But this could be a "legitimate f-up". Normally, most of these unsafe-url protection and detection is automated in something with the scale of Twitter.
Just like URL-shorteners often are (were?) "seemingly randomly" banned, because a portion of the shared urls are pointing at malware/phishing/otherwise banned content, all urls from this shortener get banned. It may be that signal.me is simply picking up on amount of illegitimate links. Signal is clearly growing strong. Therefore signal.me links' are increasingly seen by Twitter. Most legitimate links, but the amount of illegitimate links will then also increase.
This would trigger an automated ban¹.
The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
¹ Especially if this automation isn't maintained properly, finetuned and kept being tweaked by teams of experts - many of which left or were layd off after the aquisition of Twitter.
This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.
That same logic most definitely exists at well-staffed companies and the internet is full of stories of people getting screwed by these systems. Google sinking legit companies with no recourse, locking out Gmail users who had decades of their life there, etc.
My point is that this _shouldn't_ have been purely automated, but having fewer people to review things forces more things to be automated.
The first is that spammers automate so if you don't then they're always much faster. By the time your humans are paying attention and have made a decision it's too late, all the spam (scams, frauds, malware sites...) was already delivered. In the next spam run everything will have changed, so, decisions made by that point are useless.
The second is that your suggestion contains an unstated premise that the human evaluators would have somehow more information to work with than an automated system, or would reach a different decision. In reality they don't and wouldn't. URL reputation systems like this are triggered by spam attacks. For a certain window of time there's a high probability that any message containing a specific domain name will be flagged by users as spam, so the system short-circuits that and starts classifying all messages of unknown status containing a link to that domain as spam. This works well because spammers usually want their targets to visit a website.
So the human evaluators in this case will see a message like:
"URL domain signal.me has 67% chance of spam and rising, confirm block? Y/N"
and the humans will always press Y because obviously (a) it means that such a decision is right more often than it's wrong and (b) the domain name is normally meaningless anyway. The block will be removed a bit later once the spammers go away.
In this case, it's tempting to think that some human in a cheap labor country would somehow see this message and think "ah! signal.me! clearly a domain linked to the super cool Signal messenger, which I personally like, so I won't block it even though this might cause a lot of people to be victimized by criminals". But they wouldn't and shouldn't. The domain even looks phishy, it's quite surprising to learn that it's a real Signal linked domain.
The parent is correct, these systems should be automated. Automated systems can respond faster and more accurately than humans. Humans should only be involved to improve the system and correct any mistakes it makes after the fact.
If you want to prevent phishing links then you can't allow links in the first place. If you decide to allow links, then you need to add some stability to the system. Circumstantial reactions should not be fast. Banning a whole domain based on short term percentage is circumstantial.
The problem isn't links to scam sites posted on X/whatever, the problem is the scam. That is something for the actual police, government agencies and ultimately legislators to handle. Go after the actual scammers. Go after countries harboring them. Don't sacrifice our freedoms for an "easy" out instead of doing real law enforcement.
In XY problems the problem solver has the ability to solve the root problem instead of the presented one.
However, X has zero ability to go into the jungles of Myanmar and fight off the armed militias which are paid to protect the compounds of literally thousands of scammers.
99% of the public would prefer they block them than overlook them, and you're out of touch if you think otherwise.
And rightfully so. Despite being discussed a lot here, Signal is not very popular or well-known. Even TFA felt the need to start by explaining what Signal is. TFA then adds:
“This request looks like it might be automated” reads another prompt. “To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now. Please try again later.”
And if signal.me is being used for automated spam, automated attacks require automated solutions.
> The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".
That would indeed be concerning. (And maybe illegal?) But is it anything more than an unfounded accusation?
https://signal.me/#eu/fdy5h1miMifXa...
