https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential...
My guess would be that parent commenter is talking about the time before Twitter was fighting back against the “alt right”.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor"
Of course, it's not always clear what injustice is and reasonable people might disagree, but I think there are certain minimum standards, like "anti-semitism and blatant racism are bad".
Twitter as a company/platform never went after anyone's job.
Free speech does not mean that speech is without consequences.
This can certainly go to far, but it's kind of up to the employer, isn't it.
No one can credibly deny that some speech is harmful. We'd all like to suppress some speech that we don't like, but the reason free speech advocates take the position they take (generally) is that once speech is prohibited the status quo regime will ban legitimate criticisms. So the good has to be accepted with the bad.
It's a tough issue. If I'm honest I favor censorship of views that I believe are harmful, but would object strenuously if my point of view is censored. I also think being called slurs, etc, is an unpleasant user experience, to say the least, so from a business perspective if nothing else I get why that is censored. Still, the censorship has gone too far in my view. We need to figure out a way to circle this square.
See this bit of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33375286
They still take these cases. (It is a bit complicated, individual ACLU chapters have a lot of autonomy, and they do not all agree with each other in all ways.)
So I see a substantial difference.
On one hand, you have lawyers from a nonprofit arguing in court that, while someone's views may be abhorrent, they are legal, and the principle matters more than the harm.
On the other, you have a for-profit entity tilting the landscape upon that speech rests, and as the raging debates about this stuff have shown, is difficult to distinguish profit from other motives.
Running a company with specific ideological priors looks a lot different to me than defending assholes for past speech on principle.
Following that logic, I support censoring/deplatforming fascists et al. because I want to hurt their ability to do fascism, not for some higher principle of striving towards a perfect, values-neutral marketplace of ideas. Speech is just another front on the plains of power.
Granting, of course, Twitter goes beyond this. They ban all hate speech at all, no matter how limited it is, but they're a private platform, which gets to the real heart of the issue. Everyone that cares deeply about this who is in agreement with Elon's side and isn't just being petulant about having personally been banned seems to equate Twitter with some kind of true public square or some necessary platform that handicaps a political movement if it can't access it. I just don't see this. The public streets, the government itself, I have no choice but to use and participate in. Everyone has to. But I have never had a Twitter account, never visit the site, and seem to have gotten along fine like that for over 40 years. Trump got banned and is still likely to win his party's presidential nomination in two years. It hasn't materially impacted his ability to get his message out and reach followers at all. Everything Kanye says is still going to be on every headline in every news service in the country the same day, and if he releases an album, his fans will still know. He doesn't need Twitter. I just don't see how that isn't definitive proof that Twitter is not this true common carrier people seem to think it is. You don't need access to one specific private platform to be heard. They're not like an electric utility with a local monopoly that is truly your only option to access a critical service. Trump and Kanye were both well known with hoards of followers before Twitter ever existed, and people would still hang on their words if Twitter completely disappeared tomorrow.
My neighbor Sam down the street likes to say the n-word sometimes and thinks offering hormones to kids is grooming. Still, I don’t think all the Sams in the US would ever be able to do as much material harm by having access to Twitter as ISIS does in one afternoon. Could be wrong.
ISIS is a sanctioned entity. Knowingly allowing them, or anyone identified as a member, to post on Twitter, would likely be illegal under sanctions laws.
To the extent that Twitter’s approach to ISIS is not mandated by sanctions laws-I don’t see Musk changing Twitter’s corporate policies on ISIS-he has zero sympathy for them and no doubt views them as a threat to humanity’s future.
Musk is likely good news for Donald Trump, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Libs of TikTok, etc - but no change for ISIS.
I still wonder about the legalities of Twitter allowing them to use the site, given they are still under US sanctions. It is possible, however, that the US government has (quietly) asked Twitter to allow it, as a diplomatic/political calculation. Sanctions concerns disappear if the government is asking you to disregard them (they can give you a formal legal exemption from them - even secretly; even without a formal exemption, if the government asks you to do something, that is an estoppel against them taking legal action for acceding to your request.)
<<people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way
Eh. This train is never late. Just wait until you find out that eventually all the out groups are thinned out and you are identified as the next one in line. That is the normal course of things. People are assholes. Freedom of speech is a basic safety valve.
I dislike that I even have to explain those. All this stuff should be covered in basic social studies.
