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Comment by jeffhuys | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not going to return to a website that doesn't ban people unable to have a civilized conversation

That's your choice! Perfectly fine. For me, I don't want to close my eyes for what the world is actually thinking, even when they're in rage-mode. I think that makes your own thinking very narrow.

Also, it's a conscious choice they made - they're the only platform I know of that allows you saying anything with no penalty except for maybe a algorithmic one. That doesn't mean it sucks, or is a bad platform, or the transition failed.

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Twitter won't open my eyes to the "world is actually thinking". It is a rather minor social media in the big picture:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...

There are certainly much better ways to learn what the world is thinking than a website without effective moderation. The problem was never "censorship" or "people are not allowed to say everything". The problem is the quantity of garbage the information supersewer generates and finding what is true and relevant.

It’s interesting to me that we can have such different views of the same platform.

“Garbage”. “Supersewer”. I simply don’t see what you mean. Of course there IS garbage, but you’d actively have to seek it out. You’d have to scroll down all the replies to get to the shit. If you want to see that, it’s there, but if it doesn’t have value, it stays there. Up top are the sensible replies and discussion threads.

We can keep talking, but if you don’t want to see it, you’ll never see it.

Every time I open a Twitter link, most of the comments will be garbage.

> Of course there IS garbage, but you’d actively have to seek it out

I still instinctively open Twitter up most days. I scroll for a bit, see a couple of interesting tweets, but the majority is either garbage spam for views, overtly general racist tweets, purposeful right-wing distortion of facts to incite hate.

You go into any comments of a tweet that has gained a traction - the first comment will usually be "@grok is this true?", OF replies boosted by the original post (because the thread was garbage spam and they're getting paid), or obvious ChatGPT responses.

It feels really disheartening, especially having grown my career from the stuff i've seen and connections i've made on Twitter. Shell of its former self.

Except for criticizing musk in the papers, as he's banned journalists, people "doxing" him by publishing his plane, etc

There's a million things you cant say, its now you are happy that the right wing nutjobs get to have their peace in public - that's the only part of the conversation that's "now allowed"

I’ve already addressed the first part of your comment in another comment.

I don’t think there’s a million things you can’t say. I see tons of posts criticizing Elon. But I also see tons of people defending him in replies. This is what we should want. Discussion. Open talking. And that includes “right wing nutjobs”.

If the vision you’re seemingly okay with censoring is so damaging that you can’t fight it with words, is the opposing vision strong enough?

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