Elon Musk Buys Twitter

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While I can appreciate his desire to revamp that wretched hive of scum and villainy, $43 billion is a respectable fraction of his total value. I'd rather see him invest his money into something undeniably good than something that starts off bad and *might* be fixable. An extra $43 billion devoted to SpaceX or to nuclear power or, heck, home desktop multi-media omnifabricators capable of producing high quality *finished* products from flashlights to auto parts to AK-47 components might well be a better use of his money. But, it *is* his money, so he can do with it as he pleases.

I bet $43 billion could go far in developing a machine the size of a microwave that can spit out any drug you give it the chemical composition to. Imagine spending two grand for a Chem-O-Fab, and then never having to spend another dime on medicine.
 
that wretched hive of scum and villainy
I don't want to get too deeply into politics, but there have been accusations that it has been less than impartial in enforcing its terms of service, in a way that ought to make your blood boil. That wretched hive of scum and villainy needs a cleanout on the scale of the Augean stables.
 
that wretched hive of scum and villainy
I don't want to get too deeply into politics, but there have been accusations that it has been less than impartial in enforcing its terms of service, in a way that ought to make your blood boil. That wretched hive of scum and villainy needs a cleanout on the scale of the Augean stables.

And even beyond that... it can hardly be argued that the cumulative effect of Twitter and similar social media platforms hasn't been a general dumbing down and coarsening of discourse. "Outrage Mobs" are now dominating large sections of politics and culture. Someone can express a perfectly reasonable and commonplace point of view and the online Outrage Mob gets to work and jobs are lost, lives are ruined, whole swathes of culture are wiped out and torn down. I'm convinced that had not Twitter and such existed, Star Trek and Star Wars may well have produced *good* content in recent years, not content calculated to appeal to the crazies.

I don;t know if Musk can fix that. But if he takes over and the crazies abandon Twitter in outrage... so much the better.
 
Mr. Musk has stated that Twitter has great potential and he will unlock it. It appears he does not believe they knew what they were doing.

- OR -

"I have billions of dollars. What shall I do with it?" This was heard by his assistant, Bob, who said: "I know. Why don't you buy Twitter?" And so it goes.
 
that wretched hive of scum and villainy
I don't want to get too deeply into politics, but there have been accusations that it has been less than impartial in enforcing its terms of service, in a way that ought to make your blood boil. That wretched hive of scum and villainy needs a cleanout on the scale of the Augean stables.

And even beyond that... it can hardly be argued that the cumulative effect of Twitter and similar social media platforms hasn't been a general dumbing down and coarsening of discourse. "Outrage Mobs" are now dominating large sections of politics and culture. Someone can express a perfectly reasonable and commonplace point of view and the online Outrage Mob gets to work and jobs are lost, lives are ruined, whole swathes of culture are wiped out and torn down. I'm convinced that had not Twitter and such existed, Star Trek and Star Wars may well have produced *good* content in recent years, not content calculated to appeal to the crazies.

I don;t know if Musk can fix that. But if he takes over and the crazies abandon Twitter in outrage... so much the better.

Yes, yes. Twitter presaged the downfall of civilization, caused death and destruction... AND cAn BE CoMpLetely ignored by AnYOne. Not to mention the incalculable damage it has caused both Star Trek And Star Wars... Oh brother, I can't believe someone even alluded to that.

Here is the formula used by Total Strangers (TM), also called crazies. Find some issue, and (no) thanks to the internet, watch the numbers. Wherever the numbers are going up, fan the flames. If they keep going up, fan them some more. Then charge more for advertising. Because it's really about money and influence. In the alternative: Ignore Twitter entirely. Never engage the crazies. And sleep well at night.
 
I’ve seen him being accused of this being a pump and dump scam. That he’ll make hundreds of millions in profit and may get a slap on the wrist from the regulator. Also that he doesn't have the financing to actually buy out 100% of the shares. Finally he’s accused of doing this before.
 
There’s an interesting looking article on the WSJ but it’s behind a paywall unfortunately.
 
