I can't imagine working for Twitter, in a position to fix things like this, and having to listen to Musk tell me to 'stay the course'. I know that everyone has a price, so their salary must be insanely good.

I can't be certain but I'm pretty sure Musk isn't personally going through each report to vet them

Depends on your system/browser font?

It's not really clear at all to me, since, eg some people here are talking about getting several bot account follows daily, while for me it is the opposite, where I used to get a lot more bot follows than I have gotten over the past year or so (down from 4-5 per week to less than 1 per month).

On the other hand, I do see a lot more bots in replies (haven't had any reply to me yet though).

Overall my opinion has been slightly positive, my usage of the site is up and I'm hearing far less of people I follow (or those they follow) who have been unreasonably suspended or forced to delete tweets. It feels a lot "wilder" than before, but that's kind of what I enjoy anyway.

But I also don't really engage with political Twitter, I only use it to keep up on space related reporting and weeb stuff. The worst part has just been a lot more engagement farming through dumb statements from content creators who are circling the drain.

Please share some examples, I never see crypto scams anymore and pre-acquisition you could go in the replies of any popular account and it would be nothing but that. I'm guessing it's still there but I don't see it because I don't scroll for hours on end and verified posts being boosted at the top suppresses the visibility of any bots. Either way considering how bad the bot problem was before the change in ownership I feel like people have a very selective memory about this problem. I did get a handful of catfishing bot accounts following me a few months ago, but that's about the extent of what I've seen as far as spam goes recently and feeds are much cleaner than they were a couple years back. If you're comparing to how it used to be several years ago then it's a different story.

> It's definitely objectively true that boosting paid-for comments above organically high-engagement comments means your signal:noise ratio is way, way worse.

I'd like to see an objective proof for this alleged objective truth.

The bigger problem that I see constantly nowadays is cherry-picked information and people outright lying about a picture or video that they're sharing, but thankfully the community notes help a lot with that.

Go ahead and flag this comment for not being prefixed with "Grr I hate Elon Musk!"

I don't care about Musk one way or the other and I don't see any evidence to support your claim. The level of bot activity is no higher than before in terms of comments on tweets by accounts that I follow. But why bother reading comments anyway? That has always been mostly a waste of time.

The "It's better now" comments are always of the same form, and never any examples of some great discussion. That's lazy, even for a bot.

> to whom and why

To the Nazis that were kicked off or fled when Twitter had decent moderation to let them know Nazi conversations are flowing like wine and they're welcome back.

Rephrasing for people who will react negatively to that. You're making an important point but "dog whistle" assumes some things:

Those are people speaking abstractly about how much more free their speech is*.

I've never heard that common phrasing used, in any setting, to refer to a change in Twitter user makeup, or it becoming a kinder place. Whether I'm in the company of team left or team right, and coding as same team or opposite team.

* yr humble author refuses comment and does not endorse this viewpoint, or that anything changed on this front

To whome and why?

As opposed to the “twitter was so wonderful before Musk and now it’s a wasteland”?

Please. It’s always been a wasteland.

This seems vibes based. Twitter censored in the past and continues to censor. If you were in the out group and now are in the in group you’re happy even tho you were unlikely to have been censored

Does it?

Does it account for the 13 new sex bots following me every time I log in, or my DMs full of crypto scams?

Great point, I guess.

Censorship hasn't ended, it is simply impossible not to censor.

There is obviously illegal content (child porn, ...) and copyright infringement, you have to censor it or you will get sued and lose. Related is libel, doxxing, harassement, revenge porn, etc... that may also get you in legal trouble. And there are countries other than the US with different laws, for example many European countries ban some categories of "hate speech", and if you want to do business with them, you need to follow their laws.

And there is spam, if you let all of it pass, it will simply drown everything else.

And at some point, you may want to make money. Usually, you start with advertising, and if you want people to advertise on your platform, so you have to be at least somewhat socially acceptable. You also have to please payment processors, if you bring the wrong kind of people, Visa and the likes won't want to deal with you. On that last part, considering Elon Musk past, he may have workarounds, but the reason Visa has a problem with porn is not just because they are prudes. That's because there is a lot of fraud happening here, and it will happen too on a socially unacceptable network.

And yes, even 4chan is censored.

I somehow doubt that the audience that's going to make Twitter money with subscriptions or advertisers are Nazis, MAGA, Crypto Bros, and OF performers. But you do you.