I'm not defending Twitter or their policy in any way (disclaimer: I left Twitter the moment Elmo took over. I despise his hypocrisy and his fascist ideas)
But this could be a "legitimate f-up". Normally, most of these unsafe-url protection and detection is automated in something with the scale of Twitter.
Just like URL-shorteners often are (were?) "seemingly randomly" banned, because a portion of the shared urls are pointing at malware/phishing/otherwise banned content, all urls from this shortener get banned. It may be that signal.me is simply picking up on amount of illegitimate links. Signal is clearly growing strong. Therefore signal.me links' are increasingly seen by Twitter. Most legitimate links, but the amount of illegitimate links will then also increase.
This would trigger an automated ban¹.
The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
¹ Especially if this automation isn't maintained properly, finetuned and kept being tweaked by teams of experts - many of which left or were layd off after the aquisition of Twitter.
I think you buried the lede in your footnote here. Even if it is just a mistake, it's a pretty avoidable one by having a human in the loop to review changes to start blocking URLs to such a commonly linked site. If he thinks that it's "efficient" not to retain enough people to be able to notice that URL fragments and hashtags use the same symbol, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an "office of government efficiency", much less in charge of it.
Humans aren’t in the loop for automated bans. That has no relationship to staffing size.
This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.
That same logic most definitely exists at well-staffed companies and the internet is full of stories of people getting screwed by these systems. Google sinking legit companies with no recourse, locking out Gmail users who had decades of their life there, etc.
Well, I worked on abuse for a few years and gave a tech talk on it at Twitter. You really do want these things to be fully automated for two reasons.
The first is that spammers automate so if you don't then they're always much faster. By the time your humans are paying attention and have made a decision it's too late, all the spam (scams, frauds, malware sites...) was already delivered. In the next spam run everything will have changed, so, decisions made by that point are useless.
The second is that your suggestion contains an unstated premise that the human evaluators would have somehow more information to work with than an automated system, or would reach a different decision. In reality they don't and wouldn't. URL reputation systems like this are triggered by spam attacks. For a certain window of time there's a high probability that any message containing a specific domain name will be flagged by users as spam, so the system short-circuits that and starts classifying all messages of unknown status containing a link to that domain as spam. This works well because spammers usually want their targets to visit a website.
So the human evaluators in this case will see a message like:
"URL domain signal.me has 67% chance of spam and rising, confirm block? Y/N"
and the humans will always press Y because obviously (a) it means that such a decision is right more often than it's wrong and (b) the domain name is normally meaningless anyway. The block will be removed a bit later once the spammers go away.
In this case, it's tempting to think that some human in a cheap labor country would somehow see this message and think "ah! signal.me! clearly a domain linked to the super cool Signal messenger, which I personally like, so I won't block it even though this might cause a lot of people to be victimized by criminals". But they wouldn't and shouldn't. The domain even looks phishy, it's quite surprising to learn that it's a real Signal linked domain.
I don't think you should block a major domain because of a spam spike. If you think the entire domain is compromised, then send in a human to look, otherwise focus on the accounts that are sending spam links.
signal.me probably isn't a major domain. These things work on probability. I use Signal (most people don't) and had never heard of this domain until now. It's likely a utility domain that doesn't appear in X messages often, so a single spammer is capable of overwhelming its good traffic in a single campaign. Whereas e.g. google.com has a lot of presence over a long period of time in non-spam messages so it'd take a huge spam campaign to overpower it.
Meanwhile thousands of users are receiving links to malware and phishing attacks while human raters are twiddling their thumbs.
The parent is correct, these systems should be automated. Automated systems can respond faster and more accurately than humans. Humans should only be involved to improve the system and correct any mistakes it makes after the fact.
Meanwhile thousands of users that depend on their links working see them still working.
If you want to prevent phishing links then you can't allow links in the first place. If you decide to allow links, then you need to add some stability to the system. Circumstantial reactions should not be fast. Banning a whole domain based on short term percentage is circumstantial.
Social media platforms shouldn't play internet police in the first place. We need to preserve our ability to communicate via impartial carries. I don't want the mailman to decide what letters I can send. I do not want the telephone company to decide what calls I can make. I don't want online replacements of them to make any such decisions either.
The problem isn't links to scam sites posted on X/whatever, the problem is the scam. That is something for the actual police, government agencies and ultimately legislators to handle. Go after the actual scammers. Go after countries harboring them. Don't sacrifice our freedoms for an "easy" out instead of doing real law enforcement.
You're framing this as an XY problem, but it isn't really an XY problem.
In XY problems the problem solver has the ability to solve the root problem instead of the presented one.
However, X has zero ability to go into the jungles of Myanmar and fight off the armed militias which are paid to protect the compounds of literally thousands of scammers.
What you are arguing for is corporate vigilantism. Not having the ability or authority to do things properly does not entitle you do enact your own vision of justice, and it definitely does not protect you from criticism when your "solution" ends up having negative consequences for innocent people.
The trick I imagine is to categorize users by how established they are then block links by domain and user level. Sometimes spammers will mature accounts first but it is considerably more work. Creating a lot of fresh accounts is much easier.
> This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.
And rightfully so. Despite being discussed a lot here, Signal is not very popular or well-known. Even TFA felt the need to start by explaining what Signal is. TFA then adds:
“This request looks like it might be automated” reads another prompt. “To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now. Please try again later.”
And if signal.me is being used for automated spam, automated attacks require automated solutions.
> The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
That would indeed be concerning. (And maybe illegal?) But is it anything more than an unfounded accusation?
The URL hash (the part after #) is often not considered by automated systems to be a part of URL that's meaningful, because hash is normally only used for addressing parts of the website that was loaded based on the previous part of the URL. If a particular Signal.me link was flagged for whatever legitimate reason (contained malware or illegal content) it's entirely reasonable that an automated system would strip the hash and block the whole domain (because the path part in this URL is just "/" and nothing else).
It'll be interesting to see whether they address and reverse it. If not, then we can be fairly sure this was intentional.
If you can post links in the form of signal.me/asdf then yes, this reinforces my point that they've probably automatically flagged the top-level domain because of how these /#me links are constructed by Signal.
"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a shorthand statement that comes out of the study of complex, human-involved, systems that lack unitary design, often having many actors having a hand in creating over time, and mostly is a statement about the lack of analytical utility of any other concept of the purpose of a system, and it is about analyzing the operation of those systems over a window of time. A longer phrase from the person who coined it on the same topic and explaining it is, “There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”
> Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
It's more like claiming that there is no meaningful difference to any outside observer between a bug that is not eradicated over an extended time window and an intentional feature.
I disagree, because it's the opposite: the purpose of a system only aligns with what we want the purpose to be if the system works perfectly. Whatever we consider the purpose to be doesn't matter for the effect the system has on the world, because if we choose to keep the system alive as-is, it will keep doing the thing that we apparently don't want it to be doing. It's the same for a program - if you choose not to fix a bug, that bug is part of the functionality. It doesn't really matter to the user whether it's supposed to work differently, unless you actually fix the bug.
I do agree with you in cases where the system is being continually refined, but I don't think the quote talks about changing systems, only about constant ones.
when a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view
> But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
In the sense it is intended, it is entirely correct. It is not a claim about what the intent of the people involved in the system is, it is a recognition that (1) intent doesn't really aggregate, and, more importantly, even if it did (2) intent that consistently fails, because of the nature of the system, to materialize into function doesn't matter.
It's an elegant idea in it's simplicity, but there's zero reason to think this heuristic is more valid than any other, and in my personal experience this line of thinking is usually wrong.
People often can't see past their own hostility when figuring out what a system 'does'. And now they have have a clever sounding way to pretend that they're describing a system with detached reason, not just describing their attitude towards the system.
It's like a art review where a writer - completely unaware of what they're doing - talks only about the work, but says nothing about the work and opens a window into their soul. A lot of people don't even recognize when it happens in that context. It's even easier for a speaker to deceive a listener (and themselves) in the context of speaking on systems. Systems thinking is hard and almost everyone is terrible at it.
Your metaphor is not clear to me, but you seem to be asserting more of an empirical problem with people, not saying anything about the heuristic itself. It does not speak to how we know a system does what it does, or that we can even know I guess, so even if you have some kind of point here I don't see how it applies in this case.
"If we know what a system does, we know that it is its purpose": is that ok?
Is the useSkin parameter something you manually added? I am not logged in and when I navigate to another page the parameter (and with it the skin preference) disappears.
Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).
I just discovered that feature due to your mistake, so thank you!
For similarly newly enlightened people it's a feature of MediaWiki (which Wikipedia runs on) and there are five (plus two) themes selectable with ?useskin= values:
IIRC that requires having an account and being logged in, or maybe it just required a persistent cookie to remember the preference. Either way, my browser still aggressively clears cookies on exit so this solution was more permanent for me than the official solution.
It's the opposite; it's a heuristic for directing thought down useful pathways and escaping a rabbit hole of speculation on matters which makes no material difference, and which largely (for the kinds of systems it concerns) also involve pointless metaphysical wankery on the order of debating how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, because the kinds of systems it concerns (which are almost all real systems that matter) aren't guided by unitary intent, and pretty much any intent you want to appply probably can be found in some subset (and, conversely, also opposed by some subset) of the contributors to the system.
A more precise statement might be "'Purpose' is not a meaningful attribute of complex systems," but POSIWID works.
It's a good "razor" to strip away rationalizations and sophistry used to defend perverse or failed systems and ideas.
E.g. the "purpose" of fascism is nihilistic violence and the "purpose" of communism is rule by a bureaucratic elite that is somehow more equal than everyone else. All the sophistry is bullshit.
The thing is that, in a platform based on link sharing, it should be known which domains point to URL shorteners.
Even if you automate their handling, the algorithm should know that, if it bumps into a say signal.me, bit.ly or goo.gl URL, it should first do a GET and then apply the algorithm to whatever is provided in the Location header.
Not doing this for a widely used URL shortener like signal.me is just a show of technical incompetence.
As you point out, "honest mistake" can be used by sophisticated intentional aggressors to get away with their attacks.
For a long time, the advice was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." but aggressors evolve to fit their surroundings. When the population largely follows this rule, it becomes a competitive advantage to fake incompetence.
Perhaps both malice and incompetence should be treated the same, especially regarding punishment, until proven otherwise. After all, robust systems are designed in such a way that a single mistake can't cause harm. If somebody fails to design a system so that multiple mistakes (how many depends on cost and severity) have to stack up, then he should be held responsible.
This ties in with something that took me far too long to recognize: Trust has two pillars.
One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents.
Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the road and driving within the speed requirements. If only the founding fathers had recognized the need to have more information included in ballots so that negative campaigning wasn't as effective if not more effective than positive.
If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values, the smartest, most constructive candidates would have a better chance. Each district would have its own blend of 3-4 viable parties, and the nation would be all the healthier for it. (Side note: Yes, this is still one person one vote--you could imagine voting with a single checkbox for a single permutation of all possible assignments of the scores, as an intermediate form.)
Back to your point, though: Yes, incompetence and malice can have the same effect in the short term. The long term is what determines the difference, both in effect and our responses to it.
I have realized something quite related in my growing years of experience both interviewing and observing contributors to a technical/engineering organization
Q: Given two engineers, one incompetent and one malicious, how can you tell the difference between the incompetent engineer and the malicious engineer?
> One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
That's a good point.
> If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values
Are you describing range/score voting?
I don't think avoiding duplicated values is necessary but it's pretty well known that score voting is the best system: https://rangevoting.org/
See the diagram at the bottom of the page describing voter regrets. Everybody at least somewhat interested in voting systems would prefer this, especially over plurality/FPTP which is the stupidest system possible. But a lot of people are clueless or willingly supporting a broken system.
Sidenote: the fact you need to explain that expressing more information in one vote is still one vote shows how clueless people are. Obviously every vote has the same power to influence the result but some people will try to wear you down through misunderstood technicalities.
Funny, but no. The broader principle is that even if something could conceivably be "negligence", you eventually have to treat it as malice. The possibility of hiding malice in the guise of negligence is only one of the reasons that's true.
I will go with "legitimate f-up" too. Elon Musk has been pretty vocal about Signal in the past, mostly positively. If blocking Signal URLs has been intentional, he would have probably have mentioned it somewhere.
Shortened URLs are dubious by default. It is also possible that there really is a lot of spam/scam happening on Signal right now with signal.me URLs as an entry point. I mean, why not? Every messaging platform can be used for that, even more so if end-to-end encrypted as it makes spam detection harder. In fact, one of the first messages I received on Signal was an obvious scam from a user pretending to be Amazon.
Are links to mastodon still banned on twitter? Because that was a thing after Musk took over. So much for being a free speech absolutist.
You're making the mistake of taking a (communal + antagonistic) narcissist at face value. They are known to lie to suit their current goals and when those goals are achieved, they will lie to suit their new goals, whether the lies are congruent with each other or not.
This is a guy who:
- publicly called a rescuer "pedo guy", then falsely claimed it's a common insult from South Africa
- in a private email called him a "child rapist" and made up allegations of a 12 yo bride
- hired a PI to dig up dirt on him (which failed to corroborate any of his allegations)
Western society really needs to destigmatize discussion of mental illness, including diagnosing public personalities based on their behavior. Give them an opportunity to defend themselves, sure, but at some point, they become a danger to others (usually not to themselves) and should be required to seek treatment or be committed to a mental institution.
> A jury quite quickly ruled against defamation here
Yes, and? That changes nothing about Musk attacking a guy as "pedo" because he wanted to insert himself into the spotlight and went threw a fit when he was told off for that.
Also, as if professionals aren't saying the same thing, or as if he'd voluntarily undergo clinical diagnosis?
I find it worrying how often people try to pass off a court's decision as truth or in this case as proof of something entirely different.
I looked at the guy's link and it actually supports my view even more.
> A JDart, lawyer Alex Spiro explained, meant: a Joke that was badly received, therefore Deleted, with an Apology and then Responsive Tweets to move on from the matter. JDart.
> "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."
> "Stop defending child rapists."
Given he made up a 12 yo bride and hired a PI to dig up dirt, this also proves Musk lied to the court. I don't know why the jury gave the wrong verdict but I knew only about the original "pedo guy" tweet and the PI this morning and the deeper I dig, even into material posted by his supporters, the worse it gets.
If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition, and you are actually playing his game here. A "legitimate f-up" is the worst for a narcissist, as it would show he is nothing special, and incompetent.
That's why I go with the "legitimate f-up" explanation. There is no clear intent, it lacks flair, and it can just cause a mild controversy at best. Though I am still pissed that it turned out to be something about Elon Musk again and not Twitter/X. As much as a "nanomanager" he likes to call himself, he is not the only one working at Twitter/X, there are still people with some responsibilities there. It is not all a masterplan by Elon Musk.
As for banning links to other platforms like Mastodon, it was mentioned explicitly on the Twitter Support account that "we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter", followed by a list of platforms that included Mastodon, but not Signal. I don't think it is still the case, and I am not aware of anything similar regarding a ban on signal.me links.
> If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
That's like saying a liar will always lie. Real people do not have min-maxed traits, he has obviously non-zero self-control. If it's an action that benefits him in some way but knows will alienate his followers, he is perfectly capable of doing it in secret.
> A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition
Definition of which subtype?
---
I never said it was a masterplan or his personal decision. Culture comes from the top (only people with very strong principles will resist and many most likely quit when he took over). All he needed to do is make visible his displeasure at (free) competitors in front of the right people.
He AFAIK also tweeted about not allowing free promotion for mastodon. Which again speaks volumes about how much he values freedom of speech. If a free (as in speech and beer) and decentralized platform can be a credible competitor to twitter - serve the same amount of users but be self repairing and resistant to takeovers - than that would be a win, even if his company would no longer be needed.
---
If you take anything from this discussion, please at least look up different types of narcissism. Far too often people reduce them all to the "standard" overt archetype (usually even an overdone caricature of it) and it's hard for victims of other subtypes to convince others what they are dealing with.
The reason absolutely matter : a mistake can happen to anyone, and be fixed within a short time, while censorship is deliberate and will probably not be fixed
If a 'mistake' keeps happening for two years, then it is realistically not a mistake. This is not Musk!twitter's first 'mistake' of this nature, by a long shot.
Ok, I see what you mean and I agree with you, it would not be a first time a company pulls this kind of trick.
But in this case it's not that the reason does not matter, it's that the reason is censorship/bad faith competition, and is obfuscated behind a mistake
Legit question: How would you test something like this? It's not like you can have automated tests with million of random links. And these URLs are certainly not hardcoded.
Compare the results between the current code and the proposed version. Analyze what the new version blocks that the current one doesn't and vice versa. Have logging that shows which factor(s) were applied in the actions taken. Determine if the outcomes are in line with the intended goals.
This can be accomplished in a few ways. You could accumulate real URLs and build a test set that you can run in non-prod environments prior to deploy. You could also deploy the new version alongside the current version, both watching the live data, with the current version retaining enforcement power while the new version is in log-only mode.
In the case of automated systems that might create new actions in response to live traffic, anomaly detection can be used to look for significant changes in classification and/or rate of actions, spikes in actions against specific domains, etc.
Unit tests with a text fixture of every URL format you can think of, and every time one breaks your e.g. parser, you add it and some permutations to the list. Eventually, you have a vast file with tons of nasty edge cases to ensure that your e.g. parser is robust and reliable.
You cannot. Because these aren't simple "URL parsers" or such. They commonly use heuristics, bayesian logic and complex statistics (the word AI has become so conflated with LLMs and GPTs, and infected with politics, but it is a form of AI).
The output isn't reproducible, not even predictable. The whole idea of a system like this is that it adapts. If only by simply collecting more data to "do the stats on".
What systems like this need, is different layers towards which stuff is leveraged. This is how your spam folder in your mailbox works too (to some extend). Basically: if it's clearly spam, just /dev/null it, if its clearly not spam let it pass. Everything inbetween will be re-rated by another layer which then does the same etc. One or more of these layers can and should be humans. The actions of these humans then train the system. If gmail isn't certain something is spam, it'll deliver it to your spam folder, or maybe even to your inbox. For you to review and mark as ham or spam manually.
Knowing that Elon fired a lot of teams of humans that fact-checked, researched fake news, a lot of it manually, I'd not be surprised if exactly the "human layers" were simply removed. Leaving a system that's not tuned nor checked while running.
(Source: I've built spam/malware/bot etc detection for comment sections of large sites)
> It's not like you can have automated tests with million of random links.
Why not? They were already filtering millions of random links with the existing system. Saving some of those results to run regressions against before making changes to critical infrastructure should be trivial.
Same as every social platform, the network effect. The actual functionality really is secondary to the usage and culture of these. Very much affecting it, yes, but still secondary at the same time. Same with multiplayer games, hangout spots or third places, and the list goes on.
There are many circles where xitter is a default platform. For example, many anime-style nsfw artists publish there as a primary outlet, and many companies publish their most instant news there (like a service outage, change in the opening hours, things like that). That and many other such things are plenty to keep people there.
Stopped using X when Elon took over, and then finally deleted my account (which I had had for many years, was an early adopter of Twitter before it was highly popular) when Elon went full MAGA-nazi. No regrets.
Some people are smart, insightful, and for some reason insist on only posting on X. I don't see the harm in continuing to follow them, even if I do wish they'd choose a different site to post on
(I expect a lot of people also have less techie friends and family that only post on a single social media site - I've had accounts all over the place trying to keep track of some old friends)
I guess those smart, insightful people are staying on X because
- their targeting audience are on X
- they are rich and do not really care what the platform owner does
- they will be very happy to join the owner when offered such opportunities
For people who are the target audience of those people, I guess
- they voted for this, and they are happily watching the federal gov falling apart
- they convinced themselves that X is the place to grow / learn from smart and insightful people (I don't think one has to be on it for more than 10 min a day to grow & learn, unless one is a crypto trader)
- they convinced themselves that it is really nothing political about using X
Are you actually curious, or did you just want an excuse for your pre-scripted soap box rant?
It's a mix of indie artists, old friends, and a few people who still think it's worthwhile to try and do outreach, fight against disinformation, etc.. I'm really not sure why you feel such an urge to insult people you've never met, but it's extremely rude and does nothing productive.
> nothing political about using X
I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?
I dare say your grocery bill is responsible for supporting far more evil than anything I'm engaged in here.
"I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?"
This is basically my interaction from the beginning - a lurker account if you will, with occasional comments. And I rarely used it because I could just add easily pull up a profile and see a user's posts. But then the profile page presentation changed. Often, it seems to force a login, and if it doesn't, it randomizes the post order, so the latest posts are buried, and some random posts from the Twitter era are at the top.
So now we have to be logged in just to lurk. We're not seeing ads or driving conversations, but if I'm following users, I'm a point of incentivizing for them to stay. Small point? For sure, but I'm part of the aggregate. And even without following anyone, we're also a userbase metric for Twitter. We add to the daily active user count, monthly active user count, and now that everyone has to have an account to even view a profile's posts in chronological order, we're all are in that artifically grown general claim of user count.
No, we are not actively shoveling ad revenue at Musk, but our continued presence is definitely useful for him and X when they pitch the platform to advertisers or try to get a better ad rate. More active users > more ad reach, even if we'll never actually see the ad > more money for X > more money for Elon.
I haven't deleted that X account, but i don't visit on my own or log in anymore. I refuse to give him even the value of my interaction metrics.
It’s propped up by media companies, who have become addicted to the quick quote that a tweet provides. Any topic distilled down into 140 characters is always going to have multiple ways to interpret it, thus feeding the click bait pipeline with sufficient reactionary data.
It is a monument in the race to the bottom of “digestible/summarized content”.
I use it because it's one of a few platforms that's not censored to hell. Sure, it results in some unpleasant crap sometimes, but generally the feed is good.
its the only social media platform that isn't image and video heavy, can consistently have non-bot and non-fake and non-clickbait material of substance (if you curate who you you follow well), provides awesome filtering options out of the box for stuff like keywords (i literally had to make a browser extension to filter reddit crap out better), and has a lot of interesting people posting entertaining non-image stuff
caveat: i completely stay off anything political, i filter the absolute hell out of anything political, i block people constantly
i don't care that elon owns it because i don't buy into the outrageous hyperbole of him literally being the next hitler. i think elon is a deeply problematic person not especially more so than a million other business leaders and billionaires, his bullshit is just a lot more visible, and he accomplishes a lot of cool shit despite the bullshit.
not interested in debating people wanting to scream about elon and wont respond to comments about him, im just offering my unfiltered opinion about why I use X
> i think elon is a deeply problematic person not especially more so than a million other business leaders and billionaires, his bullshit is just a lot more visible
I don't disagree with you. But the big problem -- and the reason why people like me are so upset -- is that Elon is now in a much more powerful position than any of those other business leaders, a position in which he is directly impacting the lives of Americans whether they use his products or not. That's quite different than Bezos, Zuck, and all the rest. If he had stayed out of politics I wouldn't have much issue (I can choose not to use X, drive a Tesla, etc.)
i dont want to tie identities, basically just go follow actual researchers at frontier AI labs and close to nothing else and it'll be a close approximation
Are you seriously asking that question? If so, I suggest looking at the nov election results. The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election).
It's not just about Trump though. I jumped ship the second Musk pushed the change to increase the weight of tweets made by a paying account. Also the first thing he did when he took over was cut the entire a11y team. Then he login-walled Twitter and broke the API. Reddit communities went crazy when the Reddit team paywalled their own API.
There's an incredibly long list of reasons to ditch x beyond musk's political activity
No, I’m suggesting the political supporters of Trump/Elon are the reason people use X.
If you are one of them or want to see the mainstream US right-wing zeitgeist, X is where it’s at. That alone is a massive reason for people to keep the app and an account.
Otherwise I agree, all of its utility as a general platform is gone otherwise.
quite frankly, your argument is dishonest, whether intentionally or not. I do not trust anyone repeating online, and no one else should. Especially since its repeated verbatim every time it comes up, its clear that this is "the play" and propaganda.
> I suggest looking at the nov election results.
What should we be looking at exactly? How the curiously 100% flipped swing states voted? I agree, theres much to look at there.
> The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election
That is an outright lie.
No one knew Musk would be running amok dismantling government institutions like a rabid dog, while side stepping all government processes. Project 2025 had something like a 6% approval rating. What is being "implemented" right now is Project 2025.
The US is in a constitutional crisis, and the saving money is a farce to permanently disable the US as a functioning body.
> No one knew Musk would be running amok dismantling government institutions like a rabid dog
Trump approval ratings are at a high. His supporters are clearly happy with what’s going on.
The question was quite simple, it was about why anyone would use X.
There are at least 60 million people that are happy with what is going on and like to be on X, which is an echo chamber of what they like.
Nothing about what I said is dishonest. This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for. Approval ratings don’t lie.
I don’t like what’s going on either, but this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
This is all ignoring that we live in a world almost completely dominated by disinformation.
The media have clearly aligned themselves to not report on whats actually happening. Right wing supporters get a carefully curated "view" of whats going on. Left wing media pushes outrage over ever minuscule detail while purposefully obfuscating whats really going on.
> This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for.
Trump supporters or republicans? Trump supporters at this point are rabid lunatics who post nothing but "librul tears" memes on facebook. They have no connection to reality. Republicans are trapped in an algorithmic cage, where everything might not be ideal, but gosh darn it, its for the good of the country!
> If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
I dont know how a rational, technologically inclined, person can scroll through X and not see that its 60% bots and propaganda. X is not reality, it is Elon's personal propaganda machine.
> this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
What is the political reality of the US right now? You're conflating the peoples' response to the information they're getting to the actual reality: The US government is being destroyed by a hostile group of actors, with most likely criminal motives.
> What is the political reality of the US right now? You're conflating the peoples' response to the information they're getting to the actual reality: The US government is being destroyed by a hostile group of actors, with most likely criminal motives.
You’re still not understanding what I’m saying. You can hand-wring about “the destruction of the government”. That part is fine because it’s complaints about actions by DOGE.
What isn’t fine is to pretend that nobody supports this. “All the republicans I know have regret, etc” is all bullshit. Not just Trump supporters, everyone who voted for him.
Trump approval ratings are at a high, they love the destruction.
That is the reality in the US, the right loathes the government, including “the moderate republicans” who voted for them. Like all Trump topics they don’t say it out loud, but the polls certainly indicate they are still on the MAGA train.
X gives you an unfiltered view of that side of the country. Take it or leave it.
You think the US is bankrupting you by stealing your money? Specifically: USAID, FAA, Government Watchdog agencies, and whatever other group that has been dismantled by now? Those are the high priority agencies stealing our hard earned money?
Not the guys who all of a sudden have a 100 billion dollars since 2010?
Still a better solution than to keep voting for parties that actively work against their constituents' interests. Unless those parties themselves change, the only alternative is violent revolution and and that is going to be a lot messier than a shitted bed.
the people who ensure government is broken and stealing from you are now in charge. they recently requested $4.3 trillion in deficit spending for tax cuts and the dissolution of medicaid.
I don’t think this is true. The world has plenty of anti-American sentiment, most of it well-deserved. What is unique about the phenomenon you describe is that Americans are extraordinarily misinformed and misguided about their own government and everything it does for them. This makes them particularly cynical.
This is hardly bizzare but how governments everywhere work. People in power are not benevolent out of the goodness of their hearts but because the people from whom they derive their power - the population in a democratic state - continuously fight against overreach of their powers.
And it's not like this is a one-sided conflicts. Governments are actively working to suppress their citizens from standing up to them - by restricting free speech that would allow those citizens to organize, by trying to shape the thoughts of their citizens through various forms of propaganda and ultimately by doing everything they can to retain the state's monopoly on violence.
The thing is, this kind of anarcho-libertarianism is barely recognizable in Europe, or belongs to fringe left movements. In the US, it's much more right-coded and also tied to nationalism, while not being anti-military or anti-police.
"Defund the Federal government" is right-coded; "defund the police" is left-coded. No analysis connects the two.
> retain the state's monopoly on violence
Places like Italy know that when the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it gets messy ("years of lead").
I saw your comment and saw it getting downvoted or flagged but it is useful to have a discussion so that others similarly inclined can potentially learn something that they obviously don't already understand. I reproduce that comment here in case it somehow disappears.
>i voted for that, i voted for the destruction of the federal government because it's bankrupting us by stealing our money
If you're concerned about the federal government bankrupting "us" by stealing our money then ask yourself why one of the first things that happened was the firing of OIG personnel. The Inspectors General and their OIG employees are the federal employees with the mandate to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in every federal program regardless of size. They have the power to audit any recipient of taxpayer monies and to work with US Attorney federal prosecutors to prosecute those who steal, waste, or otherwise violate plan guidelines in disbursing money. US Attorneys will not even take a case to trial unless agency auditors can document in detail that a crime has occurred and that crime fits within prosecutorial guidelines and a conviction is nearly guaranteed. To take a case that has any weaknesses risks wasting public money prosecuting a case you might not win. The whole point is to make sure you have the evidence that forces the defendant to either make restitution or to spend some time in a federal lock-up.
It's suspicious to me that the first thing they do is fire all the people who not only can watch, but who have the Congressional mandate to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse of federal programs that disburse money to individuals, small businesses, cities and other non-federal entities, non-profits, and corporations.
Though I am not a doctor, I do think that you should seriously work on your mental health. Start by changing your diet to include less kool-aid as the sugar high you're on can cause metabolic changes that lead to seriously bad health outcomes.
My spouse has spent a career in a federal department working to insure that the money Congress allocates to specific programs ends up being spent for purposes that are allowed under the guidelines of those federal programs. If you think the federal government is the one stealing your money you are sadly mistaken.
Federal programs are full of fraud but the fraud occurs at the recipient end, not within the department.
If you or anyone else are so concerned about where your tax money goes then the last agency entity that you would eliminate would be the one charged with insuring that all the monies in all the programs administered by the agency are disbursed lawfully according to plan guidelines which were approved by Congress. These people, as part of their job, have to read and internalize all the nuances, conflicts with existing programs, and contradictions in all the programs that they serve as watchdog over and it is their skills that allow federal prosecutors to take fraud cases to trial and to convict those who have abused federal programs for personal gain.
You voted for someone who has a documented history of fraudulent use of federal money who made it a point in both of his administrations to remove the specific persons and agencies that would guarantee oversight so that they can do anything without worrying about accountability. Internalize that.
> The Inspectors General and their OIG employees are the federal employees with the mandate to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in every federal program regardless of size.
There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru. Do you think the OIG was doing a good job?
And please don't link to X. I don't have an account so I cannot read X threads, which is very surprising because the owner said he really wanted to make it so logged-out users could read X easily, but then changed his mind because he wanted to make more money. Sounds like a really untrustworthy person to me!
I'm gonna break this down into pieces that are easier for you to swallow.
>There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security...
Your powers of reasoning are taking a siesta if you believe this. It begs the question of how many people not only in America, but globally, are in the age group 150-159 years old? You claim that there are more than one million in the US alone.
I have worked with lots of demographic data and I have seen zero evidence that there are any people with a clinically detectable pulse on planet earth in that age group. How did you arrive at such an unreasonable number that is entirely unsupported by any demographic evidence available publicly?
The answer of course is that you musk've listened to or read about a post your newest right-wing jesus made on his misinformation network or at a white house back-patting session and, lacking any deductive reasoning skills of your own to help parse the post you just took it to be true since it was easier than thinking rationally about a collection of words. Minimum energy expended.
Though I have seen posts on HN addressing age issues of Social Security recipients, I haven't been following this part of the dysfunction very closely so I had to do some digging to try to understand where the idea that anyone might be that old came from.
It appears that musk posted a table of ages of recipients in the SS database where the Death field was set to FALSE implying that they might be alive and receiving benefits. He had some white house appearance where he stated that people over the age of 150 were receiving benefits.
Since all that happened the issue has been debated rigorously. It is likely not smart to conclude that anyone over the age of 150 is receiving SS benefits, anywhere. Instead it turns out that this is a known issue, detected in audits back in 2023 which were designed to detect and eliminate fraud in the benefits payment system at the SSA. The OIG auditor at the time, appointed by Trump during his first administration, Gail Ennis, took on the task of identifying and quantifying the problem of SS payees whose personal information in the SS databases implied an age greater than the maximum that could reasonably be expected. That audit report is here [0].
On completion of the audit, it was concluded that correcting the database would waste money and effort so instead, new methods were introduced to help eliminate payments to non-qualifying recipients through a couple of initiatives called "Do Not Pay" and "Earnings After Death".
Basically your DoGE people didn't discover anything that the SS administration had not already discovered but it does serve as rage bait for those like yourself who refuse to do any independent research to help themselves understand whether something they heard is true or false.
There's a bit of additional info that may also help you. The acting Inspector General of the SSA at the time, Gail Ennis, later retired from her position because of charges that she obstructed a DoJ investigation into her own ethics violations. [1] Her retirement letter if I read it right is right here. [2] She toots her own horn quite a bit and in reading that, which I assume you will since it is only a few short paragraphs with no disturbing content, she provides a short summary to the reader about how an OIG office operates. As a citizen it is useful to know that these people are on our side. She served under two presidents, being appointed by Trump and retained by Biden. That illustrates a commitment by both administrations to the work that the SSA-OIG was doing during her term.
Anyway, let's move on now while I still have you in the audience.
>...and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru.
I work on cars a lot so I had to put this into context. Seeing how you are feeding on the rage bait I decided that these comics were not trade school training for automotive techs in Peru. Lucky guess for me I'm sure.
This whole blurb of misinformation can evidently be attributed, of course, to the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in an interview after USAID was shuttered, [3] evidently got some facts crossed in her memory banks causing some people in the audience to see red again and shout at the sky about government waste in USAID programs. According to reports by FactCheck.org [4] the claims that she made about USAID's funding of several things were false in 3 of 4 claims.
Only one of the projects was funded by USAID, the others were funded by the US Dept of State, including the comic book.
If you dig into that looking for facts you will discover that not only did the comic book in question not have a trans character but it won an award in Peru. The comic book designer ultimately produced three comics for distribution in Peru, none of which used transsexual characters though the second one did have a gay guy as the main character hero at the request of the State Department. The total cost of this comic edition is documented here [5] but in case you are already burnt out with this wall of words, it cost $32000, and was paid to the Florida artist who did the work of producing the three comics for the DoS.
At this point I think it is obvious to anyone still reading where each of our individual biases lay.
As an arm of government charged by Congress with detecting fraud, waste, and abuse of federal money disbursements through any agency that dispenses money I think that OIGs are a vital component for accountability in federal programs. They have the responsibility and the ability to investigate anyone in their department at any level who receives federal money for any purpose. That includes the department heads and all staff under them, not just members of the general public, etc.
You will never know of some of the things that OIG auditors uncover that are never prosecuted though evidence to convict is there. In many cases, the subject being investigated has deep connections that shield them from accountability. In other cases the recoverable amount of fraud and waste does not meet a threshold for prosecution and the result is that the person or group committing the fraud loses their position and in the future is barred from any positions that would allow them access to federal funds.
The OIG and all the audit staff are frequently working simultaneously on multiple audits within their assigned regions. Each person involved must learn and know all of the program guidelines and in some cases the programs being audited have been operating for more than a decade and the program has received money in several budget phases with each infusion potentially having a different set of guidelines based on how and what Congress decided to allocate.
All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas. You're hungry for something delicious but will take whatever the other little fish around you leave. On the surface of this Sea of Misinformation we find fishermen, trolling for hungry fishies, their hooks securing morsels of rage bait knowing this is a preferred delicacy guaranteed to send their gullible quarry into a feeding frenzy.
It may be too late for you to escape the baited hook as it appears that the angler has already set the hook and landed you.
I think the part that tells the real story here that I forgot to add in that wall of text most won't read is that each of those links came up in the first 5 results for the simple searches I ran on DDG.
If any effort had been expended at all in attempting to understand whether anything in musk's post was accurate then they would easily have been able to find several high quality breakdowns from non-partisan sites.
Instead they made a choice to echo something, incorrectly too, that they thought they read somewhere. Didn't even provide a link.
I think if HN was to modify any rules that would improve the quality of discussions on contentious subjects that frequently devolve into unproductive political arguments then the posting rule could be changed to require posting of links to arguments that you are trying to make so that everyone can see the supporting data behind your beliefs and judge for themselves whether they should change their own beliefs or poke fun at the poster for believing nonsense.
Back when reddit was still a one-pager they tried to maintain a standard of backing up claims with data to support the claims. Over the years it has devolved into the site we have today where most posters do as this guy did and post simple one line replies to everything.
It's a hit and run way of trying to bring someone around to your way of thinking without giving them a reason to do so.
> On completion of the audit, it was concluded that correcting the database would waste money and effort so instead, new methods were introduced to help eliminate payments to non-qualifying recipients through a couple of initiatives called "Do Not Pay" and "Earnings After Death".
Thanks, that's a useful addition to the conversation.
> All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas.
If we're doing insults, which seems to be the new law on HN, you seem like a cunt.
>If we're doing insults, which seems to be the new law on HN, you seem like a cunt.
That's pretty funny. I can assure you that as someone who spent 40 years working in the oil and gas industry your insult looks really green to me.
Thanks for jumping on the recycling initiative.
In our work profanity is a tool wielded by everyone for any situation whether it seems appropriate or not. We invent new insults and epithets instead of recycling all these ancients. We're at the forefront of insult technology every time a new worm shows up at the wellsite or a situation goes from rosy to catastrophic.
It makes the day go by, and so here I just made it through another 15 minutes with a chuckle.
Thanks.
EDIT: The more I think about it, reminiscing about all those glory days out in the oil patch, with that simple insult you may have just qualified as a potential friend. You're gonna need to up your game a bit though since most of my friends have multi-syllable nicknames for me, and I for them.
If you're in Texas maybe we could go get some ribs somewhere sometime and talk about things unrelated to right-wing jesus and his disciples.
In the meantime, since I know you must be bored from reading all this, here's a comic for you to enjoy. [0]
You must be a redditor with this abbreviated, low quality reply. You didn't even include the part of the post that you consider to be the advice that I should take.
I hope you're not a life coach because there is clear evidence here of a deficiency in your skillsets.
Signal.me links are just a way to easily send either a phone number or user name to someone else. No cryptographic identity. No protection of the phone number or user name. So to get around the ban a Signal user could simply send their phone number or user name over Twitter/X.
It seems that the encrypted username form does provide some identity protection in that it can be cancelled, but for as long as it is active it appears that someone can just ask the Signal server what the associated user name is.
The people involved probably should not be using Twitter/X for this sort of thing in the first place. Mastodon comes to mind as an alternative, but really, anything else.
OK, I couldn't find any specific documentation just floating around about group links. It appears that the base64 value is specific to the group and is only exposed through the link. I didn't see any way to munge the "signal.me" domain and fix it again. So for groups Twitter/X seems to have won.
Phone numbers and usernames are sent in the clear in signal.me links. So in this particular case, they can't be hidden. Perhaps it is not a good idea to post such links on a hostile system.
That's interesting, given that as an official government department they're subject to FOIA requests and as such have an obligation to persist their documentation.
The same one that declared that presidents are above the law and that the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment is basically meaningless? The one that slow-walked a bunch of cases related to presidential crimes?
I don't think it's actually hopeless - they have constrained him at times. But I would also avoid getting my hopes up.
Presidential Records Act is quite strong about capturing all records & releasing them. But after a 5 year delay.
During Trump 1 there was quite a habit of ripping up papers by the president. So there were some dudes hired to go take the ripped up papers and tape them back together. Really looking forwards to seeing some of those next year! https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers-filin...
I suspect that what's happening is flagrantly incredibly evil & immoral, is a heinous crime against democracy. The people need to be ae to see what governments do and are, need to have some chance to learn and see what their governments really do. My dear is that the Presidential Records Act is being thrown out the window by these folks, that we will have nearly no record of so much of what this administration & it's "advisors" (Musk) do.
The National Archives and Records Administration doesn't currently have an Archivist. Trump fired the previous head a week and a half ago. The deputy head then retired over the weekend. It is currently sort of headed by Marco Rubio. He put Jim Byron, the President & CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation in charge of it part time.
Trump seems to have it out for NARA since they originally reported the missing classified documents that Trump refused to return. I would not expect records to be kept in the manner they have been in previous administrations.
In that case a corrupt politician with lots to hide was able to keep their crimes hidden using the secret service (who defended her house). I do not think that standard should be applied to anyone, ever.
Pretty sure it's because literally all the signal.me links are the same when you remove the part after the #.
When you perform an HTTP(S) request you never provide the part after the # in the request URL, it's only interpreted by the web browser itself. It's likely that their antispam thing does the same and ignores the hash altogether.
On a similar note: the Swedish armed forces just came out and recommended that people working for the military should use signal for their calls and messages for things that are not classified in any of the higher classifications.
I was curious because over here, the ownership of signal.me is pretty much obscured (behind Cloudflare and WHOIS privacy). Doing this for infrastructure domains is not a good idea because it encourages persistent overblocking because it makes manual review more difficult. At least there is official documentation mentioning signal.me: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320291-Fi...
(The page is in the Bing index, but it seems "signal.me" is treated as a stop word by the search engine.)
Tell me more. I live here and have never encountered a situation where I was not allowed to express my opinions in a systematic way. So I don't know but would be delighted to
Are we counting the UK? Because that one's really easy to find examples of - just google "UK arresting protestors", maybe throw in "Queen" or "Royal". They really, really don't like the anti-monarchists.
You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.
There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..
The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.
This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.
It might simply mean your opinions fall in the narrow band of views that are permitted to be expressed. It proves nothing about freedom of speech in general.
Even in North Korea, people are allowed to freely express their love for their Dear Leader. Those who express a different view are swiftly disposed of. If you love Dear Leader you could live your entire life believing that you and everyone else has free speech, simply because you have never encountered evidence to the contrary.
AfD is a Nazi party, and nobody's silencing them, despite overwhelming opposition in all EU countries. If you listen to EU parliament speeches, there's all kinds of radical political views being shared during debates. Vance came to Europe to peddle US culture wars and got laughed out.
