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> ...so they could be removed entirely and this problem would remain.

Which problem? Seriously: the only legitimate problem I know of is that Twitter gives artificial reach to things via algorithmic engagement. They literally send me push notifications for tweets their algorithm thinks is interesting.

If you retweet something some asshole says and I don't like it, I should probably just unfollow you because you could have just screenshotted the original tweet and included the image... that was you actively sending that content, and wasn't the original anymore.

(FWIW, the reason I don't trust this is because I actually further disagree with your assertion that the algorithms aren't causing reach, because Twitter no longer does linear timelines: everything you see, including from your followers, has been curated by the engagement-driving algorithm, and so if he starts down-modding stuff then it actually will work and actually will reduce reach as you will be less likely to see it even if the people you follow retweet it.)

My point is that the algorithms used by Twitter did not create the problem of bad tweets having reach. Elon could turn off every piece of engagement-hacking functionality within the Twitter system and it would not solve the problem. The algorithms just exist to eek out better engagement numbers.

Twitter provides reach to speech. You cannot remove reach from Twitter without rendering Twitter useless. Pre-Elon Twitter addressed the problem of giving bad speech reach by removing the bad speech. Elon’s “free speech absolutist” position is that removing speech is wrong so he’s going to remove the reach… which has the same outcome as removing the speech.

I think you’re vastly overestimating how much the algorithms matter, they’re not relevant to the problem Elon is trying to address.

> Twitter provides reach to speech. You cannot remove reach from Twitter without rendering Twitter useless.

You absolutely can.

The way that it is still useful, is if instead of being perma-banned for a bad tweet, instead an account just has that tweet only prioritized.

That way, the bad stuff is stopped, without draconian ban policies destroying your account.

Twitter gives you the option to view a linear timeline.

> If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them.

I'd equate it more to people in Nebraska can't hear the guy yelling in Times Square, nor should they.

If people like this guy and want to hear him, they can go to Nebraska and listen to him (follow on Twitter).

If he does something outlandish and makes the national news, people will know about it (a lot of retweets).

If they're max deboosted, you won't see their posts even if you follow them; you'll only be able to see their posts by going to their page.

That’s how Twitter works already — that’s how the “filter bubble” concept is able to exist, you’re only exposed to things in your self-selected bubble.

What Elon is describing (as I understand it based on the limited information provided) is restricting reach within your network, i.e: you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed.

Basically shadow banning, which a lot of the “anti-woke” brigade have been complaining about for years and thought Musk would stop. Unsurprisingly, it turns out it’s more complicated to run a social media site than some people might think.

This, exactly. Although I'm still convinced that at least 90% of cases where people complain about shadowbanning are nothing more than them being unable to handle the idea that others just aren't all that interested in what they have to say.

The problem is there’s fundamentally no difference for the user posting such things. They both result in low engagement, and the tools deliberately and necessarily don’t differentiate, after all you kind of can’t tell the banned individual. So they just can’t tell and it exacerbates their view it’s stacked against them.

Not really. They've been complaining about shadow banning at the account level. Musk explicitly said it would be at the Tweet level.

> you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed

As far as I can tell, this is already how Twitter works.

I have plenty of people I follow who I almost never see tweets from anymore in my timeline, but if I go to their accounts directly I can see they are saying a lot of things.

People call it being shadowbanned.

Are you using the chronological timeline? If you're using the algorithmic timeline, this can happen even if a user isn't shadowbanned. Facebook does this too.

>people will know about it (a lot of retweets)

Yeah, unless those get suppressed too which is what currently happens on social media sites like Facebook, Reddit and (pre-Musk) Twitter.

There is no way authorities can gently steer public debates in the "right" direction. Any meddling is overstepping a line and problematic.

Are you able to provide a citation for Twitter suppressing retweets?

It's been referred to by them as "de-emphasizing" of content. It's fancy newspeak for this type of suppression of speech:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a35nbj/twitter-content-moder...

Any meddling? Like when people of one ethnic group use social media to organize a massacre of another group (as has happened in a number of countries)? Social media have correctly tried to suppress that, and I worry about what happens when people who speak the language get fired because they aren't coders.

Wow. I suppose the downvoters have never heard of what happened to the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

Your own example is the best argument against such censorship. Myanmar is a heavily censored military dictatorship, the violence is against the Rohingya is state sanctioned. Journalists have been arrested for as much as reporting on it:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-journalists/reute...

