I think people are really over-analyzing this move. I think it's motivated by prestige, not money, nor is free speech the heart of the matter.
Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating as Twitter fails to appeal to "normies" in a way Facebook and other networks can.
A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
It doesn't take much. People have been begging for an edit button for a decade. If he'd get only that feature implemented, it will be remembered forever.
Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers.
Twitter does what it does and people like it (as seen by the fact that they all use it), yet armchair generals cry out that twitter's refusal to turn into "not twitter" is somehow a failure of engineering and management, or some form of incompetence.
While I agree with you, at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? I don't think there's anything wrong with being a stable, profitable company, but logically it should also come with a whole lot of layoffs.
> at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff?
...to keep the app running? New devices, new standards, a lot of things change that you need devs to keep up with.
Also, what's up with people saying twitter is stagnant? They've added Spaces, Twitter Blue and Crypto Profile Pictures - all 3 massive features added to their product. They're all trash, but that's besides the point.
FWIW, I have a close friend who worked on Twitter's "Health" team whose job at one point was building mini games for the support/moderation staff to play during company mandated breaks in between looking at racist tweets and CP. He coasted for a while then moved onto a job with more work.
This is entirely anecdotal, but from the little I know from his couple months there, Twitter has no idea what to do with the huge amount of engineers they employ. This is by no means an endorsement of Musk, but the company could use some new direction I think.
That seems like an actually valuable, human thing to work on vs the garbage many devs find themselves working on. Mini games can also be super engaging to build and are a showcase for creativity… I’m really not seeing the problem.
They could just give support staff a proper break and let them do whatever they want with that break (including playing the games they want to play if they deem necessary)
There is a difference between the truth and a truth. It wouldn't be pretentious to share something of your story and how you saw it in the larger picture.
That’s fair but disinformation and the lack of actions against it was part of why I left Twitter. As such, I feel strongly about my experience not being interpreted as the truth or that a significant portion of the company shares the same views as I do.
I feel like public discourse has increasingly been more and more polarizing and anecdotes and hearsay are being leveraged to create further divisions.
I can certainly share your concern here, but not sure what can be done about this. Since you probably have done more thinking in this space, what are some things you think are possible?
While I understand what you’re getting at, this is basically pointless, because nobody is going to accept hand wavey “you can never know, so don’t even try!”-type answers. Even if that is the best way to go.
I’m not accusing GP of this necessarily, but quite often the view “since we can’t know everything, we can’t know anything” is considered wisdom.
To the GP: we all understand that your experience isn’t the same experience of everyone, but it is AN experience, and would be useful to us who don’t have any experience.
> This is entirely anecdotal, but from the little I know from his couple months there, Twitter has no idea what to do with the huge amount of engineers they employ.
I wonder why I keep getting LinkedIn and email notifications about engineering jobs at Twitter.
We're talking about a simple platform of people relaying updates of 140 characters with a comment section and a feed algorithm to aggregate the content to everyone with a focus on prolonging everyone's engagement time while also following guidelines on what's "politically correct". There's only so much you can do, unless you venture out into manipulating public discourse, or striving to become a nation-state (or at least its propaganda machinery) or taking over the world (with all the imaginable internet services provided by you - email, storage, encyclopedias, news etc).
At some point you should stop and think about your core business. And at some point you should realize that the law of diminishing returns applies. And at some point you should realize that it's fine to provide a stable service to a stable amount of users with a stable amount of features. Not that much R&D required.
Or, rather, this is how our society would have to work in order to stay healthy. Living on a planet with finite resources while using them up like they're not is a sure-fire way to doom. We already know enough about farming for example to make it sustainable. We just don't know how to do it in a way where we don't cut down production considerably and starving a lot of people in the process. Not a nice topic to bring up i your election speech.
But it's nice to ride the train since things seemingly move forward thanks to rising inflation (which is due to the problem in the first place) and the price of your product can go up.
Regenerative agriculture practices can allow us to make farming sustainable without cutting down production. In fact, we can actually increase production — or at least avoid loss of production due to soil depletion.
Economic growth is not only driven by the use of new resources but by the increasingly efficient use of existing resources. The real problem is stated in Jevon's paradox[1], that demand is increasing faster than supply, regardless of efficiency, which points the the real real problem, which is that the population is increasing too quickly (though it may slow down and become stable).
Provide females around the world access to education, birth control, and opportunity in the job market and this problem will fix itself. To do that, however, would mean allowing the kind of discourse that Twitter is inclined suppress and many of its more vocal users would call "racist" i.e. being able to criticise cultures that don't give females these opportunities.
> I would have called a streaming service for gamers to be watched by adoring fans utter stupidity. Maybe that’s also why I’m not rich.
Is Discord profitable yet? Reported revenue and users is up significantly post-covid, but that does not necessarily mean there are profits. Your instincts may be under-estimated.
> ...to keep the app running? New devices, new standards, a lot of things change that you need devs to keep up with.
I guess, and I imagine at their size they probably run pretty inefficiently. It just seems like a surprisingly big team. From all fronts really, not just development but design too, does it really take that much effort to keep Twitter "twittery"?
> Crypto Profile Pictures
Straight out of a satire piece, I had not heard about that.
> They've added Spaces, Twitter Blue and Crypto Profile Pictures - all 3 massive features added to their product.
I think your definition of "massive" is different to mine.
Spaces is at least a new medium. The other two are incremental features that a small (<10 person) team would ship in a few months at another FANG company.
Spaces is amazing. It was great listening Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador talk while they were making history by voting Bitcoin to be adopted as legal tender in the country. He was just looking at his Twitter feed at that time, and was interested in what people are talking about the bill in spaces.
I know he's controversial, but I wish more politicians would make themselves more accessible through Twitter (and I'm not a Trump fan, I just think he used it more effectively than other politicians).
Yeah, they give lunatics like Nayib a voice, by the way good luck going to el salvador and hope to use bitcoin.
But so does Instagram and Facebook and other socials. Politicians doing live QAs on facebook was happening a decade ago already, since live streams were a thing.
Giving people a voice sure seems like a clear downside of this whole internet thing. Or does it simply mean that humanity is fucking destructive (while individual humans generally are beautiful)?
And with more opinions available to people, there is less likelihood of a large mass galvanized around one crazy theory (the one that the overlords deem not crazy).
I don't think that's necessarily true. Is QAnon not an issue? The church of scientology? There are a lot of large groups of people "galvanized around one crazy theory." But, maybe you're right that if they're exposed to more, non crazy views that they'll be better off and less galvanized. How would we test the hypothesis? I wonder if you took some fox news viewers and showed them CNN for a month or so if that would change their worldview?
So it's amazing at miseducating and misinforming politicians in impoverished countries?
In industrial economies money is credit and countries issue their own money by setting up a banking system to lend it into existence on security of domestic tangible capital to promote wealth formation and create liquidity for domestic employers to make payroll. Since the early 1700s western governments have known how to create stable money from nothing without any gold, private banks, or external investors by lending it into existence through land loan office system.
It looks like El Salvador didn't create its own money before and was just using US Dollars sent back by emigrants though.
Those things you mention hardly justify thousands of expensive developers to maintain and create. I bet a team of 10 top notch engineers could create Spaces+Blue+Crypto pfp's in a couple months and run it at Twitter scale. Don't forget Instagram was acquired when it had 13 employees serving tens of millions of users.
Speaking out of experience, most engineers in big tech are bike shedding on internal tools that don't do anything useful. A small minority deliver the majority of the impact. On top of that at companies like Twitter and Google some of those useless employees spend their time complaining about social justice initiatives rather than doing work.
I think this is a pretty naive take. Developing anything at Twitter-scale will run into security considerations, infrastructure development or optimization, constructing data workflows, multiple design iterations, UX design (how do people find and use this feature?), i18n, accessibility, product marketing, user testing, copy testing, and other functions and that’s not even considering the actual product development, which is of course across multiple platforms. See also: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
Build the product, sure. Build the product to scale across the world?...I strongly disagree.
Pre-revenue that is possible. Post revenue, you'd need at least lawyers and accountants in each country you operate in. Then you need systems to respond to subpeonas and legal requests, that is a hundred people right there.
IG was 13 employees when you had a fraction of the images and they didnt have to be profitable, rather just grow by burning $. Now consider scale and profitability and you need even more people to grow tech cost consciously.
> Now consider scale and profitability and you need even more people to grow tech cost consciously.
This seems intuitively false. Adding more people to tech domains can actually decrease effectiveness with more expense, resulting in lower profits. Obviously, there is a sweet spot, but Twitter is a basic product regardless of how many countries it operates within.
I'm curious about your opinion on this. I may be thinking about this incorrectly.
Suppose you are Twitter and operating in, say, {Ghana, Russia, Korea, Mexico, and Pakistan}. You're served with subpoenas and legal IP requests in each country. If you dont respond in time, your license to operate may be revoked. Each request is in the native language. How do you "scale" this technically? Can one lawyer handle these across the world? How?
First recognize that lawyers are not a technical issue and that mostly they handle independent cases and subpoena requests. Since the work is fairly compartmentalized (unlike software development) throwing more people at the problem has less of a consequence. Hire a law firm in each country to handle your cases; No need to have lawyers all over the world as employees. Have a small team of international lawyers as employees or hire them as contractors to oversee the contracted teams of lawyers around the world and negotiate when needed.
Furthermore, developing tech for managing this is likely to be unnecessary as there are existing software packages already out there. Doing business across the world and handling legal issues is not unique to Twitter.
>> Hire a law firm in each country to handle your cases; No need to have lawyers all over the world as employees. Have a small team of international lawyers as employees or hire them as contractors to oversee the contracted teams of lawyers around the world and negotiate when needed.
I generally agree with your response, but note that you've just converted FTEs to contractors/outsourcers and "reduced" FTEs that way. You'd have to do the same with accountants and many other country-level positions. But w2-->1099 isnt really a "win".
I don't think Instagram had to seriously tackle the kinds of problems you're replying to prior to that acquisition. But when you're a big time tech company, the minimum bar is simply higher. That means more humans.
There is a huge difference between building a clone today on top of today's tools and commodity cloud platforms versus building it originally on what was around in 2006 and then having to constantly add features, change things, and then maintain 15 years worth of accumulated special edge cases forever without downtime.
Comparing to Instagram seems pretty unfair too as it's newer, it was even-more-featured-limited for a long time, is now part of a much larger behemoth and had much lower scale than today's twitter when it was acquired, and my guess would be that it's an easier scaling problem too (lower on post frequency, more read-heavy workload).
Working at several big tech companies in industry. I can't say my experience is fully representative but I do start to see a pattern when my experiences line up with that of all my friends. There are a _lot_ of internal tools and anecdotally many of them seem like they're designed to abstract away things which wouldn't need abstracting for a company that exclusively hired high performing engineers.
Plenty of things are abstracted not because they need to be, but because they can be, and doing so increases efficiency, security, the ability to scale, and the ability of engineers to reason about the development.
Even highly effective engineers will have trouble delivering features, in a large company, when they could easily deliver the same features in a smaller company.
Process and politics is part of it, but the one of the problems with having so many developers, is that these developers end up writing code, all of that code ends up making things more complicated than they need to be, which makes introducing new features more complicated, due to all the systems you need to integrate with.
Love it! Thanks for sharing, I just discovered Edward Abbey.
> Abbey also left instructions on what to do with his remains: Abbey wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck and wished to be buried as soon as possible. He did not want to be embalmed or placed in a coffin. Instead, he preferred to be placed inside of an old sleeping bag and requested that his friends disregard all state laws concerning burial. "I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree," said the message. For his funeral, Abbey stated, "No formal speeches desired, though the deceased will not interfere if someone feels the urge. But keep it all simple and brief." He requested gunfire and bagpipe music, a cheerful and raucous wake, "[a]nd a flood of beer and booze! Lots of singing, dancing, talking, hollering, laughing, and lovemaking."
if you're interested in some more hot takes, try Pentti Linkola's "Can Life Prevail".
Be warned about his views of democracy and the US. He opposed the consumerism of the US and sees democracy as "me, me, me" politics, where people vote for what they want now (or what they're told they want) rather doing the uncomfortable thing today for the sake of tomorrow.
You can disagree but you're wrong. Twitter is the definition of a stagnant company.
The stock has gone nowhere since its IPO and Twitter has never paid a dividend. It has revenue of $5bn but cannot seem to turn a meaningful profit and is not growing.
So far it has been a massive failure for shareholders, who are the stakeholders that the board and management are actually there to serve.
> The stock has gone nowhere since its IPO and Twitter has never paid a dividend.
This is a terribly short-sighted and impoverished definition of stagnation. If Elon shakes things up and Twitter generates 2x the profit and 2x the social destruction as Facebook would you call them a vibrant and successful concern?
I get what you're saying from a moral point of view, but we live in the real world.
In the real world, Twitter is a public company. It has existed for a long time and has barely every made a penny. It fails in comparison to other high growth networks (Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube).
And it's not an armchair comment. Twitter's own PMs have openly admitted to some of its flaws, it's failure to appeal to the masses. They're self-aware about their own incompetence.
Why do they need so many engineers though. It's not like twitter is facebook or gmail or apple tv where things are constantly shifting? I think the point was why does it take so many people? They should be raking in the cash after a 25% cull. Just saying this from the point of view if I was interested in buying their stock.
The 217 million active daily users? It is "only" $~80 million in the US, I'd love to know how a quarter of the US population using it daily represents an insignificant user base.
Near as I have ever seen, most English speakers actually do mean something more like that when they say "all": maybe it would be good to mentally model it as "it feels as if it would be hard to choose at random and not find this statement to be true".
We're not even over half in this case. If this person actually believes most people are already using twitter, it's clearly a problem when it comes to informing a judgement of stagnant growth.
Sort of? The thing to realize is that your average speaker leans heavily into the "no true scotsman" fallacy in order to make sense of the world quickly, and so they heavily bias that random distribution from which they are selecting candidates. While I wouldn't personally say "all" in this exact case, it certainly does feel to me as if there isn't anyone new for Twitter to really target, as you have to first discount most of the old people, "all" ;P of the young people, and a depressing number of people who really don't have the resources--time or money--to buy into technological society. Do you seriously believe there is some useful untapped market of people using other social networks--or are even in the target market for a social network but who somehow haven't started using one yet--who aren't using Twitter? I hate Twitter--I'd dare say it is by far my least favorite major social network by far--and even I use the damned thing :(.
Because that growth is used as a substitute for profit (or net income or EBITDA - take your pick). For a public company having one or the other (or rarely, both) keeps the ticker price moving in the right direction.
> Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers.
I agree with you on this, but I think the parent commenter was implying that if you're going to be employing thousands of engineers, you ought to have something to show for it.
It's fine to move into a "steady state", but your engineering team should eventually reflect that reality.
I agree on one hand, it's a perversion of business that seems to manifest in venture capital bubbles that growth is never satisfied. On the other hand, what are they doing with all that talent?
The question is “what is all that talent doing with Twitter?” Truly talented people are typically restless and discontent with mediocrity. Perhaps, the talent is overrated?
I think the correct word is a "changing" company. In a static environment, without competing products like IG, FB etc, Twitter can afford to stay the way it is and probably do incremental improvements.
However, in a competitive environment, and with proof that the market is expanding (Newer generation of kids are using social media), if it fails to capture the market, the company will die out.
So, there is this need to focus on user number growth.
I am sure that if the company was only adding older people, the stock would be punished inspite of growing numbers.
I appreciate this sounds counterintuitive, but even in order to stay where it is, a company needs to grow. "Staying where you are" would mean to grow by at least as much as the current inflation rate - which in Feb 22 was 7.9% annualized in the US. Anything below that would be decline - and we're not even talking about fighting off competition, offsetting the dollar value against other currencies etc.
Well even their team disagrees with you, they have for the last years chosen to focus on things like stories (dead), clubhouse (soon dead)instead of working on removing spam/scams
Twitter Spaces is good. Twitter is also very popular in Japan and Spaces isn't only a Clubhouse competitor, it's also a Twitcasting competitor over there.
Though, twitcasting has more monetization options and Twitter only has super followers which nobody actually uses yet.
Well, if they're not going to develop new things they could take big hunk of the billion dollars a year that they're spending on it and return it to the shareholders.
> A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
Whatever merit or lack thereof Musk on the Twitter board has, I would bet money this particular scenario does not happen. Musk is not a turnaround expert or corporate savior (and for the record he's not claiming to be).
Yeah, I was thinking exactly that. Assuming that this is the case - that Musk is joining as a savior - is silly. He doesn't fit the profile nor has the track record for that.
He may be a visionary (whatever that means), but a excellent, renowned executive that revitalizes companies, heck, that really has never been the case.
Strange that both of you would say that. He's a ruthless result-driven executive that doesn't accept excuses. If it's at all impossible for something to get done, he'll get it done.
I'm not at all a fan of him, but his power is in execution. A vision is worthless.
The vision may be worthless on its own, but in people like Musk or Jobs, the combination if the vision and the ability to execute is absolutely explosive.
Both sell/sold products that hardly need any marketing.
Musk never said you can't put trains in his tunnels. He happens to have a car company to help, but I bet if he had a train company sitting around they would develop something for the tunnels.
Boring company tunnels are wider than London subway tunnels.
Squandering an entire companies potential as a PR move for your other company is hardly big brain executive work though. Film executives do that all the time, and they're some of the dumbest people doing supposedly intellectual work.
His power is in blood diamond money from mummy and daddy during apartheid. His power is in ignoring regulations and laws he doesn't like. His power is in being a modern-day version of PT Barnum.
Execution and result-driven like that giant coffin-box he tried to claim could be used to rescue boys from a cave where rescuers were swimming through spaces so narrow they couldn't wear their diving gear?
Result-driven, power-in-execution executive who took a decade to build a luxury car that had initial quality, paint, NVH, and interior quality equal to an economy sedan made by Ford or Honda. His cars often literally don't line up the same way on the right side as they do on the left. Oh, and also about a decade to get the motor/drivetrain unit on the Model S to not destroy itself every 10,000-20,000 miles. It still can't handle being driven through too large a puddle without ingesting water through the speedo sensor port...
Autopilot routinely "phantom brakes", and FSD "Beta" likes to drive at telephone poles, veer at cyclists, and pedestrians standing on street corners.
I wish I could find the article describing his efforts to get the model 3 production fixed. Endless issues because the robots weren't assembling the cars precisely enough. He was told they needed to go back to workers assembling the cars. Ran around screaming profanity at people, demanding they fix automation. Bunch of people got up and quit to his face.
Months more of delays and issues until he finally listened to someone who had been saying all along that they needed to grow capacity by having more people assembling the cars. Boom, production volume and quality issues gone.
Musk is a rich man-baby who has relied on shouting at people to get things done.
> His power is in blood diamond money from mummy and daddy during apartheid.
It's weird that people made up a fake biography just because they don't like when he tweets on Ambien.
In particular I don't think this was an advantage, I think it was a disadvantage, and at most he started with no more privilege than any other Stanford grad. (Which is a lot!)
> I wish I could find the article describing his efforts to get the model 3 production fixed. Endless issues because the robots weren't assembling the cars precisely enough. He was told they needed to go back to workers assembling the cars. Ran around screaming profanity at people, demanding they fix automation. Bunch of people got up and quit to his face.
I read that article and it was obviously made up. It claimed people were being sent through the air by machinery exploding like they were DBZ characters.
Emeralds from a mine in Zambia, a country that had similar apartheid laws stemming from the fact that they were ruled by the same Britain that ruled South Africa, isn't exactly lying. The OP's details were just a bit fuzzy.
The Musks lived in the biggest house in the richest neighborhood of segregated Pretoria, and Elon was able to avoid the draft from the same apartheid South African military that his father engineered for.
You'd definitely need to have a certain amount of privilege to do that, and to leave adolescence with anecdotes about selling pocketfuls of your dad's emeralds, like this[1]:
> A teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father, Errol Musk, had a casual attitude towards the family’s considerable wealth, including the stones that came from the Zambian emerald mine in which Errol owned a half share. Elon, by his father’s recollection then probably 16 years old, and his brother Kimbal, decided to sell emeralds to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York – one of the world's most famous jewellers – as his father lay sleeping. "They just walked into Tiffany’s and said, ‘Do you want to buy some emeralds?’
And none of that matters. He has a lot of money solely because PayPal investors gave it to him for no real reason, just like Peter Thiel. But nobody pretends Thiel is some kind of racist old-money villain. (Although they do call him a vampire and he is a lot of other things.)
Btw, now that he's rich because Tesla investors keep on wanting to give him a lot of money for no reason, seizing/nationalizing the company and giving it to the poor wouldn't work, because those investors don't want to give _them_ money.
> Emeralds from a mine in Zambia, a country that had similar apartheid laws stemming from the fact that they were ruled by the same Britain that ruled South Africa, isn't exactly lying. The OP's details were just a bit fuzzy.
So why is Kimbal Musk a nobody, while Elon isn't? They grew up in the same house, shared the same privilege, are children of the same parents etc. If all this matters so much, Kimbal should grow up to be someone like Elon.
This is very true, and another thing is, he wasn't even a founder of Tesla. He swooped in about a year after it was founded with wads of investment cash, and with his now well-known egotistical drive, decided to make the company all about him. When of course all the actual work was being done by the experts rather than this arrogant dilettante who did more to impede their work than effectively manage it.
This isn't true. The employee account was 2 or 3 (depending on accounts) at the time when he supplied almost their entire funding round after basically no one else would, and continued to supply funding rounds. Saying "in about a year after it was founded" implies that they had done real work in that year when in fact they couldn't even pay their own salaries. The company would have ended right there, just like so many other "two guys and some incorporation papers" companies.
Musk invested in the company, became chairman of the board and quickly became active in their normal everyday operations.
You really hate and despise that guy, don't you? I guess this is driven by Tesla. People are less dismissive about Musk if they concentrate on SpaceX and not Tesla.
Like it or not, Musk has a talent for attracting young talented engineers and giving them a huge playground to show what they can do. That is the main reason why SpaceX took off so massively, not any shouting to get things done (everyone can do that, but successful space startups are rare, so it isn't an obvious path to success). SpaceX engineers are allowed to have some initiative and aren't kept in a narrow corridor set up by typical corporate bureaucracy.
Contrast this to Bezos, arguably a very strict businessman who used to be much richer than Musk - several orders of magnitude, in fact. Bezos isn't any softer than Musk on his employees, arguably even harder; less shouting, but more pressure. But Blue Origin is a snail compared to SpaceX, even though it was founded 2 years earlier. They have enough money, but they have a problem attracting engineering talent and retaining it.
He often doesn't do things "by the book" and will not wait for what he thinks is unnecessary red-tape. He will skirt around regulations and taunt the process the entire way. We've seen it many times before, and it's always purely in the benefit of whatever company he's helping at the time.
He has no problem throwing people/money/etc. at the problem to get the result he wants and if someone so much as says the opposite, they are removed from the equation (fired, publicly ridiculed, etc.).
I personally don't see what benefit he can bring to Twitter other than shaking up the culture. Who knows, he may even come in, take over, and claim to be a founder of Twitter, just like he did with Tesla.
> He has no problem throwing people/money/etc. at the problem to get the result he wants and if someone so much as says the opposite, they are removed from the equation (fired, publicly ridiculed, etc.).
Not just fired or ridiculed, Musk and Tesla have also tried to have a whistleblower murdered by accusing them of being a mass shooter and having them SWAT'd[1].
> Early on, according to Gouthro, a company lawyer told him that the previous head of security at the Gigafactory, Andrew Ceroni, had left after a bitter dispute. The lawyer said Ceroni had spied on a union meeting on Musk’s orders and then threatened to tell the world about it when he left the company.
Considering where Tesla was when he joined and what they have become, I’d say it’s fair to call himself a late-joining founder. This would obviously not be true of Twitter.
> I personally don't see what benefit he can bring to Twitter other than shaking up the culture. Who knows, he may even come in, take over, and claim to be a founder of Twitter, just like he did with Tesla.
He didn't "come in", in as much as he "made the company". The company was "two guys and some incorporation papers" before Musk's involvement. The company, for all intents and purposes, did not exist before Musk's involvement.
Whether that made him a founder is irrelevant, but it's important to not imply that he just "bought" a company that already had a product. There was no product.
It's only useful if the shit that is "gotten done" is actually an asset to the company and its bottom line or service to the public. Change for change-sake is almost always a bad thing.
> People have been begging for an edit button for a decade.
And they haven't implemented it because it's a truly horrible idea. If you messed up your tweet delete it. If it's already got traction, then it shouldn't be changed, especially because the edit feature would mostly be used maliciously to cancel retweeters.
“Retweet if you like ice cream!” then after a bunch of retweets change it to “Retweet if you love pedophilia!” No thanks. I’d never retweet it like anything again. Editing is a terrible idea.
Retweet could show the version of the tweet as it was when it was retweeted. If you see a tweet that has a new revision ready you could see a "latest" link. If you see the latest version of a tweet with a version history you could see a "history" link which would show you a revision history.
We've suddenly turned a "simple" feature into something with potentially major architectural changes[0] on how retweeting works too, just in a few minutes here! I wonder what other dragons await the ... lucky ... engineers who will get to size this feature soon. ;)
[0] No idea how it works internally, but it would hardly surprise me if the lack of edit functionality caused early design decisions around stuff like this that would be pretty tough to unwind.
Edit has obvious options for misuse. Mitigating misuse might be complicated but that's no reason not to do it. The feature I've just described is not complicated. The feature might have architectural implications but resolving those is literally the job of software development teams (including design, PM, etc).
I think it's pathetic to say of a feature that it's too hard because there may be some complications or architecture changes. It's especially pathetic to say of a basic feature like edit which exists on other platforms and is obviously possible. This defeatist attitude is, no doubt, partially to blame for Twitter's inability to improve.
Just rewrite twitter as a simple github client. You could tag the version the person retweeted or liked. Since you don't mind the repository being public, you could actually use a free account.
As a not user of twitter, you really made me confirm my "no way, ever" stance, as far as the platform goes. With editing, as you describe it, enabled?
"Absolutely not a fucking chance", is the most polite phrase i can think of.
Imagine replying to me, me changing my reply, then you having to extra-click to wade through various re-writes i could manufacture.
Don’t forget that Twitter likes are also soft retweets.
When I follow you and you like a tweet from someone I don’t follow, the Twitter algorithm may show the tweet to me in my timeline, marked as “X liked this”, even several days later.
There’s a lot of interaction models built into Twitter that assume immutability.
They can instead add a link for "Original" in edited tweets. So everyone effortlessly see the latest update but if people see it controversial, they can click "Original" to see what it looked like when it was retweeted. The problem with likes still remains but eventually social contract might form that if tweet was editted you cannot harass people for retweeting or liking it.
OK, I can believe this has non-engineering issues. Still cannot "edit as new" for when you want to edit what you posted in the exact some editor state as when you posted it. What you edit and what gets posted can differ radically. This is well-trodden territory in the email world. Accordingly, Fastmail service has "Edit as New" and Apple's iOS Email App has "Send Again" for email.
I'm pretty confident Twitter could manage "edit as new" for Tweets, and it would be useful with or without tweet editing.
> especially because the edit feature would mostly be used maliciously to cancel retweeters.
This could turn out to be a good thing in the long run: force the public to confront the fact that the commentary they are seeing may have, in fact, originally been on something entirely different than the context it is currently presented in.
> force the public to confront the fact that the commentary they are seeing may have, in fact, originally been on something entirely different than the context it is currently presented in.
How is this a good thing? I’d have 0 confidence that a reply was in fact to the tweet I’m currently seeing. Then how can I accurately reply to that initial reply?
And what’s to stop someone from selling the ‘edit’ on their viral tweet? If you edit a tweet does your like and RT count get reset so your tweet is no longer trending?
Yes. Because people won't look through the edit history for the same reason they don't read the fine print or studies that are cited. I'm pretty sure making it easier to misinterpret what tweets say is going to be even worse
The two word combination "Free speech" is so Americanised that it needs a bunch of asterisks to define what it's supposed to mean. Is it the legal thing where the government isn't allowed to arbitrarily censor citizens? Or is it the "I want everything I think to be received by everyone" that a good chunk of people seem to think it means? Or is it "I want to be a dick and everyone has to keep dealing with my shit"? As far as I can tell, unless you're dealing with the government, the most legalese meaning of "free speech" doesn't apply at all.
It's Americanized because most other countries on Earth don't enshrine it as a principle at any level, whether private or public. The topic is hairy in the US because the government is actually obligated to care, so there are various grey areas when it comes to the interaction between US laws/constitution/government/private businesses.
Compare this to say the UK where neither corporations nor the government enshrine free speech, so these estuaries don't exist.
"Or is it the "I want everything I think to be received by everyone" that a good chunk of people seem to think it means?"
Tweets aren't forced upon anyone. Twitter isn't a megaphone in a library. It's a flexible medium that allows you to follow the people who write/retweet stuff you want to read, and ignore others.
Face it: if you interfere between Sally who writes something she wants Bob to read, and Bob who wants to read what Sally wrote, that's censorship.
(No, I am not making a legal argument. And no, I'm not interested in exploring extreme exceptions to the general principle.)
> Face it: if you interfere between Sally who writes something she wants Bob to read, and Bob who wants to read what Sally wrote, that's censorship.
What about national security, NDAs, illegal content, etc.?
Two consenting parties doesn’t mean the speech is legal or good for society.
> And no, I'm not interested in exploring extreme exceptions to the general principle.
The Supreme Court is (to the count of hundreds of times) because the devil is in the details. “Free speech” sounds good on paper, but when you start trying to define it and enforce it it gets complicated with tons of edge cases.
> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
“Tommy stole my lunch money.” “What about that time you stole Sally’s pencil?”
That would be whataboutism. It avoids debating the act of stealing someone's lunch money, by instead charging hypocrisy.
Just using the words “what about” doesn’t make it whataboutism.
I used the words “what about” to ask about a subsection of speech: NDAs, National security, illegal content, etc., that is covered by OC's definition of what it means to censor speech. I'm not charging hypocrisy or avoiding disproving the argument, I'm examining OC's claim. In this case "What about" is used to examine pertinent edge cases, and isn't whataboutism.
For example, in a scenario where Bob (US government) has nuclear launch codes he wants to talk about and Sally (domestic terrorist) wants to hear what he has to say, should someone intervene and restrict Bob's speech? By OC's definition, if they do, that is censorship. OC's only conditions are two consenting parties.
> Face it: if you interfere between Sally who writes something she wants Bob to read, and Bob who wants to read what Sally wrote, that's censorship.
Others, like the Supreme Court prefer to say that free speech has limitations that are not covered by the 1st amendment.
> The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising
So, in the case of two consenting parties discussing nuclear launch codes, OC calls that "censorship", but the Supreme Court says that the speech wasn't protected in the first place.
It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse and that anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it.
The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse.
> anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it
The problem is that in the real world you can't silo off dicks like that. Bad opinions (e.g. racial hatred) can spread through the society and cause tremendous damage.
If you're going to argue for zero content moderation, the only good faith way to do so is to first admit that this could be a problem, and secondly admit that you have no problem if Twitter became like 8chan. If you just pretend like these kinds of things aren't possible, I can only conclude you're arguing from a position of ideology.
I've been on the internet for quite some time, and I just haven't seen a lot of the bad stuff, or even the dumb stuff, that people say is unavoidable.
I struggle to think of examples, and the worst ones are things that might be described as "sounds kinda racist but the person who wrote it is probably not the cross-burning type".
Sure, I could find it if I went looking. But I don't.
You could argue that this is because of some kind of benevolent filtering, and I'll grant that dang (of HN) does a great job. But I think it's mostly because I don't delve into the kinds of places where that would happen.
So I'm honestly just not sure what you mean when something will devolve into 8chan. I've heard of that but I don't know anyone on there, so I don't even really know what it is or how the devolution might happen. Mechanically, what would take place? Would I follow a friend, and then start getting weird flat-Earth stuff because of their second cousin?
There is automated moderation of Twitter, Youtube, etc, that aggressively blocks or downweights such comments, so it is not surprising that you don't find it. Go and make a Twitter account and start spewing racial hatred, and see what happens. Do you remember all the anti-semitic crap in the Youtube comments from a few years ago (all the triple parentheses etc) that are now mostly gone thanks to AI moderation? The comments section is now actually alright. So your argument is based on the incorrect premise that the sanitized nature of these online spaces is organic. It is actually heavily engineered.
> Mechanically, what would take place?
You would likely get three things:
- Informal networks of political extremists with a recruitment platform of global reach. Similar to r/genzedong in extremism, but far worse. Think ISIS, The Base.
- A tool that authoritarian regimes can use to exercise influence over open societies via coordinated misinformation and sowing division. This centralized effort to divide Western societies via coordinated social media manipulation is already being done.
- A society overtaken by conspiracy theories, with unpredictable consequences. Empirically, sunlight isn't the best disinfectant.
I make these claims by observing the local gradient and extrapolating.
That is exactly where the conversation should be. It’s a world more productive than implicating false dichotomies of government authority vs. private authority, or polite vs. annoying.
> It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse
No, it means the government cannot restrict speech.
> Freedom of speech, also called free speech, means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government. [0]
Most people assume “free speech” means “nobody” can restrict it, but it is in fact only “by the government”.
For example, you do not have freedom of speech at my house. I am free to demand anyone who says the word “blue” on my property to immediately leave.
You also don’t have free speech on the public comment section of my blog. I can delete (or not approve) any comments that don’t adhere to a list of approved words, or are not sufficiently praiseful of my views.
There are some state and federal laws that protect free speech at private companies, but they are mostly around employment as you can read about in the article.
That’s why I think OC is stating that the definition of “free speech” is important. Are we talking about US law, or about an abstract concept that “nobody can restrict public discourse” that doesn’t exist in reality?
> The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse.
Not true. There are many, many complications to free speech.
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. [1]
These types of speech can be legally restricted, punished and censored. This list was not created in 1776, it was created over time because the line isn’t clear. What’s always been clear though is that there have always been complicated edge cases concerning free speech.
The issue is so complicated it’s been litigated in the Supreme Court possibly hundreds of times [2].
Keep in mind that the Supreme Court only takes on a case if it presents a novel problem or if they thought a previous Supreme Court mad an egregious error in judgement. So the sheer volume of cases means that there continue to be many unique, complicated facets to “free speech”, not all of which involve private enterprise. Protesting, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom to petition, compelled speech, false speech, etc. all can be complicated issues concerning individuals or public institutions.
Yes, but the paradox is that, because the government can't properly regulate speech (outside of the categories you listed), speech is heavily regulated by private operators, starting with you at your house, going to newspapers, TV, and Twitter, Facebook, etc. Everyone has their own rules, some explicit, some secret, most entirely arbitrary, and there is never a proper appeals process.
> Everyone has their own rules, some explicit, some secret, most entirely arbitrary, and there is never a proper appeals process.
That’s by design.
The government creates a framework within which you can then create your own private experience.
The free market, freedom of choice, freedom of association, etc. is the balancing act to self-regulate private party practices.
If we start centralizing and standardizing free speech requirements from the government all the way down to your blog, we’d be putting all our eggs in 1 basket. The government does not restrict repetitive speech for example, yet you’d now be powerless to regulate spam. You’d also be powerless to moderate HN or any other topical social community, as off-topic speech is protected at the federal level.
