Anyanka Bunny Slayer
✨ Hail Hydra ✨
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I just realised I meant LIMBER, not flexible. I can also hold my breath a LONG time. 😎Do it. Send him a DM. 😉
Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter
- Thread starter Cohen
- Start date
Stake fodder
What about my me?
The truth is that I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I don't have an account on Twitter, and typically only check it when some quote is in the news or on this board, or occasionally looking through the account of someone I know or someone famous.
I guess my real objection is a general one, that it doesn't seem good that a multi-billionaire will decide that he doesn't like the rules, and just buys up something so he can have his own way. (Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post might be another example.) I find it hard to believe that someone like this will really have some altruistic sense of good for the common people. But like you, @thetopher , I'll watch to see what he does. Or I'll wait for @Anyanka Bunny Slayer to start dating him and whip him into shape! (You know you'd be step-mother to seven children, right?😱)
Plasma
Same here with the “no account” thing. Social media is stupid!
thetopher
Member of the Church Of Faith
I think anyone, even rich people, can have principals. Hell, the former owners of Twitter had an ideology which meant that they thought they were doing actual good by abiding by their own (inconsistent) principals. Kicking Trump off twitter? Suppressing news pertinent to the the election? These things were ideologically driven at least in part.
Many do not view free speech as 'the common good' nowadays, they view it as an ideological principal that allows 'hateful speech and harmful ideas' to propagate online. This idea, which I find nonsensical, is a relatively new one, and one which should be an anathema to anyone who considers themselves liberal.
It's ultimately oppressive and authoritarian because the window of acceptable speech gets smaller and smaller.
In short I'm saying that maybe Elon isn't a saint who believes in the freedom of unfettered self-expression, maybe he's just a really anti-authoritarian guy who believes in the 'free market of ideas'. And I think that's probably enough.
Oof! Busy. Boy.
TheMaster666
To be fair, Trump deserved to be banned from Twitter. They didn't kick him for political reasons, or they would have done that much sooner, no doubt. They did it after they realized his posts were galvanizing supporters to overthrow the state. Jan 6?
Anyanka Bunny Slayer
✨ Hail Hydra ✨
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This is why nannies and soundproof rooms were created. 😎
TheMaster666
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I'm glad someone posted a topic about Elon Musk's takeover, because there's something about the whole affair that I find very troubling.
It's not Elon, because he's one of the few big entrepreneurs I truly admire. From Paypal to Tesla to SpaceX, he's never stopped innovating and trying to make the world a better place. He deserves all of his hard-earned fortunes, and even now his only desire is to make Twitter have more free speech. That said, there is legitimate concern about disinformation. In the age of dumbasses (as Red Foreman would put it) it does not matter how stupid or insane something is, if it is out there on the internet, people will believe it, doubly so if it is outrageous.
Which leads to my real concern, frankly, the elephant in the room. Musk stated it himself:
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."
Wait, you mean to tell me the service where people write 3-word sentences is the virtual town hall where the citizens respectfully and thoughtfully debate policy in the name of democracy? Haha, yeah right.
Is it any wonder we had so many people questioning the efficacy of life-saving vaccines last year? At what point did it become acceptable for Twitter (or any other social media platform like it) to be seen as some forum for free speech?
If any digital platform should be the forum for free speech...how about actual forums, like this one? Where people might actually speak their minds without artificial word limits? Now I wouldn't know as I've never actually used Twitter myself, but it seems to me like it's more designed for snarky comments and emojis than any kind of a nuanced, meaningful dialogue. Heck, even on sites that don't limit how much you can say, people just don't care. That's why "TL;DR" exists. Face it, when we're online, most people have the attention span of a mayfly, and a post of any length long enough to possibly actually say something intelligent would just bore most users before they bothered finishing to read it.
