Live data from Hacker News

“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

twitter.com

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#821
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He still has a fiduciary duty since he's not the sole shareholder though.

Who are the other shareholders? I thought the entire point of the purchase is that he bought out all the shareholders.

Not all shareholders have been bought out , notably the saudi investment continues and is rolled forward as equity shares into the new structure, they retain the same amount of ownership as before .

Also he raised equity investment commitments from a16z , Sequoia , Ellison and few others as well who likely come in as new investors.[1]

So he still has a few shareholders but those who are accredited and have much higher risk appetite and long term view unlike not qtr to qtr of typical public companies so twitter wont be buffeted with market forces like FB is now when trying something radical.

[1] while some of 7B equity investment secured backed out since April , few publicly affirmed their intent to participate recently, no one knows how much was still on table and how much musk took.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#823
post #699

Potentially of intellectual interest: Some people here might be wondering about speech that is "harmful," with the famous quote about "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." That quote from the Supreme Court is commonly used to justify why there need to be restraints on free speech. This is actually a popular misconception. The decision where "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" was from was actually overtu…

There is clearly speech that is harmful without considering that case. Basically the entire concept of “conspiracy” is harmful speech. That said, Twitter is a private company and the First Amendment isn’t the holding factor.

When did "The United States government is watching and logging everything you do" change from conspiracy to common knowledge? I'll admit they use third party contractors for storage and some log collecting instead of doing so in-house, but the question remains.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#824
post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is basically an internet scale public bathroom wall with everyone scrawling short hot takes onto the walls. The best case scenario has always been that it shut down and I hope we are one day closer to that eventuality. It is ironic and laughable that Elons post to advertisers is done with screenshots of text. After 20+ years of mainstream networked computing this is what passes as a state of art platform and…

What's wrong with screenshots of text? They're easily readable. The white background makes things stand out more than just posting text on stock Twitter. It's one reason Insta story posts and even slides have text. Technological progress doesn't mean making user-hostile design. If users like a format or medium, you can offer it to them even if your platform is capable of greater things.

> What's wrong with screenshots of text? They're easily readable. The white background makes things stand out more than just posting text on stock Twitter. It's one reason Insta story posts and even slides have text.

The fact you defend it as more readable than actual twitter design says a lot

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when SNL satirizes a political figure, absolutely no one refers to it as "targeting"

A political figure is a politician, this person is not

and yet that changes nothing

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#826
post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe shareholders was the wrong term, doesn’t he have a duty to like the banks and Saudis and other investors

He doesn't have any duties to debt investors beyond what's explicitly in a contract with them. If he has equity co-investors (which he was certainly attempting to syndicate at one point) then those are indeed shareholders (private rather than public, but still shareholders) and he'll have duties to them.

On the contrary, LBO debt investors typically have clauses to be able to convert their debt to equity and basically force liquidation/sale etc to recover the money they put in if their debt is defaulted on.

The 13 billion in loans are secured not complete junk.

Of course if cash flows become too low to service the debt (I.e. default), musk can always inject[1] more capital and keep the debt serviced he can afford to do that by leveraging (or selling)TSLA and SpaceX stock easily or use other financing options

(1) he could also buy the debt directly himself without changing capital structure, or refinance it by lending the company money personally

or have one of his other companies lend Twitter money,

he did this between spaceX and Tesla once , it is more difficult with TSLA today- he will get sued . However he controls the board and has the power. He did force TSLA by solarCity and won the lawsuit as well so not implausible.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, a…

Isn’t the fact that we separate gender and sex because one (gender) is a social construct while the other (sex) isn’t?

No, gender-sex separation has always been an oversimplification. The fact is that gender identity is driven by complex interactions between biology and society. There is no better explanation for why regret rates for gender affirming surgeries are the lowest across all of medicine.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#828
post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has ‘thrown out’ the voting rights act. That’s an opinion. Part of it has not been upheld as constitutional. The decision on gerrymandering is real. But you seem to be thinking this is evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy rather than just normal bias. Even that piece admits that gerrymandering was invented by the democrats. This is just normal US politics at work.

"Nobody has ‘thrown out’ the voting rights act. That’s an opinion. Part of it has not been upheld as constitutional." Semantics. "The decision on gerrymandering is real." Yes. It is. "But you seem to be thinking this is evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy rather than just normal bias. Even that piece admits that gerrymandering was invented by the democrats. This is just normal US politics at work." Do you not u…

> Do you not understand the difference between democratic and Democratic? Otherwise, what's the relevance of gerrymandering having been invented by Democrats.

That it's a normal part of US politics engaged in by all political parties.

> The court upholding it is anti democratic.

Is it? If it's a normal part of US politics, that is far from clear.

The point is that it's not evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#829
post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is basically an internet scale public bathroom wall with everyone scrawling short hot takes onto the walls. The best case scenario has always been that it shut down and I hope we are one day closer to that eventuality. It is ironic and laughable that Elons post to advertisers is done with screenshots of text. After 20+ years of mainstream networked computing this is what passes as a state of art platform and…

What's wrong with screenshots of text? They're easily readable. The white background makes things stand out more than just posting text on stock Twitter. It's one reason Insta story posts and even slides have text. Technological progress doesn't mean making user-hostile design. If users like a format or medium, you can offer it to them even if your platform is capable of greater things.

What's wrong? Everything.

Screenshots of text are popular because people don't seem to be able to copy and save data anymore. Social media apps don't let users download pictures anymore. I can only share intra-platform links to content. The Instagram app won't even let me select text. People get around this insanity by screenshotting the whole screen and saving a poor quality version of the data in image form. This is actually a lossy format conversion and will happen multiple times as people encounter resistance when they try to copy, save and share. It's not just images of text, it's screenshots of screenshots of of screenshots of text.

This is what computing has degenerated to. People can't do basic actions like copying and downloading anymore so they just use screen shots and screen recorders to get around software limitations. I've seen so many videos that end with the user manipulating the interface to stop the recorder. And then there's the people reduced to taking pictures of another screen with their phone cameras.

Re: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”

#830
Everyone seems to say there’s no moderation policy that will please everyone. Sounds right. But the real physical world has freedom of speech and it works pretty well. There’s a KKK meeting going on somewhere right now and yet none of us are bothered. Is the issue really freedom of speech or is it that Twitter puts people who would absolutely hate each other into the same room? What if you just fix that second part instead of worrying about the first?
Post reply on HN