If you want to talk about basic social studies, I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
Would you feel comfortable if your opinion that you just expressed above was being targeted for no other reason that it exists and someone somewhere finds it abhorrent. Do you not agree it is a rather bad standard just because, well, it is very general and can be applied to anything down the line?
Edit2:
Yes, I am invoking the "what if that was done to you".
edit3:
<<I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
There is no paradox. What you have is a conflict of values. From my perspective, things are either in balance or they are not. I personally would postulate that "escape from freedom" is a much more applicable here, where the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.
Personally, I do find it mildly amusing that the groups that were persecuted not that long ago are embarking on their own witch hunts shortly thereafter. It is a fascinating insight into the human condition.
Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
If you say yes, then...well there's no further discussion to have, and you scare me.
If no, then it's clear you and I both agree that there SHOULD be SOME limits on speech, we just disagree where the line is.
Heh. I too would love to live in such a binary word, where things are simply black or white and there are no shades of grey. I also love how you think this allows to bow out of the discussion. For the record, it does not and I challenge you to openly discuss it. Otherwise, and I am not using this phrase lightly here, you are an intellectual fraud pretending to engage in a good faith argument.
Now, the actual response to:
<< Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
Is that even a real question? Are you really drawing a line at name calling? This the hill you are willing to die on? I might be willing to accept some limits along the lines of the precedent that happens to include relatively conclusive standard of "immediate and present danger", but KKK members going through the streets shouting slogans using words you find offensive is absolutely something I am willing to defend, because I actually happen to believe in the founding document of this nation. Hell, I actually promised I will uphold it. I was not born into it and blessed with apathy. I voluntarily chose that path, because I happen to believe in ideals it espouses.
If you think I am the person to be scared of, I feel genuinely concerned for you. I would recommend less.. whatever it is that got you wound up.
Wait.
Are you arguing that "Someone needs to start lynching" equates to clear and present danger", because I am relatively certain a lot would depend on the context AND the resulting consequences? Like.. not to search very far, and to put things in perspective, to what extent did BLM protest rhetoric contributed to the resulting riots. Should we start locking them up?
I can give you that it is a close call, but nowhere near as clear you as you make it seem.
Either way, you may want to reconsider your argument a little. Those same rules are supposed to protect everyone. There is a reason for it.
Edit:
<< How far are you willing to take the notion of Freedom of Speech?
Notion. It is an idea enshrined in god damn law. It is a right. And it is one of the few things founders agreed upon. And it is the very first one.
You know what is a notion? Deconstructionism. There is a difference.
Notion.
Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
Honestly, if you want to be really consistent, almost every world government should have its officials off Twitter. Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
> Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
That comparison is invalid because those companies don't commit their purported harm on Twitter. Same with government officials. Even Kim Jong Un has a Twitter account https://twitter.com/official_kju
The "teenager" (or billionaire influencer) dropping racial slurs and either targeted or broad threats uses social media as the method of the harm they inflict. Mainstream social media companies are concerned with their platforms being used for harm.
I'll absolutely screenshot it and report it to your employer, should it be truly heinous behavior that would make your coworkers uncomfortable.
As with many of the things Elon has tweeted or said, appearing to value free speech for Twitter was just him appealing to conservatives, upset with their perception of cancel culture.
Wait to see if Elon actually makes any TOS and policy changes in the next month, and debate then.
The (absurd, imho) belief that such a right should preclude any sort of government regulation is a libertarian value.
So the "conservatives" believe very strongly in free speech (at the moment) because it's their speech that is currently getting crimped. And, seeing the trends, they think it's likely to get worse in the future. (As, say, anything disagreeing with the current "liberal" position gets labeled "racist" or "transphobic" or something, designed to make it virtuous to censor.)
Conservative and liberals have flip flipped on worker rights, corporate power and speech
It leaves conservatives open to being conned by everything from Chinese electronics manufacturers [1] to bankrupt reality TV stars [2]. Misconstruing TOS agreement violations as censorship persecution makes it easy for billionaires to win conservative admiration without actually doing anything.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/foxconn-sharply-scales-back...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/politics/trump-save-am...
Conservatives now define it as the permission to spread deliberate misinformation and overt racism and bigotry without consequences from either the government OR private entities.
Which, in a world where anything you don't like or agree with must be one of those things, is kind of unavodiable.
