Twitter agrees to Elon Musk buyout, a reminder we're on Mastodon

Quoting: WMan22I'm not asking for the support or condemnation of any ideology. I can do that elsewhere whenever I want to. I'm asking for a place that gives me a break, for the sake of the projects I enjoy, and my mental health.

This is the main reason I don't participate in social media often, save in anonymous conversations or with people who I actually know offline. It's gotten to the point that we're gaming for "points" instead of wanting real conversations, looking for "gotchas" and reasons to NOT listen, instead of reasons to engage and really further our ideas through other people, even if we find them or their ideas repugnant.

Social media are mainly platforms for propaganda, of any stripe, and it didn't used to be so. The personal should not have become political, because then there is no escape, no fun, no goodwill, no jokes, no honest mistakes, no forgiveness, no meeting of minds as one human to another, both of whom are and always will be fallible; and it's incredibly sad.

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Kithop...let's be honest, here: the 'free speech' being championed, even if it doesn't purport to be, on the surface, invariably becomes a vehicle for hate of anyone 'other'.

Let's be honest, here: a lot of what is decried as "hate speech" is simply whatever opinion a liberal happens to disagree with. It's like the whole "microaggression" and "white privilege" nonsense where you can be condemned as guilty no matter what you do or say.

What fantasy land do you live in? Please find me any conservative speech on the internet covering LGBTQIA+ issues with a comments section where it isn't just a bunch of downright hateful slurs and mean spirited remarks. I bet you can find this speech on all the "liberal" platforms like youtube, twitter, reddit, etc but I doubt you'll find any with civil discourse. Like are you using an alternate internet where hate speech doesn't exist? Or are you so obtuse as to not find these types of slurs and malicious remarks as not being hate speech?

Quoting: TheodisOr are you so obtuse as to not find these types of slurs and malicious remarks as not being hate speech?

There's a very wide umbrella for that. You don't have to engage with assholes, block them. Part of the problem is whoever that is at the top will decide what is acceptable or not, but there's no way of making everyone happy. Individual responsibility is preferable, because any platform that prefers a top-down method of policy enforcement will always come down on things harder, and likely have more false positives.

If you chase away the "bad speech", it's probably going somewhere else, where you can't see it, but that doesn't get called out on by others and perhaps worsening in intensity. It makes a person dig in their heels on their beliefs, potentially radicalizing them at the worst, when they're banned. If anything, those are the factors that determine overall social acceptability of public speech, losing the ability to see or even call out what you find offensive means this method of in-person social regulation of speech has disappeared, ergo the echo chambers.

In order to prevent this, it's necessary to see things we don't like, even briefly before we block that person. We should know they exist so we can avoid those people if we individually choose.


Last edited by namiko on 26 April 2022 at 4:58 pm UTC

As to what Elon Musk himself might or might not do with Twitter . . . well, I think the open sourcing of the algorithms is a good thing on a number of levels. If nothing else, it will allow for some interesting analysis of just what those algorithms really do, what they promote, what they suppress.

And, I think if he genuinely clamps down on bots that will have a bigger impact than practically anything else he might do. People underestimate bots--we know intellectually that half of Twitter is bots and that that probably skews heavily to the more political/culture-war-ish side of things, but I don't think people really dig what that means to how the platform behaves. If he really scraps 'em that could massively change Twitter, both in its sort of "intensity level" and in terms of what floats to the surface--without bots some of the most inflammatory stuff would get far, far less promotion. It might largely return to being the vapid but relatively harmless entertainment we used to know and despise.

Whatever he might mean to do vis-a-vis "freedom of speech", and however politically slanted his intentions might be in trying to do it, I don't think the results are likely to be as important as the bots thing, if he really does it. No matter what country, there are always limits to free speech--would Twitter under Musk be planning to explicitly allow libel? Presumably not.

