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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

811–820 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#811
post #708

I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world. There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict wit…

Do you know Elon Musk? I feel like this is the opposite take I would expect.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#812
Wait a minute. I read the first 20 or so comments and the following strikes me. Most comments are about -- Musk could try toake Twitter better but will probably fail... This is not the first thing that came to mind for me. How 'bout: a very rich man is capable of doing what a very powerful man is/was not capable of. Being able to influence in a major way the policies of the most influential social network in the world. A US president was kicked of the very same platform.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#813
post #758
post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

I've tried Twitter recently for the first time to get more recent information about the Ukraine war. Maybe long-term twitter users see it differently because they've fine-tuned it and got used to it, but to me Twitter looks like a horrible and awful medium. I just can't see any purpose for it. People on Twitter post opinions and are subsequently mocked and insulted by other people who also value their opinions above…

Perhaps in an ideal sense, it’s like a group chat of people that you find interesting, sharing their thoughts and ideas. It’s also useful as a mechanism for distributing your own work and ideas.

I agree with you in that, it sucks for content consumption, outside of keeping up with things in a shallow way.

I don’t know if you could rise to higher levels of understanding by continually using twitter, in the way you could by reading a lot of books.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#814
post #41

He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive…

>the elusive path of maintaining free speech What's so elusive about it? Let people say what they want and give users a robust word and account filtering system. If you think your ideas and values won't stand up to public scrutiny, then perhaps you should do some self-reflection. If it's just a matter of your own comfort, use the block/mute/blacklist controls.

The full quote is “ elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side".”

The path is balancing all that. It’s not just about people being “uncomfortable”, there is very real & hurtful abuse on social media, some of which breaks laws that Twitter will also need to respect. Just adding more filters does nothing to build the open public square that Musk seems to want to curate. More filters & blocks just creates smaller echo chambers.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#815
post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

> Return to a reverse chronological time They've had this for years. Press the "swish" (stars) button top right.

This applies to your feed but not to replies in a thread.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#816
post #708

I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world. There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict wit…

It's _really_ easy to disempower extremists.

(a) Linear timeline.

(b) Stop injecting stuff into people's timelines.

(c) Hide like and retweet counts from anyone but the person who made the tweet.

(d) Add a cooldown period on tweets: they're not visible for this period, and they can still be edited during it. Editing a tweet resets the cooldown period.

The problem with all this is that it drives down "engagement".

Addendum:

(e) Make it possible to prevent retweets (including quote retweets) from certain accounts you follow from showing up on your timeline. There are certain people you might like who retweet effluent, and you don't want that effluent going straight into your eyeballs.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#819
post #41

He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive…

Trolls, disinformation spreaders, and "free reach absolutists" are going to be thrilled with the megaphone Musk will provide them to drown out their enemies. Welcome to Voat 2.0.

I think many people have made assumptions about what Musk means when he talks about free speech. I don’t think (and greatly hope) it’s going to be an uncensored free for all, which typically leads to a toxic nightmare. Fingers crossed!

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#820

You can check if twitter is silently oppressing your account here: https://taishin-miyamoto.com/ShadowBan/ Mine currently has "reply deboosting" applied. Twitter didn't notify me of this either. I had to actively hunt it down. And there's nothing I can do to change it. Such a shady company so far.

My HN account is rate limited by @dang, if I post more than an unspecified amount of comments in an unspecified time frame I get a message telling me to go away.
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