The variety in free speech rules is a feature not a bug.
This is inconsistent. If the rules were changed so that speech was regulated by the government, then the rules could also be changed to fight spam.
It won't happen, unfortunately, since "free speech" has become an article of faith in the US. Yet there are democracies where this works well; the choice isn't between freedom and slavery, the US or North Korea.
> If the rules were changed so that speech was regulated by the government, then the rules could also be changed to fight spam.
Yes, but there are very valid reasons to curtail speech at a private level that don’t make sense at a national level like curating content, creating unique social spaces, topical content, etc.
Constraints make things interesting sometimes. Like Twitter’s original character limit, or Google Shorts clip length, or HN’s moderation policies. They restricted speech in order to create a unique experience that people liked. My freedom to post pop culture gossip is restricted on HN and I’m OK with it.
With bottom-up free speech rules, you can create this interesting landscape of private content.
With top-down free speech rules, a government can’t react quickly enough to accommodate all of these entrepreneurial reasons for privately restricting speech.
If I want to create a positive social network where every post has to have a positive sentiment analysis as determined by an AI, then why do you need to have the ability to share your negative thoughts on my private platform that I pay for? You already have the ability to do that in a public square, or on your own private website.
What does society gain by forcing me to accept all legal speech on my private site? It sounds like a recipe for stifling innovation.
Thank you. And these complications are nothing new. Newspapers have long been regulated and the Fairness Doctrine defined the period during which Americans almost universally trusted the news media.
What is the difference between a society and a private entity? Are they interchangeable? Does ownership constitute absolute authority? Historically, I know of no such society which has considered them interchangeable so I find it outrageous to act like they are.
>A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
Ha! You are drinking straight from the hose pipe and having a hangover. Not having a Edit button was a strategic decision from Twitter and not a competency one. For the longest time, Facebook did not have Dislike button and still don't; sometime back, they added few options instead. It was their product vision that drove the decision behind their feature selections.
- Completely redesigning their UI two times over,
- Launching a subscription-based service (which seems to make it the first social media network without ads)
- Lengthening tweets to 280 characters
- Letting users make money off their following (super followers)
I'm confused as to how any of this makes it stagnant.
It’s just an example of the product not being stagnant. There’s a lot of things that go into current Twitter and it’d probably take no less than a couple hundred engineers just to keep the site up assuming no R&D whatsoever. That adds a ton of inertia and friction against changes.
Anyway I’m happy with Twitter’s direction. They’ve gone and made it less toxic, and in fact I’ve recently created an account because it has become a pleasure to use.
Twitter Blue still has ads and still constantly fights you to try and show you their algorithmic timeline.
It also doesn't cover multiple accounts - and my side account, when it switches to the algorithmic timeline every other day, is convinced I want to know about pop musicians and inserts 1000 "suggested topics" about the Grammys and BTS I have to dismiss individually.
> They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all
I have always wondered. Are there "projects" adjascent the core product that I'm not aware of? I can understand the infrastructure side of the work is pretty busy, but feature development and bugfixing don't require that many people even in a fast paced product development phase. What's everyone doing?
People on HN are great at making irresponsible claims and they are the clueless ones. You can bet that thousands of engineers there are very very busy.
Irresponsible is a bit rich, I have no responsibilities owed to twitter. Perhaps ignorant would be fair. I am not exactly floored by those releases compared to the team size, but it does show they're not twiddling their thumbs. As mentioned in another comment, they might be a bit inefficient at the size they are now, and the responsibilities they have to internal operations aren't particularly obvious to outsiders.
1) 'publicity' not 'prestige' so much. We're all going to be talking about it.
2) "do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. " I'm doubtful as a board member he'll have the influence to make material changes. More like a series of publicly visible things.
Twitter doesn't have an 'edit button' because they're incompetent, it's just an odd choice they've made, and I think there are good reasons there. And 'edit button' is not any kind of material change.
3) I'll bet the speech issue is on his radar.
On the whole, I don't see how musk really changes the nature of what Twitter is, it's a mature product.
> Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway.
As a Twitter user since 2019, I’ve seen improvements even in my short time on the platform. The most obvious example is that you can now restrict who can reply to your tweets.
You could make the same argument about HN, and it’d be equally mistaken.
How quickly we forget the front end redesign that lets you tweet photos when you quote tweet. The old one didn’t.
Or that they collapse new tweets into a button you can click, rather than interrupting your reading flow when it loads more. (Admittedly the old site already had this.)
Twitter auto-pauses videos when I scroll down past them. It has a couple other UX quirks that I really dislike as well.
HN probably has 0-1 devs actively working on it and is (likely still) running on two machines ("master" and "standby")[1]
Not sure about the comparison between Twitter and HN. I agree with the comment above yours - IMO Twitter has been stagnant in many regards. Why not spend time really nailing down video/image hosting/viewing etc? Why NFT profile pics?
> They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed.
Why do you assume it's engineering problem? I think engineers at twitter are well capable to solve any problems, but it's just not a business need. The real problem are product owners/stakeholders/business people, incapable to transform, envision and lead at Twitter.
I think it's more basic than prestige. Musk's value add is in no small part due to his influencer status among a group of investors who primarily interact with him over Twitter. Leaving such an important part of your value subject to someone else's whims is crazy when you have the money to secure it.
On twitter you can find lot of great people to follow; journalists, scientists, experts of any kind. If you are looking for information, you can find it.
The main issue is that all those diamonds are covered by an abundant amount of material of... let's just say lower quality, so the search can be long and tedious.
But most people don’t want that info; most people want to be entertained, every second of the day. And for that tik tok now wins until the next, even shorter attention span thing pops. Twitter started that by artificially limiting input of course, but people still had to read. Tik tok was obvious really. But people will come up with better ways to put less info into entertaining seconds people will want to watch 24/7; it will be a unicorn again in the coming years and TikTok will be for old people.
personally, I don't understand the appeal of tiktok, guess that makes me too old for the target demographic I guess.
I never liked facebook (fake people bragging about their perfect fake lives for all the world to see).
I used to find value in twitter - but now I just can't wade thru the all noise to get to the value - gave up all major social media years ago, don't miss it.
> It doesn't take much. People have been begging for an edit button for a decade. If he'd get only that feature implemented, it will be remembered forever.
I was following this discussion on finclout (https://app.finclout.io/t/dD66Ww2) and also don't think that Parak will not be CEO in 12 months (probably earlier)
Twitter facilitates knowledge transfer and communication. I'd argue they are one of the largest sources for communication on the internet, and with 200 million visitors every day, I'd say they are doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Twitter took out Clubhouse in about a week with what is now Twitter spaces. They've introduced Twitter Blue. Not that stagnant, and if you think it's stagnant, an edit button wouldn't be thing that changes that.
a proof that he get shit down? Yah just like he got the underground tunnel project don-... oh wait, he ended up building 10% of the original plan and it sucked
My intuition is that Twitter's CEO will be looking for big changes to turn Twitter's stock price around. Now his largest shareholder is also a famous entrepreneur with some big ideas.
Why would Elon Musk spend his capacity to get things done on something like Twitter? He's got planets to colonize. Interesting point to question his motives, but for now I take him at his word regarding the free speech thing. I guess it could be something more nefarious as well.
You see both white nationalism and civil rights as political antipatterns? What do you consider a healthy political environment? Complete stagnation where people who got theirs are OK but no one else can ever rise to that level? Or do you mean something different by "woke" than its usual meaning of "aware of inequities and desiring to fix them"?
Edit: I see the free speech proponents are here to try to make my comment invisible. Come on guys, don't give in to cancel culture like this!
Woke is a disparaging term used to refer to people espousing broadly left wing “progressive” ideologies, who are obsessed with issues affecting minorities and “inclusion”, yet fail to recognize that their intolerance and refusal to respect differing views are utterly exclusionary.
So what you're saying here is that helping minorities and making them equal members of society is a political antipattern if opponents of civil rights don't like when you do it? I don't see how that's an antipattern. If that's what you mean, it's basically just saying "A healthy political landscape is one where civil rights are never granted to anyone," which doesn't sound healthy at all.
As a side note, I don't think there are very many people who are unaware that being intolerant of bigotry is exclusionary toward overt bigots. Can you give an example of someone you think has this attitude but doesn't realize that it excludes the people they would consider bigots?
In Québec, where I live, a university published a job posting that explicitly excluded white males for a research chair on marine biology[1]. Affirmative action like that job posting from ULaval is not what I consider "helping minorities and making them equal members of society".
I am sure that this was the kind of regressive left da39a3ee was taking about.
First of all, your post is not invisible, just downvoted. Mine got flagged, meaning someone wanted it killed by an authority.
The way I see it, both MAGA and WOKE are ideologies that are more interested in attacking outgroups than really helping ingroups. Seems to me that Trump spent more time talkiing about immigration than helping the Americans that are negatively affected by immigration (while lowering taxes). I'm sure you agree with this part.
On the other side, I see WOKE as more interested in attacking white, conservative males (or some combination of the former), rather than helping whatever minority is their favourite. Case in point, BLM seems to only care about the black lives that are taken by cops. Black-on-black homicide seems completely uninteresting for them.
So how can this improve?`I'm old enough to remember the the Soviet Union, and when I was a kid, old people remembered Hitler.
In my country (northern Europe), everyone from moderate conservatives to social democrats realized that both Communism and Facism lead to terrible results. Facisim was completely off the table for everyone, possibly in part because we had been occupied by Nazi Germany for 5 years. There were some communists, but in fact it was primarily the social democrats who made sure they never achieved any real power. (who at the time were borderline socialist, especially in the 70s).
Actually, most social democratic parties understood that Communism is really an ideology of hate in the 1920s and 1930s, as far as I can tell, and it doesn't help much to use the same boilerplate and just replace the proletariat with some other, more modern victium group, the thought pattern is still based on hate and guaranteed to be toxic if it gains enough power.
This knowledge is still somewhere in the DNA of most social democratic parties in Europe, but it seems that countries who never had strong social democratic parties are not able to see the difference between the inclusive left (liberalism, social democracy) and the hateful left (hardline socialism, communism, and I would argue, hardline WOKE).
Part of the problem with ideologies like MAGA and WOKE are that they feed off each other, and make each other stronger. The more hateful each become, the stronger the other side will be. Trump pushes democrats towards WOKE and AOC pushes republicans towards MAGA.
In the end (EDIT: if the polarization doesn't end), the USA will have some Chavez or some Putin, or one of each in power, possibly a civil war. There are no good outcomes coming out of such polarization.
Counterpoint: Twitter is the only social network I use where I get an unfiltered balance of ideas big and small - CEOs and random Joes. It's where memes are born and proliferate everywhere else (other than TikTok).
Twitter WORKS. If it's profitable, it doesn't need more growth. Facebook got ruined because it thought everyone's parents and grandparents should be on it, and now that's the only people on it.
My parents and grandparents are scared of Twitter, and that's how I like it.
It also doesn't try to charge me for access to my own followers like Facebook does.
Twitter may have problems but I like the balance they've struck.
An edit button by the way would RUIN it because people who have gone viral with a bad take would simply edit it away.
>Just add a change history like (I think) FB has. No big deal.
If the Hacker News crowd isn't even sure that the feature exists, there's no way the majority of users are actually checking it. That may solve the problem for the most careful of users, but the conversation is going to be driven by the people who just react to what's in front of them.
I've deleted my FB account several years ago, but this is what I remember: There was a note like "Bearbeitet" ("changed") right in the post header, when a post had been changed after initial posting. You could click on that and see at least one previous version of the post.
A note like this, with a changelog, should therefore be fine for twitter and counter all "I never posted sth. like that!" talk, as it would be easily to be debunked.
Only on "hackernews" do people expect a username to have any alignments with people's political beliefs. This seems to come up regularly here, and never on any other forum or irc channel I've used this ID.
If I was a communist, why would I self identify as a "commie"??
And not even consistently: Are you a lawn mower? A landscaper even?
> A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
Typical musk cult bullshit. I'm sorry, it sounds so wrong it makes me questions your honesty here.
He won't "do a few sweeping changes and get out". The only shit he will get done is abusing his influence over the top of the hierarchy to slowly but surely get more control over what gets fed to twitter users. Remember how Facebook has been crucial for election manipulation over the world? Now Musk gets to play this game too.
By the way, that's how he took over Tesla from its original founders. He invested an amount of money large enough so that he could force his way into becoming CEO. Then he fired the few remaining people who could oppose him.
So, no, he's not going to get out. Your post sounds more like "nothing to see here" than anything else. There's a big thing to see here. The richest US person calmly and openly taking over one of the largest social network in the world.
It's not over-analyzing, it's obvious. But in our troubled times such things are somehow happening in plain sight and nobody bats an eye.
I think Twitter's CEO summed it up well, and I agree:
> He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!
I give his tenure as CEO 6 months at most before he's forced out by the board, or resigns for ideological differences. The changing wind that Elon is going to usher in is going to be fundamental and sweeping, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an exodus of employees follow.
What ideology is that? Musk has hinted that he views Twitter as a public forum and should be moderated as such.
Until now, I think Twitter's not-so-slight political lean has been viewed as detrimental to the company (and public discourse).
I hope the people who work at Twitter and think it is OK to bring your politics to work go elsewhere. We would all benefit from platform where telling jokes that offend only the wokest doesn't get you banned and silenced.
Edit: not all of these are about employees. He has attempted to get an anonymous stock analyst fired from their job due to a negative evaluation of Tesla stock.
What matters the most is the results. In my opinion a
decision like the following is totally reasonable providing
you are looking for people that owns your results to be in
charge:
during a factory visit over issues with the Model X's
window. When a worker on the assembly line proposed a
solution, Musk lit into the worker's manager.
"This is totally unacceptable that you had a person working
in your factory that knows the solution and you don't even
know that," Musk reportedly said before firing the head of
the factory.
I'm of the opinion that a manager's responsible to know issues raised by his subordinates.
In my opinion, there's entirely too much context missing from this for us to say whether or not what is quoted there was totally reasonable.
Had the employee even brought that up to the manager before? Had they had the idea for a long time and didn't bring it up? If so, why not - does the manager foster a culture where collaboration isn't encouraged? If that's the case, does the manager not do that simply out of ineptitude, or because that's the same culture coming down from above him/her? Maybe the individual just had the idea that morning? That week? The very moment it came out of their mouth, even? Has the manager had a stellar tenure up to that point, or a rocky one? How severe was the issue pre-fix that it warranted this termination? I could go on and on.
Point being, two sentences saying, "An employee had an idea and Musk fired his boss because he didn't know about that idea," is typically not going to be enough for us to say, "Oh yeah, that was a good/bad call".
This kind of thing sounds smart, but in practice it's terrible to work with higher ups who randomly do this kind of micromanaging and attach immense consequences to it.
Story I heard from a friend was of a CEO who asked a janitor if he used their store and if not why. He replied that he needed size Y of a product to efficiently store in his cupboard, size X was too small and Z too large. For months he hounded the department and forced negative performance reviews on them because there was no good way to provide Y with their current supplier. They ultimately switched to a different inferior supplier because of it (the brand the janitor normally brought) and lost several good employees in the process. They got a lot of negative feedback from customers from the switch and their revenue on the product went down.
This sounds completely insane, but totally on brand for Elon who needs to keep up his internet persona.
If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic.
(Note this is assuming it doesn't involve anything controversial, office politics etc, just a suggestion based on my observations that I think could help the company overall).
>>If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic.
Tho I've got very mixed assessment of Elon Musk, he's right in this case.
At the moment that you first think of the solution and mention it, your boss should not be fired.
However, this was not that situation.
But, from the above description alone, we know that there was a known problem, and that the employee had enough time to think about it and present it to Musk. One of two things happened. The manager had failed to put out a request like "we have problem X, please bring all ideas for solutions", and/or the employee had previously described the idea and been ignored up the chain of command.
Either of those are cause for a decision of "I now fail to see why we should allow you in our plant, nevermind paying you to be here.".
One of the most basic jobs as a manager is to identify problems, seek solutions and implement them. If the answer had been something like: "yes, he brought the solution to us yesterday, implementation will require P, D, and Q, and we expect to have it into production by next week", I'm sure Musk would have been fine with it.
IMO I don't expect someone with this type of "philosophy" to be that deep of a thinker:
"1. Email me back to explain why what I said was incorrect. Sometimes, I’m just plain wrong!
2. Request further clarification if what I said was ambiguous.
3. Execute the directions."
Failure to perform one of the three actions would result in termination, Musk noted.
He's proven this over the years by getting sanctioned by the SEC for posting on Twitter over the weekend while high with his girlfriend and then being forced to step down as chairman, and also consistently shitposting on Twitter the last few years that would get any line level employee fired.
I saw that and thought it was a succinct, highly distilled extract showing the result of 'if I'd had more time I'd have written you a shorter letter'. While there's obviously a myriad variations on the theme and actions crossing those lines, the message and call to action is very clear — either identify and address the problems with the directive, or execute it. Punting, dithering, or ignoring it are not options.
That said, the twitter nonsense is getting a bit much. When he wanders into anything outside his zones of expertise, he's a disaster.
Batshit. Sounds like a withdrawal moment. Anyone who studies institutions, management, and factories knows that the overarching culture that flows from the top-down is what sets the expectations and communication norms. This is typical old school American hierarchically organized culture that made it certain that the employees on the floor knew the solution and that the managers had no idea. The problem starts and ends with Musk and his shitty company culture/communication. It is his job to create a culture where ops communicates with management and vise versa. Toyota has answer to this problem.
This goes along with Nassim Taleb's idea of Skin in the Game:
To learn you need ‘contact with the ground’:
Actually, you cannot separate anything from contact with the ground. And the contact with the real world is done via skin in the game-having an exposure to the real world, and paying a price for its consequences, good or bad.
I actually do agree with this. The idea that only a certain set of individuals at a company could ever fathom a problem X with product Y and anyone else who shares a potential solution should be ignored is pretty short-sighted and ignorant.
I don't know if someone should be fired over that, but then again, a firing is a pretty potent warning to others not to commit the same offense.
This a horrible way to run a company, particularly one with high engineering risks.
I'd suggest reading one of the books by Sidney Dekker. The last thing you want to institute is a culture of fear surrounding surfacing problems. Every other manager in that factory just got a loud and clear signal to lock down their staff and suppress awareness of any problem that might get them axe'd.
There are things that justify firing on the spot, but these are generally malicious, criminal, etc acts. Short of that no matter the fuckup treating firing as something done by whim of the CEO is very corrosive.
Freedom for me, not for thee, is the recurring theme in every discussion on censorship. Generally shared by both sides, and generally used as a description of the other side by both sides.
The goal of liberty is freedom under common rules. Rules may exist but it need to apply and enforced equally. The trouble is that no one seems to want to have such rules when they themselves get effected, and so people want to carve out exceptions to common rules in order to return to Freedom for me, not for thee.
True, but we know some systems are more free and some less free. Let's understand how the parts of a system work to create freedom and try to replicate those aspects.
Let's not just throw up our hands and say that freedom is never sincere and there's nothing we can do.
For instance, the Constitution has been successful at maintaining many important rights, some of which are quite rare in the world.
Yes, common rules that get enforced equally for everyone works pretty well. It is the true and tested system that produce more free.
Every time people suggest that social websites should operate on such rules, ie laws, people throw up our hands and say that laws don't work, or that there must be exceptions because the world is unfair and wrongs need to be addressed.
Its a very difficult problem to solve since in general people really do not want to be in a system where rules are common and get enforced equally. That it happens to be the only thing that actually work is just part of the problem.
You mean the lawyer that had previously deposed him for the SEC? My pet theory is it had nothing to do with this particular individual and all about setting a precedent to other government line attorneys (play nicely now, or I'll ice you out of BigLaw later)
Could be both. You will recall that time he received light criticism from a rescue diver and in return called him a pedophile and hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on him. Elon Musk is incredibly petty.
Maybe this will remind liberals to be, well, liberal. I've seen too many "liberals" who had credibility before lose it all by using illiberal tactics.
Now, see what happens when not-so-woke people start taking over the boardroom and using the same tactics. And then there's no more "but free expression is the heart of America" defense. It'll be "they are private companies and can do what they want on their platform... just like you said".
He also loves free speech except when employees discuss unions.
He wants Twitters algorithms to be open, but his cars must stay closed.
Requesting anything of him is anti-freedom then he projects at others how they could do better in the same contexts.
He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. He’s playing the acquisitions of other people work game to prop up his preference to not work.
Normal humans should not be given extreme leverage over other normal humans. Lie to me about “free markets” but as one of the 13% with and advanced degree, mine being in math, the average person has no ability to smell through his BS in detail, but they have a gut sense he’s just another used car salesman.
Xerox licensed it to them. They had no other path to market since nothing at PARC had to do with selling printer paper or whatever it is they did in the 70s.
Given that Musk has said himself that his titles don't mean anything[1], and the fact that he chose to give himself the title of Chief Engineer in response to people on Twitter making fun of him, it makes me believe that his self-appointed title as Chief Engineer is about as meaningful as his title of Technoking at Tesla.
Musk isn't an engineer, he has no engineer credentials and isn't licensed to engineer in any country. Moreover, Musk has never engineered anything.
Given the fact that both companies hire hordes of real, licensed and credentialed engineers, says that, yes, the engineers at both companies are responsible for the hard engineering work.
I prefer to stick with actual facts and not feelings or insults. I'm not sure why stating the basic fact that Musk is not an engineer would upset you so much.
It doesnt upset me, it goes against all evidence. There are hours of video online about him answering details about rocket technology, battery technology etc. He is a very technical CEO, not some bullshit artist like the Nikola guy.
He doesnt have an engineering degree, that doesnt mean a whole lot anyways.
This is the exact type of bias that Musk is trying to address with his stake in Twitter.
Nothing you stated can be backed up by anything real - all of it is taken directly from leftists twitter headlines that are more concerned with moral grandstanding then facts.
In the GP’s defense, the most vociferous anti-Elon folks online tend to also identify as leftists. It makes sense that they are because Elon is a capitalist billionaire known for being anti-Union, for overworking employees, and for being a general critic of leftists on his social media. He is the antithesis of most people on the left’s ideology.
>”Is asking that you practice what you preach leftwing these days?
Is being a two-faced lyer a concervative value?”
Now this is just playing dirty. This is a rhetorical cheap shot combined with moral grandstanding while also being nakedly partisan at the same time.
For years I used to be a fan of both Elon and Steve jobs, but when I learn about how Jobs treated his child or the 'diver saving kids in a cave is a pedo' incident, I have to conclude that they are shitty people.
I can imagine how a man forces another man out of a company, offers him a rotten deal or even robs him at gunpoint.
I cannot understand how a man abandons his child in poverty. The degree of irresponsibility required to live with yourself, to me is incomprehensible.
Elon's 'pedo incident' is simpler - he tried to butt in into a rescue mission with a submarine PR project, made a fool of himself, and instead of admitting his mistake has displayed infantilism and self control of a moody teenager. He could have shown at least some respect to the diver that has saved many lives. So maybe not irredeemable, but does not sound like someone you'd invite over for dinner.
Maybe it's not their fault, maybe the flaw is in our society and when you become super rich and people line up in a mile long-queue to kiss your ass, it starts messing with your head and you really start to believe that the sun shines out of your arsehole and other people are lesser to you, the ubermench. Thats just a hypothesis.
I know right wing people who hate both of them, reasons vary: disrespecting family values, pushing green agenda, whatever.
But sometimes you dislike a person because they are a shitty person, and it has to do with their action, not political leanings.
Really I just don’t think anyone should be above the real hands on work of supporting their existence.
Term limits for these roles should be explicit, not a game of they who can possess the most minds the longest wins.
The promise of human colonization of all of space time is still a high minded fantasy which makes this “hype/gossip my way to wealth” seemed designed to intentionally manipulate the same basal biology religion accidentally latched onto.
Who knows, maybe rockets to Mars are all wrong and we should be doing something completely different; information doesn’t need to just travel in a ship, but Star Trek seems to live long and prosper in his head.
All of it is taken from him not releasing source code.
From him not unionizing his companies.
From the officially documented history of his business acquisitions where he bought up business that already existed.
This approaching 1984 level double speak. It’s the lack of effort that speaks to his motives. Where is the code for his machines that can choose to plow into us? But somehow Twitters algorithm is super important.
Edit: tacking on his desire to burn up fossil fuels on rockets while the UN is announcing we’re firmly on track to an unlivable ecosystem. We are not optimizing human economics but Elon’s.
> There is a clear difference between open sourcing Twitter's algorithm that promotes certain tweets over others and Tesla's IP.
Given that the IP in question includes whatever solution Tesla adopts for the trolley problem, there certainly is a clear difference. Twitter's algorithm is for arguing about, Tesla's algorithm is going to be directly the cause of death for someone (arguably, it already has).
I am serious and any self-driving car engineer would agree with me. (I got this opinion from an AI lawyer at such a company.)
The truth is the opposite - not only will cars never make a "trolley problem" decision (because the only thing they should be doing is braking), it would be immoral to give them the capability, because it might decide it's in a trolley-problem scenario at the wrong time and randomly decide to sacrifice you.
I agree braking should be the default. But if any self-driving car out there steers to avoid collision, then it is already facing the 'trolley problem'.
In fact self-driving cars normally change lanes as part of their path finding. So a failure to change lanes in an emergency would be unusual.
Disagreement over the correct behavior will result in lawsuits of course. "It should have attempted to miss me!" vs "It should have stayed in it's lane!"
We'll need legislation to settle this, for insurance purposes at the very least.
It shouldn't do what's correct, but rather what's predictable. Anything else is less safe for other people around it.
If the brakes turn out not to work, that is quite the problem, but hopefully it'll notice in time to not accelerate in the first place. Maybe it can still engine brake.
You don't "choose" because, as I said, it is unsafe to program your system to make choices. You brake because that's what a car does.
Your problem isn't real because the car doesn't exist in a logical world with N or M discrete things, it exists in a real world where it can be mistaken about what's happening outside it. Letting it make choices like that would have a bad outcome if it hallucinates (occupant+1) grandmas in front of it and decides to heroically sacrifice itself and you.
> But if any self-driving car out there steers to avoid collision, then it is already facing the 'trolley problem'.
Even the tweet you've cited says:
> there is nothing in the street which you want to collide with. the correct response in every case is to evade the thing that's in the street.
(emphasis mine)
So braking is clearly not the only option.
I truly hope that you do not work on software or hardware that is in any way close to areas like this. You seem completely blind to the real world issues that driving (among other things) forces onto a system. Cars have brakes and steering wheels. Any real world system will use a combination of the two of them to try to keep the occupants and those outside the vehicle safe. Pretending that there will never be situations where there are conflicting choices to be made is ... well, I just find it unbelievable that anyone reading HN could try to deny that there will be situations like this.
I should point out that the guy I linked is an AI lawyer, so the replies aren't actually as valuable input in this case… also, I think he uses "evade" to mean "not hitting something" so braking still counts.
I've had other discussions with literal self-driving car company engineers where they told me it's not a real problem as usually defined. Though I can't link those, here's one where someone asks the Aurora people about it.
It's the best option because you're not the only moving thing on the street. Braking in response to a car in front of you is normal, but evasive maneuvers at speed aren't. You don't know what other people are going to do in response to that.
Oh, but I will let you turn or reverse as long as you signal first. I just don't think you should do it at speed with no warning even in a "least bad option" situation.
> You seem completely blind to the real world issues that driving (among other things) forces onto a system.
Sorry for being a theoretical murderer, but you weren't talking about real world issues, you're talking about a trolley problem! That's defined as:
- there's 2+ discrete paths you can take. (semi-true for cars)
- there really is something on each path you'll hit. (semi-true, in reality they'd react to you in good and bad ways)
- your knowledge about this is correct. (not true, SDCs' world-knowledge is not perfect)
- you are going fast enough to be dangerous. (semi-true, SDCs will drive at safe speeds more often)
- you must go forward. (not true, SDCs can brake or reverse)
#3 and #5 being the big problems making this unrealistic.
Maybe a real world problem would be driving on a mountain road and there's a boulder about to fall on you? In that case, I agree braking would not be safe.
Yeah there is a clear difference. I never said there was not.
Strawman.
I have a very high iq; in a past life I designed power switching machines and high performance boards for Nortel. Also that’s an appeal to higher authority.
Also these companies are pretty data driven through automation; big banks are run from 2GB excel sheets. It’s just people doing math and the ones doing best also happen to have political tradition on their side.
UAW is corrupt, encouraging them is a bad idea.
Unions are symptom of corporations where employees don't have enough equity.
Also a symptom of incompetent governments.
If you fix the government or give employees equity you don't need unions.
Tesla aspires to give employees equity.
There are many who became millionaires after joining tesla early and working the line.
There are many who became millionaires through unions.
It’s almost as if humans will work to enrich each other and the numbers game is artificial political semantics; millionaires appear in both constructs!
At least I can vote and discuss openly union operations.
Not so with Papa Elon. The outputs of labor are his preferred targets.
Why does humanity keep doing this?
Oh and governments serve at the will of the people which seems fine with the status quo. I’m not expecting much movement there. Any improvement on Main Street has to occur within politics as usual which means deflating Elon for change.
It’s really sus to suggest his vision for the far future is possible given he sits right at the same edge of discovery we do. “Outlook uncertain” for that far down the road is the only honest answer. Especially when “build rockets to nowhere” and even EV production are exacerbating industrial feedback loops threatening the species.
I don't doubt that if he thinks he can get away with it, he'll censor information on twitter that is harmful to the finely-crafted PR narratives he likes to make about himself and his companies. Like those battery fires and autopilot unforced/spontaneous crashes.
> this is the behaviour of a free speech absolutist?
Because it’s just a catchy phrase that sounds good on paper.
What’s a “free speech absolutist” position on spam, NDAs, calls to violence, libel, national security, fraud, false advertising, copyright infringement, personal privacy, etc.?
I don’t know of any country, platform or person that follows an “absolutist” philosophy on free speech within any reasonable definition of the word “absolute”.
Everyone is a “free speech exceptionist”, it’s just varying degrees of exceptions.
Yep. Every discussion I've ever had with a "free speech absolutist" has gone like this.
"What are your thoughts on false advertising laws?"
"That's fine, because fraud is a crime and therefore not speech"
People have bucketed "things I think should be legal" as "speech" and "things I think should be illegal" as "not speech" and then this makes it trivial to say that all speech should be legal because the definition is circular.
Given the undercurrent of their responses and initial remark. Breitbart or the like. Possibly with a remark of providing an 'equally biased on the other side' source
Since when has musk believed in free speech(as a universal constant, not as in the right protected in the US from government action) other than when it’s to his benefit? He’s on record for retaliating against people who criticize him. He only wants free speech when it’s to his benefit
He won’t and can’t yet admit it publicly, but his ideology is closer to Russian ideology than what used to be the west moral values (human rights, democracy, free speech, …). He’s a natural born liar, bullshiter, cheater… he lied his way to become the richest person in the US. He’s similar to trump. No real expertise, just bold bullshit statements. He stands for nothing, except his personal glory, money and domination. How can anyone not see this is beyond me…
I could link some drama and bad press on him, but it's beyond that.
Just like you only need to listen to Trump for a few monologues to know it's all rotten inside. With Musk, the "benefit of the doubt" period is probably longer, as he targets a more educated audience.
But for me it's now clear he's not a good person by any mean. He's filthy rich and not anywhere close to satiation, now he's throwing his money at twitter "to defend freedom of speech". That's gross, he's obviously after more control over twitter to better push his personal agenda. I don't pretend to know what it is, but it's certainly not about human rights, freedom of speech or democracy...
> Just like you only need to listen to Trump for a few monologues to know it's all rotten inside.
Again with the mind reading. You might be right by the way. It’s not like I’m an Elon Musk fan boy or Trump fan boy. But you have no idea what’s going on in other people’s heads. They might be better people than your hallucinations, or they might be substantially worse people. Those of us outside of their brains simply don’t know.
This is a disingenuous argument because we are capable of judging people based on the outcomes of their actions. By your metric, you can't estimate people's attitudes and mindsets at all, you can just eternally say "what they just did was bad but we can't hold that against them".
> By your metric, you can't estimate people's attitudes and mindsets at all, you can just eternally say "what they just did was bad but we can't hold that against them".
You can infer what they think based on their words and actions. You’re pedantry here about not knowing what someone is thinking without “mind reading” is A: incorrect unless you believe inferring things is impossible and B: a pointless interrupt to the conversation
So... do you sincerely feel like you have no idea if Trump is a good and honest person or not? With so many, many red flags, at some point you have to go with what your intuition is telling you, right? If you're still giving "benefit of the doubt" to Trump, what would make you take a stance?
I'm really concerned with that current mood of not "taking sides"... At some point you have to say what you stand for. And acknowledge that Trump is miles away from that, assuming you stand for human rights, democracy, honesty, ...
Or maybe he actually, somehow, stand for those values. Then he does a so bad job at promoting them that he's still harmful. Why are people so quick to say "we don't know" regarding Trump, and then "but Biden sure is doing a terrible job".
You said "we can never know". I don’t buy these way to dismiss critics, when evidence is overwhelming. Sure we can never be certain of anything. Yet we make choices in our lives, we go with what we feel is likely true. I hear a lot of such very "prudent" views about Trump and Musk. I never hear such prudent views about non-fascist persons. Suddenly the same people have strong opinions… doesn’t sound like honest discourse to me.
> He won’t and can’t yet admit it publicly, but his ideology is closer to Russian ideology than what used to be the west moral values (human rights, democracy, free speech, …).
Strange post when Russia is currently committing genocides, something I don't think Tesla has ever done!
So he is pro free speech and non censorship and allowing for idiots to make idiots of themselves. I see no problem here.
Having come from a quasi socialist dictatorship and being a foreign born Hispanic ,I would fight for the right of the racist idiots to post there idiotic comments. You fight ignorance with education and rational debate, not with censorship.
It appears that Elon wants to treat Adults as Adults and let them make up their own minds. Unless you are bad at adulting this shouldn't be a negative, but a positive. Let me make up my own mind and don't have a Corporate Oligarch and a Gov't riddled with conflict of interest spoon feed me or use group think bullying to shape society based on Tech Oligarch morality and political believes.
> You fight ignorance with education and rational debate, not with censorship.
If humans were rational, that might be true, but humans aren't rational. Studies, and just looking at people's response to social media, have shown this.
Try changing someone's opinions with facts, and it will usually fail, but systematically post a bunch of fake content on social media, and many people will literally be willing to ruin their lives or even die over it.
Your comment is exactly why we shouldn't censor people and the consequence of getting filtered uncontested MSM and Oligarch scrubbed news , if you are insinuating there was an insurrection.
If anyone has become radicalized its the tech oligarch, hollywood, MSM and BOTH the democrat and republican party.
They do nothing but promote hatred , intolerance, and violence among the people in order to keep them fighting with each other.
Does what I think of free speech matter in this conversation or does what musk thinks matters? He talks about censoring as a violation of free speech and then engages in the same sort of behavior when he does things like canceling the Tesla order of a reporter who said things he doesn’t like.