Here Musk original offer
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm

current situation at Twitter HQ and other firms Elon Musk show interest in.
everybody-panic-will-ferrell.gif
 
I completely agree that Musk actually shelling out $43Bn (or more) to acquire sole control of Twitter is irrational, both in the framework of his stated aims and the universal context of what that kind of money can buy.

Moreover, despite his preferred "sometimes benign libertarian" image, Musk certainly doesn't appear to be a free speech absolutist who would in any real sense correct the platform into an actually more egalitarian direction, witness only his petty treatment of a teen who decided to track his private jets' flightpaths. He'd have to spend an insignificant fraction of his wealth compared to his Twitter offer to try and salvage Truth Social and it'd probably be more to his tastes, anyway. It's thoroughly illogical to argue that more or less autonomously emergent masses of people getting all excited about this and that on private platforms are somehow a greater problem than the ability of single individuals gaining complete control of these media and just ending said phenomena in one fell swoop if they so wish. Even now, just casually observing the various rankings of "influencers" and "trends" on different platforms year in, year out quickly brings into a sharp focus which ones are the most prolifically astroturfed, pushed and thus most efficiently percolate through the networks. Looking at those data, it really is obvious that it isn't the oligarchs of this world who need more of a bullhorn in public discourse.

Your experience of Twitter may vary depending on how you use it. There certainly are cesspools but IMHO it is quite possible to avoid those altogether; being at least half-way proficient with Twitter's deep search functions is advisable. These go beyond just following interesting experts in their fields as they go, well into exploring their networks in time, media and resources they have posted and so forth. It can be very efficient, really. Quite typically for myself, the social side of things is secondary to a sort of a general exploration and appreciation of ideas. On a sidenote: Worryingly for my types though, research indicates that browsing "social media" passively is either indicative of depression or a risk factor for it; for the time being I've decided that this conclusion is dependent on researchers' limited presuppositions of utility and thus does not really apply to me personally.

Anyway, I can see nothing good coming out of Musk's interest (most recent obsession?) into Twitter. Oligarchs trying to solidify the structures that support their power and within that framework monetize their influence most reliably remove just those functions that are of most value from public use and retain the very "cesspools" so deplored here as the public facing "goods" Twitter has to offer. It's less of an upcoming paywall than a "powerwall", if Musk gets his way, I'm afraid. This process is pretty far along all over anyway but on Twitter some true utility does remain. On the other hand, Musk's antics may just be a simple case of market manipulation just like @Flyaway said because there's scant discouragement from that kind of thing anymore. Let's call that a preferred outcome, or a lesser possible evil at least.
 
He'd have to spend an insignificant fraction of his wealth compared to his Twitter offer to try and salvage Truth Social and it'd probably be more to his tastes, anyway.
On a larger level, it would be *far* better culturally to have a single fully accessible public forum where people are treated fairly, rather than two separate echo chambers, especially when one echo chamber has a many-year lead. A right-wing alternative to Twitter would be possible, but it would always be the "right wing" alternative, while Twitter has the lefties and the great bulk of the centrists, because the centrists signed on before Twitter fell to the mob, and it's all they know.
 
While I can appreciate his desire to revamp that wretched hive of scum and villainy, $43 billion is a respectable fraction of his total value. I'd rather see him invest his money into something undeniably good than something that starts off bad and *might* be fixable. An extra $43 billion devoted to SpaceX or to nuclear power or, heck, home desktop multi-media omnifabricators capable of producing high quality *finished* products from flashlights to auto parts to AK-47 components might well be a better use of his money. But, it *is* his money, so he can do with it as he pleases.

I bet $43 billion could go far in developing a machine the size of a microwave that can spit out any drug you give it the chemical composition to. Imagine spending two grand for a Chem-O-Fab, and then never having to spend another dime on medicine.

He has no intentions of spending that money. His rejection of the board seat was the first clue. This is all about f#$king with the twitterverse in the same way the twitterverse disinformation hordes have been f#$cking with his Boca Chica facilities. Anybody that slows the progress to Mars down is going to get crushed.
 
