Elon Musk buys Twitter to bring back Free Speech

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 hours ago, Rilee Dallas said:

Yea I just watched the 3 hour Robert Pattinson batman instead of reading forums. I wonder how often the people mad at twitter actually are on twitter? I think it's like being mad at something that is not even a part of your life. I just use twitter to look for interesting videos. 

That's an interesting question. I keep it open constantly and flip over every once in a while to see if anything important is happening (and important in my case is a new game announcement or new track dropping or something fun like that). My follows are mostly very "on" people who tweet like a gabillion times a day (I never tweet - only read), and most of them don't seem to be doing much complaining about it. They're just tweeting as they usually do.

Funny enough, I've seen more people bothered by the announcement and arguing about it outside of the Twitterverse, like on Discord and Reddit.

[Katherine Heartsong]

9 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

Can't really dodge that question - who will decide what's acceptable to say on social media, and how?

The owners of said social media? It's very simple. If you're in my house, you play by my rules.

A private company can set up whatever rules about speech they want on their platform. Twitter's an example, Trump's Truth Social is another. They both have rules about what can and can't be said.

[Silent Mistwalker]

7 hours ago, Rilee Dallas said:

Yea I just watched the 3 hour Robert Pattinson batman instead of reading forums. I wonder how often the people mad at twitter actually are on twitter? I think it's like being mad at something that is not even a part of your life. I just use twitter to look for interesting videos. 

I have no use for Twitter. Jerks won't even allow me to sign up for an account without a smartphone. Tried several times on my desktop but Twitter just spins its wheels. 

Twitter is not worth the headaches or stress.

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, Rilee Dallas said:

I wonder how often the people mad at twitter actually are on twitter? I think it's like being mad at something that is not even a part of your life. I just use twitter to look for interesting videos. 

Even if you never go to Twitter (I seldom do myself) it has the power to effect your life in major ways though.

For example, the Capitol riot, where a group of people attempted to overthrow democracy in the US via storming the Capitol to disqualify the results of the election, was planned on Twitter. If we allowed the overthrow of a democratically elected government to happen the whims of the authoritarian taking power by force would rule, and those whims often minimize the rights of those they don't approve of in horrific ways.
Even if you don't reside in the US, the effects of a country turned into an autocracy, with so many weapons at their disposal, could affect many parts of the world in negative ways.

Also, many are forced to rely on social media if they want to keep their jobs, as social media is now a major avenue for advertising -- they are forced to endure the harassment directed toward them then. While I may not have to log in to Twitter myself and endure this abuse, witnessing the suffering of others affects me personally.

And when hatred is allowed to thrive in public it can give license to those who want to lash out against their enemies, often those in marginalized groups who are used by society as scapegoats. Words are powerful, and the more we see demonization of people the more it seems okay by some to direct violence against people they dislike.

Take for example the PizzaGate conspiracy rumor spread on social media. A conspiracy theory rumor claimed that a pedo ring existed in a pizza parlor, and a guy took a rifle and fired shots at the place. Fortunately nobody was injured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

I can't say how social media should be controlled for sure, but I am looking at solutions currently proposed by others.
Those against any control cite "free speech" to insist there should be no control. But 'free speech' doesn't mean we're allowed to scream 'fire' in a movie theatre when no fire exists -- there is and always has been limitations to 'free speech' to protect the public. 
Social media is now that fire and it needs to be regulated so harm is minimized.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

7 hours ago, Rilee Dallas said:

Yea I just watched the 3 hour Robert Pattinson batman instead of reading forums.

I really loved that movie..

I will watch it then!  Many superhero movies I don't like, but if they have good character development along with all the action I enjoy them. I think a spiderman movie of a few years back fit that description.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

5 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I have no use for Twitter. Jerks won't even allow me to sign up for an account without a smartphone. Tried several times on my desktop but Twitter just spins its wheels. 

Twitter is not worth the headaches or stress.

This is true. It used to be a loooot easier. I first joined in 2013 and there was no phone verification (maybe email? I don't even remember).

But I tried making a second account for blog purposes a few years ago and it got instabanned before I could even verify, HMPF. And then was asked to make a new account for a freelance gig and had to verify it with a phone. That one went through.

But yeah it's likely their bot-prevention system that makes it so obnoxious - if you sign up at a bad time (I guess depending on news cycles when numerous bots are being spun up), they'll make you jump through hoops to verify the dang thing.

It's not overly worth it, though. If you have hobbies you want to keep up with, there are alternative places outside of Twitter. It's just kind of like an all-in-one sort of gathering place, but definitely not needed. Like for fiber arts and crafting - Ravelry is wayyyy better. Pinterest, too. YouTube, etc.

[Luna Bliss]

10 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I was going to post about the years of Twitter's lax moderation and how it's spawned off like eleventy-billion articles and investigations and reports criticizing them for it (thanks for linking one of them, @Luna Bliss ) but I just don't feel like it anymore 😂. 

I understand. It's a mess. Best to minimize thinking about all this.

I hope the new regulations in process here can have some effect, because like you point out, whatever Twitter tried didn't solve the problem, though booting the orange one was a good move.

[Rowan Amore]

Actually just signed up (again) for Twitter using a throwaway email address.  No smart phone needed.  

[Aethelwine]

A few on here have advocated free speech like twitter should not ban anyone.

The main twitter bans are for Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Saudi bot farms. Domestically a lot of QAnon accounts that were spreading dangerous misinformation about public health.  Cuban and Venezuelan politicians and news media. Some Far Right organisations for everything from Doxxing, organising terrorist attacks or other conduct falling under spreading hate. Ref

Twitter has admitted to making mistakes like the OSINT bans at the start of the Ukraine conflict:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/23/22947769/twitter-osint-russia-ukraine-invasion-suspended-error

But I think we can all probably empathise with a desire to suppress information that might put civilians at risk in a war zone, over caution perhaps better than not regulating at all.

Do Free speech advocates really think Twitter should have no rules, regardless of the consequences?

Edited May 2, 2022 by Aethelwine

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Just now, Luna Bliss said:

I understand. It's a mess. Best to minimize thinking about all this.

I hope the new regulations in process here can have some effect, because like you point out, whatever Twitter tried didn't solve the problem, though booting the orange one was a good move.

Yeah, it's just a lot to think about. It's something I've been bothered by for many years now as I've seen really good people struggle on these platforms and nothing's ever done about it. Social media in general can do some serious harm. In the gaming industry alone, it's an absolute nightmare. I've seen entire careers ruined over it, and far, far worse.

Of course, I'm not saying it's an easy thing to moderate. It's really not. But that's the responsibility Twitter has to contend with. There is no simple fix, but it's up to them to figure it out.

[Ceka Cianci]

36 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I will watch it then!  Many superhero movies I don't like, but if they have good character development along with all the action I enjoy them. I think a spiderman movie of a few years back fit that description.

Batman is more a detective than superhero in this movie.. There are twists and all kinds of things in it.. It's really well rounded and much different then the ones in the past.. I think anyways..

[Arielle Popstar]

11 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lemme just do a quick tl;dr version - Twitter can't get it right. They've tried every method they could come up with to mod their massive giant of a platform and they just don't know what they're even doing anymore. They posted an application in 2018 to recruit outside experts to help them learn to mod and foster a healthy community for crying out loud. Here we are now in 2022 and things are still a hot mess.

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-submission.html

 

Not surprising they had trouble considering their moderation policies had to include a way to censor, block and shadowban one side but not the other in such a way it wasn't very obvious. By a number of reports, 97% of the content moderation team are woke progressives so that right there points out there is going to be bias. No chance they are going to be able to check their politics at the door when they come in to work. 

It should be obvious that a content moderation team has to have no political bias to be effective and fair in sifting through the content and determining what goes and what stays. And that from Jack Dorsey's own words on Twitters left leaning bias, is not the case.

[Silent Mistwalker]

33 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Actually just signed up (again) for Twitter using a throwaway email address.  No smart phone needed.  

I tried on several different occasions, meaning different days weeks apart. I would fill in the initial info, click next and it does nothing but spin its wheels. It does not even throw an error message. It does nothing. It didn't like my email, it didn't like my FB or Google. Reminds me of a forum I used to be a member of long ago when they migrated to a new format. I'd been a member for over 10 years and I could no longer log in. Resetting didn't do anything. Contacting admin was a waste of time as they didn't know squat about how forums worked. I tried using a different email, even moved half way across the country and STILL could not log in on the old account or create a new one.

It's the same damned thing with trying to sign up for Twitter. Screw that and it.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Those against any control cite "free speech" to insist there should be no control. But 'free speech' doesn't mean we're allowed to scream 'fire' in a movie theatre when no fire exists -- there is and always has been limitations to 'free speech' to protect the public. 
Social media is now that fire and it needs to be regulated so harm is minimized.

When it comes to moderating of social media it is about fair speech where each side or viewpoint is allowed it's say. Like as in not limiting the speech of those with alternate views like the Jan 6 protests being just protests rather then only allowing the voice of those calling it an insurrection by the unarmed participants of a political rally.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not surprising they had trouble considering their moderation policies had to include a way to censor, block and shadowban one side but not the other in such a way it wasn't very obvious.

One side of what? I don't know what a "woke progressive" is as my AAVE is quite limited (bad me), but my posts aren't addressing any of that. If you mean politics, then I have no idea. I pay exactly zero attention to any left/right whining on that platform. It's not even worth my time to read those comments on Twitter. My most recent post mentioned the gaming industry, for example. That's the Twitter community I'm most engaged with, outside of music, hobbies, some business, and art.

I've personally seen abuse and harassment in the areas of gaming, game development, streaming and YouTube celebrity fanbases, business, music, art, etc. I'm talking about mostly regular people here - not the big, massively followed verified accounts or anything. How Twitter chooses to moderate those is a mystery to me - perhaps it depends on how much is reported and how much influence a person has. Zero idea.

I can say I have not seen Twitter take any serious action against actual harmful bullying and pile-ons in the industries I've mentioned (where they seemingly happen frequently, if not daily - gaming especially). They might delete a few posts, maybe. Whole accounts - ehhh it doesn't happen that frequently.

As far as moderation goes - Twitter and other platforms occasionally contract with some outside companies to develop/train some AI bots to help with that. I've done a few tiny freelance projects that involved testing the effectiveness of some of these bots. They mostly suck (no surprise), but the bots aren't trained to spot political biases or anything. They're basic little things that will fail to spot toxicity if you try to get too sassy or sarcastic and can only really pick out direct insults (no surprise). Seems to be a complete waste of time for spotting anything but four letter words, really.

As for Twitter's manual moderation process - zero idea. One thing I DO know - some of the big big big accounts that have been banned had very good reasons for why that happened. Azealia Banks? Yeah I'm not sorry she got yeeted off the platform (though I think she's back now, maybe).

[Theresa Tennyson]

23 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

When it comes to moderating of social media it is about fair speech where each side or viewpoint is allowed it's say. Like as in not limiting the speech of those with alternate views like the Jan 6 protests being just protests rather then only allowing the voice of those calling it an insurrection by the unarmed participants of a political rally.

You just said that, didn't you?

[Coffee Pancake]

9 hours ago, Rilee Dallas said:

Yea I just watched the 3 hour Robert Pattinson batman instead of reading forums. I wonder how often the people mad at twitter actually are on twitter? I think it's like being mad at something that is not even a part of your life. I just use twitter to look for interesting videos. 

Hi, I'm on Twitter a lot. It's 1000x worse than people allude to in this thread.

If you have an account over a certain size and say the wrong keywords, a hundred bot accounts and their idiot human followers show up to trash you, then the humans decide they need to find out where you live and post that. The right wing on twitter are very bot/professional driven, especially MAGA & Q. This is how conservative "meme" talking points spread so fast and change so quickly (see current attacks on LGBTQ+ people with "groomer").

Their social media game is on point and they aren't participating in the same way as everyone else. Twitter is credited heavily for 45's win and generating outrage is a huge part of the game plan.

The right complain the most about getting set on by a lynch mob, however that's not quite the same. It's typically huge accounts that have said something so deeply offensive that actual people are unable to let it slide. "Grandma should die so the economy can get back to normal" .. well that pisses off everyone who likes grandma.

Pushback and dogpiles from left and minority groups tends to come in the form of ratioing transphobes with the trans pride flag.

 

Governance is the technical application of specific rules, and big conservative accounts play against those rules for the outrage. Kind of a "Ban me, I dare you" so they can then go on fox and complain about being banned.

Eg MTG got punted for breaching clear stated Covid rules multiple times with multiple warnings, she knew she would get a ban and did it anyway. The pillow guy had a similar fate .. and then got banned again the other day for blatantly making a new account to deliberately evade a ban. It's performative and planned.

[Coffee Pancake]

25 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Like as in not limiting the speech of those with alternate views like the Jan 6 protests being just protests rather then only allowing the voice of those calling it an insurrection by the unarmed participants of a political rally.

 

 

 

[Aethelwine]

25 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

When it comes to moderating of social media it is about fair speech where each side or viewpoint is allowed it's say. Like as in not limiting the speech of those with alternate views like the Jan 6 protests being just protests rather then only allowing the voice of those calling it an insurrection by the unarmed participants of a political rally.

Did that happen? I can't find a reference for it. 

There were the Audit accounts that got banned for platform manipulation. But you are saying a different reason so I am not sure who you are referring to.

One ban on Twitter last year was for Rebecca Jones the whistleblower from Florida, that was sacked for saying De Santis was manipulating the data from the Dashboard she created to downplay Covid figures for his political purposes. Again though that was for platform manipulation.

[Coffee Pancake]

7 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

Did that happen? I can't find a reference for it. 

No conservative accounts have been banned for expressing "alternative facts". The specific cases of bans for Covid misinformation only happened because Twitter amended their rules to include it.

It's hard enough to get people making actual death threats banned, saying that Jan 6th was a kumbaya moment is absolutely fine .. well, unless you were there or inciting people to violence and then it's evidence .. any drop off in that sentiment comes from lawyers telling people to STFU.

[Silent Mistwalker]

18 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

well that pisses off everyone who likes grandma.

Including grandma. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not surprising they had trouble considering their moderation policies had to include a way to censor, block and shadowban one side but not the other in such a way it wasn't very obvious. By a number of reports, 97% of the content moderation team are woke progressives so that right there points out there is going to be bias. No chance they are going to be able to check their politics at the door when they come in to work. 

At least one person posted that this apparently "one-sided" moderation was because only "one side" was breaking the rules so egregiously. Do you not accept that possibility?

[Love Zhaoying]

45 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

alternate views

Do you see "alternate facts" the same as "alternate views"?

[Istelathis]

21 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Hi, I'm on Twitter a lot. It's 1000x worse than people allude to in this thread.

Oh yeah, it is definitely a tool that can be used to wreck havoc on society.  One does not need to be on twitter, or any social media platform to feel the impact it has had on society.  Ultimately, I see it more as a recruiting site than a social media site, free speech is often a rallying cry disguised as a concern for freedom, but if you remove the mask it is often just one group wanting to recruit others to push their own ideological views on the masses - of which twitter has plenty of people to recruit from.  

It is why I think the algorithms on social media sites need to be changed, these are not town halls as far as I see, they are simply recruitment centers.  Allow free speech, if that is what they want, but make it more difficult for extremist groups to infiltrate society with the purpose of dismantling it and rebuilding it in their own image, often at the cost of the freedom that other groups of people get to enjoy in real life.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Istelathis

[Ceka Cianci]

16 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

 

 

OMG that was democrats In disguise.. I seen Pelosi in the red beany hit the ground..

I think I just solved the case!! \o/

 

 

hehehehe