Alice Weidel is in almost every talk show I watch, was invited to almost every major debate and everyone is doing a great job of normalizing the AfD. Every time someone from there complains about not being allowed to say what they want it's on a stage with a mic in hand and them being allowed to say whatever they want. So while I don't really agree on the "Nazi" part they're definitely not silenced. And apparently no one in this thread can tell me what freedom I'm missing despite claiming I do. Just give me some statistic or some example of systematic suppression of speech if it's that obvious to anyone but me
The established political parties in Germany are in fact trying to silence the AfD - precisely because they are gaining support amongs the population that is no longer represented by the established parties.
A disillusioned and unrepresentated population being mopped up by a right-wing populist political party in Germany. This is exactly how the Nazi party took power. It's what just happened in America. It pays to know your history.
It feels inappropriate that progressives have decided that it's okay to use Nazi as a generic insult for mainstream right wing parties. It waters down the true horrors of the Nazi party.
Anyway, as to censorship coming from Germany:
"Germany submits the highest number of legal demands for user data to X within the European Union, with ~87% of these requests targeting speech-related offenses. "
It's more complicated than that, in this case. They aren't simply insulting AfD by calling it a Nazi party. There is some truth to it, in that AfD almost certainly has Nazis in it. A prominent AfD member has used the phrase "all for Germany" that was also used by the Nazis. They also openly say that they want to take down holocaust memorials and stop talking about it.
Personally, I think that the full accusation of Nazism should be reserved for when it's really needed. But I assume that Germans know better than I do how to go about keeping Nazis out of their country.
Germany is also the biggest market in the EU. Without actual numbers this proves nothing. And with a platform that primarily relies on speech I struggle to come up with a huge list of non-speech-related offenses that could come up. Also, we're taking about a platform owned by an heavily opinionated US gov official here, come on...
Sure, and Elon Musk couldn't have done a Nazi salute twice, because he photographed himself looking bummed out at Auschwitz. What does it take for you to call spade a spade?
AFAIK they don't terribly mind what Israel is doing in Gaza, and even the ADL has that page about them.
There is a lot more if you are not convinced. At any rate Alice Weidel being lesbian means as much as some of the original Nazi leadership being homosexual, nothing. Homosexuality isn't a taboo anymore, holocaust revisionism is. Those to whom it isn't are anathema to those to whom it is.
That's great and all, but last time I checked I didn't live in a country with a grand leader. Germany's chancellor is looking at loosing an election in less than a week. So I ask again, and I'm actually serious about this question: What opinion am I not allowed to express? (Except insults and denying the death of 6 million Jews)
You never said it explicitly but you are referencing the French Reporters sans frontières (RSF) ranking, which is a European organization which is obviously predisposed to rank European countries highly.
I find their ranking highly suspect because they put the Netherlands at number #4, one of the highest rankings, while in reality the press in the Netherlands is in a dire state: literally all newspapers of record are collectively owned by just two Belgian (not even Dutch) mega-corporations. Is this really one of the most free countries? It's like Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg together owned all newspapers in the US.
And the US is ranked suspiciously low, at #55, below a country like Belize. Belize! Look at what RSF itself writes about Belize:
> With no daily newspapers, the pool of media outlets is small, and of those considered mainstream, some are supportive of political parties, even when privately owned. Independent media are scarce and access to funding is limited. Most of the advertising funds that media publishers rely on come from the government and their distribution are often dependent on the party in power.
Am I supposed to take it seriously that this is better than the US? That Belizeans have access to a more free press than Americans do? It seems more plausible the ranking is bogus.
You picked the wrong country. I'm from the Netherlands and it's not in a dire state.
It has newspapers across the spectrum. Volkskrant and Parool are left-wing, AD is centrist, Telegraaf is center-right. To name a few. This reflects our political system which is a distribution rather than a binary system.
In addition, there's state-owned news that reports very factually, with little to no bias in any direction.
We also have excellent deep journalism, my favorite being Follow The Money:
https://www.ftm.nl/
The Netherlands has no hard-right or alt-right newspapers or TV channels. Not because it's not allowed, we just don't have the equivalent of Fox.
In my view, this is a blessing. It's not because I'm left wing. I'm center-right. Alt-right with their misinformation and alternative facts are an attack on information itself. It's not just "another view", it undermines reality itself.
And for the record, we have no hard-left in mainstream media either. Not because it's not allowed, it just doesn't work over here.
Shoshana Zuboff was so right it is scary. The name ('Surveillance Capitalism') put me on the wrong foot as I already knew about the surveillance part. But what I found most scary was the part where the tech companies turned from surveillance to influence. Once you have these billions of people using only your platform to view the world, it is trivial alter their view of the world. And thereby changing policital currents, policies, opinions.... anything.
It is like the Bible before Martin Luther translated it into German, and all christians just had to accept blindly that whatever the priests said was written in the bible actually was. Most humans now have so little input other than whatever priests they follow we might as well be back in the dark ages.
The dark ages is the plan according to Curtis Yarvin, their “prophet”.
A network of techno-feudal states run by a joint-stock corporation headed by a CEO with absolute power. Like Hunger Games, fancy dress, bad tans, and all.
It’s really lame and shortsighted. Never mind philosophically broken.
In my opinion, Elon Musk initially endorsed Signal because of its strong encryption, security, and commitment to privacy. Now, he's blocking it for those very same reasons—what a blatant double standard!
On a related note, one of the key advantages of the modern internet—and more specifically, social media—is that everything you say publicly is archived. This means that if you ever do a complete 180° on your claims or principles, it can easily come back to haunt you. So, it's always wise to be mindful of what you say and stay true to your values.
He may use Signal, but he does not want people on X to advertise their presence on any competing platforms. It is a childish and protectionist policy, and in no way align with his Free Speech® claims.
It was the same when URLs to Mastodon/Fediverse instances was banned on X, in an attempt to hamper the network effect for those who migrated. Meta does the same with Pixelfed these days, to hamper migration away from Instagram.
Elon and Mark are all for competition and free markets, but as soon as alternatives that can't be bought and controlled pops up, they outright ban any mention of it on their platforms.
Signal links are odd, in that all the identifies are after the #, so to a spam filter this just looks like a single url, https://signal.me , being sent out in mass.
I run a service that does the decryption in the client so it's links look the same to filters. It runs up1, a really old version. The links are all like http://example.com/#longhexhash
On X, only the "Signal.me" links are blocked. Other types of Signal links, such as call links, group invite links, Signal.org links, and link previews, are not blocked on the platform. [From Mistral]
This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.
While you’re correct as to his intentions, it’s still important to point out his hypocrisy as he called himself “a free speech absolutist,” and claimed to want Twitter to be part of that vision. He explicitly called left wing and right wing views as things he wants.
Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.
We really are living in a world where we were always at war with Eurasia. Musk shouted loudly to his followers his views on free speech and why he wanted to buy Twitter. And now, it’s like it never happened. This isn’t like a bias news outlet leaving out certain facts, this is Musk himself saying these things and people going along with it.
I'm not sure you understand free speech. Free speech means he can make public threats to people without repercussions, doxx people when he feels like it, lie, and spread misinformation for personal gain. It means unbanning rule breakers, doxxers and harassers, as long as they're right-wing. Free speech does not extend to anyone who he personally disagrees with or dislikes, who will instead be banned from the platform.
Legal (first amendment) free speech certainly allows him to ban whoever he wants.
However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like.
Except the meal is mostly shit. There's no free speech anywhere on Twitter. It's not even free-as-in-beer speech because you need a paid account for anyone to really see your tweets.
What makes you say that? I've started using X recently and I would argue it's pretty free, you see a lot more range of opinions than on a site like reddit. Aggressively pro-trans posts come across my feed all the time, including some right-wing content
“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.”
Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.
The biggest problem with the term "Free Speech" is that almost everyone makes exceptions for things that they believe should be restricted/censored.
Therefore the only standard should be the legality of that speech in a particular country. In the US those things you put as exemptions are permitted. So pre-musk Twitter wasn't about free-speech as those exemptions are restrictions on speech that are greater than US law restricts (which isn't much tbh).
Generally you have a trade off on any of these platforms between what you can say without breaking terms of service and the popularity of that platform. Generally less popular platforms are less restrictive.
If you don't want your speech restricted, you should probably just go back to hosting your blog and using a mailing list.
I would argue it appeared after the Twitter purchase. Originally Twitter had been dying through excessive bans, now you can find major political influencers on both sides of the spectrum
I don't understand how your comment is relevant. It feels like word salad and does not appear to logically follow the PC. What is "truth to power"? Did those ex-intelligence officers survive the Musk purge? How does this all relate to the events of today?
You're still not making sense. Who is "they" here, USAID? What does your second sentence even mean? How "news organizations [are funded]"? I'm seriously unclear what you are trying to say.
USAID had thousands of premium subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. One such was for 8000 monthly subscriptions. I don't remember the publication with 8000 but the NYT also got money from USAID.
Not sure if that's what we're talking about here. For the record I am against that practice.
Also how liberals were celebrating Elons "genius" just a decade ago will never not be funny to me, they also don't seem to mind Gates at all. I don't think they have much of a problem with oligarchy, they just want a liberal oligarchy instead.
You may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :)
Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.
But this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy".
You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.
Clarification: I am guessing you are using the liberal term from a "classic liberalism" sense (e.g. how it is used in Europe) and not the US version of the term, which generally refers to social liberalism and is often associated with Democrats? That changes some things.
Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.
Have you been on Twitter recently? 50% of it loves Musk, the other 50% openly hate him and abuse him. If what people on here are saying was true, those accounts publicly insulting him would be blocked by now.
Except that... They are? Of course not all of them, but those with enough reach or power to truly harm his reputation - such as journalists investigating him. He's not disappearing "Mark0394893838444" for saying "Musk is a dummy lol" but what does that proves?
Meanwhile Musk has already banned the accounts of journalists for the crime of being too critical of him (on top of frivolous lawsuits clearly aimed at draining their money). The proof is not "how many people he hasn't banned" but "how many he has".
People keep saying this yet there are countless people on X critisizing Musk freely, so it must be fine to criticise Musk on X. I can provide examples and already have done. Can you?
No not in this case. Im using a quote from Musk to defend something someone made up about him. Theres no conflict of truth because theirs was an opinion, mine is a fact.
Stop carrying water for the world’s richest person. Musk has claimed multiple times he’s a free speech absolutist and bought Twitter to make it the free speech platform.
I agree, it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law. But, how you or anyone else can continue to defend Musk when he has made clear multiple times he’s a lying hypocrite is beyond my understanding.
I think its funny how some conservatives used to advocate for common carrier regulation because they didn't have much control over social media platforms, now that they do, they don't care anymore about that.
But liberals do seem to stick to their principles of free market capitalism, "it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law". I see now why you are so ineffective in combating Trump/Musk if the only problem you have with them is their hypocrisy.
Perhaps you need to come to the realization that if you want liberal democracy you really do need to regulate mass communication platforms in a way that doesn't leech peoples brains out of their ears.
For the record, I wouldn't consider myself liberal or conservative using the US definitions. Probably more down the middle. But, I am a never Trump person, but even then I had a 'wait and see' attitude when he was first elected in 2016. Now I've seen, and I don't want any more of what he brings.
I have a lot of problems with both of them beyond hypocrisy, that was simply the big issue in this thread. And I do agree with your point. How can the left stick to some basic principles like following the law and still combat someone like Trump/Musk who ignore it at every turn. I really don't know what the answer is here, and it worries me that people will feel more and more trapped which can lead to violence.
I also think there could be some smart regulation around mass communication, but the problem is we have so few people in government who even understand social media. The average age in the senate is almost 65. The last two POTUSs will leave office in their 80s.
> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform
This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE.
Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action.
(Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.)
Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight? What the fuck is this timeline, is nothing serious anymore?? It's really not so long ago that this would be considered completely bonkers and something you would see on a "banana republic".
> Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight?
Trump team has said that Musk will self-determine conflict of interest when gutting govt. agencies.
It is lost on them that self-determination of conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.
On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose.
The problem with hypocrisy is it's a milquetoast charge. Plenty of people, including very powerful people, are hypocrites and we tolerate them fine. Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.
People know this. This isn't confusing. The hypocracy being pointed out is when Elon Musk says that he is a free speech absolutist[1], yet consistently blocks his critics and competitors.
This is ignoring his very confused notion of what free speech is[2]
> By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
> I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
> If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Not only is this inconsistent with his 'free speech absolutist' views, and inconsistent with Twitter's actions, but it states that he's actually all for the government censoring people. That's not even non-absolutist free speech.
Many have an issue with that stance, including me. The public townsquare has rules about permitted speech, same is true for public plattforms that fulfill that role in the digital realm. Utilities are to be regulated etc. These types of censorship ought to be illegal, and e.g. in the EU this whole thinking of that the owner decides is already not the legal reality anymore.
> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform.
Before the Internet this was not the case. In Marsh v. Alabama, it was ruled (in line with all previous precedent) that privately owned roadways and sidewalks had to allow religious pamphleters, even though it is private property. The court asserted that anywhere that is the forum for public discussion is de facto allowed for political and religious speech regardless of property rights. In the very early days of the Internet things changed, when people tried to assert First Amendment claims on Compuserve chats. Compuserve claimed they weren't the public square, that they were a private service. I think they were correct, in that Compuserve was a very marginal private space and couldn't possibly have been "the public square". But precedent over this tiny service were eventually laundered into much larger and more critical bits of social infrastructure.
In contrast to Compuserve, Twitter and Facebook are definitely the public square. You cannot petition for a redress of grievances or lobby for policy changes without using them. And the political left delights in suppressing their opponents on them but files lawsuits claiming their rights are infringed when they aren't given access to every inch -- such as when they sued Trump for blocking them on his Twitter account:
When Democrats were barred from interacting even with a very small part of a platform, it is a critical First Amendment violation. When conservatives, racists, sexists, or whatever term you want to use are barred, well, it's a private company bigot.
This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict. There must be open, public debate on every major platform, and Americans must be entitled to express their opinions because the only other alternative is violence.
You're spot on (I say this as a lefty). Big social media like fb, instagram, twitter, et al are bigger and more important than any physical public square that ever existed. They are way way WAY past the point where they need to be treated as such and regulated as both a public forum for 1A purposes and as a utility like phone or mail for privacy protection and non-discrimination purposes.
Just don't pretend that trying to censor people on social media is somehow a trait of the Left (in fact, in a thread about the right doing precisely that!)
This is what happens when a society allows narcissists in positions of power. It's a disease and when they refuse to seek treatment, it should make them ineligible for any leadership position, in both the private and public sector.
Nobody (sane) would allow a psychotic individual to run for president or become a CEO. This is the same thing, except they are less of a danger to themselves and more to others.
And of course they're able to craft more convincing lies. Mr. Musk never cared about free speech, only about being worshipped and the best way to achieve that is to say what people want to hear.
You’re reading too much into it. Stop thinking he’s playing 5D chess, he’s not even playing regular checkers. It’s well known he bought Twitter because he thought he would be forced to, he clearly tried to actively back out of the purchase.
Good point, and I strongly hold if you can explain something by incompetence, it's profoundly more likely to be true than cunning.
OTOH, I recall Elon's comment about "vote Dem in House and GOP in Senate, divided is better", something like that. Given his position as Donald's right hand man, that comment takes on new meaning.
The parent post is by and large correct, except for the right-hand man of Donald Trump stuff. Musk was indeed trying to buy influence, which is definitely not a "5D chess move" but simply common sense for extremely wealthy people if they can get away with it. He also wanted to ensure that he is always the center of attention and intended to use twitter as the marketing arm for his brand. He only wanted to back out once US and global economic indicators started going south and made his offer look ridiculously overpriced, and also made himself look like a sucker. And Musk does not like being the sucker. But his wanting to back out later doesn't cancel out his initial intentions. And once he was forced to buy it, he started playing high stakes poker and managed to turn it into a great investment for him personally by the end of 2024, becoming one of the most powerful men in the world in addition to being the richest. How long it will last might depend on how many consecutive presidential terms the Republicans can hold on to.
The righthand man for Trump stuff was never the intention initially. Musk went gaga for Trump rather late, he was a DeSantis supporter after all, with DeSantis launching his terrible presidential bid on Elon's twitter.
Instagram blocked telegram 8 years ago and nobody complained, the ban in still in place as far i know; trying to block the competition is fairly common, unfortunately
Well, Instagram never claimed to be a free speech network. Also Instagram is covered with content that sexually exploits children, and Telegram links to CSAM were pretty common.
Given that Telegram has very publicly failed at that kind of moderation, it is pretty defensible to block it. If only they would do something about the weirdo Instagram mommies that flood the network with pictures of their preteen daughters in swimsuit and leotards... It's gross what some people do for anything resembling Internet clout.
Signal could start doing some posts praising Musk and promoting Tesla or whatever scam he’s pushing at the given moment, that would unblock them really fast.
Pre-Musk Twitter was indeed bad, a sign of it’s time and dying. Now it’s even worse and quite pathetic.
I think it is critical to not forget the context of russian aligned bots getting free reign on Twitter, they are not being blocked, and Musk is keeping close ties to Putin.
This comment section has turned into something of a circle, it's cool to be mad nd all, but there was a comment expressing doubt at the details, wonder about a reason other than those stated, and asking if anyone independently verified, as I clicked it the comment was flagged to oblivion. No opportunity to engage with that viewpoint.
HN is always a mess when the subject contains Musk, Trump, Google, browsers or social media platforms in general.
I don't mind the slight political aspects of things, but reading a ton of hate and "I already deleted X" (pun intended) and "Just use Y other platform" (that no normal user can figure out) comments is just uninteresting and should stay on Reddit or wherever these nonproductive comments fit into.
I'd love to hear more about this case, the technical aspects and the follow-ups/investigations. Let's focus on that, no? Maybe it's just me.
The biggest exception to that is dead/shadow banned accounts. Requiring showdead (without much of an explanation what that is) to see some heavily-downvoted comments makes it rather difficult to engage with some people. Then again, I rarely feel the need to engage with dead accounts.
In terms of moderation, you also get to flag/vouch posts, so moderation isn't entirely binary.
Do all these commenters believe this nonsense? The conspiracy thinking has reached new peaks. Hard to take concerns of free speech seriously from people promoting platforms that routinely “moderate” any dissenting opinions (HN included).
Our ability for collective sense making seems to be permanently destroyed. Two people who seem to agree on everything point-by-point then reach different conclusions on the final step. Its bewildering.
Discussion mediums just don't seem to scale very well at all. Feels like we've arrived at a point where it's either this or walls of text where you spend more time trying to figure out what a post is replying to than you'd need to keep up with the new messages coming in (i.e. loads of discords)
I remember as a teen how much of a pain it was to find a good forum. Too few users and it'd feel like a graveyard, not worth checking in on often enough to build up a habit. Too many and it was impossible to keep track of anything or gain enough of an understanding of the regulars to know how to read their posts. Even the sweet spot in the middle would be frequently torn to shreds by one troll or mentally ill poster spamming the forum in a frenzy.
Far preferred it to the reddit tree based vote setup but I can understand how this is what most people have settled on.
How do you mean do we "believe this nonsense"? I don't use twitter regularly, but I have two accounts for reasons. I just signed in, I typed out a (fake) signal URL, and... posting was blocked.
It doesn't appear to be nonsense, it appears to be entirely true that any tweet with "signal.me" in it is blocked.
Occam's razor says they're blocking Signal. Hanlon's razor says they're just idiots. Either way: An important tool for communication is being blocked by twitter, which is both dangerous and not "nonsense".
Given Elon Musk's current propensity for authoritarianism and censorship, I'm leaning towards Occam's explanation. If you have evidence otherwise, I would genuinely like to see it, but honestly Hanlon's explanation that it's incompetence is not much better.
I think they're saying to give the benefit of the doubt (ex. maybe it's a glitch), without realizing many of us have no more leeway to give due to the continuing onslaught of criminal behavior from musk/Trump which we'll all have to pay for in the future and is now giving our enemies reason to celebrate.
1- The conspiracy is that blocking signal links is some top down dictation from Elon as part of geopolitical power play over censoring dissenting opinions about DOGE. This is some next level mental gymnastics. There may be good reasons to temporarily block links to a specific service, eg, maybe an ongoing phishing scam, or security issue. Plenty of rational reasons that have nothing to do with Elon and Trump.
2- X is full of people arguing about DOGE, positive and negative, and Elon is constantly attacked on his own platform by both small and large accounts. These posts are not censored.
3- Elon routinely talks about the importance of free speech, and yet I keep reading claims he’s against it from people advertising bsky and mastodon, which absolutely do not (by any reasonable definition) represent free speech platforms. They are more heavily moderated than even old Twitter was.
4- I have seen no evidence of Elon having a “propensity for authoritarianism and censorship”. Every time he gives a speech he specifically talks about being pro 1st amendment, regularly responds to his detractors, and actively defends the constitution.
I do not know what version of Elon you see, but from my perspective you are talking about a cartoonish media caricature that is the opposite of the reality that I see. We appear to be see the same person, same events, and are drawing opposite conclusions. Hence my point about sense making no longer seems possible, even when we actually appear to agree. (If anybody comes out as pro-censorship, I would be the first to call it out.)
That doesn't hold up because there are 200 year old people as well, and apparently millions of 100-year olds. I'm not saying all of it is fraud but incompetence leading to waste would not be surprising.
It sounds like there are several million in the db with those ages and without death records, but it also sounds like the vast majority are NOT collecting paychecks either. Also unclear how many of those who are collecting involve money going to living spouses or whatever other rules exist.
Too late to edit, but I've learned this is not necessarily true (but could be a default date used by the SS code in particular). Sorry for spreading rumors.
I'm not sure everything in there is 50 years old. Not even that everything is actually in COBOL. Those gigantic beasts tend to eventually be quarantined into some VM, never touched again, and then somebody puts some modern-ish wrappers around. For example some HTTP JSON API endpoints to query things. And what do they do when a date is missing? Not returning one would surely make sense. But I'd also expect layers and layers of abstractions in between, maybe some libs to transform some data type in one representation into another. Somewhere on the way, this date as a default value could easily slip in. It's not entirely made up, it's in an ISO standard. Maybe the lib was strictly following that standard.
It's not hard to imagine that something like this actually happened. Dismissing it outright just because COBOL does not have a datetime data type and the standard is only 21 years old (that far pre-dates node.js btw) could be playing into the hands of the Muskians who surely love any possibility to get out of this BS in case they made a mistake. Would not be the first they made nor the first they handled that way.
There is no cluster at 150 in the underlying data though, there's even distribution among unrealistically high age ranges. This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.
> There is no cluster at 150 in the underlying data though, there's even distribution among unrealistically high age ranges.
Is that so? How do you know? Afaik that data is confidential and access is highly restricted. Or are you saying that that's what Elon said and we should take his word for it?
> This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.
Everything political gets downvoted, from either side, but you're going to need better evidence than Musk and rumors for this fraud.
(There probably is some fraud! There is in any large money handling system! Japan had a problem with elderly people claiming pensions after they'd died, for example. It's just that you need a better standard of evidence before cutting off money that people are legally entitled to, because otherwise the fraud detection process is going to have false positives.)
Being down-voted is OK, but posts being flagged and removed for posting factual news is not.
You will need to define your threshold for standard of evidence. If you automatically disbelieve everything on doge.gov, then there is nothing one can do to convince you. You have chosen to shut your eyes.
Please note: I am not an American citizen. As for "rumours", when I was a junior developer working in a service company in Bangalore over 15 years ago, developing tax filing software for an American state, during a test run on live data, I filed bug-tickets for duplicate SSN, SSN's with folks over 150 years of age, obviously spurious unemployment claims, etc. All of them were closed and the contractor told my manager not to file such tickets. (I am really thankful I left that line of work)
These problems are actually very well-known. They really aren't "rumours". You can choose to put in a few hours or a few days of effort in talking to people and figuring this out yourself.
Something can be factual and political. The guidelines suggest that political content is off topic for this site and that you should flag it.
Right now there is an interesting convergence of tech, politics and general newsworthiness that is going to stress the content moderation system. But people flagging a story as obviously political is the system working as designed.
He's just queried records with dead=FALSE. It's not active recipients of social security payments. All its showing is that some portion of people die without the death being officially logged on their record in the social security database.
Edit: Also, it's not clear that the death field is the sole criteria for determining the eligibility for payments (i.e. determining the recipient is alive)
Yep, it doesn’t sound like that’s the sole criteria based on this thread, which includes a NYT article (from 2023!) showing less than 50k users over 100 collecting payments despite over 18M records.
https://xcancel.com/ThatsMauvelous/status/189135619250239902...
I can’t say how annoyed it makes me that Elon’s initial reaction to anything odd seems to be “fraud!!” rather than curiosity
> I can’t say how annoyed it makes me that Elon’s initial reaction to anything odd seems to be “fraud!!” rather than curiosity
To be fair, being curious about things isn't going to get as much support as screaming "GUBBERMINT FRAUD!" (a red rag to the GOP bull) when you're trying to trash any government departments that stand between you and more money.
Politics in general. Because everyone has an opinion, often based on their values rather than cold facts, and people do not like their values being questioned. The discussion is more civil than on other forums, but the difference is not night and day. Disappointing.
bsky is decentralized, in theory more so than Mastodon, which is federated (a variant of decentralization that requires you to trust the server admins of a server of your choice)
"In theory", because so far, there are very few nodes (one?), very few (if any?) alternative implementations, most is controlled and operated by a small team paid for by a.o. Jack Dorsey and other funds. Mastodon (using the ActivityPub protocol) has one main repo, managed by one person under a non-profit that also operates the biggest instance. But also has dozens of other implementations in other languages, with other niches, with more, less, other features and so on.
So, "best bet" would probably be to:
- Sign up at both a Mastodon and Bsky. Try them both for while.
- See which one fits your needs, style and practical needs best. Stick with that one.
I wouldn't let that stop you from signing up for bluesky -- in my experience it is definitely the best of the options for a twitter alternative -- but you should know exactly what it is you're getting into before you get into it.
> And at present, there's really only one each of the Relay and (Twitter-like) AppView components used in practice, but there is a real possibility of this changing and real architectural affordance work to allow it. So perhaps things to not seem all that bad.
I think a big pro for Bluesky from a tech perspective is how widely people are using their own websites as their handles and as verification. It doesn't do anything to protect Bluesky from going to hell but it does make it significantly easier to relink with people again.
Mastodon has failed to show any signs of hitting a critical mass so I kind of feel like it's a different level of social network altogether. A lot more durable and worth making an effort with but unlikely to ever become much more significant than it currently is.
Unless they interop. And there is no reason why they shouldn't.
(other than grumpy old neckbeards bickering over their Prefered Thing and blocking any progress towards cooperation or interoperability. Which is actually a thing in "The Fediverse" even right now. Yes, really. A few loud voices manage to bully down projects that build bridges between both.)
I have and deactivated my account a day or two in -- that un-removable message up top that it will use your posts, likes, etc to train their models unsettled me. At least they were upfront about it, unlike Twitter/X.
I also didn't like that I had 30 different followers the moment I signed up.
Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? And remember how Elon bought Twitter, loudly proclaiming he was doing so to defend free speech?
I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, but I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.
"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or links are banned.
> Are the people with these views not also entitled to free speech and equal rights to express themselves the same as everybody else?
Free speech and equal rights in a legal sense, meaning staying out of jail? Sure, with caveats about threats and abuse.
Free to use a private platform? No, nobody's entitled to the support of someone else's private platform. Equal rights are about protection from the state, not from others' opinions.
Platforms themselves also have speech-based rights. Even if one portrays itself as a neutral 'town square,' it puts its own rights to work as soon as it implements an algorithmic feed, implicitly deciding what content to promote or hide.
You are entitled to your opinion: good, bad, or irrelevant. You are entitled to your words. You are not entitled to an audience.
> You are entitled to your opinion: good, bad, or irrelevant. You are entitled to your words. You are not entitled to an audience.
Brilliant statement, I fully agree.
The issue is who chooses to give them an audience. IMO it is up to the audience not to listen, but it seems to be the opinion of a lot of people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
If a firm decides to be pro or anti free speech. That is their choice.
If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
Which puts a hole into the underlying theory. If people do not naturally gravitate towards alternative ideas, and network effects keep people in one place, then these networks should be made government owned.
Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
> If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
What you are saying is actively happening right now.
Certain people dont like that another certain group of people have been allowed back onto Twitter, and so they are going in droves to Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads/TruthSocial etc.
Twitter has received an 87% drop in revenue since reinstating previously blocked accounts.
Id say people are flocking to alternatives.
This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see. History has shown that where this happens it increases aggression and intense reaction, where people are not used to seeing things they disagree with and so when they do they react more violently.
> Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
Of course they do, but what this generally turns into in the modern age is 'The left doesnt like what the right have to say, block them plz". Then this turns into a political argument, when in fact one group of people just dont want to hear what a different group of people have to say because 'it offends them'.
> I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
We have rules and laws to prevent this as it is recognised as being a threat.
To be honest, I have no idea what opinion you are trying to form here. You are twisting and turning my words all over the place and I am unable to gather your thoughts into a coherent point.
You seem to be trying to pin me down to an opinion, and Im not really sure why. Do I, a random person on the internet, matter to you that much that you need to clarify my exact opinion on stuff?
>… t and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
Firms have a right to do what they please, as long as it is legal.
You dont like what firms do.
You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
This kills free speech.
——-
The position that you set up, is inherently in contradiction to the norms of reality. I am a policy person and understand the trade offs here intimately, which is leading to me playing fast and loose, resulting in confusion.
And yes - you matter to me. Why shouldn’t you? You seem intelligent, or if not, you value looking intelligent.
It would be interesting to see how you resolve the contradiction that your position throws up.
> You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
Im actually not doing that. I dont know where I gave you that impression but I do not believe the government should force any company to allow full free speech on their commercial platform.
> Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
We are talking about twitter here in this context, which has been many times quoted as saying they are upholding free speech. The opinions you are referencing here apply to that company because that is what they state. Im not talking about all companies and their right to control what people say on their platforms, I feel this is more of an ideological discussion around Twitter/any social media which claims to uphold free speech in their public forum.
Therefore the contradiction does not really exist IMO, because they are being held to their own values and not mine.
Interesting thought experiment, I enjoyed chewing that over for a bit. Thanks :)
Ok. Sure, so I think my error was based on my over extrapolation from this:
>people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Gatekeeping would be a right of platforms and I assumed that combating it would involve forcing them to behave in accordance with an external force.
And Since you are discussing only twitter, it does follow that Twitter has an anti-speech position, despite their stated intentions.
——-
For a bit more fun, I think what X was proclaiming is the naive version of free speech. The kind of “anyone can make this app” naive over generalization.
I have a mechanism which allows me to balance the needs of moderation and censorship with free speech. Its an interesting exercise, I think you might like working through it.
From personal experience - I have had to ban people, and it was a form of censorship. Resolving this contradiction effectively changed my career path.
So I have a 1000 users on my forum. One user is incredibly active, and spends their time abusing a specific local minority group.
Things like X minority needs to die, not arguing in good faith.
Now, ideally I shouldn’t ban him, and let counter speech do its things. But since they aren’t arguing in good faith, counter speech doesn’t work.
Over time, this is also creating second order effects in other conversations.
It’s attracting a new kind of user, its driving conversations to be more polarized, and its reducing time spent on longer more thoughtful posts.
> This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see
It has always been thus. E.g. right wingers did not use twitter back in 2021.
I will grant it's getting worse though... for instance, the battle here on hackernews between left and right has strongly intensified and it looks like the left will win the downvote/flagging war and the right will stop posting in (and reading) political threads.
Regardless of whether someone is entitled to free speech, is a private company bound to the constitutional protection?
My understanding has always been that its specifically the government that can't censor me, a private company or citizen can. The NY Times isn't required to write an article I submit to them for example, that's no different than Twitter deciding not to keep a post a write.
> The NY Times isn't required to write an article I submit to them for example, that's no different than Twitter deciding not to keep a post a write
I generally agree with your point about private companies and the 1A.
However, the NYT and Twitter/X are fundamentally different in that the NYT is not a user platform but rather a media company who decides what it wants to publish--meaning that is it's stated goal. Twitter/X stated goal is to provide a platform for users to publish whatever they want to say. Now, Twitter/X can have a policy saying "here's a platform where you can say whatever you want except for X, Y and Z" and that's fine. Just like HN has policies. As long as it's clear and transparent as to what they are allowing or disallowing, then users are informed enough to know what they're going to get when they log on to X. Just like I know what I'm going to get if I visit Fox News.
Prior to Elon, Twitter's policies were stricter and so there was a lot less "hate speech" (for lack of a better term). Those guardrails are gone, since for one Elon fired the whole moderation team, and also because of Elon's own immature posts setting the example, it's devolved into a reddit-style cesspool so I decided not to go there anymore.
Banning links to Signal would be no big deal if Elon hadn't loudly proclaimed himself as the "defender of free speech" and demonized the "censorship" of Twitter.
We pretty much agree here. The contradiction of claiming free speech while doing things like banning Signal links is frustrating for sure.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I've gotten too cynical to believe any company or rich individual making a business deal to actually tell the truth - its all marketing at that point.
> I've gotten too cynical to believe any company or rich individual making a business deal to actually tell the truth - its all marketing at that point
> My understanding has always been that its specifically the government that can't censor me, a private company or citizen can.
Then you have no free speech. I can just refuse you internet access, or not sell ink and paper to you…
So my take is that no, it should not be allowed to private companies to censor arbitrarily. And of course an "algorithm" that sorts stuff in any other way than chronologically is censorship. The feed should just show chronological ordered stuff of followed accounts. No more and no less.
Then you do not have free speech, since this is what the rules of free speech are.
They are about ensuring that the government doesnt use its unique powers of force to ensure that certain ideas are not shared or discussed.
What the current government is doing, with Fox + Twitter, is fundamentally the opposite of free speech. They have the power to say something, then pretend it is true, and act on it.
Neither do you, unless you redefined it to be the super narrow description that you gave. So you can freely be censored but keep believing you have freedom.
You're the poster child of how europeans imagine usa citizens.
Governments can't censor what their citizens say. That's the only protection covered in the US constitution.
Private citizens and companies can censor. Twitter can have rules of conduct or terms of use, for example, and you have to play by their rules when posting on their service. The government isn't involved at all (twitter files not withstanding).
I guess.. it must be shocking to you? Seemingly absurd perhaps.
You can't say what you want in a shopping mall. They can decide who gets to stay in their premises, and for whatever reason they can eject you.
All the free speech cases, have been about government stopping speech. Whether its about deceny laws, or sedition - its always been the government vs a person / corporation.
So yeah - these have been the rights you lived under for all your life. Its never changed.
That is the operating definition of free speech that has worked in America since I started working in this space.
Oh. I come from and am In a country with much stricter Free Speech laws.
I think all of them are pretty crap for today’s environment.
But yes - the operating definition of Free speech, the one enforceable in courts, the one you have lived under, is the one I outlined.
Namely - no government over reach in speech. Not that people can’t do what they want as private individuals, and now corporations.
So you can in theory, have a corporation buy up all the local news channels, and then have them share one kind of point of view. It’s perfectly free speech.
You could stream porn, and the courts would side by you for your right to free speech.
This doesn’t mean you wont get sued for piracy, or actually earn money through your project - you still need a service people want.
I’m dead serious, you can check if you like - but these are the rules you live under even right now.
How you don't understand that the point of free speech is the ability to be heard by others, and if you're shadow-banned you're effectively just writing a private diary?
I mean, ok you have this right. What do you think was the INTENTION of this right? Do you think they intended for people to freely mumble to themselves or to tell their ideas to others?
Freedom of Speech goes hand in hand with Freedom of Association. You are free to speak and spread your ideas, you are not free to compel others to help you to do so and you are not entitled to an audience.
I don’t have to let you stand on my porch to speak anymore than Instagram has to allow you to post things or Costco has to allow you to hold lectures in the food court.
If you sell paper to anyone BUT me, or let anyone who pays a fee stand on your porch and talk for 10 minutes except me, yes that should count as a felony.
exactly. Once we stop treating TwiX like a public good but rather like the private website of a a gaming cheater with a lot of guests, things would be more obvious, wouldn't it?
Free speech does protect you to say whatever you want from government censorship. That's getting blurred here with most of the discussion circling around Twitter censorship.
I would still argue, though, that saying literally anything should be legal. Acting on hate speech, by plotting to commit a crime, may be illegal. The problem there is that you plotted a crime and in certain case that plot itself is illegal, it isn't about what you said but what you did.
In that case, even as an ideal, free speech does not exist. Someone can proclaim that I should be killed because of a certain opinion that I voice. Now there are only four outcomes to that scenario: (a) I take the threat seriously and stop voicing that opinion, in which case they have suppressed my freedom of speech; (b) I take the threat seriously and use it to suppress their freedom of speech, (c) I ignore the threat, yet someone else takes it seriously and, as a natural consequence of being dead, they have suppressed my freedom of speech; or (d) I ignore the threat and nothing happens, so nobody's freedom of speech is violated. The problem is, there is no guarantee of scenario (d). This leads to the freedom of speech being used as a tool to suppress the freedom of speech.
This is not a simple matter of people saying things that are undesirable, or even heretical. It is not a matter of someone saying something hateful, then ignoring them as a hater, because chances are they want to suppress the speech of those they hate.
Anyone who has considered child porn speech is smoking something. We have agreed the act of taking pictures or videos of children in those situations to be illegal, it isn't about the meaning or speech a person may apply to that final product.
Slander and death threats are harder to define. You have to show an active plot to commit the crime, not just a statement. At that point the plot, the action you took, is the crime rather than your words.
Deciding what a company should say, or behave about speech, is subverting THEIR freedom of speech.
This is why the no asterisk position sets itself to implode.
The core defense of Free speech, one of the better articulated points is from Oliver Wendell Holmes. He articulates that free speech serves the search for truth, but the search for truth via the competition of ideas.
>that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,
This was his articulation in a sedition case brought by the government against citizens.
It is specifically in the case of government using its power to become a player in the market of ideas.
Well, according to Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk it does. Which is why we're here, discussing this topic. Right now. And is the point of the person you quoted.
When Musk and people similar to him say "free speech", what they mean is their ability to say and do things without consequences. To them, the world only exists for them and their benefit, so someone disagreeing with them or them facing consequences for something they said is "silencing their free speech".
They also feel like they should be allowed to shut down other people's speech, because that is part of their idea of free speech. They should be allowed to tell you that you're not allowed to talk.
The more people understand that when people talk about "absolute free speech", it isn't a serious position, and is mostly held by people with this view, the better. I'm sure there are actual "free speech purists" out there, but they are few and far between. Instead it is mostly people using the guise of free speech so they can say and do what they want without consequences.
Well that isn't quite right. The original idiom came out of an earlier supreme court ruling that was partially overturned by later rulings on the matter:
> Ultimately, whether it is legal in the United States to falsely shout "fire" in a theater depends on the circumstances in which it is done and the consequences of doing it. The act of shouting "fire" when there are no reasonable grounds for believing one exists is not in itself a crime, and nor would it be rendered a crime merely by having been carried out inside a theatre, crowded or otherwise.
Even with the partial overturn, it is perfectly clear there are limits to freedom of expression. The poster before you clearly mistakes "a high bar" to "no bar at all".
I was simply pointing out two common misconceptions.
There are obviously some restrictions on speech in every nation. However in the US the restrictions on speech by the state are far fewer than pretty much anywhere else and are enshrined by law. This is in stark contrast to other other Western nations such as the UK where there are far, far more restrictions on speech.
> I was simply pointing out two common misconceptions.
With regard to falsely shouting fire, there are no common misconceptions. The common understanding of the saying is identical with the understanding in the judgment, and that part of the judgment remains good law.
However, there is a modern meme that strives to obscure this reality by pointing out that the judgment reached conclusions that modern people generally disapprove of. This has no relevance to the issue.
Even in his dissenting opinion in Abrams vs the United States, Holmes valued not free speech, but the market place of ideas - the competition of ideas that underlies the search for truth.
Slavishly sticking to free speech, and destroying the market of ideas - creating a monopilist propaganda force, with a symbiotic political party is NOT free speech.
Today we have far more information than any of the founders had anticipated. Monopolies of ideas, far more content than fact, the race to the bottom due to advertising - a source of stress in every pocket?
Yeah, your network is going to have a very specific signal to noise ratio. Your market place of ideas is going to be selling junk food, because its cheap and easy to make.
The idea of counter speech works, if counter speech is heard in the first place. If your message never gets to the other side, or the other party is completely enraged and unable to think past their fears - you have no market place of ideas.
I hate how the word "disagree" is used to strip all nuance out of political conversation.
If I said it was my political opinion that the gestapo should show up to your door, and drag you, your wife, and children to a death camp - we don't just have a "disagreement." Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
There's a line somewhere around political opinions that involve using the state to inflict violence on another that I believe should be inexpressible in public, and I think it's fine for non-state actors to ensure that's the case.
> If I said it was my political opinion that the gestapo should show up to your door, and drag you, your wife, and children to a death camp - we don't just have a "disagreement."
Yes we do, we disagree on that statement.
> Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
Yes of course, why wouldnt I? Trying to understand that opinion and maybe bring us closer to agreeing on the underlying issues would be my first aim, not just to cry foul on free speech and expect them to be locked up just for saying something I dont like. That is barbaric.
You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
> Yes of course, why wouldnt I? Trying to understand that opinion and maybe bring us closer to agreeing on the underlying issues would be my first aim,
I think the promotion of liberalism and the lack of critical thinking has created a society of fanatics. For the vast majority of disagreements, it's good to try and understand other perspectives and to work towards compromise. What compromise should the German jews have offered the Nazis? What insights could they have gained from understanding the Nazi perspective?
> You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
Everything Hilter/Stalin did was legal. When families were gassed and thrown into ovens, that was legal. In fact, it was illegal to impede them. That started as somebody's political opinion, they were able to foment support for it, and it happened.
