Tryp, you invest so much into these things. Why?
in the sense that i'm willing to debate on things that i pay attention to? jada is a familiar person who can reason, debating can be good rhetoric exercise, and of course i can learn new things in the process
https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-orders/
The above is one example source. There have been individual infringements by both Twitter and X, but X has, as a whole, performed worse. The Turkey thing is such a blatantly obvious example of textbook censorship, which X claims to fight against, that it's just foolishness to think Elon bought X to address free speech like he says he does.
social media companies have to follow laws. this article basically affirms what i was saying before, which is that more requests got honored as the turkish presidential election came around, because there had to be legal compliance. the article also introduces that the volume of requests increased. and if the requests would not be accepted, presumably the turks would do what the article said they did in 2014—simply ban the service
> ok, that's a bit dramatic...
Fair. But the point is: Elon gave himself an algorithmic megaphone unrivaled by anyone on Twitter.
Then, he uses that algorithmic megaphone to endorse people like Jordan Peterson, Donald Trump, and many other conservatives. Intentionally or not, effectively what he's done is used X to politically boost conservatives. Something Twitter, Google, and others would not do, for fear of free speech issues.
you're telling me twitter (prior to X), google, and others have not been known to have heavy political bias in their algorithms?
there is sort of a case to be made that elon is himself boosted, and elon leans politically right. honestly, so what? i still get the krassensteins on my timeline, and i hate the krassensteins. so the algorithm is working pretty well in the sense that i get content relevant to my interests from opposing perspectives, even though i heavily bias it in another direction based on who i follow. elon using his own tweets to share his thoughts isn't a doomsday scenario, people can agree or disagree
I mean suppose I was a liberal leftist and bought X now, citing alarming right wing bias, and said I'd make it a free speech platform and get rid of the political bias. Suppose then I immediately tasked the twitter engineers to give me an algorithmic superpower that allows me to bypass the system to ensure whomever I want will get the biggest audience, used my cheat codes on the platform to artificially boost liberal left wing political figures, and then endorsed Kamala Harris. In that case, would you feel I was a bit hypocritical? How are you not seeing what I'm seeing?
no, i don't think the owner of the platform being boosted and having partisan opinions really destroys free speech. maybe if he banned a sitting president or something like that
It seems like our disagreement is then more fundamental.
Let me take back what I said to address your question, I recognize that Twitter did algorithmically boost and deamplify certain accounts and did shadow ban accounts. I condemn this.
I suppose the fundamental disagreements is that you think what Twitter and X did with the algorithmic boosts was fine, except when they banned Trump. I condemn the algorithmic boosts, suppressions, and the banning of Trump.
The other fundamental disagreement is regarding whether a company that openly censors content on behalf of corrupt governments should still be considered a great fighter for freedom of speech.
I think we agree about the facts, but just interpret things differently.
It seems like our disagreement is then more fundamental.
Let me take back what I said, I think that Twitter did algorithmically boost and deamplify certain accounts and did shadow ban accounts. I condemn this.
I suppose the fundamental disagreements is that you think what Twitter and X did with the algorithmic boosts was fine, except when they banned Trump. I condemn both the algorithmic boosts, suppressions, and the banning of Trump.
i do think there is some minor unfair censorship on X, and that even people like andrew anglin and jared taylor should be allowed—provided they aren't breaking TOS. and there is some soft censorship with "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach". but i also understand this is a nuanced situation.
anglin and taylor are part of a list of people the ADL want off the platform permanently. and for context, the ADL had programmers helping create censorship algorithms at Twitter. and there was a big fight over censorship at X, where the ADL and other groups would pull advertisers if there wasn't enough censorship. that culminated in the #BanTheADL movement, which helped break that yoke. and eventually the ADL did restore advertisers, but after significant damage—X has been operating at financial loss for a while now because of these games.
so elon has to move carefully on this censorship, and he basically waits until there is enough uproar to unban an individual from that list (this happened with alex jones and nick fuentes). it's probably worth noting that the people being suppressed here are all from the political far right.
with twitter, the algorithm manipulation was an entirely different game. as in it wasn't played around people threatening to pull money if they didn't get censorship concessions; it was based on the Twitter team being in alignment with censorship groups like the ADL and having them help work on the algorithms, following their infamous ban list, etc.
The other fundamental disagreement is regarding whether a company that openly censors on behalf of corrupt governments should still be considered a great fighter for freedom of speech.
