@Madbum censorship is the way all of authoritarians. 'Disinformation' is just the latest rhetorical trick to make it look like the censors are the 'good guys'. Glad to see you and others are not fooled. Free speech is a central American value, always has been, always will be.
Aren’t you tired of seeing people school you in basic civics and constitutional law? Free speech is a guarantee the government can’t put you in jail for the things you say, and even that has limits. There is no constitutional guarantee that any platform has to air, promote, broadcast, or amplify what you say without exception.
Feel free to go to your local town square and say whatever the fuck you want to. No one is going to stop you, unless of course you cross a line and say something about someone’s momma... Then you’re apt to get smacked for it.
Societal accountability doesn’t exist for anonymous trolls and thats a big reason we’re in this mess. People would never take their “Free speech” twitter screeds and say them to someone’s face.
@Madbum censorship is the way all of authoritarians. 'Disinformation' is just the latest rhetorical trick to make it look like the censors are the 'good guys'. Glad to see you and others are not fooled. Free speech is a central American value, always has been, always will be.
Aren’t you tired of seeing people school you in basic civics and constitutional law? Free speech is a guarantee the government can’t put you in jail for the things you say, and even that has limits. There is no constitutional guarantee that any platform has to air, promote, broadcast, or amplify what you say without exception.
Feel free to go to your local town square and say whatever the fuck you want to. No one is going to stop you, unless of course you cross a line and say something about someone’s momma... Then you’re apt to get smacked for it.
Societal accountability doesn’t exist for anonymous trolls and thats a big reason we’re in this mess. People would never take their “Free speech” twitter screeds and say them to someone’s face.
While it's true that from a strictly legal perspective it only the government is prohibited from infringing on speech, it's also a bit of a disingenuous argument for a couple of reasons.
First, this is a principle deeply ingrained in American culture. One which people expect to be broadly and generally respected not merely technically limited.
Second, it ignores the fact that some of these companies have been operating under the "guidance" or "influence" or "recommendations" of the US government. In that situation, these companies are defacto agents of the government. This is not something to be casually dismissed or hand-waved away.
Third, this censorship has tended to be quite one-sided—and not limited to the vaguely (conveniently vague mind you) defined "misinformation". And what we see is people falling back to this disingenuous technical legal argument because the people and views being silenced happen to be people and views they don't like or agree with so, you know, it's okay.
Finally, so few people have a time horizon that looks much beyond today. One day, the tides could turn and you might be on the side of "misinformation". History is instructive here. Better to champion free speech (good, bad, true, false, etc.) rather than risk this power to decide what is right/wrong or true/false is put into a different set of hands when it is too late to resist it.
P.S. To add to the disingenuousness of the general "well they are a private company, they can do what they want" argument is the fact that many of the people making this very argument took the exact opposite position when it came to a baker (among others) who refused to decorate a cake (provide a service) for a particular customer because that decoration (provision of the service in that instance) violated the baker's (et al) sincerely held views and beliefs. And, no, the "but that's different" excuse is plainly wrong. If people are honest (and I don't expect that) they'd see the situations are the same.
What’s disingenuous is to bring up Masterpiece Cake v CCRC and not mention the outcome — the Supreme Court sided with the bakery, i.e. the private company. I think it’s gross they discriminated like that, but I always felt it was their right. Just as it’s now the right of people to boycott their business, So anyway, case law is on the side of the private company here.
What’s also disingenuous is to argue historical precedent when none exists. The issue isn’t just speech but massive, algorithm-juiced amplification of speech, and there’s never been a tool like social media before in the history of mankind.
Take the Pelosi kidnapping/possible assassination attempt. The alleged perpetrator has CONFESSED in detail his plans to the police and yet now an entire political wing thinks it’s a hoax and has conspiracy theories galore. Pre-social media maybe you have one guy who thinks up the conspiracy theory, phones his buddies, tells some people at a bar, and after 24 hours there are 100 people who have heard it. Then they publish a newsletter, it’s mailed out, and after a week 3,000 have heard it. They have free speech to do so and could still do that today.
But this week within hours a man with 114 million followers responded with that theory to a former US Senator and Presidential candidate and shit hit the fan… there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. They don’t care he confessed or what the actual facts are. Space Man said it might’ve happened and that’s good enough for them.
I genuinely dont know what Twitter should’ve done about that, content moderation is impossibly hard as Elon is finding out, but the example of amplification vs speech still stands.
Lastly - clearly censorship is not one sided as governments of all political wings have done it. And right now it looks like Elon — one single human and not a government — is doing that to his critics according to your definition of censorship. AOC has stopped receiving ALL notifications and messages in Twitter. Other accounts (like his ex Amber Heard’s) are mysteriously vanishing and the head marketer for Unilever has been blocked by Elon for asking questions publicly — but the day before he asked them on a call at the invitation of Elon himself.
I also follow a hilarious trans comedian on Twitter who got permabanned 10 minutes after posting a poll asking “Should @elonmusk ban me for calling him a free speech fag?” Their account is now gone for good and they’re starting over on a backup, minus nearly a million followers. So yeah, I guess that’s Elon’s right, but what a disengous argument HE’S been making…. Pure hypocrisy really. Guess only some comedy is legal on Twitter now.
A great move by Elon. Fire the woke. They've ruined the Internet.
And now the word is they’re calling some fired employees in critical engineering positions and asking them to come back…
Honest question - do you really think Jack Dorsey of all people only hired a bunch of wokester engineers? My experience in STEM is that its pretty diverse and all of my libertarian crypto buddies LOVE Jack….