The American constitution has done a uniquely good job of enumerating those limits. It seems like a stretch to paint a de facto adherence to free speech (as outlined by the law of the land in a given jurisdiction) as oppressive, when the status quo has been unilateral normative judgements of relevant political speech by an unrepresentative cabal of employee-activists.
It's tricky because these platforms are huge, and are a public square in many ways. But they are also companies. The local newspaper is not required to print some anti-semitic screed. A local bar can kick out nazis. People do have alternative ways of freely expressing themselves.
Due to the massive size of these platforms, it feels a bit different, though in that being removed from one could really alter your online presence.
I don't have all the answers. And I suspect that Elon Musk does not, either, but we will have to wait and see...
I'm personally of the belief that network effects have granted Twitter a relatively unassailable cultural position, or at least enough of a moat to greatly reduce competitive pressures, and so should be subjected to different standards than a local bar or paper -- and if the analogy is to a newspaper, then Twitter should be treated as a publisher with all the attendant regulatory baggage that carries. It's hard for them to argue they have a right, as a private company, to shape the conversation, and in the same breath claim they're shielded from legal responsibility for what takes place on their site.
It's definitely a tricky debate, but in my personal value stack I place individuals' freedom of speech much higher than a private company's right to refuse service, so that's where I fall.
Hard to say... there are massive network effects, but switching costs are also pretty low. Facebook seemed pretty solid not so long ago.
Legal interpretation of the constitution has also very clearly found that a huge collection of actual literal Nazis marching around shouting "death to jews" at the top of their lungs is a-okay. Excuse me if I'm not super excited for that to be present on various social media platforms.
Of course I despise the vitriol spewed on twitter as much as anyone else, but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier. I realize that's a bit of an antiquated view, and the prevalent opinion is that these people can't be reasoned with and thus shouldn't be platformed, but I truly believe that that cynicism is a greater threat to our liberal institutions than the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
> but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier.
Great. Will you also be willing to be the person who experiences a torrent of hate speech directed at them? This is not an abstract thing where somebody else can "expose and ridicule" proponents of hate. You need to be willing to have the Nazis literally protest at your home and your job every single day and not leave.
> the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
If you think this is an honest portrayal of the state of hate on social media when moderation is reduced to "everything that isn't illegal" then you are grossly mistaken.
Yes, I am committed to backing up my philosophical attachment to free speech at the expense of personal inconvenience. I realize that's an empty statement without actually being subjected to that reality, but that's the best I can do.
If I'm wrong about the extent to which hate speech proliferates in unmoderated spaces (absent the adverse selection effect for sites like 4chan), then that's all the more reason to address that undercurrent of our societies. If anything, I'd argue pushing people off platforms where they might encounter dissenting views exacerbates radicalization.
Not okay, but not illegal, and better than the alternative i.e. a society without freedom of speech (as the Reich was, or Weimar Germany).
I do find the continued attempts to paint social media kicking transphobes off their platforms as equivalent to the actual Nazis hilarious, though.
2. I probably take the threats to your elections more seriously than you (I read whole of the the Antrim County computer forensics report, I'll never get that time back but I put in the effort).
3. To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
4. I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
5. "haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
I don't think that's true, since you think that people being banned on social media is a greater threat to a fall to authoritarianism.
> To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
I did not do this. Nor is this just "simply for disagreement." Argument over the best way of funding retirement savings programs is distinct from arguments over whether or not to throw gay people in prison, for example.
> I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
I'm sure you do. I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
> haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child. You use this "you talk like you are on Twitter" move pretty often as a way of talking down to people.
That's a strange reading that seems to assume that free speech goes hand in hand with authoritarianism, a laughable notion. Free speech is the antithesis of authoritarianism. No authoritarian has ever allowed anything approaching freedom of speech within their jurisdiction and sometimes even enforce it far beyond. As such, what you think is wrong.
> > To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
> I did not do this.
A phobia is a mental illness, you call your ideological opponents transphobes, so you did do this. It's pathetic name calling.
> I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
I'm here right now spending my time doing just that because you quite clearly do hate your opponents.
> Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child.
No one here has claimed that Nazis aren't shit but you're acting like a teenager high on self righteousness that thinks proclaiming that is some kind of insight for the rest of us. It is childish.
As I wrote, HN isn't the place, and one reason I bring it up far too often is because far too often of late I see people, like yourself, treating it as such. I make no apologies for wanting the standards to remain high.