While I can appreciate his desire to revamp that wretched hive of scum and villainy, $43 billion is a respectable fraction of his total value. I'd rather see him invest his money into something undeniably good than something that starts off bad and *might* be fixable. An extra $43 billion devoted to SpaceX or to nuclear power or, heck, home desktop multi-media omnifabricators capable of producing high quality *finished* products from flashlights to auto parts to AK-47 components might well be a better use of his money. But, it *is* his money, so he can do with it as he pleases.

I bet $43 billion could go far in developing a machine the size of a microwave that can spit out any drug you give it the chemical composition to. Imagine spending two grand for a Chem-O-Fab, and then never having to spend another dime on medicine.

He has no intentions of spending that money. His rejection of the board seat was the first clue. This is all about f#$king with the twitterverse in the same way the twitterverse disinformation hordes have been f#$cking with his Boca Chica facilities. Anybody that slows the progress to Mars down is going to get crushed.
That’s a really weird reading of the situation and I don’t think you would find many that would agree with you.
 
He'd have to spend an insignificant fraction of his wealth compared to his Twitter offer to try and salvage Truth Social and it'd probably be more to his tastes, anyway.
On a larger level, it would be *far* better culturally to have a single fully accessible public forum where people are treated fairly, rather than two separate echo chambers, especially when one echo chamber has a many-year lead. A right-wing alternative to Twitter would be possible, but it would always be the "right wing" alternative, while Twitter has the lefties and the great bulk of the centrists, because the centrists signed on before Twitter fell to the mob, and it's all they know.

The primary issue is anonymous people behaving badly for reasons ranging from boredom to making money. There is no Utopia anywhere in human society. Anyone can try to create some social media platform that is and does everything right. But the anonymous can use and abuse people for profit or other reasons. The 'social contract' that exists between people in real life can be broken on the internet. And let's face it. When (D)ARPA released it into the wild, it was for the purpose of making money and influencing others.

I am in no position of confidential trust with anyone online except for people I know in real life.
 
Excerpt from today's MarketWatch:


Twitter Inc. TWTR, -1.68% announced on Friday that the company has adopted a shareholder rights plan, or "poison pill," that will reduce the chances that a person or group will take control of the company. The announcement comes after Elon Musk's offer of $54.20 per share was made public on Thursday. There were reports that Twitter was considering a rights plan before it was announced. "Under the Rights Plan, the rights will become exercisable if an entity, person or group acquires beneficial ownership of 15% or more of Twitter's outstanding common stock in a transaction not approved by the Board," the announcement said. The rights plan doesn't preclude Twitter from considering offers or accepting them if they are in the best interest of shareholders. The rights plan expires on April 14, 2023. Twitter stock closed Thursday down 1.7%, but is up 4.3% for the year to date.
 
A right-wing alternative to Twitter would be possible, but it would always be the "right wing" alternative,

Don't they already have Telegram or Truth Social...:cool:
Exactly. Even if those were running like champs, who'd sign up for them? Right wingers only, or those *deemed* right wing after having been booted from Twitter for some ridiculous reason. The great majority who don't much care about politics wouldn't sign up for them as they are already on Twitter, and don't recognize Twitters ideological leanings because they haven't said some perfectly reasonable thing that has gotten them cancelled. Yet.
 
A right-wing alternative to Twitter would be possible, but it would always be the "right wing" alternative,

Don't they already have Telegram or Truth Social...:cool:
Exactly. Even if those were running like champs, who'd sign up for them? Right wingers only, or those *deemed* right wing after having been booted from Twitter for some ridiculous reason. The great majority who don't much care about politics wouldn't sign up for them as they are already on Twitter, and don't recognize Twitters ideological leanings because they haven't said some perfectly reasonable thing that has gotten them cancelled. Yet.

Right wing, left wing, who cares? Shouldn't everybody get to join in and talk or are sites just "captured" by some group? If it is the case that various groups can stage takeovers of almost any site, well, that is the problem.

I mean, shouldn't casual conversation be the norm? Apparently not, especially when certain motivated groups can just takeover the site and call it their own.

For the record, I do not participate in the following so-called "social (not so much) media" sites at all:

Twitter
TikTok
Instagram
Snapchat
 
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Do you have a solution?