I was reading on the BBC this morning that many of the employees were notified they were getting laid off, by their company computers having been remotely wiped.
Just a piss poor way to handle staff, but then Musk is known for this. I’m sure the remaining staff are feeling REALLY secure. I would not be surprised if a lot of them jump ship as soon as a recruiter calls, and they will be calling. So all of the people who know how to keep Twitter systems working will be gone.
Yeah this is going to end well. /s
It’s ok. Elon is brilliant. He’s got his own engineers analyzing the code based now. They’ll likely rewrite in a different programming language and make sure no little mousetraps were left behind while making things modern and efficient. Twitter was archaic and it’s amazing how many people were employed just to do so little on a platform that did so little.
The purging of current staff is no different than when a new and usually well-heeled home buyer purchases a property that contains an existing house that many of us consider perfectly acceptable and immediately proceeds to tear the whole house down to the ground. The new owner then rebuilds a new and oftentimes much more elaborate house on the same property. Frankly, I see this scenario play out quite often, even in rural and semi-rural areas.
The rationale of course is that the new property owner values something about the property beyond the value of the original house that was sitting on the property. It can also be the case that trying to renovate the old house wasn't seen as a viable option for many reasons. The basic architecture and structure may never have fit the new owner's requirements regardless of the amount of renovation performed. Maybe the foundation was decrepit. We don't know, but the new owner knows and is really not obligated to explain their motivations or actions to any of us. It's their property and they can do with it as they please, as long as they don't violate any building codes.
The same thing must be true for Musk and Twitter. He's stripping it down to the studs. What we don't know is why and he's not going to tell us unless he wants to. Of course it sucks for all those whom he has deemed to be expendable and worthy of tossing in the roll-off dumpsters he brought in as soon as he put down the sink. At least those who've been shown to the dumpster are getting a few months of salary to bridge them over to their next career endeavor. I doubt that any prospective employers will view the cast-offs as being personally responsible for being discarded. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time but still have their skills and experience to get them into their next gig. I wish them all the best.
So ... what is Musk going to build on top of the stripped down and skeletal remains of the company that he just spent $47 billion dollars acquiring?
He bought the platform and brand. The code base sucks. Could use a rewrite by the Tesla and spacex guys. Most of the staff weren’t doing much other than pretending to be political overlords. Now they can go cosplay to their hearts content and post hate on the internet. just won’t get paid for it.
Rewriting Twitter is s good idea as is getting staff to a reasonable level as well as populating positions with hard working talented people who don’t have an axe to grind.
It’s just good leadership. Taking the bull by the horns and getting ithings done.
Oops. Twitter is already trying to rehire workers Elon Musk fired days ago, sources say
Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.
Don’t agree with Elon on everything but This is good.
my Twitter account was banned by this so called ethics team for posting article suggesting natural immunity from Covid infection maybe more powerful than these 500 shots and boosters ….
article was done by a Stanford doctor who happens to disagree with the current government! And they ban me?
have not gone back to Twitter since and now it does seem like people who had natural immunity from Covid are not getting as many second infections as people who are boosting every time …
I digress..
Well, that’s the thing about science and scientific peer review. One doctor’s opinion is not enough unless his peers review his work and agree. And Twitter was right in banning you for spreading disinformation about the virus. And now you are continuing to spread more disinformation about so-called natural immunity. You can cite as many unscientific studies and anecdotal reports as you want but it doesn’t change the science. All it does is place the people who listen to it at more risk.
You know nothing about science or medicine do you? Stunning.
I’m guessing you believe everything Mr. Science says without question.
Comments
Societal accountability doesn’t exist for anonymous trolls and thats a big reason we’re in this mess. People would never take their “Free speech” twitter screeds and say them to someone’s face.
What’s also disingenuous is to argue historical precedent when none exists. The issue isn’t just speech but massive, algorithm-juiced amplification of speech, and there’s never been a tool like social media before in the history of mankind.
But this week within hours a man with 114 million followers responded with that theory to a former US Senator and Presidential candidate and shit hit the fan… there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. They don’t care he confessed or what the actual facts are. Space Man said it might’ve happened and that’s good enough for them.
I genuinely dont know what Twitter should’ve done about that, content moderation is impossibly hard as Elon is finding out, but the example of amplification vs speech still stands.
Lastly - clearly censorship is not one sided as governments of all political wings have done it. And right now it looks like Elon — one single human and not a government — is doing that to his critics according to your definition of censorship. AOC has stopped receiving ALL notifications and messages in Twitter. Other accounts (like his ex Amber Heard’s) are mysteriously vanishing and the head marketer for Unilever has been blocked by Elon for asking questions publicly — but the day before he asked them on a call at the invitation of Elon himself.
I also follow a hilarious trans comedian on Twitter who got permabanned 10 minutes after posting a poll asking “Should @elonmusk ban me for calling him a free speech fag?” Their account is now gone for good and they’re starting over on a backup, minus nearly a million followers. So yeah, I guess that’s Elon’s right, but what a disengous argument HE’S been making…. Pure hypocrisy really. Guess only some comedy is legal on Twitter now.
https://fortune.com/2022/11/06/twitter-trying-to-rehire-workers-elon-musk-fired-days-ago-sources-say/
Oops. Twitter is already trying to rehire workers Elon Musk fired days ago, sources say
I’m guessing you believe everything Mr. Science says without question.