X (née Twitter): Elmo has no good ideas

[Ran]

I mostly use Twitter to read a few specific writers and journalists, and a smattering of entertainment sites, plus to broadcast our own stuff at Westeros, and it really hasn't changed for me either.

I suspect it's different for people who are captured by the algorithm and just scroll endlessly rather than curating it at all. Twitter's algorithm was never your friend, it was always aimed at increasing your time on site by any means necessary.

[Consigliere]

Hasn't really changed for me either. I primarily follow specific journalists who report on football, cricket and rugby and a few local and international news accounts. I also don't bother reading the comments - it's really not worth it. If you are a little technically inclined then you can also patch the app to disable ads, promoted content, users, trends and the various who to follow stuff. Only using the 'following' tab also eliminates a lot of the rubbish.

[mormont]

I very carefully curate my timeline, so I don't see a lot of the neo-Nazis etc. But there's no denying that a lot of the folks I did follow, have left. And that's a noticeable change. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Let’s be honest it was always a cesspit of argument and bad faith. You should never read the comments under the main tweet, and that’s always been true, unless you want to see the worst elements of humanity. Yes there are ads, but almost every other social media platform is the same, if not worse for adverts. 

Personally almost nothing has changed

Demonstrably a lot more Nazis and Nazi rhetoric.

Must I literally trot the data showcasing the increase of each and high level cases of Musk inviting back Nazis like the founder of Stormfront and Kanye west after his acquisition?

Why truly play defense to a fascist-sympathizer like musk’s handling of Twitter?  What is the goal for you? 

Edited September 8 by Varysblackfyre321

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 hours ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

Community notes is the best thing to have happened to twitter. And twitter has more free speech now (there isn't 100 percent free speech though)

-Musk has literally given pms to Saudi Arabia to persecute dissidents-, said repeated use of cis would be a suspendible offense and has crackdown on political speech from the political opposition of Turkey’s government(which the previous Twitter regime fought against). 

Edit Elaboration. Oh also throttling traffic he views as competitors or doesn’t like.

But he is more Blaise about people using slurs against minorities and telling trans people to kill themselves than the previous regime(who also coddled the far right but to a lesser extent) so many a free speech absolutist are content.

Im not saying Twitter pre-musk was a god send or that it didn’t do some genuinely condemnable things(giving special privelages to far right culture warriors, not challenging authorian regime’s demands  as much as they could like Saudi Arabia ) —Musk didn’t make Twitter bad. He did make it worse.

 

Edited September 8 by Varysblackfyre321

[Heartofice]

I'm sure some people have left Twitter, but I'd suggest if you did notice that then it's probably pretty dependent on the type of people you were following in the first place. Certainly I've barely noticed anyone leaving, although a lot of people a few months ago claimed they were going to.

I don't know if Twitter is any better for 'free speech' (not sure what that even means) than it used to be before, although certainly pre-musk the principals behind much of the moderation came from a pretty far left position and I'm happy that has changed. |

There are elements of it that are better, I think the echo chamber nature of Twitter (which is a major issue for society not just Twitter) has improved, community notes plays a big role in that. But for it to truly feel like less of an echo chamber they will need to fix the 'For you' section to truly show content that challenges your preconceived ideas and a range of opinions. Right now 'For you' is just spam and seems to have no idea about what kind of topics you are interested in. 

Edited September 8 by Heartofice

[Gorn]

Twitter is the most toxic method of communication known to humankind, with the possible exception of multiplayer video game chats and cesspools such as 8chan. The primary reason why people shouldn't spend time on it is their own mental health.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Yup.

On “free speech”; because people are confused (or suckered) by this.

1. When you sign up to a Twitter (or any other social media account), you agree to terms of service (that thing that no one reads). Included in that agreement is a set of community guidelines.

They set the rules, they determine whether or not those rules have been violated, and they determine the punishment. Again, you agreed to this. 

2. Most importantly,

YOUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH DOES NOT OBLIGATE ANYONE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A PLATFORM.