Yes, but it involves a well-supplied bomb shelter.

Modern social media is essentially a drug designed specifically to not only addict human minds, but to twist them. It thrives on cognitive dissonance. It operates as something akin to both a disease and a religion, driving its adherents to infect/convert more, and to combat those who believe differently.

Read "The Machine Stops" to see the endgame in action, as written more than a century ago.

Modern sci-fi such as Star Wars and Star Trek seem odd in that virtually nobody in them is glued to the futuristic equivalent of social media. The closest was the holodeck in Star Trek, which did actually show that some people got addicted to it... but apart from those rare saps, it was used sparingly. How do we get from today to a technologically advanced future where humans aren't plugged into joy-machines? Laws and a changed culture are about it, I suppose.
 
I don't need laws. I just avoid the whole mess. If someone tells me that this or that site is filled with vicious people, and I can see that going on for myself, I won't stay there, ever.

The addiction model is very old, from cigarettes to stupidly named vaping devices.

The point is this: You walk into a totally dark, totally silent room, and you are told it is filled with people. You can't see them, you can't speak with them - you can only type messages back and forth. The alternative is spending time with real people you can see, speak to and interact with on a personal level.

It is not possible to really get to know or trust anyone online. In real life, as one gets to know a person, the decision to trust them is based on those elements. The internet lacks this. And the internet lacks the ability to have a full human relationship with anyone.

Exchanges of information. That's it. I'm not interested in 'Real Life Lite' to the level of substituting it for real life, much less allowing an addiction to take hold.

I don't take the drug, and I've dumped a number of sites.
 
I have a solution, social (Or anti social) media is about as reasonable as formalising a one legged seat kicking championship. Just ban it now or we will have to eventually nuke it from space.
 
I don't need laws. I just avoid the whole mess. ...
I don't take the drug, and I've dumped a number of sites.

Bully for you. Billions of other people aren't the same. If you say in some public forum something that has been common sense for the last four thousand years but which was deemed Problematic a week ago, of those billions millions might well get all upset, thousands might contact your employers/customers/co-workers/clients/constituents in an attempt to ruin your business and your life, and hundreds might well physically show up to chase you out of the public, and a few might try to set your house on fire.

Be as Above It All as you like, most people aren't. Social media increasing enables and promotes irrationality, mental illness, hatred and just generally awful things... whether *you* are involved or not. So we're back to "how do we fix this." Selling Twitter to someone likely to bulldoze the thing is as good an idea as any.
 

For the record, I do not participate in the following so-called "social (not so much) media" sites at all:

Twitter
TikTok
Instagram
Snapchat
Add Facebook and I am with you.
I agree, social media turned out to be a big waste, Elon Musk should invest in advancing Space X and his technology/systems, he has outpaced Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin as examples (space station resupply missions, micro-sat deployments, etc) and then there is NASA SLS (Saturn V Part II), wants to repeat the Moon missions?
 
I don't need laws. I just avoid the whole mess. ...
I don't take the drug, and I've dumped a number of sites.

Bully for you. Billions of other people aren't the same. If you say in some public forum something that has been common sense for the last four thousand years but which was deemed Problematic a week ago, of those billions millions might well get all upset, thousands might contact your employers/customers/co-workers/clients/constituents in an attempt to ruin your business and your life, and hundreds might well physically show up to chase you out of the public, and a few might try to set your house on fire.

Be as Above It All as you like, most people aren't. Social media increasing enables and promotes irrationality, mental illness, hatred and just generally awful things... whether *you* are involved or not. So we're back to "how do we fix this." Selling Twitter to someone likely to bulldoze the thing is as good an idea as any.

OK. I get that others participate. But for me, and others I know, the new car smell is gone now. The novelty is gone.

I hope people realize that some sites are nothing more than surveillance to sell you something and collect marketing data. I hope people realize that some people are paid to pose as Average Joe to try to convince them of something. And like a disease traveling through a body, there are those who watch where the most people congregate and try to brainwash them. What's the difference between honest outrage and the outrage that is manufactured in the Outrage Factory? No one can tell.