And finally, I understand what the law is in the US. The US basically allows any speech that doesn't threaten the government's monopoly on violence. I'm saying the Europeans are right to criminalize some political ideas. There's been no slippery slope in German because they don't let you wear swastikas.
Yep it totally is and you are fine to say that about me or anyone else.
If someone takes you up on that offer and you pay them, that crosses from free speech into illegal activity and you will be put in jail. But you are totally fine to talk about if you want.
And if someone takes me up on that offer and I don't pay? "Woops, just joking" but you're dead.
Also, you never were in that situation, otherwise you would know there's no way to be fine while people are plotting to maim you. Or if you are, your family sure won't be.
If someone takes you up on that offer then they are breaking the law and committing an offense, regardless of what you said or did or didnt pay them.
If I tell you to go jump off a cliff and you do it, am I liable for murder?
I think you need to back off a little bit and stop trying to invent situations that you think fit your idea of what I think about implications of murder.
I think its fine to say what you want, thats it. You can agree or disagree with me to your hearts content, but do it amicably :)
Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves?
How did you come to these conclusions about the goals and future of Twitter? My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
> that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
This is clearly not true. X represents Elon’s politics. Best example: Elon has X officially blocked any usage of the term cis as part of his crusade against his trans daughter - and I don’t say that lightly, he was not anti trans until she came out.
It’s always strange when reality seems more grotesque than what we could legitimately considered gross exaggerated portrayal for the sake of the caricature if it appeared in a fictional work.
>Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves?
No, because people acting with hate as motivator don’t care if they are within a social minority. They will cease any opportunity to use every aggression tool they have at their disposal to express loudly their will to oppress whoever looks like unaligned with their mindset.
This is in sharp contrast with minorities whose only wish is to live in a way that is aligned with with their own aspirations that perfectly fit in a specter of harmonious social differences even if it doesn’t fall right in the middle of the median mainstream stereotype.
Everybody is part of some minorities. But not everyone think that because they are a member of this or that minority they should be given some hegemony over everything and the rest in the political matter of their society.
> My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
Difference without distinction in this case. The left actually polices its luminaries to some degree (not perfectly but still) which makes it incompatible with the grifter class Musk is chief president of. He’s never going to drift leftward because we’re not going to metaphorically suck his balls because he promotes basic human decency. Figures like him only go rightward.
As for if he bought twitter explicitly to make it a greater hotbed for racism, I think you’d have a hard time proving it in court, but at the same time, he’s unbanned a lot of prominent alt-right figure heads, and boosted tons of their tweets to the financial detriment of the platform. Can’t say he bought it to do that but the huge drops in value because of it hasn’t deterred him so…
That's true in good part. But when it comes to leftist activists specifically, it's war for Musk. His son transitioning didn't exactly endear him to the ideology.
So Musk isn't libertarian nor left on social issues. He is conservative right. Although his exact philosophy is hard to pin down because he isn't really a supporter of the traditional family.
How can being racist belong to a minority while literally being the force that elected a white supremacist like Donald Trump?
Moreover, it’s not that simple. Racists can express themselves. I was talking about racist discourse, not racists themselves. Racism is a hate speech, which has nothing to do with, for example, the right to enjoy one's body and have an abortion as a woman or the ability to express one's gender identity—something that, according to all scientific studies and meta-analyses on the subject, clearly improves the well-being of trans people.
I know very well that racists are experts at playing the victim and making it seem like they are the ones facing repression, but who runs the country? Who are the journalists on television? Are they women or men? White? Rich?
It’s outrageous to claim that the richest man in the world—Elon Musk, a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic white supremacist—is supposedly "censored" and unable to express himself freely! Remind me of a time in American history when a woman had as much power as Elon Musk over the country, or even over other countries (as we see with ALD in Germany)?
"Antisemitic" is also being thrown around a lot towards people who aren't actually saying antisemitic things, but rather criticizing the government of Israel and their actions that take place under color of law.
You're not wrong, but lately, criticism of Israel includes its right to exist, and while anti-Zionism isn't technically anti-Semitism, in practice it is. Furthermore, the pro-Palestine crowd includes many textbook anti-Semites.
Yeah, lots of name-calling going around everywhere for sure. We used to have to word "Anti-Zionist" for people against like what Israel is engaging in now, but at one point it feels like the term was "hijacked" and Zionist/Anti-Zionist is now part of forgotten terminology.
"Liberal Zionism" used to be in vogue in Israel, which takes a more moderate view and criticizes the Israeli occupation while still arguing for an Jewish state, but I think it's gotten less and less popular these days, at least from what I tell from the outside, and a more extreme form has become the popular one again.
> "Liberal Zionism" used to be in vogue in Israel, which takes a more moderate view and criticizes the Israeli occupation while still arguing for an Jewish state, but I think it's gotten less and less popular these days, at least from what I tell from the outside, and a more extreme form has become the popular one again.
Another part of the issue is that especially among young people, words have lost their meanings. Everything is toxic, a genocide, sexual assault, rape, cultural appropriation, god knows what else - the room for nuances in discussion has been entirely lost because large parts of society lack the vocabulary to talk about it, 1984 says hello.
The combination of hyper-social media, ever shorter dopamine feedings / gamification and a complete lack of awareness for the importance of basic education and history are disastrous.
There's nothing inconsistent with people who don't call themselves "free speech absolutists" not being free speech absolutists.
There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.
The "lane" is simple and has always been: no "right", as fundamental as it can be, is limitless. For ex. Freedom of movement is largely restricted, and the fact I can't "enter your house freely" is not a slippery slope to internal visas as the sort China uses to restrict movement internally.
Even in the US, freedom of speech IS restricted: the Supreme Court put the bar very high but it didn't say you could say anything. State secrets can't be revealed willy-nilly; even lower, you can't enter a non-disclosure agreement and then violate it.
The "lane" is that we try as much as possible to put clear, consistent guideline that apply to everyone through a legislative (actual laws) and judicial (precedent) process. This is absolutely not the same as Musk deciding on his own, inconsistent, ridiculous fits of drug-addled rage, where he bans the word "cisgender" or @elonjet for his own safety and then allows complete nazi-"WE WILL KILL YOU BITCHES" stuff - and that's only one of many examples.
If you violate an NDA, it is a civil matter. (Unless something significant has changed without me knowing!) That's completely separate from the government embarking on a criminal prosecution over speech. I think it is important to make the distinction.
I see it a bit differently. Progressives tend to believe speech can have limits, and generally support private citizens and companies enforcing it through shame etc.
Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.
Its the same as competition in a capitalist marketplace. A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
With free speech if somebody is saying something that other people think is terrible, they should stop listening to that person. They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
In reality, people are weak and do not do these things. They keep buying the terrible products because they dont want to have to think about looking for a better alternative. They keep listening to the hate speech because its easier to respond in anger than to ignore the person. The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Again in reality this wioll never happen, and so people will keep shouting and shouting about what they dont like until the world ends up destroying itself through hate and anger.
The free market on its own doesn’t work, that’s why we have regulation in place to guide it to a place that minimises the long term damage while consumers try to maximise the short-term benefit.
Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
>They keep listening to the hate speech
The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate
>>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies
> Just because there’s not a single definition of a word does not mean the meaning of the word is unclear.
So, from the opposite direction, I have the same issue as the other commentator but with the divergent use of the word "woke" by those mostly on the right (and sarcastically by those on the left) — if the person hearing/reading it doesn't know what to expect, it's not a useful word.
Therefore, while I know what I mean by "hate speech" (demonising/dehumanising a group), I tend to avoid using the term as it doesn't successfully replicate my thoughts into the heads of other people.
> Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal and I will call the police or defend myself. If they pay somebody else to act on their opinion and cause me harm then again it becomes illegal. But to expect the law to punish someone just because they said 'I want to kill you'? That IMO is barbaric and completely ridiculous.
> In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
Yes agreed, and its also the reason we have an innocent until proven guilty justice system.
Things can be said in anger, and not really meant. In fact I would wager out of all the death threats made in the entire world, the vast majority are said in anger and not meant to be followed through on. This is why we dont lock people up for just saying things. There needs to be other motives and evidence behind it to show intent.
Unfortunately yes this means we have situations where people are not believed and go on to receieve harm. Humanity has decided as a society that this is less harmful than locking far too many innocent people up by mistake. I do not have an opinion on whether this is right or wrong, but it is what exists for us and created by us.
If you have a better idea for a more fair justice system then go advocate for it, but the whole history of humanity hasnt found one yet.
> Things can be said in anger, and not really meant. In fact I would wager out of all the death threats made in the entire world, the vast majority are said in anger and not meant to be followed through on. This is why we dont lock people up for just saying things. There needs to be other motives and evidence behind it to show intent.
From your link:
"the prosecutor must prove that the threats placed the victim in reasonable fear and that the fear was sustained"
You cant just be prosecuted for saying something. You always need to back it up and prove it was a real threat where harm was a real possibility or the victim was in sustained genuine fear of their life.
> If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal
While I appreciate your free speech maximalism, I can't help but feel you're shutting the door after the horse has bolted.
My feeling is that someone should be allowed to say that they hate me, and that they'd like to kill me. All the same, if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
I'm fact I'm glad that they're allowed to express themselves like this because then I know who not to stand near cliff edges with.
For real though I think a lot (but not all) of opposition to things like hate speech is really an opposition to the feeling being expressed, rather than the expression itself. I'd prefer someone didn't have hatred in their heart, but once they do I prefer that they're open about it.
(You might say that that will only encourage others to become hateful, I don't necessarily agree, but it's a fair concern.)
I really like your opinion, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with what you are saying.
> if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
This is the sticky issue which nobody is able to solve though. How do you prove someone will actually attemt to do it? Currently the legal system requires more than them just saying it to prosecute. There needs to be more motive, or evidence of actual persistent stalking or harm.
What do you think makes the difference between an idle threat and an actual intention of harm?
I don't have a good idea for how to determine whether a threat is sincere or not, or whether or not either party believes it to be so.
On the other hand, it may not be necessary. When I say the law can try to prevent my murder, I don't necessarily mean to deprive my would-be murder of liberty or privacy (since those should be protected in the absence of proven guilt). If you put the prevention on the other side, and offer e.g. a police escort or enforced blocks on communication media then maybe you can discourage/prevent my murder without answering difficult questions like intent.
You might well say, "I shouldn't have to do any of that, they should have to not murder", or "that's all fine but who's going to pay". I have a most marvellous answer to those, but is comment is too small to contain it.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I am enjoying mulling over your responses.
> You might well say...
Well indeed I do say who is going to pay. If we had a society where you could get your own police escort or phone block just by saying that someone threatened you, I feel that service would be open to abuse and would end up costing the taxpayer a whole lot.
If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
> A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
> They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
> The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world.
Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.
>If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
As a more general approach to freedom, we can consider that freedom can only begin where it confirms others’ freedom. If we don’t act with reciprocity in mind, we are on the track to build some kind of hegemony, not to establish a society of free people.
> If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it.
> Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
Yep, and if the majority of the world fully agrees that Twitter is in the wrong and is a horrible place then it will plummit further and cease to exist. The thing here is that there is a massive percent of the population that loves twitter as it is, and so it will continue as there are still enough people to justify the advertising.
> Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
He didnt. He is trying to and we will see what hapopens there. Personally I think his case will be thrown out but thats just an opinion.
> Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
I agree, I never said it was easy. In fact I said that the majority of the world will take the easy way out and not put the thought required into their reponses to things.
> Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
This is not how people typically use the term. And if you look it up the dictionary also doesn't use it that way.
And while we're on this point, there's such a thing as vexation litigation. You should look that up too.
Because words are used to communicate between parties, one cannot unilaterally define an existing term to mean whatever they wish it to mean. (Another good thing to look up: Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of words.)
> This is not how people typically use the term. And if you look it up the dictionary also doesn't use it that way.
Yeah fair enough, I am not a laywer and so am not knowledgable on exact legal definitions.
However you argued your point as if he was successful, which he is not, and so your point is moot until a ruling.
No need to go off on other tangents that I have not mentioned anything about, then again you have the right to free speech so feel free to rattle on about whatever you want!
Lots of people can't fight lawsuits even if they're in the right. This is called "lawfare" or a "SLAPP".
Here's the result of a different SLAPP case that he was involved in, that was dismissed by a judge because it was identified as a SLAPP case by a judge in a jurisdiction where that's deemed anti freedom-of-speech:
"""A judge in California on Monday dismissed the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has published reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X, formerly Twitter, since Musk’s acquisition.
In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific).
There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible.
Most of the limits on free speech don't pertain to the speech itself, but rather the speech being related to some other form of criminal conduct. Incitement to violence can be punished because of the violence; fraud can be punished because of the theft, etc.
So one can still be a free speech absolutist with respect to speech in itself, while still holding people responsible for unlawful activity that the speech is helping to facilitate.
Your logic here is circular. You're arguing definitions, it doesn't make sense to point to examples of places that claim to have free speech and decide that free speech must have limits because those places said they have it and they have limits.
You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.
Sure, you could easily say that, but it would be a pretty silly thing to say. The world is not black and white, as much as we'd like it to be sometimes.
Free speech in the US means they cannot make specific laws against proposing ideas, but a long history of legal cases does mean there are cases when you can be civilly or criminally liable if your words lead others to harmful actions
Its a weird grey area for sure. The best rationalization I have ever come up with is that when speech involves a legitimate threat to do harm, for example, that skips past just speech and can be seen as a step in actively planning to do harm. In certain situations, like murder or terrorism, we've agreed that simply planning to do it is a crime.
Combine the two and it isn't that you said something that is illegal, its that the statement is interpreted as a clear signal of actively planning to do something which itself is illegal.
That's a good rationalization indeed! It makes sense that you should be able to think and say "Y_Y is a jerk who deserves to die", but if you say it to my face then I might be reasonably upset to the point of considerable emotional harm, or if you say it from your pulpit it could reasonably be interpreted by one of your followers as an instruction to commit murder. The speech alone isn't the crime, but you can certainly commit different crimes purely by speaking (though the context is determinative).
It is quite nuanced, but generally it depends on your intent. If you plan how to commit a crime without intending or encouraging anyone to commit it, that is not illegal, but intending to commit a crime, even if some else does the actual deed or if nobody is even harmed, that is illegal, as they were the perpetrator and succeeded. Eg https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-pun...
That's not how capitalism works because the between the companies and the customers is a Mismazch in power and information.
That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power.
According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.
Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.
> According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.
IMO it is
> Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
Feel free to, you have that right. If people choose to act on it I will deal with it on my end appropriately, and I wont be complaining to you to stop saying what you have the right to.
Words are still just words until they are acted on, but this is just my opinion and you are entitled to yours.
> So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
Not sure where you got that from, of course it is possible. But we are all gatekeepers of our own minds.
You seem to be ignoring my responses and trying to lead me further into extreme examples to trap me. Carry on if you feel you must, but at the end of the day we both have our opinions and we are entitiled to them.
If an extreme example could trap you there would be limit to free speech, so there can’t be trap, just proof.
You overestimate the power of your mind. Constant attacks breaks everybody and don’t forget the mind of children and young people is even weaker. But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Back to extreme examples, what about Charles Manson? He didn’t kill anybody, was his imprisonment wrong?
You seem incredibly intereseted in my opinion. Do I really need to give you a rundown of all high profile murdereres and paedophiles and what I think of them?
> You overestimate the power of your mind
No I dont. I am fully aware of mine and everybody elses weakness and bias.
> But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Exactly!
I think you are overestimating your opinion, you come across as if you know everything thats right and wrong and everybody should have the same opinion as you.
Luckily for myself and free speech, opinions are subjective. Here you are trying your hardest to offend me and back me into a corner about what I think.
Yet my overarching opinion is that you are free to say anything you like about me. I have no issue with your opinions, and if you didnt have issue with mine this would be a much nicer world to live in.
Try tolerence of other peoples opinions sometime, even if you dont agree with them. Its actually quite refreshing and liberating.
>So do Jews. So are we seeing full free speech in action?
To be clear, you're comparing anti-semites (a racist "group") with Jews (an ethnic/religious group). One is defined by holding a targeted, hateful ideology. The other is a group of human beings, by birth/existence.
I make no claim against you, but this framing represents the insidiously successful repackaging of hate as an "equal right", which racists have used to mainstream hateful ideas that, at-scale, ultimately infringe on the rights of groups of people. This can include (has included) incitement to violence. The latter is famously a limitation of free speech, and all rights are generally circumscribed by their infringement on the rights of others, in any case.
The other insidiously misleading argument around this issue is that Twitter is enforcing "free speech" in the first place. Only the government can infringe on the right, as it restrains only the government. Twitter is no "protector" of free speech, because it cannot be. It can, however, make the choice to allow and promote hateful speech against others, and that's exactly what it's doing.
So, the argument here is not whether promoting rights is good for society. The argument is whether promoting hate is good for society.
> To be clear, you're comparing anti-semites (a racist "group") with Jews (an ethnic/religious group). One is defined by holding a targeted, hateful ideology. The other is a group of human beings, by birth/existence.
I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant. It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist' or any other word. You are applying your opionin and bias to other people arguments to paint one side better than the other.
Take this same opinion and apply it to Israel/Palestine, and suddenly it becomes not so clear cut. Both sides claim something about the other side, and both are killing each other because if it. In this instance, who would you call hateful and racist? It completely depends on who you sympathise with as there is no correct answer here. It is no different to any other groups of people who you are not part of.
>It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist'
You should look up the word, antisemite.
>Take this same opinion and apply...
I understand why you'd want to change the subject, but no.
I also understand why you ignored the rest of my comment.
I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today. While it's infected too many people, it is heartening to watch the exodus underway that's rapidly evolving it into a 4chan-esque echo chamber.
Definition of antisemite: a person who is prejudiced against Jewish people
Prejudice is completely different to hate. They are often associated but are not the same.
> I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today.
You seem very quick to label and categorise people into boxes about what they think about. Be careful, that is a very dangerous road to go down as history has proved time and time again.
> I'm seeing now that you're just kind of a lazy troll—boring and unimaginative.
Theres a main difference between you and I here which is becoming quite apparent at this point.
I respect your right to think and say anything you like. I have no issue with you or your opinions, and you are free to express them against me as you wish. This is the whole basis for all my posts as can plainly be seen.
You seem to have very strong feelings against me, resorting to labelling and name calling very quickly. You dont seem to respect my opinion or right to have one. You seem to think I am 'wrong' in the general sense, yet have nothing other than your opinion of me, a random person on the internet, to back that up.
Carry on with your offense throwing, I completely respect your right to express yourself in that way and will not tell you you are wrong or you should stop:)
> I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant.
This is an absurdly disingenuous way of phrasing the situation. One group is ideological and defined by its generalized hatred towards members of the other, while the other group is an ethnic/religious group. Being jewish does not imply that you subscribe to any particular opinion or identify with either end of the political spectrum. There is no possible way this can simply be seen as as a disagreement between "two sides".
Your attempt to equate this to the Israel/Palestine conflict is equally absurd. The Hamas and the government of Israel are both committing heinous acts of terrorism in the name of hatred, bigotry and racism.
Yeah, sure, you can have your opinions, I have never claimed otherwise. My opinion is that your opinion is absurd and apologetic of hatred and racism.
It does not matter how politely you formulate your opinion if it legitimizes racism by reduction to a "two sides" argument. Merely existing as a religious or ethnic group is not the same as expressing an opinion, and it doesn't legitimize the expression of unqualified hatred towards the same group. We should tolerate the expression of opinions which we disagree with, but I think there is a limit, and we should not tolerate intolerance.
> It does not matter how politely you formulate your opinion if it legitimizes racism by reduction to a "two sides" argument.
The problem is, and I'm sure you wont agree here, is that what constitutes racism is subjective. This is because the strength of the definition of 'prejudice' differs from person to person.
Some people say racism is when you make big decisions that negatively affect a whole race of people, other people say its when you say a rude word to a black or gay person.
There is no universal definition of racism which the whole world subscribes to. If you think there is, then you need to see that thats just your opinion and you have made yourself think everybody else agrees with you.
It seems that you think you have your definition of racism wrapped up with a bow, and that the rest of the world should agree with you on what that is. Unfortunately the world doesnt work like that, and unless you are willing to discuss these things without calling the other side 'absurd' and actually start exploring these topics properly then it will always devolve into a 'sides' argument.
> we should not tolerate intolerance
But right now you are being intolerant of me, so should I not tolerate you back? Again, the definition of tolerance is subjective. Until we can all tolerate every other persons opinion to the point we can calmly debate it, then we will not get anywhere in purging prejudice from the world.
I think part of the problem is that so many folks think its somehow Israel's job to absorb terrorist acts without any military response. I for one won't be part of that. Gaza seems to me to be little more than an Iranian military outpost from which they can launch attacks on Israel.
I don't blame folks for being tired of this, but Gaza chose this route just like we in the US chose ours. Gaza made an extremely gross and unwise decision to go with the hamas losers. Its natural when a country picks poor quality folks to run their government that there may be consequences for their unwise choice. That goes for any country who picks the wrong leaders. I'm sure during world war 2 the civilians inhabiting axis territories probably experienced things you guys would call genocide.
All people need to do is to come up with something other than the complete destruction of Israel, and maybe there could be the start of a peace process.
>Ah, you only get your information from zionist propaganda.
I wouldn't agree with that, what I try to do is to gather the news the best I can, try to include the historical context and then try to reason about where the conflict exists. My intent with this process requires that by necessity I DO try to see the other side(s), because conflicts often arise from incompatible worldviews, so what are these worldviews?
Often with these long standing beefs, there is a chain of hostile actions met by more hostile actions by opposing sides or interests. I think the reason that the october 7 action is now forgotten was that it was sudden and ended pretty quickly for obvious reasons.
Is the destruction in Gaza disproportionate in nature, well it clearly looks that way, but on the other hand if I shoplift a candy bar and get arrested, the consequences are not comparable in magnitude to the price of the candy bar, heck its often hundreds of times more severe :)
>No point talking to you then :)
Its fine if you don't like to discuss things like this, I understand the frustration. Drilling down into these subjects seems suspiciously close to work and I know many of us just post here for fun. I do it to cultivate a "slander free" posting style and avoid things like assuming what sources of information others exclusively subscribe to.
I had to look up what word you could possibly be talking about. You mean "Zionist"? How is that a slur? It's what the movement calls itself. That's like saying "Nazi" is a slur against Adolf Hitler.
True, but thanks to certain groups using it as a dog whistle you now have to do extra work to find out whether you the person saying it actually cares about empowering people to speak or whether they just want a safe space where they can say the n word.
Which thankfully when it's a platform it doesn't take long to find out which it is.
As with all things in life, regulation makes it possible in the first place.
Unfortunately, in American culture any kind of regulation is seen as negative inherently, whereas in continental European cultures, regulation is seen as a vital and fundamental part of ensuring a place where everyone can thrive.
No it doesn't. It's like libertarianism—it's a concept I find interesting if it helps promote mutual aid, collectivism, etc. Abolishing the state as a vehicle of oppression? Why not.
But if we abolish the state the way libertarians currently define it—meaning abolishing the state but not private property (which paradoxically forces the state to persist in order to determine who owns what, such as businesses, housing, etc.)—then it's an entirely different project. We would be abolishing the so-called oppression of the state only to replace it with an even worse and unchecked oppression by corporations and the billionaires who own them, with no means of voting (since "voting with your wallet" is a myth).
And yet, when you listen to them, it sounds as if they are liberating us from something, when in reality, they are freeing themselves from all control so they can better enslave us.
Prior to Musk's purchase of Twitter, feminists who expressed the view that women and girls need single-sex spaces, and that males who identify as women aren't actually women and therefore shouldn't be allowed in these spaces, would be banned from the platform under the guise of "transphobia".
They were literally being silenced for expressing their criticism of the ideology of gender identity and how it is being used to disadvantage and oppress women and girls.
On X, however, they are free to state this without fear of censorship, due to the broadening of permissible speech on the platform. So while it might not be the "free speech absolutism" that Musk disingenuously claims, it's an improvement to the pre-Musk era of censorship.
I agree that is true regarding freedom of speech laws. But many organisations, including social media platforms, have policies regarding freedom of speech as well. Universities are another such example, as free speech is an essential component of academic freedom.
This is a flat out falsehood - jk rowling was spewing anti trans hate from the position of “feminism” long before the purchase of twitter, she was never “censored” or anything close to it. This is revisionist bs, framed in a way to make your dear leader look like the hero, and not the incompetent anti free speech nitwit he actually is.
Even this article doesn’t go out of its way to say that’s why she was banned - this is according to her. Even if this terrible source were true and you found a single case - it doesnt change the fact at all at what I said, the single loudest feminist anti trans voice is still alive and well on twitter and has never faced a lick of censorship on twitter or now X. So yea, it’s a falsehood. Musk didnt “change” anything here. It’s revisionist nonsense.
I could search X and provide many more examples, including from feminists who appealed and were unbanned after Musk took over the company, others from screenshots posted of emails with the reason for the ban.
“before musk you as a feminist could not state (common anti trans positions held by feminists of a certain flavor)”
I provided the single biggest counterexample ever in JK rowling, so the original post is either a falsehood (I believe so) or very wrong, hope that’s more clear to you, since you seem to have issues following here.
You could search it yet you don’t provide those examples here which is why I’m not taking anything you’re saying in good faith because it isn’t. if you’re curious why I think that, read again the first part of this comment.
It seems to me that you've misread my original comment as stating that all feminists who spoke out against the misogyny of gender identity ideology on Twitter were banned. This isn't what I said or what I meant. To elaborate a bit more: in addition to the then-permanent bans, there was also a considerable amount of self-censorship amongst those who hadn't been banned (or had only been temporarily suspended), to avoid wording their views in such a way that may be disfavoured by Twitter's censorial policies.
JKR is an interesting counterexample for a number of reasons. One is that she was very careful and tempered in her language, as one may expect from an expert writer and of someone with her keen perception of language. If you search her tweets on this topic prior to Musk's ownership (e.g. "from:jk_rowling until:2022-04-14 trans" in the X search box) you'll see what I mean. Another is that she spoke out on this topic fairly late on, and so would have witnessed the censorship and been aware of how best to express her views around these limitations. There is also the fact that hers is and was one of Twitter's most-followed accounts and in practice that would give her more leeway in terms of freedom of expression.
I could search X to confirm to you what I personally witnessed with regard to feminists who aren't JKR being censored and banned, but that would take some effort and I'm not yet convinced that it would be worth it, given that you're engaging with an attitude of aggressive cross-examination rather than curiosity and open-mindedness. This is also why I enquired as to if it might change your view.
Freedom of speech, at least in the US, is a concern specifically with the government censoring citizens' speech. The Twitter files are a recent example of the government partnering with private corps to censor, so that's a fair argument, but in general a private company can't violate free speech by deciding what kind of content they want allowed.
Is it shitty that they censor? Absolutely. But is it a constitutional violation? Not unless I've horribly misunderstood my rights for more than 35 years.
> Freedom of speech, at least in the US, is a concern specifically with the government censoring citizens' speech.
Well, no -- you're conflating "freedom of speech" as a general concept with the first amendment as a legal principle. The first amendment is specifically the mechanism of law we use to ensure that freedom of speech is respected in our interactions with the political state.
The first amendment doesn't apply to our interactions with each other outside of the political sphere, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have expectations of conduct and cultural norms that uphold freedom of speech via other means in non-government contexts.
Cultural norms dictate some modicum of restraint on everyone. You have no obligation to tolerate me if I call your wife a whore. Any given community has its social norms that dictate what you can and can't say. To force them to accept "unacceptable" speech would violate freedom of speech itself.
No, that's not quite correct. A lot of subcultures and echo-chamber type social contexts certainly do have extreme policing of extremely particular taboo subject matters, but in more general contexts, especially in American society, there's a strong expectation that people ought to be able to speak their mind without excessive interference, and there's usually a high bar to what constitutes subject matters taboo enough to restrict or exclude people for engaging with, along with social norms that often regard excessive policing of other people's expression as itself taboo.
No there isn't. You can't, rightfully, campaign to make rape legal for a day without your life being ruined through ostracization. I wouldn't want to be associated with such a person. And that is in public.
In private you have severe restrictions on speech and expressions. Workplaces, stores, and schools have codes of conduct, dress codes, etc. to restrict expression.
What you call "extremely taboo subjects" is relative, based on your own biases and beliefs. "Woman should be more active in public life" is not an "extreme" view, even in more conservative sections of society. But in Ultra-orthodox jewish communities, or isolationist muslim communities, or even many christian sects, this would be controversial statement.
If a member faces social consequences for these statements, it is not a violation of their right to free speech. Nobody is obligated to tolerate you, no matter how in the right you may be. You can't force society to be on your side.
You might say, "But these social norms are repressive and harmful." Well then change them through activism. Stop whining about "free speech violations". That is, again, ass backwards.
> No there isn't. You can't, rightfully, campaign to make rape legal for a day without your life being ruined through ostracization.
You can't control what other opinions people will have of you, or suppress their expression of those opinions, that's true. But that itself is part and parcel of freedom of speech. The social consequences of expressing opinions that other people find offensive or disgusting are yours to bear, and may indeed motivate others to want to have little to do with you.
But this is juxtaposed against an expectation of freedom of speech as a cultural norm -- the point above is precisely that the way this is expressed in other contexts is different from the way it's expressed with respect to the political state. So we do have an expectation that formal institutions will not engage in prior restraint, or punish people for speech itself within most (but not necessarily all) categories, etc.
For example, people might find it reasonable that someone be dismissed from a job for making overtly racist comments in the office. But the same people would consider it inappropriate if, for example, an employee was fired for expressing that he does not like the boss's favorite movie.
There are absolutely different boundaries and different weighing of consequences between how we apply the norm of freedom of speech to political vs. social situations, but to say that we do not adhere to freedom of speech as a cultural norm at all is quite incorrect.
Elon described himself as a free speech absolutist. There is no inconsistency in pointing out that his actions don’t align with this description, regardless of whether or not the person doing so is themselves a free speech absolutist.
The attacks on Musk are almost always that he doesn’t support freedom of speech, without any qualification.
If you’re trying to attack the much narrower position that he’s not a free speech absolutist you need to do it at the time your make the criticism, not retrospectively after you make the allegation.
I don't think so. Twitter before Musk had all kinds of TOS that obviously blocked speech that would be protected by the First Amendment. No-one is saying that Twitter used to be a free speech absolutist free-for-all before Musk took over. They're saying two things. First, that his actions don't match his stated intentions. Second, that he is heavily biased towards unblocking far right accounts.
Here is my lane: Elon is a hypocrite. He bought twitter in the name of "free speech," then removes any speech he doesn't like.
His actions are inconsistent, and this one of many demonstrations that he doesn't care at all about liberty. That matters because he's now apparently in charge of every federal government agency.
Wait so you're saying that anyone who criticizes Musk is in this bucket of "progressive" and therefore is accountable for the supposed hypocrisy of all "progressives"?
Actually this argument makes no sense. I know that it's commonly repeated in propaganda, but that doesn't mean it isn't stupid on its face. You can't just throw people into a collective arbitrarily and then hold them responsible for everyone else you'd call that's actions
Sure, but also hypocrisy only makes sense when applied to a single person or an actual organization that actually collectively takes positions. "Progressives" is an amorphous category that can seemingly include anyone we want to declare "woke" at any given time, and seems to span the political spectrum from even the most right-leaning democrat politicians to random tankie teenagers on social media. Such an incoherent group doesn't have collective positions or collective responsibility for each other's positions, and I think it's important to point this out because it's a very common rhetorical gambit
That's a generalization that I think you'll find hard to back up with evidence. I'm the progressive you're discussing this with right now, and I don't think I've said anything inconsistent. But I'll respond to your imagination's idea of what "progressives" must be saying anyway.
The statements "Elon Musk Musk doesn't care about free speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)." and "Free speech has limits." Are non-contradictory.
Additionally, not allowing links to Signal isn't an "edge case," but a considerable offense against free speech (the general concept, not the literal law in the constitution), especially for one who calls himself a "free speech absolutist."
> Progressives: Elon doesn't care about freedom of speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)
No, it's "Elon claims to be a free speech absolutist yet somehow keeps denying freedom of speech to people who disagree with him". The hypocrisy is the problem.
Actually freedom of speech is a principle, which Musk and his ilk claim to care about, despite using their power to censor people through either direct control of information streams or threats. The first amendment to the US constitution specifically seeks to reify this principle in laws pertaining only to the government's actions, but freedom of speech as a principle can be supported or violated by anyone with power over other people. The people claiming to be "free speech absolutists" are hypocritical even if they didn't also work for the government and enact these vendettas against speech they don't like on a governmental level (which is also happening)
This is definitely true, however many of us remember Musk declaring himself a "free-speech absolutist", so in most cases people are referring to his hyprocisy rather than his legal rights.
I mean, congratulations you’ve explained why the Speechers criticising Twitter were always wrong on this point, but Twitter has now been taken over by people who’ve been pushing a very unamerican idea of free speech so it’s fair game to point out they’re trying to prevent people from using the very system that DOGE runs on.
> In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves
This particular clause seens very unlikely. One could want an increase in racism and homophobia on a platform without specifically wanting there to be less black people (for example) speaking out. That the -isms cause said people to speak up less would likely be a (pleasant?) side effect rather than the primary goal.
1. Inherited rich kids like Elon often have a strong feeling that they are better then the rest of humanity.
2. But it turns out if you are a leech on society like that sooner or later people stop accepting that (remember: he pays less in taxes and gains more in government subsides than most people)
3. So in order for people not to turn against you sooner or later you need to keep them split into subsections that are in conflict with each other. The more split they are, the more wealth you can extract.
That is the age old strategy of divide and conquer and if you ever wondered why your political system seemed to be split down the middle 50:50, that is your answer: people with money profit from it being so.
Even granting that, you would want MORE LGBTQ+/minority speech. The more energy people spend arguing with each other about culture war, the more dividee they are and the less they have for trying to change inequality.
Trying to silence LGBTQ+ etc people goes directly against the goal you posit.
It's not a closed ecosystem. If LGBTQ+/minority speech is happening on a different platform or medium, it's still happening. It can be profitable to be the part of the ecosystem that doesn't cater to the minority as long as someone else does.
Those platforms have not, however, been billing themselves as champions of unfettered free speech before handing out arbitrary unexplained bans when their feelings got hurt or they disliked the speech.
Companies market themselves in ways that disagree with how the companies operate all the time. Marketing is frequently misaligned with what the company or product actually is.
That's true, but there's no reason Twitter/X has to stay like that.
Stack Overflow has a pretty good model. It does not remove suspended accounts nor their posts (except those directly related to the suspension). It subtly signals that an account is in suspension by reducing the account's 'reputation' (internet points) to 1 and placing a small notice on the profile, usually stating the reason for the suspension (e.g. suspicious voting etc).
> A couple of journalists broke Twitters rule on doxxing, and were briefly suspended.
That is a complete lie. Musk "updated" twitter rules to ban the tracking of private jets (namely his) despite that being public information, and immediately proceeded to suspend accounts having relayed that public information, and accounts which had mentioned or linked to such, or to aviation tracker websites.
Doxing often involves linking data in public datasets to de-anonymised individuals. Using ADS-B to achieve that is just an implementation detail.
Ultimately, there's little doubt that sharing the real time location of named private individuals is doxing.
It's true that Twitter suspended journalists only 24 hours after the ban on doxing went live, but the penality was minor, and journalists were allowed back after they removed the offending content.
What exactly is it about that article that leads you to label it as politically biased? I see nothing but apparently factual information without any commentary.
You can not make Wikipedia care about your pet idea without working on it yourself, so the absence of information on something is more an issue with you than with the people that edit Wikipedia.
It is impossible to argue against you because it is an opinion. First of all there is not one "Wikipedia", second of all as politicians usually say "I can not comment on specific cases". There is some truth in that saying, you can only talk about the policy and the policy continues to be "neutral point of view". Considering the horribly biased alternatives to Wikipedia that has sprung up, I would say that Wikipedia is probably the best NPOV you are going to get.
> You can not make Wikipedia care about your pet idea without working on it yourself, so the absence of information on something is more an issue with you than with the people that edit Wikipedia.
Have you actually tried creating articles on Wikipedia? I've seen some pretty notable projects have pages that they wrote for Wikipedia be rejected as being "not noteworthy enough". Specifically Pleroma (a Fediverse application similar to Mastodon) comes to mind.
I have many fought for many disputed articles, Bitcoin is one of them. I would agree that Pleroma is not noteworthy, I am not a deletionist so I would not delete it but that is a slippery slope and you end up writing articles about date handling in Cobol. I just accept and move on, e.g. expand on the Fediverse article.
And why was CrimethInk banned then? because they didn't dox anyone, never called for violence against people or location.
Until a "free speech defender" can explain what CrimthInc did that was against free speech that warranted the ban (and not either ignore it or sweep it under the "mistake were made" rug), i will keep thinking they are only a Musk glazer, deal?
I mean, it's a massive stretch to pretend that sharing an ADS-B feed is somehow more of a share of the real time location of private individuals than livetweeting an event individuals are present at, and the reporting on Elon's U-turn on the ElonJet account that he banned journalists for came after the account had been deleted...
When you say "Wikipedia" do you mean the site operators, or the volunteer editors? If there is a factually incorrect statement in the article, instead of complaining about bias you can always edit it or start a section in the Talk page on the article. Be a part of the group and reduce its perceived bias.
The simple existence of a page that documents an event is not evidence of political bias, and that accusation says more about your own biases than it does Wikipedia editors.
The problem is that notability is very subjective, and wikipedia's editors are notorious for applying a low threshold for information critical of those on the right, and high threshold for information critical of the left.
Suspending a few journalists for doxxing would not meet the notability threshold for an article to exist, if it occured on any other platform.
If you have verifiable information that debunks or improves upon existing text in the article, which meets the standards of the organization (not self-published, etc), I promise you that your edits will be considered and integrated. There is a Talk page for a reason.
The system is not perfect, and is still vulnerable to certain kinds of subterfuge, but the more critical thinkers involved in the process, the better. If you consider yourself a critical thinker, consider adding to the body of knowledge.
> if it occured on any other platform
Who cares? Those platforms are not Wikipedia, and serve different goals. You will find plenty of historical events covered in great depth on Wikipedia despite only involving a few people over a few days. Don't fall victim to cherry-picking.
You seem to have completely missed what I was saying.
Journalists get suspended from social media platforms for doxing all the time.
These events are not newsworthy, and wikipedia articles are not written about them.
The problem isn't the content of this article, it is that the article exists at all. It only exists because wikipedia editors apply different notability thresholds to one side of politics than the other.
"Free speech" on a centralized platform always seems fishy. One can't expect it from Elon at least. He always has extreme/polar thoughts on various subjects.
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors?
The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.
> The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes
Tunisia is now arguably better off, but even beyond that: the longterm effects of such things aren't always immediately apparent. The French Revolution led to terror, then to an Empire and devastating wars and finally back to the old monarchy, but it cast a very long shadow on the 19th century and beyond.
The point is that social media was used by people to connect and organise which led to the overthrow of a number of dictators/military junta.
What has happened since is the old order has mostly reasserted itself - with a clamp down on social media, and mechanisms put in place to cut access if things get too fiesty.
Take Egypt - they kicked out a miltary juntu - forced elections - then the 'wrong' people won the elections and the military took over again, clamped down on the media and are in still in place today ( president has been in power for 10+ years with no signs of stepping down ) - and they are so representative of the people that the US think they might be able to persuade the Egyptian leader to take part in ethnic cleansing of it's neighbour.
Whether that's a good thing depends on whether you think people like el-Sisi know what's best for their country, whether the people agree or not.
The Egyptian case was so sad: the first elections run elected Islamists, who failed to make a pluralist democracy stick (which was what the Twitter protestors largely wanted!) and instead ended up running similar levels of repression but with a Muslim flavour.
I think it's complex - being elected to a head of state that was previously rife with corruption is a very difficult job, not made easier by the previous regime and their foreign friends trying ( and succeeding ) to reverse the revolution.
In the end I think it's easiest to stick to the facts - which is the elected PM was overthrown by the military and sentenced to death, and eventually died in prison.
At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
I'd argue it's a tool for extremism and populism everywhere; the weakest Arab governments simply crumpled first, however the same pressures are applied to all governments.
Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace.
In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed.
If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better.
Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed.
In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it.
In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
Twitter was a net positive for many. Millions of people around the world relied on it for timely news and updates in the absence of other avenues. This was particularly pertinent in places like Africa where state infrastructure wasn't able to provide or indeed, the middle east, where censorship prevented accurate news being disseminated.
So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
Also, the Arab spring overthrew several decades-long brutal dictatorships. Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
>Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
I don't believe either of those ended up positive either. The Taliban waited out the US; they may have been overthrown, but given that he Taliban are back in power it seems like the entire effort was waste. In Iraq, Saddam was the only force holding back the Shia majority. Iraq has largely devolved into another proxy for Iran, and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone. I'm not supportive of Saddam, either; he was truly evil in ways that people don't always understand. My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
> and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone
> [....] My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
The current worse state of Iraq ( post Saddam ) is nothing to do with populism - and all to do with foreign inference.
Though I agree with the general point about revolutions - one of the key problems with violent revolutions is quite often the most hardline nutters ( of whatever flavour ) tend to end up in charge as they are the most prepared to be violent.
> So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
I presume the grandparent was being rhetorical and trying to say Twitter was always a net negative for society as a whole.
Even today, its a net positive for plenty of people (myself included).
Indeed. It was always a drama tool for me. Short and clickbaity.
That occasional good information also succesful spread, doesn't mean that information would not have also flowed with different communication tools and maybe then even in a better way.
If your sycophants eat everything you'll throw at them there won't be any need for justification. Which completely baffles me. The US digital technology sector seems to be full of yes man and groupthink, and it's getting worse.
I think some people are so motivated by "hate" (for lack of a better word) they they pretty much would shoot their foot off with a sawed-off if someone told them it would "own the libs". It's like you say: there is not even need of justification, Musk is "our guy" and that's that.
