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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

Am I being paranoid in thinking that Musk’s exposure in China & disdain for the LGBTQ community could lead him to lower the reach of tweets related to this issue?

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Plausible.

However, I would say that a related, more general, and more disturbing hypothesis (in the "big picture") is more plausible:

Musk is all-in with China, Saudi Arabia, etc. For various reasons - access to markets, financing, etc. Some of those who left Twitter shortly after the bad deal he made was force-consummated, suggested that it might be far less safe for, say, Saudi dissidents to use the platform than it was prior to his takeover (and, there were "incidents" and indications of incidents before he took over, already).

I'd suggest that he has some general directive(s) in place for what to do about certain kinds of potentially sensitive tweets. His claims about "free speech absolutism" are interesting, in the use of the word absolute (think "L'État, c'est moi") and subsequent statements about "following the law" and the resultant behavior.

And, of course, his little trolincel fans are the perfect little army of toadies for these kinds of totalitarian governments... just waiting to denounce any "enemies of the people" (i.e., flag tweets so they may be passed on to House of Saud, CPC [CCP], etc.).

Edit: It's easy to see that this makes all of the craziness we've witnessed with Twitter, since the takeover, look less crazy. With this as a backdrop. That is: the bad deal is already done, but, some of the rationale and goals can still be salvaged.

So, come in, get rid of anyone with a conscience, more experienced, more independent. Have NDAs in place (par for the course already, at "MuskInc", good cover), and a set of foreign indentured servants. The environment is perfectly transformed to extract THIS kind of value from the whole clusterfck. Plus, Elon gets to build his mythos further in multiple ways, including fostering further disgust in "his enemies". And, if / when it all crashes down, well, at least we disrupted all those communities, independent journalist-types, etc.

Gotta say, this would sound like a conspiracy theory if there were different players involved. That being said, it sounds plausible.

Her account is fine. She has to stop tweeting. You guys need to get a grip. As if the Chinese government needs Musks help.

I was thinking tweets about her or CCP oppression in general, not necessarily from her. There is plenty of proof out there showing that Musk has his fingers on the scales. Citations can be provided upon request.

Just search for "Naomi Wu" on Twitter. There's plenty of people Tweeting about how she was silenced. You can find all sorts of China critical tweets. Uyghurs, Peng Shui. Take your pick.

Since I don't have an account, I am no longer allowed to search.

In any case, this does not at all indicate if the reach of those tweets was restricted or not.

Not paranoid, but other non-exclusive factors are also in play and much more certain; e.g. “American influencers and press won’t talk about her plight because she’s an intelligent, non-white woman with large breasts and without shame about her body”.

I can't say, but I have been following Wu for a year or more and we interacted maybe once a month. Looking back through the timeline the last tweet of hers that I remember seeing was from late June. I rarely follow new people but don't easily notice when someone falls out of my feed, and Wu would tweet only once or twice a week normally.

No. At this point Twitter (I refuse to call it "X" and I will die on this hill) is little more than Elon's personal agitprop and trolling platform, and he would absolutely be petty enough to pull something like that.

Xitter works, since you can pronounce the X as "sh"

Personally I’m a fan of ‘the platform/network/website formerly known as Twitter’.

ExTwitter

i keep getting that urge to click the X to close the window.

I have to stop myself from thumbing or clicking the X. My brain sees it as something that got past the ad filter and needs closing. A hilarious experience in self-observation loops.

> Musk’s ... disdain for the LGBTQ community

I'm not a Musk fan, but what are you referring to?

Musk is a transphobe.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-...

They started doing that day one.

This was explicitly one of the things people were worried about when he bought Twitter. If you didn't notice this your personal filter bubble is giving you ideological blind spots.

This assumes filter bubble theory is true, which it isn't, because being exposed to things outside your bubble mainly makes you resent them even more because they're annoying.

Twitter now bravely, aggressively exposes me to both left-wing and right-wing politics [1]

[1] for a country I don't live in

Yes when I could still view tweets without a login I got some shit about some villian called Dark Brandon and a deranged woman using steroids called Margory not from Game Of Thrones.

WTF.

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