Tell you what. I'll change all my words if it'll make you take me seriously. Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
There's a reason such a misnomer is used, and there's a reason why those using it such as yourself, seem to overlook its utterly mistaken connotations.
> Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
I know, but you're begging the question, while being an ironic hypocrite. How about you substitute a specific and accurate term for those you disagree with, or would it be too difficult for you to actually drop the ad hominem for even a moment out of fear of being shown up?
Assuming you're referring to constitutional law jurisprudence here and not the First Amendment's meager words here, I don't think I can agree with this statement. The short summary of the jurisprudence is that the government has no powers of censorship whatsoever, and the margins of where speech can become illegal are so far away that it's basically impossible to reach them (e.g., to reach the bar in Brandenburg, you more or less need to be at the head of a literal mob getting ready to lynch somebody). Unless you're a student.
As a guideline for moderation, it's absolute shit. There's ample evidence that absence of moderation will cause forums to degrade into cesspools, and the guideline of First Amendment jurisprudence is that the government is not permitted to be a moderator.
A great example of this is the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of accounts, which were permanently banned in October of 2021. Their own thought crime was posting revelations from Ashely Biden's diary and Hunter Biden's laptop. The excuse was " Russian disinformation" but news of late have proven Twitter's statement as clear disinformation in itself.
Musk had already said content that is illegal won't be permitted, and troublemakers will be dealt with, and that perma-ban will be final course, not the first & only.
Minimum western standards.
Anti-semitism is a “good” if you’re a Palestinian.
Racism similarly can be “good” for members of a minority fighting for literal survival.
Are you going to be correct all the time? Or even majority of the time?
If you believe in your capability to be correct all the time, might as well make billions in the market and help fight injustice everywhere.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...
The results are unsurprising.
I'm not sure that's possible. Even if you could magically roll back Twitter to pre-2015 (staff, code, rules, etc.), the world has changed and the average Twitter user has changed.
For all of Musk's proponents' claims that this is a boon for "free speech", such free speech is anathema to corporate interests, particularly advertisers and corporate partners (we only need to look at the recent Ye + Adidas bustup).
Thus, it will likely devolve into "Free Speech (TM)", the my-way-or-the-highway speech policing that we see in places like /r/conservative where any criticism of Musk's preferred views is silenced. Again, we only need to take his own history towards criticism to see what Musk with a bullhorn is likely to do.
And, thus, we can only hope that it becomes such a cesspool of hatred such as Parler and other so-called liberterian free-speech platforms that it becomes toxic for investors and users, save for those who relish the echo-chamber.
One can dream.
An actual stated policy that is followed by the company instead of some arbitrary internal morality police like the last lot.
I haven't tried the Metaverse and have no clue whether that'll take off, I'm more talking about the general technology. I have to admit, I'm still surprised it hasn't taken off stronger.
VR mini golf with my friends is the closest thing to hanging out in person without actually doing so. It’s a pretty dramatic difference over a phone call or other type of video game together.
The only other anecdote I have is an acquaintance who was early (i.e. the first web-dev) at YouTube. He _hated_ working for Google and left as soon as his shares vested. That was my first experience with someone simply rejecting a fat paycheck because _Google_ was to buttoned down for them.
People are strange (and software engineers are a whole different level of people).
It's easier to reject a fat paycheck after your shares vest, I imagine.
Still, no real data to back that claim up though.
I suspect he will surprise us with some product decisions, but I wouldn’t bet against him.
I’m sure he will upset some users and some advertisers, but on the whole he understands that in order for his investment to make a return Twitter needs to be popular.
Elon may be notorious for his big statements, and he has certainly made a few around twitter, but I don’t believe he is doing anything other than investing in a business that he is personally interested in. That’s his MO, it’s about growth not ideology.
If you haven’t seen them take a look at the released email/text exchanges between Elon and the Twitter CEO and board from the lawsuit. They offer a good insight into what his thought process is.
IMO Tesla -- we owe them a bit, for revitalizing electric cars. Now that the big brands have come around, I'm not sure Tesla has such a huge draw (?). Like if you are an engineer, you could work on the same problems at Ford, but with fewer CEO antics, your designs will probably be implemented with better build quality, and I bet your employment would be more stable.
SpaceX is still pretty impressive though.
