Merged Musk buys Twitter!/ Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold....

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dudalb said:
I don't think twitter is the kind of social media program people will be willing to pay for, frankly.Too limited.
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I'd tend to agree, then I remember that people pay for PornHub content.

Just how many stupid people there are is the question, and looking at polling numbers from USA, you have quite a few there. I'd still bet against it being profitable, and advertising will shrink.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Twitter will drown in swastikas and child pornography.
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I doubt it, because even his stated ideas about free speech (whether it's actually implemented that way, that's a different question) it had the clause 'if it's not illegal'. Child porn is illegal. Plus, it's illegal for the site too, so it's not like he actually has a choice there.
 
I think I saw Musk float the idea of “tiered” “freedom”. IOW, you could select “Anything Goes” and be in 4-Chan-land, “Kinda Like Before”, or whatever. Seems feasible, but as always , the devil is in the details.
 
zooterkin said:
Far right groups that were banned are back again. https://www.theguardian.com/politic...es-return-to-twitter-within-hours-of-takeover
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Yes, and? As long as they're not actually doing anything that's actually forbidden as hate-speech on Twitter, nor are currently wanted criminals for it even in the UK, nor anything illegal, what's the problem? Seems to me like both the USA and the UK have already decided that those guys are well within their rights to say those things, wrong as they may be.

Honestly, more than Elon Musk's antics, I find this fear of free speech reaction to be much more interesting and entertaining. Some people don't seem to have any idea how to function in any setup that's not a circle-jerk echo-chamber. God forbid that other people may be talking about anything else than what they want to hear.

I mean, those guys may be wrong or idiots, but that's a whole other thing than enforcing that one only hears one side of everything, and only that whoever disagrees must be some kind of commie mutant traitor... err... I mean, fascist incel homophobe.
 
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And, predictably, the advertisers begin leaving:

DRIVEN OFF: GM pulls advertising from Twitter after Musk takeover

General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following the takeover of the social media platform by Elon Musk, the company announced Friday.

The Detroit automaker, a rival of Musk’s electric vehicle maker Tesla, is “pausing” its advertising as it evaluates Twitter’s new direction. GM will continue to use the platform to interact with customers but not pay for advertising for the time being.

Under GM’s CEO Mary Barra, the company was among the first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to better compete against Tesla in the battery electric vehicle segment. Now, other companies are joining GM in removing their vital advertising dollars from the privately held app.
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tyr_13 said:
Literally what they were banned for.
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Sorry, my poor way of putting it. I meant: forbidden by law. Which at least in the US it's not.

Twitter can of course decide to forbid whatever it wishes, as per the freedom of the press principle. One day someone could wake up with a bad case of allergy and decide to ban any mention of cats on their site, and be quite within their legal rights to do so. That doesn't mean it's hate speech, nor would it mean the end of the world if someone decides to lift that ban, and suddenly people decide to talk about cats again.

At any rate, it's hardly an argument for why it should continue to be so. It's rather circular in fact, if the only argument is that it should continue to be banned on a site just because it used to be banned on that site.
 
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In its previous incarnation Twitter decided that saying only women can give birth was hate speech, so there's that.
 
I've just got into a spat on Twitter and said things that would have got me instabanned under the old régime. Let's see what happens.
 
I think the problem is going to be similar to what the mods have to deal with on ISF with some obvious differences.

From what I can see, the mods and MA does a great job of allowing freedom of speech, in terms of content, to an extent that is often not allowed elsewhere (including on Twitter). But at the same time, platforms need some rules to stop the place becoming a 4-Chan-like sewer. There are some skeptic forums which, in my opinion, don't take care of this side of things enough and they are poorer places for it.

The problem that I think Elon has, is that many of his fans want him to allow people who were rightly banned from Twitter to come back on the platform. These include Milo and Alex Jones who weren't simply using freedom of speech but whose behaviour was expressly aimed at making the lives of other people miserable.

Now, maybe the First Amendment of the United States of America allows for you to conduct harassment campaigns, but I think a responsible social media site should not allow it.

Anyway, Elon Musk has declared he is going to set up a "council" to decide how things will operate and has also said that there have been no changes yet (so anyone claiming that Elon Musk has suddenly made things worse or better on the platform already is just not telling the truth... if Elon Musk is to be believed anyway, and in this case, I think he can be).

Actually, while I am not a fan of a lot of his douchebaggery, I think that what he has announced is a good move and hope that he implements something that works well.

Whatever happens though, I am sure that many people who cheered him on and think that he is going to save Western Civilization are going to be disappointed.
 
HansMustermann said:
Sorry, my poor way of putting it. I meant: forbidden by law. Which at least in the US it's not.

Twitter can of course decide to forbid whatever it wishes, as per the freedom of the press principle. One day someone could wake up with a bad case of allergy and decide to ban any mention of cats on their site, and be quite within their legal rights to do so. That doesn't mean it's hate speech, nor would it mean the end of the world if someone decides to lift that ban, and suddenly people decide to talk about cats again.

At any rate, it's hardly an argument for why it should continue to be so. It's rather circular in fact, if the only argument is that it should continue to be banned on a site just because it used to be banned on that site.
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There are many manifest differences between not letting one's powerful communication platform be used to magnify outright misinformation designed to dehumanize religious groups to the point of violence (like that group and the military in Myanmar did, and were banned over), and arbitrarily denying cat videos.

You were well aware that the 'only argument' was never that it was banned before so it should still be banned.

If the only argument for allowing a platform to be used to amplify a message is 'it isn't illegal', then you have objections to universities not teaching holocaust denial in the US.
 
tyr_13 said:
There are many manifest differences between not letting one's powerful communication platform be used to magnify outright misinformation designed to dehumanize religious groups to the point of violence (like that group and the military in Myanmar did, and were banned over), and arbitrarily denying cat videos.

You were well aware that the 'only argument' was never that it was banned before so it should still be banned.

If the only argument for allowing a platform to be used to amplify a message is 'it isn't illegal', then you have objections to universities not teaching holocaust denial in the US.
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This is really important. If Elon Musk's platform ends up being the platform of choice for genocidal maniacs then clearly he will and obviously should come under pressure to take down posts that exacerbate acts of genocide regardless of what the First Amendment says.
 
Yes, but while the USA doesn't have "hate speech" even defined in the law, it does have the notion of "hate crime". Which does include incitation to violence, intimidation, bullying and really everything that's already illegal if they're motivate by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.

And, for all his trolling otherwise, again, Elon did say 'as long as it's not illegal.' If it's actual incitation to genocide, I'm pretty sure it's illegal already.

So again, I'm not seeing some great threat, other than as some imaginary SF scenario by sad little twits who got butt-hurt that they no longer get an echo-chamber for their own views only. And that kinda is when you know that someone doesn't have an actual argument: when it's let's not deal with reality, let's deal with some imaginary scenario in which verily everything they don't want to hear is an outright incitation to GENOCIDE. GENOCIDE, I tell ya :p
 
HansMustermann said:
Yes, but while the USA doesn't have "hate speech" even defined in the law, it does have the notion of "hate crime". Which does include incitation to violence, intimidation, bullying and really everything that's already illegal if they're motivate by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.

And, for all his trolling otherwise, again, Elon did say 'as long as it's not illegal.' If it's actual incitation to genocide, I'm pretty sure it's illegal already.

So again, I'm not seeing some great threat, other than as some imaginary SF scenario by sad little twits who got butt-hurt that they no longer get an echo-chamber for their own views only. And that kinda is when you know that someone doesn't have an actual argument: when it's let's not deal with reality, let's deal with some imaginary scenario in which verily everything they don't want to hear is an outright incitation to GENOCIDE. GENOCIDE, I tell ya :p
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Are you literally as ignorant as you sound right now?

Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after the social media network’s algorithms amplified hate speech and the platform failed to take down inflammatory posts, according to legal action launched in the US and the UK.

The platform faces compensation claims worth more than £150bn under the coordinated move on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Link
 
I dunno, are you? There's a difference between suing someone for anything, and actually proving that case.
 
HansMustermann said:
I dunno, are you? There's a difference between suing someone for anything, and actually proving that case.
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Way to miss the point.

Are you saying that Facebook has no ethical, as opposed to criminal responsibility?

Are you saying there was no genocide of the Rohingya?

Or that the Rohingya are "sad little twits who got butt-hurt that they no longer get an echo-chamber" and that "verily everything they don't want to hear is an outright incitation to GENOCIDE. GENOCIDE, I tell ya".

I think what you should probably say is the followig:

"Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about those SJWs with red hair saying that it is genocide to call transwomen men or you meant that the woke police have said that it is genocide to deny a child who identifies as a cat to have a kitty litter in a school, and I didn't realize you were responding to a reference to an actual case where there is a real ethical responsiblity for social media platforms to intervene when there is evidence they are being used to promote genocidal rhetoric in countries outside the US".

But I guess the whole, "Did they win their case?" question suggests you really do assume that the responsibility ends at legal culpability regardless of other ethical concerns. I mean, I guess if you can outspend a bunch of sad little Rohingya twits that can't even beat a tinpot army in Myanmar then who cares, amirite, Hans?
 
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