There is plenty of criticism of Elon Musk coming coming from both sides of the political spectrum. I am consider myself right of centre and I hear plenty of criticisms of Elon Musk coming from the right. The complaints are completely different though.
The big problem with any of these discussions (especially online) is that a lot of people are intellectually lazy and assume the other-side is comprised of brain dead zealots who only support the most extreme positions.
I don’t think it’s quite right to say they assume it. News outlets and online platforms intentionally cultivate that idea, because in the modern era they directly optimize for engagement, and I’m substantially more likely to click on people saying or complaining about outrageous things than measured criticisms from a perspective I don’t share.
Maybe it is a bit of both. However the end result is the discourse online is frequently frames on the idea that the if you are part of Group A, then Group B is full of sycophants. I am also dubious whether I am actually talking to a real person in a lot of these discussions, but that is another discussion entirely.
You can also ignore any justification X gives, all the statements coming from Musk and the other tech companies and the government are untrustworthy or deceptive. But people are still hopeful in that Musk saying "free speech" actually gives them any reasing to keep using Twitter.
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
Your comment is quite extraordinary as Orwell's work dealt with an unthinking bureaucracy resembling the Soviet Union. He also had the foresight to see the U.K. could be a totalitarian state.
An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entirely benign. And it would suggest that reasonable people can also dispute the pure intentions of a system that makes it almost entirely impossible to fire people, and was started as a soft power system for US foreign policy.
But how does any of that relate to banning signal links regardless? This is an effort to reduce self-organization and solidarity between affected normal people. It isn’t just USAID, 100,000+ people are being illegally terminated across the government (probationary employees who are only allowed to be fired for “performance,” but many/most have fine reviews and/or just started).
If a bunch of new people are being fired after having just moved or started new positions, why wouldn’t people try self organizing to support their coworkers who just had their lives upended?
My comment was simply in direct relation to the poster's comment about trustworthiness of government.
But as to your assertion of "illegally terminated," let me provide some context.
Not a single lawsuit has provided evidence of damages under law. One of the TROs has been shot down outright. This is key, as the judiciary requires law to be violated to intervene. They are not an HR department, and there are existing remedies for this in the administration. No such violations warranting legal action outside of the existing system have been shown.
Not only this, they went district "judge shopping" on a Friday night, two hours prior to close. Many of these judges are now being shown with extremely inflammatory political rhetoric showing bias, and one will have articles of impeachment drawn.
The circumstances surrounding this judicial action are so unprecedented, that when the Administration appealed showing evidence of fraud and illegal behavior, they "asked" the judge if they should allow it. The point of this is to show the frivolity of the suit: not only does the judiciary not determine Executive Power under Article II, they're asking the judge if the judge should take executive action to break the law.
While law is subject to interpretation, it is not clear (and I do not believe) these employees are being terminated illegally, the least of which is they have yet to describe the legal circumstances under which their termination is unlawful. Unlike common wisdom, the federal judiciary is not-coequal with the Legislature and the Executive; the Supreme Court is. Article III specifies that federal courts called "inferior" courts are subject to the leisure of Congress. These courts have been disbanded twice in history and do not hold the power that popular culture thinks they do.
If you take USAID « revelations » by Musk at face value, you are… rather misled.
The very behavior of DOGE looks like kids unleashed in a factory they don’t understand, willing not to recognize their capacities are adequate to understand it in so little time.
There were knowledgeable people, they’ve been fired.
You wouldn’t accept it for a flying plane pilot or a surgeon in the surgery room, why would you accept it for state agencies?
I was asked to join USDS by the head of the agency in 2018.
I am fully aware of the widespread fraud they were encountering, as well as the technical difficulties of fixing it. I am also aware of the less-than-neutral culture that pervaded that organization at that time. I also have experience as a defense contractor and have personally met and interacted with many people in the administrative bureaucracy, including high ranking cabinet members.
My comments come from personal experience both with the precursor to DOGE (which is a division in USDS), as well as how the federal government operates.
And yet you believe that fixing this requires pulling the plug on most if not all, by people totally remote to how it works?
That’s a peculiar way of fixing this. Especially in administrative matters (where the side effects are as deadly as putting an untrained random person in charge of a civil airplane).
They won't. They'll lie, some will buy it up and they'll cary on. This behaviour is completely consistent with what they've been doing since purchase. Why start now?
If you capture a high enough proportion of the attention bandwidth, you cease having to answer questions or be accountable. It's quite scary how powerful this is.
There is so much censorship going on on Twitter through the use of dark patterns, that it's embarrassing to claim it to be something like a fortress of free speech.
Let alone the fact that you need to have a subscription in order to obtain a "somewhat fair" exposure. It's ridiculous.
Look up “leggi fascistissime”.
It’s appalling how people don’t see the obvious playbook that’s unfolding here, down to the claims of “defending democracy”
Most people are living automatons who find excuses in being too busy, too scared or too confident in believing "that's history, it can never happen again, we're living in a modern world" to notice things unfolding around, which is exactly what brought fascism to life back then.
IIRC, Twitter(and several other social media platforms) was asked to limit/block accounts that were spreading Covid misinformation at the height of the pandemic. You know, the kind of stuff a functioning government interested in protecting ALL of it's citizens would do. That's "heart" of this "government meddling" excuse.
I would say there is all sorts of "government meddling" going on right now, with all the uncertanty and mess with all the services + departments we all rely on over the last month....
It was a nothing burger because Twitter didn't blindly do everything they were asked to do, they rejected a bunch of the government requests. It's not weird for law enforcement to notify a platform of something suspicious they found on the platform.
The Twitter Files also conveniently omitted that Twitter also got requests from the Trump campaign and accepted some of them.
> The Twitter Files also conveniently omitted that Twitter also got requests from the Trump campaign and accepted some of them.
It got requests from both the Trump administration and the Biden campaign. Joe Biden was not President in 2020. Donald Trump was still running the government that was "censoring" social media.
I don't know why this never comes up when people talk about the Twitter Files.
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> Security researchers at Mysk first noticed the issue on Sunday night, Feb. 16. They reached out to me via DM and we were able to confirm the various different ways (DM, post, profile bio, etc.) that X was blocking “Signal.me” links.
> Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors?
That was a pure US State Department/the Blob move, as soon as social media turned against them they were very quick into crying wolf and saying that said social media needs to be curtailed and protected against outside foreign influences.
I'm a mr. Calin Georgescu voter from Romania (you might have heard of him in VP Vance's recent speech held in Munich), so you can understand how come I view things this way.
If you just need to get all the emotions off your chest, feel free to continue, If you want to know what's actually getting blocked see the discussion here
It's funny how people claim both that he is totally in charge of the US, and that at the same time the US is totally in charge of him. It can't be both, and in fact it's neither.
Twitter is the most compliant social media platform for government take downs. The number of government take downs actually sharply increased under the new leadership.
If that was the case, that would definitely mean he is not a state actor, which is defined as «An entity that is a part of, or which operates licitly or semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency.».
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
If that was the case, that would definitely mean he is not a state actor, which is defined as «An entity that is a part of, or which operates licitly or semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency.».
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
> operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency
Hard to see how he doesn't fit this criteria? That DOGE thing is clearly a US government agency of some sort.
> The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
If you take the Louis XIV "I am the state" approach, then, well, he has, right? He promoted Trump on the platform during the election, then walked into a job with the state.
Your claim was «He is de facto if not de jure more or less in charge of the US government.». If this is true, the opposite, i.e. «operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency» can't be true. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne. Talk as much fatalism about that fact as you please: it really must be.
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Elon's proclamation that he is fighting "them" (deep state/democrats/...) has turned around and he is the same now. He is the USAID-ish funding for his cause. The cause could be different but the tools are the same, albeit in different names.
People have only that much power we give to them. If everyone stops using Twitter/X, it is nothing. Nobody buys Teslas - it is nothing. The list goes on since his # in wealthy ranks defines his position. Just make it drop.
Flood the zone. Propose ethinc cleansing and sell Ukraine to Russia and manipulate the German elections and censor twitter and cut usaid and pass inane stuff about transgenders. All in the space of a week. How can you even process what's happening, let alone resist it?
You pick a line where you have some degree of control, and you stay focussed on it.
Coordination should not be about "hey, let's all make a lot of noise about his last move", because you're overwhelmed. It's about making sure not too many people are working on the same line.
You pick a line. One where you can act.
You get one executive order rescinded. Someone else work on another one. You legislate one doggy doger at a time. You focus like crazy. (First action to focus is, of course, to delete your Twitter account.)
You make noise about all the times where you win, and they loose.
In two years, you get the voters out.
If you don't have any other control then "not playing their game, and wait", that's at least something. There's probably a food bank close to your place. Keep the lights on there.
Sell them to whom? If I had a Tesla and sold it to you, there are still the same number of people driving one.
I’m sympathetic to Tesla owners who've had their car for a while. If Akio Toyoda turned out to be a bastard, I wouldn't buy another new Toyota, but I’d continue to drive our current one until the wheels fall off. Same with Teslas. It's unreasonable to ask someone to get rid of their working, paid-for family transport. We can't just scrap all of them.
But. Anyone driving an Incel Camino just bought the thing, and I will continue pointing at them and laughing.
Only the initial purchase matters for buying the cars from the point of Musk and Tesla's value. I think the revenue for repairing the cars during their lifetime does not bring that much money back to the Tesla.
So ideally, we want to reduce the purchases of new Teslas and bring the stock down.
I mean people should do that anyway, because when that stock takes a tumble it's going to shed value incredibly fast.
It's been overvalued before, and now it's cruising on "how good will the government corruption money be". Needless to say, you can look at how things worked out in Russia for who gets paid, and how much that winds up being worth in the end.
The pussyfooting around this from some countries is genuinely surprising. Like, how are the Germans of all people confused about whether the oligarch courting their neo Nazis is a threat to their national security?
Unfortunately this isn’t quite correct. They’re not neonazis but they are fascists, they don’t believe in liberal democracy and hold extremist (as in, objectively far right) views on women’s rights, Judaism, Islam and LBGT issues.
AfD are also anti-science proponents of climate change denial, and are quite happy to hold opposing views from one day to the next.
Other parties in many countries don’t seem to understand that if they try to solve the immigration issues more seriously - many right-wing parties would disappear as they have nothing else.
It’s not about immigration. If it was, then mainstream parties WOULD fix immigration.
It’s about national identity, “us and them”. If it wasn’t about immigrants it would be about “experts”. If it wasn’t about experts it would be about “the gays”.
This kind of thing doesn’t go away with appeasement: orgs like AfD just point their weapons at somebody else. It has always been the way with facists.
You just shifted from "immigration" to "illegal immigration".
Dual citizenship is as legal as you can get, the AfD opposed it until they realised it meant they could get away with later stripping undesirable people of German citizenship.
Germany decided to accept a million *perfectly legal* asylum seekers in the Syrian crisis, and another million from Ukraine. The AfD opposes it, even as they accept the suffering of Ukranians is real.
Germany is also in the EU, so has, totally lawful, free movement of people from every country they share a border with. The AfD opposes it.
It is about immigration. The mainstream parties can't fix migration because Germany's political system makes it almost impossible to form majority governments. Coalition politics and the cordon sanitaire force the CDU to work with the left and seemingly the left's only consistent political position is opposition to migration reform.
The AfD aren't fascists and the attempts to win elections by just screaming slurs until they lose all meaning has stopped working. People have realised that calling everything "racist" or "fascist" or "Nazi" or whatever doesn't mean it actually is, and the left's entire political strategy is just labelling things it doesn't like with bad words.
And yes part of the issue with immigration is national identity. Germany is a nation-state and always has been, just like France and Poland and Italy and Spain and Portugal and Czechia and Hungary and Ireland and Greece are. There are still some non-national states in Europe like the UK (which contains multiple nations: England, Scotland and Wales, arguably part of Ireland (although some claim Northern Ireland has been separate long enough to have its own national identity) and arguably Cornwall if you listen to Cornish nationalists which you probably shouldn't).
Economic migrants, falsely claiming to be refugees, from Somalia and Syria, aren't German. Or French. Or Italian. Or Greek. They are Somalian, or Syrian. To pretend migration policy debates don't raise issues of national identity is fucking insane.
Do you think the systematic repression of Polish people during the German Empire, which was seen as necessary to achieve the 19th century ideal of a nation-state, was appropriate?
Because you make it sound like Germanisation was a good thing, as otherwise it wouldn't have been a nation-state.
> Within Bismarck's Kulturkampf policy, the Poles were purposefully presented as "foes of the empire" (German: Reichsfeinde).[7] Bismarck himself privately believed that the only solution to Polish Question was the extermination of Poles.[8] As the Prussian authorities suppressed Catholic services in Polish by Polish priests, the Poles had to rely on German Catholic priests. Later, in 1885, the Prussian Settlement Commission was set up from the national government's funds with a mission to buy land from Polish owners and distribute it among German colonists.
If that's what needed for a nation-state, I reject it as a worthy goal to achieve or use as a basis for identity, just like I reject my country's racist and expansionist history of exploiting African slaves and Native Americans as being something to re-attain.
(Apropos: "Frederick the Great ... likened the newly conquered West Prussia to a Prussian Canada and its inhabitants (which were German and Polish) to the Iroquois, who he saw as equally uncivilised.")
It was no more acceptable than any of the other things that happened in the 19th century.
How Germany became a nation-state, which was generally by the unification of German polities (like Italy, or as happened in France many many centuries earlier), is quite irrelevant to its status today as one. Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. There are presumably people still alive today that were expelled. That is much more recent history but it doesn't take away from the fact that Poland is a nation-state or make that somehow a bad or invalid status.
I didn't say it was a good thing to expel cultural minorities, and nation-states can and do obviously have cultural minorities without issue.
The problem is people denying that Germany is a nation, often denying the very notion that there is something validly called a nation. The problem is people saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country on this basis. There are people that think unironically that identifying ethnic groups is racist if you are doing it for any reason except to give "affirmative action" benefits to non-white ethnic minorities.
Your country is presumably the US so you likely have no actual conception of what a nation-state is. The US is not one.
You are the one which talked about how Germany has always been a nation state, as if that were a good thing.
> Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. ...
> Poland is a nation-state
Umm, you should mention the additional role of the Allied powers and the Postsdam Agreement in the ethnic cleansing of Germans from post-war Poland, and how it was based on the belief that a homogeneous population would be be more stable. And you should mention how the nation-state could only exist because of the near extermination of the Jewish population.
Had that not happened, Poland would now be as much a nation-state as Belgium or Finland.
So far I am not liking the processes used to make nation states.
Let's see, you said Italy is a nation-state, right? I've visited the autonomous region of South Tyrol. I guess the native German speakers are a cultural minority that a nation-state can have, right?
> saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country
I think I've spotted the racism. Define German. Define "their borders." Is Austria German? Is South Tyrol German? Should they be in German borders?
Is the Danish minority of Southern Schleswig German?
Do Germans need to be Catholic? Or Protestant? Can Germans be Muslim? Can Germans be black? Can Somalian refugees be German? Can the grandchildren of Turkish guest workers be German?
As an American, I find it bizarre and bigoted to call native-born Germans "Ausländer" just because their parents didn't come from Germany. Is that the nation-state you're talking about?
To me that just seems like a continuation of 19th century racist nationalism.
The CDU/CSU understands perfectly. That is why its immigration policy has turned around completely. It is now basically the same as AfD's, in the hopes of drawing its old voters back. But the voters aren't stupid. Because of the cordon sanitaire, the CDU/CSU can't implement its migration policy without violating the most sacred "rule" of German politics: you cannot work with the AfD. If you do, the establishment media and the left (SPD/Greens) will be very upset with you. And we can't have that! Look at all the howling there was over the CDU even considering using AfD votes to pass migration reform recently.
The closest to what Twitter used to be is Bsky. The model isn't perfect and some of its features are still not quite there, but it has replaced my Twitter usage entirely. And they've managed the large user surge pretty well. I've seen some developers I follow who cross post getting more engagement on Bsky than X despite a lower follower count there.
Most of the people you mentioned wouldn't risk their money for something like moral values so they haven't left X. A large number of interesting, less self motivated people have migrated already.
I mentioned some global accounts that are very generic, but I do follow some folks from my country (India) who share valuable content for my field of work.
Such content doesn't seem possible on other platforms. FB is dead here. Insta is only images/videos. Threads is a no-no. I don't know any alternatives as of yet where my network is active.
> Which platform provides the same network effect?
None, obviously - every network is unique. However, that doesn't contradict the premise. If one accepts that continuing to use twitter makes one "part of the problem", a desire to read PG's tweets doesn't seem like a meaningful justification. In my view, the only justification is "I don't care how twitter operates" or "I think twitter's new mission is good".
I mean, I suppose it really depends on what you want out of a social network. Some combo of mastodon and bluesky is fine for me, but then I didn't follow any of those people in the first place.
If you want celeb VCs, then, yeah, you're probably stuck with Twitter. Most people don't, though.
Makes sense. What other platforms do you know where we can get access to the network of entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, governments, and authors? I am considering text-based social apps only.
I've never been quite sure what people mean when they say this.
> governments
An increasing number of governments, government agencies and politicians have presence on Bluesky or Mastodon or both. The EC has its _own mastodon instance_ (though, confusingly, some EC agencies are on other instances, or are just on bluesky).
BTW if I may clarify, by thought leader, I mean people who are leaders or popular figures in a particular industry, whose voices matter and shapes up that domain.
Think of Sam Altman for AI, Marc Andreessen for VC, Andrew Huberman for Mental Health, and figures like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Naval Ravikant, etc.
At this point you're actively contributing to the death of free speech if you're still active on X in any way. There are no excuses to use it still if you have any sort of functional moral compass.
Usually, posting on Twitter or quitting it has a very tiny, almost imperceptible effect on the larger world and it's certainly not something to get worked up about.
That's reversing the argument. I'm not saying quitting X is bad for X, I'm saying quitting X is good for you. Nobody's completely immune to whatever that sociological experiment is turning into and staying on X is likely to influence your ethics, morals and standards in an objectively negative way.
Even personally, you couldn't possibly know whether it's positive or negative for a random stranger on the Internet, because it depends on how much they use it and what they use it for.
For example, keeping a Twitter account in case someone wants to contact you seems pretty harmless.
Well, sure, if you're exceptionally picky about non-normative use cases you can probably find a use for it that is not harmful to the average person. But you're doing a lot of heavy lifting already to justify a positive use case (contacting a person you apparently have no other way of reaching, which isn't in the top 3 of primary use cases for X). Anyway, I was speaking in the aggregate. X (so, post Elon) has been bad for society as a whole and if that's not an objective statement then it is at least close enough to make no difference. I suspect any arguments to use it anyway probably boil down "but...I like it". And since we live in a free world that's a good enough argument to have. It is not, however, harmless.
There is of course a connection between individual and aggregate effects (consider voting) and certainly the aggregate effects have been very bad lately.
But I think it's bad for your mental health to lose perspective about it. It all adds up, but it's 99.999% other people doing the adding, and unless you're in the right position to use leverage, you are mostly an observer of national and global events.
This means that morally, you don't need to feel responsible for big stuff like that - unless you see a way to end up in a position where you have that kind of leverage.
Using big, negative events as justification to scold random nearby individuals is mostly just making your local community more unpleasant.
Example: I do encourage people to vote, but I'm not going to worry about one voter more or less.
I think the only smaet business move for twitter right now is to ban all external links in posts, like Instagram and TikTok.
It was never much of a driver of traffic outside news and most news consumers that click have already left. And most news sources you'd want to click are behind paywalls The users that remain are more likely to watch Twitter videos and read those long-ass tweets, out of loyalty to Papa Elon.
Agreed. Most twitter posts I see anyway is stolen content without a single link to attribute it. Almost seems like posting a link to the source there is bad manners.
The logical explanation to me is that most of the Signal contacts shared tend to be for drugs or CSAM trading, so they went for the nuclear approach to make moderation easier.
Give me a break, open telegram, which is still in the clear for comrade musk and he publicly advocated for comrade durov and tell me how long it will take you to find anything from prostitution to weapons, drugs and human trafficking. It's all about punishing people who can question musk & co's authoritarian desires.
Feds can request info from Telegram. Additionally, Telegram has evolved past a simple messenger application. A massive amount of projects, most of them being crypto projects, use Telegram as their primary method of communication and announcements. It is also a very popular messenger in India and parts of Europe. They can block Signal because they can get away with it. If it means banning a bunch of CSAM traders and drug dealers, even if it includes a few users and privacy nerds, they're still winning in terms of easing up their moderation efforts without significant outcry. I believe this block will be lifted, even if Signal users a minority, they are a loud minority. This could have very well been a mistake.
Are you seriously this delusional? All other messengers offer e2e encryption in one form or another and the "feds" can't request shit. The only difference is that signal does it out of the box, instead of being buried 20 layers deep in menus and unlike the other messengers(including telegram) is not false advertising and is a crime in the civilized world under data protection laws. So much for free speech(which btw is not news when it comes to musk and anyone with a functioning brain). Comrade musk is in a position where he can mass execute newborn babies on Time square in broad daylight and his simps and entire government will praise him.
What I've said is from the perspective of a hypothetical moderation team at Twitter that has enacted this change, a change that will most likely be reversed, and was probably a mistake. Additionally, you are breaking the site's guidelines. This comment thread has very little to do with Elon Musk, please direct your rage somewhere else.
>This comment thread has very little to do with Elon Musk, please direct your rage somewhere else.
Backatcha.
If it's about twitter, specifically 'x', musk has a lot to do with it...somewhere in the region of 100%. It may be unfortunate, but that's just the way it is.
And he's the reason many stay away from it.
As another poster asked, why do you (continue to) use it?
Similarly, someone (else) is highly likely to mention a certain brand of vehicles but not me.
It's not rage, it's realism - musk is a classic example of extreme stalinism. If there are dozens of such instances on weekly basis and comrade musk is the one behind them, it's naive to think that this one isn't. Especially when it something that hurts his fragile ego. Which is not a secret anymore since plenty of his former employees have come forward. Hell, even the present day ones are coming forward but anonymously out of fear.
Can’t really tell what most of you are complaining about. You can say anything on X (short of doxing and inciting violence and things that are against the law), you can follow or block anyone on X.
If they ban Signal links, a competitor platform, that’s a shame, but whatever you say on Signal you can say on X instead.
Seems like some people think a “free speech platform” would be some sort of moderated debating space where opinions you dislike are silenced on your behalf and the downstream political ramifications are things that you personally enjoy, or else it’s not free speech but “fascism” (lol).
Somehow I don’t believe this, it is too much out of character, even if it fits so nicely with how we want to see Elon. Did anyone here actually confirm this? I never used Twitter nor X or id check myself.
sure, use the goog's to site-search twitter.com and signal.me, here's one: https://x.com/harris/status/1764683829455843464 and it says the malware after you click the obfuscated signal.me url
edit:
the url's are still visible in the mouse-over text popup, and the obfuscated site-redirection url does have the url in the address bar - but only time will tell before those vanish
honestly, any site that visibly displays one url as a hyperlink (underlines ect) and links to another site is practicing in malware style link hijacking. stop using those sites
I'm not defending Twitter or their policy in any way (disclaimer: I left Twitter the moment Elmo took over. I despise his hypocrisy and his fascist ideas)
But this could be a "legitimate f-up". Normally, most of these unsafe-url protection and detection is automated in something with the scale of Twitter.
Just like URL-shorteners often are (were?) "seemingly randomly" banned, because a portion of the shared urls are pointing at malware/phishing/otherwise banned content, all urls from this shortener get banned. It may be that signal.me is simply picking up on amount of illegitimate links. Signal is clearly growing strong. Therefore signal.me links' are increasingly seen by Twitter. Most legitimate links, but the amount of illegitimate links will then also increase.
This would trigger an automated ban¹.
The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
¹ Especially if this automation isn't maintained properly, finetuned and kept being tweaked by teams of experts - many of which left or were layd off after the aquisition of Twitter.
I think you buried the lede in your footnote here. Even if it is just a mistake, it's a pretty avoidable one by having a human in the loop to review changes to start blocking URLs to such a commonly linked site. If he thinks that it's "efficient" not to retain enough people to be able to notice that URL fragments and hashtags use the same symbol, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an "office of government efficiency", much less in charge of it.
Humans aren’t in the loop for automated bans. That has no relationship to staffing size.
This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.
That same logic most definitely exists at well-staffed companies and the internet is full of stories of people getting screwed by these systems. Google sinking legit companies with no recourse, locking out Gmail users who had decades of their life there, etc.
> Humans aren’t in the loop for automated bans.
My point is that this _shouldn't_ have been purely automated, but having fewer people to review things forces more things to be automated.
Well, I worked on abuse for a few years and gave a tech talk on it at Twitter. You really do want these things to be fully automated for two reasons.
The first is that spammers automate so if you don't then they're always much faster. By the time your humans are paying attention and have made a decision it's too late, all the spam (scams, frauds, malware sites...) was already delivered. In the next spam run everything will have changed, so, decisions made by that point are useless.
The second is that your suggestion contains an unstated premise that the human evaluators would have somehow more information to work with than an automated system, or would reach a different decision. In reality they don't and wouldn't. URL reputation systems like this are triggered by spam attacks. For a certain window of time there's a high probability that any message containing a specific domain name will be flagged by users as spam, so the system short-circuits that and starts classifying all messages of unknown status containing a link to that domain as spam. This works well because spammers usually want their targets to visit a website.
So the human evaluators in this case will see a message like:
"URL domain signal.me has 67% chance of spam and rising, confirm block? Y/N"
and the humans will always press Y because obviously (a) it means that such a decision is right more often than it's wrong and (b) the domain name is normally meaningless anyway. The block will be removed a bit later once the spammers go away.
In this case, it's tempting to think that some human in a cheap labor country would somehow see this message and think "ah! signal.me! clearly a domain linked to the super cool Signal messenger, which I personally like, so I won't block it even though this might cause a lot of people to be victimized by criminals". But they wouldn't and shouldn't. The domain even looks phishy, it's quite surprising to learn that it's a real Signal linked domain.
I don't think you should block a major domain because of a spam spike. If you think the entire domain is compromised, then send in a human to look, otherwise focus on the accounts that are sending spam links.
signal.me probably isn't a major domain. These things work on probability. I use Signal (most people don't) and had never heard of this domain until now. It's likely a utility domain that doesn't appear in X messages often, so a single spammer is capable of overwhelming its good traffic in a single campaign. Whereas e.g. google.com has a lot of presence over a long period of time in non-spam messages so it'd take a huge spam campaign to overpower it.
Meanwhile thousands of users are receiving links to malware and phishing attacks while human raters are twiddling their thumbs.
The parent is correct, these systems should be automated. Automated systems can respond faster and more accurately than humans. Humans should only be involved to improve the system and correct any mistakes it makes after the fact.
Meanwhile thousands of users that depend on their links working see them still working.
If you want to prevent phishing links then you can't allow links in the first place. If you decide to allow links, then you need to add some stability to the system. Circumstantial reactions should not be fast. Banning a whole domain based on short term percentage is circumstantial.
Social media platforms shouldn't play internet police in the first place. We need to preserve our ability to communicate via impartial carries. I don't want the mailman to decide what letters I can send. I do not want the telephone company to decide what calls I can make. I don't want online replacements of them to make any such decisions either.
The problem isn't links to scam sites posted on X/whatever, the problem is the scam. That is something for the actual police, government agencies and ultimately legislators to handle. Go after the actual scammers. Go after countries harboring them. Don't sacrifice our freedoms for an "easy" out instead of doing real law enforcement.
You're framing this as an XY problem, but it isn't really an XY problem.
In XY problems the problem solver has the ability to solve the root problem instead of the presented one.
However, X has zero ability to go into the jungles of Myanmar and fight off the armed militias which are paid to protect the compounds of literally thousands of scammers.
What you are arguing for is corporate vigilantism. Not having the ability or authority to do things properly does not entitle you do enact your own vision of justice, and it definitely does not protect you from criticism when your "solution" ends up having negative consequences for innocent people.
X can't stop the scammers, they can only block them or ignore them.
99% of the public would prefer they block them than overlook them, and you're out of touch if you think otherwise.
The trick I imagine is to categorize users by how established they are then block links by domain and user level. Sometimes spammers will mature accounts first but it is considerably more work. Creating a lot of fresh accounts is much easier.
> This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.
And rightfully so. Despite being discussed a lot here, Signal is not very popular or well-known. Even TFA felt the need to start by explaining what Signal is. TFA then adds:
“This request looks like it might be automated” reads another prompt. “To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now. Please try again later.”
And if signal.me is being used for automated spam, automated attacks require automated solutions.
> The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
That would indeed be concerning. (And maybe illegal?) But is it anything more than an unfounded accusation?
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You might be onto something, I noticed that all the banned links were in the format:
https://signal.me/#eu/fdy5h1miMifXa...
The URL hash (the part after #) is often not considered by automated systems to be a part of URL that's meaningful, because hash is normally only used for addressing parts of the website that was loaded based on the previous part of the URL. If a particular Signal.me link was flagged for whatever legitimate reason (contained malware or illegal content) it's entirely reasonable that an automated system would strip the hash and block the whole domain (because the path part in this URL is just "/" and nothing else).
It'll be interesting to see whether they address and reverse it. If not, then we can be fairly sure this was intentional.
You can actually post links of the form https://signal.me/asdf. But https://signal.me/#asdf is blocked. That supports you point of view, I guess?
If you can post links in the form of signal.me/asdf then yes, this reinforces my point that they've probably automatically flagged the top-level domain because of how these /#me links are constructed by Signal.
Or they just did a poor job of implementing the block on signal links
The purpose of a system is what it does.
After a review, the program works as coded.
"The purpose of a system is what it does."
This is only true for systems that works perfectly. If the implementation if flawed, the system can do something different from its purpose.
Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a shorthand statement that comes out of the study of complex, human-involved, systems that lack unitary design, often having many actors having a hand in creating over time, and mostly is a statement about the lack of analytical utility of any other concept of the purpose of a system, and it is about analyzing the operation of those systems over a window of time. A longer phrase from the person who coined it on the same topic and explaining it is, “There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”
> Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
It's more like claiming that there is no meaningful difference to any outside observer between a bug that is not eradicated over an extended time window and an intentional feature.
I disagree, because it's the opposite: the purpose of a system only aligns with what we want the purpose to be if the system works perfectly. Whatever we consider the purpose to be doesn't matter for the effect the system has on the world, because if we choose to keep the system alive as-is, it will keep doing the thing that we apparently don't want it to be doing. It's the same for a program - if you choose not to fix a bug, that bug is part of the functionality. It doesn't really matter to the user whether it's supposed to work differently, unless you actually fix the bug.
I do agree with you in cases where the system is being continually refined, but I don't think the quote talks about changing systems, only about constant ones.
Seems reductive.
But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
when a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view
> But in the absence of credible information to the contrary, it's not wrong.
In the sense it is intended, it is entirely correct. It is not a claim about what the intent of the people involved in the system is, it is a recognition that (1) intent doesn't really aggregate, and, more importantly, even if it did (2) intent that consistently fails, because of the nature of the system, to materialize into function doesn't matter.
> it's not wrong.
It's an elegant idea in it's simplicity, but there's zero reason to think this heuristic is more valid than any other, and in my personal experience this line of thinking is usually wrong.
What kinds of experiences have shown this heuristic to be not so useful to you?
People often can't see past their own hostility when figuring out what a system 'does'. And now they have have a clever sounding way to pretend that they're describing a system with detached reason, not just describing their attitude towards the system.
It's like a art review where a writer - completely unaware of what they're doing - talks only about the work, but says nothing about the work and opens a window into their soul. A lot of people don't even recognize when it happens in that context. It's even easier for a speaker to deceive a listener (and themselves) in the context of speaking on systems. Systems thinking is hard and almost everyone is terrible at it.
Your metaphor is not clear to me, but you seem to be asserting more of an empirical problem with people, not saying anything about the heuristic itself. It does not speak to how we know a system does what it does, or that we can even know I guess, so even if you have some kind of point here I don't see how it applies in this case.
"If we know what a system does, we know that it is its purpose": is that ok?
Is the useSkin parameter something you manually added? I am not logged in and when I navigate to another page the parameter (and with it the skin preference) disappears.
Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).
I just discovered that feature due to your mistake, so thank you!
For similarly newly enlightened people it's a feature of MediaWiki (which Wikipedia runs on) and there are five (plus two) themes selectable with ?useskin= values:
- timeless (as seen above): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=timeles...
- monobook (default 2004-2009): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=monoboo...
- vector (default 2010-2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=vector
- vector-2022 (desktop default 2022-): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=vector-...
- minerva (mobile default): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=minerva
- modern (delightedly dated, deprecated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=modern
- cologneblue (also ancient and anti-favored): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=cologne...
You can also choose a preferred skin when you log in and go to Preferences → Appearance.
That makes sense! I can see why you would prefer that skin. Out of curiosity, why use a plugin and not Wikipedia's appearance preferences[1]?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...
IIRC that requires having an account and being logged in, or maybe it just required a persistent cookie to remember the preference. Either way, my browser still aggressively clears cookies on exit so this solution was more permanent for me than the official solution.
It's a thought terminating cliche.
Systems thinking is much more nuanced and productive IMO. Drift Into Failure by Sidney Dekker is a good introduction.
> It's a thought terminating cliche.
It's the opposite; it's a heuristic for directing thought down useful pathways and escaping a rabbit hole of speculation on matters which makes no material difference, and which largely (for the kinds of systems it concerns) also involve pointless metaphysical wankery on the order of debating how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, because the kinds of systems it concerns (which are almost all real systems that matter) aren't guided by unitary intent, and pretty much any intent you want to appply probably can be found in some subset (and, conversely, also opposed by some subset) of the contributors to the system.
A more precise statement might be "'Purpose' is not a meaningful attribute of complex systems," but POSIWID works.
It's a good "razor" to strip away rationalizations and sophistry used to defend perverse or failed systems and ideas.
E.g. the "purpose" of fascism is nihilistic violence and the "purpose" of communism is rule by a bureaucratic elite that is somehow more equal than everyone else. All the sophistry is bullshit.
I dunno, you start doing that to capitalism people get big mad fast.
The "purpose" of capitalism is to "destroy the ecology of earth by being good at organizing stuff into metastasizing accumulation strategies"?
People don't like that at all, because it's simply pretentious to reduce any system to however you choose to smugly describe "what it does".
Three issues with believing this: 1. How long does it take to undo this though even if it might be an automated screwup?
2. Why it isn’t getting banned on other social networks and only on X?
3. Didn’t X previously block Substack and Mastodon URLs?
The thing is that, in a platform based on link sharing, it should be known which domains point to URL shorteners.
Even if you automate their handling, the algorithm should know that, if it bumps into a say signal.me, bit.ly or goo.gl URL, it should first do a GET and then apply the algorithm to whatever is provided in the Location header.
Not doing this for a widely used URL shortener like signal.me is just a show of technical incompetence.
As you point out, "honest mistake" can be used by sophisticated intentional aggressors to get away with their attacks.
For a long time, the advice was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." but aggressors evolve to fit their surroundings. When the population largely follows this rule, it becomes a competitive advantage to fake incompetence.
Perhaps both malice and incompetence should be treated the same, especially regarding punishment, until proven otherwise. After all, robust systems are designed in such a way that a single mistake can't cause harm. If somebody fails to design a system so that multiple mistakes (how many depends on cost and severity) have to stack up, then he should be held responsible.
This ties in with something that took me far too long to recognize: Trust has two pillars.
One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents.
Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the road and driving within the speed requirements. If only the founding fathers had recognized the need to have more information included in ballots so that negative campaigning wasn't as effective if not more effective than positive.
If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values, the smartest, most constructive candidates would have a better chance. Each district would have its own blend of 3-4 viable parties, and the nation would be all the healthier for it. (Side note: Yes, this is still one person one vote--you could imagine voting with a single checkbox for a single permutation of all possible assignments of the scores, as an intermediate form.)
Back to your point, though: Yes, incompetence and malice can have the same effect in the short term. The long term is what determines the difference, both in effect and our responses to it.
I have realized something quite related in my growing years of experience both interviewing and observing contributors to a technical/engineering organization
Q: Given two engineers, one incompetent and one malicious, how can you tell the difference between the incompetent engineer and the malicious engineer?
A: It doesn't matter.
> One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
That's a good point.
> If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values
Are you describing range/score voting?
I don't think avoiding duplicated values is necessary but it's pretty well known that score voting is the best system: https://rangevoting.org/
See the diagram at the bottom of the page describing voter regrets. Everybody at least somewhat interested in voting systems would prefer this, especially over plurality/FPTP which is the stupidest system possible. But a lot of people are clueless or willingly supporting a broken system.
There's also an explorable explanation by Nicky Case: https://ncase.me/ballot/
Sidenote: the fact you need to explain that expressing more information in one vote is still one vote shows how clueless people are. Obviously every vote has the same power to influence the result but some people will try to wear you down through misunderstood technicalities.
I like to add the statement, "Sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice."
"Sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from negligence"
FTFY :)
Funny, but no. The broader principle is that even if something could conceivably be "negligence", you eventually have to treat it as malice. The possibility of hiding malice in the guise of negligence is only one of the reasons that's true.
"Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?"
Didn't they wanted to beat each other up in the public?
I would have prefered that concept and not shady deals. (and while it is of course possible, I really doubt it in this case)
> Didn't they wanted to beat each other up in the public?
Isn't that like ultimate bro code for "I love you man"?
I will go with "legitimate f-up" too. Elon Musk has been pretty vocal about Signal in the past, mostly positively. If blocking Signal URLs has been intentional, he would have probably have mentioned it somewhere.
Shortened URLs are dubious by default. It is also possible that there really is a lot of spam/scam happening on Signal right now with signal.me URLs as an entry point. I mean, why not? Every messaging platform can be used for that, even more so if end-to-end encrypted as it makes spam detection harder. In fact, one of the first messages I received on Signal was an obvious scam from a user pretending to be Amazon.
Are links to mastodon still banned on twitter? Because that was a thing after Musk took over. So much for being a free speech absolutist.
You're making the mistake of taking a (communal + antagonistic) narcissist at face value. They are known to lie to suit their current goals and when those goals are achieved, they will lie to suit their new goals, whether the lies are congruent with each other or not.
This is a guy who:
- publicly called a rescuer "pedo guy", then falsely claimed it's a common insult from South Africa
- in a private email called him a "child rapist" and made up allegations of a 12 yo bride
- hired a PI to dig up dirt on him (which failed to corroborate any of his allegations)
Western society really needs to destigmatize discussion of mental illness, including diagnosing public personalities based on their behavior. Give them an opportunity to defend themselves, sure, but at some point, they become a danger to others (usually not to themselves) and should be required to seek treatment or be committed to a mental institution.
It allows links to bsky and Mastodon posts, but it doesn't auto-summarize bsky posts at the moment.
So they backed down, then did the same with signal. It makes negligence less likely though since it's a repeating occurrence.
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> A jury quite quickly ruled against defamation here
Yes, and? That changes nothing about Musk attacking a guy as "pedo" because he wanted to insert himself into the spotlight and went threw a fit when he was told off for that.
Also, as if professionals aren't saying the same thing, or as if he'd voluntarily undergo clinical diagnosis?
I find it worrying how often people try to pass off a court's decision as truth or in this case as proof of something entirely different.
I looked at the guy's link and it actually supports my view even more.
> A JDart, lawyer Alex Spiro explained, meant: a Joke that was badly received, therefore Deleted, with an Apology and then Responsive Tweets to move on from the matter. JDart.
> "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."
> "Stop defending child rapists."
Given he made up a 12 yo bride and hired a PI to dig up dirt, this also proves Musk lied to the court. I don't know why the jury gave the wrong verdict but I knew only about the original "pedo guy" tweet and the PI this morning and the deeper I dig, even into material posted by his supporters, the worse it gets.
> I don't know why the jury gave the wrong verdict
Get help dude. “I don’t know why a jury that was given more information than me made a different decision”.
If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition, and you are actually playing his game here. A "legitimate f-up" is the worst for a narcissist, as it would show he is nothing special, and incompetent.
That's why I go with the "legitimate f-up" explanation. There is no clear intent, it lacks flair, and it can just cause a mild controversy at best. Though I am still pissed that it turned out to be something about Elon Musk again and not Twitter/X. As much as a "nanomanager" he likes to call himself, he is not the only one working at Twitter/X, there are still people with some responsibilities there. It is not all a masterplan by Elon Musk.
As for banning links to other platforms like Mastodon, it was mentioned explicitly on the Twitter Support account that "we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter", followed by a list of platforms that included Mastodon, but not Signal. I don't think it is still the case, and I am not aware of anything similar regarding a ban on signal.me links.
> If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
That's like saying a liar will always lie. Real people do not have min-maxed traits, he has obviously non-zero self-control. If it's an action that benefits him in some way but knows will alienate his followers, he is perfectly capable of doing it in secret.
> A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition
Definition of which subtype?
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I never said it was a masterplan or his personal decision. Culture comes from the top (only people with very strong principles will resist and many most likely quit when he took over). All he needed to do is make visible his displeasure at (free) competitors in front of the right people.
He AFAIK also tweeted about not allowing free promotion for mastodon. Which again speaks volumes about how much he values freedom of speech. If a free (as in speech and beer) and decentralized platform can be a credible competitor to twitter - serve the same amount of users but be self repairing and resistant to takeovers - than that would be a win, even if his company would no longer be needed.
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If you take anything from this discussion, please at least look up different types of narcissism. Far too often people reduce them all to the "standard" overt archetype (usually even an overdone caricature of it) and it's hard for victims of other subtypes to convince others what they are dealing with.
I mean, this has been going on for years at this point (for instance see https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-...). At some point you have to stop extending the benefit of the doubt.
does the reason matter? regardless of whether it is a mistake or or censorship, the end result is the same.
The reason absolutely matter : a mistake can happen to anyone, and be fixed within a short time, while censorship is deliberate and will probably not be fixed
If a 'mistake' keeps happening for two years, then it is realistically not a mistake. This is not Musk!twitter's first 'mistake' of this nature, by a long shot.