If the site is bulldozed, another will pop up. One answer is to tell people in advance that various groups that want to promote various issues will infect that new site, make sure they and their buddies are the majority and it's back to square one.

"A sucker is born every minute." P.T. Barnum. This is nothing new but There Are No People to Blame Because they ARE Anonymous.

And I am sick and tired about hearing that people post private information online as if they don't know that everything they say/type will be used against them if possible
 
And I am sick and tired about hearing that people post private information online as if they don't know that everything they say/type will be used against them if possible

From one point of view that actually might (*might*) be a positive. A few decades ago, being gay or doing anything much beyond the straight and narrow would preclude you from many jobs, certainly from having a security clearance. Your private affairs could be used against you by enemy powers, holding evidence of your dirty, dirty deeds over you as a way to blackmail you. Now, we're about fifteen minutes from hearing about "Madam President's Onlyfans account."

While the coarsening and debasement of culture is of course a bad thing, it's difficult to blackmail people who have no shame. How do you blackmail someone with images and videos stolen from their laptop or phone camera when they prance around naked in front of a planetary audience anyway?
 
Don't quite know how we got here but now I'm

a) thinking up new and surprising morals to the "Emperor's New Clothes" tale
b) trying not to think too much about world leaders in their birthday suits
c) considering whether Musk could avoid wasting his billions on Twitter by showing up at the next SpaceX infomercial buck naked?
 
Elon Musk motive are nobel
He want to buy Twitter, pull it out Stockmarket and guarantee free speech on it.
its good Idea (at first) Compare to the others:

Facebook collect everything you do, filters only that what they not need, the rest data is commercial sell to third party !

Telegram, better know as Terroristgram offer instant messaging service to everybody like criminals, terrorist, extremist...
That serious problem that Telegram owner has for moment, now the German authorities arrested a Telegram group chat
For planned coup d'état, attempted kip napping the minister of health karl Lauterbach and terrorist attacks
not the first time that happen with Telegram and not last time...

Jeff Bezos buy the Washington Post to "protect free speech", but is now behind a Paywall (the poor no access to free speech)
and i bet the news paper feature ZERO article that criticise Jeff Bezos

but what free speech will Elon Musk offer ?
Total ? in that case Twitter will become second Facebook and Telegram with all extreme you will find !
also it will become battle ground for political extremist like Nazi, the Wokies and National Socialist Warriors.
and platform for Terrorist, criminals...

Moderate ? then need Twitter army of people and AI to filter the dirt in real time
and what to filter ? how to deal with Terrorist, criminals, paedophiles ?
the CIA, FBI, BKA, Interpol, Mossad and a Unknown Chinese Agency would be very interested in tweets
 
Musk should not spend any money until the midterms. Twitter will get investigated and reform or die.
 
Here's a Twitter thread from Yishan Wong (fmr. Reddit CEO, member of the "PayPal Mafia", etc.) on Musk's bid.

While I don't agree on a whole lot of things he states here, he does have something of an insider's view on the matter, on what the "birds' eye view" from the ivory towers within looks like (or how he wants it too look like, perceptions may vary). So some information value and thoughts worth considering, regardless.

The original thread is here, I've omitted the images and links and just retained the raw text as best I could.

Yishan Wong said:
I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter.

So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out)

(long )
I think if Elon takes over Twitter, he is in for a world of pain. He has no idea.
There is this old culture of the internet, roughly Web 1.0 (late 90s) and early Web 2.0, pre-Facebook (pre-2005), that had a very strong free speech culture.
This free speech idea arose out of a culture of late-90s America where the main people who were interested in censorship were religious conservatives. In practical terms, this meant that they would try to ban porn (or other imagined moral degeneracy) on the internet.
(Remember when it seemed very important to certain people that we ban things like this?)

Many of the older tech leaders today (elonmusk, pmarca, etc, GenXers basically) grew up with that internet. To them, the internet represented freedom, a new frontier, a flowering of the human spirit, and a great optimism that technology could birth a new golden age of mankind.
I believe that too.

