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“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

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Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#291

Post by TillE »

slg wrote: post #243
phphphphp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

>So you’re probably right to say this isn’t a sudden 180 on his thoughts, but it still highlights how faulty his framing of free speech is. I still don't understand what his logic is. What is the philosophical value of free speech if no one is able to hear that speech? Is his viewpoint that free speech is just about babbling on into an empty void? What is the value in protecting that? How does one argue that shadowba…

Charitably, I guess the idea is that people won't have their accounts banned for previously bannable hate speech, so their other tweets are still handled normally.

I don't think there's any coherent principle, and in practice it really encourages bad actors to find exactly where the line is.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#292

Post by at-w »

pixl97 wrote: post #121
hellfish wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who oppose free speech always try to redefine it this way. Freedom of speech is freedom from censorship or moderation. Not freedom from discomfort

Like the discomfort from being banned from someones private property from saying dumb crap?

Like Comcast deciding they don't want workers discussing unionizing using the internet infrastructure that they privately own. Or financial institutions like PayPal freezing and seizing your money on their "private property" because of speech they don't like. Or when AWS, Microsoft, and the largest and most powerful corporations in human history coordinated to take a separate social network offline because of speech they didn't like.

Or when Twitter and Facebook coordinated to falsely label a true story "Russian disinformation" days before an election, literally preventing people from sharing it with each other privately on the world's largest communications networks. Whether Hunter Biden smoking crack with prostitutes would impact the election, or is even anyone's business, is questionable to me. But so is having billionaire tech CEOs decide what people can discuss through private communications with the express intent of suppressing information related to a political campaign.

The same goes for credit card monopolies like VISA and Mastercard coordinating to destroy businesses like Mindgeek because of moralist outrage from another "side."

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#293

Post by notyourwork »

hsn915 wrote: post #240
aquova wrote: post #153

There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the debacle last night, I think it's a moot point, I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks. He's fired 50% of the company, reports seem that conservatively 50% of the remainder just quit yesterday, their subscription service ha…

This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so.…

> where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers

I stopped reading at this point.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#294

Post by yodsanklai »

boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

The difficult question is who decides what is "negative" and what should be boosted or deboosted, and how to do it at a global scale.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#295

Post by dilap »

abzolv wrote: post #205
aquova wrote: post #153

There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the debacle last night, I think it's a moot point, I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks. He's fired 50% of the company, reports seem that conservatively 50% of the remainder just quit yesterday, their subscription service ha…

This is the correct take. Without the staff and institutional knowledge of a 16 year old service, no amount of hand waving will keep the service healthy. It’s a stunning display of what not to do.

Perhaps the Twitter code is convoluted and messy, but really, you think to such a degree that even a small team of highly-motivated, skilled engineers could not figure it out and keep it running?

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#296

Post by altacc »

phphphphp wrote: post #239
EMM_386 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. I'd equate it more to people in Nebraska can't hear the guy yelling in Times Square, nor should they. If people like this guy and want to hear him, they can go to Nebraska and listen to him (follow on Twitter). If he does s…

That’s how Twitter works already — that’s how the “filter bubble” concept is able to exist, you’re only exposed to things in your self-selected bubble. What Elon is describing (as I understand it based on the limited information provided) is restricting reach within your network, i.e: you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed.

Basically shadow banning, which a lot of the “anti-woke” brigade have been complaining about for years and thought Musk would stop. Unsurprisingly, it turns out it’s more complicated to run a social media site than some people might think.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#297

Post by kornhole »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #244
kornhole wrote: post #192

The main reason some of us go on Twitter is it is where the politicians and other leaders tweet. It is the only place where we can talk back to them. This talking back is probably considered negative. If our voices will be silenced, I will just subscribe to a few of the people still there using RSS feeds. All real discussion will move elsewhere.

And all the above is very bad for commerce. Social media should be lubricants for commerce, that's how they make money. Or in Twitter case they dont. Given all that, the only way to monetize twitter is to use it as leverage on political leaders and business leaders. This was most likely Musk plan, he then got out-framed by the Delaware courts and lost all his confidence to punch up, so he's punching down by abusing e…

Good points. As rich as he is, he is heavily dependent on defense contracts and the global financial system who can pull his strings. He is also punching down on the regular working class who want a voice against the powerful. A more neutered and sanitized environment seems to be the future of Twitter. The fediverse looks more beautiful every day.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#298

Post by bluefirebrand »

phphphphp wrote: post #239
EMM_386 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. I'd equate it more to people in Nebraska can't hear the guy yelling in Times Square, nor should they. If people like this guy and want to hear him, they can go to Nebraska and listen to him (follow on Twitter). If he does s…

That’s how Twitter works already — that’s how the “filter bubble” concept is able to exist, you’re only exposed to things in your self-selected bubble. What Elon is describing (as I understand it based on the limited information provided) is restricting reach within your network, i.e: you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed.

> you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed

As far as I can tell, this is already how Twitter works.

I have plenty of people I follow who I almost never see tweets from anymore in my timeline, but if I go to their accounts directly I can see they are saying a lot of things.

People call it being shadowbanned.

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