Ok, I see what you mean and I agree with you, it would not be a first time a company pulls this kind of trick.
But in this case it's not that the reason does not matter, it's that the reason is censorship/bad faith competition, and is obfuscated behind a mistake
twitter is not anyone. you would expect a company of this size with millions of users to have checks and tests.
Legit question: How would you test something like this? It's not like you can have automated tests with million of random links. And these URLs are certainly not hardcoded.
Compare the results between the current code and the proposed version. Analyze what the new version blocks that the current one doesn't and vice versa. Have logging that shows which factor(s) were applied in the actions taken. Determine if the outcomes are in line with the intended goals.
This can be accomplished in a few ways. You could accumulate real URLs and build a test set that you can run in non-prod environments prior to deploy. You could also deploy the new version alongside the current version, both watching the live data, with the current version retaining enforcement power while the new version is in log-only mode.
In the case of automated systems that might create new actions in response to live traffic, anomaly detection can be used to look for significant changes in classification and/or rate of actions, spikes in actions against specific domains, etc.
Unit tests with a text fixture of every URL format you can think of, and every time one breaks your e.g. parser, you add it and some permutations to the list. Eventually, you have a vast file with tons of nasty edge cases to ensure that your e.g. parser is robust and reliable.
You cannot. Because these aren't simple "URL parsers" or such. They commonly use heuristics, bayesian logic and complex statistics (the word AI has become so conflated with LLMs and GPTs, and infected with politics, but it is a form of AI).
The output isn't reproducible, not even predictable. The whole idea of a system like this is that it adapts. If only by simply collecting more data to "do the stats on".
What systems like this need, is different layers towards which stuff is leveraged. This is how your spam folder in your mailbox works too (to some extend). Basically: if it's clearly spam, just /dev/null it, if its clearly not spam let it pass. Everything inbetween will be re-rated by another layer which then does the same etc. One or more of these layers can and should be humans. The actions of these humans then train the system. If gmail isn't certain something is spam, it'll deliver it to your spam folder, or maybe even to your inbox. For you to review and mark as ham or spam manually.
Knowing that Elon fired a lot of teams of humans that fact-checked, researched fake news, a lot of it manually, I'd not be surprised if exactly the "human layers" were simply removed. Leaving a system that's not tuned nor checked while running.
(Source: I've built spam/malware/bot etc detection for comment sections of large sites)
> It's not like you can have automated tests with million of random links.
Why not? They were already filtering millions of random links with the existing system. Saving some of those results to run regressions against before making changes to critical infrastructure should be trivial.
if you can't test it properly, then maybe you should not roll it out.
Do people in the US still use X? If yes, why? What keeps you on the platform (so the owner is a tiny step closer to destroying your own country)?
Same as every social platform, the network effect. The actual functionality really is secondary to the usage and culture of these. Very much affecting it, yes, but still secondary at the same time. Same with multiplayer games, hangout spots or third places, and the list goes on.
There are many circles where xitter is a default platform. For example, many anime-style nsfw artists publish there as a primary outlet, and many companies publish their most instant news there (like a service outage, change in the opening hours, things like that). That and many other such things are plenty to keep people there.
Stopped using X when Elon took over, and then finally deleted my account (which I had had for many years, was an early adopter of Twitter before it was highly popular) when Elon went full MAGA-nazi. No regrets.
Even the European Union still has X as their primary platform: https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en
OP meant people though, not organizations, which I assume are not that easy to migrate.
In the end it's a void question though. users will flock to where opinions resonate with theirs.
> If yes, why?
Some people are smart, insightful, and for some reason insist on only posting on X. I don't see the harm in continuing to follow them, even if I do wish they'd choose a different site to post on
(I expect a lot of people also have less techie friends and family that only post on a single social media site - I've had accounts all over the place trying to keep track of some old friends)
I guess those smart, insightful people are staying on X because
- their targeting audience are on X
- they are rich and do not really care what the platform owner does
- they will be very happy to join the owner when offered such opportunities
For people who are the target audience of those people, I guess
- they voted for this, and they are happily watching the federal gov falling apart
- they convinced themselves that X is the place to grow / learn from smart and insightful people (I don't think one has to be on it for more than 10 min a day to grow & learn, unless one is a crypto trader)
- they convinced themselves that it is really nothing political about using X
- They realize that the owners of other platforms that are actually used aren't any better, including the previous owners and leadership of Twitter.
- They reject outrage and cancel culture and refuse to engage in performative posturing that ultimatively achieves nothing.
Are you actually curious, or did you just want an excuse for your pre-scripted soap box rant?
It's a mix of indie artists, old friends, and a few people who still think it's worthwhile to try and do outreach, fight against disinformation, etc.. I'm really not sure why you feel such an urge to insult people you've never met, but it's extremely rude and does nothing productive.
> nothing political about using X
I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?
I dare say your grocery bill is responsible for supporting far more evil than anything I'm engaged in here.
"I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?"
This is basically my interaction from the beginning - a lurker account if you will, with occasional comments. And I rarely used it because I could just add easily pull up a profile and see a user's posts. But then the profile page presentation changed. Often, it seems to force a login, and if it doesn't, it randomizes the post order, so the latest posts are buried, and some random posts from the Twitter era are at the top.
So now we have to be logged in just to lurk. We're not seeing ads or driving conversations, but if I'm following users, I'm a point of incentivizing for them to stay. Small point? For sure, but I'm part of the aggregate. And even without following anyone, we're also a userbase metric for Twitter. We add to the daily active user count, monthly active user count, and now that everyone has to have an account to even view a profile's posts in chronological order, we're all are in that artifically grown general claim of user count.
No, we are not actively shoveling ad revenue at Musk, but our continued presence is definitely useful for him and X when they pitch the platform to advertisers or try to get a better ad rate. More active users > more ad reach, even if we'll never actually see the ad > more money for X > more money for Elon.
I haven't deleted that X account, but i don't visit on my own or log in anymore. I refuse to give him even the value of my interaction metrics.
Ironically, it's still the best platform in terms of reach for countering the propaganda of Elon and those like him.
It’s propped up by media companies, who have become addicted to the quick quote that a tweet provides. Any topic distilled down into 140 characters is always going to have multiple ways to interpret it, thus feeding the click bait pipeline with sufficient reactionary data.
It is a monument in the race to the bottom of “digestible/summarized content”.
I use it because it's one of a few platforms that's not censored to hell. Sure, it results in some unpleasant crap sometimes, but generally the feed is good.
Garbage platform run by garbage people.
its the only social media platform that isn't image and video heavy, can consistently have non-bot and non-fake and non-clickbait material of substance (if you curate who you you follow well), provides awesome filtering options out of the box for stuff like keywords (i literally had to make a browser extension to filter reddit crap out better), and has a lot of interesting people posting entertaining non-image stuff
caveat: i completely stay off anything political, i filter the absolute hell out of anything political, i block people constantly
i don't care that elon owns it because i don't buy into the outrageous hyperbole of him literally being the next hitler. i think elon is a deeply problematic person not especially more so than a million other business leaders and billionaires, his bullshit is just a lot more visible, and he accomplishes a lot of cool shit despite the bullshit.
not interested in debating people wanting to scream about elon and wont respond to comments about him, im just offering my unfiltered opinion about why I use X
> non-bot and non-fake and non-clickbait material of substance
This is if you actively stay off politics. Taking just a small step in and it suddenly turns into 4chan /pol/
> i think elon is a deeply problematic person not especially more so than a million other business leaders and billionaires, his bullshit is just a lot more visible
I don't disagree with you. But the big problem -- and the reason why people like me are so upset -- is that Elon is now in a much more powerful position than any of those other business leaders, a position in which he is directly impacting the lives of Americans whether they use his products or not. That's quite different than Bezos, Zuck, and all the rest. If he had stayed out of politics I wouldn't have much issue (I can choose not to use X, drive a Tesla, etc.)
mind sharing your feed?
i dont want to tie identities, basically just go follow actual researchers at frontier AI labs and close to nothing else and it'll be a close approximation
> Do people in the US still use X? If yes, why?
Are you seriously asking that question? If so, I suggest looking at the nov election results. The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election).
I feel only MAGA are happy & comfortable staying on X, voting for trump != maga
hence the question
It's not just about Trump though. I jumped ship the second Musk pushed the change to increase the weight of tweets made by a paying account. Also the first thing he did when he took over was cut the entire a11y team. Then he login-walled Twitter and broke the API. Reddit communities went crazy when the Reddit team paywalled their own API.
There's an incredibly long list of reasons to ditch x beyond musk's political activity
No, I’m suggesting the political supporters of Trump/Elon are the reason people use X.
If you are one of them or want to see the mainstream US right-wing zeitgeist, X is where it’s at. That alone is a massive reason for people to keep the app and an account.
Otherwise I agree, all of its utility as a general platform is gone otherwise.
quite frankly, your argument is dishonest, whether intentionally or not. I do not trust anyone repeating online, and no one else should. Especially since its repeated verbatim every time it comes up, its clear that this is "the play" and propaganda.
> I suggest looking at the nov election results.
What should we be looking at exactly? How the curiously 100% flipped swing states voted? I agree, theres much to look at there.
> The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election
That is an outright lie.
No one knew Musk would be running amok dismantling government institutions like a rabid dog, while side stepping all government processes. Project 2025 had something like a 6% approval rating. What is being "implemented" right now is Project 2025.
The US is in a constitutional crisis, and the saving money is a farce to permanently disable the US as a functioning body.
> No one knew Musk would be running amok dismantling government institutions like a rabid dog
Trump approval ratings are at a high. His supporters are clearly happy with what’s going on.
The question was quite simple, it was about why anyone would use X.
There are at least 60 million people that are happy with what is going on and like to be on X, which is an echo chamber of what they like.
Nothing about what I said is dishonest. This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for. Approval ratings don’t lie.
I don’t like what’s going on either, but this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
This is all ignoring that we live in a world almost completely dominated by disinformation.
The media have clearly aligned themselves to not report on whats actually happening. Right wing supporters get a carefully curated "view" of whats going on. Left wing media pushes outrage over ever minuscule detail while purposefully obfuscating whats really going on.
> This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for.
Trump supporters or republicans? Trump supporters at this point are rabid lunatics who post nothing but "librul tears" memes on facebook. They have no connection to reality. Republicans are trapped in an algorithmic cage, where everything might not be ideal, but gosh darn it, its for the good of the country!
> If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
I dont know how a rational, technologically inclined, person can scroll through X and not see that its 60% bots and propaganda. X is not reality, it is Elon's personal propaganda machine.
> this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
What is the political reality of the US right now? You're conflating the peoples' response to the information they're getting to the actual reality: The US government is being destroyed by a hostile group of actors, with most likely criminal motives.
The sky is still falling?
I especially like the part about the media not reporting on what's actually happening.
You are the frog sitting in the pot of water on the stove. All you are saying is that no one turned on the gas yet
> What is the political reality of the US right now? You're conflating the peoples' response to the information they're getting to the actual reality: The US government is being destroyed by a hostile group of actors, with most likely criminal motives.
You’re still not understanding what I’m saying. You can hand-wring about “the destruction of the government”. That part is fine because it’s complaints about actions by DOGE.
What isn’t fine is to pretend that nobody supports this. “All the republicans I know have regret, etc” is all bullshit. Not just Trump supporters, everyone who voted for him.
Trump approval ratings are at a high, they love the destruction.
That is the reality in the US, the right loathes the government, including “the moderate republicans” who voted for them. Like all Trump topics they don’t say it out loud, but the polls certainly indicate they are still on the MAGA train.
X gives you an unfiltered view of that side of the country. Take it or leave it.
i voted for that, i voted for the destruction of the federal government because it's bankrupting us by stealing our money
You think the US is bankrupting you by stealing your money? Specifically: USAID, FAA, Government Watchdog agencies, and whatever other group that has been dismantled by now? Those are the high priority agencies stealing our hard earned money?
Not the guys who all of a sudden have a 100 billion dollars since 2010?
I'm more concerned about the members of congress and senate that became multimillionares on a $174k/year salary.
Yes, to clarify, I do believe that.
I’m reminded of this line from Stewart Lee, when talking about the disillusioned British working class voting for radical political parties/causes:
“A protest vote for UKIP is like shitting your hotel bed as a protest against bad service, then realising you now have to sleep in a shitted bed.”
more like kicking out the staff after they convinced everyone that your house is a hotel that they own and operate
Still a better solution than to keep voting for parties that actively work against their constituents' interests. Unless those parties themselves change, the only alternative is violent revolution and and that is going to be a lot messier than a shitted bed.
Yes, but that's talking about radical political causes.
Do you expect that money will be worth very much after the entity that issues it is destroyed?
the people who ensure government is broken and stealing from you are now in charge. they recently requested $4.3 trillion in deficit spending for tax cuts and the dissolution of medicaid.
This aspect of America has always struck me as the most bizarre: the most vicious enemies of the American state are Americans.
I don’t think this is true. The world has plenty of anti-American sentiment, most of it well-deserved. What is unique about the phenomenon you describe is that Americans are extraordinarily misinformed and misguided about their own government and everything it does for them. This makes them particularly cynical.
We have Reagan to thank for it.
This is hardly bizzare but how governments everywhere work. People in power are not benevolent out of the goodness of their hearts but because the people from whom they derive their power - the population in a democratic state - continuously fight against overreach of their powers.
And it's not like this is a one-sided conflicts. Governments are actively working to suppress their citizens from standing up to them - by restricting free speech that would allow those citizens to organize, by trying to shape the thoughts of their citizens through various forms of propaganda and ultimately by doing everything they can to retain the state's monopoly on violence.
The thing is, this kind of anarcho-libertarianism is barely recognizable in Europe, or belongs to fringe left movements. In the US, it's much more right-coded and also tied to nationalism, while not being anti-military or anti-police.
"Defund the Federal government" is right-coded; "defund the police" is left-coded. No analysis connects the two.
> retain the state's monopoly on violence
Places like Italy know that when the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it gets messy ("years of lead").
You voted for a $4T increase in deficit as a tax gift for billionaires, to save you money?
Please explain the logic.
Then federated governments with local currencies, or what?
I saw your comment and saw it getting downvoted or flagged but it is useful to have a discussion so that others similarly inclined can potentially learn something that they obviously don't already understand. I reproduce that comment here in case it somehow disappears.
>i voted for that, i voted for the destruction of the federal government because it's bankrupting us by stealing our money
If you're concerned about the federal government bankrupting "us" by stealing our money then ask yourself why one of the first things that happened was the firing of OIG personnel. The Inspectors General and their OIG employees are the federal employees with the mandate to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in every federal program regardless of size. They have the power to audit any recipient of taxpayer monies and to work with US Attorney federal prosecutors to prosecute those who steal, waste, or otherwise violate plan guidelines in disbursing money. US Attorneys will not even take a case to trial unless agency auditors can document in detail that a crime has occurred and that crime fits within prosecutorial guidelines and a conviction is nearly guaranteed. To take a case that has any weaknesses risks wasting public money prosecuting a case you might not win. The whole point is to make sure you have the evidence that forces the defendant to either make restitution or to spend some time in a federal lock-up.
It's suspicious to me that the first thing they do is fire all the people who not only can watch, but who have the Congressional mandate to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse of federal programs that disburse money to individuals, small businesses, cities and other non-federal entities, non-profits, and corporations.
Though I am not a doctor, I do think that you should seriously work on your mental health. Start by changing your diet to include less kool-aid as the sugar high you're on can cause metabolic changes that lead to seriously bad health outcomes.
My spouse has spent a career in a federal department working to insure that the money Congress allocates to specific programs ends up being spent for purposes that are allowed under the guidelines of those federal programs. If you think the federal government is the one stealing your money you are sadly mistaken.
Federal programs are full of fraud but the fraud occurs at the recipient end, not within the department.
If you or anyone else are so concerned about where your tax money goes then the last agency entity that you would eliminate would be the one charged with insuring that all the monies in all the programs administered by the agency are disbursed lawfully according to plan guidelines which were approved by Congress. These people, as part of their job, have to read and internalize all the nuances, conflicts with existing programs, and contradictions in all the programs that they serve as watchdog over and it is their skills that allow federal prosecutors to take fraud cases to trial and to convict those who have abused federal programs for personal gain.
You voted for someone who has a documented history of fraudulent use of federal money who made it a point in both of his administrations to remove the specific persons and agencies that would guarantee oversight so that they can do anything without worrying about accountability. Internalize that.
> The Inspectors General and their OIG employees are the federal employees with the mandate to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in every federal program regardless of size.
There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru. Do you think the OIG was doing a good job?
I'm sure you heard that from a trustworthy person who provided clear evidence? Perhaps you could share some of that evidence?
Yes, the head of the department of government efficiency published this earlier today.
No link to their statement?
And please don't link to X. I don't have an account so I cannot read X threads, which is very surprising because the owner said he really wanted to make it so logged-out users could read X easily, but then changed his mind because he wanted to make more money. Sounds like a really untrustworthy person to me!
Ho hum.
Is it wise to credulousy believe everything your government tells you without source data?
The breakdown is readily available and even the Guardian read about the issue 10 years ago
You knew a decade ago that a million 150 year olds were collecting social security and nothing came of it?
Yes.
I'm gonna break this down into pieces that are easier for you to swallow.
>There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security...
Your powers of reasoning are taking a siesta if you believe this. It begs the question of how many people not only in America, but globally, are in the age group 150-159 years old? You claim that there are more than one million in the US alone.
I have worked with lots of demographic data and I have seen zero evidence that there are any people with a clinically detectable pulse on planet earth in that age group. How did you arrive at such an unreasonable number that is entirely unsupported by any demographic evidence available publicly?
The answer of course is that you musk've listened to or read about a post your newest right-wing jesus made on his misinformation network or at a white house back-patting session and, lacking any deductive reasoning skills of your own to help parse the post you just took it to be true since it was easier than thinking rationally about a collection of words. Minimum energy expended.
Though I have seen posts on HN addressing age issues of Social Security recipients, I haven't been following this part of the dysfunction very closely so I had to do some digging to try to understand where the idea that anyone might be that old came from.
It appears that musk posted a table of ages of recipients in the SS database where the Death field was set to FALSE implying that they might be alive and receiving benefits. He had some white house appearance where he stated that people over the age of 150 were receiving benefits.
Since all that happened the issue has been debated rigorously. It is likely not smart to conclude that anyone over the age of 150 is receiving SS benefits, anywhere. Instead it turns out that this is a known issue, detected in audits back in 2023 which were designed to detect and eliminate fraud in the benefits payment system at the SSA. The OIG auditor at the time, appointed by Trump during his first administration, Gail Ennis, took on the task of identifying and quantifying the problem of SS payees whose personal information in the SS databases implied an age greater than the maximum that could reasonably be expected. That audit report is here [0].
[0] https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
On completion of the audit, it was concluded that correcting the database would waste money and effort so instead, new methods were introduced to help eliminate payments to non-qualifying recipients through a couple of initiatives called "Do Not Pay" and "Earnings After Death".
Basically your DoGE people didn't discover anything that the SS administration had not already discovered but it does serve as rage bait for those like yourself who refuse to do any independent research to help themselves understand whether something they heard is true or false.
There's a bit of additional info that may also help you. The acting Inspector General of the SSA at the time, Gail Ennis, later retired from her position because of charges that she obstructed a DoJ investigation into her own ethics violations. [1] Her retirement letter if I read it right is right here. [2] She toots her own horn quite a bit and in reading that, which I assume you will since it is only a few short paragraphs with no disturbing content, she provides a short summary to the reader about how an OIG office operates. As a citizen it is useful to know that these people are on our side. She served under two presidents, being appointed by Trump and retained by Biden. That illustrates a commitment by both administrations to the work that the SSA-OIG was doing during her term.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2] https://oig.ssa.gov/news-releases/2024-06-05-letter-from-ssa...
Anyway, let's move on now while I still have you in the audience.
>...and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru.
I work on cars a lot so I had to put this into context. Seeing how you are feeding on the rage bait I decided that these comics were not trade school training for automotive techs in Peru. Lucky guess for me I'm sure.
This whole blurb of misinformation can evidently be attributed, of course, to the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in an interview after USAID was shuttered, [3] evidently got some facts crossed in her memory banks causing some people in the audience to see red again and shout at the sky about government waste in USAID programs. According to reports by FactCheck.org [4] the claims that she made about USAID's funding of several things were false in 3 of 4 claims.
Only one of the projects was funded by USAID, the others were funded by the US Dept of State, including the comic book.
If you dig into that looking for facts you will discover that not only did the comic book in question not have a trans character but it won an award in Peru. The comic book designer ultimately produced three comics for distribution in Peru, none of which used transsexual characters though the second one did have a gay guy as the main character hero at the request of the State Department. The total cost of this comic edition is documented here [5] but in case you are already burnt out with this wall of words, it cost $32000, and was paid to the Florida artist who did the work of producing the three comics for the DoS.
[3] https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/white-ho...
[4] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/sorting-out-the-facts-on-w...
[5] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_SPE50022CA0009_19...
>Do you think the OIG was doing a good job?
At this point I think it is obvious to anyone still reading where each of our individual biases lay.
As an arm of government charged by Congress with detecting fraud, waste, and abuse of federal money disbursements through any agency that dispenses money I think that OIGs are a vital component for accountability in federal programs. They have the responsibility and the ability to investigate anyone in their department at any level who receives federal money for any purpose. That includes the department heads and all staff under them, not just members of the general public, etc.
You will never know of some of the things that OIG auditors uncover that are never prosecuted though evidence to convict is there. In many cases, the subject being investigated has deep connections that shield them from accountability. In other cases the recoverable amount of fraud and waste does not meet a threshold for prosecution and the result is that the person or group committing the fraud loses their position and in the future is barred from any positions that would allow them access to federal funds.
The OIG and all the audit staff are frequently working simultaneously on multiple audits within their assigned regions. Each person involved must learn and know all of the program guidelines and in some cases the programs being audited have been operating for more than a decade and the program has received money in several budget phases with each infusion potentially having a different set of guidelines based on how and what Congress decided to allocate.
All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas. You're hungry for something delicious but will take whatever the other little fish around you leave. On the surface of this Sea of Misinformation we find fishermen, trolling for hungry fishies, their hooks securing morsels of rage bait knowing this is a preferred delicacy guaranteed to send their gullible quarry into a feeding frenzy.
It may be too late for you to escape the baited hook as it appears that the angler has already set the hook and landed you.
Great work. I'm sure the brain-rotted OP will be back to regurgitate whatever he read on twitter and completely ignore your debunking.
Thanks for this reply.
I think the part that tells the real story here that I forgot to add in that wall of text most won't read is that each of those links came up in the first 5 results for the simple searches I ran on DDG.
If any effort had been expended at all in attempting to understand whether anything in musk's post was accurate then they would easily have been able to find several high quality breakdowns from non-partisan sites.
Instead they made a choice to echo something, incorrectly too, that they thought they read somewhere. Didn't even provide a link.
I think if HN was to modify any rules that would improve the quality of discussions on contentious subjects that frequently devolve into unproductive political arguments then the posting rule could be changed to require posting of links to arguments that you are trying to make so that everyone can see the supporting data behind your beliefs and judge for themselves whether they should change their own beliefs or poke fun at the poster for believing nonsense.
Back when reddit was still a one-pager they tried to maintain a standard of backing up claims with data to support the claims. Over the years it has devolved into the site we have today where most posters do as this guy did and post simple one line replies to everything.
It's a hit and run way of trying to bring someone around to your way of thinking without giving them a reason to do so.
> On completion of the audit, it was concluded that correcting the database would waste money and effort so instead, new methods were introduced to help eliminate payments to non-qualifying recipients through a couple of initiatives called "Do Not Pay" and "Earnings After Death".
Thanks, that's a useful addition to the conversation.
> All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas.
If we're doing insults, which seems to be the new law on HN, you seem like a cunt.
>If we're doing insults, which seems to be the new law on HN, you seem like a cunt.
That's pretty funny. I can assure you that as someone who spent 40 years working in the oil and gas industry your insult looks really green to me.
Thanks for jumping on the recycling initiative.
In our work profanity is a tool wielded by everyone for any situation whether it seems appropriate or not. We invent new insults and epithets instead of recycling all these ancients. We're at the forefront of insult technology every time a new worm shows up at the wellsite or a situation goes from rosy to catastrophic.
It makes the day go by, and so here I just made it through another 15 minutes with a chuckle.
Thanks.
EDIT: The more I think about it, reminiscing about all those glory days out in the oil patch, with that simple insult you may have just qualified as a potential friend. You're gonna need to up your game a bit though since most of my friends have multi-syllable nicknames for me, and I for them.
If you're in Texas maybe we could go get some ribs somewhere sometime and talk about things unrelated to right-wing jesus and his disciples.
In the meantime, since I know you must be bored from reading all this, here's a comic for you to enjoy. [0]
[0]https://www.scribd.com/document/825254795/The-Power-of-Educa...
Of course it's the one the DoS spent $32000 on. I figured you were unlikely to follow any of the links in the references I gave.
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You must be a redditor with this abbreviated, low quality reply. You didn't even include the part of the post that you consider to be the advice that I should take.
I hope you're not a life coach because there is clear evidence here of a deficiency in your skillsets.
= Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face
This make me curious about exactly what "signal.me" links were all about. The details appear to be available here:
* https://signal.miraheze.org/wiki/Signal.me_URLs
* https://signal.miraheze.org/wiki/Usernames#Username_links
Signal.me links are just a way to easily send either a phone number or user name to someone else. No cryptographic identity. No protection of the phone number or user name. So to get around the ban a Signal user could simply send their phone number or user name over Twitter/X.
It seems that the encrypted username form does provide some identity protection in that it can be cancelled, but for as long as it is active it appears that someone can just ask the Signal server what the associated user name is.
The people involved probably should not be using Twitter/X for this sort of thing in the first place. Mastodon comes to mind as an alternative, but really, anything else.
signal.me links are used to join (and advertise) Signal groups
No. Signal groups are advertised with signal.group URLs.
Which, it is worth noting, are not blocked. I checked.
OK, I couldn't find any specific documentation just floating around about group links. It appears that the base64 value is specific to the group and is only exposed through the link. I didn't see any way to munge the "signal.me" domain and fix it again. So for groups Twitter/X seems to have won.
> The people involved probably should not be using Twitter/X for this sort of thing in the first place.
Usernames don't necessarily link someone with their real identity, and phone numbers can be hidden.
This isn't the weirdest apology I've ever heard for the behavior of Elon Musk and X's censorship policies, but it's definitely in the top 5.
Phone numbers and usernames are sent in the clear in signal.me links. So in this particular case, they can't be hidden. Perhaps it is not a good idea to post such links on a hostile system.
GP isn't wrong - if you post a username link then you have not revealed your phone number.
Particularly ironic given that DOGE is reported to be using Signal as its comms platform. [1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873
That's interesting, given that as an official government department they're subject to FOIA requests and as such have an obligation to persist their documentation.
They declared that the DOGE stuff is official presidential records and thus not subject to FOIA.
https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-doge-records-public-inf...
Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the right one: they're fascists and the rules are not applicable to them.
> They declared that the DOGE stuff is official presidential records and thus not subject to FOIA.
which is pretty absurd and you would need to have a really corrupt court IMHO for this to hold up
The same one that declared that presidents are above the law and that the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment is basically meaningless? The one that slow-walked a bunch of cases related to presidential crimes?
I don't think it's actually hopeless - they have constrained him at times. But I would also avoid getting my hopes up.
Presidential Records Act is quite strong about capturing all records & releasing them. But after a 5 year delay.
During Trump 1 there was quite a habit of ripping up papers by the president. So there were some dudes hired to go take the ripped up papers and tape them back together. Really looking forwards to seeing some of those next year! https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers-filin...
I suspect that what's happening is flagrantly incredibly evil & immoral, is a heinous crime against democracy. The people need to be ae to see what governments do and are, need to have some chance to learn and see what their governments really do. My dear is that the Presidential Records Act is being thrown out the window by these folks, that we will have nearly no record of so much of what this administration & it's "advisors" (Musk) do.
The National Archives and Records Administration doesn't currently have an Archivist. Trump fired the previous head a week and a half ago. The deputy head then retired over the weekend. It is currently sort of headed by Marco Rubio. He put Jim Byron, the President & CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation in charge of it part time.
Trump seems to have it out for NARA since they originally reported the missing classified documents that Trump refused to return. I would not expect records to be kept in the manner they have been in previous administrations.
If you think they're going to follow FOIA law I have a bridge to sell you.
* Unless you're secretary of state.
What happened in that case, and do you believe the same standard should be applied currently?
In that case a corrupt politician with lots to hide was able to keep their crimes hidden using the secret service (who defended her house). I do not think that standard should be applied to anyone, ever.
She went before Congress for to testify for 11 hours under oath, as a point of fact. I feel like that would be a reasonable next step.
The FBI investigation https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-dir... is at odds with your description. It appears nothing was as anywhere as severe as the recent intelligence breach of when DOGE posted NOFORN material publicly (https://abcnews.go.com/US/agency-data-shared-doge-online-spa...)
Elon personally uses Signal, I would assume this is a legitimate mistake which will be fixed soon if it hasn't already
I can’t edit the original comment but it looks like sharing signal links is back, but some now have a spam warning. https://x.com/jeremiahdjohns/status/1891554583756845526?s=46
Pretty sure it's because literally all the signal.me links are the same when you remove the part after the #.
When you perform an HTTP(S) request you never provide the part after the # in the request URL, it's only interpreted by the web browser itself. It's likely that their antispam thing does the same and ignores the hash altogether.
————
Example of link (blocked): https://signal.me/#eu/P01wpUmC4nT2BBTwMrPAw7Nxcp81055tKHGbYw...
Without the hash (blocked): https://signal.me/
There is no blocking if you add any letters in the path (e.g. “abc”): https://signal.me/abc#eu/P01wpUmC4nT2BBTwMrPAw7Nxcp81055tKHG...
I had some time in the morning so built a simple site to share Signal links on X:
https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app
If you think someone might benefit from it, please share. Also, spam if you have feedback!
This comment keeps going up and then getting downvoted -- if you have time to leave some feedback - I'd appreciate it.
People already started using this thing, so if there's an issue with it, I'd like to respond/apply fixes if needed.
On a similar note: the Swedish armed forces just came out and recommended that people working for the military should use signal for their calls and messages for things that are not classified in any of the higher classifications.
https://cornucopia.se/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-infor-krav-pa-s... (Swedish)
This free speech absolutism thing is brutal.
Free speech for thee but not for me.
Why, does Musk have the ability to post signal links on X with no issues?
Some free speech is more free than some free speech. /s
I was curious because over here, the ownership of signal.me is pretty much obscured (behind Cloudflare and WHOIS privacy). Doing this for infrastructure domains is not a good idea because it encourages persistent overblocking because it makes manual review more difficult. At least there is official documentation mentioning signal.me: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320291-Fi...
(The page is in the Bing index, but it seems "signal.me" is treated as a stop word by the search engine.)
And Vance is lecturing the EU about free speech. The EU might be very happy with blocking encrypted services, just as Musk is.
Nobody is required to use X. False dichotomy
The US is playing with fire. Most of Wall Street's valuation is at stake.
That is the point, crash the economy and pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar.
Tariff the world, devalue the dollar
Wallstreet is a tumor, but the scope of this biopsy seems to be all wrong.
And few days ago JD Vance went to Munich to say to EU leaders that they "there is a problem of freedom of speech in Europe"...
There obviously are problems with freedom of speech in Europe.
Everyone knows it.
Tell me more. I live here and have never encountered a situation where I was not allowed to express my opinions in a systematic way. So I don't know but would be delighted to
Are we counting the UK? Because that one's really easy to find examples of - just google "UK arresting protestors", maybe throw in "Queen" or "Royal". They really, really don't like the anti-monarchists.
You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.
There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..
The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.
This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.
It might simply mean your opinions fall in the narrow band of views that are permitted to be expressed. It proves nothing about freedom of speech in general.
Even in North Korea, people are allowed to freely express their love for their Dear Leader. Those who express a different view are swiftly disposed of. If you love Dear Leader you could live your entire life believing that you and everyone else has free speech, simply because you have never encountered evidence to the contrary.
AfD is a Nazi party, and nobody's silencing them, despite overwhelming opposition in all EU countries. If you listen to EU parliament speeches, there's all kinds of radical political views being shared during debates. Vance came to Europe to peddle US culture wars and got laughed out.
Alice Weidel is in almost every talk show I watch, was invited to almost every major debate and everyone is doing a great job of normalizing the AfD. Every time someone from there complains about not being allowed to say what they want it's on a stage with a mic in hand and them being allowed to say whatever they want. So while I don't really agree on the "Nazi" part they're definitely not silenced. And apparently no one in this thread can tell me what freedom I'm missing despite claiming I do. Just give me some statistic or some example of systematic suppression of speech if it's that obvious to anyone but me
The established political parties in Germany are in fact trying to silence the AfD - precisely because they are gaining support amongs the population that is no longer represented by the established parties.
No, that's the story the AfD tells everyone. In reality it's because the AfD isn't compatible with our constitution and democracy.
My, this narrative sounds familiar... Almost like it's been peddled in Germany before, 80 years ago.
What "narrative"?
A disillusioned and unrepresentated population being mopped up by a right-wing populist political party in Germany. This is exactly how the Nazi party took power. It's what just happened in America. It pays to know your history.
> AfD is a Nazi party.
It feels inappropriate that progressives have decided that it's okay to use Nazi as a generic insult for mainstream right wing parties. It waters down the true horrors of the Nazi party.
Anyway, as to censorship coming from Germany:
"Germany submits the highest number of legal demands for user data to X within the European Union, with ~87% of these requests targeting speech-related offenses. "
https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1891593848771707233
It's more complicated than that, in this case. They aren't simply insulting AfD by calling it a Nazi party. There is some truth to it, in that AfD almost certainly has Nazis in it. A prominent AfD member has used the phrase "all for Germany" that was also used by the Nazis. They also openly say that they want to take down holocaust memorials and stop talking about it.
Personally, I think that the full accusation of Nazism should be reserved for when it's really needed. But I assume that Germans know better than I do how to go about keeping Nazis out of their country.
Your source is Elon Musk. AfD is not just "a mainstream right-wing party".
Sure it is. Their policies are comparable to the those of the current trump administration.
That says a lot about the current Trump administration, not the other way around.
Germany is also the biggest market in the EU. Without actual numbers this proves nothing. And with a platform that primarily relies on speech I struggle to come up with a huge list of non-speech-related offenses that could come up. Also, we're taking about a platform owned by an heavily opinionated US gov official here, come on...
AfD the extreme right wing nazi party helmed by a lesbian that is married to a brown woman?
Are you sure you're using all of these words correctly?
Sure, and Elon Musk couldn't have done a Nazi salute twice, because he photographed himself looking bummed out at Auschwitz. What does it take for you to call spade a spade?
Yes, they are.
https://extremismterms.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/altern...
AFAIK they don't terribly mind what Israel is doing in Gaza, and even the ADL has that page about them.
There is a lot more if you are not convinced. At any rate Alice Weidel being lesbian means as much as some of the original Nazi leadership being homosexual, nothing. Homosexuality isn't a taboo anymore, holocaust revisionism is. Those to whom it isn't are anathema to those to whom it is.
That's great and all, but last time I checked I didn't live in a country with a grand leader. Germany's chancellor is looking at loosing an election in less than a week. So I ask again, and I'm actually serious about this question: What opinion am I not allowed to express? (Except insults and denying the death of 6 million Jews)
And I have never been charged with a murder so we can conclude that murder is in fact allowed.
This is cute because it needs the UK to not be in EU in order to not immediately get a guffaw.
I think the French might have some quibbles about how free their speech is.
The US ranks #55 in press freedom, all positions in the top 10 are EU countries.
You never said it explicitly but you are referencing the French Reporters sans frontières (RSF) ranking, which is a European organization which is obviously predisposed to rank European countries highly.
I find their ranking highly suspect because they put the Netherlands at number #4, one of the highest rankings, while in reality the press in the Netherlands is in a dire state: literally all newspapers of record are collectively owned by just two Belgian (not even Dutch) mega-corporations. Is this really one of the most free countries? It's like Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg together owned all newspapers in the US.
And the US is ranked suspiciously low, at #55, below a country like Belize. Belize! Look at what RSF itself writes about Belize:
> With no daily newspapers, the pool of media outlets is small, and of those considered mainstream, some are supportive of political parties, even when privately owned. Independent media are scarce and access to funding is limited. Most of the advertising funds that media publishers rely on come from the government and their distribution are often dependent on the party in power.
Am I supposed to take it seriously that this is better than the US? That Belizeans have access to a more free press than Americans do? It seems more plausible the ranking is bogus.
You picked the wrong country. I'm from the Netherlands and it's not in a dire state.
It has newspapers across the spectrum. Volkskrant and Parool are left-wing, AD is centrist, Telegraaf is center-right. To name a few. This reflects our political system which is a distribution rather than a binary system.
In addition, there's state-owned news that reports very factually, with little to no bias in any direction.
We also have excellent deep journalism, my favorite being Follow The Money: https://www.ftm.nl/
EU edition: https://www.ftm.eu/articles
...the type of journalism the entire world needs.
The Netherlands has no hard-right or alt-right newspapers or TV channels. Not because it's not allowed, we just don't have the equivalent of Fox.
In my view, this is a blessing. It's not because I'm left wing. I'm center-right. Alt-right with their misinformation and alternative facts are an attack on information itself. It's not just "another view", it undermines reality itself.
And for the record, we have no hard-left in mainstream media either. Not because it's not allowed, it just doesn't work over here.
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Shoshana Zuboff was so right it is scary. The name ('Surveillance Capitalism') put me on the wrong foot as I already knew about the surveillance part. But what I found most scary was the part where the tech companies turned from surveillance to influence. Once you have these billions of people using only your platform to view the world, it is trivial alter their view of the world. And thereby changing policital currents, policies, opinions.... anything.
It is like the Bible before Martin Luther translated it into German, and all christians just had to accept blindly that whatever the priests said was written in the bible actually was. Most humans now have so little input other than whatever priests they follow we might as well be back in the dark ages.
The dark ages is the plan according to Curtis Yarvin, their “prophet”.
A network of techno-feudal states run by a joint-stock corporation headed by a CEO with absolute power. Like Hunger Games, fancy dress, bad tans, and all.
It’s really lame and shortsighted. Never mind philosophically broken.
When will they start to block wikipedia links?
Ironically, three years ago, Musk encouraged the use of Signal and tweeted: "Use Signal", https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153
Edit:
In my opinion, Elon Musk initially endorsed Signal because of its strong encryption, security, and commitment to privacy. Now, he's blocking it for those very same reasons—what a blatant double standard!
On a related note, one of the key advantages of the modern internet—and more specifically, social media—is that everything you say publicly is archived. This means that if you ever do a complete 180° on your claims or principles, it can easily come back to haunt you. So, it's always wise to be mindful of what you say and stay true to your values.
He may use Signal, but he does not want people on X to advertise their presence on any competing platforms. It is a childish and protectionist policy, and in no way align with his Free Speech® claims.
It was the same when URLs to Mastodon/Fediverse instances was banned on X, in an attempt to hamper the network effect for those who migrated. Meta does the same with Pixelfed these days, to hamper migration away from Instagram.
Elon and Mark are all for competition and free markets, but as soon as alternatives that can't be bought and controlled pops up, they outright ban any mention of it on their platforms.
It's probably just a spam filter going awry.
Signal links are odd, in that all the identifies are after the #, so to a spam filter this just looks like a single url, https://signal.me , being sent out in mass.
I run a service that does the decryption in the client so it's links look the same to filters. It runs up1, a really old version. The links are all like http://example.com/#longhexhash
Don't the DOGE dweebs use Signal?
Though I think they were forced to stop.
On X, only the "Signal.me" links are blocked. Other types of Signal links, such as call links, group invite links, Signal.org links, and link previews, are not blocked on the platform. [From Mistral]
what does „from mistral“ mean in your comment?
It means he had the Mistral AI make that comment.
Remember the promises they made about Web 2.0 (interoperability, APIs, etc.)?
The stripped those promises from us, tried to flog memecoins to steal from us and now pushing AI garbage onto us.
Signal group chat links still work as do signal.org links. It's only signal.me links that are blocked.
So much for Elons "Free Speech"!
This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.
There never was any demand for free speech from him. He just wanted to advance his fascist agenda and used whatever means he had at his disposal.
While you’re correct as to his intentions, it’s still important to point out his hypocrisy as he called himself “a free speech absolutist,” and claimed to want Twitter to be part of that vision. He explicitly called left wing and right wing views as things he wants.
Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.
We really are living in a world where we were always at war with Eurasia. Musk shouted loudly to his followers his views on free speech and why he wanted to buy Twitter. And now, it’s like it never happened. This isn’t like a bias news outlet leaving out certain facts, this is Musk himself saying these things and people going along with it.
It’s bonkers to me.
Remember how he tried to get out of the twitter deal by claining there were too many bots?
How is the bot situation on twitter now?
I don’t think he ever wanted out of the deal. It was a way to keep the acquisition from being scrutinized too much.
I'm not sure you understand free speech. Free speech means he can make public threats to people without repercussions, doxx people when he feels like it, lie, and spread misinformation for personal gain. It means unbanning rule breakers, doxxers and harassers, as long as they're right-wing. Free speech does not extend to anyone who he personally disagrees with or dislikes, who will instead be banned from the platform.
Legal (first amendment) free speech certainly allows him to ban whoever he wants.
However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like.
These mental gymnastics are remarkable to see.
I think we’re all in agreement and the person you’re replying to is being sarcastic ;-)
It's pretty crazy. If you say something that offends him (like perhaps the financial abandonment of his kids) then you're banned.
Free speech eh.
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On the assumption you are acting in good faith, that is a very poor analogy.
I think a more apt one would be: Imagine asking for a shit-free meal, and you're served a meal with just a little bit of shit in it.
