worthwhile during certain historical events like the Arab Spring. But since?
 
I barely have any social media presence (other than here).
Yet now, half of it is no longer relevant.

--Patrick
 
But tumblr was a porn site that banned porn. I can not think of what Elon could plausibly do that is that obviously dumb.
 
I wonder how long until we get "Twitter, but by someone else who actually understands what moderation is" from someone. It sure as hell isn't Mastadon.
 
Nothing is going to change right away. Musk's promised changes are:



He also proposes a longer tweet limit, I think.

And some of those will take months or years to code, test, and implement. Will any of them make Twitter worse? I'm hard pressed to believe your heuristic of "Musk bad so Twitter will get worse" is truly predictive of anything. I say all this as an extremely casual user of Twitter with no stake in the game.
 
My major complaint is that he has implied that he would reinstate people who have been kicked off Twitter for good reason. Spreading misinformation, threatening language, and hate speech should not be supported. I get the rest of his proposals seems fine, but letting garbage people continue to spew their garbage is a big problem.
 
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We'll see. That fourth point is the big one, isn't it? Unbanning Trump and very clearly and loudly announcing anything goes, feel free to say Biden stole the election, Putin is great, Harris is an evil secret Muslim communist pedo, you won't get reprimanded, it's all cool, would have a very immediate and important impact on the tone of the conversation and on further eroding what is considered acceptable behavior and speech.

Sure, blocking spambots would be great and edit buttons or color scheme changes won't make a big difference.
 
Nothing is going to change right away. Musk's promised changes are:



He also proposes a longer tweet limit, I think.

And some of those will take months or years to code, test, and implement. Will any of them make Twitter worse? I'm hard pressed to believe your heuristic of "Musk bad so Twitter will get worse" is truly predictive of anything. I say all this as an extremely casual user of Twitter with no stake in the game.
The problem is, of course, that last part. When Musk or Trump or any of these rich assholes talk about free speech, what they mean is they want to be free to spread lies that benefit them without oversight
 
How the fuck is "authenticate all humans" a good thing?
On the one hand, it ensures that each account will be traceable back to a verified individual who is a real human being.
On the other hand, it ensures that each account will be traceable back to a verified individual who is a real human being.

--Patrick
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Nothing is going to change right away. Musk's promised changes are:



He also proposes a longer tweet limit, I think.

And some of those will take months or years to code, test, and implement. Will any of them make Twitter worse? I'm hard pressed to believe your heuristic of "Musk bad so Twitter will get worse" is truly predictive of anything. I say all this as an extremely casual user of Twitter with no stake in the game.
Open source algorithms would just mean that people could look at the code to know exactly how to game the system.

Reducing moderation to the bare minimum of what is blatantly illegal is going to result in making Twitter even more of a cesspool than it already is. All sorts of harassment and misinformation are technically legal, but wholly undesirable on any online platform. There's going to be so much trouble if Musk actually insists on allowing such Free Dumbs.

Twitter is a major source of disinformation, and it doesn't just stay on Twitter. "I'm just a casual user of Twitter, it doesn't matter to me how bad it gets" is like people who say "Well, I don't have any kids, so it doesn't matter to me if public schools suck" or "I don't take any road trips, so the interstate highway system doesn't impact my life."

Most likely Musk will get bored and move on before making Twitter drastically worse than it is now, but if he doesn't then things could get really bad for the internet, and society as a whole.
 
Twitter has 300 million active users. The only reason it gets such outsize coverage is its popularity with politicians. I really don't think Twitter affects society as much as people think. I think Facebook is far more potent in influencing people, due to its literal billion of international users.

Since I left Twitter, I almost only ever see it when it's screenshots, outside of when I had to tweet occasionally for my job.
 
At the risk of making this thread move into the political subforum, here's what "I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law" could potentially mean:
I mean, it would technically not be censorship, right? You would still be allowed to post anything you want (within the existing law(s)), and appending your IP address and location to each post wouldn't interfere with your ability to post at all, right?

--Patrick
 
At the risk of making this thread move into the political subforum, here's what "I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law" could potentially mean:
I mean, it would technically not be censorship, right? You would still be allowed to post anything you want (within the existing law(s)), and appending your IP address and location to each post wouldn't interfere with your ability to post at all, right?

--Patrick
Elon is big into the scam of "web 3.0" which is all about making everything identifiable and traceable so that it can more easily be sold to you
 
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