Twitter is censoring journalist critical of Tesla | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is censoring journalist critical of Tesla

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34 pointsmartingoodson17 comments

2022 really was the year of Elon Musk turning into Trump in real time.

I guess this is what happens when you have a huge following. You become intoxicated and think you can do no wrong because legions of fans blindly follow you.

Not to mention your net worth kept increasing from 2020 - 2022.

I think one reason Elon supports crypto is because he gets a high from having the singular power to pump a coin to the moon and then getting the love and adoration from holders. The more coins (Doge, Shiba Inu, BTC) he pump, the more love he gets online. It's this adoration that he seems to be addicted to. It's similar to a social media influencer's number of likes and follows or a Stackoverflow member's upvoted answers.

Though it seems like Elon has taken a step back in 2023. Probably more to do with falling TSLA stock price more than anything.

I don't think he realistically have any huge impact on BTC, on the rest maybe, but BTC is too big and independent that he has no real impact on how it is valued. At least that is my impression.

Musk was always this way. Comparing him to Trump is unfair. Whether it's skill, intelligence, or luck, Trump is lightyears beyond Musk in building a cult of personality and exploiting it through grift. The only "smart" thing Musk ever did was to figure out he could be legally declared the founder of 2 companies retroactively.

Did anyone even bother to check? He’s the first listing when running a search.

The SV bro’s went from “he is a savior!” to “I hate him! Let’s create a cancel mob”

Yes, I checked. His full name, spelled correctly, does not show up in the autocomplete nor in the search results page.

The first search result is someone with 5 followers. The real user has 500k followers.

It's possible that the silent search censoring hasn't propagated to all their servers worldwide yet or they quickly reversed the ban after being caught and the reverse hasn't fully propagated.

Edit:

Here's desktop for me: https://imgur.com/a/XOb6roj

iOS app for me: https://imgur.com/a/l9CC9HH

Also just checked.

Spelled his name correctly, his account was the first result with 496.6k followers.

Literally the first hit for me on iPhone

https://files.catbox.moe/3q7otr.jpeg

Here's desktop for me: https://imgur.com/a/XOb6roj

iOS app for me: https://imgur.com/a/l9CC9HH

Again, it could a delay in worldwide propagation of the censorship or de-censorship. It could also just be region specific censorship.

Yes I checked. He doesn't appear. Someone with 15 followers appears instead. And Elon Musk. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eowMi0P84lXom3jAxzJwaDC7gfM...

Do you have a screenshot of your results?

Just as before the Musk purchase, most of these reports of shadow banning don't turn out to be true.

- hisubway. online/shadowban don’t seem to work for @kenklippenstein atm.

- shadowban. elrincondelantropologo. com reports: No search ban, No suggestion ban, No ghost ban, No reply deboosting detected.

And it remains inconclusive as always…

This guy is the first search result when searching for his name. What is all the fuss about?

The 'fuss' is probably what caused Twitter to change their policy on this. The 'fuss' is why people like you can now search the uncensored results, two days after the censorship was first reported.

The ban has been lifted. It was well documented while in effect.

Translating from Muskese to English: "free speech" = "speech that Elon Musk likes".

Those who are upset about this: Is it because of the censoring, or is it because it was done for the wrong reason? If the journalist in question is doubtful about vaccine safety, does that make it OK to remove him again?

I think the issue here is an obvious conflict of interest and general hypocrisy. It also is an pretty good counterexample to the whole idea of freedom of speech absolutism. Someone is always going to decide what speech is preferable and that person is always going to be subject to their own biases.

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