But I also ran Reddit.
Reddit was born in the last years of the "old internet" when free speech meant "freedom from religious conservatives trying to take down porn and sometimes first-person shooters." And so we tried to preserve that ideal.

That is not what free speech is about today.
It's not that the principle is no longer valid (it is), it's that the practical issues around upholding that principle are different, because the world has changed.
The internet is not a "frontier" where people can go "to be free," it's where the entire world is now, and every culture war is being fought on it.

It's the MAIN battlefield for our culture wars.
It means that upholding free speech means you're not standing up against some religious conservatives lobbying to remove Judy Blume books from the library, it means you're standing up against EVERYONE, because every side is trying to take away the speech rights of the other side.
(It's also where Russia is fighting a real war against us, using free speech literally. But that's another story too)
Free speech may be noble, but here's what's it's like these days:
All my left-wing woke friends are CONVINCED that the social media platforms uphold the white supremacist misogynistic patriarchy, and they have plenty of screenshots and evidence ...
... of times when the platform has made enforcement decisions unfairly against innocuous things they've said, and let far more egregious sexist/racist violations by the other side pass.

Woke friends: it's true, right? You have LOTS of examples.
All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends are CONVINCED the social media platforms uphold the woke BLM/Marxist/LGBTQ agenda and they ALSO have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when...
... the platforms have made enforcement decisions unfair against them for innocuous things they've said merely questioning (in good faith) the woke orthodoxy, and let far more egregious violations by the other side stand.
Right-wingers and libertarians: it's true, right? You can remember PLENTY of examples.
Neither side is lying.

Mostly, it's really because enforcement is hard, and there are LOTS of errors. There's a separate emerging problem (more FB than Twitter) where AI models make inhumane/dystopian judgments that can't be appealed, but that's a separate issue.
Both sides think the platform is institutionally biased against them.

"All the top executives and board members are men."

"Silicon Valley employees are overwhelming woke and left-wing."
I want you to pause for a minute and think about your political alignment and whether you're on the left or right of this issue, because you probably think one of those things.
And the old GenX tech titans are right there with you - vaguely left-wing but also center-right - seeing their version of "censorship" - and drawing all the wrong conclusions from it about what's happening with the management of social platforms.
Elon is one of those, because he doesn't understand what has happened to internet culture since 2004. Or as I call it, just culture.
I KNOW he doesn't, because he was pretty late to Bitcoin, and if he'd been plugged in to internet culture he would've been on Bitcoin way earlier.
Elon's been too busy doing Actual Real Things like making electric cars and reusable rockets and fucking actresses/singers, so he has a Pretty Fucking Good Excuse For Not Paying Attention but this is also something that's hard to understand unless you've RUN a social network.
I'm now going to reveal the institutional bias of every large social network (i.e. FB, Twitter, Reddit):
Are you ready?
Here it is...
They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.
That's all.
They DON'T CARE ABOUT POLITICS. They really don't.

Donald Trump was not de-platformed for being right-wing.

I talk a bit about this in my thread about Omega Events:

Yes, the execs are (whatever demographic) and the employees are (whatever politics) but they don't care about it. They don't.
Facebook's userbase has at various times been left-leaning, then right-leaning, then bifurcated. So has Reddit's. Twitter's also. The social platforms don't care.
They kind of care about money, but mostly they wish you would shut up and be civil.
But that is impossible: they (we) made a platform where anyone can say anything, largely without consequence, so people are going to be their worst selves, and social networking is now The Internet, and everyone is on it (thank you chamath), saying WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT.
But the platforms have to be polite. They have to pretend to enforce fairness. They have to adopt "principles."

Let me tell you: There are no real principles. They are just trying to be fair because if they weren't, everyone would yell LOUDER and the problem would be worse.
What happens is that because of the fundamental structural nature of social networks, it is always possible for a corner case to emerge where people get into an explosive fight and the company running the social network has to step in.

Again: Omega Events
Because human variability and behavior is infinite. And when that happens, the social network has to make up a new rule, or "derive" it from some prior stated principle, and over time it's really just a tortured game of Twister.
You really want to avoid censorship on social networks? Here is the solution:

Stop arguing. Play nice. The catch: everyone has to do it at once.

