Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[OttoVonBismarck]

Practically speaking I'm not sure Musk will actually make much difference to Twitter - I don't fully get the garment-rending online. Trump'll get unbanned but I think that's about it. It's not like Twitter did a mass sweep of the Nazis or anti-vaxx they are still very much there (just ask any female journalist).

I also thnk there's a slight contradiction between people who have (rightly) said that Twitter is a private company and can ban whoever they want, who are now considering its takeover by a weird billionaire (as opposed to Jack and the Saudis) a threat to the public sphere.

I still basically lean to the side that it's a private company that I'll use as long as it provides me with the service I want - and I think it probably will. But I don't massively think the stuff around disinformation/misinformation and the impact of social media is correct.

This is probably because you have no fucking clue how Twitter runs or operates. Their health and safety division has been doing massive auto-moderating and suppression of some of the worst crazy racist / vaccine misinformation etc. That does not mean the platform was totally purged of them. If Musk is taken at face value he won't want any of that, and it means Twitter will look like 8chan or Parler. Literally every communications platform to ever exist on the internet that has had fully unbridled moderation looks like 8chan or Parler.

[The Larch]

I've always used Twitter to connect with people of similar interests. I have a soccer list and an Arsenal FC list 
As well as a list containing historians and other academics.   

I will continue to use Twitter as long as these folks continue to as well.

Me too, and I've already seen a couple of messages of people from some of those groups (mostly some classicists) dropping messages of the "well, it's sad to see people leave, if you want to keep in touch please follow me on FB", or something to the like, as well as some big time people saying the ususal "I've lost X thousand followers today, what the hell has happened?". To me this feels overblown at the moment, given that Musk has not yet even formalized the acquisition. Even once he does, it remains to be seen what he'll do in a practical sense. He's quite the blowhard, so from what he says to what he does there can be a huge difference. If it ends up turning into a cesspool, well, then people will leave in droves, and good riddance to it.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

What happens now is going to depend on a few factors:

• How direct a hand Musk takes in the day-to-day operations of the company once the purchase closes
• How many people currently working here end up leaving just because Musk bought us
• What Musk owning the company does to the recruiting pipeline

My knee-jerk is to assume this is going to be bad.  I don't actually know what changes will take place, or how drastic they will be.  I could speculate, but I don't feel that I should.  I will say that I think OvB's fear is a valid worst-case possibility, but also that it's unlikely to happen.  This may well be partly a vanity purchase for Musk, but it still represents a significant fraction of his net worth.  I doubt he threw this cash out, including a major leverage on his Tesla holdings, on a whim.  I think he has ideas on where to take the platform long-term.  Whether they make sense, or will pan out, I don't know.  I hope he's smart enough to modify his ideas based on how the platform actually operates and what it has to deal with.

[Razgovory]

I used to be the same way.  Reality is hell on ideals.

In Sweden the past weeks dozens of police officers have been wounded, firefighters attacked and much material damage has been done by persons completely opposed to an open and democratic society. I still think that banning their propaganda would be extremely poor policy.

We also live in a world where a large but unknown number of people died because they refused a vaccine because they read that Covid was fake.

[Razgovory]

*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.

I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.

 

Oh Lord, please stay in your lane.

Well, That was basically Sweden's response to a real virus.

[FunkMonk]

As long as I can read threads about some dude accidentally releasing hundreds of crickets in his house and his wife almost killing him, or debate whether a dress is gold or black, or see live tweets of rich kids being fed table scraps on some desert island after being conned into attending a fake music festival, Twitter, or a service like it, is something I'll continue to use. I hope the new asshole in charge of it doesn't fucking ruin it.

[The Brain]

*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.

I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.

 

Oh Lord, please stay in your lane.

Do you think that trying to completely close your borders to the virus necessarily leads to a better outcome than vaccinating the population?

[garbon]

I personally think the "it's a private company" argument was always a little strained.  I think social media companies are closer to being privately-held utility companies, which puts some responsibilities on them that purely private companies won't have. 

Yeah I can see an argument for that, but I never felt there was an absolute right to be on Twitter or any other platform. It's challenging though thinking what those responsibilities should look like.

Especially, for example, in the UK where we have the Online Safety Bill which is horrendous and I don't think anyone is happy with it, but creates liability for companies for them to prevent "harmful content" including the idea of "legal but harmful content". If we're going down that route, I feel like a sharper clearer set of rules and regulation by government would be better than making that the responsibility of the company - so they mainly have to enforce, not work out what might be hamrful.