He’s an inconsistent hypocrite and there’s zero evidence that’s been presented to make me believe this move is coming from a sincerely held belief that isn’t “what’s best for Elon is the right thing”
Free speech does not mean "free of consequences", it means nobody deletes it or jails you for it. Forcing you [within legal/moral limits] to delete it yourself is not against free speech.
Then what is musk asking about in terms of free speech since no one is going to jail when Twitter or other social media sites ban people or censor their tweets?
While I am not claiming that you personally are guilty of this, musk stans always seem like they are talking out of both sides of their mouth whenever they defend musk’s comments on free speech and jump back and forth on whether they are using the “protection from government action” definition or the “protection from condemnation of other private individuals and companies” definition
He is asking Twitter to not hand out bans based on content and/or delete content.
Not that I entirely agree with him on this topic. IMHO Twitter has the right to delete whatever they want and ban whoever they want.
But he's not trying to force the change through law/government. He bought a stake and got on the board and wants to change the rules of the platform itself from there - that's a way I respect.
Ok now I will say you are one of the people arguing out of both sides of your mouth. Elon musk is perfectly happy banning people from his platforms or businesses whenever he sees fit based on their speech. There is no reason to believe that he wants control of Twitter “to not hand out bans based on content and/or delete content” as you said, as he _already_ does that himself
If you will refer to my previous comment, you will see that I did not say public forum. Blocking a reporter from purchasing a Tesla after a critical review is the example I've used in this thread as an example of him removing people from his platform/businesses. Twitter being a semi public forum does not add any additional twists to this that would make me believe he is going to act differently
It's not about any twists. He himself said why it's different - he wants this particular "public forum" (as he described it) to be more as he likes it, so he bought a stake in it. I don't see why it should have any relation to his behavior in other companies. He never said he wants Tesla to be a public forum that maximizes free speech - he said that about Twitter and then put his money where his mouth is.
Yeah I think he probably wants twitter so he can censor bad things about himself. He thinks if they can censor the Biden laptop story I can get away with censoring bad PR about himself or TSLA.
I take your (rather tired) point that for some sufficiently broad definition of "ideology", even moderate viewpoints are "ideologies". Even still, moderation should feel like water to a fish--it should be moderate, it should roughly represent the viewpoints of the people rather than trying to tug the Overton Window in any particular direction (that's activism, not moderation). And yes, this too is subjective--you could argue that moderation should be indistinguishable from far right or far left activism if you really want.
EDIT: Seems like a lot of disagreement with this, but would love to hear some compelling arguments to justify activist moderation.
To be much more specific: the idea that Twitter has a free speech problem is itself immoderate and ideological. There is an unquestionably huge range of ideas that can be not only freely but rather aggressively expressed on twitter. There is a very narrow range of speech that is disallowed and even a considerable amount of that actually gets through. To be concerned about the narrow range that is disallowed and see that as ideologically motivated is to swim in the waters of ones own unexamined ideological biases. And that’s being charitable, as many of those who complain about the bias of twitter know full well they’re actually remarkably privileged when it comes to not only freedom of speech but being heard and regarded, they just know that among a certain audience that shares the sense that their views/expressions should be privileged, the posture of loss of privilege as victimhood can be used as a tool of manipulation.
Combine that with the culture that understands free speech issues in this way more generally: less from a regard for the value of liberal discourse and more for the privilege of indulgent speech, related to the idea “my ignorance is as good as your knowledge” but extended into the realm of stewardship or even ownership of an entire platform. This indulgent and degraded view of free speech is required in order to understand twitter as a repressive forum as a consequence of limits on things like some trans jokes and deadnaming or even advocacy of identity-focused violence, which can only feel like repression to someone who fundamentally has nothing else of value to say.
If that seems tired to you, I’d be happy to inject more vigor.
The "tired" bit that I was referring to is the popular compulsion to miss the point in order to score a "gotcha!" by invoking the strict philosophical definition when someone says something like, "Twitter Inc is too ideological". Of course, when people say things like this, they're not usually meaning "Twitter Inc" is too ideological, it's that they are too aggressive about pushing their ideology. They could remain devout leftists without spamming everyone's feeds with leftist propaganda, for example.
> To be much more specific: the idea that Twitter has a free speech problem is itself immoderate and ideological.
It's ideological in the sense that "free speech is desirable" is ideological. Arguing that it's "immoderate" implies that arguing for stronger free speech protections is radical, which is untrue.
> There is an unquestionably huge range of ideas that can be not only freely but rather aggressively expressed on twitter. There is a very narrow range of speech that is disallowed and even a considerable amount of that actually gets through.
I'm not going to die on the hill of "Twitter needs to be less censorious", but free speech proponents can still legitimately find Twitter problematic even if the censors allow a lot of wrongthink through. For example, Twitter can sort replies by ideology such that wrongthink is much less likely to be seen. It could hide wrongthink from various users altogether. Whether or not it actually does any of these is difficult to assess because there's no transparency.
> Combine that with the culture that understands free speech issues in this way more generally: less from a regard for the value of liberal discourse and more for the privilege of indulgent speech, related to the idea “my ignorance is as good as your knowledge” but extended into the realm of stewardship or even ownership of an entire platform.
Yes, we have a broken epistemology, but this is the result of the politicization of institutions (especially by the left wing). Specifically, the left wing argues that because perfect neutrality and objectivity are impossible thus we should wholesale abandon the pursuit thereof and instead be doggedly (and ideologically homogeneously) activist. This predictably damages trust in the institutions which in turn drives people toward other institutions, many of which are less savory.
>I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology - makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament - when we are within ideology, is that - when we think that we escape it into our dreams - at that point we are within ideology.
In other words, what you think of as moderate and not ideological is a result of your ideology itself.
For a more thorough, very academic examination of ideology, I can recommend the book The Sublime Object of Ideology.
"Moderate" doesn't mean "agreeable", it means "opposed to radical/extreme change". These beliefs are moderate by definition, it's not tautological or subjective.
In Saudi Arabia, death penalty for homosexuals would be considered moderate. They would consider your attitude toward free speech around the prophet radical.
What you consider moderate is always a result of your ideology. There is no objective moderate, there is only moderate within your ideology.
That's exactly what ideology is: It determines what you perceive as "normal" or "moderate".
You're observing that the definition of "moderate" is relative, not ideological. It's just like the definition of "median", my height might be close to the median in a US context, but I would be tall in a Nigerian context. This doesn't imply that the definition of "median" is ideological.
Yes, "moderate" describes ideology (no one in this thread questions that), but the OP's claim is that the definition of "moderate" is itself an ideological question. It's a bit meta.
> Of course "moderate" is relative. But relative to what?
Relative to your ideology.
Incorrect, not relative to one’s ideology, but relative to the implicit political context (such as “US politics” or “Saudi politics”. If it were relative to each person’s own ideology, then everyone would identify as a moderate: “My ideology is moderate relative to my ideology”.
> You'd be a moderate in the US and a radical in Saudi Arabia relative to the prevailing ideology.
This is correct, but it contradicts your earlier claim that the definition of “moderate” is itself ideological. It’s contextual but not ideological.
Yes, I was being precise. “Moderate” is relative to “the prevalent ideology” (although it’s not conventionally thought of as a single ideology, hence my phrasing). The point is that the definition isn’t an ideological matter.
Zizek, as usual, is saying something facile but with flowery language to make it seem insightful, but the idea that in order to understand his culture a man must leave it and view it from the outside, the same idea Zizek is sharing here (amid sniffs) is an idea that goes back at least as far as Buddhism, as it is present in the story of the youth of the Buddha.
Zizek is very ironically an ideologue himself (a "Hegelian" in his words) and as such his version of the story only contains half the lesson -- that culture, which he calls ideology because he seemingly refuses to truly understand what ideology is, lest admit he is an ideologue, can blind members of that culture to certain things, but without addressing that culture and ideology have positive aspects as well.
The man is a neverending font of faux insight and obscurantism posturing as wisdom and this quote is no different from any other.
I think you thoroughly misunderstood his point. His point is that everything is ideology and that it's inescapable, that obviously includes him. Everyone is an ideologue if you will, some just think their ideology isn't ideology.
(and it seems that includes you based on how you contrasted "status quo" and "ideology" in the other comment, as if the status quo were somehow unideological)
But you're missing the point of everyone who is saying "Twitter Inc is too ideological". The point isn't "Twitter should abstain from ideology" as though that's possible in a strict philosophical sense, the point is that they don't need to suffocate users with their ideology. Twitter Inc can remain devoutly woke without spamming user feeds with woke propo.
Invariably, topics involving "ideology" are a trap for pedants. They think they're going to get a good "gotcha!" in, but they find themselves hoisted on their own petards.
But that in itself would also be an ideological act. As we've just established, there's no "non-ideological".
People who want Twitter to be non-ideological in reality just want it to represent some other ideology instead, they don't get to hide behind some veil of neutrality.
Your point is that people who want Twitter to be neutral are ideological, because being pro-neutrality is itself an ideology? Even taking that as a given, they could still absolutely hide behind a veil of neutrality- they support neutrality, they're the people they invented the veil for.
Yes, pushing one’s ideology on people is technically an ideological concern as is the preference not to. But most of us find the latter more agreeable.
There is no justification, you're staking a position against radical politics, that is, politics that seeks to dismantle the current society and replace it with an ideological vision, and the agents of the dominant ideology which has no name (called Woke by its detractors) are mad that you are challenging one of their many parables from their scripture. Hence downvotes.
Whether or not the status quo is an "ideology" is a semantic distraction. For some strict technical definition of "ideology", it may well be, but the interesting question is whether or not it's radical. Since the status quo refers to mainstream, moderate attitudes, it can't be radical by definition (radical and moderate are antonyms).
Mainstream attitudes are moderate by definition ("A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views and major social change." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_moderate). Both "mainstream" and "moderate" are relative terms with respect to some population.
> To a devout Muslim, the amount of freedom of speech we have around the prophet is radical. To a leftist, the exploitation of laborers by the capitalist class is radical. To the religious right, LGBT rights are radical. To racists, race mixing is radical.
Yep, you're observing that "moderate" is a relative term. Different groups have different Overton windows.
> The only thing that makes it seem moderate to you is your ideology.
No, it doesn't matter what my ideology is, it matters what context we're talking about. That context is often implicit, but that doesn't mean the notion of "moderate" is ideological. If someone says "Joe is of median height", do you leap out from behind the bushes and yell "gotcha! 'median' is an ideological term! In Nigeria Joe is tall!"? That doesn't mean "median" is an ideological term, it means that it's dependent on the context, in which case the context is probably something like "whatever country Joe lives in".
> Both "mainstream" and "moderate" are relative terms with respect to some population.
Correct. Which attribute of the population though? Their height? Their skin color? Their weight? No, their ideology.
> Different groups have different Overton windows.
What is an Overton window if not a measure of ideology?
> No, it doesn't matter what my ideology is, it matters what context we're talking about. That context is often implicit, but that doesn't mean the notion of "moderate" is ideological.
That's exactly what ideology is, "implicit context".
But moderate isn't an absolute description of an ideology as we've established, it is relative to an ideology. In other words, it's meaning depends on ideology.
I'm not even sure what the point you're trying to make is at this point. You've agreed that "moderate" is a term relative to ideology already, so what even is it you're arguing now? If it's relative to ideology, of course it's ideological, because your definition of "moderate" will change based on ideology.
> But moderate isn't an absolute description of an ideology as we've established
Right, that was my point from the start. "moderate" isn't an ideology by itself. When we are in a US context (irrespective of whether someone is a US progressive or a US conservative), "moderate" refers to the propensity to hew somewhat closely to the US status quo. On the other hand, you've argued that "moderate" depends on a person's ideology, and people with normative American ideologies can't talk about Saudi moderates because "moderate" would be relative to normative American ideology--of course this isn't true because I'm an American and I just referenced Saudi moderate ideologies. "moderate" doesn't depend on my ideology or normative American ideologies, but the context which I've explicitly designated as "Saudi" but it may also be implicit.
> You've agreed that "moderate" is a term relative to ideology already, so what even is it you're arguing now?
Hah, "moderate is a relative term" was my position from the start, you've changed tack from arguing that the definition of moderate ("occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views and major social change") is inherently ideological--it's not. It's an adjective which describes ideologies, and it's relative to some context (e.g., US politics, European politics, etc), but the definition doesn't vary based on anyone's ideology contra your claim.
> Musk has hinted that he views Twitter as a public forum and should be moderated as such.
Nobody spends $4 billion to create a public forum or to defend free speech. You spend that kind of money for influence or to push an agenda. What his agenda is, who knows. I'm a fan of elon and maybe he is an outlier, but I'm not holding my breath. There was a time when everyone from google to facebook to reddit and even twitter all supported free speech. People forget that twitter was once a very pro-free speech platform. Everything from war footage to politics of all sides was available on twitter at one point.
> I hope the people who work at Twitter and think it is OK to bring your politics to work go elsewhere.
It's generally not the employees. Most tech employees are apolitical at work or against the woke culture. It's just that C-suite/HR gives protection to the tiny vocal minority espousing politics at work.
> We would all benefit from platform where telling jokes that offend only the wokest doesn't get you banned and silenced.
We would all benefit if every platform allowed people to have their say. Regardless of how "offensive" you find them to be.
"It's generally not the employees. Most tech employees are apolitical at work or against the woke culture. It's just that C-suite/HR gives protection to the tiny vocal minority espousing politics at work."
This is going in my childrens' book: "Why high paid employees need a union!"
> Nobody spends $4 billion to create a public forum or to defend free speech.
Well, Twitter's stock price has already gone up, so in a way he hasn't spent anything. Getting the cash to buy the shares in the first place probably involved a lot of capital gains though.
Given that we're talking about people like Éric Zemmour who are mainstream candidates in French Conservative politics now despite being literally convicted for inciting racial hatred several times that says more about the state of French politics than it says about Twitter's moderation policies.
That's a general theme with these 'I got banned, how overly sensitive!' stories. 95% of the time you don't need to scroll long until you find some genuinely vile stuff. I honestly cannot figure out how anyone who behaves even half-civilized ends up being banned by any of these platforms, it's kind of wild how much garbage you can post.
"By mistake", that's twitter's version of the story, so, there goes some new information for you, sorry if it's crushing your beliefs.
As for the long story: EZ was convicted for saying that most insecurity comes from immigrants, which is actually true when you look at the Calonge file - you just have to be part of the police or work in defense to see it, and France forbids ethnical statistics so people can't be made aware publicly about that, except by syndicalist cops such as Bruno Attal. The conviction is purely political and EZ should have appealed but he was just a journalist at the time and preferred to consider this conviction a medal of honnor.
Nonetheless, he didn't have twitter at the time, he has twitter since he's a candidate, and his account is completely clean, so is the GZ party's, but those were closed "by mistake" by twitter according to twitter itself, and since then, their content is systematically marked sensitive, for absolutely no reason.
It is important not to confuse correlation and causation though (I mean even if your speculation that most insecurity* comes from immigrants was true).
Also EZ have made it very clear that he doesn't have that much problems when immigrants are white and christian (even recently when discussing immigrants from Ukraine) so it's not like he is really hiding that everything he says about immigrants is really about non white and Muslim people.
* Not exactly sure what insecurity means exactly. I feel it's often used to mean "the feeling ignorant people have when they see foreigners" in which case you might be right :)
> if your speculation that most insecurity* comes from immigrants was true
> * Not exactly sure what insecurity means exactly. I feel it's often used to mean "the feeling ignorant people have when they see foreigners" in which case you might be right :)
It's not a feeling, we have the data, it's just illegal to publish them in France because ethnical statistics are forbidden:
In 2021, 1659 anti-religious acts were recorded in France, including 857 anti-Christian acts (52%), 589 anti-Semitic acts (36%) and 213 anti-Muslim acts (13%)
But yeah, go ahead and say we have a "feeling of insecurity because we are racist", I won't blame you, I've been doing the same for 15 years or so. Meanwhile, let me know if you want more data because I have tons. What, you want to talk demographics now ? ;)
Criminals with double nationality must be removed from the country, that'll already be a great improvement.
Hey Americans! Did you know police and firemen are assaulted every day somewhere in France? Here's for today
> In 2021, 1659 anti-religious acts were recorded in France, including 857 anti-Christian acts (52%), 589 anti-Semitic acts (36%) and 213 anti-Muslim acts (13%)
Well Mr statistics, since you are offering, maybe you also the percentage of Christian/Jew/Muslim in France and, probably there are less Muslim than Christians which means they are more likely to be victims of anti religious acts? Was that your point?
I'm not sure it's really worth discussing more, I'm not going to convince you you got brainwashed by populists, you are not going to make me become racist or xenophobic, so we are just losing time and energy :)
Have a great rest of your day. I wish you to become less hateful in the future and to start loving all humans <3
Maybe there's still more christians in France, but certainly not twice less muslims than jews, France have 2 200 mosques and 500 synagogues (2019), so, go ahead and find another explanation :/
> Have a great rest of your day.
The day is not over, but so far my daughter is safe, let's see how's life for my people (whom you obviously don't love) today:
> I wish you to become less hateful in the future and to start loving all humans <3
I've been saying exactly the same thing for 15 years, anyway, you're saying that I'm hateful but you don't have any argument to back it up, you're just defaming me because your arguments aren't worth anything, while I haven't said a hateful word, I'm just stating facts, so, I'll take it as a medal of honnor because this is exactly what EZ has been going through.
I haven't done anything, I only have love for my people who are victims here, I wish one day you love the victims who haven't done anything neither because so far you're just closing your eyes and not giving a fuck.
> you are not going to make me become racist or xenophobic, so we are just losing time and energy :)
I'm french from north africa so you're not playing that card with me, and I know what's coming to you, and you have no idea. It's not about being racist because it's not about race, it's about culture, it's about protecting our people, our children, which you obviously hate.
Anyway, one day it'll be your turn too, or the turn of someone you love, then we'll talk again, and then maybe, like me, you'll be ashamed of having closed your eyes for so long.
America has great immigration standards, in France we have absolutely none, we even pay them even if they enter our territory illegally, it's insane.
Americans reading this, come spend some time to visit paris and we'll see if you think it's become a shithole or if it's still what it used to be like, keep in mind murder attempts have tripled in the past 10 years, this is called an explosion of criminality. But some people like this guy are too rich to see it, I guess there are still some people who haven't any victim in their circle, but that's definitely not going to last, criminality is rising everywhere in France as they are spreading immigrants including illegals which France doesn't throw out anymore, no matter if they were leading genocides in rwanda (see other comment) or whatnot
EZ also made it clear that a French Muslim is French and he won’t touch them, so it’s not like he’s hiding that he’s targetting delinquants.
Targetting delinquants is often seen as straight up racist, which kind of proves the point.
EZ is the Muslims’ best opportunity to separate the good from the evils, because many Muslims in France would like the bad ones to be convicted, which the current system prevents. Macron has instaurated a system that can be summarized as “Let’s free all Muslim criminals”, which does a lot of torts to all of them.
> convicted for inciting racial hatred several times
That's not even true.
Source, liberal media:
> Son avocat se plaît d’ailleurs à rappeler qu’il dénombre au total «seize dossiers de poursuites, dont une seule condamnation définitive» contre son client.
Deepl: His lawyer likes to point out that he has a total of "sixteen prosecutions, of which only one is a final conviction" against his client.
Because he didn't want to appeal because he wanted to take it as a medal of honnor, back 10 years before he was candidate when he was still a journalist.
They are not “conservative”. Zemmour is an impression of a conservative from the 1930s by someone who’s never read a history book, and le Pen is anything but a conservative. A xenophobe, sure, but her manifesto does not look like anything conservative beyond the appeal to the Fatherland.
The only conservative candidate is Pécresse, and she is not “sensitive”, because she’s never been convicted for hate speech or inciting violence.
Right, when pecresse is defending against laicity, next to Mohammed Heniche who as later involved in the samuel paty murder, she's "conservative", way to go.
The last time I tried creating a twitter account, I was immediately presented with a set of recommended people to follow, which included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. I'm sure there were more, but those were the first three it showed me, and I did not bother to look at any more.
I don't want to follow any politicians, but that seems pretty obviously one sided. I wish people would just recognize that, and recognize that it isn't "right-wing" to do so.
It twitter recommended new users to follow Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, and those were the only recommendations they saw without clicking "view more", would anyone question whether that was biased or not?
I don't know how the recommendation engine works, but Barack Obama is the most followed account on twitter I think, so can see how they'd suggest that...
But if the recommendation engine is anything like their recommended tweets, I think they intentionally show you the other side always. I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet. Without knowing anything about your tracking cookies and however else they 'enrich' what they know about you, it's tough to say why you got the recommendations you did. If you signed up based on a tweet from a democrat so you could engage by telling them they're wrong, maybe they assumed you like other democrats.
If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.
Not hard to believe - younger people make up the bulk of their audience, and probably the bulk of HN that trend more liberal. That's a reflection of the userbase though, not necessarily of Twitter or HN's views. I would bet most LPs are more conservative - if only in private.
Nope, I am very much not - but I believe the twitter algo biases opposing viewpoints on popular tweets. Go look a tweet from AOC, and then from Ted - the replies I see are almost all opposing views, not the most popular replies or anything similar. You have to scroll a bit to find the sycophants.
>If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.
I don't think we can say with any honesty that Twitter is a clone of Fox's Three talking heads, comprised of a good looking moderator with a leftwinger, and a rightwinger duking it out.
Twitter has been censoring, moderating, editorializing, and shadow-banning a large amount of conservatives, Libertarians, and also, moderates/centrists, and leftwingers that are posting contrary to the establishment narratives.
By turning into more of an ideological echo-chamber it initiated the birth of conservative and other competitors, of which gettr appears to be leading the race with competitors like parler, truthsocial, gab, and others falling behind. Am surprised there are not shareholder lawsuits yet against Twitter's Officers for violating fiduciary responsibilities.
Maybe they are prioritizing influence over eyeballs & economics?
I'd question the intelligence of anyone or anything who recommended following the musings of Ted Cruz. And that's coming from someone who grew up in a family deeply engaged in county-level republican politics.
If it were 2009, and Twitter was pushing Al Gore and ignoring George Bush, I'd see it differently. But it's 2022, and the toxic & polarizing aspects of many individuals make a perceived endorsement problematic for mainstream consumers.
I get tons of recommendations for right wing politicians on my country. Trying to make sense of the recommendations is trying to extract meaning from a novel written by a monkey. It's a waste of time. Just block that section with your favorite ad blocker and live happily thereafter.
I don't live in France and don't follow their politics.....
Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service have an ideological bent?
Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are being applied when they shouldn't against conservative politicians in France?
Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are only used against Conservative politicians - and do you have examples of Tweets that were actioned for conservatives and counterexamples that were not actioned for liberal politicians?
Yes, because every time I open twitter, the first posts I see are from people whom I have no connection with, who are celebrating about the current president, and it's not the trendy ones #MacronGate #McKinseyGate #AlstomGate #AlphaGate and so on.
You can go into your account settings and disable sensitive content warnings, content filtering and reply filters (the ones that put some messages in "more replies").
Non naked dudes should probably stop making their images be associated with a clear ideology. You seem to be under the impression that Twitter needs to treat everyone as neutral when the people in question are ideological themselves
I’m talking about everyone. Unless Twitter or other companies are bound to treat everyone neutrally by force of law then both their actions and inaction when it comes to ideological figures will have an ideological effect. Twitter cannot stand by and remain neutral while it has free will
If an account posts (other) media that repeatedly gets flagged (by many reports) as "sensitive", their other media is auto-flagged as sensitive. You're seeing that side effect.
Either way, my intention was to say: you can disable these quality filters, Twitter isn't forcing you down an ideology with no opt-out. On that note -- many of these are based on user reports: if accounts get too spammy they get put in "other replies", if they're regularly inflammatory they (might) be put in "other replies" + sensitive content, etc. But again, you can turn this filter off and see all replies together, media normally, etc.
It is trivial to do a google search to find examples. A couple recent and high profile would be accounts locked because they tweeted "learn to code" which was, of course a joke at the expense of the (very sensitive and unemployed) journalists. Another example of bans would be sharing any satire that goes against the extreme left view that it is perfectly OK to allow biological men in women's sports.
> Musk has hinted that he views Twitter as a public forum and should be moderated as such.
That's an ideology. Whether or not it's a good one can be a topic of debate, but phrasing it as not being an ideology puts a finger on the scale of the debate right from the start.
> Until now, I think Twitter's not-so-slight political lean has been viewed as detrimental to the company (and public discourse).
Can you point out what is, in your personal opinion, the best example you have of Twitter's "not-so-slight political lean" and how you interpret it as "detrimental to the company (and public discourse)"?
Public forums tend to be subject to rules and regulation, enforced by authorities, which Elon Musk does not seem to be very fond of. His ideology in the context of social media is a bit more anarchic and sceptical of the imperiality and morality of said authorities.
No comment on how much of a free speech warrior he is when he's dealing with employees or reporters or cavers that he dislikes.
Moderating like a public forum is easier said than done. Is labeling flat earthers as incorrect wrong? What about banning people spreading covid misinformation? What if there are true american citizens pushing KGB / russian propaganda, they have every legal right to do so, but will Twitter still allow it? At what point does a policy like "respect peoples' free speech" end with the specific reviewer's moral compass determining if something is targeted hate speech or just satire?
democracy is in dire danger from lies and adversarial propaganda crafted by traitors and hostile nation states
jokes which offend the Woke liberals is not a problem on the same scale, though it is certainly annoying. there is a censor-leaning thoughtcrime segment among some liberals but again, that is NOT an imminent danger to democracy, humanity, climate etc
The ideology in question is "Anything that is good for Elon Musk is good."
That's pretty much all there is to it. There's no rigour to it, there's no intellectually sound foundation, there are just things that serve his bottom line, and those that hurt it.
What goes around comes around. If Twitter wasn't so ideological to begin with then Musk may not have decided to meddle.
I personally would like companies to be less ideological in general.
EDIT: By less ideological I mean less interference on behalf of an ideology. Allowing all legally covered free speech would be the minimum interference possible by a company but not necessarily the maximally profitable position. Some interference may actually be a good thing - I think many companies have gone too far. My problem with companies being ideological is that they are signaling a willingness to interfere that invites substantial pressure from third parties to do so which can cut both ways.
Is the argument that Musk will make Twitter less ideological? My assumption is that he’ll push for his own ideology. If so, nothing gets better unless you happen to agree with Musk’s ideology. If nothing gets better we’ve traded one echo chamber for another.
>Is the argument that Musk will make Twitter less ideological? My assumption is that he’ll push for his own ideology. If so, nothing gets better unless you happen to agree with Musk’s ideology. If nothing gets better we’ve traded one echo chamber for another.
That may be true, but if ideology in moderation is what's killing twitter, that already exists, so it will be just as bad as it is now, just a different flavor I would think. People might not like the new flavor though, but for many people, it's already ruined by having any flavor at all.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if Musk just changes the flavor, it will just continue to suck. If he removes the flavor, it will be better for public discourse.
No. The idea is that moderation wouldn’t tend to select for/against specific ideologies. Twitter discourse will remain extremely ideological in character.
Twitter is a psychological hell-hole that like all social media preys upon the absolute worst of humanity in a perpetual negative feedback loop to generate advertising dollars to sustain itself
Elon is a deluded billionaire who cares only about himself
The same way anyone else does. By subjective observation and opinion of the subject
This isn't "The Good Place" where an objective arbiter of the net good or bad we put out into the universe through our entire existence can be measured
Musk is very pro-free-speech-even-speech-that-offends.
Twitter is very ban-anything-that-doesn’t-comport-with-our-woke-worldview-and-call-it-hate-speech-or-disinformation. Also they selectively apply TOS against people they don’t like while regularly ignoring blatant TOS violations from people they like.
There's no way to know if Musk will seek to impose his own brand of ideology or make it less ideological overall (I'm hoping for the latter).
For example, if he stopped banning users who "misgendered" people on Twitter, but instead started banning those who "took God's name in vain", I would qualify that has imposing his own brand of ideology (just for the sake of argument I have no idea if he is religious or what his stance is on "gendering").
If, on the other hand, he stopped banning of users who "misgendered" people, and didn't replace that behavior with a ban on something he frowned upon, I would qualify that as "less ideological". Obviously in this day and age many authoritarians will argue that the absence of censorship is an ideology in itself, but I think most reasonable people can agree that overall, less censorship = less ideology.
I don't think you understand what people mean when they say less ideological.
For example, would you call it ideological that the government does not arrest people for criticizing it?
Imagine if we compare 2 governments, 1 which arrests people for criticizing it, and another that doesn't. In the context of this comparison, the one that censors less people, most would call less ideological.
By ideological, people usually are talking about enforced ideology. So if you censor more people, then that is enforcing your ideology more, and if you have less censorship then that is less enforcement of ideology.
people call things less ideological when they agree with them more, that's all - if your views are unexamined then they look like a natural or intuitive position.
The idea that freedom primarily exists as a lack of compulsion is libertarian or neoliberal ideology. Your total freedom from censorship is somebody else's freedom to harass and send death threats - obviously the line has to be drawn somewhere or twitter devolves into 8chan, and oftentimes people call for a nebulous "free speech" or "anti-censorship" instead of specifying what particular speech is being censored that they think is legitimate. Moderation is essential on the internet.
If people think something is being censored and it shouldn't be, they should point to specific examples.
That’s a really pedantic point to keep injecting throughout is thread.
Yes, technically it’s an ideological choice to NOT gather up various books at the public library and burn them. But in practice, it’s not ideological at all compared to doing the opposite.
> Yes, technically it’s an ideological choice to NOT gather up and burn various books at the public library. But in practice, it’s not ideological at all.
No, in practice it's very ideological, but it falls into a the blind spot most people have for broad consensus ideology. People tend to recognize something as “ideological“ only when a large group strongly opposes the ideology in question.
(The Musk case is different from the analogy you present, though, because of the ideologically loaded way rhetorical appeal to “the principles of open and free discourses with less moderation“ is used in regard to internet fora by a political faction that actually supports intensified censorship of lots of things, but also happens to want to promote lots of things that various large platforms have decided they don't want to be a megaphone for.)
How so? How is it “very ideological” to NOT be burning the third book from the left on the first shelf in the library? Or the ninth one on the right. I don’t even know what’s in either and I spend roughly zero time thinking about my local library. I’m not even sure where the first shelf from the door is situated.
How is my (ongoing) choice NOT to walk over there and start burning a non-empty set of books “very ideological”?
I suspect if you were to enter the same library and light various books on fire, nobody hearing about your arrest would agree that you were no more ideological with respect to that library than I (or the billions of others who also did not chose to engage in that behavior).
OK, so the free speech versus censorship argument, let's go:
Speech rules exist on a spectrum from total free speech where you can threaten to murder someone or continually harass them, to total control where everything you say must pass inspection (say, letters out from a classified military base). Any position on that spectrum has tradeoffs. If you ban Nazis you are being censorious but at the same time, providing space for the people that Nazis hate where they won't have their existence constantly challenged. If you ban fake news and one side of the political spectrum puts out more fake news than the other, that side will accuse you of political bias. Where you draw the line is not an objective decision, it's one based on what you value. That's an ideological decision. Brian Armstrong banning "politics at work" is because he is probably a libertarian rather than a progressive and would rather shut up the political people at work so he can focus on making money without having his actions criticised. Twitter allows politics at work because it was founded by liberals and they allow staff to criticise the direction of the company. 8chan refused to censor their platform for ideological reasons, twitter does censor their platform for ideological reasons. Does that clear it up for you?
I find this bit deeply unhelpful for the discussion.
It’s clear from your numerous comments on this story, that you have an axe to grind. My comment above was to highlight how it was repetitive and annoying as a reader of the thread.
It was not a request for a longer expanded version of the same talking points with a condescending swipe at the end.
I comment a lot in threads when I'm bored. As for the swipe, it gets annoying when people wilfully disregard the point being made and just restate their opinion in various ways without forwarding an actual argument.
In some sense but if a platform takes a neutral stance on the content within it becomes as "ideological" as a pinboard in a super market. So yes the platforms content may reflect the ideology of those who uses it most the platform itself as long as it does not interfere with what is posted to it would in my opinion less ideological.
Free speech and vibrant debate are ideologies. Respecting free speech while limiting the amplification of hate speech and Russian disinformation is an ideology.
I think those are good ideologies for a social media platform to have.
Not everyone has an ideology. Having an ideology is a bad thing. It generally means you reduce the complexity of the world into a simple narrative, and this results in you having incorrect beliefs, making bad decisions, and supporting bad causes. The goal should be to abandon all ideology, not change to a different, better one, although better is always an improvement over worse.
an ideology is a model of the world. You can have a more nuanced ideology (which is a good thing), but you can't have no ideology at all. Otherwise, you can't engage with questions like "why are there poor people and rich people" or "is it ethical to steal bread to feed your family". There are no non-ideological answers to these questions, so your best hope for non-ideology is to cling to and never question the status quo.
I disagree, and so do other thinkers more well-known than I. With regards to "why are there poor and rich people", the answer is so complex as to occupy entire libraries. I've personally read Thomas Sowell's "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics", where he delves into a number of important factors for economic disparity that in vogue ideologues tend to ignore. And, that's the point. Their ideology blinds them to the complexity of the world.
There is similarly a non-ideological answer to "should I steal bread to feed my family?" It involves tradeoffs like:
* what will happen if I steal this bread? Could I get caught and therefore no longer be able to provide for my family? What effect will it have on myself and on society?
* what will happen if I don't steal the bread? Is there any other way to provide food for my family? Can I accept their death as a consequence for obeying a moral law?
You weigh the tradeoffs, risks, and expected outcomes, then make a decision for yourself, which may or may not be the right answer for your specific situation and may or may not generalize to other situations or other people.
As Jordan Peterson says: " Ideologues are the intellectual equivalent of fundamentalists, unyielding and rigid."
And also: "Beware, in more technical terms, of blanket univariate (single variable) causes for diverse, complex problems."
Your definition of ideology may differ from that, but in practice, I find that when we call someone an ideologue today, or refer to an ideology, it is always a false narrative-based over-simplification of the world.
I'm sorry but you can't argue that you are free of ideology by quoting Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson. That's very funny.
Thomas Sowell is a fiscal conservative whose ideology boils down to "individual decisions are primarily responsible for divergent outcomes". Jordan Peterson is a Christian conservative, all his advice might as well be Bible citations. He also knows nothing except ideological positions when it comes to criticising the left wing; he loves the term "postmodern neomarxist" despite those terms being completely contradictory.
> There is similarly a non-ideological answer to "should I steal bread to feed my family?"
> proceeds to describe their own thought process
you didn't even engage with the ideological elements of the question. Is it right to redistribute property if the need is greater elsewhere? Does the right to survive override the right to property? What if violence is necessary to take the bread? You just treated it like a personal cost-benefit analysis of a single instance.
2: yes there is. The fact that you consider them to be authorities on non-ideological positions is the funny part.
I engaged with the question and responded, essentially, "there may not be a universally right answer to your question." I just didn't respond the way wished I would.
And, in general, I would say it's not ok to forcefully take property because you made the judgement that the property would be better used in your hands, but I won't say there are no exceptions to that. Again, life is complex. Abandon ideology.
2. I think you are overdue for some humble self-reflection.
I don't think so, no. The call to abandon ideology is to recognize that narratives can contain truths in a limited form, but it is an error but to treat them as more than they are. I don't see that as an ideology, but as a simple fact about narratives and ideologies themselves. They are, by design, simplifications of reality, or very narrow windows into reality.