I guarantee you, if you do that, there will be NO CENSORSHIP OF ANY TOPIC on any social network.
Because it is not TOPICS that are censored. It is BEHAVIOR.

(This is why people on the left and people on the right both think they are being targeted)

The problem with social networks is the SOCIAL (people) part. Not the NETWORK (company).
"The best antidote to bad ideas is not to censor them, but to allow debate and better ideas."

How naive.
"Debate" is a vague term, and what a social network observes that causes them to "censor" something is masses of people engaging in "debate" - that is to say: abusive volumes of activity violating spam and harrassment rules, sometimes prompting off-site real-world harm.
This is what you think of when you hear "debate."

This is not what is happening on social networks today.

Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic because the "debate" included ...
massive amounts of horrible behavior, spam-level posting, and abuse that spilled over into the real world - e.g. harrassment of public officials and doctors, racially-motivated crimes, etc.
Why is this link not being censored now? Hypocrisy? Because the facts changed?

(Vanity Fair article)
It was "censored" not because it was a wrong idea, but because ideas really can - at certain times and places - become lightning rods for actual, physical, kinetic mob behavior.
That is just an unpleasant, inconvenient truth that all of you (regardless of your political leaning) need to accept about speech. Ideas really ARE powerful, and like anything else that is powerful, yes, they can be DANGEROUS.

I'm sorry, it's just true.
It would have been perfectly acceptable if the lab leak theory were being discussed in a rational, evidence-based manner by scientists on Twitter, but that is not what happened.
Replace "lab leak theory" with whatever topic you think has been unfairly censored, and the reason it was censored (or any other action taken against it) is not because of the content of that topic, I ABSOLUTELY ASSURE YOU.

It is because at Certain Times, given Certain Circumstances, humans will Behave Badly when confronted with Certain Ideas, and if you are The Main Platform Where That Idea is Being Discussed, you cannot do NOTHING, because otherwise humans will continue behaving badly.
Here is what I think about Twitter:

I think the last few years of @Jack's administration have been the best years of Twitter's history.
I think Jack really matured as an exec, his prior experience with Twitter, then his success with Square (i.e. doing it wrong, then doing it right) really raised him to a world-class CEO level, and Twitter finally got to be "pretty good."
And "pretty good" is about as good as any social network can possibly be, in my opinion.

(@Jack, if you are reading this, my hat's off to you. Saying this as one of the few people who have ever run a social platform: you showed the world how it should've been done)
There is a reason why Jack has a crazy meditation routine and eats one meal a deal and goes on spiritual retreats. Because it takes an INHUMAN level of mentality to be able to run something like this.
Because the problems are NOT about politics, or topics of discussion. They are about all the ways that humans misbehave when there are no immediately visible consequences, when talking to (essentially) strangers, and the endless ingenuity they display trying to get around rules.
These last few years, @Jack did a really good job.

And whoever the midwits were who didn't think so have kicked him out, and now Elon thinks he's going to come in and fix some problems.
Elon is not going to fix some problems. I am absolutely sure of this. He has no idea what he's in for.

(He might hire back Jack, which might be ok, but I don't know if Jack wants the job. Who knows. All the tech titans are buddies, kind of)
Elon is going to try like heck to "fix" the problems he sees. Each problem he "fixes" will just cause 3 more problems.
And the worst part, the part that is going to hurt ALL OF HUMANITY, is that this will distract from his mission at SpaceX and Tesla, because it's not just going to suck up his time and attention, IT WILL DAMAGE HIS PSYCHE.
I mean, it's not like he isn't already an emotionally damaged guy. (Sorry Elon, it's pretty obvious) But he has overcome a lot. And he does not need more trauma from running Twitter.
And I know I'm not just projecting my own traumas from the time of running Reddit, because:
Mark Zuckerberg talks about e-foiling in the mornings to avoid having to think about bad news coming in that's like "being punched in the face."
Ellen Pao was horrifically scarred by her run as Reddit CEO and the active harrassment, far beyond merely adjudicating community misbehavior.
Jack has his meditation retreats and unusual diets and spiritual journeys - he's an odd guy yeah - but I'm pretty sure some of that is so he can cope with All You Fucking Assholes.
Never heard much from Dick Costolo, but I haven't seen him do much stand-up improv since he left Twitter, have you? Dick might still be recovering.
It's not a fun job, and it's not like how anyone on the outside imagines. Elon is a very public personality, and he will be faulted by ALL SIDES any time Twitter Does Anything to Solve A Problem, even if he isn't the CEO.
"Why is chairman of the board @elonmusk standing by while @<newtwitterceo> is doing X, which is wrecking Y?"

