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?

Given the complete meltdown of those who liked to send rape and death threats to women who didn't want to 'choke on their girl dick' and the pro-paedophilia organisations who were previously allowed to operate as they wanted on Twitter...it can only be a good thing.

In my experience of working with developers, the few who listen to users needs and get it right first time become the go-to people and the less competent, less helpful become a pure overhead doing little or no work.
Whether he actually fires those writing fewer lines, making the developers more user-focused is a step in the right direction. His ability to retain those invaluable, influential people who help others to fine-tune or reshape their code but write little or nothing themselves will tell us just how smart he is - or isn't.

It has that's true.

But it used to be that you could modify your feed to mostly stay above or away from that if you wanted. By following (serious) journalists, legal analysts, news outlets and entertainment/humour/cute animal stuff geared toward my sensibilities my feed was generally pretty informative and entertaining. These days it's really taken a dive.

I'm glad that free speech has prevailed and people can now speak openly. Rather than being banned because of the little twitter twats hating the fact that other people have an opinion that doesn't suit their narrative. people have 0 understanding of what freedom of speech actually means.

People seem to think that freedom of speech means you can say what you want, when you want, and nobody has the right to challenge or give consequences because anyone’s opinion is valid irrespective of how hateful or damaging that opinion might be.

If people think that bringing back neo-nazis, racists, homophobes and sacking the entire accessibility team from twitter is a positive message then I can only assume you share the opinion that Jews, gays, other races and the disabled are all worthy of hate.

I think that's true of front-end developers, but less so when it comes to back-end developers.

I was coming at it from the angle that in companies with very large dev teams, the devs with the most system knowledge and experience with the systems that have grown over the years tend to deal with the most difficult problems - that's natural. They might commit 10 lines of code in three days (as opposed to 100 lines a day, which is closer to the average), but those 10 lines will have such a critical effect on the overall performance or stability that they're game-changing and they're the only ones who can find and fix the issue.

Contrast that with the less-experienced-but-still-competent devs, who'll be building semi-boilerplate code that anybody could write with mild modifications to suit the specific requirements, churning out 200+ lines a day, every day.

This is why, after he fired all those devs, he had to beg them to come back.

people have 0 understanding of what freedom of speech actually means.

Well, stating that men can't become women is the type of thing that could get you banned at the height of the Dorsey era, so suggesting that free speech was being respected and people just don't understand what it means is somewhat naive.

Sounds like a troubling concept. It seems like a one-click way of associating opinions you don't share with violence, as a prelude to cancelling or silencing those opinions. Or am I missing something?

There's a difference between expressing an opinion and repeatedly pushing a false narrative that results in people feeling the need to resort to violence -- i.e. a stolen election (plenty of reports out there about non-partisan election workers being subjected to violent threats, stalking, etc.) or a pedophile ring in the basement of a Washington DC pizza parlour.

Cutting costs in a company that is losing millions per day is common sense.
Twitter isn't the only one firing people- Facebook is planning redundancies too and I've not seen anyone as critical about that.
I'm not surprised at all by the revelations because the Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted how Social Media was being used to manipulate us.
Twitter can only be as good as the people who post but there are paid for bots and trolls who make the site the cesspit it is. There will now be a bigger range of terrible posts but if championing free speech is your goal then you need to allow the trash at both ends to voice their opinion.

Elon Musk a hero? Don't make me laugh.

Agree.

If Twitter start taking rape and death threats against gender critical women with some seriousness, rather than allowing that to go unchecked while banning people for saying that a man cannot become a woman, that will be a big improvement.

If Twitter clamp down and get rid of the huge amounts of child sexual abuse content, then that will be a massive improvement. I'm surprised that the critics of Elon Musk seem to be so willing to overlook the cesspit that Twitter was prior to the takeover.

The male violence GC women receive on there appears extreme, going by the screen shots of some of the threats JKR has received - I’m sure that’s the top of the iceberg.

?
Im a critic of Elon Musk and have no illusions that he has improved Twitter. Certainly made it worse. That doesn’t mean it was good to start with.

When people see social media platforms for what they are - ways to monetise interactions, then it makes sense why hate filled content is not clamped down on - because there’s more money to be made from hate and anger. People are less likely to post if they’re happy or not wound up by something. And if there are fewer posts then there are fewer eyeballs to sell to advertise. Newspapers have known that trick for a hundred years!

You could and can tweet racist hate filled shit openly on Twitter.

You just face a consequence if you do = banned. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Although only if it’s reported.

And you can carry on spouting your racist views in the real world as well. Just be prepared for consequences.

It’s interesting that this has been commented on twice now. When people see the word “transphobia” why do they assume I mean gender critical views and the protection of women’s rights? Those are not the same things…

Of course they’re not, you see attacks along those lines often enough though probably why it was posted.

GC women are called that and worse.

On Twitter, they are the same thing. Everything is transphobic. Multiple people have been banned for saying men aren't women.

As someone using the new TRA buzzword of the month "stochastic terrorism" repeatedly, I thought you might have been aware of that.

That's got nothinh to do with the right to freedom of expression and you've just illustrated the PP point perfectly.

That's got nothinh to do with the right to freedom of expression and you've just illustrated the PP point perfectly.

So what has it to do with then? People were prevented from stating biological fact on the platform. Is that okay in your eyes?

Thanks for clarifying @MarshaBradyo was worried for a minute there that words had lost all meaning!

@SantaCarlaCalifornia Stochastic terrorism has actually been a term used for years, often used to describe Al Qaeda and Isis’s use of stirring up hatred and inciting violence online. I wasn’t actually aware that’s it’s now a TRA buzzword as I don’t move in those circles on Twitter, but I apologise if it’s somehow offended you.

Could you explain how he's made Twitter worse? Don't you think if he does attempt to get rid of cse content, rather than turning a blind eye or even refusing to act on complaints, that that on its own would be a massive improvement? What was it from before that you think was better than it is now? Hate filled content was ignored before the takeover.

I hate Twitter and Elon Musk is a bit of a dick, so they both deserve each other IMO.

I find Elon Musk strangely mesmerising. He's clearly not talentless to become as wealthy as he has.

That said, I'm surprised he went through with the Twitter takeover so it will be interesting to see how it pans out. He's no fool so I presume he has a plan. Twitter wasn't the great bastion of public discourse it sold itself as.