I'm suggesting that in the implementation of what you describe, there is ideology at play. To me, it seems like ignoring that is it's own, different type of ideology.
Your responses are mostly regurgitating things you've watched from youtube philosophers. You clearly have an ideology whether you believe you do or not.
You implying that a quite prolific 90-year-old scholar is a "Youtube philosopher" comes off as pretty ignorant or foolish. Sowell did most of his work before Youtube existed, and AFAIK has never directly engaged with the platform in any way.
And again, I never claimed to be free of ideology. At the same time, you haven't done anything to pin down my ideological constraints.
Sowell mostly pops up in the same conservative circles as the IDW crowd these days. It's all under the same online junk philosophy umbrella. It's not like his material has aged particularly well.
Most of what you're parroting seems to be from JP anyways.
1. saying 'it's complex' isn't a non-ideological position, it just calls for nuance. I already agreed that nuanced ideology is better than rigid and inflexible ideology - I think that's true of people I broadly align with and people I disagree with. You might want to reflect on the conditions under which it's acceptable to redistribute property, because if there's a dividing line for you it'll be telling what that line is. It sounds to me like you primarily navigate on intuition alone but I could be wrong. I could easily go on a cost-benefit analysis like you did about stealing bread, but instead it was for mugging businessmen and using the money to pay for drugs and prostitutes. I'm sure you would agree that the latter is wrong, but I doubt you could elaborate a coherent framework for discerning between right and wrong action beyond gut-feel.
2. humble self-reflection isn't going to lead me to think that Sowell and Peterson are authorities on non-ideology. But the tiniest bit of research into the criticism of them might lead you to understand the flaws in their positions. I would know: I used to think Jordan Peterson was great and his tirades against the postmodern neomarxists was him defending western liberalism against university indoctrination and crybullies or whatever. Then I grew up, read some books, actually thought about my internal unchallenged opinions.
"Smarter" is arguable, but unless the parent got hooked on benzos, pursued a scientifically-unsound, meat-only diet, and then ended up in a Russian hospital I think it's safe to say they're wiser than Jordan Peterson.
Nutrition is a fantastic example of a field where the adage "life is complex" applies so well. I love how a person:
1) has major health problems
2) changes his diet and immediately sees those health problems go away.
3) gets mocked online by complete strangers.
Human bodies are so complex and variable. What works for one person's health may not work for another. If you are blessed to find something that works for you, be grateful and humble, and don't automatically assume what you know applies equally to everyone else. Also, "science" is not even close to settled on the subject of nutrition as it applies to individuals.
Jordan Peterson really should have known better with regards to benzos. He said on a Joe Rogan podcast that science only recently found out how bad they were which I personally can't believe to be true, but if it is it is an indictment on 'science'.
> With regards to "why are there poor and rich people", the answer is so complex as to occupy entire libraries.
I think that would quality under beacon's idea of a more "nuanced" ideology, rather than something hard/fast (eg: a Marxist narrative dividing people into capital owners and non-owners).
Can you name one public Twitter ideology except a commitment to not spread vaccine misinformation?
At this point if anyone thinks that vaccine debate is ideological, I don't think we will change each others mind in either way, but I'm just curious if there are any examples.
As far as I can tell that is the one and only piece of controversy. They banned Trump.
Its just the San Francisco “silence is violence” crowd. The “use your platform” crowd. They are not objective even if you coincidentally like the cause of the day.
If you try to express a dissenting opinion at that organization, even as an attempt to refine that opinion, you get kicked out. You made someone uncomfortable.
Taking a spiked metal baseball bat to that beehive is the way to deal with it. Whether it will be better? Unlikely, just different
They prevented spreading the story of Hunter Biden's laptop just before the last American election
[Edit: it's strange to be downvoted for a factually correct statement.]
The thread I created on validating the legitimacy of one of those emails using DKIM back when the story broke was quickly flagged. Be glad all you got was a downvote.
That means nothing except his email account was hacked and put on a random laptop, which is what happened. They're free to delete any emails they like, or even add some as long as you don't check every single one.
> means nothing except his email account was hacked and put on a random laptop, which is what happened
I've never seen this suggested, certainly not in any official communication by the relevant parties.
It would be a weird evidentiary standard to construct highly complex, even far out defenses, for someone accused of dubious conduct that must be defeated when they won't even put their own credibility on the line in arguing them themselves.
> They're free to delete any emails they like
Absolutely, but that doesn't do anything to answer validated emails which are concerning on their own, in isolation.
Why release a statement about what's either an intelligence op (if it's a hack) or a CFAA violation (as reading someone's email on their laptop probably is)? And you can't say finding someone's abandoned laptop is just finders keepers, everything on earth is a CFAA violation. It's nice and open ended like that.
Note before it was "found" there was already a pseudonymous report written about some of its contents.
But it wasn't hacked, he brought the laptop in for data recovery and never returned. After a period of time, that property becomes the property of the shop. The laptop was also seized by the FBI.
Which is why they shut down the NY Times for posting trumps tax information. ... and why, after hunter biden, they shut down ProPublica after they obtained the detailed tax records of all Americans and started publishing documents from a multitude of wealthy people, none of which (thus far) have exposed any crimes, and little of which could be argued to be a matter of public interest... oh wait they didn't.
In these examples not only was the material hacked, its further disclosure is a crime. By comparison, the disclosure of the hunter biden material was completely lawful, as far as we're able to tell right now. The material was also easily verified to be legitimate, at least in part-- since the google DKIM on the messages passed. You won't find pretty much any other hacked material reporting that twitter allowed to spread that could be cryptographic authenticated.
It's why twitter shut down accounts sharing the dump of Epik (right wing wingnut friendly domain registrar), or personal information extracted from it... oh wait, they didn't (well they didn't shut down a few accounts calling for violence against people in it, just not one merely propagating the hacked information).
It's why they shut down Suddeutsche Zeitung when they published their reporting on the Panama Papers... oh right, yet again. They didn't.
I could keep going, -- there is a lot of journalism that comes from hacked documents.
Can you give a single prior example of high profile reporting on hacked materials where twitter suppressed the media outlet and discussion of the subject? -- I'm earnestly interested.
Hunters laptop was NOT hacked; it was abandoned at a repair shop which after 30 days became the property of the owner of the shop. BTW this is NOT uncommon. Not just for comptuer repair shops but storage units, auto mechanics, etc.
You can't hack something you own. The whole "hack" thing is such a stupid narrative yet people cling to it - probably because there is no other defense for what was on the laptop.
My point was that even if you accept that clearly false premise, the claim is still bogus: the media and members of the general public routinely share actual hacked information (as well as other material which is unlawful to distribute, such as people's tax returns) via twitter's platform without much fear of account suspension over it and did both before and after the hunter biden laptop incident.
This reminds me of a startup I've worked for, CEO highly praised new board member ("[..] worked hard for months to get him on board [..]") in all hands meeting, 2 weeks later CEO essentially was out.
Parag was extremely lucky to have been appointed CEO despite his lack of qualifications. He's only ever worked at Twitter and was appointed CTO before ever holding a management position. He's not going anywhere because he won't get as lucrative of a gig anywhere else.
This type of career progression interests me. What type of internal politics did Parag have to maneuver to be appointed to these high profile roles? As someone with C-level career aspirations, it makes me wonder if I'm not cut out for the politics. I'm not Machiavellian. Can people make it to C-suite via merit alone?
Multiple times, I've seen inoffensive personalities be internally promoted to C level positions ahead of more politically savvy (and often more effective) candidates. This often takes place after the departing executive has a strong personality or leaves for contentious reasons. Everyone wants someone nice and trustworthy and unambitious to take over so that the organization can heal. I'm guessing this is what happened at Twitter.
How to maneuver into this position? Maybe you could get hired to an important role at an organization with an unstable CEO, and make sure that you are friends with everyone and don't piss anyone off. Then wait for the CEO to lose their shit completely.
No merit alone doesn’t work. You absolutely need to be both charismatic and that guy who’s constantly asking their boss what they can do for promotions or more money. Bonus points if you’re tall. That’s pretty much it.
There are more CEOs of large U.S. companies who are named David (4.5%) than there are CEOs who are women (4.1%) — and David isn’t even the most common first name among CEOs. (That would be John, at 5.3%.)
Are we able to construct experiments to test this? I’m not sure how that’s possible given the confounds we don’t have the ability to control for (genetics being a huge one). Looking at group level statistics can’t provide a definitive answer due to this.
If you have some links that prove otherwise I’d love to see them!
I guess there is a high probability that he will drag boardroom disagreements out into the open, so in that sense they will have to "argue" with him. In general boards vote to settle things and then it is settled, they are not supposed to be arguing indefinitely - the chair calls the question and the matter gets settled.
Can Musk keep his board seat? That is my question, being an unruly character when you don't have full control usually gets you turfed from a board for violating confidences pretty quickly, but IDK.
Everything "goes up" when Elon first gets near it. That's the benefit of an army of Twitter worshippers. Whether there is any lasting value to his involvement beyond the pump is the question.
If he kills the stupid pop-over login box that's supposed to force me to make an account I'll call that lasting value.
Sorry, I don't understand how this reply relates to my comment.
Are you saying that the price bump will keep him on the board? The fear of a drop will keep him on the board? I can see that, but in the long run the valuation shouldn't be affected unless he is actually a good member of the board.
"Can Musk keep his board seat? That is my question, being an unruly character when you don't have full control usually gets you turfed from a board"
The short answer was that yes, because investors will believe he will add value and so will keep him on the board. And investors are the ones that decide.
Separately, it's possible this was done as part of a non-aggression pact.
I mean in some ways twitter did die ages ago in that its user base has stagnated over the years and its relevance has dropped outside of a certain powerful minority of users.
The "powerful" users (like Musk) are it's relevance. Tweets are quoted more than ever as the primary source of information when they are know to be "official" accounts, or owned by a specific person of interest.
Embedded Tweets on a news website might not be a great way to get ad-views, but those accounts give it relevance beyond the users who actually interact by commenting.
I expect Matt Levine’s take will amount to some version of this; Elon Musk uses Twitter to make a lot of money via his various market manipulations, one risk to that is Twitter doing something to make those market manipulations harder, so a way of mitigating those risks is to buy as much of Twitter as possible to get as much of a say as possible, in an effort to prevent that from happening.
Surely Elon has made $3bn off of Tweets by now, it makes perfect sense for him to spend some of that as a way of protecting future additional earnings, both for him and the various companies he runs that also make money off of Elon’s tweets.
I do think Elon will provide a valuable counter-balance to the current monoculture that drives Twitter.
But I do not believe Elon in of himself can really resolve Twitter's ills (by my subjective assessment). Twitter and other social networks are ultimately reflections of parts of humanity. Us humans have our biases and our drives that don't just go away. You can obviously (and should) tweak the product to incentivize more productive dialog, but you can't overwrite our biases/drives/distribution of competencies by updating Twitter.
Personally, I view these social networks as mirrors, revealing parts of our humanity as it currently is. A lot of us don't like what we see, and we fixate strictly on the mirror, suggesting it's strictly the mirror's fault for displaying the unflattering image.
Social media is a mirror in the same way that baseball is a mirror. Individual personalities are tested and the fact we're playing it is because we're human, but the rules of baseball are not the rules of life. When we're playing baseball we're doing something very different from when we're relating to each other or spending time together.
Twitter is a social game, and distorts the behavior of its participants. Its a fun house mirror, not a reflecting pool.
Baseball is a game, and a little bit of "relating to each other or spending time together" (which is why there are sometimes brawls).
Twitter is "relating to each other or spending time together" to a much larger extent, even though some people are using it as a game or (more commonly) a business.
It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics. That may be unavoidable anyways.
I think people outside the SV bubble (I grew up there, don't live there anymore) don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are. Musk has his pulse on that, so I'm happy to see him step in and shake up the group think.
Outside of the SV bubble people have actual lives that don't resolve around tech companies. Until someone shows actual evidence with real numbers behind it it's hard to take the whole "people don't realize how much people do or think X" seriously.
As someone who lives in the midwest, very disconnected from the SV bubble, this is spot on. I know several conservative-minded people that absolutely care about the censorship and policies SV companies push and despise them for it.
I also live in the midwest, and literally no one I know (family or friends) outside of the tech industry cares at all about this. I'm sure that means my bubble is a bubble- but again, until I see real numbers either way this just looks like people pushing a narrative and using imaginary people to do it.
And yet, they all have Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts. You can hate them all you want, but you're not going to change them by shoveling money into their pockets. They care enough to bitch, but not enough to do anything about it.
These people who hate Twitter probably don't even use Twitter. If you're not interesting or important, then nobody on Twitter cares what you have to say. It's not like Facebook, where you can argue politics with someone from high school. A nobody on Twitter is just screaming at the clouds.
Twitter is a monopoly. When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter, it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation. It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.
> It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.
You provide no evidence and then try to shut down other opinions? This is certainly not a self-evident fact.
Maybe the public square is still the public square? Or the Internet itself?
Isn’t “public” in “public square” important? Twitter is a private company. The public square became important to free discussion because it was owned by the public. Twitter isn’t.
And between FB, YT, Reddit, podcasting, Google search, etc. we’ve actually never had this many different, non-siloed ways of communicating publicly. If Twitter went bankrupt tomorrow there would still be many ways for the public to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience.
I don’t understand how a website that the majority of my friends and family don’t use, isn’t public and isn’t in the top 10 visited sites can be the “de facto public square”.
Sure, it’s a major communication channel, but one of many.
This is very much up for debate. Elected officials actually have free postage and can send letters if they need to. Not only that, they likely enjoy direct access to their local news networks and can broadcast messages through that avenue. Most have email lists, and can send interested constituents updates through that platform. Most also have websites on official .gov accounts where they could host press releases as well.
Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.
> Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.
NO! I am not saying that at all. I am saying that this is why Twitter is a de facto public square. I am not advocating that Twitter should be a public square. Frustrating to see a strawman of this sorts. You have completely and utterly misunderstood my points. Basically, 180 degrees opposite of what I was trying to say, may be a failure of mine to be less precise but jeez.
The observation that Twitter has become a public square is undenieable (this is different from advocating Twitter to be a public square. I actually wish it wasn't).
I thought it was very obvious. Just check your local firefigting department or police. From local Governments to the President, they use twitter to inform their citizens sometimes exclusively. Meaning there is no other place to go for this information.
Unrelated but - Doesn't it bother anyone that it has become a necessity to use Twitter and they demand your phone number to login simply to view the Tweet?
I'd like to see reasons why Twitter is not a public square.
> Just check your local firefigting department or police. From local Governments to the President, they use twitter to inform their citizens sometimes exclusively. Meaning there is no other place to go for this information.
I believe federal, state and local institutions have reporting requirements that ensure the information is also publicized on their website or available in paper form upon request. I don’t think it’s legal to put important government info exclusively on Twitter.
Twitter is 1 method of quickly dispensing information, but that information then gets more widely distributed through traditional news networks. For example, I use Twitter almost every day but I never once read Trump’s tweets. I heard about them by watching TV or reading a news article.
When anyone from police to the President need their message heard, they put it on TV.
Also, a town square is for the public to communicate to the public. People seem to use FB, Reddit, Instagram, etc. all for that purpose. I’ll grant that it’s one of many virtual town squares, but it’s not a monopoly, so I think “the de facto town square” is a bit of a stretch.
I don't think they're a monopoly. If Twitter vanished tomorrow, people would quickly move on to a host of other platforms. That's the sad truth about network effects: they can unravel shockingly quickly. My mayor tweets, but her office also uses email, text messages, postal mail, press conferences, and other tools to communicate.
Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.
People care because censorship does affect how they build their real lives.
> Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.
This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship? In my experience far more of them are worried about harassment- I know far more women who can't use social media because of their stalkers than I do people who were kicked out of social media for having bad opinions.
I think what you're missing is that most people don't want to run into vitriolic hate speech while they're going about trying to organize their neighborhood parties (and so on). We can talk about the idealism of free speech all we want; the problem is any platform that stakes a claim as caring about Free Speech almost immediately gets overrun by that sort of vitriolic hate that most people don't want to be around in their daily lives.
I went on one of the "free speech" video platforms about a year ago because I was curious, and on my first visit, right on the front page, were videos about how the Jews rule the world and Holocaust denial. I'm not remotely Jewish and I was immediately put off from ever revisiting.
This is a core problem that people who legitimately care about censorship and free speech need to address. It's extremely unfortunate, but "anti-censorship" has well and truly become a dog whistle in the modern era.
Remember that free speech is about the 'market of ideas.' In even totally free markets, not every product sells. An anti-censorship social network startup cratering because its platform immediately got overrun with hate is not censorship, it's the market at work. The vast majority of 'regular' people I know do not consider Facebook's rules prohibiting hate speech to be censorship. They're just grateful they aren't running into it every time they open their phones to scroll their feed.
This, honestly. It _feels_ more like the only people that care about SV censorship policies are the people affected by them: SV types that live almost entirely on the platforms they're scared of being censored from. Well, that and people who make their entire careers pushing other peoples' boundaries and, as a result, generate a big negative following.
He's not asking you to take him seriously. He's taking executive action while others wait infinitely for some kind of "real numbers" to come in. Analysts make terrible entrepreneurs.
That's what makes all of this so ironic to me. Social media platforms and their users (especially Facebook) are not left-leaning. That a vast majority of Twitter users feel he will improve it means that the bias is fictional.
I don't know how you got that sentiment from that graphic, which doesn't have jack shit to do with political affiliation.
I will put $100 down right now that if you did a statistically significant, unbiased, controlled, representative sample of verified Twitter users - as in people you can provably show are actual human beings - you'll find the majority are left-leaning.
Oh wait, I don't have to, Pew Research Group already did it...
Facebook is a different animal because more than half the planet uses it, and what we consider "left" or "right" as Americans is dramatically different than what other nations would consider "left" or "right" or "liberal" or "conservative".
> verified Twitter users - as in people you can provably show are actual human beings
Verified means the account is authentic and of public interest. It doesn't guarantee that you are a person and further, the vast, vast majority of real people on twitter aren't verified.
as for the pew survey, it isn't controlling for many of the things that we know correlate with political affiliation, it is just reporting them as isolated facts. Just education and age would likely explain the delta in political affiliations within that survey. [1]
Sure this doesn't change the fact that the slight majority is Dem-Leaning, but it should raise serious doubt that its because of bias on the part of twitter instead of just plain old demographics of the internet.
Precisely, liberals aren't leftists in the least—at least not according to leftists. That is, world-wide, liberals and fascists have constantly worked hand-in-hand to form coalitions to keep the left out of power since WW1.
The true dialogue in America is happening amongst center-left vs. far-right ideologies.
I think the framing you're proposing is off; what the right has done are things that are offensive to leftists and as a result they're banned. It's tautological. This is exactly the premise of the criticism levied in this thread and writ-large at Twitter censorship.
Nick Fuentez (well, racism and antisemitism), David Duke, I'm sure there are more but these are the only examples I know off the top of my head from being terminally online
“It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics. That may be unavoidable anyways.”
one can dream. as of now all corporations follow the same ideology of neoconservative imperialism because they are all owned by the same people (blackrock, etc)
You mean like the news? As an experiment try this for two months. On month 1 - watch only CNN. On month 2 - watch only Fox. Maybe take a 1 week break between both and write down your thoughts on the world... very interesting how it evolves based on what you watch/listen too... From what I hear if you just watched Russian state media it'd be an even more extreme version. The great thing about our free society is you have the choice to do this experiment, as I understand it you can't do this in Russia today...
> as I understand it you can't do this in Russia today...
Or Ukraine or many other countries. Not sure why you singled out Russia specifically.
However, if you are just watching corporate media you're not getting the full picture either. CNN and Fox News have very similar opinions on non-culture war issues.
"It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics."
Not ideal, but better than the status quo where there is 1 company catering to 1 group.
> don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are.
Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit. I'm sure you can find some people on both sides of the spectrum regarding their policies, but the vast majority don't. As someone who isn't from SV or has ever worked for in or for an SV company, my bubble is surrounded by farmers.
Doesnt seem that way from my perspective. Do you grant this is simply your impression? I tend to distrust you because you just assert this general truth that is rather controversial and you dont cite any data.
The idea that an absolute majority of Americans have really spent any time even thinking about Twitter's censorship policies seems divorced from the reality I live in.
> Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit.
That's the problem with not giving a shit. When things finally do become bad enough that it affects you personally, it's too late. When it comes to standing up for what's right - and I define what's "right" as mostly what the Constitution of the United States lays forth as our inalienable rights, you better give a shit from the word "go" and you better oppose it stridently because once freedoms get stripped away from you, they're nearly impossible to recover.
I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.
And we can blather on all goddamn day about "muh private corporations!" but when these corporations are actively suppressing competitors and are working hand-in-hand with news outlets to label any new alterative as a Mos Eisley-esque shithole that no respectable person would frequent, the point is moot.
Facebook and Twitter are the modern day public square. Some people will want to claim it's "The Internet" itself; you can just go make your own public square and publish your own website, etc., but that's not actually how a public square works. Just because you hop on your tractor and box blade your front yard flat and pave it over with concrete and add some park benches to it, doesn't turn it into the public square. You actually have to have the public actively occupying it. The public square is where the people are. And the people are on Facebook and Twitter... at least in America.
I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.
I can't even take this seriously. These are the same folks that kept people as property. Didn't make sure everyone could vote (male land owners only). They founded the country on land stolen from folks already living here. It isn't like the founders were really beacons of freedom, at least not if you use today's standards and honestly, they'd not even have a grasp of the events leading up to it. Perhaps they'd back it up considering how glaringly the world has changed since then.
I'm sure it is supposed to make folks think the country is straying from its foundations, but look around: People that aren't straight, white land owners are walking around with all these rights and freedom and stuff. That's already happened long ago. Maybe straying is a really good thing.
Imagine being born into several flawed systems, risking everything, and many had a lot to risk to fix one aspect of a system and being judged because you didn't fix everything. You act like the founding fathers created slavery on their own. The freedom given to the world by the US and by extension Napoleon was not some inevitable thing and its not something that will necessarily persist either as we can easily judge from mankind's very limited written history.
Well said. Judging historical figures by modern standards isn't fair. We should look at each person as a flawed human being and take away lessons from what they did right and what they did wrong.
It is fair when folks are speculating what the people from the past would say about modern problems - which is what this started out as. If one is wrong but not the other, some folks aren't arguing in good faith.
"I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act."
That might not be the best argument. Remember that the First Amendment passed only a few years before the awful Sedition Act, which would never pass modern judicial review.
> and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics.
That's exactly where we are now? When twitter censors right of center ideas and de-platforms those who think them, we invariably seek refuge in alternatives that engender far more radical thinking than if we had stayed in a larger public discussion.
The furthest ~25% on the left and right have an increasingly extreme, partisan, borderline psychotic view of the world that you're either with us or against us. That polarization has become radically more aggressive over the past decade.
Just to use a simple example: someone might might say it's not enough to not oppose men becoming women and dominating female swimming/sports (neutrality), you must support it. Anything else and you're an "enemy" and not an "ally." The left in particular has created an increasingly large vocabulary designed to polarize and split the population and draw lines between people (either or lines).
This doesn’t really make sense what you described isn’t actually a neutral stance — hell just the framing alone betrays your feelings. You’re already using extremely polarizing vocabulary in your attempt to be neutral.
Someone in support of trans men and women being able to compete would take issue with:
* “men becoming women” — transitioning doesn’t change your gender, it only aligns your outward appearance to the gender you have always been.
* “dominating female sports” — the whole point of the opposing view is specifically that trans women don’t dominate sports.
You’ve twisted it in such a way that even accepting the premise of your “neutral” statement is already super political.
Here’s a real neutral stance that would be accepted by people on both sides of this particular issue.
“I’m not qualified to have an opinion on this matter, the decision is best left to the athletic clubs and people more knowledgeable about the effects of HRT.”
> transitioning doesn’t change your gender, it only aligns your outward appearance to the gender you have always been
Is that really true? There's a growing body of evidence that "the gender you have always been" doesn't really apply as a general case. For example: detransitioners, autogynephiles, abusive parents attempting to 'trans the gay away' in their kids, and so on.
Of course there are people who also report having felt like their dissonant gender identity for as long as they remember, and will for the rest of their lives. But this is not universal.
Seems there are many reasons why one may decide on transitioning, and not all of them are positive.
First, since you used a throwaway for this, kudos for asking this in a way that is respectful and seemingly genuinely curious.
I think at some point it becomes a little bit semantics. If you transition for reasons other than your dissonance or because you suffer from dysphoria then you’re probably gonna have a bad time. And if you’re forced to transition by abusive parents or government you’re gonna cause dissonance or dysphoria.
Detransitioners are an interesting case because while it’s absolutely possible for people to be wrong the majority of cases of people doing it are because of external factors like violence, discrimination, and unsupportive friends and family. However, there are lots of safeguards to keep people from making mistakes. You need the sign off from a doctor, two psychologists, and have to be living as your post-transition gender for at least a year to get reassignment surgery, HRT is broadly speaking reversible, nobody is giving HRT at all to kids, teens only get puberty blockers until they and their doctors are sure, and adults still have to go through an interview. This process is supposed to catch autogynephiliacs (although this terminology is really really dated) and I suppose someone could lie their way into getting reassignment but that’s on them then.
So yeah, I think we’re basically in agreement. I think a better way to say it so it’s universal is “transitioning doesn’t change your gender.” A gay woman forced to transition against her will is still a woman, a man who detransitions because it doesn’t alleviate problems misidentified as dysphoria is still a man, and a trans woman is and always has been a woman.
It does not seem like the solution to the problem would be change the mission of the mainstream platform. It would undoubtedly fall victim to whatever these mysterious forces are.
I haven't encountered a single person in my young, left-wing, NYC bubble that demands I actively support trans women in female sport leagues, as opposed to not opposing them. I don't even know what the difference is between these things (does active support mean lobbying or volunteering?).
I do, however, have some family members that demand I actively oppose this, and get very mad when I profess neutrality.
- Claim that Twitter is a private corporation and its their rules (Btw, you can check my history in 2020 where I did support purge of Trump from social media, but I am now comtemplating).
- But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces, but rather with censorship, algorithms, political and misinformation driven opposition.
So now we have public square that enjoys monopolistic powers (yes, government officials exclusively publishing on Twitter. Your tax money cannot buy a platform where you can listen to the constitutuents that you voted for), but also prevents incumbents from rising through political proxies that I mentioned earlier.
What scares me to no end is foreign interference by intelligence agencies in domestic affairs done via social media. That is the real danger here. We are seeing the destabilizing effects of that since 2015.
I also just don't see the widespread censorship of conservative opinions that you do. JK Rowling is still there with her TERF views (which I actually largely agree with). Jordan Peterson is still there denying the predominant view on human-caused climate change. r/conservative; nobody wants to censor this or anything like it. Bret Weinstein is still there spreading his Covid vaccine misinformation. Donald Trump got kicked off after repeated ToS violations. Far-leftists also get kicked off (I know they recently shut down a bunch of far-left subreddits) and you don't see that because of your echo chamber.
When someone says that _Twitter_ does heavy handed exercising of censorship or algorithmic manipulation just shows me that most people don't actually use Twitter and instead consume it view headlines. That wouldn't be surprising considering is the 15th largest social network by MAU globally. The Twitter product today is still largely the same as it was 10 years ago; Meta & friends do far more to stifle "free speech" but are never given the same sort of criticism because they do the "right" kind of amplification and moderating. Twitter is probably the least moderated of all the big social networks but it gets the most criticism for having too much moderation. What people actually want from Twitter is freedom from criticism from the mob, i.e "free speech for me, but not for thee".
>But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces,
Not with market forces? You mean to say that censorship is what is actually holding Gab back from mainstream adoption? This sentiment has always been incredibly myopic. I don't know why American conservatives are always surprised when their flavor of politics aren't popular. For some reason Europe and the rest of the West, who are farther left than Americans, cease to exist and the reasons why sites like Gab aren't huge is because of censorship.
There seems like there's a presumption that already successful companies are not subject to the same forces as other companies, despite all the evidence (including Twitter's experience) to the contrary.
This is great news! Twitter and the rest of the rotten and censorious platforms could use a proper shake-up. Hope the authoritarians and political repressives and anyone who works on the content moderation team all resign in protest! Good riddance!
In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”
His grandfather (Dr Joshua Haldeman) was head of Technocracy Inc:
Honest question, and not snark: We have 4chan and 8chan. Those are absolute free speech. Don't we already know how "absolute free speech" works out on digital platforms? Why do we need another one?
Those are free speech but also anonymous. In real free speech you still have to put your name to what you're saying. If you suddenly stuck everyone's real name on every single comment they wrote then it'd suddenly become a lot more civilized.
Conversely, because there are no identities, there's no way to follow specific people you agree with.
I guess the problem with those platforms is that most privately censored speech is still the actual hate speech stuff like Nazism/racism/homophobia/etc, so those platforms have taken on all of those aspects because those people have nowhere else to go.
But Twitter is not already a cesspool of those things, and I guess the feeling is that loosening up on the reigns a little bit won't suddenly cause Twitter to turn into a neo-nazi dominated platform. You'll just have things like not banning Donald Trump or not squashing factually correct NYPost articles – which of course are things that you can still debate the merits of but are different from Twitter becoming 4chan.
It’s easy to call for change without actually having to build any of it.
Odds are zero things change about Twitter’s content policy, as it’s about as permissive as you can get while operating in the US.
There’s a lot less sinister intent than one might think at first blush; Twitter wants users to stick around, banning them is a really bad way to do that.
What's to build? Twitter already built all the tools to ban, censor, and editorialize content. OP is simply suggesting that Twitter use those tools less.
Since when is "published" a meaningful quality barrier to content?
Any idiot with a WP site can "publish" a "news story".
Besides, if I reply to your tweet, "My child just died in a fire." with an article about how fire deaths are among the most painful ways to die, it doesn't really matter much how "published" that "news story" is, it's hateful and has no place on the Internet.
Well that’s where we (you and I, but also us collectively as a country, it seems) disagree.
I don’t care that it’s hateful, and I think it should have a place on the internet, and so long as we allow monopolies on the internet, then it needs to have a place on whatever monopoly platform there is.
Anyone who thinks they should be deciding what is “hateful and has no place on the internet” is EXACTLY who should NOT be deciding such things.
You're totally right, I was trying to do a two part thing and I ruined it by saying, "no place on the Internet".
I should have said, "No place on Twitter." On the Internet? Yeah, totally in agreement.
On Twitter? Couldn't disagree more, and my one-two punch of a point was going to be that 1) it's up to Twitter to decide that, and 2) they've landed at about as free as American society will tolerate.
1) because Twitter has rights too. If we actually respect freedom of speech, we also have to respect Twitter's right to decide who to associate with and,
2) Twitter is completely tolerant to many things we'd probably consider offensive. My example probably isn't even enough to get banned on Twitter for, even though I think Twitter would be wise to avoid associating with people who get that mean in their trolling.
I think the only way to support free speech is to support Twitter's right to decide who it allows on its platform. I don't think they should let Trump on their platform, for example, but that's up to them, and they can change their minds. And now, apparently, (at least partially) up to Elon!
Above you said that twitter was pretty much as permissive as they could as you can get while operating in the US. Don't you think you're moving the goalpost in your response here?
I don't see how anyone could seriously sustain an argument that twitter is as permissive as they could be lawfully. (Nor would I argue that they should be /that/ permissive in any case, the law in the US is a very very low bar, in part because we recognize that there are other ways to deal with bad speech than prohibiting it by law)
I didn't mean legally, I meant what the US population (western population generally), as an aggregate market segment, will tolerate. Twitter, as a company, should be allowed to pursue whatever market they believe will best provide value to their shareholders, and if that market includes "Americans with typical sensibilities" then I doubt they'd be able to pursue that market while allowing hate speech and harassment on their platform.
I think it's only fair we defend Twitter's right to freely associate as a form of free speech just as vigorously as we defend the right of people to be able to say whatever they like (with some exceptions around protected groups).
Thanks for correcting my misread. That makes a lot more sense. I don't think I agree there, certainly twitter's policies are more restrictive than say-- google-- which is used by a much larger portion of the country. But you've taken a defensible position, which I wouldn't care to debate.
There are not many of us here, it wouldn't make sense for some small percentage of the US population to dictate how the entire population is forced to engage with one another on a website run by a private (as in not-government run) organization.
Twitter should be able to seek profits, and if maximal profits exist by creating a set of rules that can be violated with non-illegal activity, they should be allowed to chase those dollars.
There was a ban hammer for breaking out the news that Hunter Biden lost a laptop , containing sensitive emails and compromising photos. Twitter even blocked NYPost for this. 1 year later both NYTimes and WAPO both reported the laptop as real (and at least some damaging emails as real too) - that kind of news story. This kind of ban does not belong in a democratic society, it's a banana republic move.
It's undemocratic to allow Twitter to decide for itself what content it wants to allow on its own private website?
Wouldn't it be undemocratic for the government to force Twitter to publish content it doesn't want to publish, content that would, in Twitter's estimation, harm its ability to make money?
Well, you said it. If Twitter publishes content, then it should be responsible for that content. But Twitter does not want to do that, they want to have protections like they are a public square, but also heavily alter the discourse. It's like the phone company can disconnect you if you swear on the line - it should not be possible. I would be supportive with Twitter and Facebook taking on a full editorial role, and be responsible for everything on their platforms.
And let's be honest about it. It was never about Twitter making money, for example Trump was making money for Twitter hand over fist. And NYPost publishing about a potential viral news story was not going to make Twitter less money...
It was about shifting the political discourse, which is what it's making this an undemocratic bad move. And I was wrong, it's not really a banana republic move, it's more of a communist regime style move. It was the same back then: if you said the wrong things, the censorship will come in full swing and "cancel" you. It didn't have to be the state censorship, oh no, you were censored way before that: by your boss, by the company, by the public opinion etc. Communist Romania in the 1980s and what I see here today are eerily similar: you wouldn't go to jail for your opinions, but you would be "cancelled" from any good career and public voice.
You're missing the part where Twitter is not part of the federal government. And for the federal government to step in and order what a private company must publish is an actual banana republic move.
"For so long as Mr. Musk is serving on the Board and for 90 days thereafter, Mr. Musk will not, either alone or as a member of a group, become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the Company’s common stock outstanding at such time, including for these purposes economic exposure through derivative securities, swaps, or hedging transactions."
This is the second line in the linked filing, and something a number of people have not read.
> This is the second line in the linked filing, and something a number of people have not read.
Not sure it's that it was left unread or if it just doesn't matter.
As best as I can tell, it just means he won't overtly threaten the company with a takeover or equivalent because he's been given soft power to influence.
My lay reading suggests that Twitter is now basically operating at his whims to keep him from leaving the board and executing a takeover plan 90 days thereafter.
>> he won't overtly threaten the company with a takeover or equivalent
Well, he can overtly threaten all he wants. He can begin the process. He can make all the money arrangements and make agreements with other shareholders. He just cannot complete the takeover by actually acquiring more stock (or other instruments) until after 90 days. Imho that isn't a practical limit on threats.