My money would be on software developers with certain personality quirks being drawn to Musk's leadership while those who have been building Twitter's compliance and moderation infrastructure would be repulsed. But, I don't think we'll really ever know because - as a private company - I expect Twitter to not disclose that information in the future.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792
Or if I'm wrong and there is clear vision which these people support, can you please elaborate?
What do you hate about it?
I've never used it because it always seemed pretty shallow and vapid to me, but I don't have a visceral reaction against it. What am I missing?
One issue I find just generally with social media is that it incentivizes some inherent qualities in people that are detrimental to a functioning society. The nature of twitter encourages two behaviors that seem antithetical to constructive dialog.
Tweets are short. This makes it extremely difficult to have nuance in any conversation and makes it really easy for people to take a tweet that might be part of a larger thread or a series of replies out of context. There are lots of examples of a tweet blowing up someone's life and then you come to find out that the reality was, unsurprisingly, unable to be captured in 140 (or 280) characters.
Tweets are algorithmically promoted based on engagement. This really isn't just a Twitter thing, most social media works this way. The problem comes when you combine this with the first issue. "Hot takes" and things that outrage are pretty engaging and end up going far on the site.
So you take these two things together and what you end up with is a lot of content that takes complex topics and turns them into snappy hot takes. People then engage with those and our natural tribal tendencies take over and people fall into camps of either agreeing or disagreeing with the tweet. Now their agreement or disagreement might not be total, but in comes the format of twitter, it's hard in so few characters to express a nuanced opinion like "Well I agree with these parts of the tweet because of XYZ but I disagree with ABC and I think it totally misses the complexities of JKL."
In my experience a lot of twitter ends up devolving into a rabid sort of tribalism. But that's not universal, many people carefully curate who they follow and derive a great deal of value from the site. I think though when people have a strong negative reaction to it, they are probably considering what they (and I) perceive to be the majority case of people following popular twitter accounts (by definition they are popular because they have lots of followers) and taking part in the lower quality dialog trap I described above.
Second, I just don't like the site. You go to the site, click on the news ticker for any topic, and you see a million of the worst takes ever dreamed up by mankind. The format also encourages mob mentality which I find very disturbing.
Starlink gives free twitter access for everyone in the world, without internet access required, basically what FB tried to do.
Elon starts loving ads xD
He could be right or wrong.
But the one thing that is obvious is that everything there is not fine.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/10/21/twitter-musk-wa...
I’d like to think I can provide a net positive to the org with 15 years experience as a developer, founder and CTO.
Maybe it’ll end up being a net zero brain swap.
I know it sounds silly that I’d use a throwaway to say I want to work for Twitter now.
But if I do end up working there I have a feeling some in my network may not be so happy about this. I’d have to come to terms with that and plan some things out.
Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe not. But it’s on my mind these days when I say I support free speech within the confines of existing US law.
What I mean to say is that I support a company freely choosing to adopt a content moderation policy that aligns as closely as possible to the US 1st Amendment.
I think the US 1st Amendment is among (if not the) strongest free speech laws in the world, and it would be beneficial to society to have a major social media platform adopt that ideal as their North Star.
Right now presents an interesting and rather unique opportunity to convert a major social media platform from an ad-driven model with shareholders seeking endless growth to a sustainable, long-term business model with a revenue model that aligns closer to users. And sprinkle on top the idea of making the platform more inclusive to diverse groups and opinions with less echo-chamber. That interests me.
Politicians and sports media aren't going to abandon twitter any time soon, so I expect revenue will hold for quite some time.
It seems that many people abandoned FB already. If those same people abandon twitter, where will they go? I personally don't use twitter because I don't want to see updates from random people on the internet, but is there a replacement for that? I'm not sure.
It was clear she didn't do much of anything. Twitter could probably trim all the adult daycare shit.
I don’t know how people who describe themselves as free speech absolutists and claim no one will be censored are even given the time of day when they simultaneously discuss enforcement policies.
We already have and had multiple sites for absolute free speech short of actual government intervention on the internet. They are either small(the various chans) or go out of business(voat and the like) because no advertiser wants to associate with the content that is created, and free speech absolutists only appear to value free speech as long as someone else is covering the costs for propagating said speech.
Are there actually people like that? Whenever I see this phrase it's used to vaguely describe some group that's obviously in the wrong.
Twitter has never been nor propertied itself to be a bastion of free speech, so I always find this pearl-clutching at "meddling in X" funny. It's a private company, it can do as it please.
