The Twitter Debacle

[Etern4l]

20 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

I generally view the need to verify misbehavior by the internet Nazis like Twatter, Facepoot, Goober and YouBoob as an unnecessary denial of what is already obvious to those paying attention. Also very hard to verify what they do because it is always so deceptive, secretive and misrepresented. What is more revealing is how deep and wide the scope of their evil plan and devices were and are. I am super glad that Musk is releasing all of the dirty garbage from the former Twatter Gestapo. It certainly puts things in perspective, including the nefarious behavior and underhanded schemes of the deep state lefties.

 

Paradoxically, the problem with these platforms is they are designed to serve you (almost) exactly the content you would love to see. You will rarely be provided with alternative viewpoints. The idea is to reinforce your entrenched views and push you into one of the extremes, where are you are predictable and thus easy to control. Divide and conquer. 

 

If you are into right-wing content, you will receive so much of it you will be constantly shivering with excitement and coming back for more. 

 

The only way a person with some agency left can defend themselves (short of geting completely off the grid lol), is to take sufficient measures to prevent tracking and targretting. Tip: Privacy mode is insufficient. 

[Mr. Fox]

1 minute ago, Etern4l said:

 

Paradoxically, the problem with these platforms is they are designed to serve you (almost) exactly the content you would love to see. You will rarely be provided with alternative viewpoints. The idea is to reinforce your entrenched views and push you into one of the extremes, where are you are predictable and thus easy to control. Divide and conquer. 

 

If you are into right-wing content, you will receive so much of it you will be constantly shivering with excitement and coming back for more. 

 

The only way a person with some agency left can defend themselves (short of geting completely off the grid lol), is to take sufficient measures to prevent tracking and targretting. Tip: Privacy mode is insufficient. 

The problem is the censoring, and in particular, the censoring of everything that doesn't fit their extreme left woke socialist agenda. It forces people from the center to move hard left or right, moreso of the latter.

[Etern4l]

11 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

The problem is the censoring, and in particular, the censoring of everything that doesn't fit their extreme left woke socialist agenda. It forces people from the center to move hard left or right, moreso of the latter.

 There are some edge cases, but by and large if you want to learn about anti-woke topics you willl be well served. Other more hardcore topics will still be banned, but it's hard to argue that's unreasonable after the atrocities of WWII.

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 There are some edge cases, but by and large if you want to learn about anti-woke topics you willl be well served. Other more hardcore topics will still be banned, but it's hard to argue that's unreasonable after the atrocities of WWII.

What they are doing certainly doesn't come anywhere near the order of magnitude of the WWII atrocities and can't be compared to that, but the approach with the censoring and agenda-driven information (disinformation) control is remarkably similar. This is unacceptable and totally contrary to normal American life, not to mention unconstitutional and illegal. They are basically blocking everything that is true, accurate, normal and mainstream and replacing it with extreme woke, hard left nonsense... wickedness on steroids. They shroud their agenda in a fake presentation of being anti-racism and anti-hate when it is exactly that they are guilty of. Totally ludicrous.

[Etern4l]

6 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

What they are doing certainly doesn't come anywhere near the order of magnitude of the WWII atrocities and can't be compared to that

 

Not sure, what you mean - qualitatively, the statements are often not far off the pre-WWII propaganda. Of course, limited physical violence is involved, but that was largely the case in the 1920s as well. Ye's latest outburst would be one example, and even Musk fixed that.

[Aaron44126]

Leaked email shows Musk threatened to sue Twitter employees who leak to media

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/leaked-email-shows-musk-threatened-to-sue-twitter-employees-who-leak-to-media/

(...as Musk himself leaks emails and documents from the previous management)

Also a bit at the bottom there about the conservative response to the "Twitter files" posted by Musk; once actually looking into the details, there isn't really anything there that was not already general knowledge...  Definitely not a "smoking gun".

 

Also this one about Elon Musk's appearance on a Dave Chappelle show which has drawn some negative reactions.  A video from the show was uploaded to Twitter, went viral, and then the account that posted it disappeared...  (Talk about censorship?)