> My lay reading suggests that Twitter is now basically operating at his whims to keep him from leaving the board and executing a takeover plan 90 days thereafter.
Honestly, it might be amusing if he does do that. Twitter stock looks to still flat from the IPO price, even after the spike after this announcement.
I say, let him tie up a significant portion of his net worth in a vanity project with no real growth potential.
The board seat was granted in tandem with a guarantee from Musk that he will limit the number of voting shares he amasses. I don’t think it’s an uncommon arrangement when an outside investor joins the board.
OK, Elon, lets settle. Let's give you a board seat but you have to promise not to try and buy up controlling shares in the company and privatize it in a hostile takeover.
I really don't understand how you pull that from my comment. They are trying to avert a hostile takeover. Elon may not even be interested in making twitter more profitable. It may just be a pet project for him to take over the company and shutter it out of spite or use it to further some other goals. They gave him a board seat to try to get him to back off.
Someone fill me in here: TWTR is a NYSE traded stock. What, hypothetically, would prevent someone from just paying the market price for whatever percent of Twitter's stock they care to buy, such that they would have to agree to these terms?
Absolutely nothing, although when management is opposed to the takeover they have techniques to make it very costly for the attacker. In this case, the requirements are conditions for a seat on the board – if Elon wanted, he could resign and buy as much stock as he pleases.
It's easy to look at Musk's tweets and think he's just doing buying in so he can shitpost more effectively, but he is savvy enough to realize that Twitter is not nearly as valuable as it could be. Its reach is as huge as any network and anyone with a public presence "has to" be on it.
The big knock against it is that users and brands are afraid of spontaneous howling mobs. Fewer users means less reach and fewer brands means less $$$. My guess would be that he has some ideas about how to change this. Maybe (spitballing here) more tools for users who are QT'd?
I hope that's the reason. I've always said Twitter has unbelievably untapped potential that for whatever reason, its current management is unable or unwilling to realize. Over the years they've kept the platform stagnant at best or filled with user dark patterns at worst. Not to mention their hostility to the developer community.
> Maybe (spitballing here) more tools for users who are QT'd
Yes - slowing down the rate of Twitter pile ons would help a lot. Rate limiting QTs from non-followers would help a lot I think. You could even extend this to manual text quotations and screenshots, using either printer dots or OCR. Subtweeting is fine - the point should be to avoid making randos the "it" person on Twitter.
I agree and people forget Twitter owned TikTok four years before TikTok was a thing (in the form of Vine). I'm still amazed that people take Twitter seriously as a business while they have still have board members around from when Vine was closed down. That kind of ignorance seems inexcusable to me.
Thanks for breaking my brain. Possible complement :P
I got as far as "bot" <-> "the cloud is just someone else's computer" <-> "tree that owns itself" before my train of thought SEGVed loudly in complaint.
Is there a law akin to Godwin's or Sturgeon's about all social media trending toward some failure state? Several years ago I deleted all my FB content and then disabled my account. Looks like it's time to do that with my Twitter account now.
I think while the effect was first noted in a relatively small community, the idea applies broadly to all sizes of open public forum, especially where things are organized chronologically. There's difficulty in developing and establishing cultural norms when there are constant new arrivals who can't have learned from past developments. That's what the term represents to me.
Yeah, I also don’t see why such patterns should apply differently to any community past a sufficiently large Dunbar number, modulo some tribal factor. Humans simply haven’t evolved to differentiate between a tribe of three thousand, or three million.
Want proof? Tell me how many people might read this comment and agree with it.
Humans are bad at large scale pattern recognition and suffer from extreme proximity bias. It’s why filter bubbles exist.
For the same reason, it seems dangerous to promote the idea that it’s even possible to “have a conversation as a society.” If any such conversation is taking place, surely its level of inherent selection bias would render any of its conclusions irrelevant. Only a participant or biased observer could claim otherwise.
Society has a filter-bubble deficiency. For a global population nearing ten billion humans, the number of distinct information channels is alarmingly low in comparison. It’s not possible to have an honest “conversation as a society” in such an asymmetrical information environment.
I didn't come up with it and I don't know if there is a name for it but here's a comment I wrote a while ago about how I model the decline of social media and other systems.
That’s why free speech policies shouldn’t be dictated by partisan concerns. You never know who will be in control of your social media platform in the future.
I mean, there's a difference between platforms trying solve the issue and Twitter that gives a badge repeat offenders as long as the target of their bigotry is deemed acceptable..
Suppose the president got up every day and issued a presidential address in which he said "we should kill all mintorities". Would you be opposed to this?
Thats an extreme example, but the point im illustrating is that in reality, as a society, we do not approve or endorse all speech, and it is obviously true that censorship is useful. You can see quite clearly that were the president to do this, it would have consequences.
Does that mean we should make certain speech illegal? Not necessarily. Does it mean we should curtail the reach of certain speech? I think it is good for Twitter to do this.
The distinction is that speech being possible is different than speech being emphasized or broadcasted.
And both might be related. Motivation for any billionaire to back Republican top candidates is to repeal all Billionaire Tax legislature that might pass soon.
No such thing will ever happen. This is just political theater for the sake of appeasing the "sour grapes" faction on the left. There is no political will to tax unrealized gains, tax wealth, etc.
Considering we only have 2 political parties in the US, if you oppose the policies of the party in power you only have one other option. I'm a libertarian and don't have a team I root for, but it's a fact that plenty of hyper-wealthy people support the Democrats.
I don't know where the implication that society is dependent on twitter is hidden in my comment. But no, society isn't dependent on twitter, is it relevant to society? Certainly.
Luckily your stating something with no actual argument points to support your statement doesn't hold any weight whatsoever to whether it has any truth to it or not.
You want argument points to support the idea that Twitter is relevant to society?
It is the fourth most visited site on the internet. It has well over three hundred million active users. It was one of the main methods of communication for the last sitting president of the united states. It is worth more than three billion dollars. It is currently what this subset of society in this thread is discussing because we find it relevant.
My bad, I was thinking of your "and [Elon buying 10% of Twitter is] awful for society" comment - unless I misunderstood what you that was awful for society.
Well, the definition "awful for society" is fairly anecdotal, so my reply won't be able to be built upon hard facts.
But in my opinion, Elon Musk is a very smart man who not only sees, but has reaped massive value from Twitter. He is notable for tweeting misleading information to affect the stock price of his companies. These actions resulted in a lawsuit from the SEC in 2018.
The ripple effects of stock manipulation are hard to directly tie to the concept of "awful for society". But it certainly feels like when money is given one place, it is taken from another. When that transfer of money is based on misinformation, it creates pain. I personally am doubtful that the billionaire feels any of it, but someone else will.
I also don't believe that Musk has learned any lesson from the lawsuit either. He is currently trying to fight the tweet pre-approval stipulation in the courts. Putting a financial investment into the company to me personally, looks like someone who has found, or is looking for a loophole.
So I'm curious then what you think about short sellers who can bet against Elon Musk, and therefore they're financially incentivized to generate negative press (whether factual or not), and that Elon is very vocal against that practice?
I presume you're primarily referencing his "Funding secured" tweet - which arguably with Elon's pretty solid judgement, he may have well had funding secured - say through verbal agreement - just perhaps not through official legal channels?
It's also arguable as to whether what he's said is misleading or not, and which what he says, what the SEC wants him to do vs. what the Constitution gives him the foundational right to do seem to be at odds.
Because you didn't give any specific examples of his supposed misleading, it's hard to actually argue you further.
You also haven't tied anything you said back to how him buying ~10% of Twitter is awful for society though?
You must also dislike Bitcoin then because the vast majority of what people see, that hypes them up to buy into Bitcoin, is shallow propaganda/is highly misleading - and those people ultimately will lose their money once the blockchain designed to mimic MLM-Ponzi schemes collapses?
Yes, the idea of short sellers using nefarious methodologies to provide value for themselves is also "awful". This is essentially the crux of my argument about Elon's usage of twitter. I'm of the mind that more than one awful thing can exist in society at the same time.
I'm sorry that I didn't base my argument on what "he may have well had". But when I think about it that way, sure, he may have well had never done anything wrong. The courts disagree, but they also might not being taking into account what he may have well had.
I tried my best to elaborate on why I felt that him purchasing a stake in twitter was awful for society in my last comment. I am sorry that you didn't find it meaty enough for you to argue on, but perhaps that is for the best.
and yes, I also believe bitcoin and MLM ponzi schemes are also awful.
> This development makes Trump being reinstated on Twitter more likely.
Maybe.
> His reinstatement would make a Trump presidency less likely, IMO.
That's...an interesting opinion, but I don't see any strong reason to believe it is true, or even more likely to be true than the opposite effect.
> Most people (or at least HNers) would agree that decreasing the likelihood of another Trump presidency would be a good thing.
For people (at least, US voters) generally that appears to be less true of Trump than literally every other potential candidate, as Trump currently is both the strongest by far polling candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 against other potential Republicans and the strongest against potential Democratic opponents, winning my most general election head to head polls.
I understand he polls we’ll head to head, but most Americans would prefer he not be the next president (whether they prefer a democrat, republican, or something else). And I cannot imagine that most HNers want another Trump presidency.
I would speculate that part of the reason he’s polling so well (relatively speaking) right now is that he’s been off twitter for the last year.
> I understand he polls we’ll head to head, but most Americans would prefer he not be the next president
That's true of literally every possible candidate; no candidate is preferred by the majority of people, and Trump is preferred by the largest minority.
> I would speculate that part of the reason he’s polling so well (relatively speaking) right now is that he’s been off twitter for the last year.
I would speculate that almost the entire reason is that he successfully took over the Republican brand and people are dissatisfied with the present conditions, largely due to economic conditions, particularly inflation.
Is Elon a Republican or Conservative? I've seen variations of this regarding balancing ownership and improving free speech, but aside from a few cryptic tweets about cancel culture, has Elon ever said anything? In interviews (especially the famous Rogan interview) he seems pretty disinterested in politics.
In America, progressives/leftists actually lump in “liberals” as “conservative” now since traditionally “liberal” means support of typical Enlightenment values, democracy, and free market capitalism. But I’ve noticed that people who vote Republican refer to progressives/leftists as “liberals”, so it’s all very confusing.
Depends on the person, doesn't it? If I were at Twitter, I would be excited about this. I would be expecting the work to become more challenging, but also more important.
Praise for Elon tends to diminish the closer you get to him. He’s kind of notorious for being a bad boss; impulsive, poor temperament, and petty. Even if you like his achievements, chances are you would very much not enjoy having him as a boss.
Many do enjoy that very much, clearly. Amazing engineers, who can work anywhere they want, choose to work at SpaceX and Tesla. And we all benefit from the electrification of the grid and advances in space.
Where did the person you are replying to indicate that "hard work" and "ambition" are the issues he is faulting? It seems like you're being rather disingenuous.
Musk's bad behavior includes things like forcing Tesla employees back into office, against local health restriction, mocking trans-folk because an ex started dating a trans-woman, pumping and dumping cryptocurrency, posting multiple tweets that violate laws (stock and union related), repeatedly lying about his products, etc.
Don't worship the man. Hard work and ambition are aspects of his character deserving respect, no doubt. But he's not perfect. Not all aspects of his character are worth emulating, and he has his blindspots like everyone else.
The idea workers have to suffer under "great men" to produce things of value is provably untrue and just an excuse by those "great men" to act in unacceptable ways, while taking credit for the work done by those people.
A good CEO can of course provide value, but pretending they are alone responsible for success, and abusing staff is a good way to achieve that success is just wrong. Burning out passionate people is a good way to create short-term profit, it isn't "greatness".
Suffer? What are these workers - slaves? Duped cult members?
You people are crazy. Since when is hard work and ambition something to be scorned?
It's pretty easy for you now, from your obvious position of wealth and privilege, to now ridicule those values which built the very civilization you are now inheriting and trashing. Talk about not having skin in the game.
I'm genuinely confused by your post. Do you personally know the person you're responding to? Nothing about his public information seems to warrant this level of vitriol, but maybe I'm missing something.
It’s kind of like how some actors really only get into “method acting” when it allows for them to behave like assholes on set. The idea that one must be a jerk to do “great things” is a self serving lie by rich and powerful people who want to excuse their misbehavior.
My post wasn't saying that my entire point was provable, just that it was specifically trivial to show you can create great work without that suffering.
If you can't think of a single example of a valuable thing being made by a company without an abusive auteur CEO, then I guess we see "value" very differently.
The rest of my post argues that there is no way to justify that harm given we know the work can be achieved without it.
They have a culture of overwork and moving fast. I was looking at job postings for SpaceX & Tesla a couple years ago, and every single one of them explicitly mentioned that you will be expected to work more than standard work hours and put in time on weekends, which is very different from all the other companies that stress work life balance. I'm sure it works for a lot of people, but you should be sure of what you are getting into. And I don't expect employees will stay happy if/when the Musk stock rally stops.
As long as it's honestly communicated beforehand, and employees are not deceived about compensation and workload as they voluntary sign the contract, is it bad or immoral in any meaningful way?
I'd say no. But given the trend of people calling 20 hours a week "slavery", demanding debt forgiveness; and such. It seems like it's becoming a minority opinion to let consenting adults make their own informed decisions (and deal with the consequences of them)..
Oh, bullishit. Corporations will take every inch you give them, right up to the red line. Then that becomes "normal". And then you'll cheer them on for it, probably.
I was responding to someone asking how they're different than any other tech company. They're known for underpaying and overworking people. That's how they're different than most others.
The implication being that if Twitter switched to that culture, then it'd generally be a really bad thing for most of those who currently work there, since they did not sign up for that.
How is this different from M&A or company going bankrupt or getting laid off? Are you saying the software engineers and fully functioning adults that work at Twitter are unaware of this and would be betrayed? They totally signed up for it and has been compensated well for the risks they take and the services they provide.
Anyone can buy the stock though, while working at a company that pays better and has better work/life balance. Is the stock grant particularly generous or is there a better-than-average employee discount on stock purchases?
He's known for running his employees into the ground, generally treating people poorly. Pay is sub-par compared both to big tech for tech workers (although not really when the stock does well) and to skilled labor for laborers. You can compare ratings of the company on sites like Indeed to other big tech, and I'm sure you can find some articles about the working conditions (I recall some being published over the years).
My former boss went there, his whole team quit shortly after, he got promoted twice and made a boatload of money from stock grants, and now he's one of the higher ranked engineers and a few of his family members went to work there as well. But these guys are workaholics, brilliant but not humans of normal working capacity. I think it a lot depends on your expectations.
I don't care either way. Nor about Tesla, nor about Musk. Calling yourself a founder when you aren't, regardless of the merits of him funding Tesla, is still very odd.
I don't think the OP was referring to Tesla since technically they are a car company, not a "tech" company, but still you can find interviews with real founders of Tesla who stated on record they don't understand why Elon calls himself a "Tesla founder", but since they took his money, he is their boss (or was).
I think he was referring to PayPal, a tech company. Even now all over the net you can see articles claiming Musk founded Paypal. Nothing further from the truth. Musk started X.com and designed a very simple page where you put two peoples email addresses and you "could" send them money. It was happening at the same time as PayPal had the same idea and similar website. Problem for PP was that back then no sane bank or financial institution would touch any company that is hooked up to the internet. Musk had a tremendous leverage because of the only bank who would go ahead and plug their gateway into the net (I believe it was Stanford Federal Credit Union, but I don't remember) was okay for doing it because personal leverage of Musk father, who owns multiple diamond mines in ZA, and put a huge collateral "just in case" something goes wrong. Musk didn't have to have a working website to have a $300,000,000 leverage over PayPal and PP knew it will be years before they get any bank to agree to work with them. It was smart for Thiel to offer large stake of PP for Musk just for ability to change which site will be using the bank's gateway. This story was somewhat easy to find and popular back in the old days of the internet, but - putting my conspiracy hat on - these days you find nothing about it at least not by Googling. So I don't really know - to me it doesn't sound he founded PayPal, they would eventually got their permission from some bank but at that point we would be X'ing each other money, not "Paypalling" it.
> record they don't understand why Elon calls himself a "Tesla founder"
And I explained why it is really not that insane. It was basically him throwing them a bone, they should be grateful. And of course they were horrible and ran Tesla into the ground and hid facts from Elon.
> I think he was referring to PayPal
I don't think so.
> X.com and designed a very simple page where you put two peoples email addresses and you "could" send them money. It was happening at the same time as PayPal had the same idea and similar website
This is not true. X.com from the beginning was payment company. Confinity was originally a security company for Palm platform. From there they switched to payments.
From Wikipedia:
> In March 2000, Confinity merged with x.com, an online financial services company founded in March 1999 by Elon Musk.
The two companies merged so all the people of both companies are rightly called founders. And non of the others disagree with that.
> because personal leverage of Musk father, who owns multiple diamond mines in ZA
Please provide evdience. This 'dimond mine' nonsense has mostly been discredited. The best researched story about that basically showed that it was like a 30k investment sometime in the 80s. Certainty not enough to convince a bank to do anything.
Musk father was wealthy because he was an engineer.
> This story was somewhat easy to find and popular back in the old days of the internet
I don't care about all that.. I just think he is a liar for claiming he founded Tesla and for spreading bullshit that he founded PayPal... I literally thought he founded both..
His companies compensate engineers below market, does he not?
Also- weird take that both of your examples seem to focus on one specific genre of role. I’ve dealt with many more useless software engineering and product managers on a day-to-day basis than HR-types, who are there if you want/need to contact them or in the background if you don’t.
Maybe Musk would benefit from them, actually …especially considering Tesla has been ordered to pay $137 million to a single worker for demonstrated cases of racism and now the state of California is suing the company for widespread abuse and harassment
> If you think like an economist, the fact that his engineering departments remain fully staffed shows they're paid enough.
Well enough does not equal market rate though. There are many reasons people don't switch jobs, economists are well aware of this. Being at a company lead by such a big personality adds even more reasons.
I mean, based on the objective aggregate information we have available, they pay much less than FAANGs.
I said nothing about Tesla not being able to keep a staff due to low pay – just that I do not see any indication they are paid "well" compared to what other companies pay.
If I worked at Twitter, I would be worried my salary would be frozen and pay/promotion scales re-adjusted.
> His companies compensate engineers below market, does he not?
This varies by division. Auto Pilot for example is way over paying currently compared to peer companies. On average pay at Elon's companies is below what you'd get from FANG though.
Regarding the CA issues, as I noted on a similar comment:
> I'm sure this is all 100% true and in no way backlash for Musk's decision to shift operations away from California and very loud criticism of CA's politicians/bureaucrats.
Tesla was found guilty by the court, and other employees have come out with evidence/witnesses of the same experiences and recordings/videos. Of course the state must pursue. The state _should_ have a legal grudge against Tesla -- if it's unsubstantiated, the courts (and Tesla's top-tier legal representation) will absolutely find that.
Also, as a lifelong Texan and a recent Californian, if you don't think Texas will find a way to sink its political might into extracting as much wealth and political favors out of Tesla you are sorely mistaken. If you don't abide by the Texas governments whims, they will shut you down or run you out -- Tesla still isn't allowed to sell Teslas directly in the state, for example, because all car sales must go through a dealership; if you want to buy one, you must go to a different state (even if it was made in the state). Tesla's lobbying this latest legislative session didn't even get close to changing that, the amendment died in committee.
Basically he's got a lot of money. People will attack him no matter what he does, in an effort to redistribute his wealth. It's game theory, there are no billionaires who are liked.
I may be wrong, here are my impressions from 5 minutes spent googling - he already made his fortune in past decades. He is not really in the limelight, not building revolutionary stuff or going up against govt/corporate interests. He is pretty old and has already planned to donate major portions of his wealth already. Elon has signed the giving pledge too btw.
Someone said it better than me, but a lot of HN users are smart engineers and are basically jealous of what he has achieved. The pile on hate of Elon Musk in here is hilarious to watch, and it happens like clockwork.
Normally I'd agree, but his father made his fortune from emerald mining in apartheid South Africa. Elon went to an all-white prep school that explicitly didn't allow black students. There's a pretty high chance that Elon was raised in a household that may not have been amazing on the whole racism front.
Looks like his fathers background is actually hard to pin down. A biographer of Musk believes his father made most of his wealth from his engineering business.
> Elon was born on June 28, 1971, to Errol and his wife Maye Musk when they were both in their 20s. This is important because the parents divorced in 1979, nine years after getting married, and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the emerald mine in question came into the picture.
> The family owned one of the biggest houses in Pretoria thanks to the success of Errol’s engineering business,” a business that included “large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base.” Elon even admitted his father is “brilliant at engineering” despite being an overall “terrible human being.”
Judging people by skin color, not okay, we both agree.
But judging people by their ancestors seems to be the same kind of wrongdoing to me. Both are pretty arbitrary criteria that the target has no control over.
The information that Elon 'might' have a racist upbringing is not really relevant. Whats relevant is whether self-responsible Elon is doing (directly or indirectly) harm to others based on skin color or race or anything like that.
It's remarkable how all the replies to my message here completely ignore the comments in the articles made by actual Tesla employees who've been victims of racism.
People can’t escape their ideologies. This website is as tribal as anywhere else (actually, honestly worse than the median). Accepting that Tesla fosters and promotes a racist work environment is unthinkable for ideologues of a certain stripe.
To me, it doesn't seem likely (from the evidence I've seen) that Elon has created a culture of racism at Tesla such that it led to some blue-collar auto workers making racist jokes and comments to each other in the factory.
I am sure that happened, and it is awful, and Tesla should answer for it in court and through the proper channels. But to some degree, this seems like the type of thing that (unfortunately) can happen in an environment like that. It doesn't seem like there is much indication that is a part of Tesla at a high level or happening in Elon's other companies.
(Also all 3 of those articles refer to the same lawsuit.)
I've not heard Musk being accused of being personally racist - that was more one contractor used racist language in the presence of some other contractor stuff.
I'm sure this is all 100% true and in no way backlash for Musk's decision to shift operations away from California and very loud criticism of CA's politicians/bureaucrats.
He lost in court, multiple times. And he'll probably continue to lose.
It's not that people in the government have a vendetta against him. He's just petulant and thinks himself above the law. So, while I'm sure it's enjoyable to to knock him down a peg, he's doing it to himself allowing blatantly illegal shit to happen in his companies.
A decent chunk of people in the previous thread were saying he’s doing it to kill the bot that tracks his plane’s movements.
In general, he seems to be an active enough user that there’s concerns he will use his new power as a way to shield himself from the consequences of his activity.
I don't think it's about that, but I am absolutely sure that Musk would sooner pay 100x the cost in order to send a "fuck you" to someone that rankled him rather than take the ego hit and pay the 50k even if it's a pittance to him.
No it's because it's extremly simple to setup another account to do the exact same thing. You'd have 10 new ones the next day asking for the same amount.
Yeah he spends 9 billion to be petty against a random kid with a twitter account that just republished public information. Again, that's literally an insane thing to believe. If you can't see how insane that is I can't help you.
You keep saying "that's insane" as if that's supposed to mean something. "Richest guy on the planet makes a capricious stock investment"... yeah, totally insane lol.
I won't go so far as to call you insane for not being able to imagine an edgy rich guy spending a lot of money for petty reasons, but I'll instead say that your refusal to even accept the idea as a possibility is a bit naive.
You really think getting rid of a twitter bot is that important? Seriously? Like wtf. I just can't even imagine how anybody can even consider that.
Musk clearly has much better other reason that make about 1000% more sense. He has been one of the biggest twitter accounts for a long time. He clearly cares about speech (whatever you may think about it) and he talks about that often in talks to governments around the world and so on. In your version that is all some elaborate front in order to take down some twitter bot?
If you think any non-insane person would spend 9 billion to ban a twitter account that just publishes public information I really don't know what to say anymore. Even if that bot was removed, anybody else could set up the same thing again.
Whatever you my think of Musk and calling 'edgy' or 'petty' or whatever, what you suggest is literally a 100% totally crazy thing to do. No human that is not insane would consider this a logic course of action.
If it was about that and he didn't want to pay the 50k publicly, there are about 1000 possible other ways that could have been achieved other becoming gigantic investor in twitter.
By "shield himself from the consequences of his activity" I think Elon literally meant "I don't want to get shot by some crazy person following my movements". No perfect solution, but I can get his motivation.
ADS data is public. Just because a Twitter bot puts it in a nice easy to digest format doesn't mean the data isn't out there, and there's nothing Elon or really anyone can do about it.
It is trivial to track a plane if you have its tail number and Elon only flies on a small number of jets.
And, no, by "shield himself from the consequences of his activities", I mean things like calling someone a pedophile on Twitter. He is one of the biggest Twitter drama quee s and it would be a lot easier to clean up his messes if he practically owns the company.
Doxxing is very specific-- you are revealing the link between the pseudonymous account and the holder. Elon Musk is a public figure, and posts under his own account.
Additionally, a jet plane, whether private or public, does not have any rights. You cannot "doxx" an airplane. Aside from the practical benefits that ADS-B provides, the public nature of it holds everyone accountable.
Doxxing isn't only for pseudonymous accounts. There are people with actual profiles that use their real names on Twitter and with a little bit of research you can publish all kinds of personal information about them like their current address which can be a real safety issue and would definitely violate Twitter's TOS.
> You cannot "doxx" an airplane.
I think it's pretty obvious that Elon Musks plane will most likely have Elon Musk inside of it. So by doxxing the plane you're doxxing the person. Just think about the same example with a car of someone who may be receive a lot of negative attention, you can tweet out the location of their car and that may put them in harms way. The car has no rights either but revealing the information is still a safety issue. It's just that for planes the data is public because the idea of a plane identifying an individual location is not a common one since so few people own private planes. Another analogy is a bus vs a car. I think most people would be fine with a bus having live tracking and in fact many people depend on that, but for an individual car it doesn't make sense.
I'm pretty neutral on Musk but he has an established track record of saying stupid shit on Twitter and ruining others' days/lives. Market manipulation, libel, trolling, etc. I guess I don't trust that a man with that kind of track record would be a positive influence on the social media hellscape we already have.
This is acknowledging that he also shares awesome stuff, like technical SpaceX details, and that he often engages with people in a real cool way.
None; sounds like a good change for Twitter and probably the best thing that happened to their board in quite some time. I did laugh out loud when I heard about this yesterday. There is a more than a bit of history between Elon Musk and his many detractors and a lot of that involves Twitter. So, Elon Musk buying himself a seat on the board is more than a bit ironic.
The man definitely seems to float from one controversy to another and quite a few of those controversies seem to involve Twitter. Buying a big share in Twitter is kind of a ballsy thing to do. But why not? Might I suggest shorting the stock if you disagree ;-).
Puh-lease. Bias means tendency to lean a certain way, you can’t have bias in 2 opposite directions.
The pro Elon crowd here is a minority. Something I’ll never understand, being that this is an entrepreneurial forum and Elon is the worlds best entrepreneur. Jealousy perhaps?
What I'm saying is that you can't reduce the whole site down to one made up measure of bias.
Maybe it is jealousy, maybe it's that he's a neurotic moron who's more than happy to try and ruin the careers of little people.
How many of the great entrepreneurs of history got embarrassed after their scheme doesn't work and call their competitor a paedophile? You can recognize his skills while also recognizing that he's not a very nice man.
No, the bias is everywhere and HN is just reflecting that universal bias. It’s very popular to dislike Elon musk and it’s very unpopular to be a supporter. Count the number of supporters vs detractors in any mainstream thread — musk haters will be the majority every single time despite the fact that his detractors refer constantly to a phantom army of supporters. Every Reddit thread is basically 100 people responding to non-existent “fan boy” straw men. And they also like to spread the falsehood that Elon musk used gem mine money to become successful. It’s literally just made up nonsense.
People like to act like his pedo tweet was some kind of crime against humanity. Let’s have a look at your twitter if you’re so indignant. People are such shameless hypocrites.
The average person has simultaneously been outraged at his pedo tweet and also tweeted the same or worse. Have you actually been on twitter? It’s mostly irrational hate and insults
Also I assume you’re British so it’s not the same. You people have a problem with pedophiles. You actually bleep out when people say the word and censor the word when people write it. It’s like some kind of big deal over there. That’s just you bro, nobody else is like that.
I’ve seen it so maybe uncommon but not untrue. But it’s 100% true that British people have a weird problem with pedophilia, even compared to other western countries. Problem both in the sense that you all seem to be pedophiles and also in that the topic is enveloped in moral dogma.
Jealousy indeed, I am a fan of Elon because I can appreciate that he is an engineer first in almost every way he communicates professionally. It is very obvious he keeps abreast to physics, engineering, and he even has core IT knowledge. I watched a 30 minute video where he spent 2 minutes explaining a trace route to a interviewer in detail and it made me like him even more.
You could claim jealousy, but that’s reductive. Elon Musk annoys a lot of people, for a plethora of reasons. It’s pretty easy to find wide ranging genuine criticism of him from numerous perspectives, if you want to actually understand. Or you could hand wave it all away and claim jealousy I guess, just know it’s a lazy explanation.
It’s more lazy to claim all the criticisms about him are true. So many of these criticisms are based off of clickbaity headlines. If you actually follow him closely, actually listen to his interviews over time, you will see he is very consistent in his words and actions. There is no doubt in my mind that he aims to do good for humanity as a whole.
- Haters who can't stand people more successful than them, and who is more successful than Elon Musk? So anything he does is terrible.
- Since Trump, HN mostly supports social media censorship of opposing political ideas, and Elon Musk has expressed that he doesn't like this censorship.
It's both not okay and not a big deal. The fact that it's brought up so often is because there's so little you can pin on Musk to warrant your hatred for him. I bet you've done similarly shitty things.
Consider the phrasing: “So calling someone ‘pedo guy’ on Twitter once is Ok behavior?” You chose to unpack the facts in a direction chosen by you. A court of law unpacked it in a different direction.
I don't think that's the case. I don't like Musk because he's all sizzle and very little in terms of steak with his products. Like the most useful any of his companies has done is the work with battery tech at Tesla. The rest has been copy and paste from research done in the past. Plus, he often bungles into the product development process on the technical parts often without any context for him to make anything close to a reasonable analysis. It's why so many engineers move on as soon as possible from his companies. He literally burns out folks not because he's magically brilliant but rather because he's unbearable and not a team player.
I think Musk got the seat on Twitter because he didn't want to be deplatformed. Twitter is closely tied to his PR activities (for good or bad) and all the drama around "coins" (not to give him any legitimacy from a crypto-sceptic). Twitter allows him to "shoot from the pulpit".
The story is always bigger than what plays out in the shadows. I wouldn't base my decision on what is being extensively reported.
He filed forms that he was going to be a passive investor, and the same day joined the board after discussion that had been in the works for weeks. This is strike two on misleading investors.
I haven't seen analysis on whether it was illegal, but I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board even if it succeeded in keeping him from buying up more stock. With him on the outside, maybe he causes more trouble than on the inside but I would be wary of the association.
> He filed forms that he was going to be a passive investor
This was almost certainly done by a lawyer working on his behalf. This strikes me as a technicality of paperwork that is being seized upon by the media as a way to portray Musk in the worst possible light.
> I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board
In this hypothetical, what is your role (i.e. fellow shareholder, CEO, employee)? I ask because shareholders (aka the owners of the company) choose the board. Musk owns nearly 1/10th of the company, and is now the largest shareholder, institutional or individual, by a good margin. In other words, whatever your hypothetical role, you wouldn't have much of a choice.
Setting the mechanics of boards aside, there is strong case for him being the most successful business person alive. He is right up there with Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg. Shareholders should be cheering this on. And there is some evidence, in the form of the stock price, that they are.
> This was almost certainly done by a lawyer working on his behalf.
Are you arguing that when he signs his name and certifies that the (short) form is "true, complete and correct" that he is not responsible because the form was prepared by an attorney of his?
> being seized upon by the media
How did "the media" seize on this? When I last checked, there were zero articles. And even if they had, why wouldn't discussion be merited?
Does it matter? Was there any consequence of filling out a form then doing something different?
I have heard it several times already today, but so what a form was filled out wrong, is there any consequence to that that anybody would care about? (I doubt anybody complaining about it actually knows anything about how important it is, it’s just being latched on to because it’s a way to match events with preexisting opinions)
Yes. He is currently in court claiming SEC is picking on him on another matter and this (and the fact that the filing was late) is likely going to hurt his case with the judge. And while I don't like speculating, since you're asking me to do so I'll add that it's entirely possible that any misrepresentations here get pursued on its own merits, as well.
But why is that form there and what is the consequence of filing one way or the other? I mean besides being punished for doing it wrong, why does that rule exist and what are the effects of filling it out one way or the other?
Why is this anything more than an administrative mistake? Did he get some benefit from filing the form that way?
... or, what it seems, is this just a "gotcha!" for people to complain about on the Internet.
"Schedule 13D is intended to provide transparency to the public regarding who these shareholders are and why they have taken a significant stake in the company. The form signifies to the public that a change of control, such as a hostile takeover or proxy fight, might be about to take place so that current shareholders in the company can make informed investing and voting decisions."
It’s worth pointing out that the SEC is extremely image conscious. They count on their reputation as the hammer of god himself to keep traders in line. Elon repeatedly snubbing them is going to tempt them to pull out all the stops.
SEC's actual power is extremely limited. -- This is why e.g. with ICO scams you see them taking no action at all or imposing a fine that is just a cost-of-doing-business percentage of what they took in from the general public, at least against ICOs that are wealthy enough to keep the SEC tied up in litigation.
Let me ask you this: how is it that you are aware of the form and how Musk (or, more likely, a lawyer) filled it out?
It is being reported [1]. Every word in an article for a major news outlet is meaningful in some way. Journalists are not provided limitless word count, so decisions have to be made about what is and is not included.
Now, one could definitely argue that journalists merely reported on it as they were trying to divine Musk's intentions. But to then interpret this, as the GP has done, as a sign of Musk's dishonesty and lack of integrity is too great a leap (in my opinion).
Those articles are mostly about announcing as a passive investor -- not whether he misled the public in his filings. This collection of articles only further makes the case that the media has mostly reported uncritically his misleading claim.
However, even that article is just about the lateness of the filing. It doesn't mention the debate over whether the filing itself was misleading. And this is the best example I could find!
Can I introduce you to Matt Levine? A very popular opinion columnist - you can get his column by email even without a subscription to Bloomberg, but he’s one of the reasons I subscribe.
Yes, it can be. It can also be funny and informative, though. Check out the archives, a lot of topics build on past articles and not everything is a joke, sometimes there are clear and simple explanations of financial terms: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...
He's a harvard/yale educated lawyer who worked at goldman and Wachtell, Lipton. Of course he's pretentious and egotistical. He's also funny and informative.
> This was almost certainly done by a lawyer working on his behalf. This strikes me as a technicality of paperwork that is being seized upon by the media as a way to portray Musk in the worst possible light.
Elon openly attacks and disregards SEC. He doesn’t have any benefit of the doubt left, when it comes to activities that SEC is suppose to be regulating.
What is the substantive effect on the public (aka "investors") if this value in this field on this form was incorrect?
This is a tempest in a teapot. People who don't like Musk are pointing to it and saying, "See? SEE!? He is a liar. He is bad."
But the reality is, this doesn't actually hurt anyone and its not really a big deal at all.