Except the meal is mostly shit. There's no free speech anywhere on Twitter. It's not even free-as-in-beer speech because you need a paid account for anyone to really see your tweets.
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Ok, lets get some things straight.
Musk has /claimed/ (repeatedly) that he is a free speech absolutist, and by extension that twitter is as well.
This is false: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...
I'm not clear on how you're defining edge cases here, and regardless, it doesnt matter.
"Sorry officer, those murders back there were just a few edge cases! I've publicly pledged to a murder free life!"
I see very few in this thread pretending anything
> Musk is dramatically more pro-speech than any other social media platform owner
X is blocking private messages on the basis of their content. Every competitor with E2E as even an option clears this bar handily.
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Musk is a self-professed "free speech absolutist".
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600?lang=en-GB...
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He belongs to these people that misunderstood freedom of opinion to mean that nobody gets to criticize their opinion.
No, he did not misunderstand. This is 100% malice.
Username checks out!
Go make a brand new Twitter account and check how "free" speech is.
Immediately you get one very specific "sect" of free speech.
What makes you say that? I've started using X recently and I would argue it's pretty free, you see a lot more range of opinions than on a site like reddit. Aggressively pro-trans posts come across my feed all the time, including some right-wing content
“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.”
Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.
The biggest problem with the term "Free Speech" is that almost everyone makes exceptions for things that they believe should be restricted/censored.
Therefore the only standard should be the legality of that speech in a particular country. In the US those things you put as exemptions are permitted. So pre-musk Twitter wasn't about free-speech as those exemptions are restrictions on speech that are greater than US law restricts (which isn't much tbh).
Generally you have a trade off on any of these platforms between what you can say without breaking terms of service and the popularity of that platform. Generally less popular platforms are less restrictive.
If you don't want your speech restricted, you should probably just go back to hosting your blog and using a mailing list.
I would argue it appeared after the Twitter purchase. Originally Twitter had been dying through excessive bans, now you can find major political influencers on both sides of the spectrum
> about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech
> about free speech
> fight hate speech
Do you realize how absurd you sound?
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I don't understand how your comment is relevant. It feels like word salad and does not appear to logically follow the PC. What is "truth to power"? Did those ex-intelligence officers survive the Musk purge? How does this all relate to the events of today?
The USAID revelation revealed how they were funded. Along with thousands of other news organizations domestically and globally.
You're still not making sense. Who is "they" here, USAID? What does your second sentence even mean? How "news organizations [are funded]"? I'm seriously unclear what you are trying to say.
USAID had thousands of premium subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. One such was for 8000 monthly subscriptions. I don't remember the publication with 8000 but the NYT also got money from USAID.
Not sure if that's what we're talking about here. For the record I am against that practice.
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Do you have any examples of left-wing disinfo that Twitter let spread previously?
It certainly does not come as a shock to him. He knows what he is doing.
The funny thing is if he was Russian he would be called an "oligarch" in every news piece. Since he's American he's an entrepreneur :)
Also how liberals were celebrating Elons "genius" just a decade ago will never not be funny to me, they also don't seem to mind Gates at all. I don't think they have much of a problem with oligarchy, they just want a liberal oligarchy instead.
You may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :)
Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.
But this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy".
You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.
Clarification: I am guessing you are using the liberal term from a "classic liberalism" sense (e.g. how it is used in Europe) and not the US version of the term, which generally refers to social liberalism and is often associated with Democrats? That changes some things.
Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.
Maybe news outlets were doing this but “liberals” at large were not.
Not a surprise to him, he doesn't care.
It's a mistake to treat people with mental disorders as having an internally consistent view of the world. Or as actually believing what they say.
They are paperclip optimizers, this one optimizing for worship and power. In other words he has the antagonistic and communal subtypes: https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-diso...
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No see all speech is free but some speech is more free than others.
/s
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> You can still say anything you like on X
You cannot even say the word "cisgender" on X.
Looks like you can...
https://x.com/MissinN0/status/1891488896963252656
You have to search that word specifically to find those posts, they're otherwise algorithmically censored from timelines.
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Sure, no one can see it due to the censorship but you can say it into the void unseen which is of course what you meant.
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You can't criticize Elon on X...
Lol, is this statement serious ? People are openly calling out for his assassination on X, calling him any number of insults, etc.
Elon literally said:
"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
Another lie in the long list of lies from his mouth.
Have you been on Twitter recently? 50% of it loves Musk, the other 50% openly hate him and abuse him. If what people on here are saying was true, those accounts publicly insulting him would be blocked by now.
Except that... They are? Of course not all of them, but those with enough reach or power to truly harm his reputation - such as journalists investigating him. He's not disappearing "Mark0394893838444" for saying "Musk is a dummy lol" but what does that proves?
Meanwhile Musk has already banned the accounts of journalists for the crime of being too critical of him (on top of frivolous lawsuits clearly aimed at draining their money). The proof is not "how many people he hasn't banned" but "how many he has".
> but what does that proves?
That proves that its ok to criticise Musk on Twitter/X, which is what the OP was denying.
All the people he banned for criticizing him say otherwise.
People keep saying this yet there are countless people on X critisizing Musk freely, so it must be fine to criticise Musk on X. I can provide examples and already have done. Can you?
If I pretend to be fine with people criticizing me, that claims fails as soon as I block/ban/throttle one (1) person for doing that.
As long as criticism was 100% the reason for the ban and can be proved it wasnt related to anything else at all.
A nice dodge, given that Twitter is completely non-transparent as for the reasons of a ban - not to say anything about throttling/shadowbanning.
An impossibly high bar. So we just take people at their word then?
How does the justice system work in figuring out these things?
You are using Musk as a source to defend Musk. Do you realize why that's not a good source?
No not in this case. Im using a quote from Musk to defend something someone made up about him. Theres no conflict of truth because theirs was an opinion, mine is a fact.
Heres a random post from X wishing he could shoot Musk and his kid
https://x.com/cerpin415/status/1889763808874258448
What part of this is not allowed on X?
Not only can you criticize him, but he gets hit with community notes just like everybody else
You don't use X much do you?
Of course, since I was banned for criticizing Elon Musk.
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Except that Musk claims to be a "free speech absolutist", and part of the noise he made around buying Twitter was to stop censorship.
Not that it's news that he's a hypocrite.
When has Signal called for a violent overthrow of the US government?
Good of you to admit that Musk is as bad as what you hated in the past.
I would even argue he's worse.
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> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform.
Correct. It still makes him a liar, given what he claimed before the purchase to have meant:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/06/elon-musk...
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376
Plus this pair:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/musk-threatens-to-sue-adl-for-...
vs.
https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/tesla-boss-elon-m...
Stop carrying water for the world’s richest person. Musk has claimed multiple times he’s a free speech absolutist and bought Twitter to make it the free speech platform.
I agree, it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law. But, how you or anyone else can continue to defend Musk when he has made clear multiple times he’s a lying hypocrite is beyond my understanding.
I think its funny how some conservatives used to advocate for common carrier regulation because they didn't have much control over social media platforms, now that they do, they don't care anymore about that.
But liberals do seem to stick to their principles of free market capitalism, "it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law". I see now why you are so ineffective in combating Trump/Musk if the only problem you have with them is their hypocrisy.
Perhaps you need to come to the realization that if you want liberal democracy you really do need to regulate mass communication platforms in a way that doesn't leech peoples brains out of their ears.
For the record, I wouldn't consider myself liberal or conservative using the US definitions. Probably more down the middle. But, I am a never Trump person, but even then I had a 'wait and see' attitude when he was first elected in 2016. Now I've seen, and I don't want any more of what he brings.
I have a lot of problems with both of them beyond hypocrisy, that was simply the big issue in this thread. And I do agree with your point. How can the left stick to some basic principles like following the law and still combat someone like Trump/Musk who ignore it at every turn. I really don't know what the answer is here, and it worries me that people will feel more and more trapped which can lead to violence.
I also think there could be some smart regulation around mass communication, but the problem is we have so few people in government who even understand social media. The average age in the senate is almost 65. The last two POTUSs will leave office in their 80s.
> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform
This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE.
Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action.
(Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.)
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy...
Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight? What the fuck is this timeline, is nothing serious anymore?? It's really not so long ago that this would be considered completely bonkers and something you would see on a "banana republic".
> Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight?
Trump team has said that Musk will self-determine conflict of interest when gutting govt. agencies.
It is lost on them that self-determination of conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.
Mm.
On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango
The problem with hypocrisy is it's a milquetoast charge. Plenty of people, including very powerful people, are hypocrites and we tolerate them fine. Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.
> Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.
Unfortunately, I think this is just a comfortable illusion that most of us choose to believe.
Between https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bribery-rates?tab=table&t... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, I think it's fairly likely almost everyone both knows personally someone corrupt, and has done business with someone who is corrupt, even in the UK, Germany, and the USA.
You're equivocating. Elon didn't just say that he believed in free speech, he said that Twitter would be a platform for free speech.
People know this. This isn't confusing. The hypocracy being pointed out is when Elon Musk says that he is a free speech absolutist[1], yet consistently blocks his critics and competitors.
This is ignoring his very confused notion of what free speech is[2]
> By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
> I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
> If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Not only is this inconsistent with his 'free speech absolutist' views, and inconsistent with Twitter's actions, but it states that he's actually all for the government censoring people. That's not even non-absolutist free speech.
[1]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
[2]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376
Nobody has an issue with this stance. It is that before he was the owner and as part of his argument for becoming owner, Elon had a different stance.
Many have an issue with that stance, including me. The public townsquare has rules about permitted speech, same is true for public plattforms that fulfill that role in the digital realm. Utilities are to be regulated etc. These types of censorship ought to be illegal, and e.g. in the EU this whole thinking of that the owner decides is already not the legal reality anymore.
> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform.
Before the Internet this was not the case. In Marsh v. Alabama, it was ruled (in line with all previous precedent) that privately owned roadways and sidewalks had to allow religious pamphleters, even though it is private property. The court asserted that anywhere that is the forum for public discussion is de facto allowed for political and religious speech regardless of property rights. In the very early days of the Internet things changed, when people tried to assert First Amendment claims on Compuserve chats. Compuserve claimed they weren't the public square, that they were a private service. I think they were correct, in that Compuserve was a very marginal private space and couldn't possibly have been "the public square". But precedent over this tiny service were eventually laundered into much larger and more critical bits of social infrastructure.
In contrast to Compuserve, Twitter and Facebook are definitely the public square. You cannot petition for a redress of grievances or lobby for policy changes without using them. And the political left delights in suppressing their opponents on them but files lawsuits claiming their rights are infringed when they aren't given access to every inch -- such as when they sued Trump for blocking them on his Twitter account:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-t...
When Democrats were barred from interacting even with a very small part of a platform, it is a critical First Amendment violation. When conservatives, racists, sexists, or whatever term you want to use are barred, well, it's a private company bigot.
This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict. There must be open, public debate on every major platform, and Americans must be entitled to express their opinions because the only other alternative is violence.
You're spot on (I say this as a lefty). Big social media like fb, instagram, twitter, et al are bigger and more important than any physical public square that ever existed. They are way way WAY past the point where they need to be treated as such and regulated as both a public forum for 1A purposes and as a utility like phone or mail for privacy protection and non-discrimination purposes.
Just don't pretend that trying to censor people on social media is somehow a trait of the Left (in fact, in a thread about the right doing precisely that!)
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> This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict
The country is currently massively pushing for violent conflict abroad...
Thanks for typing this.
This is what happens when a society allows narcissists in positions of power. It's a disease and when they refuse to seek treatment, it should make them ineligible for any leadership position, in both the private and public sector.
Nobody (sane) would allow a psychotic individual to run for president or become a CEO. This is the same thing, except they are less of a danger to themselves and more to others.
And of course they're able to craft more convincing lies. Mr. Musk never cared about free speech, only about being worshipped and the best way to achieve that is to say what people want to hear.
That must be the free speech some american politicians are lecturing the world about...
I legit thought the desktop signal app had some bug on X11 and not wayland.
Can this be titled clearly?
Looking at the thread here.
Trust in society is being eradicated and that's how authoritarian regimes win.
Great video to understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/nknYtlOvaQ0?si=1LP6QsbFgIvpfIay
It's sad
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You’re reading too much into it. Stop thinking he’s playing 5D chess, he’s not even playing regular checkers. It’s well known he bought Twitter because he thought he would be forced to, he clearly tried to actively back out of the purchase.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/12/elon-musk-admits-he-only-b...
Good point, and I strongly hold if you can explain something by incompetence, it's profoundly more likely to be true than cunning.
OTOH, I recall Elon's comment about "vote Dem in House and GOP in Senate, divided is better", something like that. Given his position as Donald's right hand man, that comment takes on new meaning.
The parent post is by and large correct, except for the right-hand man of Donald Trump stuff. Musk was indeed trying to buy influence, which is definitely not a "5D chess move" but simply common sense for extremely wealthy people if they can get away with it. He also wanted to ensure that he is always the center of attention and intended to use twitter as the marketing arm for his brand. He only wanted to back out once US and global economic indicators started going south and made his offer look ridiculously overpriced, and also made himself look like a sucker. And Musk does not like being the sucker. But his wanting to back out later doesn't cancel out his initial intentions. And once he was forced to buy it, he started playing high stakes poker and managed to turn it into a great investment for him personally by the end of 2024, becoming one of the most powerful men in the world in addition to being the richest. How long it will last might depend on how many consecutive presidential terms the Republicans can hold on to.
The righthand man for Trump stuff was never the intention initially. Musk went gaga for Trump rather late, he was a DeSantis supporter after all, with DeSantis launching his terrible presidential bid on Elon's twitter.
He tried to weasel out of the purchase, until it was obvious he would lose the court battle.
>both times was asked to complete ten captchas, about five minutes of pure captcha work
If you were using a VPN, this might have been why.
Direct connection, nothing special or fancy.
All that free speech is a bit too much for dear Elon apparently.
Instagram blocked telegram 8 years ago and nobody complained, the ban in still in place as far i know; trying to block the competition is fairly common, unfortunately
Well, Instagram never claimed to be a free speech network. Also Instagram is covered with content that sexually exploits children, and Telegram links to CSAM were pretty common.
Given that Telegram has very publicly failed at that kind of moderation, it is pretty defensible to block it. If only they would do something about the weirdo Instagram mommies that flood the network with pictures of their preteen daughters in swimsuit and leotards... It's gross what some people do for anything resembling Internet clout.
Free speech absolutists, am I right?
It would really cut down on spam/scams if they also blocked links to Instagram, telegram, and the onlyfans redirect sites...
So the Public Town Square with Freedom of Speech has become the most censored, and private social network out there?
Signal could start doing some posts praising Musk and promoting Tesla or whatever scam he’s pushing at the given moment, that would unblock them really fast.
Pre-Musk Twitter was indeed bad, a sign of it’s time and dying. Now it’s even worse and quite pathetic.
I think it is critical to not forget the context of russian aligned bots getting free reign on Twitter, they are not being blocked, and Musk is keeping close ties to Putin.
I guess they’ll be moving to BlueSky or Mastodon…
I think there should be a pinned post about Elon Musk at the top of HN and all posts and comments about Elon Musk should go there.
Can it be at the bottom instead?
If it's at the bottom, people will keep submitting more Elon Musk news.
This is incredibly stupid if true
do we know why?
is X susceptible to DDOS?
This comment section has turned into something of a circle, it's cool to be mad nd all, but there was a comment expressing doubt at the details, wonder about a reason other than those stated, and asking if anyone independently verified, as I clicked it the comment was flagged to oblivion. No opportunity to engage with that viewpoint.
HN is always a mess when the subject contains Musk, Trump, Google, browsers or social media platforms in general.
I don't mind the slight political aspects of things, but reading a ton of hate and "I already deleted X" (pun intended) and "Just use Y other platform" (that no normal user can figure out) comments is just uninteresting and should stay on Reddit or wherever these nonproductive comments fit into.
I'd love to hear more about this case, the technical aspects and the follow-ups/investigations. Let's focus on that, no? Maybe it's just me.
You get to moderate up or down. Otherwise people say what they want.
The biggest exception to that is dead/shadow banned accounts. Requiring showdead (without much of an explanation what that is) to see some heavily-downvoted comments makes it rather difficult to engage with some people. Then again, I rarely feel the need to engage with dead accounts.
In terms of moderation, you also get to flag/vouch posts, so moderation isn't entirely binary.
Do all these commenters believe this nonsense? The conspiracy thinking has reached new peaks. Hard to take concerns of free speech seriously from people promoting platforms that routinely “moderate” any dissenting opinions (HN included).
Our ability for collective sense making seems to be permanently destroyed. Two people who seem to agree on everything point-by-point then reach different conclusions on the final step. Its bewildering.
up/down vote is the laziest form of moderation. you get what you pay for.
Discussion mediums just don't seem to scale very well at all. Feels like we've arrived at a point where it's either this or walls of text where you spend more time trying to figure out what a post is replying to than you'd need to keep up with the new messages coming in (i.e. loads of discords)
I remember as a teen how much of a pain it was to find a good forum. Too few users and it'd feel like a graveyard, not worth checking in on often enough to build up a habit. Too many and it was impossible to keep track of anything or gain enough of an understanding of the regulars to know how to read their posts. Even the sweet spot in the middle would be frequently torn to shreds by one troll or mentally ill poster spamming the forum in a frenzy. Far preferred it to the reddit tree based vote setup but I can understand how this is what most people have settled on.
slash dot solved news comment moderation decades ago. open sourced it. nobody cares.
How do you mean do we "believe this nonsense"? I don't use twitter regularly, but I have two accounts for reasons. I just signed in, I typed out a (fake) signal URL, and... posting was blocked.
It doesn't appear to be nonsense, it appears to be entirely true that any tweet with "signal.me" in it is blocked.
Occam's razor says they're blocking Signal. Hanlon's razor says they're just idiots. Either way: An important tool for communication is being blocked by twitter, which is both dangerous and not "nonsense".
Given Elon Musk's current propensity for authoritarianism and censorship, I'm leaning towards Occam's explanation. If you have evidence otherwise, I would genuinely like to see it, but honestly Hanlon's explanation that it's incompetence is not much better.
I think they're saying to give the benefit of the doubt (ex. maybe it's a glitch), without realizing many of us have no more leeway to give due to the continuing onslaught of criminal behavior from musk/Trump which we'll all have to pay for in the future and is now giving our enemies reason to celebrate.
"Benefit of the doubt" is what some were gaslighted into when Musk threw a Nazi salute.
When you attempt to gaslight the entirety of the planet that hard, you get your "Benefit of the Doubt" card revoked.
If you continue to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, then you are charlie brown running at the football lucy is holding.
>the [nuclear] football lucy was holding [until we axed the whole department of energy]
1- The conspiracy is that blocking signal links is some top down dictation from Elon as part of geopolitical power play over censoring dissenting opinions about DOGE. This is some next level mental gymnastics. There may be good reasons to temporarily block links to a specific service, eg, maybe an ongoing phishing scam, or security issue. Plenty of rational reasons that have nothing to do with Elon and Trump.
2- X is full of people arguing about DOGE, positive and negative, and Elon is constantly attacked on his own platform by both small and large accounts. These posts are not censored.
3- Elon routinely talks about the importance of free speech, and yet I keep reading claims he’s against it from people advertising bsky and mastodon, which absolutely do not (by any reasonable definition) represent free speech platforms. They are more heavily moderated than even old Twitter was.
4- I have seen no evidence of Elon having a “propensity for authoritarianism and censorship”. Every time he gives a speech he specifically talks about being pro 1st amendment, regularly responds to his detractors, and actively defends the constitution.
I do not know what version of Elon you see, but from my perspective you are talking about a cartoonish media caricature that is the opposite of the reality that I see. We appear to be see the same person, same events, and are drawing opposite conclusions. Hence my point about sense making no longer seems possible, even when we actually appear to agree. (If anybody comes out as pro-censorship, I would be the first to call it out.)
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Apparently the 150 year old Social Security recipients were due to a COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875. Interesting, but not fraud.
That doesn't hold up because there are 200 year old people as well, and apparently millions of 100-year olds. I'm not saying all of it is fraud but incompetence leading to waste would not be surprising.
It sounds like there are several million in the db with those ages and without death records, but it also sounds like the vast majority are NOT collecting paychecks either. Also unclear how many of those who are collecting involve money going to living spouses or whatever other rules exist.
https://xcancel.com/ThatsMauvelous/status/189135619250239902...
Too late to edit, but I've learned this is not necessarily true (but could be a default date used by the SS code in particular). Sorry for spreading rumors.
> COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875
This is a piece of misinformation coming from Twitter/X post.
20 may 1875 is the reference date of ISO 8601:2004.
You don't need to trust me on that, you can just go check the standard.
Or you can claim that it's misinformation too. Up to you.
Wouldn't you pause for a moment to consider how a 2004 standard is relevant to a COBOL codebase that is probably more than 50 years old at this point?
I'm not sure everything in there is 50 years old. Not even that everything is actually in COBOL. Those gigantic beasts tend to eventually be quarantined into some VM, never touched again, and then somebody puts some modern-ish wrappers around. For example some HTTP JSON API endpoints to query things. And what do they do when a date is missing? Not returning one would surely make sense. But I'd also expect layers and layers of abstractions in between, maybe some libs to transform some data type in one representation into another. Somewhere on the way, this date as a default value could easily slip in. It's not entirely made up, it's in an ISO standard. Maybe the lib was strictly following that standard.
It's not hard to imagine that something like this actually happened. Dismissing it outright just because COBOL does not have a datetime data type and the standard is only 21 years old (that far pre-dates node.js btw) could be playing into the hands of the Muskians who surely love any possibility to get out of this BS in case they made a mistake. Would not be the first they made nor the first they handled that way.
There is no cluster at 150 in the underlying data though, there's even distribution among unrealistically high age ranges. This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.
> There is no cluster at 150 in the underlying data though, there's even distribution among unrealistically high age ranges.
Is that so? How do you know? Afaik that data is confidential and access is highly restricted. Or are you saying that that's what Elon said and we should take his word for it?
> This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.
I don't follow. Could you please explain?
Everything political gets downvoted, from either side, but you're going to need better evidence than Musk and rumors for this fraud.
(There probably is some fraud! There is in any large money handling system! Japan had a problem with elderly people claiming pensions after they'd died, for example. It's just that you need a better standard of evidence before cutting off money that people are legally entitled to, because otherwise the fraud detection process is going to have false positives.)
Being down-voted is OK, but posts being flagged and removed for posting factual news is not.
You will need to define your threshold for standard of evidence. If you automatically disbelieve everything on doge.gov, then there is nothing one can do to convince you. You have chosen to shut your eyes.
Please note: I am not an American citizen. As for "rumours", when I was a junior developer working in a service company in Bangalore over 15 years ago, developing tax filing software for an American state, during a test run on live data, I filed bug-tickets for duplicate SSN, SSN's with folks over 150 years of age, obviously spurious unemployment claims, etc. All of them were closed and the contractor told my manager not to file such tickets. (I am really thankful I left that line of work)
These problems are actually very well-known. They really aren't "rumours". You can choose to put in a few hours or a few days of effort in talking to people and figuring this out yourself.
Something can be factual and political. The guidelines suggest that political content is off topic for this site and that you should flag it.
Right now there is an interesting convergence of tech, politics and general newsworthiness that is going to stress the content moderation system. But people flagging a story as obviously political is the system working as designed.
Why is it unreasonable to demand that every recipient of money is alive and has a valid age in the system? This shouldn't be a political statement.
He's just queried records with dead=FALSE. It's not active recipients of social security payments. All its showing is that some portion of people die without the death being officially logged on their record in the social security database.
Edit: Also, it's not clear that the death field is the sole criteria for determining the eligibility for payments (i.e. determining the recipient is alive)
Yep, it doesn’t sound like that’s the sole criteria based on this thread, which includes a NYT article (from 2023!) showing less than 50k users over 100 collecting payments despite over 18M records. https://xcancel.com/ThatsMauvelous/status/189135619250239902...
I can’t say how annoyed it makes me that Elon’s initial reaction to anything odd seems to be “fraud!!” rather than curiosity
> I can’t say how annoyed it makes me that Elon’s initial reaction to anything odd seems to be “fraud!!” rather than curiosity
To be fair, being curious about things isn't going to get as much support as screaming "GUBBERMINT FRAUD!" (a red rag to the GOP bull) when you're trying to trash any government departments that stand between you and more money.
There are certain topics that you can't discuss on Hacker News reasonably and social media is one of them.
Politics in general. Because everyone has an opinion, often based on their values rather than cold facts, and people do not like their values being questioned. The discussion is more civil than on other forums, but the difference is not night and day. Disappointing.
I generally agree with no politics on here but the DOGE stuff is very much tech news.
Everyone reading this -- sign up for Bluesky, help it build up a larger network effect, so it can outcompete X. It already has 30m users.
The secret to happiness is not to leave X and join Bluesky, but simply to leave X.
These platforms are massively net-negative for the vast majority of people.
Go outside!
Who owns bsky? What prevents a random billionaire to buy it and use it their election platform? Mastodon just feels as a safer bet...
Bluesky is owned by cryptocurrency grifters. It's disheartening to see people flock to it like it's the greener pasture.
At best it's less toxic, but only marginally. They implemented even more dunk mechanisms that X has, so it's primed to be a terrible place long-term.
User-owned, federated social media is absolutely the safest bet if you want low toxicity and freedom from corporate control.
bsky is decentralized, in theory more so than Mastodon, which is federated (a variant of decentralization that requires you to trust the server admins of a server of your choice)
"In theory", because so far, there are very few nodes (one?), very few (if any?) alternative implementations, most is controlled and operated by a small team paid for by a.o. Jack Dorsey and other funds. Mastodon (using the ActivityPub protocol) has one main repo, managed by one person under a non-profit that also operates the biggest instance. But also has dozens of other implementations in other languages, with other niches, with more, less, other features and so on.
So, "best bet" would probably be to:
- Sign up at both a Mastodon and Bsky. Try them both for while.
- See which one fits your needs, style and practical needs best. Stick with that one.
Bluesky is neither decentralised nor federated.
I wouldn't let that stop you from signing up for bluesky -- in my experience it is definitely the best of the options for a twitter alternative -- but you should know exactly what it is you're getting into before you get into it.
And if you want to know exactly what you're getting into with bluesky, you should read this, which tells you more than you really want to know: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
"yet".
> And at present, there's really only one each of the Relay and (Twitter-like) AppView components used in practice, but there is a real possibility of this changing and real architectural affordance work to allow it. So perhaps things to not seem all that bad.
I think a big pro for Bluesky from a tech perspective is how widely people are using their own websites as their handles and as verification. It doesn't do anything to protect Bluesky from going to hell but it does make it significantly easier to relink with people again.
Mastodon has failed to show any signs of hitting a critical mass so I kind of feel like it's a different level of social network altogether. A lot more durable and worth making an effort with but unlikely to ever become much more significant than it currently is.
Twitter is valuable only because of its network effect. Not everyone is going to try both of the apps. Thus, they will lag in both places.
There can be only one winner I presume.
Unless they interop. And there is no reason why they shouldn't.
(other than grumpy old neckbeards bickering over their Prefered Thing and blocking any progress towards cooperation or interoperability. Which is actually a thing in "The Fediverse" even right now. Yes, really. A few loud voices manage to bully down projects that build bridges between both.)
I have and deactivated my account a day or two in -- that un-removable message up top that it will use your posts, likes, etc to train their models unsettled me. At least they were upfront about it, unlike Twitter/X.
I also didn't like that I had 30 different followers the moment I signed up.
Bsky doesn't train AIs using your data. They're warning you that your data may be scraped and used as such by third parties.
Do they believe free in free speech, or will I also be banned/blocked from saying things there?
>>Do they believe free in free speech
No they don't, blue-sky belongs to the former twitter owner, aka THE BUBBLE ;)
BTW: He was not welcomed at FOSDEM because he is billionaire, when a movement eats itself ;)
https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares...
Dorsey does not own bluesky, he's been kicked out a long time ago. Your link even says as much.
He was not welcomed by a small minority at FOSDEM*
Minorities with loud voices always wins because people don't want to deal with bullshit
Citation needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musashi_(novel)
bsky still lacks basic security features like 2FA (beyond an email code) (andOAuth implementation), which puts me off from actively using it...
Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? And remember how Elon bought Twitter, loudly proclaiming he was doing so to defend free speech?
I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, but I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.
"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or links are banned.
> allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant
Are the people with these views not also entitled to free speech and equal rights to express themselves the same as everybody else?
> Are the people with these views not also entitled to free speech and equal rights to express themselves the same as everybody else?
Free speech and equal rights in a legal sense, meaning staying out of jail? Sure, with caveats about threats and abuse.
Free to use a private platform? No, nobody's entitled to the support of someone else's private platform. Equal rights are about protection from the state, not from others' opinions.
Platforms themselves also have speech-based rights. Even if one portrays itself as a neutral 'town square,' it puts its own rights to work as soon as it implements an algorithmic feed, implicitly deciding what content to promote or hide.
You are entitled to your opinion: good, bad, or irrelevant. You are entitled to your words. You are not entitled to an audience.
> You are entitled to your opinion: good, bad, or irrelevant. You are entitled to your words. You are not entitled to an audience.
Brilliant statement, I fully agree.
The issue is who chooses to give them an audience. IMO it is up to the audience not to listen, but it seems to be the opinion of a lot of people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
If a firm decides to be pro or anti free speech. That is their choice.
If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
Which puts a hole into the underlying theory. If people do not naturally gravitate towards alternative ideas, and network effects keep people in one place, then these networks should be made government owned.
Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
> If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
What you are saying is actively happening right now.
Certain people dont like that another certain group of people have been allowed back onto Twitter, and so they are going in droves to Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads/TruthSocial etc.
Twitter has received an 87% drop in revenue since reinstating previously blocked accounts.
Id say people are flocking to alternatives.
This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see. History has shown that where this happens it increases aggression and intense reaction, where people are not used to seeing things they disagree with and so when they do they react more violently.
> Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
Of course they do, but what this generally turns into in the modern age is 'The left doesnt like what the right have to say, block them plz". Then this turns into a political argument, when in fact one group of people just dont want to hear what a different group of people have to say because 'it offends them'.
> I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
We have rules and laws to prevent this as it is recognised as being a threat.
>>> If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
>What you are saying is actively happening right now.
Oh. I am wrong.
SO we don't need to enforce rules on free speech, People are able to choose who to interact with.
>This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see
So we SHOULD enforce rules of free speech, because people dont want to hear what others are saying?
So we should have free speech, but we should control listening?
>We have rules and laws to prevent this as it is recognised as being a threat.
Wait really? Someone is suing the President for threatening Meta/Zuckerberg? Who?
Would you be on board with launching a lawsuit against a government which threatened a media firm ?
To be honest, I have no idea what opinion you are trying to form here. You are twisting and turning my words all over the place and I am unable to gather your thoughts into a coherent point.
You seem to be trying to pin me down to an opinion, and Im not really sure why. Do I, a random person on the internet, matter to you that much that you need to clarify my exact opinion on stuff?
Sure, let me summarize.
Your position:
>Your position:
>… t and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
Firms have a right to do what they please, as long as it is legal.
You dont like what firms do.
You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
This kills free speech.
——- The position that you set up, is inherently in contradiction to the norms of reality. I am a policy person and understand the trade offs here intimately, which is leading to me playing fast and loose, resulting in confusion.
And yes - you matter to me. Why shouldn’t you? You seem intelligent, or if not, you value looking intelligent.
It would be interesting to see how you resolve the contradiction that your position throws up.
———
Fair enough.
> You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
Im actually not doing that. I dont know where I gave you that impression but I do not believe the government should force any company to allow full free speech on their commercial platform.
> Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
We are talking about twitter here in this context, which has been many times quoted as saying they are upholding free speech. The opinions you are referencing here apply to that company because that is what they state. Im not talking about all companies and their right to control what people say on their platforms, I feel this is more of an ideological discussion around Twitter/any social media which claims to uphold free speech in their public forum.
Therefore the contradiction does not really exist IMO, because they are being held to their own values and not mine.
Interesting thought experiment, I enjoyed chewing that over for a bit. Thanks :)
Ok. Sure, so I think my error was based on my over extrapolation from this:
>people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Gatekeeping would be a right of platforms and I assumed that combating it would involve forcing them to behave in accordance with an external force.
And Since you are discussing only twitter, it does follow that Twitter has an anti-speech position, despite their stated intentions.
——-
For a bit more fun, I think what X was proclaiming is the naive version of free speech. The kind of “anyone can make this app” naive over generalization.
I have a mechanism which allows me to balance the needs of moderation and censorship with free speech. Its an interesting exercise, I think you might like working through it.
From personal experience - I have had to ban people, and it was a form of censorship. Resolving this contradiction effectively changed my career path.
So I have a 1000 users on my forum. One user is incredibly active, and spends their time abusing a specific local minority group.
Things like X minority needs to die, not arguing in good faith.
Now, ideally I shouldn’t ban him, and let counter speech do its things. But since they aren’t arguing in good faith, counter speech doesn’t work.
Over time, this is also creating second order effects in other conversations.
It’s attracting a new kind of user, its driving conversations to be more polarized, and its reducing time spent on longer more thoughtful posts.
How would you respond, and why?
> This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see
It has always been thus. E.g. right wingers did not use twitter back in 2021.
I will grant it's getting worse though... for instance, the battle here on hackernews between left and right has strongly intensified and it looks like the left will win the downvote/flagging war and the right will stop posting in (and reading) political threads.
This is the tricky line, isn't it?
Regardless of whether someone is entitled to free speech, is a private company bound to the constitutional protection?
My understanding has always been that its specifically the government that can't censor me, a private company or citizen can. The NY Times isn't required to write an article I submit to them for example, that's no different than Twitter deciding not to keep a post a write.
> The NY Times isn't required to write an article I submit to them for example, that's no different than Twitter deciding not to keep a post a write
I generally agree with your point about private companies and the 1A.
However, the NYT and Twitter/X are fundamentally different in that the NYT is not a user platform but rather a media company who decides what it wants to publish--meaning that is it's stated goal. Twitter/X stated goal is to provide a platform for users to publish whatever they want to say. Now, Twitter/X can have a policy saying "here's a platform where you can say whatever you want except for X, Y and Z" and that's fine. Just like HN has policies. As long as it's clear and transparent as to what they are allowing or disallowing, then users are informed enough to know what they're going to get when they log on to X. Just like I know what I'm going to get if I visit Fox News.
Prior to Elon, Twitter's policies were stricter and so there was a lot less "hate speech" (for lack of a better term). Those guardrails are gone, since for one Elon fired the whole moderation team, and also because of Elon's own immature posts setting the example, it's devolved into a reddit-style cesspool so I decided not to go there anymore.
Banning links to Signal would be no big deal if Elon hadn't loudly proclaimed himself as the "defender of free speech" and demonized the "censorship" of Twitter.
We pretty much agree here. The contradiction of claiming free speech while doing things like banning Signal links is frustrating for sure.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I've gotten too cynical to believe any company or rich individual making a business deal to actually tell the truth - its all marketing at that point.
> I've gotten too cynical to believe any company or rich individual making a business deal to actually tell the truth - its all marketing at that point
I think that's reality, not cynicism
Thanks for the thoughtful reply on an incediary topic.
I agree with your viewpoint I think, but Im sure as always there are some edge cases which make this definition difficult.
> My understanding has always been that its specifically the government that can't censor me, a private company or citizen can.
Then you have no free speech. I can just refuse you internet access, or not sell ink and paper to you…
So my take is that no, it should not be allowed to private companies to censor arbitrarily. And of course an "algorithm" that sorts stuff in any other way than chronologically is censorship. The feed should just show chronological ordered stuff of followed accounts. No more and no less.
Then you do not have free speech, since this is what the rules of free speech are.
They are about ensuring that the government doesnt use its unique powers of force to ensure that certain ideas are not shared or discussed.
What the current government is doing, with Fox + Twitter, is fundamentally the opposite of free speech. They have the power to say something, then pretend it is true, and act on it.
Its not a fair fight.
> Then you do not have free speech
Neither do you, unless you redefined it to be the super narrow description that you gave. So you can freely be censored but keep believing you have freedom.
You're the poster child of how europeans imagine usa citizens.
Governments can't censor what their citizens say. That's the only protection covered in the US constitution.
Private citizens and companies can censor. Twitter can have rules of conduct or terms of use, for example, and you have to play by their rules when posting on their service. The government isn't involved at all (twitter files not withstanding).
I understand how it works. I'm arguing you guys keep saying you have this "freedom of speech" when in fact you have absolutely nothing.
I guess.. it must be shocking to you? Seemingly absurd perhaps.
You can't say what you want in a shopping mall. They can decide who gets to stay in their premises, and for whatever reason they can eject you.
All the free speech cases, have been about government stopping speech. Whether its about deceny laws, or sedition - its always been the government vs a person / corporation.
So yeah - these have been the rights you lived under for all your life. Its never changed.
That is the operating definition of free speech that has worked in America since I started working in this space.
> That is the operating definition of free speech that has worked in America since I started working in this space.
It hasn't worked. But you're too set in "USA IS PERFECT!" mindset to objectively think about it.
Oh. I come from and am In a country with much stricter Free Speech laws.
I think all of them are pretty crap for today’s environment.
But yes - the operating definition of Free speech, the one enforceable in courts, the one you have lived under, is the one I outlined.
Namely - no government over reach in speech. Not that people can’t do what they want as private individuals, and now corporations.
So you can in theory, have a corporation buy up all the local news channels, and then have them share one kind of point of view. It’s perfectly free speech.
You could stream porn, and the courts would side by you for your right to free speech.
This doesn’t mean you wont get sued for piracy, or actually earn money through your project - you still need a service people want.
I’m dead serious, you can check if you like - but these are the rules you live under even right now.
And in afghanistan it's illegal for women to go to school. Since that is the law, we must accept it and make no attempt to ever change it, correct?
No one is required to help me spread my speech. The only protection is against governments censoring what their citizens say.
Don't sell me paper. Cut off my internet. That doesn't stop me from saying whatever I want, whether in public or private.
How you don't understand that the point of free speech is the ability to be heard by others, and if you're shadow-banned you're effectively just writing a private diary?
I mean, ok you have this right. What do you think was the INTENTION of this right? Do you think they intended for people to freely mumble to themselves or to tell their ideas to others?
You seem to have an incomplete understanding.
Freedom of Speech goes hand in hand with Freedom of Association. You are free to speak and spread your ideas, you are not free to compel others to help you to do so and you are not entitled to an audience.
I don’t have to let you stand on my porch to speak anymore than Instagram has to allow you to post things or Costco has to allow you to hold lectures in the food court.
If you sell paper to anyone BUT me, or let anyone who pays a fee stand on your porch and talk for 10 minutes except me, yes that should count as a felony.
exactly. Once we stop treating TwiX like a public good but rather like the private website of a a gaming cheater with a lot of guests, things would be more obvious, wouldn't it?
Tricky? Not really.
Difficult? Yes.
Sure, that's fine. Tricky wasn't a great fit there, I meant tricky to define or agree upon. Difficult works better there.
Sure they are, but you omitted half of that sentence.
Free speech doesn't allow you to say anything at all you know?
Calling for the eradication of people with certain sexual preferences or skin color for example.
Free speech does protect you to say whatever you want from government censorship. That's getting blurred here with most of the discussion circling around Twitter censorship.
I would still argue, though, that saying literally anything should be legal. Acting on hate speech, by plotting to commit a crime, may be illegal. The problem there is that you plotted a crime and in certain case that plot itself is illegal, it isn't about what you said but what you did.
Free speech doesnt have asterisks. If certain people say things that are undesireable to other certain people, they have to power to ignore them.
In that case, even as an ideal, free speech does not exist. Someone can proclaim that I should be killed because of a certain opinion that I voice. Now there are only four outcomes to that scenario: (a) I take the threat seriously and stop voicing that opinion, in which case they have suppressed my freedom of speech; (b) I take the threat seriously and use it to suppress their freedom of speech, (c) I ignore the threat, yet someone else takes it seriously and, as a natural consequence of being dead, they have suppressed my freedom of speech; or (d) I ignore the threat and nothing happens, so nobody's freedom of speech is violated. The problem is, there is no guarantee of scenario (d). This leads to the freedom of speech being used as a tool to suppress the freedom of speech.
This is not a simple matter of people saying things that are undesirable, or even heretical. It is not a matter of someone saying something hateful, then ignoring them as a hater, because chances are they want to suppress the speech of those they hate.
Free speech is a legal construction and it does in fact come with exceptions.
Child pornography, slander, and death threats are other examples of exceptions.
Anyone who has considered child porn speech is smoking something. We have agreed the act of taking pictures or videos of children in those situations to be illegal, it isn't about the meaning or speech a person may apply to that final product.
Slander and death threats are harder to define. You have to show an active plot to commit the crime, not just a statement. At that point the plot, the action you took, is the crime rather than your words.
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Pornography is properly regarded as a form of speech
Free speech is protected by cases over porn where the government lost - its one of the strongest tests of speech.
Porn is 100% speech.
The concept of free speech predates the US constitution or even its government.
Deciding what a company should say, or behave about speech, is subverting THEIR freedom of speech.
This is why the no asterisk position sets itself to implode.
The core defense of Free speech, one of the better articulated points is from Oliver Wendell Holmes. He articulates that free speech serves the search for truth, but the search for truth via the competition of ideas.
>that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,
This was his articulation in a sedition case brought by the government against citizens.
It is specifically in the case of government using its power to become a player in the market of ideas.
I does, like any other fundamental rights. Absolutely none are absolute.
You clearly don't know anything about actual law and rights.
Well, according to Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk it does. Which is why we're here, discussing this topic. Right now. And is the point of the person you quoted.
When Musk and people similar to him say "free speech", what they mean is their ability to say and do things without consequences. To them, the world only exists for them and their benefit, so someone disagreeing with them or them facing consequences for something they said is "silencing their free speech".
They also feel like they should be allowed to shut down other people's speech, because that is part of their idea of free speech. They should be allowed to tell you that you're not allowed to talk.