>So you’re probably right to say this isn’t a sudden 180 on his thoughts, but it still highlights how faulty his framing of free speech is.

I still don't understand what his logic is. What is the philosophical value of free speech if no one is able to hear that speech? Is his viewpoint that free speech is just about babbling on into an empty void? What is the value in protecting that? How does one argue that shadowbanning isn't infringing on someone's speech. And for the record, I think shadowbanning is generally a good thing for online communities, but I also support outright bans and don't go around pretending I'm a free speech absolutist.

Charitably, I guess the idea is that people won't have their accounts banned for previously bannable hate speech, so their other tweets are still handled normally.

I don't think there's any coherent principle, and in practice it really encourages bad actors to find exactly where the line is.

Twitter currently suggests tweets from people you don’t follow. I believe that would be part of the “amplification” or “reach” he’s referring to.

That’s how tweets spread and get massive faster/more than typical virality.

Now imagine turning that off. You can still say what you want, and your followers will see it, but it won’t get blasted out to that whole world.

He’s not making it so many people can’t read a tweet, or making it so certain tweets can’t become popular, he’s making it so twitter won’t promote said tweet.

It can be regarded a positive thing insofar that it constitutes a limit on twitters ability to censor.

In a world of bots and sock-puppets, it feels pretty far from a town square example already. If you acknowledge that you won't ever be able to stay ahead of bot and sock-puppet detection enough to remove it from the platform (and no one seems to think that's a winnable contest for the platform)), you're left with letting that drown out the town square, or to deemphasize it's worst impacts and maybe also impact some of your most negative and hateful users too. But maybe this just shows why Elon shouldn't have used the town square analogy before, it doesn't fit well with what actually exists and causes people to believe it should work in ways it can't (without the equivalent of letting someone bring a microphone and loud speakers to drown out the rest of the town square).

> what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them.

So an even more insidious and targetted form of shadow ban.

Twitter is half a content delivery app (getting tweet from you follows) and half a content suggestion app (tweets TW thinks you might like)

In a charitable reading it looks like Elon wants to remove hateful speech from the latter and leave it off the former.

This will allow you to say what you want and to follow who you want. Who ends up in your suggestions has nothing to do with free speech.

LATE EDIT: I thought of another analogy. Imagine that the national postal service of your country add a "papers you might like" service; people in this hypothetical can go to the post office submit their proposals and then the post office sends it around to whoever it thinks might like your mail.

If the postal services decides to ban you from this "papers you might like" service you are still allowed to send as much mail as you want to whoever you want, but you no longer have access to the postal service expertise in spreading your news.

This can obviously be abused but it is also very different from being unable to send any mail at all.

Anyone's ability to broadcast on Twitter is only as far as the system dynamics of Twitter and its users allows them. Retweeting is not some pure expression of speech that needs to be "free", it is limited already shaped and limited by all kinds of incentives and technological particularities (character limit, anyone?).

I think media should function to encourage speech that balances social and individual utility. That is, speech that has important protection from powerful actors like the government and CEOs, but also that incentivizes true and useful information, in all the nuance that is necessary to actually understand the world. (Obviously entertainment is useful as well.)

But engaging lies are not a form of speech I value, and equating the current operation, or slightly-more-permissive version of it, of an overwhelmingly constructed forum (i.e. Twitter and it's retweet system) with "free" speech doesn't make much sense.

> Anyone's ability to broadcast on Twitter is only as far as the system dynamics of Twitter and its users allows them. Retweeting is not some pure expression of speech that needs to be "free", it is limited already shaped and limited by all kinds of incentives and technological particularities (character limit, anyone?).

There is no pure expression of speech in this sense. All speech is shaped and limited by incentives and technological particularities.

> what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them

No, he has said that he wants people to be able to set their own filters. So no or few top-down filter policies, but more bottom-up filter policies.

The biggest thing he can actually do is taking the company private. Until then it's just an ad platform with a goal of delivering shareholder value. Any users that decrease the value of the platform get silenced because they cost money. Yishan Wong made the excellent point that spam is free speech and is rarely hate speech or threats, it's just really annoying. And nobody bats an eye at banning spam.

I was under impression that he did take it private and it is no longer publicly traded.

Also, how does this change “users cost money” issue? Does not private company need to pay bills? Unless you mean that he’s now free to bail company out using his income from elsewhere…