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Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

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Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#851
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't buy into all the freedom of speech rhetoric he has been spewing. I think what you meant was you didn't buy into it, and this is proving your point of view. He's gone from freedom of speech absolutionist to defining the limits of freedom of speech by whether you discuss social interactions on other websites. It isn't as simple as a one-dimensional scale between freedom of speech absolutism and not, and the f…

> He's gone from freedom of speech absolutionist to defining the limits of freedom of speech by whether you discuss social interactions on other websites. I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. This is only a small bit of his capricious rules. Earlier this week it was publicly available information about flights, now it's even indirect mentions of social media competition, what happens next week if h…

Er, I think I have been misunderstood. I basically agree with you. There isn't a framework.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#853
post #173

It's baffling to me that Elon seems to be taking the opposite of a first-principles view on Twitter. He fails to realize _why_ Twitter uniquely has the reach that it does. It's because it's platform-agnostic in a lot of ways. It's the base-level social protocol that all other platforms are adjacent to. By removing that connection, it completely nerfs that influence and Twitter becomes just another social network. I a…

> It's baffling to me that Elon seems to be taking the opposite of a first-principles view on Twitter. Power corrupts. The radical idealist who becomes a despotic tyrant is practically a meme.

I think power can in fact corrupt, but I think the simpler explanation in many cases (as it almost certainly is with Elon and Twitter) is that the expressed ideals were in fact complete bullshit and despotic tyranny was always the intended outcome. Noble ideals are always a good cover for less than noble goals, and while actual idealists definitely exist, everything Elon Musk has ever said or done suggests it's smart to assume he's in the former camp until proven otherwise.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#854
post #824
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely feel like someone (ahem) is trying to get us to riot over silly things, as an experiment. It doesn’t make any sense.

Musk's entire Twitter reign makes complete sense if you just view it as one thin-skinned guy arbitrarily lashing out. There's no secret plan, he's just trying to "fix" whatever personally bothers him.

To be fair, the bloke is just human. Unfortunately we don't need humans running big old corps and media outfits or even simple businesses.

I'm not sure how you can have a "charismatic" individual run something like Twitter. Your charisma might be my anathema but a PR department waffling platitudes will probably work.

A dictator will always want to dabble. We are looking at some fundamentals here. Twitter run by whim and not rule. The world's media has basically gone all in on Twitter but it needs to get a grip.

I suspect the best thing for Twitter is to exclude the owner from participating. We all have far bigger fish to fry.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#855
post #574
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't buy into all the freedom of speech rhetoric he has been spewing. I think what you meant was you didn't buy into it, and this is proving your point of view. He's gone from freedom of speech absolutionist to defining the limits of freedom of speech by whether you discuss social interactions on other websites. It isn't as simple as a one-dimensional scale between freedom of speech absolutism and not, and the f…

Lol by this reasoning any possible moderation decision is consistent with freedom of speech. Dude came in guns blazing on team “any legal speech will be allowed” and is at this point banning all references to perfectly legal competitors.

My post is downvoted, and I agree with the replies, so I think I've been misunderstood. I'm saying he has rowed back on free speech absolutism (which I personally don't agree with anyway), to limits on free speech. And those limits are arbitrary and not based on any ethical (or other!) framework.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people get duped, it's really hard for them to admit it. Huge blow to the ego. It's surprising to watch people turn on Trump because of this.

I just wish personal integrity mattered at any scale, anymore. I wish that people actually came to their opinions via some sort of logical process that could be easily later self-evaluated and reflected upon. There's this tendency to double-down, when "admitting a mistake" is really as simple as reflecting, realizing what assumptions were made wrong, going back to base principles and re-assessing. If you have integri…

Although I'm no fan of the acerbity of your other comments, that's an interesting observation. Presuming you speak of the US, I think there's an interesting tension between the notion of "holding our political leaders to a higher standard" and the fact that we vote these people in! That is, it's more likely that we vote for someone with a moral character as fallible as that of the average man, e.g. see Trump, Adlai Stevenson. It's a reversal of the private sector adage: "corporate culture is from the top down."

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#857
Elon’s attitude is hilarious because even highly technical people I know who tried mastodon thought the UX is overall beyond terrible and the complexity is too high and too weird for the average user.

Mastodon was not a threat to twitter. Elon is the only threat to twitter that matters.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#858
post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd use of 'gatekeeper' isn't it? Even if I would call this 'gatekeeping behaviour' (I don't think it is, the way that's usually used around here at least? Not to say that it isn't 'misbehaviour') surely the thing that's objected to really is gatekeep ing by x platforms, where x is 'monopoly' or 'dominant' or something?

If Elon is the Gatekeeper, who is the Keymaster? He kinda seems like a cultist trying to summon Zuul or NYNEX or something.

He's trying to bring back the New York/New England Exchange? Phantom Phreak would approve.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#860
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, it's just that Musk's behavior is so abhorrent there's essentially no remaining reasonable defense of any of his naked hypocrisy and childishness.

On the grand scale of things, Musk's twitter behaviour isn't even a nanohitler, well bellow Bill Gates, the Koch brothers or Murdock and not even close to basically any world leader (Tony Blair, George W Bush, Barrack Obama, Emmanuel Macron). Don't overuse words like "abhorent" unless you want to seem like you're hysterically overreacting.

> inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant.

It fits, and I’ll use it if I want, thanks. You’re the one bringing in comparisons to hitler, bizarrely enough.

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