The URL hash (the part after #) is often not considered by automated systems to be a part of URL that's meaningful, because hash is normally only used for addressing parts of the website that was loaded based on the previous part of the URL. If a particular Signal.me link was flagged for whatever legitimate reason (contained malware or illegal content) it's entirely reasonable that an automated system would strip the hash and block the whole domain (because the path part in this URL is just "/" and nothing else).
It'll be interesting to see whether they address and reverse it. If not, then we can be fairly sure this was intentional.
This is only true for systems that works perfectly. If the implementation if flawed, the system can do something different from its purpose.
Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
> Claiming "The purpose of a system is what it does." is like claiming that software bugs do not exist.
It's more like claiming that there is no meaningful difference to any outside observer between a bug that is not eradicated over an extended time window and an intentional feature.
I do agree with you in cases where the system is being continually refined, but I don't think the quote talks about changing systems, only about constant ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
when a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view
In the sense it is intended, it is entirely correct. It is not a claim about what the intent of the people involved in the system is, it is a recognition that (1) intent doesn't really aggregate, and, more importantly, even if it did (2) intent that consistently fails, because of the nature of the system, to materialize into function doesn't matter.
It's an elegant idea in it's simplicity, but there's zero reason to think this heuristic is more valid than any other, and in my personal experience this line of thinking is usually wrong.
It's like a art review where a writer - completely unaware of what they're doing - talks only about the work, but says nothing about the work and opens a window into their soul. A lot of people don't even recognize when it happens in that context. It's even easier for a speaker to deceive a listener (and themselves) in the context of speaking on systems. Systems thinking is hard and almost everyone is terrible at it.
"If we know what a system does, we know that it is its purpose": is that ok?
For similarly newly enlightened people it's a feature of MediaWiki (which Wikipedia runs on) and there are five (plus two) themes selectable with ?useskin= values:
- timeless (as seen above): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=timeles...
- monobook (default 2004-2009): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=monoboo...
- vector (default 2010-2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=vector
- vector-2022 (desktop default 2022-): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=vector-...
- minerva (mobile default): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=minerva
- modern (delightedly dated, deprecated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=modern
- cologneblue (also ancient and anti-favored): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=cologne...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...
Systems thinking is much more nuanced and productive IMO. Drift Into Failure by Sidney Dekker is a good introduction.
It's the opposite; it's a heuristic for directing thought down useful pathways and escaping a rabbit hole of speculation on matters which makes no material difference, and which largely (for the kinds of systems it concerns) also involve pointless metaphysical wankery on the order of debating how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, because the kinds of systems it concerns (which are almost all real systems that matter) aren't guided by unitary intent, and pretty much any intent you want to appply probably can be found in some subset (and, conversely, also opposed by some subset) of the contributors to the system.
A more precise statement might be "'Purpose' is not a meaningful attribute of complex systems," but POSIWID works.
E.g. the "purpose" of fascism is nihilistic violence and the "purpose" of communism is rule by a bureaucratic elite that is somehow more equal than everyone else. All the sophistry is bullshit.
The "purpose" of capitalism is to "destroy the ecology of earth by being good at organizing stuff into metastasizing accumulation strategies"?
People don't like that at all, because it's simply pretentious to reduce any system to however you choose to smugly describe "what it does".
2. Why it isn’t getting banned on other social networks and only on X?
3. Didn’t X previously block Substack and Mastodon URLs?
Even if you automate their handling, the algorithm should know that, if it bumps into a say signal.me, bit.ly or goo.gl URL, it should first do a GET and then apply the algorithm to whatever is provided in the Location header.
Not doing this for a widely used URL shortener like signal.me is just a show of technical incompetence.
For a long time, the advice was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." but aggressors evolve to fit their surroundings. When the population largely follows this rule, it becomes a competitive advantage to fake incompetence.
Perhaps both malice and incompetence should be treated the same, especially regarding punishment, until proven otherwise. After all, robust systems are designed in such a way that a single mistake can't cause harm. If somebody fails to design a system so that multiple mistakes (how many depends on cost and severity) have to stack up, then he should be held responsible.