Another major issue with most popular social network sites is the popularity bias. Algorithms are designed to work like a feedback loop, only amplifying voices, ideas, and personalities that have already been liked by others or by your past behavior. That's exactly what you don't want in free speech. It's the little voice going against the herd that matters possibly the most. I remember a famous quote by Mark Twain that was posted on the walls back when I was in grade school. It went something along the lines of, "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Social media doesn't care for that though. Not enough likes or views? Get buried where no one will find you.
Heck, forget social media, that's true of entire websites. If you can't make it to page 1 of a search results page, or really just the first 3-5 results, chances are nobody will ever find you and listen in the first place. So really, those voices that do get heard at all are merely ones that game the system by actively trying to please the search algorithms (or recommendation algorithms in social media).
What that really means is that the mega-company, like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.--they're the ones who really control what you think, because they control the algorithms, and the popular voices most people are likely to listen to and follow are those voices that suit the algorithms.
Perhaps then it is good after all that Elon Musk wishes to make Twitter a freer platform, including open-sourcing the algorithms. That would invite constructive criticism from the community to help reduce bias in the algorithms (if that's even possible) and minimize the corrupting touch at least one of these networks has on the collective consciousness of the world.
On the other hand, we're probably still doomed as a species anyway.
It's not Elon, because he's one of the few big entrepreneurs I truly admire. From Paypal to Tesla to SpaceX, he's never stopped innovating and trying to make the world a better place. He deserves all of his hard-earned fortunes, and even now his only desire is to make Twitter have more free speech. That said, there is legitimate concern about disinformation. In the age of dumbasses (as Red Foreman would put it) it does not matter how stupid or insane something is, if it is out there on the internet, people will believe it, doubly so if it is outrageous.
Which leads to my real concern, frankly, the elephant in the room. Musk stated it himself:
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."
Wait, you mean to tell me the service where people write 3-word sentences is the virtual town hall where the citizens respectfully and thoughtfully debate policy in the name of democracy? Haha, yeah right.
Is it any wonder we had so many people questioning the efficacy of life-saving vaccines last year? At what point did it become acceptable for Twitter (or any other social media platform like it) to be seen as some forum for free speech?
If any digital platform should be the forum for free speech...how about actual forums, like this one? Where people might actually speak their minds without artificial word limits? Now I wouldn't know as I've never actually used Twitter myself, but it seems to me like it's more designed for snarky comments and emojis than any kind of a nuanced, meaningful dialogue. Heck, even on sites that don't limit how much you can say, people just don't care. That's why "TL;DR" exists. Face it, when we're online, most people have the attention span of a mayfly, and a post of any length long enough to possibly actually say something intelligent would just bore most users before they bothered finishing to read it.
Another major issue with most popular social network sites is the popularity bias. Algorithms are designed to work like a feedback loop, only amplifying voices, ideas, and personalities that have already been liked by others or by your past behavior. That's exactly what you don't want in free speech. It's the little voice going against the herd that matters possibly the most. I remember a famous quote by Mark Twain that was posted on the walls back when I was in grade school. It went something along the lines of, "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Social media doesn't care for that though. Not enough likes or views? Get buried where no one will find you.
Heck, forget social media, that's true of entire websites. If you can't make it to page 1 of a search results page, or really just the first 3-5 results, chances are nobody will ever find you and listen in the first place. So really, those voices that do get heard at all are merely ones that game the system by actively trying to please the search algorithms (or recommendation algorithms in social media).
What that really means is that the mega-company, like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.--they're the ones who really control what you think, because they control the algorithms, and the popular voices most people are likely to listen to and follow are those voices that suit the algorithms.
Perhaps then it is good after all that Elon Musk wishes to make Twitter a freer platform, including open-sourcing the algorithms. That would invite constructive criticism from the community to help reduce bias in the algorithms (if that's even possible) and minimize the corrupting touch at least one of these networks has on the collective consciousness of the world.
On the other hand, we're probably still doomed as a species anyway.
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Forgive me for being the grammar Nazi, but that use of the word is spelled principle. Principal is for the person in charge of a school.