But let's take the least charitable interpretation and play it out: Musk filled out the form himself. He intentionally with malice aforethought lied. The day after the SEC form becomes public, he takes a board seat. What is the material damage done to the public?
Twitter shareholders got a huge 2-day pop. That would have happened regardless of Elon's intent.
Misleading investors is one of Elon’s main jobs. And he’ll continue doing so, as we doesn’t face any consequences for it (expect for becoming ultra rich).
Other than lying about timelines (Which I'm not sure I'd really call lies, he just hasn't learned how to set realistic timing on goals), what has he lied about?
Like, I know he hasn't delivered on FSD (And I know he won't for a long time, which is why I didn't buy FSD when I bought my Model 3 in 2019), and the Cybertruck and Roadster have been very delayed, what has he lied about?
You yourself have admitted he lied about timelines. This is not a different category of lying. It's straight up lying about your products. And the world is not simply black and white. It's morally gray. You can lie about something once in a while and get away with it. But if you consistently lie about FSD capabilities, it's a pattern of willful deception.
The SEC has been asleep for years now. Every week we see market whales pulling gamma squeezes and pumping tech stocks higher and higher. The market is a joke at this point.
I’ll bite. Yes I am, but on the other hand none of the SEC’s decisions have impacted me negatively. I have never held XRP for example, so while I dislike them it’s entirely because I don’t believe they should exist in the first place, they haven’t cost me money.
>just another in a long list of government agencies that shouldn’t exist.
I would add 'in its current form' onto the end of that.
The problem is, we have these agencies, so we can say, "look, we're fixing the problem," but then we provide them neither the power nor funding to really do anything but be annoying. I am firmly convinced this is by design. One side gets to say, "look we fixed it" and the other gets to say, "look it doesn't work and never will," and nothing changes.
Elon Musk is kind of obnoxious. He lies (or "exaggerates"). But what Tesla has done is insane. It's happened so quickly, and that's leaving aside the rockets. The hard evidence that we can build new things, that we can progress and build a future that's better than the present is so important. If it takes a flawed man to show us that, I'll take it.
If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why. It may just be that you're an Ayn Rand villain.
All I see with Tesla is how government policy can successfully change markets. Tesla exists not because of Musk’s genius[0], but because of tax credits and carbon offset credits that allowed Tesla to be profitable early. Without Musk, someone else would’ve pulled it off, without the policy Musk would have done something else.
0 - Again, Musk didn’t found tesla, he did a hostile takeover and has tried to rewrite history with him as the founder.
What a wildly uncharitable interpretation of my post. “Dead-end”? Come now.
All I see in this “we wouldn’t have EVs without Musk!” discussion is a rehash of the old “great man of history” theory, something that’s generally been discredited in the historical fields. The whims and decisions of individual actors matters, yes, but they also act in a context that molds and constrains them. The specific circumstance that made Musk and Tesla took both his initiative, and a specific cultural and policy environment to support his actions. We overweight the former.
First, one must acknowledge that Tesla would’ve died on the vine without the policies I mentioned above. They finally turned a profit excluding emissions credits in Q1 2021. A feat, yes, but also one that was wholly dependent on public policy to survive and grow. You can give credit to Musk for recognizing the opportunity here, but he didn’t make it.
Second, there’s really nothing to suggest that nobody else would have taken this path if Musk had not, albeit a bit later perhaps. History is full of “great men” who discover and create, but dig under the surface and one will find dozens of uncredited inventors who were either a close second, or less lucky in marketing. Heck, there is no real reason to believe that Musk was even critical for Tesla; remember that he took it over, and we have no idea where it might have gone absent his involvement.
Who in this thread said "we wouldn't have EVs without Musk"?
To say that the idea of one person changing the world has been discredited is so wildly wrong I don't even know where to start. We can't neglect the background but we can't neglect individuals and the choices they make either.
What we can say is that Musk presided over the growth of a company that has sold 2 million EVs. We can't say "someone else would have done that if he had never been born," which is what you said. Unreal.
> Who in this thread said "we wouldn't have EVs without Musk"?
I was attempting to paraphrase a common sentiment, and should have been more clear about that. It’s pretty easy to find people stating a varient of this idea in sibling threads.
> To say that the idea of one person changing the world has been discredited is so wildly wrong I don't even know where to start.
You could start by actually reading what I said, rather than making up for yourself and then arguing against that. Everything you said here is unrelated to my point, and directly countermanded by my actual words.
> Elon Musk is kind of obnoxious. He lies (or "exaggerates"). But what Tesla has done is insane. It's happened so quickly, and that's leaving aside the rockets. The hard evidence that we can build new things, that we can progress and build a future that's better than the present is so important. If it takes a flawed man to show us that, I'll take it.
Nowhere in my post did I make that argument. If Elon used slave labor to run his factories, I wouldn't defend it. However, "being a troll, exaggerating, and sometimes lying" are not mortal sins.
> However, "being a troll, exaggerating, and sometimes lying" are not mortal sins.
Mortal sins are serious sins, venial sins are less serious sins. "Colloquial" doesn't mean you get to delete words you find inconvenient or don't understand.
Some ends justify some means. He lies to some investors. Not good. Because of the this the chance we get into serious trouble due to climate change is significantly reduced. We also gain the technology to go to Mars economically. So Yeah I would say this end justifies lying to some investors.
What kind of data do you want? For example more then half of all cars sold in Norway right now is electric. A fact that wouldn't be the case if Tesla wouldn't exist. Every yeah the market share of electric vehicles is increasing with projections that almost no gasoline vehicle will be driven in 2050 in west EU.
You just have to look at the pandemic to see what difference no combustion engine cars would make for the world. Cities that were covered in smog suddenly had clean air because of the stay at home directive.
None of that is direct evidence that Tesla's movement of "electric vehicles to the mainstream" has "significantly reduced" climate change. Yes, 50% of all cars sold in Norway are electric. Yes, EV market share is increasing. Yes, emissions decreased in major metropolitan areas at the onset of the pandemic.
Despite all of that, climate change itself has not been "significantly reduced" in any way, nor has there been any evidence that increased adoption of EVs has slowed down or altered climate change's progression.
internal combustion engine cars create 7% of the worlds CO2 emissions. That's highly significant. Electric cars will reduce that to near 0%. A fact we have to give Tesla massive credit for. 7% is country level huge.
I don't disagree with those numbers, but I still don't understand how they bolster the assertion that, "the chance we get into serious trouble due to climate change is significantly reduced". Just because something could happen doesn't mean that it will happen, or if it does, that it will happen when we need it to or that it will even be enough.
Two years ago we needed to start reducing emissions by 4% every year. We didn't. We must now reach a whopping 50% emissions reduction by 2030 to limit temperature increases to 1.5C, because the current path we are on could increase temperatures by 4.4C by 2100.
Getting every nation to ditch their ICE vehicles has to happen, yes, but it's not that simple. You can't just ban the sale of new ICE vehicles and expect that 7% to drop to 0%, because everyone who already owns an ICE vehicle is going to keep driving it until they've decided they're done with it for whatever reason. So, the only way to get to 0% ICE vehicles by 2030 would be to make it illegal to operate one - today.
Politics is involved. Getting large swaths of America (or anyone in any nation with an affinity for an ICE vehicle, but this subset of folk is a great example) to give up their gasoline and their trucks and their mustangs is like asking someone to stop breathing. Asking developing nations with little money or ability to modify their infrastructure to support only ICE vehicles over the next eight years is an outstandingly daunting task. I could go on and on, and while I admire your hopefulness, what you're saying requires the entire world to accomplish the same goal in a far shorter amount of time than we actually have.
I want to view the future through rose-colored glasses. I want to have high hopes that EVs will save us.
7% is HUGE. Like country level huge. Besides Teslas impact is not only the EV they have sold. They made EVs popular and desirable. Electric vehicles are definitely mainstream. In my country(Netherlands) 20% of all vehicles sold are electric. In Norway it's more then 50%. You really can't get more mainstream then that.
4. Tesla was able to make EVs profitably thanks to government policy designed to incentivize exactly that outcome. If Tesla didn’t exist, some other company would’ve filled that role.
>If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why.
So, I'm going to reply to your comment but really, this is relevant to most of this thread (and nearly every thread about him), because I'm just tired of these conversations.
Yes, by many measures, he has been incredibly successful at both running businesses and amassing wealth. There are a lot of metrics that you could cite that support that assertion.
At the same time, by many measures, you could successfully - and easily - argue that he's a pretty shitty person.
And guess what? Both are true. I don't know what my ultimate point here is besides saying that yeah - some people think he's awesome, some people think he's shitty, and neither view is technically incorrect. Move on.
The funny thing about life is that everyone places different levels of importance on things. You might think that innovation in EVs and space exploration far outweigh how someone treats other individuals, whereas others might place far greater importance in treating others with respect and equality over innovation in EVs and space exploration.
The question I'm asking, that you keep dodging, is: what is the reason for putting more importance on someone's attitude rather than the 2 million cars they've sold and the rocket ships they've invented?
You hint that Elon Musk treats other people badly. Has he raped anyone? Murdered anyone? Waged any wars? Are there abuse allegations? No, he's a troll on twitter.
>The question I'm asking, that you keep dodging, is: what is the reason for putting more importance on someone's attitude rather than the 2 million cars they've sold and the rocket ships they've invented?
I truly don't know how else to make my previous post any clearer to you. The simple fact of the matter is that everyone has their own personal reasons for putting more importance on one thing over another. Nobody ever owes you an explanation for why they might put more importance on how someone treats someone over how many units of a product they sell. I could speculate as to any number of reasons why that may be, but for the sake of this conversation, that's not my place. I will, however, say that I'm incredibly surprised and perplexed by your inability to understand that there are people out there who "place people over profits".
>You hint that Elon Musk treats other people badly. Has he raped anyone? Murdered anyone? Waged any wars? Are there abuse allegations? No, he's a troll on twitter.
As I've made clear in this thread, I am not taking a position on Musk. All I can say is that what I've alluded to, in regards to how he treats people and his employees, are all things that have been very publicly discussed in the past and should be surprising to nobody who has paid even a modicum of attention.
I did not call him a shitty person. Here's are the full two sentences:
>Yes, by many measures, he has been incredibly successful at both running businesses and amassing wealth. There are a lot of metrics that you could cite that support that assertion.
>At the same time, by many measures, you could successfully - and easily - argue that he's a pretty shitty person.
I simply said that there are reasons people could successfully argue that he's shitty. What I did not do, however, was take a position on those arguments. The phrase, "You could successfully argue" does not mean, "This is what I believe".
One thing that I might suggest you do is to ask yourself why it seems so important to you that other people like Elon Musk, and why you let it bother you so much if they don't. After all, he's going to keep doing what he's doing (and has been, for years) regardless of public opinion - so what does it matter to you if an internet stranger isn't a fan?
Your post is perfectly clear. It's just not answering the question. Ditto this post.
No one owes me anything. I'm asking a question and you're not answering it, you're just restating "some people value different things and we can't say why".
My point is that people should value Elon's accomplishments more than his attitude. The fact that they don't is bizarre and demands an explanation.
You're just missing the point entirely. Some people believe his shitty attitude far outweighs any economic value he has created, or wealth he has amassed.
To them, your attitude is bizarre and demands an explanation. To them, you should value someone who is a decent person over any money they make.
OP wasn't saying Elon Musk is a shithead. S/he was pointing out that both things can be true - he can be a shithead, and he can create wealth and innovation. Both can be true, and some people will place value on one over the other, much as you have done.
How did I miss the point? I summarized exactly what you wrote in the post you responded to.
We can't talk to each other because you're coming from a value-relative perspective ("people value different things, no one is wrong, and we can't say why"). To me this is insane. If someone values 5 dollars more than their life, we can question that. When people say Elon Must being a mean person on twitter outweighs everything he's built, we can question that.
I'm going to respond to this post, and your most recent post in the chain, together in this comment because it's easier that way.
>Your post is perfectly clear. It's just not answering the question. Ditto this post.
It does answer the question, you just don't like the answer. Notice how I'm not questioning the why behind why you choose to value how many units of his product he has sold over how he treats others? The simple fact of the matter is that many people put "people over profits" for many reasons - I am but one person and cannot answer for them. This is no different from why you can't speak to why every single Musk fan supports him, because everyone's reasons are different.
>No one owes me anything.
And yet you have repeatedly said...
>The fact that they don't is bizarre and demands an explanation.
I'm not sure how you can say people don't owe you anything when you've demanded it repeatedly.
>... Elon Must being a mean person on twitter...
Actually, I've been speaking broadly this entire time. When I reference how Musk treats people, I am referencing everything he does, not just his actions on Twitter.
I think what this ultimately boils down to is akin to the question you first posed in this thread - "If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why." I would like to ask you, why is it so important to you what other people think about Elon Musk, and why do you seem to let it bother you so much if they don't like him? He doesn't seem to let the court of public opinion bother him or hold him back from doing nearly whatever he wants, so he's going to keep doing what he's been doing regardless of what other people think. With that in mind, what does it matter to you - you, who isn't Elon Musk - if an internet stranger isn't a fan of him?
> So, I don't think that you suggesting that business success outweighing how you treat people is "insane"
I never said business success outweighs how you treat people. I said, in the specific case of Elon Musk, what he has built outweighs his obnoxious attitude. That's a specific, not a generality.
Anyway, we've arrived at a conclusion. To you, values are relative. That's an answer but it's not acceptable to me.
> You hint that Elon Musk treats other people badly
Leaving aside the stunt where he called a rescue diver a pedophile, there has been enough and substantially bad racism at Tesla under his leadership that the company was ordered to pay 137 million dollars [1].
There's a difference between recognizing that something is a strong argument, and agreeing/disagreeing with it. I'm simply pointing out that strong arguments can be made in both directions, and commonly are in these threads. Over, and over, and over.
Kind of like how this very comment chain is going, no?
> Elon Musk is kind of obnoxious. He lies (or "exaggerates").
> If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why.
I'm not a hater, but I can understand why others are. Like you said, he's obnoxious. And he lies. Which should be enough justification by itself. But he's also really fucking rich, which is a teeth-grindingly annoying combination.
I really admire what he's done for the Electric Vehicle industry, and the rocket industry, (and the satellite broadband industry) and I absolutely cannot wait for Starship to fly to orbit. That's gonna be amazing. He can execute on a vision like almost no-one else.
But he's a dick - I can't deny that. And for people who don't really care about EVs, or rockets, or satellite broadband (i.e. non-nerds), the "being a dick" part is what's going to stand out the most.
Lots of celebrities are gigantic douchebags and no one cares. Why do people care with Elon? Why does he have a parade of haters not just criticizing his attitude but also claiming that his work isn't valuable?
It's not because "they don't care about EVs or rockets," it's something deeper and uglier.
> Lots of celebrities are gigantic douchebags and no one cares.
Tons of people care, an entire industry of celebrity gossip lives off of it.
Elon has just as much of a cult following as he has haters, the fact that you can’t see how perfectly this mirrors wider celebrity culture suggests that you are either very out of touch with pop culture, or are a part of the Elon cult.
> Tons of people care, an entire industry of celebrity gossip lives off of it.
You have a point. But what does it say about someone that they spend time hating celebrities? Do they think "this celebrity is a bad person, if I were rich and famous I would be a good good person!" Is that true? Or is it just childish resentment?
Do we defend the people who have a deranged hatred towards Anne Hathaway? No we find them bizarre and disturbed.
> Elon Musk is kind of obnoxious. He lies (or "exaggerates"). But what Tesla has done is insane. It's happened so quickly, and that's leaving aside the rockets. The hard evidence that we can build new things, that we can progress and build a future that's better than the present is so important. If it takes a flawed man to show us that, I'll take it.
> If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why. It may just be that you're an Ayn Rand villain.
Please show me where I said "there is nothing legitimately off putting about Elon’s public persona".
Elon didn’t like how Twitter was being run, so he spent a relatively minor fraction of his overall wealth to buy a large stake in the company and get himself onto the board. This is beyond comprehension to the average person who is typically just a the will of these large corporations.
Elon is _extremely_ powerful, and as such he deserves to be held to a higher level of scrutiny, beyond even the level of some random celebrity.
Celebrities who are douche bags are criticized all the time — I'm not sure what your point is exactly. Musk is not just a "celebrity," he is one of the most powerful men on the planet. Most celebrities don't control 10% of one the most powerful media apparatuses in the country.
Musk is seen by many as a sociopathic narcissist who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Doing things like sending private investigators to try and dig up dirt on that rescue diver who criticized him hardly distances him from that image (and doesn't help his claims of being a "free speech absolutist" either). Those traits combined with tremendous power are generally not a good combination.
We don't owe him anything for his business ventures. He isn't running a charity. He isn't doing it for you and me. Electric cars and rockets are very cool, but are not moving humanity into some new dawn. The idea that he is some necessary component of "hard evidence that we can build new things" that deserves special treatment is borne straight out of a personality cult. Pointing this out is a far cry from "claiming his work isn't valuable."
Musk isn't just a celebrity. He has the money and power to alter both the political and technological landscape of the United States (and the world at large). It's not uglier.
I may be seen as a villain to Ayn Rand disciples, mainly because I may point out I have seen people do amazing things without becoming billionaires at consumers expense.
At consumer's expense? Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, people do it because they like having a car more than money.
You can argue that Tesla in particular is successful off the back of the taxpayer; are you advocating against government incentives for electric vehicles?
We're forced to share the road with them. Because Teslas are glass cannons with easily damaged body panels and a closed repair network that has extraordinary prices, their presence on the roads has a real impact on all of us.
Who knows what costs we'll be exposed to as their somewhat suicidal 'self driving' functionality becomes exposed to more of the buysers they sold it to on the back of improbable promises (such as "your car will eventually pay for itself by acting as an antonymous taxi").
The everyday work of the normal laborer is more worthy of admiration and support than anything that happens in a board room, on the golf course, or in whatever internal email chain that decides these things. It's not amazing to be an investor and make big decisions that shape lives and the flow of money, that is simply what you can do when you are in that position. The worker who can live within the turmoil the former creates, and still find love and happiness, not to mention keep the lights on and take out the trash, are the true heroes of humanity.
It may seem like an off-topic point, but I recently had a big wake-up call with the kinds of people you mention. The flip side of your flowery description is that they're often short-sighted, vicious people who can get worked up into a frenzy with little warning, or reason. Sometimes they want to for no reason.
You're trying to describe the nobility of people with no skills (valued by society). But imagine if the entire world were populated by them. Would you really want to live in it?
And if not, can they be called heroes of humanity?
Beyond a few pretty questionable assumptions at work here (that the labor market is an effective decider of what skills are valuable to society full stop; that someone's labor dictates what skills they have; that what someone has to offer the labor market could correlate at all to something like character), I would simply reflect on whatever thought process has brought you to the situation where someone simply says, in so many words, that "the meek shall inherit the earth", and your first impulse is to say "no, in fact, they are shortsighted and viscious people who get whipped into frenzies for often no reason".
I dont even think Rand would follow you there; I can't really think of any corollary to that sentiment other than fascist rhetoric. To know nothing of a group of people but how much they make at work, and to go that far in painting a picture of them... Its shocking! Haha
I'm sure you mean well, and are genuinely reflecting, but this is not a good look at all to anybody but the most rightwing people. What amounts Idiocracy lore is not a suitable or humane thing to ground political beliefs on.
I'm not an Ayn Rand disciple. But she had a point about certain people and how they view the world.
Musk is rich on paper but the stocks are massively overvalued for various reasons. The idea that "billionaires are evil people who exploit innocent laborers" is false and it comes from a place of resentment.
She did talk about how certain people view the world. She also advocated for that world view, and then died on welfare (the irony).
And yes, billionaires absolutely build their wealth on the backs of others. There's simply no way to become a billionaire without exploiting a system and taking advantage of others in some way. It may be legal, but legality took a sharp turn away from morality a long long time ago.
I don't agree with Ayn Rand that welfare is bad. I also don't agree that charity is bad.
I agree with her that some very smart people are completely consumed by resentment.
> And yes, billionaires absolutely build their wealth on the backs of others. There's simply no way to become a billionaire without exploiting a system and taking advantage of others in some way. It may be legal, but legality took a sharp turn away from morality a long long time ago.
You're just resentful of people who have accomplished more than you. What's stopping Bob, who makes less money than you toiling in a factory, from saying the exactly same thing about you? You're an exploiter, it's how you earn a living without getting your hands dirty.
That's part of it, but I think it's more envy driven. He took his winnings at Paypal and bet it all to transform 2 industries. While most of us would have retired, blew it on a mansion and binge watch Game of Thrones in our private theater. Where would we be with electric cars and space right now if he had spent the past 20 years sailing on a yacht collecting supermodels? He could have done that instead.
He shows what's possible and it exposes our inadequacies and sloth. If you're insecure, he is constantly touching a nerve with success after success, his massive fanbase and ever presence in the news.
Remember when he called that diver in Thailand a pedophile because the diver (one of the most experienced cave divers in the world) called his idea dumb as shit? That's why I don't like him (well, one of the many many reasons, but a big one).
I didn't like that either, but put it in context. It's 1 of 17,000 tweets. There aren't many users with that many tweets who haven't lost their cool and called someone else a name. It's one of the most common things you see on twitter. Not excusing it, just saying it's worth looking at in context and importantly it's not something he's repeated.
The modern era, no one can make a mistake, no one can be allowed to ever forget their mistakes, and we must always use any minor mistake to cancel the person if they do not agree with us politically
I've been both a shareholder (since 2013) and customer of Tesla, and probably won't buy one of their products again. I feel deceived about spending over $5k on that "full self-driving" package that three years later still does nothing of the sort.
The fact that I made a little money on Elon's coattails doesn't make it OK for him to constantly lie to customers.
It was a very good return on a small investment. I mostly missed the post-pandemic boom selling too early, so I guess I made around 20-30x overall.
Doesn't change my opinion of Musk's practices. If he's selling very expensive features that are actually donations into the hopes & dreams tip jar, it should be clearly marked as such.
I bought a Tesla in 2019 and chose not to buy FSD because I knew it wasn't implemented yet and won't be for several years. If you thought you were going to get FSD any time soon, you weren't paying attention.
Paying attention to what? The lackluster sensor hardware on the Model 3? I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to that at the time.
That's not some kind of consumer protection escape hatch, though:
"Yeah, we sold them software that will never exist, but because it's actually impossible to implement on our hardware, it's their fault for buying it."
I disagree with the idea that the hardware isn't adequate. I think it is, but that the software is much harder than Elon thinks, and even after nearly 10 years, he still hasn't learned how hard it is.
I think the software WILL eventually exist. Just not on the timeline Elon thinks it will.
Why is that short sighted? That seems the opposite.
If you had a money printer, wouldn't you give it a lot of freedom? Personally I'd draw the line at killing a dog or cat. Other than that, well... If it wanted to knock out a few walls, I'd just sigh and put up with the noise for a few months.
(For context, I'm undecided about Elon. But none of the counterarguments to his behavior seem persuasive yet.)
Because short term gains at the cost of long term sustainability is simply putting off problems for the future.
Your money printer may print you money today, at the cost of putting you in jail for counterfitting tomorrow. It could result in the Mafia to come and break your legs to take it (and the money it printed) from you. Or greatly increase inflation (since mechanically, inflation is a result of more money being added than removed from circulation) in the future so your future earnings are worthless.
1) that I care about the merit of the company (the products) much more than I care about what their talking heads say
2) that I don't think Elon's that bad as some say/ IMHO he's a semi-autistic person (don't know what his exact diagnosis is) who fucking loves technology and sometimes gets over-excited. I cut him some slack because he delivers - even if late and something's missing, well so what - it's still revolutionary and that's more than enough for me, everything on top of that is a bonus
I don't feel being misleaden. Yes, Elon is sometimes over hyping things. I don't mind. He makes extremely cool stuff which sells by its merit. I like the visionary talks because a company that never talks about the possibilities of future is super-boring and IMHO can't be as successful as Tesla is - even if it doesn't materialize in the specified time span or in its entirety - because there'd be nothing truly new, just linear change otherwise.
There's nothing to rationalize. Elon had some nice visionary talks which I like, but mostly don't care about - and I'm not going to be mad just because he said something will be in 3 years and it's in 6 or 9 - even 12 is good in my eyes, so what. I like his optimism much more than the """realism""" (read: pessimism) of mostly any other public company's management. His optimism is one of the primary things pushing Tesla forward - kill that and you kill the company.
I mostly care about hard facts on the ground, and these go more than well enough. Along with my investment.
I dont know about electric cars, but what Elon did with space x is simply incredible.
Commercial space flights were becoming rarer and rarer out of the US, and now it is the most common.
The price of space flight while still high, was reduced by a huge percentage.
I’m sure he told many lies to get there. But economics and physics don’t really lie.
I like him for the reasons I like Kanye, Bernie Sanders, and Trump (though I only voted for the first). Just says crazy things, but some of them are just truths that we’ve all chosen to ignore it don’t like to accept.
You wrote in Kanye West for president, thought enough other voters would join you to make doing so worth anything to you and your vote, and share that extremely poor adult judgment confidently and publicly? You like him because he says shit? I mean I say shit, too, would you vote for me even if my entire policy platform was incoherent and I stalk and abuse my exes and their new partners in public? You realize his entire presidential bid was for attention and his staff couldn’t even make the deadline to get him on the ballot, right?
With respect, this comment makes you sound like a contemptible, gullible fool that makes society actively worse. I really hope you’re being a bit facetious.
Seriously though this is my point. Kanye is absurd. A fool you might say. Like Trump and Bernie. Yet if you live in an upside down world, you might say some obvious truth, and it will further make you like a fool.
I like that back in 04 he was talking about the way blacks are treated in America, before all the woke fools decided it was popular.
And Beyonces video was better than Taylor’s.
The funny part to me is you actually think your vote for Joe means something.
>Sanders, in particular, suggested that the US could adopt a socialist system by emulating Scandinavia. “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” said the US presidential candidate, who identifies himself as a “democratic socialist.”
But Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this week, says Sanders got more than a few things wrong.
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” - at the time made Mike Myers jaw drop. People forget that being publicly critical like that was unpopular back then. That it would cost you money and contracts.
Now if you say “I think Trump likes black people” you are lambasted like Kanye was for saying George bush didn’t.
Provide an environment where those talented engineers could accomplish something no other environment allowed them to. It's not like there aren't talented people at Boeing or Lockheed and it's not like those talented people just came out of thin air, it takes amazing leadership and a strong vision to bring talented people together to accomplish something that to this day no other rocket company is still capable of doing.
Even if Musk were nothing but hype (and I think he deserves a bit more credit than that), that very hype appears to have been a decisive factor in solving the chicken-and-egg problem of electric car proliferation needing charger networks, and charger networks needing electric car proliferation.
So I would credit him with at least that accomplishment.
You must own NFTs it sounds like you really buy into hype. People just say they are Jesus Christ come to earth and you just go "Well yeah okay that's amazing"
What are NFTs? One of those blockchain proof of ownership things right, but like for gifs? What’s weird is I can imagine a dystopian future where NFTs are valuable. I hope not though. But post COVID the world seems ridiculous to me so who knows.
“Hands on” on the Jesus is King album is one of my favorites, and I do think he might have a messiah complex, but he isn’t saying follow me, but follow God.
Kanye is not a role model to imitate. But he does seem to play a large role in the cosmos (or think the story that will be told centuries from now). Like Elon I’d say.
I can appreciate Trump, and I can appreciate Bernie. I appreciate Kanye’s art and often his blunt words. My vote for him was purely symbolic. He wasn’t even on the ballot in my state.
The guy incited a deadly insurrection to subvert democracy to keep himself in power. He also extorted Ukraine by withholding weapons for his personal political gain. He was impeached for both.
He and Twitter will pay the SEC a fine and be done with it. The SEC is a civil agency. And this doesn't seem to rise to the level of criminal negligence.
(Practically speaking, he's probably losing his Tesla tweet-review case as a result of this. If he can't figure out if he's an activist when considering a Board seat, he probably needs someone with domain experience looking over his public statements.)
Shareholders like him on the board, and they would be even happier if he were running the company, because an Elon-run Twitter would be a lot more profitable.
> an Elon-run Twitter would be a lot more profitable.
I'm not so sure about that. He doesn't have a lot of experience with running ad sales. His big breaks have been PayPal (kind of), Tesla and SpaceX. None of which were social, none of which were "free".
I’m not sure either (there is of course uncertainty). But in Tesla and SpaceX, he shows good management, while my (outsider) impression of Twitter’s is that it’s dropping the ball.
Also, I think Twitter was undervalued compared to its potential, and Elon wouldn’t be buying part of it if he didn’t think he could turn a good profit.
Twitter is simultaneously useless and also the life-blood of western politics. The people in power care more about what Twitter thinks than what voters think.
This is false. There is no fee when making a purchase in at least the US or Canada [0]. The exception is when there is a currency conversion involved (about a 4% fee).
There are fees when receiving money as a result of selling a product or service, which is where PayPal makes (likely most) of its money.
It is not false, when you pay for a product with paypal it takes a fee off the person receiving the money. The person receiving the money knows of this cost in advance so adds it onto the price in advance. Therefore the purchaser pays.
It's not always true that a vendor receiving money will increase prices to pass the PayPal fees to the consumer. You can see that many checkouts offer multiple options (e.g. both PayPal, Stripe, and/or other methods), with the item price usually the same even if each method has a different fee. The idea is that you want to make purchasing as convenient as possible, as it costs more to lose a sale, versus paying an incremental fee difference with PayPal.
If a vendor makes PayPal purchases slightly more expensive, it can cause bad will with the customer (who is less likely to return and make more purchases). Exceptions are sometimes with one-off purchases (e.g. a conference ticket or course fee).
Separately, the original comment asserted that the PayPal account charges you each transaction (which is false). The new argument is different, which asserts that a vendor may charge you more due to PayPal fees.
>The new argument is different, which asserts that a vendor may charge you more due to PayPal fees.
You misunderstand me. I didn't say you got charged extra for paypal over Stripe, for instance.
Stripe which you mention is also expensive, and also factored in to the price. I don't know of any serious eccomerce company that is not acutely aware of card fees.
Every payment gateway charges high fees and it is factored in to the price the consumer pays.
More profitable, more open, and more fair to all voices. Twitter has become a liberal vacuum that, as a liberal, has gone way too far to the left in silencing voices. It's not a private company, it's a public company, and I hope Elon turns it around into a true, free speech town square, instead of just an echo chamber for blue checks.
>More profitable, more open, and more fair to all voices.
I wonder if people who say things like this actually use Twitter. Twitter has far less moderation than the other social media giants. It’s a high school popularity contest, and the cool kids didn’t need blue check marks from the teachers to be cool.
"As a liberal, twitter has gone way too far to the left in silencing voices?" Twitter moderation is blind on harassment, nazis who brag about it are using the platform to dox people without any repercussions, send death threats, etc. what the hell are you even talking about?
The legal system is too slow. If twitter couldn't moderate itself it wouldn't be moderated. That may sound good, but honestly, think about it for a second. That would pretty much be the end of twitter.
Blue checks do not equal blue voices, but you already know that. Twitter is the worst mainstream platform when it comes to right wing propaganda and scientific misinformation. Free speech in this case is code for saying anything without consequence and weaponizing it at morons. Twitter excels at it already, let's not make it worse.
It's a really simple question (yes or no, and just a single sentence about the reasoning if "no") and I hope the principle of charity can be extended when I say the discussion will come back to Twitter very quickly.
The OP hasn't provided their answer but I'd be interested in your answer too!
> Free speech in this case is code for saying anything without consequence and weaponizing it at morons.
I was just curious if the government's guarantee not to censor political speech is just as ill-advised. A quick "yes" would take about 5 seconds to give, or of not, just a short sentence about what the motivation is for keeping the government out of policing political speech. e.g. "If the government can suppress political speech, then..."
Should you be allowed to yell something like "fire" in a crowded indoor space? That you want to murder the president? That, insert x culture or race, "should be exterminated"? Ultimately, I would like to hear about this government guarantee you speak of and what you believe/what is codified into whatever human construct that you think allows unlimited speech of any kind at any time aka your vision of 'free speech'.
I don't think that means what you think it means, perhaps you are international? A Public company is one that is owned by shareholders of a public exchange. This is why Elon can buy into it and become a member of the board. If it were a private company he could not do that.
No, it is literally a public company. TWTR is traded on NASDAQ. Which is why we are having this discussion based off of SEC filings. Private companies are not required to file with the SEC.
Does an investor who declares himself to be passive lose forever the ability to become active?
Suppose he comes in saying "hey, I'm going to be a passive investor" and the subtext is "funny you didn't notice me amassing so much of your stock", meaning "I could yet become an active investor and do a hostile takeover".
It's not farfetched that management might react to that by saying "we'd rather you become an active investor, and here, you can take a seat on the board if you promise you won't mount a takeover".
His intent could have been "passive for now" and mgmt maybe immediately changed his mind. Would that be a crime, or a violation of any kind, or misleading? Would saying "passive" commit him to being passive even if mgmt preferred him to be active? How would other investors get misled by any of this? Couldn't he just as quickly have decided to get out of TWTR and sold his shares, and if so, wouldn't that possibly have done more harm to other investors? What's the law say about this?
Rule 13d-1(c): Passive Investors that have not acquired the security with the intent nor effect of influencing control over the issuer, are not an "institutional investor," and are not directly or indirectly the beneficial owner of 20% or more of the security.
He filed 13g instead of 13d. Any activist investors who want to influence the course of the company get involved in proxy fights , change the board should not file 13g that is only for passive investment.
There was discussion yesterday whether him polling his followers last week about twitter and social media was activism. Joining the board certainly is.
It requires a lot more details and you have to disclose your intentions more clearly.
He has already signed a separate agreement with twitter that he won’t go over 14 % .
Twitter has always been ripe for being targeted for a takeover it is one of the smallest social media companies it is worth only 35-40B compared to say Facebook (900+B) or TikTok (400B) and it has enormous presence and daily active users. Snapchat is not very far in valuation, but has less reach, Reddit is growing and raised the last round at $10B post but is still private and not that easy take control of. The other attractive factor the founder is no longer actively involved.
Sooner or later someone was going to attempt take over and try to improve its monetizing strategy and generate more value. 3x-5x their MCap is well within the realm of possibility for twitter if executed to a good vision.
I guess my general thought was that the 13D requirements seem pretty trivial and intent is easy to amend. On Monday your intent is to solely to inform productive decisions with a board seat, and then by Friday you now want to take over and update your filing.
I dont see how filing a 13G is better than the above
Can you explain yourself? 13G is the form that passive investors fill out. 13D is a more detailed form intended for activist investors. What is your special knowledge that everyone is getting wrong that you’re alluding to?
It's amazing how jumpy the hackernews crowd gets without even reading the document in question. As if Elon's team of lawyers that did this paperwork for him overlooked such a trivial detail.
> If you’re going to write a terse, incorrect response, at least include a misleading source.
I appreciate that you take your own advice.
You don't understand how these forms work. Both passive and active investors can file a 13G. Why are you just making stuff up?
It would be cool to see Twitter unban the thousands of accounts I used to follow. I highly doubt Musk will have or is interested in having any real influence.
When someone claims "free speech infringement" and then has no data to back it up they are either trolling or don't really care enough to make a substantial argument.