One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents.
Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the road and driving within the speed requirements. If only the founding fathers had recognized the need to have more information included in ballots so that negative campaigning wasn't as effective if not more effective than positive.
If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values, the smartest, most constructive candidates would have a better chance. Each district would have its own blend of 3-4 viable parties, and the nation would be all the healthier for it. (Side note: Yes, this is still one person one vote--you could imagine voting with a single checkbox for a single permutation of all possible assignments of the scores, as an intermediate form.)
Back to your point, though: Yes, incompetence and malice can have the same effect in the short term. The long term is what determines the difference, both in effect and our responses to it.
Q: Given two engineers, one incompetent and one malicious, how can you tell the difference between the incompetent engineer and the malicious engineer?
A: It doesn't matter.
That's a good point.
> If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values
Are you describing range/score voting?
I don't think avoiding duplicated values is necessary but it's pretty well known that score voting is the best system: https://rangevoting.org/
See the diagram at the bottom of the page describing voter regrets. Everybody at least somewhat interested in voting systems would prefer this, especially over plurality/FPTP which is the stupidest system possible. But a lot of people are clueless or willingly supporting a broken system.
There's also an explorable explanation by Nicky Case: https://ncase.me/ballot/
Sidenote: the fact you need to explain that expressing more information in one vote is still one vote shows how clueless people are. Obviously every vote has the same power to influence the result but some people will try to wear you down through misunderstood technicalities.
FTFY :)
Didn't they wanted to beat each other up in the public?
I would have prefered that concept and not shady deals. (and while it is of course possible, I really doubt it in this case)
Isn't that like ultimate bro code for "I love you man"?
Shortened URLs are dubious by default. It is also possible that there really is a lot of spam/scam happening on Signal right now with signal.me URLs as an entry point. I mean, why not? Every messaging platform can be used for that, even more so if end-to-end encrypted as it makes spam detection harder. In fact, one of the first messages I received on Signal was an obvious scam from a user pretending to be Amazon.
You're making the mistake of taking a (communal + antagonistic) narcissist at face value. They are known to lie to suit their current goals and when those goals are achieved, they will lie to suit their new goals, whether the lies are congruent with each other or not.
This is a guy who:
- publicly called a rescuer "pedo guy", then falsely claimed it's a common insult from South Africa
- in a private email called him a "child rapist" and made up allegations of a 12 yo bride
- hired a PI to dig up dirt on him (which failed to corroborate any of his allegations)
Western society really needs to destigmatize discussion of mental illness, including diagnosing public personalities based on their behavior. Give them an opportunity to defend themselves, sure, but at some point, they become a danger to others (usually not to themselves) and should be required to seek treatment or be committed to a mental institution.
Yes, and? That changes nothing about Musk attacking a guy as "pedo" because he wanted to insert himself into the spotlight and went threw a fit when he was told off for that.
Also, as if professionals aren't saying the same thing, or as if he'd voluntarily undergo clinical diagnosis?
I looked at the guy's link and it actually supports my view even more.
> A JDart, lawyer Alex Spiro explained, meant: a Joke that was badly received, therefore Deleted, with an Apology and then Responsive Tweets to move on from the matter. JDart.
> "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."
> "Stop defending child rapists."
Given he made up a 12 yo bride and hired a PI to dig up dirt, this also proves Musk lied to the court. I don't know why the jury gave the wrong verdict but I knew only about the original "pedo guy" tweet and the PI this morning and the deeper I dig, even into material posted by his supporters, the worse it gets.
A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition, and you are actually playing his game here. A "legitimate f-up" is the worst for a narcissist, as it would show he is nothing special, and incompetent.
That's why I go with the "legitimate f-up" explanation. There is no clear intent, it lacks flair, and it can just cause a mild controversy at best. Though I am still pissed that it turned out to be something about Elon Musk again and not Twitter/X. As much as a "nanomanager" he likes to call himself, he is not the only one working at Twitter/X, there are still people with some responsibilities there. It is not all a masterplan by Elon Musk.