If I invite you into my home and you shit on my rug; I’m kicking you the hell out of my house. The why is obvious.

Let’s say I call up the publisher of the New York Times. I tell him, “Eugene, you’re going to publish my op-ed in your paper next week. I have some spleen to vent by god.”

Eugene would be justified in telling me to go fuck myself. It might make me sad but it isn’t a violation of my rights. 

Platforming toxic shitheads moves the needle on freedom of speech not one millimetre. It just makes your platform toxic. 

Edited September 8 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

… also, maybe this isn’t the correct thread for this but I’m hearing some wild shit about Musk, Starlink and the war in Ukraine…

Private billionaires unilaterally dictating foreign policy? Nah, that couldn’t possible go wrong…

Edited September 8 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

… also, maybe this isn’t the correct thread for this but I’m hearing some wild shit about Musk, Starlink and the war in Ukraine…

Private billionaires unilaterally dictating foreign policy? Nah, that couldn’t possible go wrong…

My understanding of the situation was that Ukraine was using the access Starlink was giving them to the internet for communications and defensive operations for offensive purposes, in contravention of the terms for which the service was provided. This was at a time when Starlink was essentially giving the service away to Ukraine, bearing most of the cost itself. 

Ever since the DoD signed up a contract earlier this year for Starshield, the military version of Starlink, Ukraine has been able to use the service for offensive operations without limitation, and apparently some of its recent attacks with sea drones on the Kerch and other targets this year used the tech. 

Musk's reasoning for why he shut it down is rather suspect, but the facts are that Ukraine was misusing the service.

Edited September 8 by Ran

[Zorral]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Ukraine was misusing the service.

Not so.  Quite a few in-depth reports of this running currently in the main stream news media, from the NYT to the WaPo.  One of them in the WaPo has a gift link, so you need not subscribe.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Yup.

On “free speech”; because people are confused (or suckered) by this.

1. When you sign up to a Twitter (or any other social media account), you agree to terms of service (that thing that no one reads). Included in that agreement is a set of community guidelines.

They set the rules, they determine whether or not those rules have been violated, and they determine the punishment. Again, you agreed to this. 

2. Most importantly,

YOUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH DOES NOT OBLIGATE ANYONE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A PLATFORM.

If I invite you into my home and you shit on my rug; I’m kicking you the hell out of my house. The why is obvious.

Let’s say I call up the publisher of the New York Times. I tell him, “Eugene, you’re going to publish my op-ed in your paper next week. I have some spleen to vent by god.”

Eugene would be justified in telling me to go fuck myself. It might make me sad but it isn’t a violation of my rights. 

Platforming toxic shitheads moves the needle on freedom of speech not one millimetre. It just makes your platform toxic. 

There are invitation with a chance to shit on your rug?  Bloody hell, and I thought Americans are prudes.

Are the invitations free? Or is it some sorta fund raiser, like the tfg does for Giuliani. And for what end?

Is it #bringback.DMC?

Yes, that was pretty round way to get there.

Edited September 8 by A Horse Named Stranger

[Ran]

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Not so.  Quite a few in-depth reports of this running currently in the main stream news media, from the NYT to the WaPo.  One of them in the WaPo has a gift link, so you need not subscribe.

If you mean this one, that confirms what I said. The ToS for Starlink is even explicit about weaponizing the system being a violation. Hence the DoD contract for Starshield.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

If you mean this one, that confirms what I said. The ToS for Starlink is even explicit about weaponizing the system being a violation. Hence the DoD contract for Starshield.

Okay, but that is not remotely why Musk said he stopped the service mid-attack, right? We're agreed on that?

And regardless of why he actually did, you do recognize that Musk having the power to do something like that based on his own viewpoint and not any oversight might be a smidgen bad?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

There are invitation with a chance to shit on your rug?  Bloody hell, and I thought Americans are prudes.

Are the invitations free? Or is it some sorta fund raiser, like the tfg does for Giuliani. And for what end?

I don’t know what any of this means. Are you on a treadmill?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Musk's reasoning for why he shut it down is rather suspect, but the facts are that Ukraine was misusing the service.