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505354/elon-musk-dave-chappelle-booed-san-francisco-twitter

 

———

 

I mostly agree with @Etern4l's perspective on the social media echo chambers.  Though I don't think that the end goal of social media companies is necessarily to divide users into opposing camps; that's merely a side-effect of their actual end goal, which is simply to maximize revenue.  The "algorithm" is basically tuned to feed you whatever will keep you scrolling (...maximizing their ability to serve ad impressions, and thus derive a profit).  Same thing goes for YouTube's "recommended next video" suggestions and so forth.  They just want to keep you engaged on the platform for as long as possible.  Eyeballs are money.  End users are the product.  (This is why I actively avoid any use of social media whenever possible.  I think that this is a gross business model.)

 

...So, it follows that if you engage with left-wing content, you will start to see nothing but left-wing content.  If you engage with right-wing content, you will start to see nothing but right-wing content.  Their ability to track user behavior is highly sophisticated and refined at this point.  You don't necessarily even have to click on something to "engage" with it; they pay attention even to how long you leave it up on the screen before scrolling past.  (There is also tracking code that ends up many sites that results in data about what pages you look at making its way back to Facebook, Google, Amazon, or other advertising/tracking entities.  They can tell what you're interested in based on sites that you visit, in many cases.)

 

It follows that social media platforms are not a reliable source of "news" or "truth".  This, of course, leads to echo chambers and extreme ideology becoming more entrenched, does not help foster reasonable discourse between people of differing opinions (everyone is so sure that they are right), and is causing all manner of societal issues today.  The notion that the those people on "the other side" have an evil, secret hidden agenda is unrealistic.  If this were true, it would be reasonably easy to turn up some hard facts beyond suppositions — for instance, leaked communications or internal documents confirming as much.  No one could keep such a supposedly well-orchestrated evil plan so secret, especially with hundreds or thousands of individuals involved.  (I know there are smaller scale unsavory/corruption leaks from time to time.  These occur on both sides.  I'm talking about the supposed-big picture plan.)

 

And I want to be clear that in this paragraph, I am not trying to "defend" social media companies (as I rather despise them).  But, as far as the law/constitution goes...  "Freedom of speech" is something that people like to overextend.  It sounds like it means that anyone should be able to say whatever they want on any platform or venue.  But, in actuality, the first amendment simply puts limits on the government's ability to limit people's speech.  It doesn't put limits on business' ability to do so.  In fact, in recent years some state legislatures have tried to enact laws dictating how moderation on social media platforms should work, and courts have found these to be unconstitutional freedom of speech violations.  Florida's law is largely blocked from taking effect by an appeals court while legal proceedings play out because it likely violates the first amendment (page 4), and the one from Texas is in a similar situation but the block came from the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.  So, like it or not, it appears for now that social media companies have final say over what content is allowed or not (other than illegal content, for instance that espouses violence or human trafficking).  ...And while the Texas and Florida laws were an effort to force social media companies to loosen up moderation, California and New York have introduced laws to make social media moderation more strict; these are rather new and it is not yet clear how they will shake out.

 

...And that's about as far as I care to venture into the "political" space.  I won't follow up any further and will stick to posting interesting "what the heck" Twitter headlines that I run across.  🙂

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

Though I don't think that the end goal of social media companies is necessarily to divide users into opposing camps; that's merely a side-effect of their actual end goal, which is simply to maximize revenue. 

 

To clarify, the platforms' pursuit of revenue at all costs results in them providing the super-wealthy advertisers with ultimate weapons of mass mind control.  Worth reposting I guess, as the man behind the successful Ob., and later Tr. campaigns provides a reasonable overview of the basic principles behind the techniques:

 

 

The above content is 6 years old, we can rest completely assured that the techniques are far more sophisticated now. It's also worth noting that there are no specific checks on or legal framework around the platforms themselves potentially deploying these tools for their own goals that go beyond simple revenue-seeking. Personal data protection laws in the US are lax. There is another video where he takes questions from the audience. Someone asked how they acquire the data, and the answer was "in the US it's not a problem, just a question of cost - more tricky in other jurisdictions".