As for banning links to other platforms like Mastodon, it was mentioned explicitly on the Twitter Support account that "we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter", followed by a list of platforms that included Mastodon, but not Signal. I don't think it is still the case, and I am not aware of anything similar regarding a ban on signal.me links.
That's like saying a liar will always lie. Real people do not have min-maxed traits, he has obviously non-zero self-control. If it's an action that benefits him in some way but knows will alienate his followers, he is perfectly capable of doing it in secret.
> A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition
Definition of which subtype?
---
I never said it was a masterplan or his personal decision. Culture comes from the top (only people with very strong principles will resist and many most likely quit when he took over). All he needed to do is make visible his displeasure at (free) competitors in front of the right people.
He AFAIK also tweeted about not allowing free promotion for mastodon. Which again speaks volumes about how much he values freedom of speech. If a free (as in speech and beer) and decentralized platform can be a credible competitor to twitter - serve the same amount of users but be self repairing and resistant to takeovers - than that would be a win, even if his company would no longer be needed.
---
If you take anything from this discussion, please at least look up different types of narcissism. Far too often people reduce them all to the "standard" overt archetype (usually even an overdone caricature of it) and it's hard for victims of other subtypes to convince others what they are dealing with.
But in this case it's not that the reason does not matter, it's that the reason is censorship/bad faith competition, and is obfuscated behind a mistake
This can be accomplished in a few ways. You could accumulate real URLs and build a test set that you can run in non-prod environments prior to deploy. You could also deploy the new version alongside the current version, both watching the live data, with the current version retaining enforcement power while the new version is in log-only mode.
In the case of automated systems that might create new actions in response to live traffic, anomaly detection can be used to look for significant changes in classification and/or rate of actions, spikes in actions against specific domains, etc.
The output isn't reproducible, not even predictable. The whole idea of a system like this is that it adapts. If only by simply collecting more data to "do the stats on".
What systems like this need, is different layers towards which stuff is leveraged. This is how your spam folder in your mailbox works too (to some extend). Basically: if it's clearly spam, just /dev/null it, if its clearly not spam let it pass. Everything inbetween will be re-rated by another layer which then does the same etc. One or more of these layers can and should be humans. The actions of these humans then train the system. If gmail isn't certain something is spam, it'll deliver it to your spam folder, or maybe even to your inbox. For you to review and mark as ham or spam manually.
Knowing that Elon fired a lot of teams of humans that fact-checked, researched fake news, a lot of it manually, I'd not be surprised if exactly the "human layers" were simply removed. Leaving a system that's not tuned nor checked while running.
(Source: I've built spam/malware/bot etc detection for comment sections of large sites)
Why not? They were already filtering millions of random links with the existing system. Saving some of those results to run regressions against before making changes to critical infrastructure should be trivial.
There are many circles where xitter is a default platform. For example, many anime-style nsfw artists publish there as a primary outlet, and many companies publish their most instant news there (like a service outage, change in the opening hours, things like that). That and many other such things are plenty to keep people there.
In the end it's a void question though. users will flock to where opinions resonate with theirs.
Some people are smart, insightful, and for some reason insist on only posting on X. I don't see the harm in continuing to follow them, even if I do wish they'd choose a different site to post on
(I expect a lot of people also have less techie friends and family that only post on a single social media site - I've had accounts all over the place trying to keep track of some old friends)
- their targeting audience are on X
- they are rich and do not really care what the platform owner does
- they will be very happy to join the owner when offered such opportunities
For people who are the target audience of those people, I guess
- they voted for this, and they are happily watching the federal gov falling apart
- they convinced themselves that X is the place to grow / learn from smart and insightful people (I don't think one has to be on it for more than 10 min a day to grow & learn, unless one is a crypto trader)
- they convinced themselves that it is really nothing political about using X
- They reject outrage and cancel culture and refuse to engage in performative posturing that ultimatively achieves nothing.