His “Pearl Harbor” analogy only makes sense if the Americans invaded Japan before the Japanese attacked them in the Pacific.

And since when did billionaires have moral qualms about doing business with both sides in a war zone? If he grew a conscience, why not, I dunno, take the side of the country being invaded?

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

His “Pearl Harbor” analogy only makes sense if the Americans invaded Japan before the Japanese attacked them in the Pacific.

And since when did billionaires have moral qualms about doing business with both sides in a war zone? If he grew a conscience, why not, I dunno, take the side of the country being invaded?

He doesn't have a conscience like that. He cares deeply about the world ending before he can get off of it. And when Russians told him that that would be an escalation, he stupidly took them at face value. 

Musk is often remarkably naive like that; he genuinely appears to just...believe people when they say things to him and not have any theory of mind of what they may be trying to do to manipulate him. That's been the case throughout his career - it was problems with Thiel as well - and is probably part of him being on the spectrum. But it means that he's quite vulnerable to the sorts of Majorly Online issues that one can have, and it also means that Russia - which has a whole cottage industry dedicated to manipulating egotistical people in power - gets a lot of sway with him.

[Ran]

24 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

And since when did billionaires have moral qualms about doing business with both sides in a war zone? If he grew a conscience, why not, I dunno, take the side of the country being invaded?

He was? Ukraine got a whole lot of free service from Starlink, not Russia

 

But as the WaPo article notes, he never really envisioned Starlink being weaponized. Frankly, the administration, DoD, and State Department seemed to understand the issue, hence Colin Khal (no relation to Khal Drogo) promising to try and expedite a DoD contract that would satisfy the concerns.

And again, since that contract, Starshield-enablee drones have apparently been successfully used in offensive operations by Ukraine.

[Kalbear]

15 minutes ago, Ran said:

He was? Ukraine got a whole lot of free service from Starlink, not Russia

Which immediately got pulled when Russia told him to stop. 

15 minutes ago, Ran said:

But as the WaPo article notes, he never really envisioned Starlink being weaponized. Frankly, the administration, DoD, and State Department seemed to understand the issue, hence Colin Khal (no relation to Khal Drogo) promising to try and expedite a DoD contract that would satisfy the concerns.

And again, since that contract, Starshield-enablee drones have apparently been successfully used in offensive operations by Ukraine.

And again I ask - what would stop Musk from simply choosing to not honor this contract, like he's done repeatedly with various other organizations? When Russia goes and tells Musk that if Ukraine attacks Crimea (or Moscow, or anything else they want) they'll consider nuking things what is Musk going to do?

[Zorral]

Musk Shut Down Ukrainian Attack After Chat with Russian Official

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-shutdown-ukrainian-attack-after-chat-with-russian-official

Quote

 

This is so important I’m going to start with a tl;dr: Elon Musk got caught with his hand in the national security cookie jar, sabotaging or blocking a major Ukrainian military operation after conversations with a Russian government official.

Now let’s unpack this.

Last month I wrote about the rise of the global oligarchs and I made particular mention of Elon Musk. Even if you set aside the various things you may not like about Musk he has amassed a degree of economic power that is novel and dangerous in itself even if he had the most benign of intentions and the most stable personality. More than half the operating satellites in the sky are owned and controlled by him. Overnight we finally got confirmation of something that has long been suspected or hinted at but which none of the players had an interest in confirming. Last September Musk either cut off or refused to activate his Starlink satellite service near the Crimean coast during a surprise Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Navy at anchor at its Sevastopol naval port.

Ukraine has made extensive use of naval drones. But it at least sounds like this was supposed to be a massed attack that would have done extensive damage to the Russian Navy and the naval port itself and thus seriously degraded Russia’s ability to launch missile attacks against Ukraine. In other words, it doesn’t sound like this was just any attack, though the details are sketchy.

On its face you might say, they’re Musk’s satellites and he’s in charge of who gets to use them and how. But of course it’s not that simple. It’s a good illustration of how Musk’s economic power has crept into domains that are more like the power of a state.