The more people understand that when people talk about "absolute free speech", it isn't a serious position, and is mostly held by people with this view, the better. I'm sure there are actual "free speech purists" out there, but they are few and far between. Instead it is mostly people using the guise of free speech so they can say and do what they want without consequences.
> Free speech doesnt have asterisks.
Yeah it does, at least in America. You can't yell fire in a theatre and incite panic.
Also there is the paradox of tolerance.
Well that isn't quite right. The original idiom came out of an earlier supreme court ruling that was partially overturned by later rulings on the matter:
> Ultimately, whether it is legal in the United States to falsely shout "fire" in a theater depends on the circumstances in which it is done and the consequences of doing it. The act of shouting "fire" when there are no reasonable grounds for believing one exists is not in itself a crime, and nor would it be rendered a crime merely by having been carried out inside a theatre, crowded or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Incitement to violence is also permitted as long as it isn't immediate and/or likely. This is known as the Brandenburg Test:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
Even with the partial overturn, it is perfectly clear there are limits to freedom of expression. The poster before you clearly mistakes "a high bar" to "no bar at all".
I was simply pointing out two common misconceptions.
There are obviously some restrictions on speech in every nation. However in the US the restrictions on speech by the state are far fewer than pretty much anywhere else and are enshrined by law. This is in stark contrast to other other Western nations such as the UK where there are far, far more restrictions on speech.
> I was simply pointing out two common misconceptions.
With regard to falsely shouting fire, there are no common misconceptions. The common understanding of the saying is identical with the understanding in the judgment, and that part of the judgment remains good law.
However, there is a modern meme that strives to obscure this reality by pointing out that the judgment reached conclusions that modern people generally disapprove of. This has no relevance to the issue.
There obviously was a misconception as evidenced in the link I provided. But believe what you wish.
What is it that you think (a) your link explains, that (b) people do not already understand as part of the saying?
I suggest you re-read the thread, because it is quite clear.
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You can actually call for the eradication of certain groups in the US under the 1st amendment.
The limit is basically “speech which threatens imminent violence”.
So saying “we should kill all group X” is fine. Saying “lets go kill those people from group X standing on Main St at 2pm” is not ok.
Or burning a flag you don't like…
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No, this is paradox of Tolerance 101.
Even in his dissenting opinion in Abrams vs the United States, Holmes valued not free speech, but the market place of ideas - the competition of ideas that underlies the search for truth.
Slavishly sticking to free speech, and destroying the market of ideas - creating a monopilist propaganda force, with a symbiotic political party is NOT free speech.
Today we have far more information than any of the founders had anticipated. Monopolies of ideas, far more content than fact, the race to the bottom due to advertising - a source of stress in every pocket?
Yeah, your network is going to have a very specific signal to noise ratio. Your market place of ideas is going to be selling junk food, because its cheap and easy to make.
The idea of counter speech works, if counter speech is heard in the first place. If your message never gets to the other side, or the other party is completely enraged and unable to think past their fears - you have no market place of ideas.
Honestly,no.
So do you feel that people who disagree with what you think is right should be silenced and not allowed to express themselves?
I hate how the word "disagree" is used to strip all nuance out of political conversation.
If I said it was my political opinion that the gestapo should show up to your door, and drag you, your wife, and children to a death camp - we don't just have a "disagreement." Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
There's a line somewhere around political opinions that involve using the state to inflict violence on another that I believe should be inexpressible in public, and I think it's fine for non-state actors to ensure that's the case.
> If I said it was my political opinion that the gestapo should show up to your door, and drag you, your wife, and children to a death camp - we don't just have a "disagreement."
Yes we do, we disagree on that statement.
> Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
Yes of course, why wouldnt I? Trying to understand that opinion and maybe bring us closer to agreeing on the underlying issues would be my first aim, not just to cry foul on free speech and expect them to be locked up just for saying something I dont like. That is barbaric.
You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
> Yes of course, why wouldnt I? Trying to understand that opinion and maybe bring us closer to agreeing on the underlying issues would be my first aim,
I think the promotion of liberalism and the lack of critical thinking has created a society of fanatics. For the vast majority of disagreements, it's good to try and understand other perspectives and to work towards compromise. What compromise should the German jews have offered the Nazis? What insights could they have gained from understanding the Nazi perspective?
> You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
Everything Hilter/Stalin did was legal. When families were gassed and thrown into ovens, that was legal. In fact, it was illegal to impede them. That started as somebody's political opinion, they were able to foment support for it, and it happened.
And finally, I understand what the law is in the US. The US basically allows any speech that doesn't threaten the government's monopoly on violence. I'm saying the Europeans are right to criminalize some political ideas. There's been no slippery slope in German because they don't let you wear swastikas.
"I am ready to pay 1000000 USD to anyone who tortures and/or kills you or anyone in your family in the most gruesome way."
Isn't that free speech?
Yep it totally is and you are fine to say that about me or anyone else.
If someone takes you up on that offer and you pay them, that crosses from free speech into illegal activity and you will be put in jail. But you are totally fine to talk about if you want.
And if someone takes me up on that offer and I don't pay? "Woops, just joking" but you're dead.
Also, you never were in that situation, otherwise you would know there's no way to be fine while people are plotting to maim you. Or if you are, your family sure won't be.
Not really sure what you are talking about here.
If someone takes you up on that offer then they are breaking the law and committing an offense, regardless of what you said or did or didnt pay them.
If I tell you to go jump off a cliff and you do it, am I liable for murder?
I think you need to back off a little bit and stop trying to invent situations that you think fit your idea of what I think about implications of murder.
I think its fine to say what you want, thats it. You can agree or disagree with me to your hearts content, but do it amicably :)
Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves?
How did you come to these conclusions about the goals and future of Twitter? My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
> that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
This is clearly not true. X represents Elon’s politics. Best example: Elon has X officially blocked any usage of the term cis as part of his crusade against his trans daughter - and I don’t say that lightly, he was not anti trans until she came out.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91126082/elon-musk-x-cisgender-c...
It’s always strange when reality seems more grotesque than what we could legitimately considered gross exaggerated portrayal for the sake of the caricature if it appeared in a fictional work.
>Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves?
No, because people acting with hate as motivator don’t care if they are within a social minority. They will cease any opportunity to use every aggression tool they have at their disposal to express loudly their will to oppress whoever looks like unaligned with their mindset.
This is in sharp contrast with minorities whose only wish is to live in a way that is aligned with with their own aspirations that perfectly fit in a specter of harmonious social differences even if it doesn’t fall right in the middle of the median mainstream stereotype.
Everybody is part of some minorities. But not everyone think that because they are a member of this or that minority they should be given some hegemony over everything and the rest in the political matter of their society.
> My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
Difference without distinction in this case. The left actually polices its luminaries to some degree (not perfectly but still) which makes it incompatible with the grifter class Musk is chief president of. He’s never going to drift leftward because we’re not going to metaphorically suck his balls because he promotes basic human decency. Figures like him only go rightward.
As for if he bought twitter explicitly to make it a greater hotbed for racism, I think you’d have a hard time proving it in court, but at the same time, he’s unbanned a lot of prominent alt-right figure heads, and boosted tons of their tweets to the financial detriment of the platform. Can’t say he bought it to do that but the huge drops in value because of it hasn’t deterred him so…
That's true in good part. But when it comes to leftist activists specifically, it's war for Musk. His son transitioning didn't exactly endear him to the ideology.
> But when it comes to leftist activists specifically, it's war for Musk. His son transitioning didn't exactly endear him to the ideology.
It isn't just a left issue. Liberatarians also don't really care about LGBT people expressing themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_LG...
So Musk isn't libertarian nor left on social issues. He is conservative right. Although his exact philosophy is hard to pin down because he isn't really a supporter of the traditional family.
Which flavor of "traditional family" do you prefer over all those that humanity tried so far?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8090810/
https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/the-way-we-never...
https://pixiedane.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/research/tradition...
https://www.humanities.org/spark/the-myth-of-the-traditional...
Huh? I am referring to the nuclear family that is considered traditional in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_in_the_United_States
How can being racist belong to a minority while literally being the force that elected a white supremacist like Donald Trump?
Moreover, it’s not that simple. Racists can express themselves. I was talking about racist discourse, not racists themselves. Racism is a hate speech, which has nothing to do with, for example, the right to enjoy one's body and have an abortion as a woman or the ability to express one's gender identity—something that, according to all scientific studies and meta-analyses on the subject, clearly improves the well-being of trans people.
I know very well that racists are experts at playing the victim and making it seem like they are the ones facing repression, but who runs the country? Who are the journalists on television? Are they women or men? White? Rich?
It’s outrageous to claim that the richest man in the world—Elon Musk, a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic white supremacist—is supposedly "censored" and unable to express himself freely! Remind me of a time in American history when a woman had as much power as Elon Musk over the country, or even over other countries (as we see with ALD in Germany)?
>>Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves?
Maybe (if it's about black or white), but anti-Semites have a pretty loud and public voice in the "Western" world.
"Antisemitic" is also being thrown around a lot towards people who aren't actually saying antisemitic things, but rather criticizing the government of Israel and their actions that take place under color of law.
You're not wrong, but lately, criticism of Israel includes its right to exist, and while anti-Zionism isn't technically anti-Semitism, in practice it is. Furthermore, the pro-Palestine crowd includes many textbook anti-Semites.
That is true, but Jew hating people are quite prominent on Twitter.
Just look how many likes Ye’s “I AM A NAZI” tweet has…
Yeah, lots of name-calling going around everywhere for sure. We used to have to word "Anti-Zionist" for people against like what Israel is engaging in now, but at one point it feels like the term was "hijacked" and Zionist/Anti-Zionist is now part of forgotten terminology.
"Liberal Zionism" used to be in vogue in Israel, which takes a more moderate view and criticizes the Israeli occupation while still arguing for an Jewish state, but I think it's gotten less and less popular these days, at least from what I tell from the outside, and a more extreme form has become the popular one again.
> "Liberal Zionism" used to be in vogue in Israel, which takes a more moderate view and criticizes the Israeli occupation while still arguing for an Jewish state, but I think it's gotten less and less popular these days, at least from what I tell from the outside, and a more extreme form has become the popular one again.
Another part of the issue is that especially among young people, words have lost their meanings. Everything is toxic, a genocide, sexual assault, rape, cultural appropriation, god knows what else - the room for nuances in discussion has been entirely lost because large parts of society lack the vocabulary to talk about it, 1984 says hello.
The combination of hyper-social media, ever shorter dopamine feedings / gamification and a complete lack of awareness for the importance of basic education and history are disastrous.
> anti-Semites have a pretty loud and public voice in the "Western" world
So do Jews. So are we seeing full free speech in action? Or is whats right decided by which side people agree with?
>So are we seeing full free speech in action?
Even free speech has its limits...for example calling for the extermination of a race.
>Or is whats right decided by which side people agree with?
Correct, most of the time it is, and that is exactly why laws (esp. international ones) exist and Justitia is/should be blind.
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There's nothing inconsistent with people who don't call themselves "free speech absolutists" not being free speech absolutists.
There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.
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https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
Elon Musk literally said he's a free speech absolutist multiple times.
The "lane" is simple and has always been: no "right", as fundamental as it can be, is limitless. For ex. Freedom of movement is largely restricted, and the fact I can't "enter your house freely" is not a slippery slope to internal visas as the sort China uses to restrict movement internally.
Even in the US, freedom of speech IS restricted: the Supreme Court put the bar very high but it didn't say you could say anything. State secrets can't be revealed willy-nilly; even lower, you can't enter a non-disclosure agreement and then violate it.
The "lane" is that we try as much as possible to put clear, consistent guideline that apply to everyone through a legislative (actual laws) and judicial (precedent) process. This is absolutely not the same as Musk deciding on his own, inconsistent, ridiculous fits of drug-addled rage, where he bans the word "cisgender" or @elonjet for his own safety and then allows complete nazi-"WE WILL KILL YOU BITCHES" stuff - and that's only one of many examples.
If you violate an NDA, it is a civil matter. (Unless something significant has changed without me knowing!) That's completely separate from the government embarking on a criminal prosecution over speech. I think it is important to make the distinction.
The right view is, if you want to put it simplistically like this:
Progressives: Elon doesn't care about free speech, he cares about limiting the speech of progressives in favor of the extreme right
Also progressives: Free speech should have limits to protect minorities from aggressors
Nothing at all inconsistent about these two positions, regardless of whether you think that either one is a good idea, or even true.
I see it a bit differently. Progressives tend to believe speech can have limits, and generally support private citizens and companies enforcing it through shame etc.
Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.
>Pick a lane.
No, a good society should not pick lanes, but cherries.
> Even free speech has its limits
It doesnt though, thats the point.
Its the same as competition in a capitalist marketplace. A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
With free speech if somebody is saying something that other people think is terrible, they should stop listening to that person. They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
In reality, people are weak and do not do these things. They keep buying the terrible products because they dont want to have to think about looking for a better alternative. They keep listening to the hate speech because its easier to respond in anger than to ignore the person. The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Again in reality this wioll never happen, and so people will keep shouting and shouting about what they dont like until the world ends up destroying itself through hate and anger.
The free market on its own doesn’t work, that’s why we have regulation in place to guide it to a place that minimises the long term damage while consumers try to maximise the short-term benefit.
It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.
> It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.
I agree, thanks for pointing that out. There are nuances on both sides which make it an interesting thought experiment to apply to the other side.
>It doesnt though, thats the point.
Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
>They keep listening to the hate speech
The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate
>>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
> Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
It depends on context. The legal test is called the "Imminent Lawless Action" Test in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenbur...
> The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry
Buddy, do a little bit of googling before you say plainly incorrect stuff like this. [1] [2]
Just because there’s not a single definition of a word does not mean the meaning of the word is unclear.
I think everyone on the planet could identify the vast majority of hate speech from the age of like 11. They say the edgiest stuff, after all.
Even if you agree with hate speech, you can still identify it.
Also like… all words are made-up
1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate%20speech 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
> Just because there’s not a single definition of a word does not mean the meaning of the word is unclear.
So, from the opposite direction, I have the same issue as the other commentator but with the divergent use of the word "woke" by those mostly on the right (and sarcastically by those on the left) — if the person hearing/reading it doesn't know what to expect, it's not a useful word.
Therefore, while I know what I mean by "hate speech" (demonising/dehumanising a group), I tend to avoid using the term as it doesn't successfully replicate my thoughts into the heads of other people.
> Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal and I will call the police or defend myself. If they pay somebody else to act on their opinion and cause me harm then again it becomes illegal. But to expect the law to punish someone just because they said 'I want to kill you'? That IMO is barbaric and completely ridiculous.
> If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong?
In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
> In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
Yes agreed, and its also the reason we have an innocent until proven guilty justice system.
Things can be said in anger, and not really meant. In fact I would wager out of all the death threats made in the entire world, the vast majority are said in anger and not meant to be followed through on. This is why we dont lock people up for just saying things. There needs to be other motives and evidence behind it to show intent.
Unfortunately yes this means we have situations where people are not believed and go on to receieve harm. Humanity has decided as a society that this is less harmful than locking far too many innocent people up by mistake. I do not have an opinion on whether this is right or wrong, but it is what exists for us and created by us.
If you have a better idea for a more fair justice system then go advocate for it, but the whole history of humanity hasnt found one yet.
> Things can be said in anger, and not really meant. In fact I would wager out of all the death threats made in the entire world, the vast majority are said in anger and not meant to be followed through on. This is why we dont lock people up for just saying things. There needs to be other motives and evidence behind it to show intent.
You are incorrect, at least in California
https://www.cronisraelsandstark.com/criminal-threats-califor...
> You are incorrect
Not quite
From your link: "the prosecutor must prove that the threats placed the victim in reasonable fear and that the fear was sustained"
You cant just be prosecuted for saying something. You always need to back it up and prove it was a real threat where harm was a real possibility or the victim was in sustained genuine fear of their life.
> If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal
While I appreciate your free speech maximalism, I can't help but feel you're shutting the door after the horse has bolted.
My feeling is that someone should be allowed to say that they hate me, and that they'd like to kill me. All the same, if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
I'm fact I'm glad that they're allowed to express themselves like this because then I know who not to stand near cliff edges with.
For real though I think a lot (but not all) of opposition to things like hate speech is really an opposition to the feeling being expressed, rather than the expression itself. I'd prefer someone didn't have hatred in their heart, but once they do I prefer that they're open about it.
(You might say that that will only encourage others to become hateful, I don't necessarily agree, but it's a fair concern.)
I really like your opinion, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with what you are saying.
> if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
This is the sticky issue which nobody is able to solve though. How do you prove someone will actually attemt to do it? Currently the legal system requires more than them just saying it to prosecute. There needs to be more motive, or evidence of actual persistent stalking or harm.
What do you think makes the difference between an idle threat and an actual intention of harm?
I don't have a good idea for how to determine whether a threat is sincere or not, or whether or not either party believes it to be so.
On the other hand, it may not be necessary. When I say the law can try to prevent my murder, I don't necessarily mean to deprive my would-be murder of liberty or privacy (since those should be protected in the absence of proven guilt). If you put the prevention on the other side, and offer e.g. a police escort or enforced blocks on communication media then maybe you can discourage/prevent my murder without answering difficult questions like intent.
You might well say, "I shouldn't have to do any of that, they should have to not murder", or "that's all fine but who's going to pay". I have a most marvellous answer to those, but is comment is too small to contain it.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I am enjoying mulling over your responses.
> You might well say...
Well indeed I do say who is going to pay. If we had a society where you could get your own police escort or phone block just by saying that someone threatened you, I feel that service would be open to abuse and would end up costing the taxpayer a whole lot.
> I have a most marvellous answer to those
Please retort your answer, I am intrigued :)
> It doesnt though, thats the point.
If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
> A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
> They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
> The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world.
Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.
>If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
As a more general approach to freedom, we can consider that freedom can only begin where it confirms others’ freedom. If we don’t act with reciprocity in mind, we are on the track to build some kind of hegemony, not to establish a society of free people.
> If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it.
> Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
Yep, and if the majority of the world fully agrees that Twitter is in the wrong and is a horrible place then it will plummit further and cease to exist. The thing here is that there is a massive percent of the population that loves twitter as it is, and so it will continue as there are still enough people to justify the advertising.
> Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
He didnt. He is trying to and we will see what hapopens there. Personally I think his case will be thrown out but thats just an opinion.
> Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
I agree, I never said it was easy. In fact I said that the majority of the world will take the easy way out and not put the thought required into their reponses to things.
> Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it.
"Election".
Action very easy. They do it a lot. Did it this time, even, despite what they say.
> He didnt.
He did.
Here's the lawsuit that X Corp. filed: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.38...
That is him doing the thing.
> Did it this time, even, despite what they say.
I disagree.
> He did.
Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
> Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
This is not how people typically use the term. And if you look it up the dictionary also doesn't use it that way.
And while we're on this point, there's such a thing as vexation litigation. You should look that up too.
Because words are used to communicate between parties, one cannot unilaterally define an existing term to mean whatever they wish it to mean. (Another good thing to look up: Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of words.)
> This is not how people typically use the term. And if you look it up the dictionary also doesn't use it that way.
Yeah fair enough, I am not a laywer and so am not knowledgable on exact legal definitions. However you argued your point as if he was successful, which he is not, and so your point is moot until a ruling.
No need to go off on other tangents that I have not mentioned anything about, then again you have the right to free speech so feel free to rattle on about whatever you want!
> I disagree.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/14/media/white-house-ap-ban-...
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/julianne-moore-donald-tru...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/pentagon-sch... (Wasn't this the villain's plot in one episode of Buffy?)
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/13/trump-dei-ban-banned-wor... ("Trans" is a common prefix in chemical words, irregardless of humanity, this is stupid)
> Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
To sue is to file.
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/sue#:~:text=Brit%20%2F...
For the case I linked to, the status appears to be "Oral argument in the Fifth Circuit is scheduled for February 18, 2025" i.e. tomorrow: https://knightcolumbia.org/cases/x-corp-v-media-matters
Lots of people can't fight lawsuits even if they're in the right. This is called "lawfare" or a "SLAPP".
Here's the result of a different SLAPP case that he was involved in, that was dismissed by a judge because it was identified as a SLAPP case by a judge in a jurisdiction where that's deemed anti freedom-of-speech:
"""A judge in California on Monday dismissed the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has published reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X, formerly Twitter, since Musk’s acquisition.
The case was dismissed in accordance with the state’s anti-Slapp law, which forbids nuisance lawsuits intended to punish the exercise of free speech.""" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/25/elon-musk...
Thanks for the informative post, have an upvote :)
> > Even free speech has its limits
> It doesnt though, thats the point.
In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific).
There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Most of the limits on free speech don't pertain to the speech itself, but rather the speech being related to some other form of criminal conduct. Incitement to violence can be punished because of the violence; fraud can be punished because of the theft, etc.
So one can still be a free speech absolutist with respect to speech in itself, while still holding people responsible for unlawful activity that the speech is helping to facilitate.
Your logic here is circular. You're arguing definitions, it doesn't make sense to point to examples of places that claim to have free speech and decide that free speech must have limits because those places said they have it and they have limits.
You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.
Sure, you could easily say that, but it would be a pretty silly thing to say. The world is not black and white, as much as we'd like it to be sometimes.
It's ok as long as you don't want the world to be black xor white.
Thanks for the link, I'll have a read through of that.
Free speech in the US means they cannot make specific laws against proposing ideas, but a long history of legal cases does mean there are cases when you can be civilly or criminally liable if your words lead others to harmful actions
Its a weird grey area for sure. The best rationalization I have ever come up with is that when speech involves a legitimate threat to do harm, for example, that skips past just speech and can be seen as a step in actively planning to do harm. In certain situations, like murder or terrorism, we've agreed that simply planning to do it is a crime.
Combine the two and it isn't that you said something that is illegal, its that the statement is interpreted as a clear signal of actively planning to do something which itself is illegal.
That's a good rationalization indeed! It makes sense that you should be able to think and say "Y_Y is a jerk who deserves to die", but if you say it to my face then I might be reasonably upset to the point of considerable emotional harm, or if you say it from your pulpit it could reasonably be interpreted by one of your followers as an instruction to commit murder. The speech alone isn't the crime, but you can certainly commit different crimes purely by speaking (though the context is determinative).
It is quite nuanced, but generally it depends on your intent. If you plan how to commit a crime without intending or encouraging anyone to commit it, that is not illegal, but intending to commit a crime, even if some else does the actual deed or if nobody is even harmed, that is illegal, as they were the perpetrator and succeeded. Eg https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-pun...
That's not how capitalism works because the between the companies and the customers is a Mismazch in power and information.
That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power.
According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.
Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.
> According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.
IMO it is
> Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
Feel free to, you have that right. If people choose to act on it I will deal with it on my end appropriately, and I wont be complaining to you to stop saying what you have the right to.
What about cyber grooming?
So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
> What about cyber grooming?
Words are still just words until they are acted on, but this is just my opinion and you are entitled to yours.
> So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
Not sure where you got that from, of course it is possible. But we are all gatekeepers of our own minds.
You seem to be ignoring my responses and trying to lead me further into extreme examples to trap me. Carry on if you feel you must, but at the end of the day we both have our opinions and we are entitiled to them.
If an extreme example could trap you there would be limit to free speech, so there can’t be trap, just proof.
You overestimate the power of your mind. Constant attacks breaks everybody and don’t forget the mind of children and young people is even weaker. But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Back to extreme examples, what about Charles Manson? He didn’t kill anybody, was his imprisonment wrong?
You seem incredibly intereseted in my opinion. Do I really need to give you a rundown of all high profile murdereres and paedophiles and what I think of them?
> You overestimate the power of your mind
No I dont. I am fully aware of mine and everybody elses weakness and bias.
> But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Exactly!
I think you are overestimating your opinion, you come across as if you know everything thats right and wrong and everybody should have the same opinion as you.
Luckily for myself and free speech, opinions are subjective. Here you are trying your hardest to offend me and back me into a corner about what I think. Yet my overarching opinion is that you are free to say anything you like about me. I have no issue with your opinions, and if you didnt have issue with mine this would be a much nicer world to live in.
Try tolerence of other peoples opinions sometime, even if you dont agree with them. Its actually quite refreshing and liberating.
>So do Jews. So are we seeing full free speech in action?
To be clear, you're comparing anti-semites (a racist "group") with Jews (an ethnic/religious group). One is defined by holding a targeted, hateful ideology. The other is a group of human beings, by birth/existence.
I make no claim against you, but this framing represents the insidiously successful repackaging of hate as an "equal right", which racists have used to mainstream hateful ideas that, at-scale, ultimately infringe on the rights of groups of people. This can include (has included) incitement to violence. The latter is famously a limitation of free speech, and all rights are generally circumscribed by their infringement on the rights of others, in any case.
The other insidiously misleading argument around this issue is that Twitter is enforcing "free speech" in the first place. Only the government can infringe on the right, as it restrains only the government. Twitter is no "protector" of free speech, because it cannot be. It can, however, make the choice to allow and promote hateful speech against others, and that's exactly what it's doing.
So, the argument here is not whether promoting rights is good for society. The argument is whether promoting hate is good for society.
> To be clear, you're comparing anti-semites (a racist "group") with Jews (an ethnic/religious group). One is defined by holding a targeted, hateful ideology. The other is a group of human beings, by birth/existence.
I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant. It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist' or any other word. You are applying your opionin and bias to other people arguments to paint one side better than the other.
Take this same opinion and apply it to Israel/Palestine, and suddenly it becomes not so clear cut. Both sides claim something about the other side, and both are killing each other because if it. In this instance, who would you call hateful and racist? It completely depends on who you sympathise with as there is no correct answer here. It is no different to any other groups of people who you are not part of.
>It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist'
You should look up the word, antisemite.
>Take this same opinion and apply...
I understand why you'd want to change the subject, but no.
I also understand why you ignored the rest of my comment.
I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today. While it's infected too many people, it is heartening to watch the exodus underway that's rapidly evolving it into a 4chan-esque echo chamber.
Definition of antisemite: a person who is prejudiced against Jewish people
Prejudice is completely different to hate. They are often associated but are not the same.
> I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today.
You seem very quick to label and categorise people into boxes about what they think about. Be careful, that is a very dangerous road to go down as history has proved time and time again.
>Definition of antisemite
Your abridged definition is your cartoonish admission that you're aware that you're wrong.
With just a little more cleverness you could have easily avoided that reveal and actually challenged me.
>You seem very quick to label...
Ah yes, the old, "labeling the labelers is the real problem here" routine.
I'm seeing now that you're just kind of a lazy troll—boring and unimaginative. This is where I exit. Feel free to carry on with yourself!
> I'm seeing now that you're just kind of a lazy troll—boring and unimaginative.
Theres a main difference between you and I here which is becoming quite apparent at this point.
I respect your right to think and say anything you like. I have no issue with you or your opinions, and you are free to express them against me as you wish. This is the whole basis for all my posts as can plainly be seen.
You seem to have very strong feelings against me, resorting to labelling and name calling very quickly. You dont seem to respect my opinion or right to have one. You seem to think I am 'wrong' in the general sense, yet have nothing other than your opinion of me, a random person on the internet, to back that up.
Carry on with your offense throwing, I completely respect your right to express yourself in that way and will not tell you you are wrong or you should stop:)
> I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant.
This is an absurdly disingenuous way of phrasing the situation. One group is ideological and defined by its generalized hatred towards members of the other, while the other group is an ethnic/religious group. Being jewish does not imply that you subscribe to any particular opinion or identify with either end of the political spectrum. There is no possible way this can simply be seen as as a disagreement between "two sides".
Your attempt to equate this to the Israel/Palestine conflict is equally absurd. The Hamas and the government of Israel are both committing heinous acts of terrorism in the name of hatred, bigotry and racism.
Thats fine, we can disagree :)
I dont agree with your definitions or opinions and thats OK, we have the right to do that.
Are you affording me the same courtesy? Because it sounds like you are not.
Yeah, sure, you can have your opinions, I have never claimed otherwise. My opinion is that your opinion is absurd and apologetic of hatred and racism.
It does not matter how politely you formulate your opinion if it legitimizes racism by reduction to a "two sides" argument. Merely existing as a religious or ethnic group is not the same as expressing an opinion, and it doesn't legitimize the expression of unqualified hatred towards the same group. We should tolerate the expression of opinions which we disagree with, but I think there is a limit, and we should not tolerate intolerance.
> It does not matter how politely you formulate your opinion if it legitimizes racism by reduction to a "two sides" argument.
The problem is, and I'm sure you wont agree here, is that what constitutes racism is subjective. This is because the strength of the definition of 'prejudice' differs from person to person.
Some people say racism is when you make big decisions that negatively affect a whole race of people, other people say its when you say a rude word to a black or gay person.
See this enojoyable opinion of a black man on white peoples ideas of racism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA8k5uj8AyA
There is no universal definition of racism which the whole world subscribes to. If you think there is, then you need to see that thats just your opinion and you have made yourself think everybody else agrees with you.
It seems that you think you have your definition of racism wrapped up with a bow, and that the rest of the world should agree with you on what that is. Unfortunately the world doesnt work like that, and unless you are willing to discuss these things without calling the other side 'absurd' and actually start exploring these topics properly then it will always devolve into a 'sides' argument.
> we should not tolerate intolerance
But right now you are being intolerant of me, so should I not tolerate you back? Again, the definition of tolerance is subjective. Until we can all tolerate every other persons opinion to the point we can calmly debate it, then we will not get anywhere in purging prejudice from the world.
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Pretty much anytime sometime says "antisemitism" these days what they mean is "opposing genocide".
The Jewish people who are against genocide really do not appreciate people like you staining them with that lie.
In Italy even saying "stop genocide" without further elaboration on state tv is enough to get the Israelian ambassador to call the prime minister.
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2024/02/14/travaglio-a-la7-...
yeah but thats like saying I as an american have to be personally responsible for trump's behavior
That's completely different. People criticise trump without being accused of wanting to exterminate the entire population of the USA.
But if you criticise israel, that's the standard answer you get.
I think part of the problem is that so many folks think its somehow Israel's job to absorb terrorist acts without any military response. I for one won't be part of that. Gaza seems to me to be little more than an Iranian military outpost from which they can launch attacks on Israel.
I don't blame folks for being tired of this, but Gaza chose this route just like we in the US chose ours. Gaza made an extremely gross and unwise decision to go with the hamas losers. Its natural when a country picks poor quality folks to run their government that there may be consequences for their unwise choice. That goes for any country who picks the wrong leaders. I'm sure during world war 2 the civilians inhabiting axis territories probably experienced things you guys would call genocide.
All people need to do is to come up with something other than the complete destruction of Israel, and maybe there could be the start of a peace process.
Ah, you only get your information from zionist propaganda. No point talking to you then :)
>Ah, you only get your information from zionist propaganda.
I wouldn't agree with that, what I try to do is to gather the news the best I can, try to include the historical context and then try to reason about where the conflict exists. My intent with this process requires that by necessity I DO try to see the other side(s), because conflicts often arise from incompatible worldviews, so what are these worldviews?
Often with these long standing beefs, there is a chain of hostile actions met by more hostile actions by opposing sides or interests. I think the reason that the october 7 action is now forgotten was that it was sudden and ended pretty quickly for obvious reasons.
Is the destruction in Gaza disproportionate in nature, well it clearly looks that way, but on the other hand if I shoplift a candy bar and get arrested, the consequences are not comparable in magnitude to the price of the candy bar, heck its often hundreds of times more severe :)
>No point talking to you then :)
Its fine if you don't like to discuss things like this, I understand the frustration. Drilling down into these subjects seems suspiciously close to work and I know many of us just post here for fun. I do it to cultivate a "slander free" posting style and avoid things like assuming what sources of information others exclusively subscribe to.
> I wouldn't agree with that
If you did differently, you wouldn't have written what you wrote :)
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Pro-Palestinian usage of the slur coined by David Duke on Twitter is a clue there.
I had to look up what word you could possibly be talking about. You mean "Zionist"? How is that a slur? It's what the movement calls itself. That's like saying "Nazi" is a slur against Adolf Hitler.
Zio is the slur. Obviously David Duke did not coin the term Zionist.
Name it X because old Twitter is dead.
This is probably the only reasonable argument I've heard for this.
Just because some people use "freedom of speech" as a veil, doesn't make it bad.
True, but thanks to certain groups using it as a dog whistle you now have to do extra work to find out whether you the person saying it actually cares about empowering people to speak or whether they just want a safe space where they can say the n word.
Which thankfully when it's a platform it doesn't take long to find out which it is.
As with all things in life, regulation makes it possible in the first place.
Unfortunately, in American culture any kind of regulation is seen as negative inherently, whereas in continental European cultures, regulation is seen as a vital and fundamental part of ensuring a place where everyone can thrive.
No it doesn't. It's like libertarianism—it's a concept I find interesting if it helps promote mutual aid, collectivism, etc. Abolishing the state as a vehicle of oppression? Why not.
But if we abolish the state the way libertarians currently define it—meaning abolishing the state but not private property (which paradoxically forces the state to persist in order to determine who owns what, such as businesses, housing, etc.)—then it's an entirely different project. We would be abolishing the so-called oppression of the state only to replace it with an even worse and unchecked oppression by corporations and the billionaires who own them, with no means of voting (since "voting with your wallet" is a myth).
And yet, when you listen to them, it sounds as if they are liberating us from something, when in reality, they are freeing themselves from all control so they can better enslave us.
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> Twitter's content policy is more permissive now than it was pre-aquisition, with only narrow exceptions (e.g. doxxing is now banned).
Part of the problem is that the “content policy” keeps differing from practice. Does sharing Signal links violate the policy?
Prior to Musk's purchase of Twitter, feminists who expressed the view that women and girls need single-sex spaces, and that males who identify as women aren't actually women and therefore shouldn't be allowed in these spaces, would be banned from the platform under the guise of "transphobia".
They were literally being silenced for expressing their criticism of the ideology of gender identity and how it is being used to disadvantage and oppress women and girls.
On X, however, they are free to state this without fear of censorship, due to the broadening of permissible speech on the platform. So while it might not be the "free speech absolutism" that Musk disingenuously claims, it's an improvement to the pre-Musk era of censorship.
The difference is that freedom of speech is concerned with what the Government allows you to talk about.
X, through Musk, is now a quasi-governmental platform - as can demonstrated by actions like this.
I agree that is true regarding freedom of speech laws. But many organisations, including social media platforms, have policies regarding freedom of speech as well. Universities are another such example, as free speech is an essential component of academic freedom.
I don’t have the freedom to say how I feel this. But I have been studying the great helmsman recently and soon we will all have an exchange of views.
This is a flat out falsehood - jk rowling was spewing anti trans hate from the position of “feminism” long before the purchase of twitter, she was never “censored” or anything close to it. This is revisionist bs, framed in a way to make your dear leader look like the hero, and not the incompetent anti free speech nitwit he actually is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48366184
You should perhaps do more research before making claims like "flat out falsehood".
Even this article doesn’t go out of its way to say that’s why she was banned - this is according to her. Even if this terrible source were true and you found a single case - it doesnt change the fact at all at what I said, the single loudest feminist anti trans voice is still alive and well on twitter and has never faced a lick of censorship on twitter or now X. So yea, it’s a falsehood. Musk didnt “change” anything here. It’s revisionist nonsense.
I could search X and provide many more examples, including from feminists who appealed and were unbanned after Musk took over the company, others from screenshots posted of emails with the reason for the ban.
Would that change your view?
The original claim:
“before musk you as a feminist could not state (common anti trans positions held by feminists of a certain flavor)”
I provided the single biggest counterexample ever in JK rowling, so the original post is either a falsehood (I believe so) or very wrong, hope that’s more clear to you, since you seem to have issues following here.
You could search it yet you don’t provide those examples here which is why I’m not taking anything you’re saying in good faith because it isn’t. if you’re curious why I think that, read again the first part of this comment.
It seems to me that you've misread my original comment as stating that all feminists who spoke out against the misogyny of gender identity ideology on Twitter were banned. This isn't what I said or what I meant. To elaborate a bit more: in addition to the then-permanent bans, there was also a considerable amount of self-censorship amongst those who hadn't been banned (or had only been temporarily suspended), to avoid wording their views in such a way that may be disfavoured by Twitter's censorial policies.
JKR is an interesting counterexample for a number of reasons. One is that she was very careful and tempered in her language, as one may expect from an expert writer and of someone with her keen perception of language. If you search her tweets on this topic prior to Musk's ownership (e.g. "from:jk_rowling until:2022-04-14 trans" in the X search box) you'll see what I mean. Another is that she spoke out on this topic fairly late on, and so would have witnessed the censorship and been aware of how best to express her views around these limitations. There is also the fact that hers is and was one of Twitter's most-followed accounts and in practice that would give her more leeway in terms of freedom of expression.
I could search X to confirm to you what I personally witnessed with regard to feminists who aren't JKR being censored and banned, but that would take some effort and I'm not yet convinced that it would be worth it, given that you're engaging with an attitude of aggressive cross-examination rather than curiosity and open-mindedness. This is also why I enquired as to if it might change your view.
Freedom of speech, at least in the US, is a concern specifically with the government censoring citizens' speech. The Twitter files are a recent example of the government partnering with private corps to censor, so that's a fair argument, but in general a private company can't violate free speech by deciding what kind of content they want allowed.
Is it shitty that they censor? Absolutely. But is it a constitutional violation? Not unless I've horribly misunderstood my rights for more than 35 years.
> Freedom of speech, at least in the US, is a concern specifically with the government censoring citizens' speech.
Well, no -- you're conflating "freedom of speech" as a general concept with the first amendment as a legal principle. The first amendment is specifically the mechanism of law we use to ensure that freedom of speech is respected in our interactions with the political state.
The first amendment doesn't apply to our interactions with each other outside of the political sphere, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have expectations of conduct and cultural norms that uphold freedom of speech via other means in non-government contexts.
Your definitions of social norms ass backwards.
Cultural norms dictate some modicum of restraint on everyone. You have no obligation to tolerate me if I call your wife a whore. Any given community has its social norms that dictate what you can and can't say. To force them to accept "unacceptable" speech would violate freedom of speech itself.
No, that's not quite correct. A lot of subcultures and echo-chamber type social contexts certainly do have extreme policing of extremely particular taboo subject matters, but in more general contexts, especially in American society, there's a strong expectation that people ought to be able to speak their mind without excessive interference, and there's usually a high bar to what constitutes subject matters taboo enough to restrict or exclude people for engaging with, along with social norms that often regard excessive policing of other people's expression as itself taboo.
No there isn't. You can't, rightfully, campaign to make rape legal for a day without your life being ruined through ostracization. I wouldn't want to be associated with such a person. And that is in public.
In private you have severe restrictions on speech and expressions. Workplaces, stores, and schools have codes of conduct, dress codes, etc. to restrict expression.
What you call "extremely taboo subjects" is relative, based on your own biases and beliefs. "Woman should be more active in public life" is not an "extreme" view, even in more conservative sections of society. But in Ultra-orthodox jewish communities, or isolationist muslim communities, or even many christian sects, this would be controversial statement.
If a member faces social consequences for these statements, it is not a violation of their right to free speech. Nobody is obligated to tolerate you, no matter how in the right you may be. You can't force society to be on your side.
You might say, "But these social norms are repressive and harmful." Well then change them through activism. Stop whining about "free speech violations". That is, again, ass backwards.
> No there isn't. You can't, rightfully, campaign to make rape legal for a day without your life being ruined through ostracization.
You can't control what other opinions people will have of you, or suppress their expression of those opinions, that's true. But that itself is part and parcel of freedom of speech. The social consequences of expressing opinions that other people find offensive or disgusting are yours to bear, and may indeed motivate others to want to have little to do with you.
But this is juxtaposed against an expectation of freedom of speech as a cultural norm -- the point above is precisely that the way this is expressed in other contexts is different from the way it's expressed with respect to the political state. So we do have an expectation that formal institutions will not engage in prior restraint, or punish people for speech itself within most (but not necessarily all) categories, etc.
For example, people might find it reasonable that someone be dismissed from a job for making overtly racist comments in the office. But the same people would consider it inappropriate if, for example, an employee was fired for expressing that he does not like the boss's favorite movie.
There are absolutely different boundaries and different weighing of consequences between how we apply the norm of freedom of speech to political vs. social situations, but to say that we do not adhere to freedom of speech as a cultural norm at all is quite incorrect.
These are a lot of words to state you disagree with your previous post.
You're right, and that's were the double standards come in.
Progressives: Elon doesn't care about freedom of speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)
Also progressives: Freedom of speech has its limits
Pick a lane.
Elon described himself as a free speech absolutist. There is no inconsistency in pointing out that his actions don’t align with this description, regardless of whether or not the person doing so is themselves a free speech absolutist.
Shifting the goal posts.
The attacks on Musk are almost always that he doesn’t support freedom of speech, without any qualification.
If you’re trying to attack the much narrower position that he’s not a free speech absolutist you need to do it at the time your make the criticism, not retrospectively after you make the allegation.
I don't think so. Twitter before Musk had all kinds of TOS that obviously blocked speech that would be protected by the First Amendment. No-one is saying that Twitter used to be a free speech absolutist free-for-all before Musk took over. They're saying two things. First, that his actions don't match his stated intentions. Second, that he is heavily biased towards unblocking far right accounts.
Here is my lane: Elon is a hypocrite. He bought twitter in the name of "free speech," then removes any speech he doesn't like.
His actions are inconsistent, and this one of many demonstrations that he doesn't care at all about liberty. That matters because he's now apparently in charge of every federal government agency.
Musk is a hypocrite, but so too are progressives on the topic of freedom of speech.
It's the pot calling the kettle black.
Wait so you're saying that anyone who criticizes Musk is in this bucket of "progressive" and therefore is accountable for the supposed hypocrisy of all "progressives"?
Actually this argument makes no sense. I know that it's commonly repeated in propaganda, but that doesn't mean it isn't stupid on its face. You can't just throw people into a collective arbitrarily and then hold them responsible for everyone else you'd call that's actions
Hypocrites deflect when their hypocrisy is called out.
