Elon Musk / Twitter

[Circumferences]

I'm just musing really, seeing as it's looking like Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter, whether this is good news for people with opinions like those on this board, or if it won't make any difference.

EM has strong "free speech" principles so he claims, but is currently based in the extremely problematic (from a GC pov) California. I understand he's moving the company or the factory anyway to Texas because workers rights barely exist there, but HQ would still be in California.

He'll probably keep all the same HQ staff on too, who are openly misogynistic and pro-paedo, who ban us for stating black isn't white and keep violent rape and death threats against us up because "they don't break talk guidelines"...

Anyone know what Elon Musk thinks of GC feminism?

The Mail has a very long article on this. Including strops, Twitter staff blocked from making changes, shadow bans, suppression of stories by Twitter (Hunter Biden's laptop and the Wuhan lab leak theory for example) and Musk keen on ridding the platform of bots:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10754055/Elon-Musks-Twitter-revolution-Rebellious-staff-claim-new-boss-dangerous-democracy.html

Musk is GC, he publicly argued with Grimes over posting 'pronouns suck'. And I'm sure her relationship with Manning hasn't helped that.

However I'm a little more cynical over what his intentions are. After all making money is what he is very good at. I think its a data grab, making sure everyone on the site is a real person so all that amazing data on what people are really interested in can be monetised. Like facebook, but anon so people express their views unfettered. There must be huge potential in it which has not been tapped yet.

It's looking interesting at the very least!
I think the wokerati and all their dramatics over it is hilarious.

Does anyone know the difference between disinformation and misinformation?

Swayingpalmtrees

Verification would be good but given the thuggish cancel culture mentality especially around gender criticism one should be able to use a pseudonym

I think he's a bit of a knob, and there have been concerning issues about his factory conditions in China recently, but Jameela Jamil has said she's going to give up tweeting now, so silver linings and all that.

Hopefully people like Graham Linehan and Meghan Murphy will be replatformed. Also hope that Twitter doesn't turn into another Reddit, where there's a Wild West of misogyny and porn culture but anyone who points out a man's a man gets banned. Perhaps Elon should recruit his moderation strategists on this board.

Hopefully people like Graham Linehan and Meghan Murphy will be replatformed. Also hope that Twitter doesn't turn into another Reddit, where there's a Wild West of misogyny and porn culture but anyone who points out a man's a man gets banned. Perhaps Elon should recruit his moderation strategists on this board.

This is my principal fear, too. Reddit is unbearable, and Twitter could easily follow suit. Or not. No way to predict what Musk might do, but it really is sad that a small number of men now own most of social media.

Actually, it's true in many areas of life that capitalism of the wrong kind is taking over. Amazon is a behemoth, swallowing up all small book stores etc. The small group of super-rich people now have enormous power in most countries and there are few countervailing powers.

I agree nepeta, it makes me think of the saying that people get the government they deserve. I used to find it a meaningless or at least a frustrating saying in a flawed FPTP voting system. However all the power of Amazon, Google, Facebook/Meta, other social media and mega corporations was given to them by the people. Every time we use their services or make a purchase from them we enrich them with our data and/or our money. We give them power through the attention we bestow on them too. Every time we check in on them throughout the day they grow. Many of them will have more wealth and power in the world than some nation states. We, the people, made them what they are, it is on us.

Apparently EM supported Babylon Bee (Christian right wing satire website) when they put this on twitter (in reaction to Rachel levine who is a trans women being nominated for woman of the year)

babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year-is-rachel-levine

BB refused to back down and apologise and EM went on their podcast where Bb editor asked EM whether he'd buy twitter... Eh voila...

So I'm cautiously optimistic about the effect on twitter!

The issue that every site is is finding the line between free speech and hate speech / cyber bullying / censorship when content is deemed harmful and those boundaries tend to be drawn by political position. Moderation is a difficult job and no social media platform has mastered a balanced approach yet allows free speech but limits harm. The issue is ensuring that speech that is offensive is not immediately deemed harmful. And accepting that free speech still has consequences - people don't have to like what you say and can act accordingly. Take the Family Sex Show - they have a right to free speech to say what they want - and people found it acceptable, offensive, or harmful depending on their viewpoint. People responded and the show has been temporarily cancelled. That is how free speech works.

