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Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

infosec.exchange

311–320 of 386 posts

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far-left? On twitter? A site that famously stated that if they applied their rules equally, they'd have to ban almost all republicans, so they currently don't apply the rules to those? Twitter is a site where a statement as simple as ACAB, which is legally protected speech [See https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit... ] would get you a ban. Twitter is as center-right as it gets. If you think tw…

I guess this depends on whether you think "transwomen aren't women" is a right-wing or centrist statement. By world standards twitter was far left, by USA standards it was left, by California standards or non-USA anglosphere standards it was centrist.

> By world standards twitter was far left

Whose world standards? The US left is the European right.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#312
post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

What about the pivot from "This is a private company. Free speech doesn't apply" to "This is censorship of free speech"?

Now we are just having the conversation we wanted the entire time. Rather than having people hide behind "free speech absolutism" we can have a discussion about why some people think that transphobia is more acceptable on a platform than making fun of Elon Musk.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ariadna Jacobs says that Taylor Lorenz doxxed her, by asking her for her home address for “fact-checking” purposes, promising that it was not for publication, and then publishing it anyway - https://mobile.twitter.com/littlemissjacob/status/1603575149... Jacobs has been calling on Musk to ban Lorenz for doxxing her. Maybe he (or his staff) have listened. I’m sure Lorenz knows about this, so when she claims she “doesn…

That seems like a fairly big stretch for something, however bad, allegedly happening in 2020 off Twitter at all. Besides, isn't any legal content fair game on the new Twitter?

> That seems like a fairly big stretch for something, however bad, allegedly happening in 2020 off Twitter at all.

Jacobs argues it did happen on Twitter, because Lorenz and others used Twitter to promote the NYT article in which she doxxed her.

> Besides, isn't any legal content fair game on the new Twitter?

I think when Musk said that, he really meant “ideas” not mere “information”. It might be legal for me to post your home address, but I don’t think that is what he had in mind. I think what he meant was that people with unpopular social/political/etc views should be free to express them if they are legal. Someone’s home address isn’t a social/political/etc view.

So I don’t think banning people for doxxing is really contrary to what he meant when he said that. Now, he actually has gone backward on what he meant - re-banning Kanye for extremely antisemitic posts, implying that extreme antisemitism is not going to be allowed even if legal - but surely it is good he went back on that?

(The problem with banning “non-extreme” antisemitism, is few can agree on where to draw the line - some pro-Israel people claim that anyone who criticises Israel “too much” is being antisemitic, effectively implying that almost all pro-Palestinian activism is antisemitic - but surely we shouldn’t just ban everyone who is pro-Palestinian. On the other hand, few would deny that sometimes, some pro-Palestinian activists do get “carried away” and veer into more clearly antisemitic territory. But how far is too far? Reasonable people can disagree. This is why I think it is okay to ban clearcut cases of extreme antisemitism, like Ye, but trying to ban every possible instance of it is not sensible.)

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napster didn’t kill CD sales. iTunes/iPods did

Arguably, it was streaming that really killed CD sales.

iTunes was the number one music seller between 2003-2008. Way before streaming became a thing.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#315

I suspect this whole "Twitter blocking Mastodon links for anticompetitive reasons" narrative is wrong to the point of being disingenuous. People have been tweeting links ElonJet trackers on Mastodon instances (including the official @joinmastodon account!), getting both themselves and the target Mastodon instance domains flagged. This is edgelord behaviour. Twitter's policy is simple - do not dox people with real-tim…

My understanding is that the information is public. Can you provide some links to support that?

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#316
post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Pretty sure Musk was discussing freedom of ideas. That said; many of us also thought Kanye shouldn’t have been banned. Few on hacker news agreed lol You either have absolute freedom of speech or none, in many ways. That said, I appreciate that at least people are being told why they are banned. The prior set of billionaires who owned Twitter often wouldn’t say why. Blocking links to competitors, blocking real-time tr…

> You either have absolute freedom of speech or none, in many ways.

I don't think there is such a thing as absolute freedom of speech. Speech always has some limitations, and that's never been controversial. Threats, blackmail, libel, discussing plans to commit a crime, those have always been illegal in some way.

But at the same time, Twitter/Musk banning people is also protected by the First Amendment. He is not the government, and the government can't compel him to allow or ban people on his platform.

Well, unless his platform is considered a utility or a monopoly. Then it becomes a different issue. And especially banning competitors could be anticompetitive behaviour.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#317
You should be able to choose with your wallet or whatever you're paying with - your self in this case - but for communication classic server-client structure does not offer that option because you have to rely on the choices of the rest of your contacts. That alone is enough to support alternative solutions.

Yet, it's really funny how so many on HN, the vanguard of startups among news aggregators, rather continue to fanboy Musk than engage in brainstorming opportunities the Fediverse and ActivityPub offer.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#318
post #10

The pivot from “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”[1] to “I get to use censorship to kneecap a competitor because it’s my site now” was almost comically quick. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

I actually think this is quite a long way away from funny. We've been able to watch Elon Musk get radicalized in real time. That's quite worrying when you consider the amount of resources he has available to him. During the Trump years there was a lot of talk about how Trump is bad, but fundamentally incompetent. Well now we're going to see what extremism looks like when a far more competent person is orchestrating i…

He's actually not coming across as that much more competent. He seems to be running Twitter into the ground, rather than improving it.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Kneecapping competitors is what billionaires do. You dont win capitalism by following all the rules.

How many users will stay on Twitter because of this? And how many will leave because of it? My guess: it's an extra indication that Twitter is not a reliable platform to build an audience. Billionaires are billionaires because they build a product that everybody wants.

> Billionaires are billionaires because they build a product that everybody wants.

That's a pretty wild claim.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASD absolutely can make people care less about social norms, see for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198313/ (“Insensitivity to social reputation in autism”) ASD can be a mixture of both not understanding and not caring. Sociopathy is all about the later without any of the former.

Elon Musk is the CEO of a major corporation. Sociopathy, is often pointed out as an advantage in that situation. You rise above others in the social ladder and punch down your competitors. And we're seeing this behavior right now as Elon Musk is utilizing his powers to try to silence his critics (Mastodon). Autism on the other hand, is a disadvantage in most leadership roles. When we consider Elon Musk's role in soci…

Armchair diagnosis is a rather foolish endeavour.

That said, a person as successful as Musk is, is more likely to have BAP (broad autism phenotype, subclinical ASD) than clinical ASD. BAP means one has some degree of autistic traits, but is insufficiently disabled by them to warrant a psychiatric diagnosis

Sociopathy isn’t a DSM-5 diagnosis - antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is. Diagnostic criteria for ASPD include a history of criminally antisocial behaviour (animal abuse, vandalism, violence, theft, etc), evident by age of 15. It also requires evidence to support a retrospective conduct disorder diagnosis prior to 15. I see zero evidence that is true of Musk. When psychiatrists evaluate someone for ASPD, they aren’t looking for mere allegations of questionable business ethics, they expect to see a criminal record, history of school expulsion, imprisonment or juvenile detention, someone repeatedly being fired for proven serious workplace misconduct, someone who refuses to seek gainful employment despite being capable of it, dishonourable discharge from armed services, domestic violence, physical and emotional abuse of children, serious child neglect resulting in malnutrition, use of aliases or false identities to commit fraud, etc

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