to think Elon Musk is shining direct sunlight on a very grubby state of affairs?

[LondonWolf]

Just staggered at what's coming out tbh. When he first bought Twitter there were several lengthy threads on here lamenting that Twitter would soon move to the Right and be full of hate. Now it appears that no one was bothering to work on child protection, child sexual abuse and exploitation routinely unaddressed, and Twitter employees were working directly with the FBI and government to censor stories some which arguably had direct impacts on how people would vote. Are there any threads on here discussing what's coming out like there were screening about how horrific it was all going to be, because I can't see any?

London I'm convinced it was intentional. A brand of that size doesn't 'make mistakes' like that. The amount of people required to sign off on the minutiae of things is so tedious and grand that an ad basically promoting CSE couldn't have just slipped past.

Agree.

Twitter was a hellsite.

It will still be a hell site under Musk, but one run ti his specifications rather than anyone else's.

Absolutely power corrupting absolutely.

Moonlight maybe, given his requirement that employees must work intensive long hours to retain their jobs, and converting meeting rooms into sleeping facilities.

Leaving individuals aside, this a huge wake up call around the power wielded by large corporations. Like it or not, Twitter is hugely influential in shaping public discourse. What is it isn't allowed to be discussed on there shouldn't come down simply to political opinions of those at the top.

Gender critical voices in Twitter were silenced under the previous regime. That wasn't acceptable. The lack of action taken on child safeguarding was appalling.

We need to make sure that no matter who is in charge, rights to free speech are maintained while criminality is tackled, That seems to require much more robust legals and oversight in place than we have now.

No, don’t be childish. You said it, so back it up. Not twisting your (very few) words at all. I simply asked for the logic behind your point. Why did that rile you up?

While the racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic abuse was “there before”, it wasn’t there in anywhere near the same large numbers that it is now, and it wasn’t emboldened by being amplified, retweeted and supported by its owner as it is now. I guess you missed that in the links above? Easily done in along post, I suppose. As I guess you missed that Musk is now deleting left wing accounts at the behest of a right wing activist? I assume you’re not ok with that either?

If anyone thinks Elon is some sort of white in shining armour needs to have a strong word with themselves

The trouble with some of the answers to the OP is that even questioning the idea that Twitter has gone to the dogs with this take over is being taken as an endorsement of Elon Musk.

I think it is worth talking about what Twitter has been and is becoming without anyone raising the subject being stigmatised.

For example, I live in Mexico, and the Twitter team in Mexico all belonged to a right-wing party who banned prominent members of other parties, so we all greatly enjoyed seeing them get the boot.

I have zero fondness for Musk by the way.

It was open season on threatening violence against ‘terfs’ before and I am pleasantly surprised it no longer seems to be the case- I was expecting it to be more like anything goes under Elon, but to give you one example, a tweet someone reported saying terfs should be thrown into a pit and covered with cement was deleted a few hours after reporting whereas previously there was no use reporting stuff like that because threats against feminist women were apparently fine.

I think Twitter is definitely the right place for the free thinkers on this thread who hate cancel culture and are just asking questions about whether anyone else has noticed how great Musk is. Not sure why this discussion isn’t on New Twitter tbh.

What absolutely blows my mind with this is how much energy they’ve put into reinstating the far right, and digging into how certain voices were silenced when their clear priority should be cracking down on this problem with child sexual exploitation.

While I can see that both need to be tackled, why on earth is all the publicity about “the republicans were silenced” “this account with clear stochastic terrorist was banned and I think that’s unfair” and not “here’s every step we’re taking to remove illegal content from our platform.”

Weird, telling choice.

The free speech angle is interesting, Bill Maher pointed out the contradictions in the "silence is violence, but looting isn't" viewpoint. Hurt feelings are not comparable with physical and sexual violence inflicted on victims on a daily basis.
Musk makes his money by seeing obvious things that the rest of us miss. Like buying up a loss-making newspaper that has vast historical archives, Twitter was more than the advertising platform that others valued it as.
If the corporations shunning Twitter see their sales drop, they'll be back. Otherwise Musk has spent a lot of money to enable folks to communicate for free as he tries to monetise the behind the scenes data - none of those in either the Trump or Biden White House thought that their communications with those running Twitter would ever see the light of day - for that alone, Musk deserves much credit.

