Live data from Hacker News

Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

washingtonpost.com

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day Is Musk making mistakes in his management of Twitter? I'm sure he is. On the other hand, it is also true that a lot of people now have it in for him, and will amplify any story about such a mistake, regardless of how real it is, simply because it is what they want to hear, it feeds the current n…

> I think we are really going to have to give it time Yes and no. The acquisition is now complete, so we can judge what led up to that. And it was terribly done. The dude made an offer on a lark, thought he could wiggle out, and discovered that, however much he normally can get away with shenanigans, a Delaware chancery judge was not among the people who would let him slide. So he was forced to buy a business he had…

What seems an obviously right course of action to you is not to others and it comes down to value systems. Only time will tell the outcome. My colleagues wife’s company was acquired by a huge media company and she and dozens of her colleagues have spent the last 6 months wondering if they are going to have jobs. The stress is palpable every time I see her. That’s not more humane to me than what Musk did (let everyone know within weeks where they stand). It impacts her, it impacts my team lead which impacts me. It’s horrible.

I remember a few weeks ago Twitter wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on. That’s obviously not the case. Interesting how fast the narratives are moving.

Let’s pretend for a minute Musk wasnt liberal public enemy #1 and the machine wasnt fully activated to take him down (now that we have confirmation of what we already knew, that media companies collude to suppress or amplify coverage)… he is running Twitter without any noticeable impact to the operation of the services with 70% less staff. That’s astounding to me. All else equal, this business would have been significantly more profitable over night.

The fact of the matter is, companies will go where the users are. Once the noise dies down, why wouldn’t you continue spending money on Twitter if your competition is?

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#493
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go out just a little bit not everyone hates him. Personally I think he hasn’t don’t anything overt yet. So he banned a few journalists, do you know why? No right? So why judge so early?

The journos were doxxing his location. See pretty unethical on their part, if proven true.

they were doxxing his location about as my as my reply is doxxing yours.

what a joker.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#494

He actually did provide an explanation in this thread: https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1603570995490455552 They were linking to the jet tracker. To be clear, a crazy person jumped on the hood of a car carrying elons kid. Can’t really blame him for reacting by banning someone tracking his movements in real-time.

Or he could, you know, fly commercial.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#495
post #156
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon's slide into max doucheness is a real shame. I used to tell my kids he was one of the most admirable people around for jump starting the EV industry (yes, I know he didn't do it all). Then came the pedo guy comments. I cut him slack, he must be tired/strung out, he'll apologise. He never did. Now he's become like a meme of himself, or perhaps just himself as he always was but now right out there, and it's not go…

he was always like this, he just had pr people. read the article his ex wife wrote in like 2012 about how weird he was

> read the article his ex wife wrote

No thanks. Sounds like you're trying to pile rubbish on someone's name by promoting personal hit piece articles from their ex-partners. That's low quality.

Interview anyone's ex and you'll find grubby things to hold up in the light, if that's your agenda.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#496

Not trying to be snarky here, but I'm curious what percentage of the people complaining in this thread also complained about the constant censorship and deplatforming by Twitter pre-Musk? Don't get me wrong, I think it's all bad, both ways, it's just the outcry now is extremely telling. Do you not believe it was happening before? Or were you not told that it was happening before? Or did you just not care before becau…

It's oversimplistic, to put it lightly, to just point to "everything after Musk" and "everything before Musk" and assert they're equal and anybody who smells like they've expressed more criticism on one side of that divide than the other is a hypocrite. There are a million variables that any honest person considers. Some bans are high profile, some aren't. Some bans are en masse, some are individual. Some are permanent, some are temporary. Some show bias, some are just for breaking rules while happening to also be apparently right/left-wing. Some are honest mistakes. Some are reversed.

People like Elon are particularly good at generating the image of disproportionate criticism, because he is the highest of high-profile, and he is a classic modern provoker. I.e. he invites rebuke and bitterness by mocking/trolling and generally being petty/childish toward those he disagrees with, which can work in his favor ("look at all the haters"). In this case, it's pushed even further by the fact that he is so aggressively pro-free-speech and critical of those who may take a more measured approach, and yet we keep seeing him apparently falling into the exact same trap of "well OK except for this case - let me modify the rules to be more subtle/pragmatic", except the result is perhaps now even less free than before by his own apparent definition. The irony/hypocrisy is mountainous.

Additionally, "the same people who X are now Y" is an extremely common fallacy. It may be true, but much more often than not, you're assuming that two groups of people are mostly the same people when they are not (i.e. that every person is either left or right, pro-Elon or enti-Elon, etc; and every opinion a person expresses must fall on one side of each line). It's very easy to project one's internal concrete images of enemies onto the enormous, dynamic masses of the internet, or a particular forum, and "discover" hypocrisy.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#497
post #22

So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day. Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business.

He just tweeted that doxxing is a 7 day ban.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those journalists weren't reporting specific locations of his jet...they were reporting on a legit news story about it. Musk didn't like it so the journalists are now banned. The dude is truly off his rocker now. The "rules" are whatever he makes up on the spot. He's self-destructing before our eyes...no longer the richest man in the world. Telsa stock tanking all because he can't STFU and acts like a spoiled 12 year…

> Those journalists weren't reporting specific locations of his jet...they were reporting on a legit news story about it. Come on now. They were linking directly to the tracker that Sweeney was banned for, not just reporting on the story about it. It was a childish petulant doxxing on purpose and they got treated the same as Sweeney.

One simply called out his lie about the attack on the car. He didn't even file a police report.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#499
post #22

So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day. Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business.

> So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day. He also brought back a ton of banned people … who were similarly banned without explanation. In this case, he needs to set rules and judges for his kingdom if he wants a certain group to keep using it. As an aside, one of the people banned was known to take clip…

> As an aside, one of the people banned was known to take clips out of context. Add commentary on top, and actively mislead people. Imo these aren’t journalists, they’re activists

All of these things - mischaracterization, commentary, misinformation, activism - fall well within the "free speech" Musk said he'd be protecting, even if your assertions are true.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#500

At the start of this saga, I pointed to Napoleon as an example of what happens when hyper-ambitious and capable people meet an unyielding challenge, > It seems that when you are touched with greatness, you end up believing that you can do anything. And far more often than not, you can. > > Right up until the moment you can't. But never in my wildest dreams I could have imagined this turn of events. Forget Napoleon's…

Isn't it a Sun Tsu line, "Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake?"

Yes, but he's not my enemy. I still hold some measure of respect for him.

I just want to learn from this fairly rare opportunities and see if I can predict what happens next.

Post reply on HN