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.
Yes, agreed. Right wing internet trolls are full of shit. Your mistake lies in thinking that these are the only people who support Musk.
You're focusing on the absolute worst of the worst, ignoring the millions of people who genuinely support free speech. We're very happy with what has taken place at Twitter.
Actually, I agree with him. Musk has both passively and actively supported hate speech, by weakening their content policies, and also specifically inviting back users who were previously removed for hate speech.
If X was a brand new social network it would be in the same category as Gab and Truth, people are only (still) willing to give it the benefit of the doubt because of its long history, and the volume of users who are still on it from pre-Musk history.
Bans in either direction are only a small percentage of accounts. People with large followings have a large disincentive to leave (have to start over), and new users haven't had long to build followings, so most large accounts are the same ones they were before he bought the company.
Musk is not actually a right-wing figure -- he smokes pot, makes electric cars, isn't religious, etc. But he isn't a left-wing figure either, which confuses people who can't contemplate that the same person could simultaneously e.g. support gay marriage and think peculiar pronouns are silly.
The result is that he's more inclined to ban accounts he doesn't like, but what he doesn't like isn't inherently associated with any particular party. And if you look at the "left-leaning" accounts he's suspended, it's the likes of Aaron Rupar and Taylor Lorenz, who... well, here it is:
I don't really see that pivot. Only the opposite in Musk. What people are complaining about is his hypocrisy: he claimed not to ban anyone except when required by law, but instead it looks like he's banning more people, and more arbitrarily, than Twitter ever did before his takeover.
Sure he has the right to do so, but it makes him a liar and a hypocrite.
This is essentially the opposite of everything he's said about why he's looking to buy Twitter. It's all about him complaining that the "trolls and extremists" are being unfairly censored. He's all but said he wants to reverse Trump's ban.
There's no world in which Musk is going to be anti-trolling. The dude literally started this whole thing BY TROLLING.
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.
Musk bought Twitter with the stated purpose of allowing free speech. If Musk bans some accounts while bringing back others, he's being a giant hypocrite by not allowing all to speak freely.
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.
Well yes, exactly - the last time time someone said Musk had banned an account, it turned out it was because someone pasted the symbol of a group that murdered a few million people on the basis of their race, not because they insulted Musk.
There's no contradiction between desiring free speech in the public sphere - which is what Musk claims he wants - and not wanting to associate yourself with people who support certain speech, which is what Musk has done.
The comment I replied to before is a non sequitur, this doesn't mean what Musk is doing is right, simply that mindlessly upvoting a Trump-rally-tier argument is not conducive to anything good.
Eventually HN will become reddit and we'll just upvote "our side", regardless of whether the argument has merit.
Everyone is free to have their political opinions.
The issue with Musk is that those opinions are being manifested in the product decisions at Twitter e.g. taking a laissez-faire attitude towards hate speech and deliberating promoting controversial accounts in order to drive engagement.
The thing is, there were two kinds of people clamoring for freedom of speech in support of Musk's takeover: those with genuine concerns, and those who were disingenuous and were mad that Twitter wasn't a safe space for people with certain views. Those in the former camp wanted to restore a balance to Twitter, while those in the latter camp preferred to reshape Twitter in their own political image.
Through his actions, Musk has shown himself to be in the latter camp. Those in the former camp should be just as mad about post-Musk Twitter as they were about pre-Musk Twitter. Problem is I don't see many people (here on HN at least) saying "Wow, I thought Musk would fix Twitter but this is not what I expected when he said he supported free speech!" To me, that shows maybe a lot of people were in the latter camp all along, and are pleased things are working out just as they expected.
Impeding unlimited harassment is anti-free-reach. Trolls won't get banned under Musk — they're his soul mates. They will have free rein to brigade the posts of their enemies and will use massive replying at scale as a megaphone to scream others down.
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