Oh you mean the same staff who had been ignoring all the child abuse? Yeah, how will things improve without them…

I am supportive of the idea of Twitter being a politically neutral space were moderation is conducted transparently according to a clearly-defined set of rules that err of the side of allowing rather than banning speech, with no partiality giving to any particular set of views.

It's clear that Twitter was not like that prior to Musk taking over: moderation was not at all transparent and the moderators were clearly partial to some viewpoints over others.

Whether or not things will improve under Musk is less clear. Moderation may well end up being equally as biased, just in a different direction.

It's definitely interesting to see what's been going on behind the scenes. I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes out.

Ah the old tactic of “I don’t want to answer your question so you’re not allowed to talk to me anymore.” 😁

If we’re thinking about how we come across, one might ponder the logic of posting “I’m glad Elon Musk has done this.” not longer after a post detailing the reinstatement of Neo Nazis and antisemitic accounts. It’s of course very possible that you just hadn’t read the thread, which would have been useful to say, instead of snarking and… cancelling me 🤣

Recognising biology and wanting to protect women's rights is not "transphobia".

Couldn't agree less.

The man is an egotistical arsehole who is determined to re-muddy the water with right-wing psychos. The way he argues with people who say anything negative about him is so Trumpish.

I don't believe for a second that Twitter were in cahoots with the FBI etc - I think the exact opposite is the case & that it was utterly riddled with Russian bots peddling paid-for narratives that fuelled fear and hatred. Both the Trump administration and Boris' former aides have admitted that they paid Russian bot factories to smear their opponents in the run up to elections.

Can someone explain what a "stochastic terrorist" is?

Stochastic terrorism is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted”

Like the anti-immigrant rhetoric online and from the government that resulted in the fire bombing of a migrant processing centre.

Like a twitter account posting that a children’s hospital in the US carries out gender affirming surgery on children (it doesn’t) leading to that hospital receiving bomb threats and children’s operations being cancelled.

That kind of thing.

@heronsinflight

It's basically dehumanising an individual or group in a way that incites or promotes violence against them.

Lots of cherry-picking going on here. The thing with Twitter is that it's always been a complete toilet when it comes to discourse no matter the subject or political leaning of the participants, and it always will be.

The only thing he's shone a light on is his total inability when it comes to understanding how tech companies actually work. When you look at his history, he's never actually taken a particularly hands-on role in terms of decision-making, yet that's exactly what's going on with Twitter...and he's screwing it up at every turn. I mean...the very idea of ranking developers by quantity of code written and firing those at the bottom is so hilariously dumb that you have to wonder if he's just read a "How to Business" book from the 1950s.

Twitter won't be any more or less of a sewer under his stewardship, though (assuming it survives) - the proportion of meta navel-gazing might increase, but that's about it. The central problem with Twitter has always been the people who use it, and that's not going to change.

its always been a cesspit.

I don't know. I read the emails and thought they showed a group of people with different values and opinions struggling with how to best moderate content, not always successfully. What I see now is random moderation controlled by one individual with an outsized ego and a real desire for unchecked wealth and power.

I don't think Twitter was particularly well run, but I never saw Dorsey retweet the suggestion that Hitler wasn't so bad or tell me how I should vote. I will also say that Matt Taibbi (a journalist with a seriously chequered past) seems to not understand or at least is not be explaining context very well.

I will say that my twitter feed has certainly changed in a way that's amplified some very troubling voices that neither I nor the people I follow are following or retweeting, so I'd say there's some real manipulation going on at the moment.

All this said, by the way, as someone who owns and loves their Tesla, so I'm not in the Elon is the incarnation of evil camp.