"We are the free speech wing of the free speech party"[1]
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-w...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...
They can't be biased towards stuff they ban. They are biased towards controlled opposition, which makes people feel warm and fuzzy. Big difference.
All the right-wing sources I followed on twitter were banned. Therefore I didn't get ANY content sent to me.
How is that a bias FOR right-wing sources?
> According to a 27-page research document, Twitter found a “statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing” in all the countries except Germany. Under the research, a value of 0% meant tweets reached the same number of users on the algorithm-tailored timeline as on its chronological counterpart, whereas a value of 100% meant tweets achieved double the reach.
There are crazy left-wing sources that are also banned, are you going to use that as "proof" that Twitter is biased against the left? You're cherrypicking.
What do you consider an "actual right-wing source" if not Fox News?
Fox News is for your 65+ year old uncle. It's harmless, controlled opposition. Look at the Jan 6th coverage. It exists for the left to point at and say, "see, there it is! Right wing bias!" - for one example.
It'll be interesting to see if Twitter gives them a megaphone too.
If their "reporting" was so egregious that they got banned, I'd question how accurate their "news" was.
Maybe you're just wrong?
The social media company called Gab is the antithesis to that statement:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistak...
1. Interesting challenges
2. Exchange labor for money
3. Good working environment
4. As a nice to bullet point on their resume
It would be a very naive thing to work for a for profit company owned by a billionaire to think that you have any other “mission” than to line the pockets of a reluctant owner.
5. For the greater good
Whether you think the 'reluctant billionaire owner' is in it for the greater good as well is not relevant.
Now, with regard to Twitter, I have little notion of what 'for the greater good' means. But I'm sure some people do.
Even if the founder sincerely believes that, once he takes VC money it doesn’t matter what he believes.
At the end of the day you gotta do what media entrepreneurs have always done: shove stuff down people's throats in exchange for money. That's it. There is nothing tough, poetic or ideological about it.
Twitter has been trying to monetize its users but they had scarce success. That was without an ideologue at the helm. Or an ideologue-lite when Dorsey was in charge.
With an ideologue at the helm the bird will fly right into the ground. Twitter needed somebody who knows how attract the crowd which buys stuff online. Paradoxically Bezos was the right fit for the bird app.
>With a strong vision for platform entitlement and actual value enforcement, it would attract the right people. We can argue the recent dilution of Twitter's values to meddle with U.S. politics was the actual brain drain.
After all, the ideological concept of "free speech" as is commonly used in the United States and regarding political freedom is the freedom from government persecution to say whatever you want. It is being transformed by propagandists and those who would see our democracy crumble to mean "being allowed to freeload off of dominant viral message boards to spread whatever misinformation is deemed beneficial to my worldview".
I respect the idea that the Internet is a prerequisite to effective political speech in the Western world for audiences larger than a small town. I believe that certain layers of the World Wide Web, namely DNS/TLS/Network/Hosting do have a "common carrier" obligation to some extent which should possibly be codified.
I do, however, take issue with the idea that individual websites currently have any obligation to be "neutral", though I do believe in being transparent in any potential bias. I also believe it's misleading to call taking down trolls and bad faith bots as "biased".
To be straight to the point, I honestly doubt the motive of anyone who actively criticizes about free speech issues on twitter, given the kinds of democracy-destroying people who have been largely affected by their moderation policies.
Twitter, with roughly the same measly feature set it had 15 years ago, is operated by 7500 people.
Maybe some "brain drain" would not be a bad thing?
In what terms? Can you share some numbers maybe?
the one thing I'm almost certain of is twitter will have better margins under musk.
It may not be worth the $44b though, he's starting at a $20b defecit.
It's a good thing he got through middle school before it became a meme.
Working for Twitter in 2022 sounds about as exciting as working for Yahoo as it was going through the same type of turmoil.
>Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know. Used to have close to 1000 karma, got destroyed over time by hackernews cancel culture and a change in downvote algorithms. But now that the algorithm has been changed back to classic style, I'm rising up again.
The doctors are indeed worried about his karma count. It's dropped a lot because he is ethically challenged. But it's sounds like the doctors are working hard to bring that karma count back up.
Referring to yourself as "ethically challenged"? Complaining about cancel culture?
That profile just reeks of "WHY CAN'T I SAY THE N-WORD!?"