Are you suggesting there isn't any banning? What precisely is your claim here?
BabylonBee is a recent example, and apparently Musk had a call with them prior to him making the free speech poll/twitter purchase: https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1511325246967660547 (Note: Musk has been on their podcast).
It is genuinely interesting to me. All of the uproar about “free speech” has been confusing to me. Who are these people being censored? What are they saying?
Which accounts? And how can you possibly think he isn't interested in having influence? I'll bet you a pretty penny that there will be a slew of "leadership changes" in the coming months.
I'd be curious to see examples of these. I only know of Trump as having been banned. Plus I guess people who commit shootings tend to get memory holed by all the major social media brands, which might be a good idea? Thousands that you followed is quite an allegation.
If you really followed thousands of banned accounts perhaps you need to take a close look at the company you keep. That should send alarm bells ringing regardless of your perception of Twitter's biases.
Not never but while he is a member of the board + 90 days. Though if he would get more than that not being on the board would be weird so kind of yes never getting more than that.
I'm not sure what you mean by "wrecking ball," but an activist shareholder can win a proxy fight if other shareholders choose to go along with them. And Musk is pretty good at making investments go up by tweeting things, so they are probably pretty happy about this.
It's Elon Musk, he can't help but being a wrecking ball. We're talking about the 'pedo guy' guy, after all.
Twitter will get more attention for sure, but possibly not the kind of attention they want. But apparently there's no such thing as bad publicity.
I think of of the interesting things to watch for is if he starts pressuring for the guy who tracks the movements of his private jet to have his account terminated.
Good thing cars that aren't from Tesla never malfunction in lethal ways.
If you ignore the 89 deaths from Toyota vehicle acceleration issues, 271 deaths from Ford's faulty tires in the 90s, 303 dead from GM's faulty ignition switches, 478 deaths from Fiat's engines exploding, and 823 deaths from Ford's Bronco tipping over at speeds as slow as 20MPH.
I find this to be incredible news. I used to think Elon-hype was stupid, but both (a) his achievements and (b) his mind have gotten me to be an admirer.
Re (a) achievements, the man has basically bootstrapped space travel and electric vehicles. Seems like a big deal. Yes, I know it's more nuanced than that, but you get the point. Can you name someone else who broke through two fundamentally stalled/deadlocked industries on such scale? Now here he is putting his plow to the field of one of the most difficult problems of our age: information and social media.
Re (b) his mind, I have been very impressed by his interviews on podcasts as well as his willingness to go on various long-form podcasts. He seems to be somebody who is very eager to learn about a great variety of fields (history, software, hardware, physics). He also seems to take great care in extrapolating side-effects down a chain of events in order to think in a complex way of "what would happen if we do X". The world is not black & white and Elon seems to operate very comfortably in known & unknowns.
I don't agree with everything Elon says or does. But it's so bloody stupid that I have to even say that. What sort of bubble do you live in where you actually have various people who you fully agree with across all spectrums? Get out in the real world for goodness sake.
We need more Elon Musks.
Addendum:
(he also posts dank memes while on the pot, which is another plus)
He is never really challenged with uncomfortable\difficult questions on his interviews. The one time I recall he was asked an uncomfortable question he threatened to end the interview.
I cannot find the complete interview on YouTube unfortunately.
In this other interview, I am disappointed at how she didn't even push on some of his answers, for example when talking about his "rabid fan base". You just need to look at this thread for proof.
Also, she is not as technically informed about the mistakes his companies made. Would love someone to challenge him on the obvious mistakes he has made with Tesla that everyone else in the industry were adamant would be failures. Things such as the "Alien Dreadnaught" were repeats of documented mistakes that GM and Ford made back in the 80s. Even technical interviewers always gush over him about how amazing he is and never challenge him. They all just don't want to lose access.
Musk is the entrepreneur version of "Move fast; break things" - something like "Make it happen; no matter the cost" kind of guy. Leaving a trail of burnt out/injured employees and other negative externalities is just his way of "getting shit done".
Not sure how much or how little impact he'll have in the future direction of Twitter, but if I worked there I'd be a bit concerned!
1) Twitter doesn't ban people for wrong think! That's a myth!
2) Musk was accused of racism!
3) Musk isn't doing this for freedom of speech, he's only doing it for his own interests!
I want to see the Venn Diagram of people who said one of these things, and were glibly sharing XKCD #1357 whenever someone got banned from Twitter that they disagree with.
The tides have started to slowly turn, and all they can do is play the same three cards over and over: "that's not true, this is racism, capitalism bad!"
Surprise! Nobody believes this anymore. They're sick and tired of being told what to believe by "experts". They're tired of you crying wolf. And they're tired of being gaslit that none of this is happening.
A lot of comments and no mention of The Washington Post?
Maybe it's worth a board seat to not get boxed out, esp if the media owned by your opponents has been demonstrably unfriendly and you're ramping up your goals.
Sometimes I think Elon is a great marketer than an engineer or maybe both, I am happy that at least someone is in an authoritative position on the Twitter board to support free speech and I hope they do some real innovation to the platform.
I think something really important here, is that it has been agreed that Elon Musk is not to be more than 14.9% beneficial owner of the companies common stock. I'm not a lawyer, but this also looks like a tactic saying "Let's give Elon a voice on the board so he doesn't buy controlling interest in the company."
Elon is being forced (or heavily incentivized at least) to liquify Tesla stocks, so he's going to be looking for alternate places to put that money to avoid the consequences of holding on to liquid capital, this limits him from putting too much of it into Twitter, and being more than just a board member.
Gives stockholders & existing board members what they want (retaining control of the business, and makes it harder for Elon to build a competitor), while giving Elon what he wants (influence in the business). This sounds like a win-win.
One single feature can solve the spambot problem, monetization problem, and comment quality. Pay to comment - the cost scaling up based on the follower count of the tweeter. You comment is free if enough whitelisted folks like your comment. Note, this is just pay to comment. Tweeting should remain free. The whitelist would be ~10% of users. List initially aglo determined and long term curated manually.
My take on this is that he wants to bring back more of a wild west. I kinda sympathize with the sentiment to create a more relaxed version of Twitter where only the obvious in terms of free speech is excluded (like MMA/Vale Tudo - in terms of a "free fight"- not allowing eye gouging etc.) but this certainly isn't something for everyone. Not a lot of people can stomach 4chan taking this to an extreme.
So how you go about this? As a mere mortal you are damned to create a new thing, create a PR-campaign from the outside to pressure Twitter ... the usual things.
But as the richest person on the planet you don't only possess the resources to do all the above way better, additionally you can simply just buy up "Twitter". Which is kind of crazy like buying up a restaurant after not being satisfied with the service.
Well, the stock price did go up significantly and yeah, in order to make things "more fun" for Twitter users again (the most active being obviously not underclass) one can relax some "out of control" censorship practices.
>I kinda sympathize with the sentiment to create a more relaxed version of Twitter where only the obvious in terms of free speech is excluded
How does this happen though? When someone is "cancelled on Twitter" what does that mean? Is it Jack Dorsey going in a banning your account? Twitter suspensions, by the actual company, are relatively well reasoned. What most people don't like is the Twitter mob, who does not work for Twitter. Despite people saying they want "more free speech" what they actually want is to suppress the free speech of others so they can say what they want.
No, it's the pseudo-libertarian HN crowd that's super excited because they think it means they can be assholes and engage in derogatory/discriminatory speech online again, all in the name of combating the nebulous "woke" bogeyman.
Hypothesis: this is not about Elon running Twitter, controlling society, insuring free speech, or any other such thing. It's simply that he wants insurance against being de-platformed, and now he has it.
9% is a hell of an insurance policy. I don't disagree, the man does not do small things, but I do wonder if he just bought insurance for more people than himself.
I mean, you say that. But the literal former president of the USA got de-platformed from twitter, and we don't hear about him nearly as much as when he had a twitter.
Maybe it is actually worth that amount of money, if entire elections can be influenced like that.
Really? He seems to be in the news pretty regularly. He even created his own social network. So he certainly has no trouble reaching his fans, and it's clear that he isn't censored or banned in the same way that, say, Alexei Navalny is in Russia.
If there's declining interest in him among the public, maybe it's because he isn't president anymore.
Well if you added the slightest, most tiniest drop of good faith for half a second, you'd realize that I said "we don't hear about him nearly as much as when he had a twitter", and the implication being that I think this might effect future elections, and that is the reason why.
You can agree or disagree that Trump being banned from the platform that he was most known for, will effect his future election chances, and you can disagree with if you want that to happen or not, but that is completely unrelated to the point.
But I think it is unfortunate that people on HN sometimes are so jumpy to find a disagreement, that they mis-understand the point so easily.
Instead of thinking "This person didn't know that Trump was banned after the 2020 election, what an idiot!", instead you could have thought "Maybe he is talking about future elections, instead of the one that happened previously to his ban, which would obviously be really stupid!"
His gripe is that Twitter is not a neutral platform and has a lot of ideological issues that have massive impact on society. What you're saying just goes full circle into that point.
Well if his 9% actually appreciates over time (by no means guaranteed), then the only real cost is any opportunity cost of using the money for this right now. Which, given the investment environment, may not be that large. So assuming that his stake grows in value over the long run, it's a very small cost, really.
Maybe a benefit of web3 with a centralized identity would be the ability to completely block all mentions of a person. My days are much better when I can avoid the egotistical pet projects of out-of-touch billionaires.
oddly my account was just disabled without informing me of how i violated TOS. i was just mocking and condescending toward boebert and cruz. thanks elon
"What's your problem SEC? I can't buy a social media co and then say whatever I want on it, whenever I want? I thought this was 'merica", might plausibly be one of his defenses against any charges of market manipulation and what are they going to do, the SEC, since they have proved time and again how toothless they are?
Extremely powerful people do extremely stupid things. Examples:
- Trump ("Charge the White house!")
- Putin ("Invade Ukraine")
- Musk ("Make Twitter an absolute free speech platform!")
It's going to be fun to watch this over the next couple of months. And when I say "fun" I actually mean the exact opposite.
Calls to violence are explicitly not included in free speech.
The problem is actually the unevenness of policies.
An example that annoyed me recently: the video ad for /JeremysRazors is hidden behind a "potentially sensitive content" warning (it's not), but Twitter search "razors" and be prepared to see (without any warning) disgusting images of people cutting themselves.
The Kremlin (and CCP) are verified and tweeting, whilst the BabylonBee (and Trump) are banned. Lunacy.
A truth is that this guy is irrelevant. It's just your ideas that make him relevant. Just face the reality of your daily lives, and look away from some random stimulant on the net that try to rub your rough corners one way or another. Either you like him or hate him, you're just wasting your energy, people...
What are the practical effects likely to be, anyway?
I'm wary of Musk because he comes from the same "memelord shitposter" tradition that has served the right wing so well in the past few years, but I don't think he's angling for the return of Trump?
A Twitter with unlimited speech will become a racist and propaganda hellscape.
Imagine Trump will be brought back on Twitter, he’ll radicalize 40% of Americans into QAnon disciples and try to topple the United States government again. He’ll have thousands like him joining in in spreading mass amounts of fake news exactly like the Russian propaganda machine.
You’ll see extreme science denial, a boatload of new Covid myths, drinking bleach, Ivermectin, Covid is just the flu propaganda all over again, just 5 times worse.
I assumed he would optimize how he spends his time.
He mentioned once that he sometimes sleeps/slept at the factory.
I had a similar thought on Putin: as long as the war is ongoing he has less time to do other things.
When Biden took over trump I also thought that bidens team might be able to do more change than the trump team because he fired so many and golfed often.
You realize twitter is most likely far more powerful at shaping opinion than any single newspaper? Fox News Facebook and Twitter are probably among the top 5 such mind control outlets. I am not on Twitter but I am motivated to research the reach Twitter has vs the TV networks, the major news papers and the bigger social networks which of course dwarf what we used to call MainStream Media.
Who owns the media and big tech now??? It's not poor people!
At least Elon Musk is a very rich person who believes in free speech. Which is good for us poors. Twitter and the national discourse will be objectively better for working class voices as a result. Less so for the gatekeepers and media elite commentariat.
Honestly this thread has been pushing me more towards the Musk camp, which I didn't think was possible. But not one person seems to be able to point to specific, concrete criticisms with references.
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)
Yes, I too can't wait for the entire internet to be 4chan.
There is no such thing as absolute free speech and I have no idea where you all are coming up with this idea. By definition, absolute free speech cannot exist because your speech ends where mine begins. Free speech does not mean free from moderation or consequences and criticisms, both are forms of speech themselves. There is no authoritarian censorship going on here.
>There is no such thing as absolute free speech and I have no idea where you all are coming up with this idea.
As with so many plagues on American society and current political discourse, this came from Trump supporters, specifically angry at being banned from social media platforms for hate speech and disinformation, and suddenly deciding that rules and social consequences for their behavior were a violation of their civil rights. The attempt to redefine free speech is part of a movement to impugn social media platforms as engaging in widespread politically motivated suppression of free speech, with the implication they need to be forced by law to host the kind of content they would otherwise refuse to.
Offering someone $50K to stop doing something == Free Association and Free Market
Advocating Totalitarian controls via Terms of Service, and/or Government !== Free Association
Come back when it attempts to have Twitter ban this persons account, then you may have a case, offering an monetary incentive for someone to change their behavior is not censorship in any form.
isn't by definition that very rich people own the media? Or was there a time period where the media wasn't very profitable and the people who owned them weren't very rich?
I am not saying it is a lot of risk for him. I am saying moving that kind of money is a major operation.
Twitter trading volumes are not so high that anyone can just come in make a 4 billion buy order .
Acquiring 10% stock of any public company without upsetting the price to much takes time and effort [1]
It is not some whimsical impluse buy, no matter how much money he has , this was calculated buy he must have considered for a while.
Jack Dorsey stepping down probably helped him to decide to make a move, a hostile founder CEO can make it ugly. Especially somebody like Jack who has another very high value startup and doesn't derive his wealth from just Twitter can make it expensive and ugly if he choose to.
[1]- unless someone is selling you a block trade outside of the market. No institutional investors have left or reduced their stake that much in the last quarter so Elon couldn't have used this route
This incorrect idea that there's any trivial way to make a $4 billion purchase is popular because most people don't understand money in those amounts. It's fine if you have a problem with extreme wealth, but if this is how you think of it, you might not be seeing the actual problems.
I know the point you're trying to make, but I can't imagine that even the largest Elon Musk fanboys would disagree that he's divisive. At best, I can imagine them saying it's not his fault and people overreact, but that's still recognition of the divisiveness.
Why is Elon described as divisive? Because it sounds bad.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was never described as divisive, though she was objectively more divisive than a rich guy who makes cars and rocket ships and flamethrowers. Antonin Scalia was described as divisive, so the argument can't be made that SC justices are somehow different.
It's a rhetorical trick that's been used for many decades. It's obvious, and it's tiresome.
I'd say there's a mixed reaction on HN. I think he's kinda cool with the 0-60 in 2 secs cars and trying to make mankind multiplanetary but the haters seem much more inclined to post.
It seems a little contrary to the - Have curious conversation; .... Please don't sneer... guidelines. A lot of sneering going on when Musk gets a mention.
I'm in a similar boat. I like what he's achieved with SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink. I don't like his views on trans people (which are ironic, considering he named his droneships after Culture Minds), as well as his inflammatory character. Art vs. Artist and all that.
I don't think he has any well-articulated principles about us, just mocking. Like changing his Twitter name to "Elona" and posting shitty memes in response to his ex dating Chelsea Manning, along with posting that gender pronouns are "dumb." 4chan Twitter troll cringe, basically.
I don't believe much in canceling and like what SpaceX is doing, I just don't like Musk making fun of people like me and so I'd sooner work for his competitors than for him.
"doing something about it" is a privilege awarded by wealth, not competency. He could have installed someone with experience in free speech advocacy and policy but he took it for himself. People need to seriously understand that being good at one thing doesnt make you good at all things. There are people who dedicate their entire careers to understanding the challenges of enacting "free speech" (which is often more complicated than just "no moderation"). Elon Musk not that, he is the guy with 5 companies who is mad that people dont like him.
Elon is the wealthiest person ever. He will bend Twitter to help all his existing businesses increase his wealth, all while making more money doing so. How could you possibly think otherwise?
But he makes money from those ventures and is therefore immoral! /s
I don't understand why so many people seem to hold the attitude that the only acceptable response to someone having money is to pressure them to squander it by giving it all away to atrociously inefficient systems (government, charities, etc). Making money is not immoral. And neither is using money to make investments to make more money.
1) He exploits his workers with typical tech bro enthusiasm, working them to the bone. I hear terrible things about the work culture at his companies.
2) He claims the throne of innovator but many of his successes came from acquisitions which came from his rich parents who ran an exploitative emerald mine.
3) He manipulates the stock market openly.
4) He rarely keeps his promises.
That being said I think he's alright. But it's not just the fact that he uses his money that people complain about him.
It could be argued that the reason governments are “inefficient systems” (particularly in the US) is in large part due to the same people making ridiculous amounts of money. So while you’re being sarcastic, and probably believe that you too “can make it” don’t be surprised when you don’t, and when the government becomes even less efficient because private interests keep using their wealth to strip it of anything useful to regular people.
The government is elected to represent the interests of the people. They bear the overwhelming responsibility for any corrupt deals made with "people making ridiculous amounts of money." It sounds like you're to assign blame to a business person for buying influence, instead of blaming the politician for selling it in the first place! If politicians stop selling influence, there is nothing to buy.
For Musk, getting rich and living a lavish lifestyle is exactly the same as investing in causes he feels are important to him.
The problem here isn’t that Musk is necessarily greedier than any other majority shareholder, it’s that Musk is greedy in a peculiar way that is at odds with so many other people in the world. It’s important to embrace and understand differences, but put too much leverage behind one voice or vision and there will be consequences. And there’s a lot of criticism and evidence that Musk does not use his leverage over others responsibly.
While I have a somewhat similar impression of his use of wealth I think it’s important to remember that his public persona is well crafted. Following him “very closely” to me just means that the one doing the following is drinking all of the kool-aid
If you're interested in spaceflight and electric vehicles, it's impossible not to follow what he's working on. Being served the kool-aid is not the same as drinking it. He's imperfect -- his companies can be brutal to work for and he too often takes credit for his team's work -- but I find the passion for the companies he's part of as genuine.
He doesn't need to bend anything. If Elon wants to make some quick billions all he has to do is to buy any one of a million shitcoins, tweet some lame meme about it, sell and repeat. Admitedly he's done pretty much this with Tesla's venture into BTC, but the point stands.
What do you base this on? Seems there are a lot easier and less visible ways to increase your wealth. Real estate, sell your name out, crypto scams, etc.
you're right, hopefully all those political woke people will go elsewhere. Then they can be replaced by people who believe in minimal oversight and free speech, and then twitter will be truly apolitical.
Please don't post this sort of shallow ideological flamewar comment. It just leads to crap threads. If you want to express your substantive views more thoughtfully, that's of course fine.
"Un-woke" people are greater than or at least equally political compared to those you call "woke", is my experience from real life as well as internet encounters with them, so your longing for an apolitical Twitter/online public town square seems a pipe dream, I'm afraid.
You've made an awful lot of comments in threads about politics for someone who "doesn’t discuss politics in any significant quantity".
Perhaps take some time to reflect as to whether that label is really true for you, and focus more on that latter belief. Being a decent person is admirable.
Everyone is political. But “woke” people are like the old Christian right. They’re willing to use their control of institutions to prosthelytize their ideology in a way that ordinary liberals or conservatives aren’t.
it's not that woke people control the institutions - it's that companies see that they can run successful PR and marketing campaigns by espousing progressive values. Their boards don't give two shits about progressive values, but flying a rainbow flag during pride month doesn't require that they do anything, while gaining praise from liberals and criticism from conservatives, both of which are coverage/press.
In addition to this, white collar workers are going to align a little more left and it makes them feel better if the company isn't cheering for gays to be lynched or whatever. It's generally easier to hire for highly educated positions if you appear mildly woke, even if you do absolutely nothing to that end.
Conservative states are literally passing laws banning the teaching of radical ideas like "gay people exist". If that's not "prosthelytizing their ideology", I don't know what is.
> The law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten to grade 3 in Florida public school districts, or instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in a manner that is not "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students". It also allows parents and teachers to sue any school district if they believe this policy is violated. The bill additionally prevents school districts from withholding information about a child’s "mental, emotional, or physical well-being" from their parents.
> Due to the "Don't Say Gay" nickname some commentators and social media users thought the bill banned mentioning the word "gay" in school classrooms, though the bill does not actually mention the word "gay" or explicitly prohibit its use.
Please define: "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students"
The point of the bill is that nobody will talk about anything because: "It also allows parents and teachers to sue any school district if they believe this policy is violated"
Teachers and school districts don't have the money to fuck around in court to learn what this means. This is basically the same strategy as the Texas abortion bill as it allows random evangelical busybody assholes to be morality police with the threat of crippling court costs.
The bill [0] does not define it, instead it leaves it up to the Florida Department of Education to come up with a framework of what is and is not appropriate for 5-8 year olds consistent with the bill by a certain deadline.
The change here is that the bill is enforcing that some kind of framework is followed in public schools when it comes to teaching 5 to 8 year olds about sexual orientation and gender identities. What the Florida Department of Education comes up with here remains to be seen, but the vagueness of the bill actually seems reasonable here as the appropriateness of such topics likely varies depending on the age of the child.
The meat of the bill is reenforcing parental rights in public schools, such as being able to access their child's mental health records, to be notified of any medical procedures with the option to opt out, access to their child's curriculum, etc.
In the US, most public schools have health class that covers these topics in 8th or 9th grade. The bill isn't touching that. Third grade is far too young.
But why do the teachers and schools have to talk about sex orientation, gay or not? I grew up from a culture where sex was never talked about by teachers and I don't think I missed anything. Of course students did talk about it among themselves. This whole idea of teachers must talk about sex in school sounds extremely stupid to me.
The title makes it was about the message on the board, while it was not. The music teacher talked about sex orientation and trans issue in the classroom.
QUOTE:
“The issue at hand is the conversations that took place during class. I firmly believe that students and their parents expect teachers to teach content about their assigned curriculum in a subject area,“ Saylor said. “Of course, there are times that conversations may vary from that day’s lesson plan, but these conversations went far beyond the music curriculum. It is my job to make sure that parents are not surprised by these types of situations.”
Saylor said he believes that all teachers have a responsibility to be supportive of their students, “but when students share difficult situations and circumstances with them, the student should be referred to a certified school counselor.”
I'm guessing maybe you were probably cis-hetero? No judgment if that's the case, the vast majority of people will be fine in that regime. However, when I was growing up we did have non typical kids in class and they were very much picked on. Non typical gender alignment wasn't talked about so the only words kids had at the time were "weird" and "funny" along with whatever stuff they picked up from the early internet porn sites and magazines. It wasn't great.
The thing we have to realize is the would is a bit different now. Before we just assumed these people didn't exist and that became a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Now we better understand this reality and the consequences of ignoring them as well as the options available for helping them.
When I was growing up, kids were picked on for anything and everything. I think we can decouple "teaching kids not to bully" from "teaching any particular gender/sexual ideology".
We did have kids looking weird, but nobody picked on them because of this. I think the school's responsibility is forbid bulling, for whatever reasons.
I don’t have time to cite a study but there’s a clear correlation between the lack of health education and teen pregnancy (which pipes into abortion). I would argue porn addiction is at least contributed to adolescence learn sex from porn cites instead of actual education.
I wonder how many of the male population understand periods, the cost contributed to them, and other female health issues that affect 50% of the population.
I consider myself pretty firmly in favor of LGBT+ rights. But at the same time, I can see why parents wouldn't want sexual education as a part of a curriculum for 5 to 8 year olds. Sex ed certainly wasn't being taught in elementary school when I was a kid. But this legislation goes both ways. A teacher can't teach 5-8 year olds that there are only two genders, either.
People arguing for the bill believe those against it want to give 5yo kids a lecture on sex positions but in reality there's a lot of material to cover in the window they're banning that isn't the heavy sexual content they have in mind.
This feels like a straw man. No doubt some conservatives sling "liberals just want to groom children" with varying degrees of seriousness, but I would have guessed that the primary impetus is to prevent teachers proselytizing their sexual identity beliefs on young children. At least with older children "sexuality" is an important and legitimate educational topic and it's difficult to legislate against indoctrination without imperiling legitimate education; however, I can't think of any legitimate reason to broach sexuality with first graders. I also think transparency in education is eminently desirable--I can't think of any good reason that schools should hide from parents what they're teaching children, and the tenuous arguments against this seem likely to damage Democrat credibility in the minds of swing voters--politically, this seems like a terrible hill to die on (much like how Democrats distanced themselves from "abolish the police" a couple years ago, it seems like they should distance themselves from secretly teaching very young kids).
I think the more compelling rebuttal is that the fear of indoctrination is overblown, that there aren't many cases of this happening. That said, I think it's perfectly fine to preemptively legislate against something when there's no real downside to the legislation. To this point, I would be curious to hear what legitimate material you think this legislation imperils. I would also like to hear proponents of the legislation give examples which show that this could become a problem in Florida (are there many examples of teachers proselytizing to students, especially sexual and gender identity ideologies?).
Can a teacher cover why a child might have "two dads" (either because it comes up because it applies to a student, or in a childrens book, or ...) on the same level that relationship between "mom and dad" is covered and why it's ok even though its different than most other families or is that "proselytizing sexual identity ideologies" (or at risk being a violation if a parent decides they think it is)?
The law prohibits teaching sexual orientation. If discussing families with two dads violates this law, then discussing families with one mom and one dad must necessarily also violate it. Interpretation about what is/isn't appropriate is left to the Florida Department of Education, but the law itself preserves equality. Note also that without this law, it would also be legal for teachers to teach that gay people don't exist or any manner of right-wing ideology.
That's a nice theory, but there's little reason to believe it will work like that instead of working like it does basically everywhere else that tries such laws. "Don't discuss" turns into "tacitly ignore it for the 'norm' because it's impossible to not acknowledge it, single out 'deviations'". See also things like content filters treating any LGBT content as "adult", regardless of it being explicit in any way or not.
That's the obvious concern with the law, especially if you add such a "parents can sue" mechanism and with the political environment around. Any parent that sues over discussing families with one mom and one dad will look like a nutjob and loose, but parents suing over two dads appearing in a childrens book will have very legitimate concerns that have to be taken seriously.
Time will tell if that concern is wrong, but I'm not giving that scenario much chance.
> That's a nice theory, but there's little reason to believe it will work like that instead of working like it does basically everywhere else that tries such laws. "Don't discuss" turns into "tacitly ignore it for the 'norm' because it's impossible to not acknowledge it, single out 'deviations'".
You and I seem to inhabit very different realities. Pushing boundaries (especially in the name of equality) is glorified in American culture, and has been since the 60s and 70s. "Subversiveness" is a virtue. Moreover, the left dominates cultural institutions (media, entertainment, academia, etc)--the idea that any speech is going to be quelled over this seems ridiculous. Anything that one attempts to suppress gets amplified (Streisand Effect).
If conservative parents sue to block the discussion of homosexual content, liberal parents can sue to block the discussion of normatively heterosexual content. The ACLU and other progressive organizations exist for exactly these kinds of cases.
> Any parent that sues over discussing families with one mom and one dad will look like a nutjob and loose,
1. Again, you and I seem to live in very different Americas if you think suing for equality is unpopular. Such a suit would be national news, and the plaintiffs would enjoy unfailingly favorable treatment by the national press (save for Fox News) which famously skews left on precisely these kinds of social issues.
2. IANAL, but I would think it would be relatively straightforward to point to all of the cases where the courts interpreted discussing same sex parents as "teaching sexual orientation". Seems like a slam dunk, and I wouldn't be surprised if lawyers would take the case pro bono just to make a name for themselves with all of the national press coverage.
Agreed. I was all ramped up to be vehemently opposed to the bill, but then I read it (it's only a few pages of giant, monospaced font) and it seems... eminently reasonable. It protects against right-wing indoctrination as well as left-wing indoctrination as it pertains to sexual identity, and it targets a pretty agreeable age range--it still leaves the door open for proselytizing to older students (I'm not convinced this is a good thing, but I appreciate the difficulty of legislating against proselytizing without infringing on legitimate education). I can't understand why anyone would oppose this bill unless they explicitly want to indoctrinate very young children.
Literally no state has passed a law teaching gay people do not exist. You should read the actual bills and take some time off Twitter while you are at it.
Have...you? Specifically looking at Florida, the issue is, while they don't say you can't "say gay" the wording is deliberately vague on what can be taught and when. This is very much intended to create a chilling effect on classroom speech because teachers and school districts don't have the cash to find out in court and all it takes is one dumb parent to start a massive court battle.
The bill is not unclear about what and when things can be taught. Please stop buying into the hype on this bill.
First the bill applies to kindergarten to 3rd grade. Very clear who it applies to. If you teach fourth grade or above this does not apply.
Second, the bill basically prevents three things.
1. The withholding of information "affecting a
student's mental, emotional, or physical well-being" from a parent. It also requires no prohibitions on parents "accessing any of their student's education and health records created, maintained, or used by the school district".
2. Banning teachers of kindergartens through 3rd grade from "discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity or in a manner that is not age
appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students"
3. Prevents a school from "administering a student well-being questionnaire
or health screening form to a student in kindergarten through
grade 3" without providing "the questionnaire or health screening form to the parent and obtain[ing] the permission of the parent"
The law also requires the school districts to "notify parents of each healthcare service offered
at their student's school and the option to withhold consent or decline any specific service."
It is quite clear and less than 10 pages long. It is not chilling speech to not talk to a 5 year old about sex. Also, this bill also literally would apply to all sexual orientations including straight. If this is a don't say gay bill then it is also don't say straight.
A teacher shouldn't have to risk legal action by saying "Timmy's parents are both men who love each other, and that's okay." This bill introduces that risk because the teacher doesn't know who is going to decide what is age appropriate. A parent could decide it was inappropriate and initiate a suit. Will that happen often? No, but what teacher is going to risk it?
It's very difficult to find a reason that the wording "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate" is so vague, expect that the bill's intent is to silence the subject as much as possible.
I addressed your main point which is that a teacher should be able to talk about another student's home life.
You said:
>A teacher shouldn't have to risk legal action by saying "Timmy's parents are both men who love each other, and that's okay."
If a teacher is telling other students about Timmy's home life that is very much gossip.
The other students have no reason or right to know what Timmy's home situation is. If Timmy wants to tell other students about his situation he can. The teacher should not be doing that.
Would you hold the same standard if a teacher said Timmy only has one parent if one of his parents died? It is gossip and the teacher should not be talking to other students about it.
The fact that you're comparing homosexuality to a death in the family really drives this home, doesn't it?
If someone is okay with being out (like a married-with-children couple) then it's okay to acknowledge they are gay. Just like saying Timmy's dad is a doctor is okay. A teacher shouldn't risk legal action for saying so.
I used the example of a dead parent because death is something that many young people do not really understand (do any of us?). They may never have experienced the death of a family member or friend. This is similar to how many young people don't understand homosexuality.
The fact you think I am trying to say homosexuality is the same as death is quite telling isn't it?
I don't care if somebody is OK with being out. It is not the place of a teacher to tell other students the home life of another student. I don't think a teacher should tell other students what the profession of a student's parents are either.
> The fact you think I am trying to say homosexuality is the same as death is quite telling isn't it?
I didn't say that. I said you compared them. You did so again in this comment, again putting them on the same level as taboo discussion subjects for children, which is just plain wrong. The fact that people of the same gender can love each other is not hard to understand, it's really quite simple to explain, but your last comment attempted to make it sound difficult to explain, seemingly to justify speaking in hushed tones about it or not at all if children are nearby, as if you were talking about their deceased parent. But it's an easy-to-understand, neutral subject, so your point is invalid.
And really? One kid tells another kid that his dad is an architect, the second kid asks the teacher to explain what the first kid's dad does. And the teacher says "No, I can't talk about anyone's parents." That's what you're going with?
This isn't necessarily about a student's parents anyway. That's just one example of where a child might be triggered to ask about it. Kids are curious, they will ask, and with this new legislation teachers will avoid it as if the kid asked about death. And when something gets treated as if it's taboo, it becomes taboo.
The problem is it is not quite so simple as you make it out. Kids are often told when a mommy and a daddy really love each other their love creates a baby. What happens if Johnny, a 5 year old, asks what happens if there is a daddy and a daddy. How far should the teacher go? No matter how the teacher answers it is going to cause issues.
Why not let the parents who know the child better explain these things?
In terms of a parent's profession there is nothing age inappropriate about an architect. There is certain age inappropriate things about sex. A teacher does not know if a kid has hit puberty, how mature they are, etc. This is why a parent should be involved with this not teachers.
How many 5 year olds are paying attention to laws being passed? None. The only reason they would know is if their parents or teachers tell them. I think kids should be kids. You shouldn't be telling kids about cultural / legal things that are going on if you can avoid it. I have no idea why so many people want kids to get involved with legal discussions. Just let kids be unaware of the strife, conflict and other things that don't matter to them in the world.
I don't want to talk to 5 year olds about taxes. Does that mean I want conversations about taxes to be taboo? I just think there is a time and place for things like this and teaching 5 year olds about this stuff is too early.
Also, I would note that the law only bans classroom instruction. If a student asks a teacher outside of that context the teacher could answer.
Please define "not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students"
Additionally puberty generally starts in 2nd-3rd grade so these children aren't allowed to learn about themselves until after onset, including potentially asking their teachers questions privately.
> Additionally puberty generally starts in 2nd-3rd grade
No it doesn't. Third graders are 8-9.
The idea of third graders learning about sex and puberty is very strange. We (public school) had health class in 8th and 9th grade where we learned about puberty, sex, and similar topics.
Additionally, it's odd to me that you include mention of "asking teachers questions privately". Why don't 8-9 year olds ask their parents privately? The assumption is that the parents are the enemy. That's exactly what led to this bill.
Those are extreme lower bounds. I had a friend who started puberty at 9 but it's very, very rare.
You wrote:
> puberty generally starts in 2nd-3rd grade
That's wrong. Replace "generally" with "very, very rarely" and it's right.
> Idk, I'd definitely be forced to talk to a teacher if you were my parent
Why? Why wouldn't you be able to talk to a parent about going through puberty at 8 years old? Any parent is going to notice. Why is it better to talk to a virtual stranger?
The bill [0] leaves the definition of "not age or developmentally appropriate" up to the Florida Department of Education, which apparently defines such things anyway.
>Please define "not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students"
This is of course the least clear part of the bill. I believe I saw one if the Florida representatives supporting this bill basically say the existing sex ed / health classes are fine and students should be in at least middle school.
Very few people are complaining about general sex ed.
>Additionally puberty generally starts in 2nd-3rd grade so these children aren't allowed to learn about themselves until after onset
I've seen conflicting numbers on the age of puberty. I think the youngest is 8 for girls and 9 for boys. If that is the case that would be 3rd grade. Would you be OK with a ban on K-2 on this then?
Just because a kid starts puberty does not mean they suddenly have sexual preferences. It takes time to grow so even if they start puberty at 8 they will take a while to understand.