 

Lastly, if I may suggest, it would be extremely naive to believe that Musk, a man who says one thing ("Oh dear, AI will wipe us all out"), and pursues a direction contrary to the warning: invests heavily in AI, will make Twitter any more benign a platform.

 

[Aaron44126]

Oh… Twitter Blue is back for real. ($8/mo if you sign up via web, not $7 like I posted earlier.)

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23506335/twitter-blue-verified-checkmarks-return-impersonation

[Aaron44126]

Twitter's "Trust and Safety Council" (established in 2016) has been disbanded.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-ditches-trust-and-safety-council-as-musk-tweets-fuel-harassment/

[Etern4l]

OK, at least the pretence of the notion of  "safety" on Twitter has been abandoned. Restricting access to prevent minors from exposure to the hardcore content would be a logical next step. 

[Aaron44126]

Ha.  Twitter account "@ElonJet" was taken down.  This account tweeted updates about the location of Elon Musk's private plane (...I assume using publicly available flight tracking data?).

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23508898/elonjet-twitter-ban-elon-musk-jet-tracker

 

There was already some drama over this account...

• Before taking over Twitter, Elon Musk (supposedly) contacted the account operator and offered to pay to have the account taken down (paywall).
• After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk said that he will not ban the @ElonJet account, because, free speech.
• The account operator noticed that the account's visibility had been reduced, posted about that and somehow obtained an (alleged) internal screenshot of someone in Twitter's internal Slack asking for its visibility to be restricted.
• Perhaps in reaction to those posts, the account's visibility was restored to normal.  (I saw an article about this a couple of days ago but can't find it right this moment...)
• ...And now, the account is dead.

[Edit]

Another article.  Apparently the same guy has plane tracker accounts set up for other planes (Bill Gates, Russian oligarchs, Air Force One, ...) and those are still working.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-suspends-elonjet-plane-tracking-bot-after-musk-pledged-to-leave-it-up/

[Aaron44126]

Elon Musk is apparently interested in not paying out the three months' severance that he promised employees facing termination.  (Plus, issues just managing his legal team.)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-brings-spacex-lawyers-to-twitter-as-layoff-lawsuits-mount-report-says/

[Etern4l]

Free speech when it suits, and treats people like dirt apparently. Well, unfortunately for Chief Twit, lawyers are just waiting for these kind of opportunities:

 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

Twitter invents a new policy to explain the disappearance of @ElonJet (which is now unsuspended, though the operator’s main account is now suspended).

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23509817/twitter-elonjets-ban-creator-jack-sweeney-links-trackers

[Aaron44126]

Elon Musk offloads about $3.6 billion in Tesla stock. (Twice so far this year, he has said that he is done selling Tesla stock.) Up to around $23 billion since the Twitter purchase stuff started.

 

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/elon-musk-offloads-another-3-6-billion-of-tesla-stock/

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

(Twice so far this year, he has said that he is done selling Tesla stock.)

 

I suspect the SA gang have made quite a bit of money off the various tweets (perhaps one of the underlying motivations behind the pursuit of the ownership of the platform?), as a general rule it would probably be safe to assume the opposite to what the official messages claim is taking or will take place.

[Aaron44126]

Musk bans live location sharing, says he’ll sue creator of plane-tracking bot

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-bans-live-location-sharing-says-hell-sue-creator-of-plane-tracking-bot/

 

 

But more critically...

 

Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512004/elon-musk-starts-banning-critical-journalists-from-twitter

 

Freedom of speech, right?

 

[Edit]

Hitting more mainstream, non-tech media as well.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143291081/twitter-suspends-journalists-elon-musk-jet

[Aaron44126]

Twitter now blocking all links to any content on Mastodon?  That could be seen as anti-competitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512113/twitter-blocking-mastodon-links-elon-musk-elonjet

 

Apparently the journalists that have been blocked (see above) are just suspended for seven days.

