Blue checks aren't protecting sex workers from X's porn crackdown | Hacker News Reader

Blue checks aren't protecting sex workers from X's porn crackdown

techcrunch.com

20 pointsrntn10 comments

Can confirm. My next door neighbor is a sex worker (life in LA), and she said all of a sudden everyone’s engagement collapsed on Wednesday. She paid for the annual blue check, and is very pissed. I feel terrible, because I had told her that Twitter would need the money from them, and that she was probably safe there. They are very accustomed to being kicked off platforms and moving elsewhere, but this one was a real rug pull, at least in her view. I was wondering when the media would pick up this story.

What a joke. Is he trying to pull off a Tumblr and drive off the last users he still has?

I thought X was all about freedom of speech...

"Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach".

You can write whatever you want on X; they just won't share with anyone if they don't like it.

Which I think is a reasonably clever way to market yourself out of your ill-advised everything-goes freedom-of-speech promises of yore. It's exactly the same in practice as restricting speech, but you can pretend to the public that you aren't. [Musk makes V-for-victory signs.]

Twitter does promise reach for people who pay them.

>”Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Posts that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Premium subscribers.”

A lot of the issues these people mentioned is that they paid for this reach and previously received it. This decision is another in a long series of secret algorithm changes that are effectively unannounced policy changes.

Also the “freedom of speech” thing is not really true either. Elon makes grand promises about not banning any legal content, but then does things like institutes very personal censorship rules, like deciding “cis” is a slur and saying it is a bannable offense. I’ve known many people who’ve been banned for using the word in an otherwise mild-mannered post.

Freedom of reach for Musk’s pet causes and freedom of the boot for everyone else.

I don't disagree with what you said, but if your reach is zero, you'll still get zero no matter how much of a priority factor you multiply it by. i.e Musk has a loophole he can drive a truck through.

Meanwhile literally 2/3 of accounts liking my shitty comments are porn bots as of the last few months. Doesn’t feel like much of a crackdown.

My favourite is a bot that’s just been paraphrasing every tweet it responds to, like a little brother mocking you. But then every so often it responds with, “as a language model, I am not…”

Musk is speed running the "...and there was no one left to speak for me" process.

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