I don't actually pretend to fully understand Musk's politics anyway. He likes saying outrageous things (partly I think for the free publicity), he's got some alt-right-ish ideas about Covid, he's strongly anti-union, and he favours coups in countries that want to try to control their own resources if he wants those resources cheap for batteries. But lots of Democrats are into those last two things. And on the other hand, he's obviously a strong believer in stopping climate change and ending fossil fuel use, which is a seriously not-Republican position. I wouldn't be surprised if he's too into ad-hoc techno-utopian solutions to one problem at a time, to adhere to any overall political program. So the implications of his actual political slant on Twitter may be pretty limited and random, really. Except there'll probably be a pro-free-market slant, but what else is new? At least maybe we'll be able to see the algorithms do it.

Quoting: einherjarThe thing I miss is, that people listen to each other and then discuss things. But today it mostly is like identifiying the other as right or left.

While I share your sentiment, and hope for the future, for the sake of the discussion let's be clear that such an enlightened time have never actually existed.

Quoting: namikoIn order to prevent this, it's necessary to see things we don't like, even briefly before we block that person. We should know they exist so we can avoid those people if we individually choose.

Individual responsibility is great when you're being targeted by a handful of assholes, not so great when you're up against a massive hate campaign trying to stigmatize your very existence. Right now in the US there is a massive number of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills going through the system and being passed which is having real world consequences that can't just be solved by blocking people, and it's being supported due to the massive amount of misinformation being pushed. Just look at all the accusations of people being groomers being slung for wanting to let children know it's ok to be gay and that it's a normal thing.

Quoting: Theodis

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Kithop...let's be honest, here: the 'free speech' being championed, even if it doesn't purport to be, on the surface, invariably becomes a vehicle for hate of anyone 'other'.

Let's be honest, here: a lot of what is decried as "hate speech" is simply whatever opinion a liberal happens to disagree with. It's like the whole "microaggression" and "white privilege" nonsense where you can be condemned as guilty no matter what you do or say.

What fantasy land do you live in? Please find me any conservative speech on the internet covering LGBTQIA+ issues with a comments section where it isn't just a bunch of downright hateful slurs and mean spirited remarks. I bet you can find this speech on all the "liberal" platforms like youtube, twitter, reddit, etc but I doubt you'll find any with civil discourse. Like are you using an alternate internet where hate speech doesn't exist? Or are you so obtuse as to not find these types of slurs and malicious remarks as not being hate speech?

Eh, it goes both ways. I once made a perfectly polite and respectful remark stating my opposition to a certain issue. In response, I was called every filthy name you can think of by a number of posters. Guess who got banned for "hate speech". Go on, guess.

Quoting: Mountain ManEh, it goes both ways. I once made a perfectly polite and respectful remark stating my opposition to a certain issue. In response, I was called every filthy name you can think of by a number of posters. Guess who got banned for "hate speech". Go on, guess.

Attacking people for something they have no control over vs being attacked over holding a view. One of these is hate speech and the other is not.

Quoting: Theodis

Quoting: Mountain ManEh, it goes both ways. I once made a perfectly polite and respectful remark stating my opposition to a certain issue. In response, I was called every filthy name you can think of by a number of posters. Guess who got banned for "hate speech". Go on, guess.

Attacking people for something they have no control over vs being attacked over holding a view. One of these is hate speech and the other is not.

That's a very common rationalization.

Quoting: TheodisAttacking people for something they have no control over vs being attacked over holding a view. One of these is hate speech and the other is not.

Nobody can stop you from being gay, lesbian, bi, trans, whatever else. Nobody can stop you from expressing yourself in any way you please.

But nobody is obliged to support what you do in this life. I expect fully to encounter people who find my way of life (which is non-traditional by the vast majority, to be purposely opaque) repugnant, disgusting and corrupting to children. I don't associate with those people who believe that about me, some of them family, and online people don't matter, they aren't my family, they aren't my friends, so what they say doesn't matter at all.

If you can't unplug from the virtual square, you're missing out on what life really means. I'd rather a million online strangers hate me so long as my family and friends do not, because they can't stop me from being who I am outside of the screen.

Get into politics yourself if the concern is troubling new laws. Start at the bottom if you want to affect change in a meaningful way that isn't limited to scoring internet points. Try school boards and trustee positions, then it can grow from there. Then you'd be actively promoting and protecting your own beliefs instead of insisting some strangers support you, which doesn't do very much.