Starlink is a network of satellites providing robust internet connectivity without reliance on any ground infrastructure. This is critical in Ukraine since the ground infrastructure has all been degraded or destroyed. Starlink is owned by and made possible by the launch capacity of SpaceX, Musk’s space launch company, which is currently the sole means the U.S. has to launch satellites into space.

Musk made business and financial decisions that, under our economic system, entitles him to the vast profits of SpaceX. But he didn’t create it on his own. The company was built on the back of U.S. government contracts. In essence the U.S. government fronted the money to build SpaceX by awarding it contracts that made its business viable. Musk and SpaceX are also U.S. military contractors. That comes with a big set of responsibilities and restrictions.

Raytheon isn’t at liberty to sell its high tech weaponry to Russia or China if the price is right. These contractors are legally and financially bound into the U.S. national security apparatus. So is Musk and SpaceX. Or at least they’re supposed to be. A critical part of this story is that Musk took this action after conversations with an unnamed Russian government official which, Musk claimed, led him to worry the attack could escalate into a nuclear conflict.

Of course the threat of escalation has hung over the Ukraine war from the beginning. Countless civilian and military officials in the U.S., Europe and across the globe have been analyzing and trying to manage that risk for 18 months. We should take Musk’s claim about fears of nuclear escalation with a huge, huge grain of salt. There are many other threats and inducements that could have come up in these conversations. But let’s assume for the moment that’s what the Russian official told him. It’s simply not Musk’s judgment to make. That’s not only the case as a matter of basic democratic accountability and national security law. Musk is the last person you’d want making such a decision. He’s a mercurial weirdo whose views visibly change by the day in reaction to whoever is giving him the most comments love on Twitter. His national security thinking is at best juvenile and fatuous. The idea that such a call was Musk’s to make is as absurd as it is terrifying.

Let’s imagine a more generous to Musk scenario.

Maybe that Russian official said to Musk: Turn off your satellites over our naval base or we will start shooting down your satellites. In technical terms that is not an idle threat. You might say, well, war’s hell, Elon. But he might reply, was the U.S. government prepared to reimburse me for the satellites and disrupted service contract fees that I incurred not for any sane business reason but to advance U.S. national security interests?

That’s a good question and I’m not sure I know what the answer is. In fact, I suspect there is no answer. The whole situation is one that mixes and matches private sector and national security in very scrambled ways. And Musk who is someone who pushes every envelope and is more than happy to use his domestic celebrity and control of communication to reek serious havoc with any U.S. government that calls him to account. Let’s not forget that it was just after these events that Musk suddenly started advocating his personal ‘peace plan’ on Twitter — which surprisingly seem to match all of Russia’s demands.

Let me be clear that I don’t think that last scenario is what happened. But we don’t know that it didn’t. My point in discussing that possibility is to illustrate the fact that it’s not just that Elon Musk sucks, which he does. The whole situation sucks. You simply can’t have critical national security infrastructure in the hands of a Twitter troll who’s a soft touch for whichever foreign autocrat blows some smoke up his behind. But that’s what we have here.

As I said above, we’ve known or suspected for a long time that stuff like this had happened. Musk revealed at the time that he’d been talking with Russian officials. Indeed, at one point he said he had spoken to Putin himself on more than one occasion during this period. But we shouldn’t take anything he says at face value. The U.S. hasn’t wanted to get into this publicly because they don’t want a public spat with Musk. (This is the subject of Ronan Farrow’s recent piece in The New Yorker.) This applies even more to Ukraine which still relies on as much Starlink access as it can get. In response to these latest revelations the Ukrainians’ gloves seem to have come off. One of President Zelensky’s top advisors went off on Musk on Twitter last night essentially arguing that Musk personally has blood on his hand for all the subsequent attacks launched from those ships and facilities into Ukraine.

We need to learn more details about just what happened here. A congressional investigation wouldn’t be a bad idea. But we know enough to know that a guy in charge of a lot of critical technology the U.S. relies on is happy to cut deals with the other team