"@elonmusk, how can you allow X horrible thing to happen? I thought you were against censorship!"
So: my take is this:

@elonmusk, I'm all with you on the Values Of The Old Internet.

This is not The Old Internet. That is gone. It is sad. It's not because the platforms killed it.
It is because we brought all of our old horrible collective dysfunctions onto the internet, and the internet is very fast and everyone can say anything to anyone, and the place where that happens the most is on the social platforms.
(It doesn't happen very often on e.g. Amazon, except when it does, and of course that's when Amazon Censors You!)
After Reddit, I took a break, and now I work in the world of Real Atoms.

terraformation.com
It is hard. It is VERY hard. Like eating glass, as Elon would put it.

But it is not as hard as running a social network. And if Elon knows what's good for him AND HUMANITY, he won't do it - he will stick with the Real Atoms, which is what we really need.
If you like this thread, here's some more stuff about what I'm working on and how you can support it:

And if you want the Next Big Thing:

Addenda: a few people have interpreted this thread as meaning that I support or that it was a justification for censorship.

(That is a reasonable misinterpretation) but it is not true.
I am very much against censorship. I am, for example, against the censorship of every topic that the social networks blocked during the pandemic especially. I have personally been harmed by this.
However, I also understand many non-obvious things about the complex dynamics that arise in large social network platforms, and I will tell you this:
Censorship is inevitable on large social network platforms. If you run one of sufficient size, you will be FORCED to censor things. Not by governments, or even by "users," but by the emergent dynamics of the social network itself.
Someone also said something like, "it's unacceptable that anyone be considered the omniscient arbiter of what's true or not" (sorry if I'm misquoting you; there's a lot of replies)

I also agree with that. It is impossible for anyone to do, and also terrible.
Yet, the structure and dynamics of running a large social network will FORCE you to do it.

IIRC, almost every large social platform started out wanting to uphold free speech. They all buckle.
And it's not because certain ideas are good or bad, or true or false. It has to do purely with operational issues that arise with humans that disagree in large numbers on digital platforms.
The social platforms aren't censoring you (or some idea you like) because they disagree with you. They are censoring because they are large social platforms, and ideas are POWERFUL and DANGEROUS.
(That is the whole point. Ideas wouldn't be worth much if they weren't dangerous or powerful. But you can't always control what people are going to do with powerful things)
What they censor has little to do with what is true or false. It has a little bit to do with whatever the current politics are, but not in the way you probably expect.
Let me be clear: if you run a large social network, you will be forced by inexorable circumstance to censor certain things, you will be forced to "arbitrate" on topics you have an (inevitably) limited understanding of, and it will all be really really shitty.
(The alternative is just collapse of the platform, so I guess you do always have a choice - but then you're not a social platform anymore)
The process through which all of that will happen is painful, which is why I don't think Elon should do it. It is not a good use of his time, and I think his time is uniquely valuable and limited.[/Yishan Wong]
 
A week old article (it's loo ... snooze ... ooong, but there's also a listening option) touching on the subject of trying to ameliorate or reform "social media" by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist. Posted with the vaguest of caveats that I certainly don't agree on all he writes but as it's a well argued and coherent view it certainly adds to the conversation. It's sometimes in line with some of Wong's themes and diverges on others. The allegories are nice anyway. Very US centric but somewhat applicable more widely.

 
My advice: Don't participate in stupid things.
 
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