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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#291

Post by hongloumeng »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

I agree that a real name policy would help remove the bots and anonymous hate speech. But there is plenty of non-anonymous hate speech that still make Twitter toxic. Those people would have an easier time harassing other people if they knew real names.

The ad-revenue model relies on attention, and attention thrives on memes that inspire outrage, contempt, and fear. The solution is a freemium subscription model. But I don't think he'll do that. I admire the guy's accomplishments like everyone else but we all know he's got a bit of an ego. He'll not put a paywall in front of his Twitter army.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#293

Post by spike021 »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

I've said it on HN before. You need to be willing to spend some effort self-curating your feed. Only follow people you're interested in, use the settings feature to mute tweets containing certain words or phrases, and make heavy use of the lists feature.

Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#294

Post by bluescrn »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

You could go part-way and just limit anonymous accounts a bit more.

Currently users can choose to only let followers/mentioned users reply. Maybe add an option to only allow real-name users to reply.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#295

Post by chapium »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

Real name policy just leads to threats. I'd rather the place be toxic than exposing people who want to speak up.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#297

Post by mrshadowgoose »

qgin wrote: post #113

“Everything that isn’t illegal is allowed” sounds great until you see what that actually means on the internet. Anyone who has ever worked in content moderation / trust & safety knows what kind of unrelenting deluge of obnoxious / disturbing / spam-filled / miserable race to the bottom of the lizard brain stuff that is constantly being pushed back on any moderately popular social media site. It seems so easy from a d…

I believe there's a middle ground that doesn't involve the forced adoption of a single subjective viewpoint of "correctness", while preserving the benefits of moderation to whoever desires it. I refer to the following approach as "moderation lenses", although it's certainly been thought of before under some other name.

"Moderation lenses" would operate as follows:

Any person or entity can be a moderator. Moderation could be done manually or in an automated fashion, it doesn't really matter. Users would be able to opt-in (and later opt-out) of whatever set of lenses they want. The lenses they opt-in to would affect what posts they are able to see.

Online communities (for example, a subreddit), could have a default set of lenses applied to newly-joined users, but as with any other lens, they would be removable by the user. One would imagine that most users would leave a "spam" lens in place.

Governments would be able to produce their own lenses for things such as "misinformation", "hate speech", or whatever the evil-of-the-day happens to be. And if people want a government filtering what they see, they can add those lenses. And if they don't, they don't.

Human opinion is inherently subjective, and agreeing on what is "correct" or "appropriate" across large groups of people is rarely possible. Trying to impose a single viewpoint of "correct" across millions of people is laughable.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#298

Post by dimitrios1 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #269

I feel like Musk is spending $108 per Twitter user, in order to have access to all of their account data. That he wants to sell micro-targeted ads, with the aim of changing the outcomes of elections. That's my hot take.

You are giving twitter far too much credit. 206m users, most of them bots, trolls, and spam accounts. For American politics, it represents the two polar extremes of our electoral base. Twitter is not what it used to be anymore, and all the "moderation" has a big part of it. Elon has a long journey ahead if he wants the platform to have the same influence it once did.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#299

Post by hbn »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

Enforcing a real-name policy means the only users you'll have is:

1. People whose opinions are perfectly in-line with the corporate-backed, advertiser-friendly status quo, further cementing such ideas as the status quo

2. Maniacs who have nothing to lose, and/or want to be seen as a martyr

All of the reasonable people will just not use the site cause they don't want to risk stepping out of line and having aforementioned maniacs harassing you/contacting your employer/etc

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#300

Post by chapium »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

I tend to agree. I've seen things turn bad on my feed pretty quickly, so you have to really take an active role in unfollowing / delisting content you don't want for the algorithm to work.
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