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Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

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Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#111

Post by jerojero »

concinds wrote: post #76
jerojero wrote: post #8

This whole thing has been rather interesting to observe. I do wonder how the platform will change now that it's privately owned. I don't really care a lot about the platform itself, but it's influence on politics is very real. Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy, but nonetheless, it's something I want to observe. I've always thought these platforms need more democratic structures of g…

This is a significant misunderstanding of what shareholder oversight does. All the biggest shareholders were humongous asset managers; hard to call that "democratic" governance. Shareholder oversight is limited to addressing the agency problem (i.e., by firing executives if they egregiously harm profits). It's simply not a "democratic structure of governance", and has nothing whatsoever to do with content or moderati…

I don't think I ever called it a democratic governance? I think you might have misunderstood my point.

I think these platforms need to be more democratic, I don't think they're democratic at all as publicly owned companies. However, I do think control is now even more centralized residing in just one person. Which, imo, is an even worse state of affairs.

To me, democracy in these platforms is not about what speech is moderated but about taking the decision, in the first place, to do so. How is that decision taken, who is responsible for such decisions? It's about who is deciding rather than what is decided. Democracies will not always favor our personal points of view, but that wouldn't make them less democratic (think for example of the swiss people voting against face coverings, a democratic decision that goes against what I personally consider is correct).

I do consider a public company to have a more democratic structure of governance compared to a privately owned company simply by the fact that people could gain access. Of course, with such concentration of wealth it is a bit of a pipe dream. But think for example of Norway and their wealth fund; this is a country that invests in companies and steers influences them. They can't really do that with a private corporation.

In any case, this is not really a hill i would be willing to die on in any case. I want more democracy in platform governance.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#112

Post by metamet »

joshmn wrote: post #91
metamet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've observed, the uptick in botted/recently created accounts tweeting about that particular user has been pretty dramatic in the last few days.

Fellow Minnesotan, do you have a source for this? Not that I don’t believe you, I just want to read for my own eyes.

Unfortunately it's anecdotally based on my feed and of who I follow.

I typically use Twitter pretty passively. Most of my follows are tech oriented, journalists or local politicians, and it feels like every thread that has mentioned Musk's acquisition closing has been flooded with new accounts hailing the return of banned users.

It could be related to the subject matter, of course, but this has been during non-trending times and on posts that generally have mostly genuine engagement.

With the announcement today that he'll be reverting lifetime bans, I expect things to get even worse and the quality of the conversations to be near non-existent.

Doubt Musk has some unthought of revolutionary way to detect and neuter botnet accounts, and if he's insisting on laxing the enforcement of such accounts, it's going to get mucky real quick.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#113

Post by runarberg »

jerojero wrote: post #37
hitpointdrew wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth can you think this is less democratic? It is by far more democratic. Twitter under previous leadership was on a banning, censoring, rampage against anything that didn’t agree with their own narrative.

Because less people are now in control of the decisions. In theory, a public company is controlled by its shareholders who are the ones that choose the board. Now the company is privately owned, meaning there are less owners than before. Less democracy means less people are in control of the decisions, that is precisely what has happened.

I think this is attributing democracy to capitalism which isn’t warranted. At best the structure moves from aristocracy to a dictatorship, neither of which are democratic.

As an example from governments: The Chinese legislator is ruled by the communist party. The National People’s Congress has almost 3000 representatives. Even though there are almost 10x more representatives then in the USA legislator (which is still more then double per capita), this doesn’t mean the China’s legislator is more democratic then the USA’s legislator. Far from it. Now if Xi Jinping would dismantle the Congress and assume dictatorial powers (like Caesar crossing the Rubicon) this would just move China from being a totalitarian republic to a dictatorship (again like Ancient Rome after the civil wars), at no point in this affair does the common population in China have any say in the laws that govern them (not even by proxy, as is the case in the USA; but by proxy of a proxy of a proxy etc. effectively thinning out any democratic say to nothing).

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#114

Post by bitcurious »

bhaak wrote: post #84
SighMagi wrote: post #62

What’s with the sink?

„Musk bought Twitter. Let that sink in!” As usual, Musk fails to be funny. You’d think he could afford some good gag authors but that probably goes against his ego.

“They took me for everything and the kitchen sink.”

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#115

Post by n65463f23_4 »

epakai wrote: post #55
wellthatsawrap1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like if people voted him back into the presidency. That would be terrible for democracy.

