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Welcome to Hell, Elon

theverge.com

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Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#121

Post by jongjong »

_hcuq wrote: post #99
jongjong wrote: post #83

This article makes no sense; it sounds like leftist propaganda. Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff. So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant…

Advertisers love 4chan type sewers. So do users.

This makes no sense because people on Twitter choose who they follow. If some 'deplorables' want to follow some other deplorables, then let them; I'm sure some companies will still want to advertise to them.

The people who only want to consume government and corporate propaganda will only see content from like-minded people anyway; they will get the safe experience that they want. No problem! Companies can target them and sell them cricket flour, dried maggots, lab-grown meat and COVID booster vaccine number 27... These people won't even realize that the deplorables also use Twitter because they will be in a different filter bubble.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#122

Post by michaelt »

nelsonic wrote: post #11

Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, th…

Haters are always telling me not to jump into a barbed-wire-covered nettle bush in a tar pit - why don't any of them have the vision to help me succeed at it? :)

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#123

Post by futuretim »

Koshkin wrote: post #104
thunderbong wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, the world would be a better place of people who're qualified in a particular subject would opine in their area of expertise. Nowadays, we have every Tom, Dick and Harry commenting on anything and everything, regardless of how informed, educated or even experienced in the area they want to criticize.

> IMHO I would like to hear an expert's opinion on this though.

No post body was provided.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#124

Post by muaytimbo »

mikkergp wrote: post #73
nelsonic wrote: post #11

Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, th…

I think Elon will succeed _and_ I agree with almost everything in this verge article. But Elon has been very inconsistent in what he’s said. It’s impossible for Elon to accomplish his current vision because it’s not internally consistent. You can’t only moderate what is within the law and make Twitter a more friendly place and make it more attractive to advertisers and grow it to a billion users, and make it the defa…

I think there could be a balance here, allow that which is legal but distasteful but don't promote it or advertise beside it. You could probably repurpose some already pre-existing ML models searching for users to ban over takes that are too hot for twitter to mark as un-monatizable. Cleaning house is the way to make this vision of twitter a reality.

Bots I think is both the harder and existential problem.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#125

Post by Ekaros »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #44
nelsonic wrote: post #11

Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, th…

> Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could In a world where people are increasingly living in urban areas, fiber will annihilate satellite internet. Starlink is yet another niche thing which Musk is specialized in pursuing. In fact all of Musck companies can be summarized with "everybody has heard of them in the financial and technology press, but not many people use them"

It never really made sense to me. But then again I live in country that can do mobile infra. 4G and 5G with good availability and affordable or even cheap prices. And we are not even dense.

So I never really got how any other place has any excuses.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#126

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

joshstrange wrote: post #34

Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.

can't wait to see the people advocating against fundamental freedoms to finally get the short end of the "companies are allowed to do whatever they want" stick.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#127

Post by Schroedingersat »

joshstrange wrote: post #109
Spivak wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you want a more direct analogue if you assume that the problem with 4chan is the culture and not the moderation that the absolute worst most vile Mastadon servers are no moderation to the point where major servers had to just completely blacklist them. If you want to lose all faith in humanity peruse the Gab database dump. No moderation is a loosing game because any platform that offers better moderation will…

Yep, I used to be a free speech absolutist when I was younger, back when I thought the world was black and white and that simple ideas could "solve everything". Then I participated in forums/groups that had zero moderation and it was hell. Even then I didn't recognize the issues fully. It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked. I tried to be unbiased as possible but that lead to me silenc…

> It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked.

The key is that each community needs to moderate itself. The second you give one entity centralised or external control over moderation it can be used for terrible things.

I can't think of any solution for the toxic communities other than to cut themoff and let them fester. The youtube/facebook/etc strategy of 'all engagement is good, show them more' is incredibly harmful.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#128

Post by happytoexplain »

memish wrote: post #28
LatteLazy wrote: post #6

It's very very unclear to me why he bought it. He said it was about free speech but Twitter is already about as free as it's possible to be without permitting a whole bunch of content that is NOT protected under the first amendment (CP, calls to violence etc). And if it is about free speech then it cannot be an automated moderation play, because there is nothing to moderate if you're a pure free speech platform. The…

Quoted post unavailable.

"Literally true" is a good standard for individual libel, but a rarely applicable standard for content moderation. The classic example is, if I post crime statistics, part of which shows that black people commit more crime, then: If I am using it to imply that we should hate black people or treat them differently, it would be reasonable to moderate away; and if I am not, e.g. my post is intended only in some legitimate legal/statistics context and is not part of social politics shitposting, then it makes sense not to moderate.

This can of course get very subjective, and that's true of most moderation decisions. Calls-to-violence is another good example. How explicit is it? How actionable? How serious/non-joking? How influential is this person? How obvious is any implicit portion? The line gets blurry, and part of that is because the people posting know there's a line. When people are arguing, they would like things to be objective ("but it's true"), but that's unrealistic/irrational.

One of the results is that people use this complexity as wiggle room to support the position they emotionally hold ("my side of politics is being oppressed"), when usually the cases they point to are not clear cut, and those that are truly clear cut are vanishingly few or do not outnumber the politically reversed cases.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#129

Post by b0sk »

joshstrange wrote: post #34

Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.

Right. It's going to fester with dark elements of the society and he's going to hire back all the content moderators he fired and then pen another open letter to advertisers.

Re: Welcome to Hell, Elon

#130

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

maxsilver wrote: post #68
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #31

While I agree with the author on many things, this one upset me: > fucking government... They’re out here banning books, Elon! I don't believe that repeating a lie will make it true. The government is not banning any books, Nilay. Parents do. And not globally, but at a local level. It's another question whether they should or not, but I'd expect more precision and integrity from a prominent journalist. Most people do…

> The government is not banning any books The local township library and school board are both literally the government, and the book banning is largely happening based on local election results (typically county positions and/or school board positions -- both from election ballots) It's not wrong at all to say the government is banning books -- that statement is objectively correct , it's just happening at the lowes…

I understand that they are public institutions, but there is a crucial distinction. When you say "the government wants to ban arms/restrict free speech" I assume you mean the state or federal government wants to introduce a new law. Whereas in this case it was the parents who were concerned and asked relevant institutions. It doesn't matter if the books promote violence against minorities or LGBT+ themes, if parents of the kids feel uncomfortable with them and use a lawful process to limit their kids exposure to them in education, I find it quite an exaggeration to say that "the government does it." Or maybe it's become common usage to call local initiatives government, I don't know.
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