If Musk acquires Twitter, I will likely be deleting my account. Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?
I mean, jesus, just read the replies from any political post by damn near anyone who is slightly Twitter famous.
It's absolute trash heaped upon burning trash heaped upon dog shit.
https://theconversation.com/amp/if-elon-musk-succeeds-in-his...
Fighting bots seems to me the opposite of 'allow disinformation'.
Also, are we currently blocking people for pushing disinformation? Did I miss something?
Also I've lost count of how much of last year's 'disinformation' became this year's 'that totally happened'.
Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?
Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country
Quite a struggle for an international website, where the majority of users are outside of the US, to just say "we should follow the laws of countries" as if there's one single internationally compatible law for that.
I can promise you, no matter what he does, people/sites you follow will likely extol how terrible the platform has gotten with disinformation/hate speech, even if he does nothing. How will you protect against that negativity bias? Do you have an objective way to know whether it's gotten worse or not, or are you going to rely on anecdotes from the sources you follow?
It seems rather narcissistic to think that deleting your account would be of any consequence or inflict punishment on anyone. To put it bluntly, someone farting in their own car on the highway (and potentially soiling themselves, getting distracted, and causing a chain-reaction accident) has a greater potential impact to future events than whatever irrelevant drivel you (or I, or anyone) posts on Twitter.
For better or worse, Twitter has become the de-facto town square. The clones have tried and failed because the momentum to move sufficient numbers en masse just isn't there. Do you honestly believe that Musk is such an unpleasant figure that hoards of people would suddenly leave the platform? Where would they go? A digital Jonestown?
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/joe-rogan-says-gained-2-122749909.htm...
It's also as idiotic as all the people who were rage-tweeting their airline a week ago, upon suspension of the mask policy in the US, threatening to take their business elsewhere, only to have every major airline follow suit in the span of 6 hours.
I hope they enjoyed their bus ride, otherwise they'd have to just sit there and take it. I suppose getting your pilot's license isn't out of the question. It might be easier than building your own Twitter.
If you have to put a real, verified name behind these posts, at least that can cut into the massive bot armies spreading disinformation and the massive foreign spending that goes into amplifying all of it.
Then you would have the benefits of a free speech platform while preventing it from becoming a psunami of noise.
You have to stand behind what you say, because your real name is on it. True, we do have politicians and others trying to spin destructive narratives and spread falsehoods, but it is their right in the United States to do so, as long as it does not run awfoul of existing laws.
Anonymity is very valuable, especially for some of societies' most vulnerable, who should have a place on social media.
We can't have that.
Twitter can be a pretty hostile place if you’re not a white straight man, can’t see Musk making it any betters for those people who are currently harrassed fir being women, queer or colored
I've never seen that. I've been a Twitter user since 2009.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
Whoa, where are you getting that?
I feel that 'assume good faith' has its limits since those who comment in bad faith have no restrictions while others are forced to respond as though nothing is wrong. So sometimes I feel the need to respond a bit more aggressively, maybe that's not in the goals of the site though.
I’m in the “fortunate” position to not have strong feelings about Musk either way. I may delete my Twitter account if he takes the company private, but that will be more of protest against billionaires owning platforms that I think should be non-profit organisations because of their public impact. That being said, I’m not sure how that is even relevant to most people here on HN as my “protest” is not really matter.
I think Twitter might be opening itself up to a competitor if Musk does something stupid with it. But Twitter is probably already pretty open to disruption as it is exactly for the reason big money sees wasted potential in it. “Owning” the space for public discourse is sort of twitters thing, but it’s much less good at it than LinkedIn is at owning corporate discourse as an example.
But it all sort of depends on what Musk does with it, doesn’t it? Maybe he will make it better.
FTFY.
> Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?
And for all Twitter blue checks to go where? Tik Tok?
That would make Twitter the only big tech company with free speech as a core issue.
Nowadays even small tech like DuckDuckGo is actively cherry picking which propaganda to display.