Free speech for thee but not for me.
Some free speech is more free than some free speech. /s
X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
181–190 of 834 posts
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#182[flagged]
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that…
> The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes Tunisia is now arguably better off, but even beyond that: the longterm effects of such things aren't always immediately apparent. The French Revolution led to terror, then to an Empire and devastating wars and finally back to the old monarchy, but it cast a very long shadow on the 19th century and beyond.
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Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#184[flagged]
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Elon's proclamation that he is fighting "them" (deep state/democrats/...) has turned around and he is the same now. He is the USAID-ish funding for his cause. The cause could be different but the tools are the same, albeit in different names.
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or lin…
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> Twitter's content policy is more permissive now than it was pre-aquisition, with only narrow exceptions (e.g. doxxing is now banned).
Part of the problem is that the “content policy” keeps differing from practice. Does sharing Signal links violate the policy?
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
Your comment is quite extraordinary as Orwell's work dealt with an unthinking bureaucracy resembling the Soviet Union. He also had the foresight to see the U.K. could be a totalitarian state. An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entir…
If you take USAID « revelations » by Musk at face value, you are… rather misled.
The very behavior of DOGE looks like kids unleashed in a factory they don’t understand, willing not to recognize their capacities are adequate to understand it in so little time.
There were knowledgeable people, they’ve been fired.
You wouldn’t accept it for a flying plane pilot or a surgeon in the surgery room, why would you accept it for state agencies?
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the assumption you are acting in good faith, that is a very poor analogy. I think a more apt one would be: Imagine asking for a shit-free meal, and you're served a meal with just a little bit of shit in it.
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Ok, lets get some things straight.
Musk has /claimed/ (repeatedly) that he is a free speech absolutist, and by extension that twitter is as well.
This is false: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...
I'm not clear on how you're defining edge cases here, and regardless, it doesnt matter.
"Sorry officer, those murders back there were just a few edge cases! I've publicly pledged to a murder free life!"
I see very few in this thread pretending anything
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that…
At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace.
In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed.
If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better.
Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed.
In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it.
In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#189Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors? And remember how Elon bought Twitter, loudly proclaiming he was doing so to defend free speech? I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, but I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.
> I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values. It took 6 weeks for that milk to rot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
A couple of journalists broke Twitters rule on doxxing, and were briefly suspended.
Wikipedia cops a lot of criticism for being politically biased. The fact it has a whole article around this seems to support that.
Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or lin…
Aren't racists a minority who struggle to express themselves? How did you come to these conclusions about the goals and future of Twitter? My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
> My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
Difference without distinction in this case. The left actually polices its luminaries to some degree (not perfectly but still) which makes it incompatible with the grifter class Musk is chief president of. He’s never going to drift leftward because we’re not going to metaphorically suck his balls because he promotes basic human decency. Figures like him only go rightward.
As for if he bought twitter explicitly to make it a greater hotbed for racism, I think you’d have a hard time proving it in court, but at the same time, he’s unbanned a lot of prominent alt-right figure heads, and boosted tons of their tweets to the financial detriment of the platform. Can’t say he bought it to do that but the huge drops in value because of it hasn’t deterred him so…