Sure, but also hypocrisy only makes sense when applied to a single person or an actual organization that actually collectively takes positions. "Progressives" is an amorphous category that can seemingly include anyone we want to declare "woke" at any given time, and seems to span the political spectrum from even the most right-leaning democrat politicians to random tankie teenagers on social media. Such an incoherent group doesn't have collective positions or collective responsibility for each other's positions, and I think it's important to point this out because it's a very common rhetorical gambit
That's a generalization that I think you'll find hard to back up with evidence. I'm the progressive you're discussing this with right now, and I don't think I've said anything inconsistent. But I'll respond to your imagination's idea of what "progressives" must be saying anyway.
The statements "Elon Musk Musk doesn't care about free speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)." and "Free speech has limits." Are non-contradictory.
Additionally, not allowing links to Signal isn't an "edge case," but a considerable offense against free speech (the general concept, not the literal law in the constitution), especially for one who calls himself a "free speech absolutist."
> Progressives: Elon doesn't care about freedom of speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)
No, it's "Elon claims to be a free speech absolutist yet somehow keeps denying freedom of speech to people who disagree with him". The hypocrisy is the problem.
Actually freedom of speech is a principle, which Musk and his ilk claim to care about, despite using their power to censor people through either direct control of information streams or threats. The first amendment to the US constitution specifically seeks to reify this principle in laws pertaining only to the government's actions, but freedom of speech as a principle can be supported or violated by anyone with power over other people. The people claiming to be "free speech absolutists" are hypocritical even if they didn't also work for the government and enact these vendettas against speech they don't like on a governmental level (which is also happening)
The owner is working for the government, can't play that card any more.
This is definitely true, however many of us remember Musk declaring himself a "free-speech absolutist", so in most cases people are referring to his hyprocisy rather than his legal rights.
[0] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
It’s always been free speech for us, not for you.
I mean, congratulations you’ve explained why the Speechers criticising Twitter were always wrong on this point, but Twitter has now been taken over by people who’ve been pushing a very unamerican idea of free speech so it’s fair game to point out they’re trying to prevent people from using the very system that DOGE runs on.
When Mr. Musk describes X as "the last bastion of free speech" or similar what do you think he refers to?
Not OP but.. He’s full of shit?
You get banned for sharing identities of DOGE people, but Musk can share the name and tax documents of a federal judge.
Hypocrite.
> In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves
This particular clause seens very unlikely. One could want an increase in racism and homophobia on a platform without specifically wanting there to be less black people (for example) speaking out. That the -isms cause said people to speak up less would likely be a (pleasant?) side effect rather than the primary goal.
It is very simple:
1. Inherited rich kids like Elon often have a strong feeling that they are better then the rest of humanity.
2. But it turns out if you are a leech on society like that sooner or later people stop accepting that (remember: he pays less in taxes and gains more in government subsides than most people)
3. So in order for people not to turn against you sooner or later you need to keep them split into subsections that are in conflict with each other. The more split they are, the more wealth you can extract.
That is the age old strategy of divide and conquer and if you ever wondered why your political system seemed to be split down the middle 50:50, that is your answer: people with money profit from it being so.
Even granting that, you would want MORE LGBTQ+/minority speech. The more energy people spend arguing with each other about culture war, the more dividee they are and the less they have for trying to change inequality.
Trying to silence LGBTQ+ etc people goes directly against the goal you posit.
It's not a closed ecosystem. If LGBTQ+/minority speech is happening on a different platform or medium, it's still happening. It can be profitable to be the part of the ecosystem that doesn't cater to the minority as long as someone else does.
Not if you're trying to win the next election in the hope is going to be the last.
What would change in the 2028 election that wasn't changed in the 2024 one?
> I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.
It took 6 weeks for that milk to rot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
X/Twitter should publicly provide a suspension reason - that would help a lot in verifying whether the account did/did not break TOS.
A justification [0] of sorts is provided for the journalist suspensions:
> Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
That's not a new problem though, platforms have been kicking people off with no clear reason for years.
Those platforms have not, however, been billing themselves as champions of unfettered free speech before handing out arbitrary unexplained bans when their feelings got hurt or they disliked the speech.
Companies market themselves in ways that disagree with how the companies operate all the time. Marketing is frequently misaligned with what the company or product actually is.
So your take on it is "oh he's a hypocritical liar but it's OK because he's not the only one"?
No, you're putting words in my mouth. My point here was simply that we should take any marketing as an accurate view of reality.
Pick a company and you will almost certainly find contradictions in how they publicly represent themselves.
That's true, but there's no reason Twitter/X has to stay like that.
Stack Overflow has a pretty good model. It does not remove suspended accounts nor their posts (except those directly related to the suspension). It subtly signals that an account is in suspension by reducing the account's 'reputation' (internet points) to 1 and placing a small notice on the profile, usually stating the reason for the suspension (e.g. suspicious voting etc).
A couple of journalists broke Twitters rule on doxxing, and were briefly suspended.
Wikipedia cops a lot of criticism for being politically biased. The fact it has a whole article around this seems to support that.
> A couple of journalists broke Twitters rule on doxxing, and were briefly suspended.
That is a complete lie. Musk "updated" twitter rules to ban the tracking of private jets (namely his) despite that being public information, and immediately proceeded to suspend accounts having relayed that public information, and accounts which had mentioned or linked to such, or to aviation tracker websites.
Musk also routinely singles out individuals of companies or administrations he dislikes e.g. https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-bullying-federal-wor...
Doxing often involves linking data in public datasets to de-anonymised individuals. Using ADS-B to achieve that is just an implementation detail.
Ultimately, there's little doubt that sharing the real time location of named private individuals is doxing.
It's true that Twitter suspended journalists only 24 hours after the ban on doxing went live, but the penality was minor, and journalists were allowed back after they removed the offending content.
What exactly is it about that article that leads you to label it as politically biased? I see nothing but apparently factual information without any commentary.
It's existence.
A couple journalists broke a social media platform's rule on doxxing, and were temporarily suspended for it.
This wouldn't meet the standard for notability if it occurred on any other platform.
You can not make Wikipedia care about your pet idea without working on it yourself, so the absence of information on something is more an issue with you than with the people that edit Wikipedia.
It is impossible to argue against you because it is an opinion. First of all there is not one "Wikipedia", second of all as politicians usually say "I can not comment on specific cases". There is some truth in that saying, you can only talk about the policy and the policy continues to be "neutral point of view". Considering the horribly biased alternatives to Wikipedia that has sprung up, I would say that Wikipedia is probably the best NPOV you are going to get.
> You can not make Wikipedia care about your pet idea without working on it yourself, so the absence of information on something is more an issue with you than with the people that edit Wikipedia.
Have you actually tried creating articles on Wikipedia? I've seen some pretty notable projects have pages that they wrote for Wikipedia be rejected as being "not noteworthy enough". Specifically Pleroma (a Fediverse application similar to Mastodon) comes to mind.
I have many fought for many disputed articles, Bitcoin is one of them. I would agree that Pleroma is not noteworthy, I am not a deletionist so I would not delete it but that is a slippery slope and you end up writing articles about date handling in Cobol. I just accept and move on, e.g. expand on the Fediverse article.
I feel for people who get their pet idea deleted.
And why was CrimethInk banned then? because they didn't dox anyone, never called for violence against people or location.
Until a "free speech defender" can explain what CrimthInc did that was against free speech that warranted the ban (and not either ignore it or sweep it under the "mistake were made" rug), i will keep thinking they are only a Musk glazer, deal?
Did they break the rules on doxxing, or did Musk just say they did?
They shared the real time location of private individuals (or links to it).
They were penalized only 24 hours after the ban took effect, but the penality was minor.
I mean, it's a massive stretch to pretend that sharing an ADS-B feed is somehow more of a share of the real time location of private individuals than livetweeting an event individuals are present at, and the reporting on Elon's U-turn on the ElonJet account that he banned journalists for came after the account had been deleted...
The rules on doxing are applied haphazardly.
Musk is fine with censorship with his Chinese CCP friends, anyway, so the hypocrisy is as big as his Melon.
> link to Watergate Scandal article
> Wikipedia’s political bias confirmed
A president breaking the law, vs a few low-level journalists breaking a doxxing policy of a social media website.
Hardly equivalent in terms of notability.
When you say "Wikipedia" do you mean the site operators, or the volunteer editors? If there is a factually incorrect statement in the article, instead of complaining about bias you can always edit it or start a section in the Talk page on the article. Be a part of the group and reduce its perceived bias.
The simple existence of a page that documents an event is not evidence of political bias, and that accusation says more about your own biases than it does Wikipedia editors.
The editors.
The problem is that notability is very subjective, and wikipedia's editors are notorious for applying a low threshold for information critical of those on the right, and high threshold for information critical of the left.
Suspending a few journalists for doxxing would not meet the notability threshold for an article to exist, if it occured on any other platform.
If you have verifiable information that debunks or improves upon existing text in the article, which meets the standards of the organization (not self-published, etc), I promise you that your edits will be considered and integrated. There is a Talk page for a reason.
The system is not perfect, and is still vulnerable to certain kinds of subterfuge, but the more critical thinkers involved in the process, the better. If you consider yourself a critical thinker, consider adding to the body of knowledge.
> if it occured on any other platform
Who cares? Those platforms are not Wikipedia, and serve different goals. You will find plenty of historical events covered in great depth on Wikipedia despite only involving a few people over a few days. Don't fall victim to cherry-picking.
You seem to have completely missed what I was saying.
Journalists get suspended from social media platforms for doxing all the time.
These events are not newsworthy, and wikipedia articles are not written about them.
The problem isn't the content of this article, it is that the article exists at all. It only exists because wikipedia editors apply different notability thresholds to one side of politics than the other.
You're making up rules that no one is required to follow. Wikipedia doesn't exist in order to appease you, it exits in order to educate you.
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Wow, post after post of rhetorical, bad faith bullshit. Amazing.
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> I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this,
They won't. They will say they're the champion of free speech, and that'll be enough for the fan base.
"Free speech" on a centralized platform always seems fishy. One can't expect it from Elon at least. He always has extreme/polar thoughts on various subjects.
If they were actual gaslights, self-powered gaslighting would solve the world's energy issues.
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors?
The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.
> The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes
Tunisia is now arguably better off, but even beyond that: the longterm effects of such things aren't always immediately apparent. The French Revolution led to terror, then to an Empire and devastating wars and finally back to the old monarchy, but it cast a very long shadow on the 19th century and beyond.
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This is gratuitously snarky and adds little to the discussion.
It would be a bigger problem if there was a productive discussion.
What's the post in saving up all this karma if I can't spend it on enjoying myself once in a while?
Is that the HN equivalent of “what’s the point of having Fuck You Money if I don’t say “fuck you”?”
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The point is that social media was used by people to connect and organise which led to the overthrow of a number of dictators/military junta.
What has happened since is the old order has mostly reasserted itself - with a clamp down on social media, and mechanisms put in place to cut access if things get too fiesty.
Take Egypt - they kicked out a miltary juntu - forced elections - then the 'wrong' people won the elections and the military took over again, clamped down on the media and are in still in place today ( president has been in power for 10+ years with no signs of stepping down ) - and they are so representative of the people that the US think they might be able to persuade the Egyptian leader to take part in ethnic cleansing of it's neighbour.
Whether that's a good thing depends on whether you think people like el-Sisi know what's best for their country, whether the people agree or not.
The Egyptian case was so sad: the first elections run elected Islamists, who failed to make a pluralist democracy stick (which was what the Twitter protestors largely wanted!) and instead ended up running similar levels of repression but with a Muslim flavour.
I think it's complex - being elected to a head of state that was previously rife with corruption is a very difficult job, not made easier by the previous regime and their foreign friends trying ( and succeeding ) to reverse the revolution.
In the end I think it's easiest to stick to the facts - which is the elected PM was overthrown by the military and sentenced to death, and eventually died in prison.
At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
I'd argue it's a tool for extremism and populism everywhere; the weakest Arab governments simply crumpled first, however the same pressures are applied to all governments.
Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace.
In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed.
If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better.
Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed.
In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it.
In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
Twitter was a net positive for many. Millions of people around the world relied on it for timely news and updates in the absence of other avenues. This was particularly pertinent in places like Africa where state infrastructure wasn't able to provide or indeed, the middle east, where censorship prevented accurate news being disseminated.
So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
Also, the Arab spring overthrew several decades-long brutal dictatorships. Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
>Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
I don't believe either of those ended up positive either. The Taliban waited out the US; they may have been overthrown, but given that he Taliban are back in power it seems like the entire effort was waste. In Iraq, Saddam was the only force holding back the Shia majority. Iraq has largely devolved into another proxy for Iran, and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone. I'm not supportive of Saddam, either; he was truly evil in ways that people don't always understand. My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
> and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone > [....] My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
The current worse state of Iraq ( post Saddam ) is nothing to do with populism - and all to do with foreign inference.
Though I agree with the general point about revolutions - one of the key problems with violent revolutions is quite often the most hardline nutters ( of whatever flavour ) tend to end up in charge as they are the most prepared to be violent.
And you didn't even get to Libya.
> So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
I presume the grandparent was being rhetorical and trying to say Twitter was always a net negative for society as a whole.
Even today, its a net positive for plenty of people (myself included).
Indeed. It was always a drama tool for me. Short and clickbaity.
That occasional good information also succesful spread, doesn't mean that information would not have also flowed with different communication tools and maybe then even in a better way.
If your sycophants eat everything you'll throw at them there won't be any need for justification. Which completely baffles me. The US digital technology sector seems to be full of yes man and groupthink, and it's getting worse.
I think some people are so motivated by "hate" (for lack of a better word) they they pretty much would shoot their foot off with a sawed-off if someone told them it would "own the libs". It's like you say: there is not even need of justification, Musk is "our guy" and that's that.
There is plenty of criticism of Elon Musk coming coming from both sides of the political spectrum. I am consider myself right of centre and I hear plenty of criticisms of Elon Musk coming from the right. The complaints are completely different though.
The big problem with any of these discussions (especially online) is that a lot of people are intellectually lazy and assume the other-side is comprised of brain dead zealots who only support the most extreme positions.
I don’t think it’s quite right to say they assume it. News outlets and online platforms intentionally cultivate that idea, because in the modern era they directly optimize for engagement, and I’m substantially more likely to click on people saying or complaining about outrageous things than measured criticisms from a perspective I don’t share.
Maybe it is a bit of both. However the end result is the discourse online is frequently frames on the idea that the if you are part of Group A, then Group B is full of sycophants. I am also dubious whether I am actually talking to a real person in a lot of these discussions, but that is another discussion entirely.
You can also ignore any justification X gives, all the statements coming from Musk and the other tech companies and the government are untrustworthy or deceptive. But people are still hopeful in that Musk saying "free speech" actually gives them any reasing to keep using Twitter.
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The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
Your comment is quite extraordinary as Orwell's work dealt with an unthinking bureaucracy resembling the Soviet Union. He also had the foresight to see the U.K. could be a totalitarian state.
An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entirely benign. And it would suggest that reasonable people can also dispute the pure intentions of a system that makes it almost entirely impossible to fire people, and was started as a soft power system for US foreign policy.
But how does any of that relate to banning signal links regardless? This is an effort to reduce self-organization and solidarity between affected normal people. It isn’t just USAID, 100,000+ people are being illegally terminated across the government (probationary employees who are only allowed to be fired for “performance,” but many/most have fine reviews and/or just started).
If a bunch of new people are being fired after having just moved or started new positions, why wouldn’t people try self organizing to support their coworkers who just had their lives upended?
My comment was simply in direct relation to the poster's comment about trustworthiness of government.
But as to your assertion of "illegally terminated," let me provide some context.
Not a single lawsuit has provided evidence of damages under law. One of the TROs has been shot down outright. This is key, as the judiciary requires law to be violated to intervene. They are not an HR department, and there are existing remedies for this in the administration. No such violations warranting legal action outside of the existing system have been shown.
Not only this, they went district "judge shopping" on a Friday night, two hours prior to close. Many of these judges are now being shown with extremely inflammatory political rhetoric showing bias, and one will have articles of impeachment drawn.
The circumstances surrounding this judicial action are so unprecedented, that when the Administration appealed showing evidence of fraud and illegal behavior, they "asked" the judge if they should allow it. The point of this is to show the frivolity of the suit: not only does the judiciary not determine Executive Power under Article II, they're asking the judge if the judge should take executive action to break the law.
While law is subject to interpretation, it is not clear (and I do not believe) these employees are being terminated illegally, the least of which is they have yet to describe the legal circumstances under which their termination is unlawful. Unlike common wisdom, the federal judiciary is not-coequal with the Legislature and the Executive; the Supreme Court is. Article III specifies that federal courts called "inferior" courts are subject to the leisure of Congress. These courts have been disbanded twice in history and do not hold the power that popular culture thinks they do.
If you take USAID « revelations » by Musk at face value, you are… rather misled.
The very behavior of DOGE looks like kids unleashed in a factory they don’t understand, willing not to recognize their capacities are adequate to understand it in so little time.
There were knowledgeable people, they’ve been fired.
You wouldn’t accept it for a flying plane pilot or a surgeon in the surgery room, why would you accept it for state agencies?
I was asked to join USDS by the head of the agency in 2018.
I am fully aware of the widespread fraud they were encountering, as well as the technical difficulties of fixing it. I am also aware of the less-than-neutral culture that pervaded that organization at that time. I also have experience as a defense contractor and have personally met and interacted with many people in the administrative bureaucracy, including high ranking cabinet members.
My comments come from personal experience both with the precursor to DOGE (which is a division in USDS), as well as how the federal government operates.
And that’s a good point of view.
And yet you believe that fixing this requires pulling the plug on most if not all, by people totally remote to how it works?
That’s a peculiar way of fixing this. Especially in administrative matters (where the side effects are as deadly as putting an untrained random person in charge of a civil airplane).
They won't. They'll lie, some will buy it up and they'll cary on. This behaviour is completely consistent with what they've been doing since purchase. Why start now?
They haven't had proper PR since the end of 2023. They don't respond, if it blows up you might get an one-liner Elon tweet.
If you capture a high enough proportion of the attention bandwidth, you cease having to answer questions or be accountable. It's quite scary how powerful this is.
There is so much censorship going on on Twitter through the use of dark patterns, that it's embarrassing to claim it to be something like a fortress of free speech.
Let alone the fact that you need to have a subscription in order to obtain a "somewhat fair" exposure. It's ridiculous.
FYI I had some time in the morning so built a simple site to share Signal links on X:
https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app
HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078736
No one is a free specch absolutist; those who say use it as a cover to not clearly state their values and what they stand for.
Nah I think the ship has sailed on lip service. He is/was all about defending the "right" kind of free speech, anyway.
They don't have to pretend anymore. The man saluted at an inauguration, I think all pretense has left the building.
Absolutely no one should be surprised anymore. It was all a projection.
when a 'leader' takes away your rights he will claim its to protect you.
Maybe it was a mistake?
Twitter appears to make a lot of mistakes of this sort. Tsk. Very careless.
I mean, who knows, they may claim that; I believe they did after the period where they banned people for using the dread word 'mastodon': https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-...
But c'mon, now, if you believe that you'll believe anything.
I mean, I think at this point everyone knows that, in this context, 'free speech' should be read as 'speech that Musk likes'.
(This is the case for most people who go on about 'free speech' a lot, really.)
Look up “leggi fascistissime”. It’s appalling how people don’t see the obvious playbook that’s unfolding here, down to the claims of “defending democracy”
Most people are living automatons who find excuses in being too busy, too scared or too confident in believing "that's history, it can never happen again, we're living in a modern world" to notice things unfolding around, which is exactly what brought fascism to life back then.
> [...] Twitter [...]
X is not Twitter.
Twitter was a tool for free speech. X is a tool for Nazi propaganda.
I think people still haven't come to terms with that.
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> Remember how he exposed government meddling with twitter and everyone called it nothing burger.
Please provide actual evidence of said government meddling with Twitter.
I can't speak to the evidence or lack thereof, but this is what they were referring to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
IIRC, Twitter(and several other social media platforms) was asked to limit/block accounts that were spreading Covid misinformation at the height of the pandemic. You know, the kind of stuff a functioning government interested in protecting ALL of it's citizens would do. That's "heart" of this "government meddling" excuse.
I would say there is all sorts of "government meddling" going on right now, with all the uncertanty and mess with all the services + departments we all rely on over the last month....
A government might want to do it for good motives, but its still a restriction on free speech.
Otherwise you are appointing some group of people to decide what is "good speech" and "bad speech" and banning the latter.
It was a nothing burger because Twitter didn't blindly do everything they were asked to do, they rejected a bunch of the government requests. It's not weird for law enforcement to notify a platform of something suspicious they found on the platform.
The Twitter Files also conveniently omitted that Twitter also got requests from the Trump campaign and accepted some of them.
> The Twitter Files also conveniently omitted that Twitter also got requests from the Trump campaign and accepted some of them.
It got requests from both the Trump administration and the Biden campaign. Joe Biden was not President in 2020. Donald Trump was still running the government that was "censoring" social media.
I don't know why this never comes up when people talk about the Twitter Files. .
That's because it was a nothingburger.
Remember how Taibbi got an agency name wrong and used that to make a bunch of conjectures that didn't actually align to reality?
If you don't, maybe you should refresh your memory.
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> Security researchers at Mysk first noticed the issue on Sunday night, Feb. 16. They reached out to me via DM and we were able to confirm the various different ways (DM, post, profile bio, etc.) that X was blocking “Signal.me” links.
From the article, no they can't.
They're unlocked now with a spam warning added. Occam's razor wins again.
https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1891554583756845526
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> Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors?
That was a pure US State Department/the Blob move, as soon as social media turned against them they were very quick into crying wolf and saying that said social media needs to be curtailed and protected against outside foreign influences.
I'm a mr. Calin Georgescu voter from Romania (you might have heard of him in VP Vance's recent speech held in Munich), so you can understand how come I view things this way.
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I blocked twitter embeds on all my forums today. I'm so done with him.
If you just need to get all the emotions off your chest, feel free to continue, If you want to know what's actually getting blocked see the discussion here
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43077124
Why link a comment in the same thread? What does this add?
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I don't want my news filtered by state actors before I read it.
At this point in time President Musk is the ultimate state actor.
Nope.
So why are you on a platform OWNED by a "state actor"?
It's funny how people claim both that he is totally in charge of the US, and that at the same time the US is totally in charge of him. It can't be both, and in fact it's neither.
Twitter is the most compliant social media platform for government take downs. The number of government take downs actually sharply increased under the new leadership.
Elon Musk is a state actor. The biggest one in fact.
No he is not.
he controls the US government right now through DOGE.
If that was the case, that would definitely mean he is not a state actor, which is defined as «An entity that is a part of, or which operates licitly or semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency.».
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
... In what way is he not? He is de facto if not de jure more or less in charge of the US government.
If that was the case, that would definitely mean he is not a state actor, which is defined as «An entity that is a part of, or which operates licitly or semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency.».
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
> operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency
Hard to see how he doesn't fit this criteria? That DOGE thing is clearly a US government agency of some sort.
> The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
If you take the Louis XIV "I am the state" approach, then, well, he has, right? He promoted Trump on the platform during the election, then walked into a job with the state.
Your claim was «He is de facto if not de jure more or less in charge of the US government.». If this is true, the opposite, i.e. «operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency» can't be true. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne. Talk as much fatalism about that fact as you please: it really must be.
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“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Elon's proclamation that he is fighting "them" (deep state/democrats/...) has turned around and he is the same now. He is the USAID-ish funding for his cause. The cause could be different but the tools are the same, albeit in different names.
People have only that much power we give to them. If everyone stops using Twitter/X, it is nothing. Nobody buys Teslas - it is nothing. The list goes on since his # in wealthy ranks defines his position. Just make it drop.
Xitter is the least of the issues considering his tie to China and Russia and the all-you-can-eat buffet happening right now in the US government.
Flood the zone. Propose ethinc cleansing and sell Ukraine to Russia and manipulate the German elections and censor twitter and cut usaid and pass inane stuff about transgenders. All in the space of a week. How can you even process what's happening, let alone resist it?
You pick a line where you have some degree of control, and you stay focussed on it.
Coordination should not be about "hey, let's all make a lot of noise about his last move", because you're overwhelmed. It's about making sure not too many people are working on the same line.
You pick a line. One where you can act.
You get one executive order rescinded. Someone else work on another one. You legislate one doggy doger at a time. You focus like crazy. (First action to focus is, of course, to delete your Twitter account.)
You make noise about all the times where you win, and they loose.
In two years, you get the voters out.
If you don't have any other control then "not playing their game, and wait", that's at least something. There's probably a food bank close to your place. Keep the lights on there.
All the ties and US government position is based on his money and influence in platforms.
There really should be a bigger campaign for everyone to sell their Tesla shares. As you said, take away his money and he goes away.
Sell them to whom? If I had a Tesla and sold it to you, there are still the same number of people driving one.
I’m sympathetic to Tesla owners who've had their car for a while. If Akio Toyoda turned out to be a bastard, I wouldn't buy another new Toyota, but I’d continue to drive our current one until the wheels fall off. Same with Teslas. It's unreasonable to ask someone to get rid of their working, paid-for family transport. We can't just scrap all of them.
But. Anyone driving an Incel Camino just bought the thing, and I will continue pointing at them and laughing.
Only the initial purchase matters for buying the cars from the point of Musk and Tesla's value. I think the revenue for repairing the cars during their lifetime does not bring that much money back to the Tesla.
So ideally, we want to reduce the purchases of new Teslas and bring the stock down.
addandsubtract wrote "sell their Tesla shares", not "sell their Teslas".
Even nicce's parent comment only concerned buying new Teslas.
I mean people should do that anyway, because when that stock takes a tumble it's going to shed value incredibly fast.
It's been overvalued before, and now it's cruising on "how good will the government corruption money be". Needless to say, you can look at how things worked out in Russia for who gets paid, and how much that winds up being worth in the end.
The scary part is that most US citizens seem to support Mump. I think Trump has never been that high in popularity, right?
> Nobody buys Teslas - it is nothing
The pussyfooting around this from some countries is genuinely surprising. Like, how are the Germans of all people confused about whether the oligarch courting their neo Nazis is a threat to their national security?
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Unfortunately this isn’t quite correct. They’re not neonazis but they are fascists, they don’t believe in liberal democracy and hold extremist (as in, objectively far right) views on women’s rights, Judaism, Islam and LBGT issues.
AfD are also anti-science proponents of climate change denial, and are quite happy to hold opposing views from one day to the next.
By all means ask me for receipts
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Other parties in many countries don’t seem to understand that if they try to solve the immigration issues more seriously - many right-wing parties would disappear as they have nothing else.
It’s not about immigration. If it was, then mainstream parties WOULD fix immigration.
It’s about national identity, “us and them”. If it wasn’t about immigrants it would be about “experts”. If it wasn’t about experts it would be about “the gays”.
This kind of thing doesn’t go away with appeasement: orgs like AfD just point their weapons at somebody else. It has always been the way with facists.
No, it IS about illegal immigrants. Claiming everyone supporting center/right/conservative values is automatically anti-gay is just wrong and toxic.
You just shifted from "immigration" to "illegal immigration".
Dual citizenship is as legal as you can get, the AfD opposed it until they realised it meant they could get away with later stripping undesirable people of German citizenship.
Germany decided to accept a million *perfectly legal* asylum seekers in the Syrian crisis, and another million from Ukraine. The AfD opposes it, even as they accept the suffering of Ukranians is real.
Germany is also in the EU, so has, totally lawful, free movement of people from every country they share a border with. The AfD opposes it.
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It is about immigration. The mainstream parties can't fix migration because Germany's political system makes it almost impossible to form majority governments. Coalition politics and the cordon sanitaire force the CDU to work with the left and seemingly the left's only consistent political position is opposition to migration reform.
The AfD aren't fascists and the attempts to win elections by just screaming slurs until they lose all meaning has stopped working. People have realised that calling everything "racist" or "fascist" or "Nazi" or whatever doesn't mean it actually is, and the left's entire political strategy is just labelling things it doesn't like with bad words.
And yes part of the issue with immigration is national identity. Germany is a nation-state and always has been, just like France and Poland and Italy and Spain and Portugal and Czechia and Hungary and Ireland and Greece are. There are still some non-national states in Europe like the UK (which contains multiple nations: England, Scotland and Wales, arguably part of Ireland (although some claim Northern Ireland has been separate long enough to have its own national identity) and arguably Cornwall if you listen to Cornish nationalists which you probably shouldn't).
Economic migrants, falsely claiming to be refugees, from Somalia and Syria, aren't German. Or French. Or Italian. Or Greek. They are Somalian, or Syrian. To pretend migration policy debates don't raise issues of national identity is fucking insane.
"Germany is a nation-state and always has been"
Do you think the systematic repression of Polish people during the German Empire, which was seen as necessary to achieve the 19th century ideal of a nation-state, was appropriate?
Because you make it sound like Germanisation was a good thing, as otherwise it wouldn't have been a nation-state.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_...
> Within Bismarck's Kulturkampf policy, the Poles were purposefully presented as "foes of the empire" (German: Reichsfeinde).[7] Bismarck himself privately believed that the only solution to Polish Question was the extermination of Poles.[8] As the Prussian authorities suppressed Catholic services in Polish by Polish priests, the Poles had to rely on German Catholic priests. Later, in 1885, the Prussian Settlement Commission was set up from the national government's funds with a mission to buy land from Polish owners and distribute it among German colonists.
If that's what needed for a nation-state, I reject it as a worthy goal to achieve or use as a basis for identity, just like I reject my country's racist and expansionist history of exploiting African slaves and Native Americans as being something to re-attain.
(Apropos: "Frederick the Great ... likened the newly conquered West Prussia to a Prussian Canada and its inhabitants (which were German and Polish) to the Iroquois, who he saw as equally uncivilised.")
It was no more acceptable than any of the other things that happened in the 19th century.
How Germany became a nation-state, which was generally by the unification of German polities (like Italy, or as happened in France many many centuries earlier), is quite irrelevant to its status today as one. Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. There are presumably people still alive today that were expelled. That is much more recent history but it doesn't take away from the fact that Poland is a nation-state or make that somehow a bad or invalid status.
I didn't say it was a good thing to expel cultural minorities, and nation-states can and do obviously have cultural minorities without issue.
The problem is people denying that Germany is a nation, often denying the very notion that there is something validly called a nation. The problem is people saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country on this basis. There are people that think unironically that identifying ethnic groups is racist if you are doing it for any reason except to give "affirmative action" benefits to non-white ethnic minorities.
Your country is presumably the US so you likely have no actual conception of what a nation-state is. The US is not one.
> is quite irrelevant to its status today as one.
You are the one which talked about how Germany has always been a nation state, as if that were a good thing.
> Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. ...
> Poland is a nation-state
Umm, you should mention the additional role of the Allied powers and the Postsdam Agreement in the ethnic cleansing of Germans from post-war Poland, and how it was based on the belief that a homogeneous population would be be more stable. And you should mention how the nation-state could only exist because of the near extermination of the Jewish population.
Had that not happened, Poland would now be as much a nation-state as Belgium or Finland.
So far I am not liking the processes used to make nation states.
Let's see, you said Italy is a nation-state, right? I've visited the autonomous region of South Tyrol. I guess the native German speakers are a cultural minority that a nation-state can have, right?
> saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country
I think I've spotted the racism. Define German. Define "their borders." Is Austria German? Is South Tyrol German? Should they be in German borders?
Is the Danish minority of Southern Schleswig German?
Do Germans need to be Catholic? Or Protestant? Can Germans be Muslim? Can Germans be black? Can Somalian refugees be German? Can the grandchildren of Turkish guest workers be German?
As an American, I find it bizarre and bigoted to call native-born Germans "Ausländer" just because their parents didn't come from Germany. Is that the nation-state you're talking about?
To me that just seems like a continuation of 19th century racist nationalism.
The CDU/CSU understands perfectly. That is why its immigration policy has turned around completely. It is now basically the same as AfD's, in the hopes of drawing its old voters back. But the voters aren't stupid. Because of the cordon sanitaire, the CDU/CSU can't implement its migration policy without violating the most sacred "rule" of German politics: you cannot work with the AfD. If you do, the establishment media and the left (SPD/Greens) will be very upset with you. And we can't have that! Look at all the howling there was over the CDU even considering using AfD votes to pass migration reform recently.
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Which platform provides the same network effect? Bsky? Mastodon?
I don't see the popular Twitter personalities there such as naval, balajis, paulg, etc. or folks from TOPT, etc.
The closest to what Twitter used to be is Bsky. The model isn't perfect and some of its features are still not quite there, but it has replaced my Twitter usage entirely. And they've managed the large user surge pretty well. I've seen some developers I follow who cross post getting more engagement on Bsky than X despite a lower follower count there.
Most of the people you mentioned wouldn't risk their money for something like moral values so they haven't left X. A large number of interesting, less self motivated people have migrated already.
I don't benefit from being plugged into any of that. Do you?
I mentioned some global accounts that are very generic, but I do follow some folks from my country (India) who share valuable content for my field of work.
Such content doesn't seem possible on other platforms. FB is dead here. Insta is only images/videos. Threads is a no-no. I don't know any alternatives as of yet where my network is active.
I have no idea who those people are.
That's alright. BTW, paulg is the founder of YCombinator.
> Which platform provides the same network effect?
None, obviously - every network is unique. However, that doesn't contradict the premise. If one accepts that continuing to use twitter makes one "part of the problem", a desire to read PG's tweets doesn't seem like a meaningful justification. In my view, the only justification is "I don't care how twitter operates" or "I think twitter's new mission is good".
I mean, I suppose it really depends on what you want out of a social network. Some combo of mastodon and bluesky is fine for me, but then I didn't follow any of those people in the first place.
If you want celeb VCs, then, yeah, you're probably stuck with Twitter. Most people don't, though.
Makes sense. What other platforms do you know where we can get access to the network of entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, governments, and authors? I am considering text-based social apps only.
> entrepreneurs
Dunno, no interest.
> thought-leaders
I've never been quite sure what people mean when they say this.
> governments
An increasing number of governments, government agencies and politicians have presence on Bluesky or Mastodon or both. The EC has its _own mastodon instance_ (though, confusingly, some EC agencies are on other instances, or are just on bluesky).
> authors
Mostly Bluesky, also Threads to some extent.
Thanks a lot.
BTW if I may clarify, by thought leader, I mean people who are leaders or popular figures in a particular industry, whose voices matter and shapes up that domain.
Think of Sam Altman for AI, Marc Andreessen for VC, Andrew Huberman for Mental Health, and figures like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Naval Ravikant, etc.
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So? Who's using Twitter anyway?
At this point you're actively contributing to the death of free speech if you're still active on X in any way. There are no excuses to use it still if you have any sort of functional moral compass.
No, this is just mood affiliation.
Usually, posting on Twitter or quitting it has a very tiny, almost imperceptible effect on the larger world and it's certainly not something to get worked up about.
That's reversing the argument. I'm not saying quitting X is bad for X, I'm saying quitting X is good for you. Nobody's completely immune to whatever that sociological experiment is turning into and staying on X is likely to influence your ethics, morals and standards in an objectively negative way.
Even personally, you couldn't possibly know whether it's positive or negative for a random stranger on the Internet, because it depends on how much they use it and what they use it for.
For example, keeping a Twitter account in case someone wants to contact you seems pretty harmless.
Well, sure, if you're exceptionally picky about non-normative use cases you can probably find a use for it that is not harmful to the average person. But you're doing a lot of heavy lifting already to justify a positive use case (contacting a person you apparently have no other way of reaching, which isn't in the top 3 of primary use cases for X). Anyway, I was speaking in the aggregate. X (so, post Elon) has been bad for society as a whole and if that's not an objective statement then it is at least close enough to make no difference. I suspect any arguments to use it anyway probably boil down "but...I like it". And since we live in a free world that's a good enough argument to have. It is not, however, harmless.
There is of course a connection between individual and aggregate effects (consider voting) and certainly the aggregate effects have been very bad lately.
But I think it's bad for your mental health to lose perspective about it. It all adds up, but it's 99.999% other people doing the adding, and unless you're in the right position to use leverage, you are mostly an observer of national and global events.
This means that morally, you don't need to feel responsible for big stuff like that - unless you see a way to end up in a position where you have that kind of leverage.
Using big, negative events as justification to scold random nearby individuals is mostly just making your local community more unpleasant.
Example: I do encourage people to vote, but I'm not going to worry about one voter more or less.
No raindrop…
Some much people commenting about Elon Musk "free speech" declarations. There was never free speech on Twitter. Not before him, not after him.
Tags like #coup, #protest and so on will be next.
"cisgender" was banned a while ago already, probably one of many 'shadowbanned' terms that the king doesn't like.
The situation is insane
People, why are you still on X? It is a disinformation site. Move to Bluesky or Threads.
I think the only smaet business move for twitter right now is to ban all external links in posts, like Instagram and TikTok.
It was never much of a driver of traffic outside news and most news consumers that click have already left. And most news sources you'd want to click are behind paywalls The users that remain are more likely to watch Twitter videos and read those long-ass tweets, out of loyalty to Papa Elon.
Agreed. Most twitter posts I see anyway is stolen content without a single link to attribute it. Almost seems like posting a link to the source there is bad manners.
It's free speech, but only if Musk approves of it.
probably to ensure integrity. they need to fight fraud and abuse on a massive scale. nothing to see here
The logical explanation to me is that most of the Signal contacts shared tend to be for drugs or CSAM trading, so they went for the nuclear approach to make moderation easier.
Give me a break, open telegram, which is still in the clear for comrade musk and he publicly advocated for comrade durov and tell me how long it will take you to find anything from prostitution to weapons, drugs and human trafficking. It's all about punishing people who can question musk & co's authoritarian desires.
Feds can request info from Telegram. Additionally, Telegram has evolved past a simple messenger application. A massive amount of projects, most of them being crypto projects, use Telegram as their primary method of communication and announcements. It is also a very popular messenger in India and parts of Europe. They can block Signal because they can get away with it. If it means banning a bunch of CSAM traders and drug dealers, even if it includes a few users and privacy nerds, they're still winning in terms of easing up their moderation efforts without significant outcry. I believe this block will be lifted, even if Signal users a minority, they are a loud minority. This could have very well been a mistake.
Are you seriously this delusional? All other messengers offer e2e encryption in one form or another and the "feds" can't request shit. The only difference is that signal does it out of the box, instead of being buried 20 layers deep in menus and unlike the other messengers(including telegram) is not false advertising and is a crime in the civilized world under data protection laws. So much for free speech(which btw is not news when it comes to musk and anyone with a functioning brain). Comrade musk is in a position where he can mass execute newborn babies on Time square in broad daylight and his simps and entire government will praise him.
What I've said is from the perspective of a hypothetical moderation team at Twitter that has enacted this change, a change that will most likely be reversed, and was probably a mistake. Additionally, you are breaking the site's guidelines. This comment thread has very little to do with Elon Musk, please direct your rage somewhere else.
>This comment thread has very little to do with Elon Musk, please direct your rage somewhere else.
Backatcha. If it's about twitter, specifically 'x', musk has a lot to do with it...somewhere in the region of 100%. It may be unfortunate, but that's just the way it is. And he's the reason many stay away from it. As another poster asked, why do you (continue to) use it? Similarly, someone (else) is highly likely to mention a certain brand of vehicles but not me.
It's not rage, it's realism - musk is a classic example of extreme stalinism. If there are dozens of such instances on weekly basis and comrade musk is the one behind them, it's naive to think that this one isn't. Especially when it something that hurts his fragile ego. Which is not a secret anymore since plenty of his former employees have come forward. Hell, even the present day ones are coming forward but anonymously out of fear.
Is that true?
I’ve never used signal.
Telegram is overwhelmingly the app of choice for drug dealers with Whatsapp coming second, at least on a direct to customer level.
No clue about CSAM but I'd really doubt it considering it requires a phone number.
Telegram is overwhelmingly the preferred messenger for CSAM distribution, a search can find you all the relevant articles.
Thanks for the clarification.
I misread your top post as though it meant Signal was the main source for those things. Sorry for the confusion.
Can’t really tell what most of you are complaining about. You can say anything on X (short of doxing and inciting violence and things that are against the law), you can follow or block anyone on X.
If they ban Signal links, a competitor platform, that’s a shame, but whatever you say on Signal you can say on X instead.
Seems like some people think a “free speech platform” would be some sort of moderated debating space where opinions you dislike are silenced on your behalf and the downstream political ramifications are things that you personally enjoy, or else it’s not free speech but “fascism” (lol).
> whatever you say on Signal you can say on X instead.
Except one of them allows Elon to read what you write, the other doesn't.
try saying "cisgender."
A quick search for the word shows numerous X posts using it in the last few hours.
You have to search that word specifically to find those posts, they're otherwise algorithmically censored from timelines.
Somehow I don’t believe this, it is too much out of character, even if it fits so nicely with how we want to see Elon. Did anyone here actually confirm this? I never used Twitter nor X or id check myself.
It's entirely consistent with Musk's character I observed the last couple of years.
> it is too much out of character
But it's not the first time they banned links to other social media?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985
sure, use the goog's to site-search twitter.com and signal.me, here's one: https://x.com/harris/status/1764683829455843464 and it says the malware after you click the obfuscated signal.me url
here is another: https://x.com/tomwarren
edit: the url's are still visible in the mouse-over text popup, and the obfuscated site-redirection url does have the url in the address bar - but only time will tell before those vanish
honestly, any site that visibly displays one url as a hyperlink (underlines ect) and links to another site is practicing in malware style link hijacking. stop using those sites
It is perfectly in character. It’s not the first time he blocked people or services he personally doesn’t like.
> it is too much out of character
I’m curious what you’re basing this on if you’ve never used X?
How could I understand Elon's character from using X? I get it from his biography, and other things I read about him.
it is very consistent of how Elon Musk has been behaving for the last 20 years.