[Etern4l]

44 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Twitter now blocking all links to any content on Mastodon?  That could be seen as anti-competitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512113/twitter-blocking-mastodon-links-elon-musk-elonjet

 

Apparently the journalists that have been blocked (see above) are just suspended for seven days.

 

Thanks to the Twitter Debacle, I discovered Mastodon. The foundational principles look cool, however, accessing the actual content doesn't seem as straightforward as one could imagine it should be?  

[Aaron44126]

Ha ha ha ha...

 

Elon Musk temporarily suspends Twitter Spaces after being confronted by banned journalist

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23512930/elon-musk-twitter-spaces-washington-post-new-york-times-banned

 

Last night, Elon Musk popped into a Spaces chat discussing his move to ban a bunch of journalists’ accounts from the platform. Confronted by Buzzfeed News’ Katie Notopoulos and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell (who was one of the banned reporters) on how he can claim to support free speech while also ejecting journalists who report information about him that he does not like, Musk stuck to his refrain of “you dox, you get suspended.” (The banned users had not, in fact, doxxed him.) He dipped out when pressed further.

 

Within hours, Twitter Spaces was at least partially removed from the platform, with users saying they were unable to access it on iOS or Android. Musk claimed that the feature was removed to fix a newly identified bug: that banned users like Harwell were able to join a Spaces chat, which is genuinely an issue that Twitter ought to remedy. But under normal circumstances, it’s easy to imagine this bug being quietly updated when the fix was ready. The swift and extreme response of removing the vertical until it is fixed feels personal.

 

Recording of the exchange --

https://twitter.com/ForeverEversley/status/1603612770892918784

 

[Etern4l]

3 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Ha ha ha ha...

 

Elon Musk temporarily suspends Twitter Spaces after being confronted by banned journalist

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23512930/elon-musk-twitter-spaces-washington-post-new-york-times-banned

 

Last night, Elon Musk popped into a Spaces chat discussing his move to ban a bunch of journalists’ accounts from the platform. Confronted by Buzzfeed News’ Katie Notopoulos and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell (who was one of the banned reporters) on how he can claim to support free speech while also ejecting journalists who report information about him that he does not like, Musk stuck to his refrain of “you dox, you get suspended.” (The banned users had not, in fact, doxxed him.) He dipped out when pressed further.

 

Within hours, Twitter Spaces was at least partially removed from the platform, with users saying they were unable to access it on iOS or Android. Musk claimed that the feature was removed to fix a newly identified bug: that banned users like Harwell were able to join a Spaces chat, which is genuinely an issue that Twitter ought to remedy. But under normal circumstances, it’s easy to imagine this bug being quietly updated when the fix was ready. The swift and extreme response of removing the vertical until it is fixed feels personal.

 

Recording of the exchange --

https://twitter.com/ForeverEversley/status/1603612770892918784

 

 

LOL. I believe the technical term is 'snowflake' :)

[jaybee83]

just proves that Elon is just as human as the rest of us 😄 including all the idiotic behaviours we demonstrate when pushed into an uncomfortable corner haha

[Etern4l]

One of the problems is that some people (most likely including Musk himself) believe he is a superhuman, therefore this self-inflicted slow-burning learning process has been necessary in order to get the myth dispelled.

[Aaron44126]

Alright, here's some more.

 

Elon Musk is offering the generous opportunity to invest in Twitter at $54.20

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23513407/elon-musk-equity-investment-sucker-born-every-minute

(After admitting that he "obviously" overpaid for Twitter, he is offering up the opportunity for other people to hop in and overpay as well!)

 

Twitter stiffs software vendor with $8 million left on contract, lawsuit says

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-stiffs-software-vendor-with-8-million-left-on-contract-lawsuit-says/

 

Elon Musk re-enabled Twitter accounts for several journalists banned over @ElonJet

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/17/23513620/elon-musk-suspended-journalists-twitter-reinstated-elonjet

(After running a poll, no less...)

[Etern4l]

Looks to me like this Twitter thing may be his undoing, at least in terms of business reputation. The veneer has been falling off fast, which would likely deal further blows to Tesla stock, as the valuation is mostly based on the Elon hype. This video has aged well: