Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

If I were the Christian god, I'd wipe humanity from the face of the planet and be done with it.

That's the plan!

[Istelathis]

44 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then perhaps you aren't looking very hard as a ready made example trending yesterday was Chris Pratt,  and those wanting him cancelled for attending a church at some point that was accused of being homophobic.

Gotta love the insanity of social media, Chris Pratt is an excellent actor, according to many, a decent person, as far as I know does not spew any hate, and not likely to be cancelled.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Istelathis

[Innula Zenovka]

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The article confirms what I already said that he is looking to do this for the right and left. Fair speech. What is the problem with that? Me as a Left of center Libertarian, find that to be commendable.

On the assumption that he thinks the ~80% of Twitter users aren't interested in, and don't much care for, diatribes by either the far left or the far right, I took him to mean precisely the opposite of

Quote

 Musk up to this point has stated he wishes to level the playing field by allowing speech from both sides and not having Twitter moderators cancelling any and all of those challenging narratives from either the radical left or right

That is, that both the far-left and the far-right will find themselves moderated, with what Musk thinks will be the approval of ~80% of Twitter users who are neither far-left nor far-right.    That, though, raises the question of whose standards of "left" and "right" he's using, since US politics seem to skew considerably to the right of those in most other developed democracies.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Guess the blackmail didn't work?  Can't wait to see this!

Doesn't seem to be runnin' from nothin' but dinosaurs.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

34 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I might not utilize Twitter very much but most of the people I do follow have mentioned they either had their accounts closed there or were severely restricted from being able to bring out information that conflicted with what the social media companies term mis and disinformation in spite of it being no more then rebuttals to various narratives the media companies are pushing because of their bias.

I don't know how many people you're following, but I'm currently following almost 600 accounts (which maybe isn't a lot - I don't even know) and I can't say I've seen any of them get banned or restricted from posting anything.

What in the world are they posting for that to happen so often?

[Lyssa Greymoon]

10 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

That, though, raises the question of whose standards of "left" and "right" he's using, since US politics seem to skew considerably to the right of those in most other developed democracies.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Arielle Popstar]

14 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

On the assumption that he thinks the ~80% of Twitter users aren't interested in, and don't much care for, diatribes by either the far left or the far right, I took him to mean precisely the opposite of

That is, that both the far-left and the far-right will find themselves moderated, with what Musk thinks will be the approval of ~80% of Twitter users who are neither far-left nor far-right.    That, though, raises the question of whose standards of "left" and "right" he's using, since US politics seem to skew considerably to the right of those in most other developed democracies.

 

They have a left president and many of the more powerful politicians are so that doesn't quite compute.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

They have a left president

LOL

[Innula Zenovka]

5 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Again, this "woke," "progressive"  culture wars stuff is very much a US thing -- certainly in the UK, our main political arguments at the moment are, as they almost always are, about more bread-and-butter issues like taxes, inflation, energy prices, the Health Service and education (by which I mean stuff like class sizes and exam results rather than "don't say gay").

Edited April 29, 2022 by Innula Zenovka

[Rowan Amore]

15 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I don't know how many people you're following, but I'm currently following almost 600 accounts (which maybe isn't a lot - I don't even know) and I can't say I've seen any of them get banned or restricted from posting anything.

What in the world are they posting for that to happen so often?

Conspiracies, misinformation, nonsense?  Just my guess.  

[Theresa Tennyson]

Theresa Tennyson's shoulder devil kicks angrily at the wall of the cardboard-box-with-four-books-on-it that Theresa has imprisoned it under, thinking of all the comments it could be making about directional ability if turned loose.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Again, this "woke," "progressive"  culture wars stuff is very much US thing -- certainly in the UK, our main political arguments at the moment are, as they almost always are, about more bread-and-butter issues like taxes, inflation, energy prices, the Health Service and education (by which I mean stuff like class sizes and exam results rather than "don't say gay").

Would be for Canada too but the PM got woke so now we having to struggle with the fallout of that.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

Conspiracies, misinformation, nonsense?  Just my guess.  

Maybe. I've seen some outlandish, wild things on there in general (from people I don't follow) and even they don't get banned for it. People making actual threats - still on there acting a fool.

Twitter is so lazy when it comes to kicking people off the platform that I'm kind of surprised when it even happens. It takes some actual work.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Would be for Canada too but the PM got woke so now we having to struggle with the fallout of that.

Trudeau is a Leftist?

Arielle, you really are a hoot today.

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Maybe. I've seen some outlandish, wild things on there in general (from people I don't follow) and even they don't get banned for it. People making actual threats - still on there acting a fool.

Twitter is so lazy when it comes to kicking people off the platform that I'm kind of surprised when it even happens. It takes some actual work.

Maybe some are so outlandish that no one bothers reporting them?  Is reporting a thing on Twitter?  I have no clue how that works there.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Just now, Rowan Amore said:

Maybe some are so outlandish that no one bothers reporting them?  Is reporting a thing on Twitter?  I have no clue how that works there.

Yeah, you can report tweets, though I've never done it so I don't know how it works. It's in the little dropdown menu thing.

But I've seen female gamers, for example, get verbally beat down and harassed to no end - to the point where they protected their tweets (essentially blocking their accounts to all but followers), and very little ever gets done. I'm sure people report, and maybe a tweet or two might get deleted, but it does seem to take quite a bit to get Twitter to take permanent action against someone.

[Arielle Popstar]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Trudeau is a Leftist?

Arielle, you really are a hoot today.

Instead of gloating then, teach me the difference Professor.

[Luna Bliss]

16 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

the PM got woke so now we having to struggle with the fallout of that.

To be woke is to believe in democracy...it's a set of values...freedom, peace, equality, justice, truth

A good portion of the US does not believe in democracy anymore, and so we cannot cede to their demands as we would in a typical political debate. Hence Musk's plans are rubbish -- you can't treat the problems in the US like there are two valid sides. Are women human beings? Black people? Are we allowed to limit freedom of movement, expression, association — whether through intimidation or hate or making laws to restrict people? This is the reason rights are inalienable — there aren’t “two sides” to whether or not people should have them. There’s just one.

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Instead of gloating then, teach me the difference Professor.

I'm surprised that a left-of-center libertarian like you apparently hasn't heard of Canada's NDP.

https://www.ndp.ca/commitments

[Scylla Rhiadra]

14 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Instead of gloating then, teach me the difference Professor.

Anyone who takes a little bit of time to look into the internal politics of the Democratic Party in the US will recognize that, while there is a progressive wing of the party -- "The Squad," Bernie Sanders, etc. -- they have not been in control of the agenda. In fact, the Democrats who have had the most concrete influence on the policies enacted by the current administration are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both on the far right of the party.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/18/dont-blame-the-left/

As for our "woke" Prime Minister, he has shown a singular reluctance to move on virtually any of the progressive reforms he's paid lip service to, including electoral reform (shelved), as well as action on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Indigenous Peoples, and he has failed to live up to his promise to end boiled water advisories on reserves by 2021. He has supported the construction of oil pipelines, in the face of opposition from the Left and from indigenous peoples, and Canada's foreign aid contributions are in fact lower now than they were under even Stephen Harper. He's also failed to respond in any kind of adequate way to allegations of sexual misconduct within the top ranks of the military.

I could go on. He has achieved a few things: his policies on immigration and refugees are at least reasonably liberal, for instance. And he's brought us back to the table on fighting climate change -- although other policies (see pipelines, above) undercut that severely.

He sure takes a good selfie, though.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

He sure takes a good selfie, though.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[StarlanderGoods]

17 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Instead of gloating then, teach me the difference Professor.

What is a leftists to you?  And you are talking about communists or socialists (not the same thing)

Ill give you some clear cut examples to start from recent history.

Fidel Castro

Hugo Chavez

Evo Morales

Lula da Silva

Who else would you put on that list ?

[Luna Bliss]

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Please don't go changing the situations being used as examples. My point about cancellation being bad is that it is disproportionate. It's real economic harm in retaliation for words. Even, sometimes, words that were spoken decades before.

Words are powerful. People hear hatred spoken and they take license to harm those who are spoken badly of, especially when powerful or influential people utter the words. Years ago, to start with, they uttered racist words to Jews in a country across the ocean....well you know the rest.

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

It is also a sort of mob rule. Social media has made it very easy to drum up an angry crowd of peasants with torches and pitchforks screaming "Kill the monster!" and the poor monster is forced to flee for his life. Sure, some monsters deserve to be burned, but who decides? Shall we simply concede that power to those with the largest followings, or with the most strident voice?

I don't like pile-ons or witch huts...demonization of individuals or making them 'all bad'. Horrible things can happen to those who are unfairly accused...lesser so when it's simply the 'mean girls' with the emotional maturity of a junior high student going after their target.

Just because the extreme can and sometimes does happen doesn't mean it's not a good method to go after the powerful in society who frequently suffer no consequence to their behavior though. If someone frequently uses the 'N-word' for example, and I have evidence of this via video or reputable news articles, I believe they should be removed from their public place of prominence. Some wrongs in society simply can't be addressed with judge and jury, but it doesn't mean the harm they cause to society is any less criminal.

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

A "sexist boss who treats women badly" is engaging in more than words, and the response should be proportionate: a lawsuit, perhaps, or an appeal to a higher level manager.

Sometimes all a sexist does is spew disrespectful words to women.

[Love Zhaoying]

22 minutes ago, StarlanderGoods said:

43 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Instead of gloating then, teach me the difference Professor.

What is a leftists to you? 

Eager to see!

[Arielle Popstar]

23 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I'm surprised that a left-of-center libertarian like you apparently hasn't heard of Canada's NDP.

https://www.ndp.ca/commitments

You gotta be kidding right? After their support of the Liberals in some of the stunts that have been pulled, it became very obvious that the NDP is not at all for the working class people they are supposed to represent. That is way off-topic but probably another party that has been protected from being dragged through the deserved mud by Twitters censorship policies, being they helped the liberals push through some very questionable laws that had a direct negative effect on many of the middle class in Canada.