Last edited:
thetopher
Yeah, I caught that grammar mistake a little too late. Btw don't agree with your Trump take at all. He told people to stop protesting and go home, he wasn't calling for violence. And Jan was not a coup, just a riot.
HowiMetdaSlayer
𝕔𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕒 𝕒𝕕𝕕𝕚𝕔𝕥 ☕️
Anyanka Bunny Slayer
✨ Hail Hydra ✨
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thrasherpix
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I see it spreading beyond social media. What was once lunatic fringe is now mainstream, and I've even seen it here where things once considered too fringe is suddenly too political to think about. I'm not surprised politics and other social institutions have become so vitriolic, because if you don't then you get buried for the more profitable ones. It's more profitable than operating with ethics, but they could still be ethical and make a profit.
And the drive to ever increase quarterly profits have done a lot of damage (by mass replacement of now vulnerable systems, typically with laws that mean only the company that "upgraded" the necessary services and even infrastructure were the only ones allowed to legally work on it for more profit), and may actually make that alien up there going "DOOM!" right. All it would take is another direct hit of a Carrington Event solar flare--and likely stronger--and I see the USA being defunct within a year, with many disastrous side effects as a result (in addition to the direct effects), and global geopolitics will be radically redefined. (It will be a good day to be somewhere ignored out of the way that doesn't require technology to function.) It's only a question of when, not if.
And I saw Cambridge Analytica (who were very effective and exploit social media algorithms seeking outrage, and even after they were sued out of existence, their talent was scooped up fast by other companies so they're not done yet, just operating the same way under new management) that explained how they tailored their ads and directed them the right way. They were right about me, as could be expected.
Most ads don't affect me, because I'm out of step with much of society, but a few have (and even provoke strong emotions in me in ways I grudgingly admired even as I feared it), and they had a label for my type that they could tailor even further by monitoring my online (and even offline various way, this done by bots rather than people) activity. If I were a Facebook user I might be a different person today as I got a major dose of ads (many political) that actually work on me, and breathe a sigh of relief that I abstained.
And the drive to ever increase quarterly profits have done a lot of damage (by mass replacement of now vulnerable systems, typically with laws that mean only the company that "upgraded" the necessary services and even infrastructure were the only ones allowed to legally work on it for more profit), and may actually make that alien up there going "DOOM!" right. All it would take is another direct hit of a Carrington Event solar flare--and likely stronger--and I see the USA being defunct within a year, with many disastrous side effects as a result (in addition to the direct effects), and global geopolitics will be radically redefined. (It will be a good day to be somewhere ignored out of the way that doesn't require technology to function.) It's only a question of when, not if.
And I saw Cambridge Analytica (who were very effective and exploit social media algorithms seeking outrage, and even after they were sued out of existence, their talent was scooped up fast by other companies so they're not done yet, just operating the same way under new management) that explained how they tailored their ads and directed them the right way. They were right about me, as could be expected.
Most ads don't affect me, because I'm out of step with much of society, but a few have (and even provoke strong emotions in me in ways I grudgingly admired even as I feared it), and they had a label for my type that they could tailor even further by monitoring my online (and even offline various way, this done by bots rather than people) activity. If I were a Facebook user I might be a different person today as I got a major dose of ads (many political) that actually work on me, and breathe a sigh of relief that I abstained.
TheMaster666
Potential
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If you're concerned about privacy online and find ads that follow you around the web, somehow "knowing" your interests more than a little creepy, do what I do. Use the Brave browser, DuckDuckGo search engine, uBlock Origin (don't get any ads at all then), and always disable as many cookies as they'll let you (even if the popups are annoying). But cookies are the way of the past. Google is experimenting with something worse, called fingerprinting, that effectively does the same thing as cookies. Read more about it here Browser Fingerprinting: What Is It and What Should You Do About It?.
Only Twitter I really followed was Glenn Greenwald, and since I dont have a Twitter account, they only let me see the most recent messages, which made it completely moot. So I instead found him on Rumble, where he has quite long videos chockful of information.