A few days ago Elon posted "comedy is now legal on twitter". I guess this is a caveat to that.
Meanwhile I'm continuing to report the pretty explicit racism, homophobia, transphobia I'm seeing in replies to some people I follow and getting the "...we want to let you know that {user} hasn't broken our safety policies..." response. So, it seems the priorities for the (presumably substantially gutted) moderation team aren't hate speech, but rather protecting Musk's feelings
I guess that doesn't appear in the feed though?
[0] https://twitter.com/gerardkcohen/status/1588584459779321857
And I wouldn't complain too much about whatever is happening in the next few weeks. It's a transition period and not particularly meaningful - can't really tell if any one incident is due to deliberate policy, understaffing, work in progress or evolving goals.
They don't. Twitter reigned that back in many years ago.
In fact Dorsey's new BlueSky project is a return to the early days of Twitter where they provide an API and let anyone build clients.
It looks like they are moving to address this by making the blue check tied to a specific name, which makes a lot of sense. If someone wants to change their display name, they can go through reverification, which should also fix the preexisting issue of blue check accounts getting hacked and used for scams.
The tweet in question:
"Even though Jeffrey Epstein committed horrible crimes, I do still miss him on nights like this for his warmth and comradery. Rest In Peace old friend"
Parody is usually identifiable by its content, not because someone has to put a big "[WARNING: PARODY]" tag at the top.
With the Onion or the Babylon Bee, they are "reporting" crazy-sounding stories with their own name and account, and thus with their attached reputation as established satire sites. That's an important distinction, in my opinion.
Honestly this should have been the bannable offense. The checkmark was meant to guaranteed that you are who your claims to be (without having to check the @ on a side channel). If you intentionally use it for deceit then what is the point?
Personally I dislike both Musk and Twitter, but I hope (and also doubt) that Twitter keeps an adequate level of user verification for the checkmarks.
The easiest option in my opinion would be to force verified users to submit tickets for display name changes, or warn them that they will have to reapply for verification when they try to change their display name and remove it. Musk sounds like he is choosing the latter.
The point is that it's now possible to simply purchase a checkmark for $8.00/mo with no identity verification involved. So the checkmark is now unfit for any purpose besides impersonating other accounts. Which is why everyone is using it to shit on Elon Musk.
Some of the “jokes” they tried to pull off should probably get them cancelled from all platforms.
Musk seems unhinged as this point.
Someone else (with a blue tick!) being able to impersonate another verified account, goes obviously against this.
It's literally the same people first complaining about "anyone can buy blue tick" and then "why am I banned by impersonating" - I guess you got what you wanted, no?
for the record, I don't think impersonators should be banned, simply that impersonating name changes should be reversed and/or impossible.
edit: on second thought, name changes of verified accounts should be disabled and/or limited (pending re-verification)
In a few of the cases I've seen, it's been a litmus test. Like - ok if I follow the rules, mark myself as a "parody" (rolleyes) set my name to Elon Musk and fire off a tweet about how I miss Jeffrey Epstein then either one of two things will happen:
1. I am allowed to stay - fine, I don't love Elon but I can exist here. I'll probably go back to tweeting normally now.
2. I am banned - also fine, I now understand that Twitter is a place where Elon carves out little exceptions to please himself, so I don't wanna be here
It's looking like #2 is the case for many accounts. A number of the rest of us who had no interest in doing this are a bit saddened because some people we enjoyed following are gone and the rules/TOS are now almost unknowable, because you also have to append "... or if Elon doesn't like it" to them all. That last bit has a tinge of irony to it, given one of the things he was quite vocal about was making speech more free and open, not less.
I see now that it’s only become a verification of the fact that you’ve paid.
To be fair, that was several days ago. Elon has had plenty of time since to change what he wants to do in life and probably change his mind on whether or not to buy Twitter.
So gone is the "anything legal goes, free speech absolutism", now jokes need to be labeled as jokes because comedy is legal on Twitter but only within the guidelines of Elon Musk.
These people getting banned for making their name Elon Musk were not defrauding anybody, a well known comedian wasn't pretending to be Musk and making people send crypto or buy stocks.
They were making comedy or a performance art, they being banned is like going around and locking down people who impersonate other people for laughs or satire as if they were stealing identity to drain out the bank account of Musk.
Its very dystopian. As I said before, most "free speech absolutists" are actually free speech NIMBYs and Elon Musk seems to be no exception.