Also, there have been some hypotheses regarding the declining age for puberty such as the increase in sexual content at a younger and younger age. I think the average age kids first see porn is now 10 or so. That means quite a few kids are seeing it earlier than that (and probably earlier than puberty). If that is the case then maybe we should try to lower the sexual content instead of increasing it.
Kids also aren't banned from learning about themselves. Not sure where you got that idea from? How would such a thing even be enforced?
>including potentially asking their teachers questions privately.
I am dubious this is banned. The law is explicitly says classroom instruction. Asking a teacher a question privately doesn't seem to fall under it.
Regardless, I don't think English or math teachers or whatever subject should be teaching sex related things. If it is going to be be taught in schools it should be taught by a health teacher. Maybe we should be advocating for health classes in elementary school instead of middle school.
This is far too late in my experience. If you wait this long the trans and gay kids are already being picked on and everyone else has learned how sex works from internet porn.
> I've seen conflicting numbers on the age of puberty. I think the youngest is 8 for girls and 9 for boys. If that is the case that would be 3rd grade. Would you be OK with a ban on K-2 on this then?
I think this is an interesting point, and I'd agree that if the problem was just puberty then moving things back a year would solve the issue.
However...
>Also, there have been some hypotheses regarding the declining age for puberty
Obviously real data would be needed for this beyond just a hypothesis, but even if we accept this, there's another facet to this problem. Gender identity isn't a sexual issue at this age (obviously it's inherently sexual but not in the way this point is addressing it). There seems to be some consensus that gender dysphoria is first experienced at age 3 to 7 and personally I witnessed kids I went to school with displaying signs of this prior to 3rd grade. There isn't any harm in explaining to children that gender dysphoria exists and that while some of them may question their gender, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them and that they shouldn't pick on people who don't fit cleanly into gender categories.
A lot of the lefts outrage over this bill is based on the premise that there wasn't harm happening as a result of education before this was proposed, but now there definitely will be, as a result of a lack thereof.
>If you wait this long the trans and gay kids are already being picked on
I think the better thing to do would be to work on fixing bullying overall. Even if kids understood different sexual orientations better they would still make fun of people who are different. If somebody talks different or looks different they will be made fun of.
>everyone else has learned how sex works from internet porn.
I don't think sex ed will fix this. It quite possibly peak kids interest and cause them to view porn even earlier when they look up information about sex.
>I think this is an interesting point, and I'd agree that if the problem was just puberty then moving things back a year would solve the issue.
You are the one who brought up puberty.
>Obviously real data would be needed for this beyond just a hypothesis,
Fully agree. I think the problem is testing this. Introducing porn and other sexual content to a 5 year old doesn't seem like the greatest thing to do.
>Gender identity isn't a sexual issue at this age (obviously it's inherently sexual but not in the way this point is addressing it). There seems to be some consensus that gender dysphoria is first experienced at age 3 to 7 and personally I witnessed kids I went to school with displaying signs of this prior to 3rd grade.
How many actually are showing signs of this? There is a growing number of people who think if a boy plays with a Barbie or likes pink that means he is showing signs of gender dysphoria.
>There isn't any harm in explaining to children that gender dysphoria exists and that while some of them may question their gender, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them and that they shouldn't pick on people who don't fit cleanly into gender categories.
There is a harm. 80% of kids who display gender dysphoria at this age grow out of it. Those 80% may become more certain in their incorrect gender identity and start treatments over conversations you are proposing. The longer kids are on medications (and if they get surgery) the harder it is to detransition, which as I mentioned already is at 80%.
If the bill prevents any discussion that would teach someone who was unaware that gay people existed, with no explicit reference towards banning teaching that gay people existed, does that make a material difference in your eyes?
First, the bill does not say you cannot teach that gay people exist. It says you can instruct students on sexual orientation. This only applies through 3rd grade (about 8 or 9 years old). As far as I know there are no health classes or sex ed prior to 10 years old. Any talk about sexual orientation or gender identity would not be relevant to the subject material.
There is no reason why a young kids needs to be instructed about such things. Any author or historical figure who is gay could still be taught.
Second, this only applies to classroom instruction. If a student stays after class they could ask their teacher about sexual orientation if they are wondering why a student has two dads or something. Some may try to extend the law to cover that, but as far as I can tell it wouldn't apply to that.
I understood what you were asking. I reject the premise. Teachers can literally still teach gay people exist so long as it is part of the curriculum and they do it in an age appropriate manner.
If they were intending to ban X (and presumably promote Y) they shouldn't write a bill that also bans Y. (Y being straight).
You’ve yet to answer to my question on whether it matters when bills functionally block something without explicitly stating so.
If you want to infer some assumptions without answering some basic axioms so we can make sure we’re on the same page and not arguing past each other, I’ll just dive in.
Since I’m seeing many supporters of the bill get incensed at the fact that Y is also functionally banned, and been told that I should know what the bill is “really about”, and that the bill does not define “age appropriate”, I reject your rejection of the premise. There’s a chilling effect of the government saying you could be in legal trouble for this, but they won’t let you know what the line is until you’ve crossed it. That causes people to pull their behavior far back from wherever they think the nebulous line might be.
I hope I am not coming off as incensed as you mentioned some people are.
To answer your question, despite its irrelevance, I don't mind if a bill functionally blocks something so long as it would be constitutional / legal if they were to explicitly block that thing. I tend to prefer explicit to prevent any confusion.
If you think this bill functionally blocks talking about gay people existing then it also functionally blocks talking about straight people existing.
I agree there is no age appropriate definition, but I don't really mind.
I don't think any teacher who is teaching 3rd grade and younger should instruct about any sexual orientation or gender identity regardless if they do it in an age appropriate manner so I don't particularly care if teachers are afraid of talking about sexual orientation to 5 year olds. I wish the bill went further and just outright banned any instruction on the topic to kids in 3rd grade and younger without the age appropriate portion.
Unfortunately due to the age appropriate wording a teacher may be able to instruct about sexual orientation to kids who are too young to be hearing it.
I agree that the letter of the law also prevents mentioning straight people, but I have no expectation that the law will be enforced on anything but gay/trans issues. There’s no way to completely excise this sort of topic from conversation even with young children.
You don’t have to get into sexually explicit conversation but even the concept of having a mom and a dad is a functional consequence of sexual orientation and children are aware of the fact that they have parents from much younger than third grade. Given the impossibility of removing all discussion on the topic I have no reason to believe that the Florida state government is going to enforce this law equally, and instead expect selective enforcement against their political enemies. Their base expects this too based on my conversations with supporters of the law who don’t think that any discussion of heterosexually linked topics will be banned and only homosexual ones will.
That gets back to my point about the functional blocking in the law, which youve stated you’re fine with if it’s constitutional. As the SCOTUS already ruled that sexuality can’t be used as a determinate in discriminatory laws during the gay marriage case due to the fact that it relies on gender information which is a protected class, I can’t see how anyone who’s pro constitution is cool with this bill
>I agree that the letter of the law also prevents mentioning straight people, but I have no expectation that the law will be enforced on anything but gay/trans issues.
That is an issue with the enforcement of the law not the law itself.
>There’s no way to completely excise this sort of topic from conversation even with young children.
Sure there is. Literally don't talk about it. I don't think a single teacher told us they were married until we were in middle school. None of the teachers mentioned any of the other student's parents. It is pretty easy to do by not talking about it.
>You don’t have to get into sexually explicit conversation but even the concept of having a mom and a dad is a functional consequence of sexual orientation and children are aware of the fact that they have parents from much younger than third grade
And? Just because children understand they have parents and one is male and the other is female doesn't mean teachers need to talk about it.
>Given the impossibility of removing all discussion on the topic I have no reason to believe that the Florida state government is going to enforce this law equally, and instead expect selective enforcement against their political enemies
Not a given.
>Their base expects this too based on my conversations with supporters of the law who don’t think that any discussion of heterosexually linked topics will be banned and only homosexual ones will.
I don't think you talk to a lot of conservatives. Every conservative I know (and the media ones I have heard) do not want teachers talking about heterosexual relationships either. I think they all would be glad if everything related to sexual orientation and gender identity was banned (at least at this age).
>As the SCOTUS already ruled that sexuality can’t be used as a determinate in discriminatory laws during the gay marriage case due to the fact that it relies on gender information which is a protected class, I can’t see how anyone who’s pro constitution is cool with this bill
Fortunately for proponents of this bill, there is nothing about sexual orientation discrimination. The bill bans all instruction of sexual orientation regardless if it is straight, gay or anything else.
A gay teacher quite probably could even say he was gay and married to a guy so long as it is not classroom instruction.
> Literally don't talk about it. I don't think a single teacher told us they were married until we were in middle school. None of the teachers mentioned any of the other student's parents.
Were you actually unaware of people being married until middle school? This sounds incredibly bizarre/dystopian to me. People aren't soulless automatons who don't socialize and parents and teachers would be aware of each others social lives at least at an acquaintance level at every school I attended. Even in kindergarten we knew that teachers were married or not simply by whether they were called Ms. or Mrs. There's also your own parents or your friends parents. I really can't fathom this concept that we've always wanted children to not know about sexuality in any aspect and need to hide it now other than through the lens that people are willing to accept collateral damage to hide homosexuality.
>I don't think you talk to a lot of conservatives. Every conservative I know (and the media ones I have heard) do not want teachers talking about heterosexual relationships either.
I literally grew up in a uber conservative, Confederate flag waving farm town in the middle of New England. Everyone was always excited to talk about new marriages and involve actual toddlers as part of the wedding ceremonies whenever people got married. Parents were always pushing their kids to give gifts or sign cards congratulating young teachers when they got married. Unless I see vast information to the contrary, all this looks like is a continuation of modern US conservative culture that will lie to your face about their past actions, as long as it hurts the right people
>That is an issue with the enforcement of the law not the law itself.
>Fortunately for proponents of this bill, there is nothing about sexual orientation discrimination. The bill bans all instruction of sexual orientation regardless if it is straight, gay or anything else.
If a law is created by a group of law makers with open biases, and then only enforced in a discriminatory way, then the problem _is_ with the law, unless you thought poll tests under Jim Crow were fine on their own and the enforcement was the only issue. I'll reserve the right to be surprised if this law is enforced uniformly, but I have been given no reason by the Florida state government to expect that
>Were you actually unaware of people being married until middle school?
Of course I knew about marriage, but I didn't ask my teachers and none of my fellow students asked. My teachers in elementary school didn't tell us if they were married. Maybe they understood kids don't actually care about the social lives of their teachers so they didn't tell us.
>This sounds incredibly bizarre/dystopian to me.
It is dystopian for teachers to not tell students about their personal life?
>People aren't soulless automatons who don't socialize and parents and teachers would be aware of each others social lives at least at an acquaintance level at every school I attended.
This law has nothing to do with parents and teachers knowing about each others lives, but young kids.
>Even in kindergarten we knew that teachers were married or not simply by whether they were called Ms. or Mrs.
Good for you. Many of my teachers just went by Ms even if they were married. I remember when I was in maybe first or second grade one teacher used Mrs but didn't explain the difference. I just assumed it was for older woman since the teacher was quite a bit older than the previous teachers I had. Kids are quite naive and will just assume things. You don't need to explain everything to them.
Even if a student knew the woman was married they wouldn't have to tell their students if they are gay or straight.
It also doesn't work for men so they wouldn't have a reason to bring it up.
>There's also your own parents or your friends parents.
No clue what you are trying to say here.
>I really can't fathom this concept that we've always wanted children to not know about sexuality in any aspect and need to hide it now other than through the lens that people are willing to accept collateral damage to hide homosexuality.
We need things to be age appropriate. If you had a 5 year old kid and he asked about sex would you show him a gang bang video? I would assume not. I don't think 5 year olds should know about such things regardless if it is straight or gay.
>I literally grew up in a uber conservative, Confederate flag waving farm town in the middle of New England. Everyone was always excited to talk about new marriages and involve actual toddlers as part of the wedding ceremonies whenever people got married. Parents were always pushing their kids to give gifts or sign cards congratulating young teachers when they got married. Unless I see vast information to the contrary, all this looks like is a continuation of modern US conservative culture that will lie to your face about their past actions, as long as it hurts the right people
You are talking about decades ago I assume. Regardless, if a parent wants to have their kid celebrate a marriage they can.
This law is saying teachers shouldn't be teaching this stuff.
The law strictly speaking doesn't even ban a teacher telling their students they are gay so it wouldn't even have an impact.
>If a law is created by a group of law makers with open biases, and then only enforced in a discriminatory way, then the problem _is_ with the law
Which law was made by people without open biases? I am going out on a limb and saying none.
The law has never been enforced so how could it be enforced in a discriminatory way?
>unless you thought poll tests under Jim Crow were fine on their own and the enforcement was the only issue.
Of course not.
>I'll reserve the right to be surprised if this law is enforced uniformly, but I have been given no reason by the Florida state government to expect that
You are jumping to a conclusion probably because you didn't like your childhood you described. You think all conservatives are like the ones you grew up with. You think they are filled with hatred and can't move on. Conservatives appear to have become a boogie man for you, where you think the worst of them.
It is clear you hold deep seated biases and it is not going to be a fruitful dialogue.
>You are jumping to a conclusion probably because you didn't like your childhood you described. You think all conservatives are like the ones you grew up with. You think they are filled with hatred and can't move on. Conservatives appear to have become a boogie man for you, where you think the worst of them.
I grew up conservative. Theyre my family, not boogie men. But you do you. Gonna have to agree to disagree on this all then. You are describing a reality I do not believe exists
I take your point--that the choice to stop smothering people in woke content is itself a political decision (for sufficiently abstract notion of "political"), but it seems infinitely better than smothering people in any particular ideological content at all. The woke people can still opt into their own filter bubbles without their ideology being foisted on everyone.
I think generally the political right in the US is effectively underserved by social media, because all of the giants seem to lean pretty openly left. If Musk can make the platform more neutral this could be a massive business opportunity, if not to grow then to at least ensure Twitter's market dominance by venting some of the pressure for a competitor.
Never would have bothered before but I'm long TWTR now, worth a gamble since everything Elon touches turns to gold, even if only because of cult of personality...
Maybe, but not everyone uses the internet equally.
Educated people, professors, lawyers, doctors, programmers, and others with desk jobs are more likely to participate heavily in social media than the uneducated and, working class, and menial laborers.
Just because most people have a Facebook account doesn't mean that representation is equal, and there is no reason to expect that a preponderance of lefty posts necessarily implies systemic bias.
I am not arguing against more strict moderation. I am saying that the apparent leftist tilt of, for example, Twitter, is not in fact a consequence of biased moderation, but rather a consequence of a bias in the underlying population: internet users tend to be more left.
I am beyond tired of billionaires, who get to treat companies, public sentiment, and politics, and thus a fair portion of government and policy, as their personal sandbox. Greed and oligarchy are ruining America.
When Elon buys an ownership stake in Twitter, he's taking an ownership stake from other billionaires, so it doesn't make sense to think of it as an example of billionaires increasing their power in society.
Agreed but I'm not sure how we can change it at this point. Our lives in the US are way too good for revolution. This move by him is strictly about not letting Twitter ever block his accounts. He can pump & dump and mislead investors for billions that will make him a lot more money than his Twitter stake cost.
I don't know. They haven't finished the homeless count for 2022. I suspect they are scared to announce it. People are probably dropping off from housed to unhoused at unprecidented levels. I wouldn't say our lives are way to good right now.
That's 2,239 people (16 percent of all surveyed shelter-visitors) that cited "economic reasons" as the cause of their homelessness, and there's a separate entry for unemployment.
What specifically has Elon buying shares in Twitter done to use it as his personal sandbox that has ruined America? Give examples.
I'm beyond tired of the hyperbole and hysteria any time <personal internet doesn't like> <does thing>. And I can back my assertion up with an example: you.
So while this one-liner comment seems to be drawing ire, I do think it brings up a difficult point.
As more and more of our civic discourse moves online, there are no "public spaces" online where the rule of law and public interest comes first.
There is no town square, no soapbox in the park, no public access TV, or the ability for masses to organize and march or protest (or whatever the online equivalent is), with only the government's laws as written to contend with.
Everything (that has meaningful reach and impact) is private, and all these meeting and communication spaces have a company with shareholders and therefore goals and motivations that override public interest.
I certainly don't have the answer to this problem but this erosion is a problem that will need to be reckoned with at some point.
I think we do, it's called the DNS. Buy a domain and put whatever you like on it. It does get hard/expensive if you get a truly massive audience, but that has always been true. You are not and have never been owed the benefits of someone else's platform, but it's still easier now to have a truly public discussion than ever before.
We have never had a public town square larger than a literal town square, excepting maybe ham radio. Every other space has in some way been moderated or fashioned to purpose. Even public TV, news and radio are groomed to certain standards.
And yet we've had demonstrations and protests that have drawn hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, into the streets around the world to demand change or rally around causes.
Where does that happen online, with the guarantees afforded by only the rule of law?
Various governments have ways to petition online. Change.org or whatever is reasonably open to things covered by the first amendment, though of course it is privately controlled without real guarantees.
Yup, we actually need public twitters. Nothing fancy, no recommendations, not even sophisticated antispam, just simple follow list like rss with feedback. People can learn the self-curate
Sure but who owns and runs that? Who is responsible for the infrastructure costs, the operations of it, the uptime, etc..
The government? Which government? The Internet is global, so would you have a public Twitter for every country? How do you geo-restrict this then? Whose laws apply? How is it reported or enforced? Do we need "Twitter cops"?
You can throw out easy answers all you want but it's actually a really complex issue.
The govt, municipalities etc. Public spaces are public and the whole thing can be decentralized so it s not compute and bw heavy. It should be very cheap compared to e.g. roads
Without irony, you probably would have less censorship than should a private company own it. Is that a good thing? Not sure. Seems like spam would overtake it quickly.
Sure, until an American president decides to ban another country's account for disrespecting him, or use it for leverage in negotiations, or have the NSA bulk scan their citizens private messages for 'terrorist' communications, or have the algorithm bias other country's newsfeeds in favor of American propaganda.
Twitter is a global platform and much of the world wouldn't trust the US as far as they could throw an American nuke (not withstanding how much they would also trust their own government.) The only reason Twitter works as well as it does now is that its primary concern, as a company, is profit, and not the national interests of one specific country.
That ship long since sailed. Look at Russia, for example. They have basically been cut off from all forms of social media and the president didn’t even need to order them to do it (Even though the president has more or less total power over anything involving international trade). The social media companies did it voluntarily.
I would still prefer it to be the choice of individuals and private platforms, which can be competed with and avoided, than a government. Even if I think blacklisting Russians at every opportunity is a terrible, unproductive and ultimately self-sabotaging move for Americans to make.
> Sure, until an American president decides to ban
Well, that is what the court system, and the supreme court is for.
The court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech.
Sure, maybe a president would want to do something. And the courts, which have a very established history of protecting speech rights would stop them.
A better solution, though, would be to make a new law that requires twitter to follow similar standards as the government has to follow, in the same way how we put strong restrictions on what telephone companies are allowed to do
(So don't give me any objections about how such laws would be illegal, when we already have them! Use our phone laws as the model, to do something similar, if not exact the same).
Social media companies aren't common carriers. People want them to be so they have to follow the same laws, but they never claimed to be neutral. They have rules, they have distinct cultures and business models. They also exist within an ecosystem of competitors - Twitter being popular doesn't mean they control communications infrastructure. Facebook serving a billion people no more makes it a public good than MacDonald's.
Did you read this part, or are you just going to completely ignore it? "The [modern day] court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech."
I am not sure how anyone who has read any supreme court opinion in the last 40 years, could come to the conclusion that the government is not strongly prevented from engaging in large speech restrictions.
I read it, I just don't trust it. Not after the Patriot Act, PRISM, Guantanamo Bay and any number of other ways the government has made an end run around its own laws and the courts have let them, or at best not been able to intervene until well after the damage has been done. If the US government really, really wants to break the law, the courts will often look the other way if there's plausible deniability.
Are we really talking about trusting the courts to properly adjudicate a platform with a global userbase and an algorithmically driven feed (designed for psychological control and influence) when the American press is all but universally considered, by Americans, to be controlled by corporate interests and the military industrial complex? We don't even trust CNN to tell us the sun rises in the East and sets in the West but we'll trust the government to have a fair hand at managing Twitter?
I get the argument intellectually, and I'll even concede that it could work in the best circumstance. But I don't believe we live in the world of best circumstance, and i don't trust it to work in practice. Maybe if there were real international controls over the platform. But even then there could be some secret ECHELON BS going on between governments to allow rights abuses on a technicality.
> Are we really talking about trusting the courts to properly adjudicate a platform with a global userbase and an algorithmically driven feed
Ok, well then you are in luck. Because in the context of this thread, it seems like we won't even need the government or the courts to do anything, as Elon is going to be pressuring twitter to do what the open discourse advocates want anyway.
So, just remember, you can't complain about any of this, because it is not the government forcing twitter to have less moderation, instead it is private individuals.
So now everyone wins. You don't have to worry about the government forcing these changes, because private parties are going to force them to have less moderation, and there is very little you can do to stop these moderation changes.
>So, just remember, you can't complain about any of this, because it is not the government forcing twitter to have less moderation, instead it is private individuals.
This is the internet, I will complain about anything I damn well please.
>Because private parties are going to force them to have less moderation, and there is very little you can do to stop these moderation changes.
I can stop using Twitter if I find it objectionable, and if enough people do the same, Twitter will either have to change its policies or a competitor will step in. Because policies aren't laws, and don't require bureaucracy, politics, the intervention of courts or votes to change, private Twitter can change on a dime, whereas public Twitter couldn't.
As hard as it is to stop moderation changes on Twitter, it's easy to avoid Twitter. But if Twitter becomes integrated into the bureaucracy then it becomes as unavoidable as the DMV. The worst Twitter can do about my theoretically objectionable tweets is ban me. The worst the government could do is have me arrested, tortured or killed. I'll take my chances with Elon.
> This is the internet, I will complain about anything I damn well please.
You can complain, but the point is you would be a hypocrite, and none of what you say actually matters.
> I can stop using Twitter if I find it objectionable
Sure you can, and basically nobody else is going to follow, because they are the only major player in that market. So twitter will live on without you, and be perfectly fine.
In fact, it seems that the stock price went up because of the elon news. So the people with the money actually think that it will improve, and you can feel free to waste your time not using the only major platform in twitter's market.
> it's easy to avoid Twitter
Yes, and it is also easy for everyone else to continue to use twitter and not care that you leave. I guess you'll be shouting into the void on platforms that nobody else is using, about how horrible twitter is, and everyone else will continue to not care.
Its a private company and all. They can feel free to choose to have less moderation, and there is nothing you can do about it, but complain in places where nobody will care.
America just had a President who explicitly declared the press to be the enemy of the people.
Ignoring the degree to which the American press voluntarily acts as a propaganda platform[0], the US government absolutely does censor the press, by revoking or controlling press credentials, arresting reporters covering protests, harassment, etc[1].
And the US has historically censored the mail, yes, usually during wartime. But the bigger problem is surveillance - the USPS tracks, photographs and logs all paper mail for government surveillance and law enforcement[2]. The USPS also has a 'covert operations' division that monitors social media posts[3].
You could (correctly) claim that this isn't nearly as bad as the surveillance and censorship regimes elsewhere, but it's difficult to see how making that easier by giving the government direct control over a primary means of global communication makes it less likely.
Isn’t that “ism” largely discredited? He was right, the government/institutions were full of communists. Today they’ve rebranded as socialists, but to my knowledge everything he fought against came to pass.
Attaching the -ism label is just a thought-terminating cliche.
It maybe wasn't "full of communists" but you are right that project VENONA has shown that McCarthy wasn't totally wrong either. Institutions were deeply inflitrated at all levels.
During the Trump administration, their vindictive treatment of the press and the selective removal of access to the White House by outlets not toeing the line more or less amounted to quasi-censorship in practice.
Nationalizing in the traditional sense is not the solution, indeed, but rather hold the platform up to the letter of the constitution. This right now is not exactly possible given that "twitter is a private company", therefore arguably if one puts it in the hands of the government, you have the double-edged sword of potentially being abused by the government, and on the other hand the solution i forementioned on holding it accountable given that it would become public under the law. However, just like with any other gov. institution, being held accountable is more often than not up to the people through their civic initiative and probably not something that the government will do out of interest. So in this regard in US it could work given the nature of the constitution, whereas in other countries Twitter would just become a propaganda machine (isn't it one already?).
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested extending common carrier legislation to cover social media platforms. That would essentially prevent them from censoring any content legal in the US.
Thanks for the link, I remember hearing about Clarence Thomas' take on this subject but I never took the time to study it. My personal opinion (before reading the material above) is that the "core issue" stands on the S230 "loop-hole" (I don't want to use the term 'abuse' given the negative connotation ... so far it[S230] has been a net good since it made the internet grow so much since 2007, but things have started to change with the rise of monopolistic corporations) giving companies both privileges with less responsibility than should necessary. At least in principle a Bill of Rights should exist, especially considering that places like Twitter are considered fairly often under the law (think court cases) 'public spaces'. Therefore in my mind if the public street is a place where i can speak freely, so should one be able to on Twitter/any other such deemed public space.
This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right? In which case it would actually mean government can't interfere with it?
It's an interesting mind exercise. What happens with blatant spamming, or bots, is the government allowed to interfere with those? Or does the 1st amendment block that too?
The government already owns a support foundation for publicly-owned broadcasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...). Nothing about the 1st Amendment seems to prevent these broadcasters from restricting access to their airwaves. Anyone with a camera or mic can't just walk into a PBS studio and start transmitting whatever message they want. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1972 that created the CPB does stipulate that it has to be objective and balanced when dealing with controversial subjects, but it doesn't say every single person with a voice, no matter what they want to say, needs to be allowed to speak.
I aint no lawyer, of course, but this doesn't seem inconsistent with other arenas of free speech. Even literal public squares don't have infinite space. If some group tried to go occupy a government-owned park with a few thousand people more or less permanently, preventing anyone else from ever getting access, that would be illegal. Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are.
PBS is a publisher, not a platform, and is legally liable for the content they publish in a way that Twitter is not.
> Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are.
When rationing and rate-limiting are applied on the basis of the content of the speech, then yes is is absolutely censorship and there are supreme court cases to back that up.
Nuisance on public infrastructure - like loitering and littering, some trolling and all spam could become misdemeanors subject to enforcement. Twitter officers lol. Imagine joining the fbi and ending up manning the Twitter troll patrol.
Absurd idea, but amusing consequences if you ignore the obvious roadblocks.
So many people compare twitter to the national government (even Elon) and make the case that their censorship is akin to a violation of free speech. I would say they need a civics class more than anything.
But in terms of a nationalized social media network, I can't imagine it going well. The lack of innovation in the government would probably mean the site gets overwhelmed and taken down shortly after it was made.
The social media platforms need some sort of speech regulation enforced on them. Imagine if AT&T cut off your phone call because you started talking about Donald Trump or Hunter Biden's laptop.
Social media companies enjoy immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act[1] but then editorialize their platform to allow only conversations socially acceptable.
Enforcing free speech on the platforms, as its accepted today by the courts[2], with criminal penalties for noncompliance, is the only solution.
>This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right?
Without Section 230 Twitter would be liable for every evil thing that is said on their platform.
What Section 230 does is create a category in which you are not liable for the content on the platform but they specifically setup limited rules for what can be censored. All censorship must be done in good faith. Lewd, obscene, harassment etc is censorable. But again good faith, you cant just say everything is harassment or obscene so you can censor speech.
So absolutely, twitter is legally obligated to allow free speech. The big controversy is that they are clearly in violation of this but nobody is punishing them. They just get away with it.
>It's an interesting mind exercise. What happens with blatant spamming, or bots, is the government allowed to interfere with those? Or does the 1st amendment block that too?
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of-
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
So twitter could ban porn under lewd category but they choose not to do. Same with gore and obscenity in general.
You dont have to censor these things, but you can if you please.
Censoring political speech under any of those categories is going to be virtually impossible to justify that they are doing this in good faith.
You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host. Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers.
Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context.
>You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host.
I did copy and paste the law. It's clear to me what is says and the free speech that is required. Censorship must be done in good faith.
>Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers.
Without section 230 they would assume full liability as publisher.
>Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context.
Section 230 was created to allow entities like twitter to exist. Without section 230 twitter stops existing.
Let's be realistic, Elon just put $9 billion down because his poll showed significant problem with censorship. Fixing this will take twitter from $40 billion to much higher.
There was case law before s.230 was passed, which said what parent claimed: if you moderated your content you carried liability as a publisher, if you were careful not to look at what went up on your service then you didn't. s.230 was added to the Communications Decency Act specifically to remove that perverse incentive in order to encourage 'family friendly' moderation. That's it. It doesn't anywhere require good faith. The entire legislative history is on record. And it long predates Twitter.
'Social media' in the web 2.0 sense is post 1996, but there were plenty of websites with comments sections and online forums before that. Cases over intermediary liability for online content have some antiquity; in Cubby v. CompuServe (776 F. Supp. 135; S.D.N.Y. 1991), for example, CompuServe were found non-liable because they had no first-hand knowledge of the defamatory posting. Whereas in Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy (No. 31063/94, 1995 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 229; N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 24, 1995) Prodigy were found liable as the publisher because they'd set content rules and run a filter over users' contributions. Congress thought that latter result was unhelpful (because it incentivised people to run cesspools rather than to actively moderate them) and legislated.
And sorry, I should have been clearer on good faith. The section preventing providers being liable as a publisher (which is the core of s.230's value to social media platforms) has no good faith requirement. "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." (s.230(c)1) is the whole clause. Platforms don't acquire intermediary liability even if they delete every post praising the Yankees while laughing maniacally and falsely claiming it's a result of profanity use. They simply aren't "treated as the publisher or speaker" full stop.
The good faith language comes from (c)2, which further limits liability (to the speaker) for good faith removals on the grounds that the speech might be offensive. That's not an intermediary liability issue, as such, though.
>The good faith language comes from (c)2, which further limits liability (to the speaker) for good faith removals on the grounds that the speech might be offensive. That's not an intermediary liability issue, as such, though.
We are arguing over a moot point. If section 230 or whatever does not provide for free speech. Then that is what needs to be improved upon. Perhaps make it more clear that free speech is guaranteed.
> If section 230 or whatever does not provide for free speech. Then that is what needs to be improved upon.
The problem is that people have wildly different takes on how to "fix" section 230.
One group wants to eliminate the liability protections, regardless of how much moderating you do. The concern is that this basically makes hosting user generated content at any sort of scale impractical from a business perspective since scaling competent human review to reduce the legal liability below the value per user is impractical for any sort of modern social media.
One group want so eliminate section 230 so only companies that do no moderation have liability protection, forcing social media companies to stop doing any moderation. The concern here is that some level of moderation of abuse / spam seems necessary to keep platforms from degrading into wastelands that no-one wants to use.
The moderate middle ground is reforming section 230 to limit the types of moderation activity that can be performed without losing liability protection.
This last seems politically unlikely as it doesn't provide a political win, despite being good for society.
I’m curious how you think this is going to ruin anything for you. Do you mean on a tangible level, or on an emotional level? Do you actually think there will be large scale policy changes that will damage your ability to communicate with people via the platform?
The valuable parts of Twitter seem to be when niche experts tweet about their niche and specific niche comedy. Everything else seems really unhealthy.
I could see a lot of monetization efforts ruin Twitter. I could also see people saying “I don’t want to support Elon, I’m leaving Twitter” if that’s what you mean.
I’m worried about tangible changes. As their largest shareholder with a seat on the board (not to mention lots of fans/popular with some) I don’t want him to be able to drive product decisions.
I know what I would like to change (better 3rd part app support, better anti-harassment tools). I don’t see why he would push for either one.
I don’t know what he WOULD push for, but I worry I won’t like it. He called for the edit button. I know that’s long requested but carries some serious downsides. And I don’t want them glossed over because they push to get it out to make him and his army happy.
I’m not a fan but I don’t think my liking Twitter and Elon being a big shareholder implies I am a fan of his. Twitter has enough of its own identity.
Well Twitter never really hooked me, so I’m mostly just a curious onlooker, but to me it seems that Twitter is pretty stagnant. Do you think there’s a possibility that this change has a positive outcome?
No. I’ll admit I’m pessimistic on such things. Sure Twitter could improve, but I don’t see how/why that would be led by Musk. I don’t see what he brings to the table other than himself as a person. It’s not like he was an expert in a similar field/company like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.
I find it incredibly useful. I follow accounts accounts I consider useful or interesting. They post all sorts of informative things, fun anecdotes, bits of history, etc.
Yeah if you just follow celebrities or influencers you’ll have a bad time. But there are lots of great smaller accounts (<250k followers) out there. You can often get tech news first that way from reliable sources.
No, I meant 250k. But “smaller” was relative to celebrities and politicians and such with millions.
Not all accounts I follow are that big. Many are closer to 10k. Some around 5k. There are a handful less than that but they are often people I know in person or tiny podcasts I listen to.
Elon Musk is this generations Steve Jobs. He has an enormous amount of influence with people 30 and under. His opinion of Apple will most likely sour when the Apple car comes out. If he really wanted, he probably could single-handedly bring Android closer to iOS in the US by changing his phone to Android and tweeting about it. I am not kidding. People worship Elon.
Yes, because the NSA definitely does not have an entire library of top secret zero days for 90% of the software packages included in your Open Source OS. And your hardware definitely doesn't have any backdoors.
Maintaining privacy against a state level actor is essentially a nerd fan fiction daydream. If the US government is after you, you're fucked no matter what.
As I always say... if your threat model contains the NSA, GRU, CCP or any other sophisticated state actor you're better off not using any technology because the moment you do you've lost.
A troll I have blocked on Twitter has joined the board of directors. Great. Will Kayne West be next? What about Glen Greenwald? I have those blocked as well. How about a troll-only board selected from accounts I blocked?
Or maybe I believe playing by known and accepted rules is the only thing holding our country, democracy, and the global economic system together. And this guy seeks and promotes activity (SEC, crypto, ripping off cofounders, his positions on taxes, never ceasing misinformation, and so on) that dilutes this. You can’t have a democracy without common rules and a common currency. If he’d just stick to building stuff, he’d be awesome, but no, he’s gotta break all the rules for his ego for vanity projects.
No it's not, it's a very popular account with a lot of followers, but I don't know how many would follow somewhere else if Elon had to leave for example.
Not directly, but my implication here is that Elon Musk is in the bad graces of the SEC of is being made an insider of another huge company who facilitated him falling out of favor with that SEC. It is Twitter saying they don't care about the SEC and don't see any potential conflict with empowering someone who flaunts SEC penalties. And also, that I would be 0% surprised if Musk did this out of spite.
I certainly agree that Elon Musk has a habit of flaunting SEC penalties, but I don't think this alone will lead to any real conflict. Things would be rather different if he started flouting them, of course.
Much needed change, I would hope he will fire the CEO and the existing leadership at Twitter and replace them with those who really want to make Twitter a neutral, respected platform for discussion.
Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating as Twitter fails to appeal to "normies" in a way Facebook and other networks can.
A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
It doesn't take much. People have been begging for an edit button for a decade. If he'd get only that feature implemented, it will be remembered forever.