"I do think that direct threats of violence which are against the law if they are said in person should be removed from social media."

I think they're illegal in print on in any other form.

The meltdown continues:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10756831/Elon-Musk-slams-Twitters-lawyer-sobbed-bought-social-media-network.html

Not sure how a charge of "misogyny" stacks up in this particular case.

I am feeling very encouraged, the outrage seems to be coming from the woke brigade so I am assuming this is a great moment for those of us that champion free speech. I am wary about the child abuse etc - so until we know where he stands on that, I will sit on the fence (and enjoy the handbags at dawn reaction)

"And I am for the removal of threats, child abuse, violence promoting content, most the worst examples of abusive language (including blatantly racist, homophobic and transphobic language).

I’m also pro free speech, which means I don’t believe in policing ‘disinformation’ or ‘hate speech’ (unless clearly in the above categories) on a public platform."

Sending mixed messages here. Child abuse and threats are in their own category of illegality but being racist, transphobic and homophobic most definitely come under the umbrella of free speech, especially when people use accusations of all those to silence others unjustly.

To be fair I think a lot of companies would take a dim view of their staff publicly slagging off their products.

This is what I'm worried about. I have good reasons for remaining anonymous.

I'll be interested to see how many feminists are allowed back now. Venice Allan seems to be tweeting again. There's a list here of women banned from Twitter for expressing feminist views - let's see how many return: grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/silence-woman?r=992jq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy&s=r

I'm surprised at the Twitter employees slagging off their new boss. It seems very self defeating. I suspect a lot of Twitter mods will leave if they can no longer push their views and ban people for wrong think anyway.
I'm on Twitter a bit but find it hard to get overly worked up about this. You can't have proper discussions on it anyway. It's mainly broadcasting your views.
I hope it will be less misogynistic than before. Less policing of speech that isn't actually threatening harm to anyone is a good thing.

I wouldn't mind having to verify my ID in principle, I just don't trust Twitter with that info.

Interesting to see he stopped Twitter techs being able to make changes. I've long suspected thats been a problem (and I've had similar issues with Gmail as well.)

The over-reaction from the left/progressives, in the absence of knowing how things are going to change, has been really very interesting. Imagine how things would be if they were in charge of things? How they would use their power. How they would make things very unpleasant for dissenters.

Also, interesting has been to watch the #bekind crowd queuing up to say how much they hate Elon Musk. (I think he's a dick but some of his achievements are very impressive.)

Barry Sheerman (Labour) says the ‘forces of darkness are on the rampage’ because Elon Musk is buying Twitter and the government wants to sell C4.

I suspect a lot of those employees are too young to have gone through a bust in the IT/Tech industry, so they have no financial survival instincts that are telling them to keep quiet and keep their head down.

After all, the last tech/IT crash was twenty years ago, so you have to be at least over 40 to have experienced it. And the financial crash was fourteen years ago now, so you'd need to be over your mid-30s to have lived through that as an adult.

I lived through both of them, and crikey did they change my work attitudes. Not being able to pay the rent or bills really focuses the mind.

Robin Sloan has an interesting piece about Twitter (anticipates that people will quit it because it has substantial problems and has maxed out its utility and is headed for "an overdue MySpace—ification). I liked this observation:

An industrialist might soon purchase Twitter…His substantial success launching reusable spaceships does nothing to prepared him for the challenge of building social spaces. The latter calls on every liberal art at once, while the former is just rocket science.

"Libertarians like Musk always think spaces like the internet will naturally self-regulate, but all that happens is that the loudest and most aggressive voices dominate."

Nice bit of sexism there. I know plenty of loud and aggressive women, especially online and lots of quiet and meek men.

The real problem with Twitter is simply being banned for having fairly mainstream opinions.