The people didn't vote him in the first time. We just have weird rules that enable our minority party to win the presidency. This is often claimed to prevent tyranny of the majority, but it's not a boon for democracy, rather a way to limit the extreme outcomes of democracy. It's never good when someone denies the legitimacy of the very system that brought them into power. This is the part that makes him "terrible for…

No post body was provided.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#116

Post by harimau777 »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #108
harimau777 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that democracy relies on there being a degree of respect/safety for diverging viewpoints. Therefore, for democracy to work there has to be some restriction on behavior that doesn't follow those norms. That could be in the form of educational enculturation into those norms, social consequences for breaking them, or censorship.

I'm sorry but did you just say that democracy only works if we have censorship?

No, I said that democracy only works if there is some way of enforcing that the participants actually follow democratic norms; i.e. respecting diverging viewpoints.

One mechanism of accomplishing that would be to restrict people who are using communication platforms to violate democratic norms.

I'm not advocating that is the best way to accomplish protecting democracy. I'm just pointing out that "free speech maximalism" doesn't address the need to protect democracy.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#117

Post by OrangeMonkey »

harimau777 wrote: post #116
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but did you just say that democracy only works if we have censorship?

No, I said that democracy only works if there is some way of enforcing that the participants actually follow democratic norms; i.e. respecting diverging viewpoints. One mechanism of accomplishing that would be to restrict people who are using communication platforms to violate democratic norms. I'm not advocating that is the best way to accomplish protecting democracy. I'm just pointing out that "free speech maximali…

I think we can agree to disagree.

People can respect you as a person, but no I don't think people have to respect different viewpoints. I can respect that you have a lived experience that differs from mine and that your viewpoint is X, but I do balance that against my own views and speak my own truth as well.

If you think that you have to respect every viewpoint that differs, think of the viewpoints of the party you dislike. Think of any of their views. Do you respect their _view_ or do you respect the person and want to allow their speech while disagreeing with it?

Me? I think the best way to deal with speech I don't like is not filtering or censorship its more speech. Anytime I see an implication that someones view needs to be filtered I think "You first."

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#118

Post by wilg »

lupire wrote: post #77
epakai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people didn't vote him in the first time. We just have weird rules that enable our minority party to win the presidency. This is often claimed to prevent tyranny of the majority, but it's not a boon for democracy, rather a way to limit the extreme outcomes of democracy. It's never good when someone denies the legitimacy of the very system that brought them into power. This is the part that makes him "terrible for…

Come on. 50million+ people voted for him. Maybe he "shouldn't have won" in some technical senses (but not others), but to say he wasn't hugely supported by the Demos, the People, is ridiculous. Embezzling every penny he could, modeling himself after Hitler, raising a mob to storming the capital to kidnap the vice president, and filing fake lawsuits about the election, was far far worse than losing the unofficial popu…

Don't "come on" the idea of a real democracy. Yes, he got a lot of support. Yes, he won according to the rules. However, 2/3 of people do not think the rules should work that way.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#119

Post by wilg »

Jataman606 wrote: post #96
bhaak wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

„Musk bought Twitter. Let that sink in!” As usual, Musk fails to be funny. You’d think he could afford some good gag authors but that probably goes against his ego.

> Fails to be funny Is this official position of some jokes association? I wouldn't want to laugh at unfunny joke.

It's a meme where people like to say Elon isn't funny because they don't like him. I certainly don't think he's a particularly skilled comedian, but I'm also not butthurt he goofs around.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#120

Post by dr_ »

Gigachad wrote: post #10
jerojero wrote: post #8

This whole thing has been rather interesting to observe. I do wonder how the platform will change now that it's privately owned. I don't really care a lot about the platform itself, but it's influence on politics is very real. Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy, but nonetheless, it's something I want to observe. I've always thought these platforms need more democratic structures of g…

Tbh the best direction for twitter to move in is to stop recommending content people did not subscribe to. And then adjust the rules to allow anything legal to be tweeted to your own page. If you object to someones tweets, don't follow them. There may still need to be rules on replying to others tweets since thats pushing content on people.

True. I'm interested in hearing from people I follow, and the comments they make and even the posts they like or retweet. But to recommend other posts to me because the people I follow happen to simply follow (not interact with) other people, really screws with my feed.
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