But I have no idea what the answer is to be honest, I think it's incredibly tough.

I feel like it is hard to treat it like any other private company when, for whatever reason, so much of our society has decided to route itself through Twitter.

This morning when looking online (Guardian, a couple gaming sites, thehill, axios, buzzfeed, etc.), I was struck by how many times a twitter post was cited as the source of content for the article. That taken the form as either just a vox populi component to official statements from an organisation or politician. Most annoying was the few times it was hyperlinked text that unknowingly was a like to a series of tweets on the platform.

With so much discourse running through (and being sourced from) Twitter, it certainly bears some scrutiny.

[Sheilbh]

I think there's a decent chance that Trump would've lost to Hillary if it hadn't been for Twitter.

It's possible. I think there was a study and areas with lots of Twitter users were, after all adjustments, was indicative of areas being more likely to vote for Clinton than Trump - which makes sense because Twitter's userbase is younger, college/uni educated and more left-wing than the public. So Twitter exposed those people to Trump, or Cruz or whoever else was running on the right and mobilised them against them.

The issue is I think Twitter is disproportionately popular with journalists, people working in media, think-tankers etc. I think Twitter is like Trump's rallies. In themselves I think the impact is very low. The way they were covered by the media - and I mean mainstream media like CNN, NYT etc, not just Fox - did have an impact. But I think that's a media/journalism issue.

I don't know if it's better now - in a weird way, I think it would probably be good if Trump was normalised a bit and covered like any other politician. But I think going live to a Trump rally for the entire rally is a really bad editorial decision (and not something most candidates would get), similarly allowing a tweet to be the big story of the day. Twitter and the rallies I think allowed Trump to make everything reality TV of fake controversies and a bit of drama - but that only happened because that is how the media covered it.

I feel like it is hard to treat it like any other private company when, for whatever reason, so much of our society has decided to route itself through Twitter.

This morning when looking online (Guardian, a couple gaming sites, thehill, axios, buzzfeed, etc.), I was struck by how many times a twitter post was cited as the source of content for the article. That taken the form as either just a vox populi component to official statements from an organisation or politician. Most annoying was the few times it was hyperlinked text that unknowingly was a like to a series of tweets on the platform.

With so much discourse running through (and being sourced from) Twitter, it certainly bears some scrutiny.

I agree. I think it's difficult though because the more you move from "it's a private company so it can ban who it wants and decide what is acceptable speech", the more you are probably going to move into challenges of who it can ban and why.

It is above all because it is the social media platform of journalists, media, think tanks, politicians that it matters. It isn't that lots of our society have routed themselves through Twitter - but that world has. They are very important for the rest of us.

As you say Twitter is a source for stories - the most annoying to me (which Twitter promotes) is the "a debate is being had about x". It doesn't always but sometimes you'll see that picked up on the BBC and it's basically a few people with collectively a couple of thousand followers arguing about something suddenly transformed into news on the BBC front page.

Twitter interactions themselves are often the story and in part that is understandable - I think it is cheap, I think it's where journalists already are and sometimes it's justified. Twitter has about as many users as Reddit, but because that's not where journalists spend their time we get fewer Reddit based stories.

I think in a way that again goes to a journalism/media issue. I don't think we're there on how the media should treat/report on Twitter.

[crazy canuck]

Back in the time before time things that occupied a lot of minds Was the possibility of control aid media being concentrated in a few owners.  Concerned over that drove regulation which prevented, or at least try to prevent, that sort of concentration from occurring.

The Internet changed all that. I think mainly because government officials and politicians didn't understand what was happening. Not to be too critical, few people did.  And so the Internet was completely and regulated. Unlike all other media.

It may now be too late.

[Tamas]

Back in the time before time things that occupied a lot of minds Was the possibility of control aid media being concentrated in a few owners.  Concerned over that drove regulation which prevented, or at least try to prevent, that sort of concentration from occurring.

The Internet changed all that. I think mainly because government officials and politicians didn't understand what was happening. Not to be too critical, few people did.  And so the Internet was completely and regulated. Unlike all other media.

It may now be too late.

Russia and China have showed great success in regulating the Internet, hope is not lost.

[Tamas]

Isn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

[garbon]

Isn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.

[Tamas]

Isn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.

Of course, but it would be important to identify the correct one and avoid addressing/being obsessed with the wrong one. 

[garbon]

Isn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.

Of course, but it would be important to identify the correct one and avoid addressing/being obsessed with the wrong one. 

If you optimize a platform for the far right out of conviction or other self interests, what's the difference?