Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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> Considering the parent comment based itself on identity politics and vapid Musk hating

It is objectively measurable that Musk himself has been responsible for a lot of high-profile alt-right accounts (most notably Kanye West [1]) getting unbanned or that he acted as some sort of "personal helpdesk" for the far right [2], and that the spam bot problem has exploded during his reign, in political [3], fake porn [4], crypto scams [5] and dropshipping scams [6].

Instead of just claiming that I were inviting sneer replies, you could have done the research in well under a minute.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/30/elon-musk-rein...

[2] https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/who-elon-musk-likes-to-talk-to...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter...

[4] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/twitters-bot-...

[5] https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bot-problem-metamask-support-cry...

[6] https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ak9/twitters-verified-sca...

You keep using the terms "alt-right" and "far right" and all that tells me is that you're far left and more interested in playing identity politics than having a worthwhile conversation. It's akin to vapidly calling someone a nazi and killing off even the potential for a conversation.

As for the bots and scams, those have been a problem since long before Musk took the reins. I hope you have just as much hate against Dorsey and whoever the last Twitter CEO was as you do against Musk, to at least be fair.

> You keep using the terms "alt-right" and "far right" and all that tells me is that you're far left and more interested in playing identity politics than having a worthwhile conversation.

Simple: only the far-right has so far staged a coup attempt in the US, one that by many credible estimates only due to courage [1] and sheer luck didn't end in a hostage crisis or even more deaths than it did.

While you are correct that I do identify on the far-left side of politics (which a simple look on my profile would have shown you), my primary interest is not turning Germany or the US into a Communist utopia - it is, at this point, purely to sound the foghorn about the insane danger the far right poses. The worst that the far-left is doing these days, in contrast, is holding (admittely vile) pro-Hamas marches - and while I do detest these, they are not comparable at all to the sizable list of domestic terrorism acts by the far right.

> As for the bots and scams, those have been a problem since long before Musk took the reins. I hope you have just as much hate against Dorsey and whoever the last Twitter CEO was as you do against Musk, to at least be fair.

I can agree on the bots and scams being a problem before Musk - the problem is that the frequency of this crap measurably increased as legitimate advertisers left Twitter in droves and the value of ads tanked so hard that it had gotten a no-brainer for any willing scammer to buy them. Additionally, and here is where Musk personally comes into play, is ruining the "blue checkmark" by turning it not just from "someone at Twitter HQ actually verified this person is legitimate" to "the person had a credit card with 8$ on it" but prioritizing these accounts in replies.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/capitol-...

IMHO "hating" angle kinda looks sus. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, a cheap agitation.

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