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.