I think we agree about the facts, but just interpret things differently.
being purely pragmatic, it seems better to do what you need to do to keep the platform accessible there, as opposed to the people there simply not having the platform at all.
Ok, it seems we are a bit more in agreement then.
I'll reply in more detail tomorrow, but let me address one glaring thing: The same company whose most upheld core foundational value is freedom of speech engages in the most blatant and obvious public censorship possible, on behalf of clearly corrupt governments, to make money.
Think about it, Trypt. If such an obvious contradiction doesn't demonstrate that they're not serious, then what does?
Do you really think they're complying because they think it's better for the Turkish people?
'll reply in more detail tomorrow, but let me address one glaring thing: The same company whose most upheld core foundational value is freedom of speech engages in the most blatant and obvious public censorship possible, on behalf of clearly corrupt governments, to make money.
Think about it, Trypt. If such an obvious contradiction doesn't demonstrate that they're not serious, then what does?
Do you really think they're complying because they think it's better for the Turkish people?
the choices are cuck to the government or lose the platform there...maybe even worse, the platform never gets to come back after the elections. if they moral grandstand, all that accomplishes in the end is they can say "we stood the line", meanwhile the turkish people are off worse for it without access to the biggest platform for discourse. i feel like many if not most turks would even find it acceptable to compromise on stuff about their presidential election for this
there is something else here that i feel is worth mentioning, since spatial's post about how turkey is a big part of X's revenue and my own post about the ADL and advertisers poke at the periphery of a big issue. and that's that money is playing a huge role in censorship. if Elon didn't have a massive personal fortune to buffer against the advertiser boycotts in 2022/2023, X would have collapsed. and it's still been operating in the negative.
advertiser capture isn't exclusive to X either, it affects all major platforms and is a problem of scale. because to maintain these servers and staff, there needs to be revenue. Gab can do it because Gab isn't on the same scale. so this is an element that restricts free speech that i don't see mentioned very often.
Twitter is a schizo shithole filled with hate speech. There is no free speech, as that implies you have to entrust your speech to others at their own cost. Truth is Twitter now follows Elon's example because of what Elon believes. Free speech is just a mask for racists to hide under. It's no surprise thst Trypt has a little white girl as his profile picture, it is more revealing of his civilized/domineering nature then I'm sure he cares to admit. Just saying that I think Trypt wouldve been on Epstein's list given the chance. I really think similarly of a lot of people here as peoole who so deeply value civilization (exploitation) and intellect tend to be the same type of people who were on Ep's L* Express.
"The government" and the people are one in the same. All part of the same civilized logic with a conservative narcissistic core. Most people wish to partake in the bohemian fruits of the powerful or enable them to do so, as they have "earned it," and what they dont admit is that there is no limit to what you can "earn." The masses are not "woke," they are enablers at best and opportunistic perpetrators of power. I mean I could see myself as an enabler of sorts, but less so as an invested perpetrator, making me more of a "woke liberal tyrant" that "hates change" (as trypt said, with "change" being a convenient word for any purpse...) or whatever other type of cultural strawman.
I get what you're saying, Trypt, but I think the reality we live in so far detached from each other that there's no way we'll be reaching any sort of consensus.
In my mind, what you've accepted is that the bastion of free speech is censoring on behalf of corrupt governments willingly and openly, and you see nothing wrong with it. That is so far detached from the world I live in that, in my mind, there's nothing that will ever convince you otherwise.
What Elon said he wanted to do was fix free speech and fix government's involvement in regulating free speech. That's what X's one mission is supposed to be, fix free speech and stop government involvement in regulating it. This IS the moral grandstand that you're talking about, and that IS their core mission. It's why, according to Elon, they exist, to fix free speech and save humanity. It's a wonderful mission. But open black-and-white endorsement of government censorship is the opposite of fixing free speech. You cannot find an example more clear than that.
I could respect what Spatial said, that they chose to do it for fear of financial repercussions. But what you're saying sounds like trying to find how they're censoring on behalf of the government to actually help the Turkish people instead of doing it for financial reasons.
"Save humanity" as in save humanity as you prefer it by encouraging conservative attitude (via discriminatory speech) and its willingness to self-exploit as part of the ponzi scheme and fantasies of power.
"Humanity" will be fine with no twitter and no "free speech" that twitter "provides."
