It is not topics that are censored, it is behaviour
twitter.com
twitter.com
Most of what he's saying makes perfect sense to me. But people will dismiss the entire thing, pointing to weak examples ranging from individual instances of actual bad behavior to honest mistakes to tangential events of tenuous relevance to complete falsehoods.
Thus incentivizing him greatly to take the decisions motivated by money and not some imaginary neutrality or "fight the bad behaviors" concept? He mentioned this tangentially right before delving into how hard those jobs are which one absolutely doesn't have to take.
So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so.
p.s. I would also prefer Elon to work on spaceships, cars, leaving social platforms to run for somebody else
No, the whole thread is "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, so Elon should just not do it."
Not really—the poster (ie, a previous CEO of Reddit) is trying to tell Elon that what he wants to do is impossible, and Elon attempting to do so will just make everyone mad at him, as well as making him completely miserable in the process. One of those "this will kill you, and it will hurt the whole time you're dying" sort of things).
I don't know if he's right or not, but I do agree that running a social media company is messy for social, not technical reasons—and brilliant engineers generally struggle with complex social dynamics. (As always, there's a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/592/)
Hilarious coming from someone who used to work at Reddit. Apart from blatantly illegal stuff, the one thing most likely to get a subreddit in trouble with Reddit's Anti-Evil Operations is allowing open debate about whether trans women are women. Even if the mods take every effort to make rules and remove posts calling for violence etc. and merely allow debate over whether or not they are women, they are guaranteed to run afoul of the AEO team. There is a subreddit I frequent that allows this, and the mods there are very transparent about when the AEO removes posts, and it is pretty much always posts about whether trans women are women (the remainder of ones that get removed by the AEO tend to be people arguing about lowering the age of consent, but the ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1).
This was a time when blatantly racist subs like /r/coontown were allowed, as well as fringe subs like /r/watchpeopledie.
Volunteering to show your own oppression receipts isn't evidence against the idea that people from many political poles thing the platform is institutionally biased against them. It actually reinforces his point. Particularly when he takes pains to point out that anyone running this kind of circus is always going to find out that no single stable system or rules are going to be adequate to address behavior that surrounds discourse with limited accountability.
I frequent at least one sub where trans-skeptical discussion is certainly present (/r/JordanPeterson , in spite of the fact that it's largely a political fun-house mirror now more than a venue for discussing his work). I see that kind of discussion regularly. You may want to consider that something else is going in the sub you're referring to. Particularly considering it's one in which apparently both lowering the age of consent and trans-skeptical topics are a staple (the potential behavioral red flags almost throw themselves).
> ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1).
What's the ratio of trans posts that don't get removed to those that do?
What's the ratio of shitposts where the frame is ultimately about how one should behave towards trans people vs posts that are courteously principled with the obvious point of exploring what gender/sex actually are and how might know?
What's the ratio of worldview to discourse?
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.
Some interesting conclusion too: “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.”
"Free speech changed, it was about being free to behave badly on certain topics against repressive forces in charge. Now we are in charge, so it's different"
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.”
This is a great idea. If all countries just stopped fighting there’d be no more war!
I agree though with your point that he’s being a bit sanctimonious. It’s not just about community civility — there’s an overarching “we are doing what’s best for world” attitude that Facebook and the like are also employing.
Just “I’ve been there, this is what’s going to happen, sorry but it really sucks.“
A repost is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31044693
Then there’s the hard-core Elon fans who don’t want to say anything bad about him. They probably flagged it too.
Some people are probably tired of this specific topic. There’s been a lot of stories about Elon Musk and Twitter over the last two days or so, why do we need one more? Everyone’s going to say mostly the same things anyway. Elon is right. Elon is an idiot. He’ll save twitter. He’ll ruin it. I hate twitter. Blah blah blah. So they flag it.
He provides a very unique and useful perspective, but it’s not clear from the headline. That probably doesn’t help. Sorry.
Whenever I see vague complaints like this, I'm reminded of a twitter user I once encountered. He was conservative, and he was complaining about how the left controlled all of the media and social media, censoring people for arbitrary actions and disallowing speech they didn't agree with, banning people for the most trivial of things. He waxed lyrical about how nobody should let them have this power, how we should resist them at every turn, about the freedom denied to him and those like him.
As I read more, and got more context, it became increasingly clear that he was talking about not being allowed to call people the n-word. (I also found him in the first place in the Emmet Till trend, complaining that it was trending.) What's innocent and acceptable for one group can be unacceptable and offensive for another group, and sometimes the second group has a much better point than the first.
I don't think Elon is going to allow Nazi spam, and he shouldn't if he wants the platform to be relevant.