Lack of moderation is 10x a worse problem for revenue that offending the blue icons.
Moreover, it seems most of the activists don't want to contemplate that bigotry runs in all directions and saying things about 'men' or 'white people' probably should fall under the same auspices ... which is why even as irresponsible and inconsistent as Musk is, he leans a bit more 'loose' than not which is probably preferable than ideological forms of censorship.
I also feel that as a society, we're going to get used to 'foul language' and that it just doesn't have the resonance it might have had.
Someone spreading fake papers saying 'doctors are trying to kill you with vaccines', with a ton of followers, is actually more problematic than some random dirtbag's side-comment.
>How to properly moderate social media to control some of its worst tendencies has been a very visible and very difficult issue for pretty much every social media company for the past 10 years.
Define "worst tendencies", because most people agree that "doxxing" and calls to violence are unacceptable but the left has just labeled all speech that they disagree with as "violence" or "misinformation" and just banned it all. I think musk has a good pulse on the dividing line that is most appropriate and that having the wrong opinion on the definition of a man, who won the last presidential election, and whether or not a vaccine is "safe or effective" have no business being censored by the cretins currently running twitter.
I think people mostly take issue with the hypocrisy of claiming to be a paragon of free speech while censoring all kinds of things because Musk personally dislikes them.
Fair enough. I still think conservatives (and liberals, for different reasons) are vastly overestimating how much Musk will protect free speech. Slurs will obviously still be banned (likely automatically; I don't see why the platform relies on human moderation in those cases). These people are just getting a fast-track ticket to not-allowed-on-Twitter.
Whether Musk is or is not going to implement a fair stance on 'free speech' is still up in the air. He has done several things to level the playing field but also stumbled on the way and will surely stumble more.
Lately (as in over the last few days) a multitude of left leaning accounts have been suspended, most of them due to breaking clear rules on incitement, but others not so clear were lumped in with them. The latest suspension of 'Ye' is also controversial, don't think most people want to see a swastika inside a david's star, but, it doesn't seem he really want to spread any hate, rather the topics is so toxic in society that we all recoil from the slightest mention of the subjects. Do I think 'Ye' is correct? Heck no. But how can we know if we aren't allowed to explore, this is worrisome.
That's exactly I found Elon Musk's and Sam's tweets disappointing. There are very few free speech absolutists who support violence. This is not a case of whether we need moderation or not but rather "was this the right level of moderation". I can't really blame Twitter or even AWS for it.
Posting a swastika alone is not necessarilly a call to violence like posting a confederate flag or ACAB isn't always a call to violence.
It's been more than evident that the drivers Musk's policies on moderation are commercial and personal which is well within his right.
Others are pointing out the hypocrisy of him claiming that his motivations for setting policy have been a dedication to 'free speech absolutism' which is clearly not the case.
If yourself and others the moderation policy on Twitter was too oppressive to right wing views and are happy with this new direction all I can say is good for you. But you and those same other people should come out and expressly say that instead of getting on a high horse over "free speech absolutism" when thats clearly not what you're interested in.
It's not reasonable for someone claiming free speech absolutism & unbiased moderation. You do make a good point by pointing out Musk could have just built his own social media platform instead of crying about the moderation and blowing $44B on Twitter, only to fail to make good on his promise of free speech.
Yeah... I mean, ultimately it's a private company and it can censor its platform how it wants. This means that it is welcome to include more hate speech, which clearly it is doing.
Not arguing that. But I do think it had a better set of standards for this before it came down to the subjective whims of how Musk was feeling on any given day.
Also, no one has ever considered misgendering hate speech in any legitimate conversation. If you have examples of people legitimately getting censored for misgendering someone, I would love to see it...
We've already seen him banning accounts of people who were saying things he didn't agree with so I really don't think we can say he defends freedom of speech. What Musk seems to want to do is make money off of attracting and offering to signal boost what would be otherwise unpopular speech.
That seems too convoluted. Why not just believe Musk: he claims that almost all moderation is censorship. I've got to give him credit if he's bought Twitter to cut moderation. He's put his money where his mouth is, and he's going to pay for everyone else's free speech.
If you read what Musk says now or years ago he actually is very much for moderation, but not censorship or banning people of the platform. In a way Musk is for something similar to HN point system.
The only mentions in my replies about current censorship are about a petty beef between Elon and some Tesla critics and one about Elon not wanting cis used on the platform. I'm not a fan of Elon and I wouldn't have done either of these things, but their impact seems inconsequential compared to the number of people affected by censoring a topic like COVID. Seems more like evidence of a spoiled rich baby used to getting his way behaving exactly like I'd expect him to, which I don't think is nearly as threatening as the previous pattern of elected government officials spanning multiple administrations and parties and an entire department of people at Twitter working together (standing meetings!) to spin a yarn for us plebes. Maybe this is the skew you speak of - I tend to judge things from a utilitarian perspective of how many people are impacted.
His reactions towards criticism (like harassing or banning journalist criticizing Tesla, or that whole fiasco with his submarine) are always well covered too. And while it's not exactly suppressing free speech, that level of pettiness doesn't look too good.
Also, how is this pushing you towards the Musk camp? (The fact that there's such thing, and there is, is troubling on its own)
I'm still highly critical of what Musk is doing (again, without knowing the 'why') but something that seems important and is going unnoticed is that while the previous administration's actions were just as arbitrary and capricious, they almost always related to events that were popular topics of discussion like recent elections, a global pandemic, and other things that are naturally topics of discussion.
I think the current rules are likely just as dumb, but the number of people likely to be suspended for doxxing Elon or posting about Mastodon is undoubtedly a MUCH smaller segment of the population.
It's amusing watching the reactions to it. I've run enough communities in the past to appreciate how many times you have to make decisions that go against your personal ethics for the sake of the community. Everyone draws different lines on the sand on what they consider "free" speech, and anything closely resembling what is protected in America will likely get you into trouble internationally. Elon is finding out that it's hard, and while it may seem like he's setting his lines in untenable spots, it seems just as possible to me that we're all wrong and he isn't.
As if Musk doesn't encourage the vitriol. He's banned antifascists and unbanned right wing trolls, and he's a right wing troll himself. This is what he created, and maybe it makes business sense, polarization and anger generates engagement. But it doesn't make sense to blame the users, thats just what the platform is now.
I've got opinions on the free speech question, but notice how I wasn't making a statement about free speech. I was saying that Musk has made some exceptionally bad business decisions lately and that they're impacting his bottom line. Advertisers are fleeing Twitter because of Musk's erratic behavior.
Moreover, it seems most of the activists don't want to contemplate that bigotry runs in all directions and saying things about 'men' or 'white people' probably should fall under the same auspices ... which is why even as irresponsible and inconsistent as Musk is, he leans a bit more 'loose' than not which is probably preferable than ideological forms of censorship.
I also feel that as a society, we're going to get used to 'foul language' and that it just doesn't have the resonance it might have had.
Someone spreading fake papers saying 'doctors are trying to kill you with vaccines', with a ton of followers, is actually more problematic than some random dirtbag's side-comment.
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