It's a mix of indie artists, old friends, and a few people who still think it's worthwhile to try and do outreach, fight against disinformation, etc.. I'm really not sure why you feel such an urge to insult people you've never met, but it's extremely rude and does nothing productive.
> nothing political about using X
I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?
I dare say your grocery bill is responsible for supporting far more evil than anything I'm engaged in here.
It is a monument in the race to the bottom of “digestible/summarized content”.
caveat: i completely stay off anything political, i filter the absolute hell out of anything political, i block people constantly
i don't care that elon owns it because i don't buy into the outrageous hyperbole of him literally being the next hitler. i think elon is a deeply problematic person not especially more so than a million other business leaders and billionaires, his bullshit is just a lot more visible, and he accomplishes a lot of cool shit despite the bullshit.
not interested in debating people wanting to scream about elon and wont respond to comments about him, im just offering my unfiltered opinion about why I use X
This is if you actively stay off politics. Taking just a small step in and it suddenly turns into 4chan /pol/
I don't disagree with you. But the big problem -- and the reason why people like me are so upset -- is that Elon is now in a much more powerful position than any of those other business leaders, a position in which he is directly impacting the lives of Americans whether they use his products or not. That's quite different than Bezos, Zuck, and all the rest. If he had stayed out of politics I wouldn't have much issue (I can choose not to use X, drive a Tesla, etc.)
Are you seriously asking that question? If so, I suggest looking at the nov election results. The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election).
hence the question
There's an incredibly long list of reasons to ditch x beyond musk's political activity
If you are one of them or want to see the mainstream US right-wing zeitgeist, X is where it’s at. That alone is a massive reason for people to keep the app and an account.
Otherwise I agree, all of its utility as a general platform is gone otherwise.
> I suggest looking at the nov election results.
What should we be looking at exactly? How the curiously 100% flipped swing states voted? I agree, theres much to look at there.
> The votes for Trump were for this (his relationship to Elon and intention of “having him make the government efficient” were well known in advance of the election
That is an outright lie.
No one knew Musk would be running amok dismantling government institutions like a rabid dog, while side stepping all government processes. Project 2025 had something like a 6% approval rating. What is being "implemented" right now is Project 2025.
The US is in a constitutional crisis, and the saving money is a farce to permanently disable the US as a functioning body.
Trump approval ratings are at a high. His supporters are clearly happy with what’s going on.
The question was quite simple, it was about why anyone would use X.
There are at least 60 million people that are happy with what is going on and like to be on X, which is an echo chamber of what they like.
Nothing about what I said is dishonest. This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for. Approval ratings don’t lie.
I don’t like what’s going on either, but this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
The media have clearly aligned themselves to not report on whats actually happening. Right wing supporters get a carefully curated "view" of whats going on. Left wing media pushes outrage over ever minuscule detail while purposefully obfuscating whats really going on.
> This is exactly the type of outcome Trump supporters were looking for.
Trump supporters or republicans? Trump supporters at this point are rabid lunatics who post nothing but "librul tears" memes on facebook. They have no connection to reality. Republicans are trapped in an algorithmic cage, where everything might not be ideal, but gosh darn it, its for the good of the country!
> If you want to interact with the right wing people or read what they are thinking, that’s effectively what X is for right now.
I dont know how a rational, technologically inclined, person can scroll through X and not see that its 60% bots and propaganda. X is not reality, it is Elon's personal propaganda machine.
> this constant hand-wringing of “nobody supports this, I don’t understand, crisis crisis crisis” is unproductive and ignorant of the reality of the political landscape in the US right now.
What is the political reality of the US right now? You're conflating the peoples' response to the information they're getting to the actual reality: The US government is being destroyed by a hostile group of actors, with most likely criminal motives.
Not the guys who all of a sudden have a 100 billion dollars since 2010?
“A protest vote for UKIP is like shitting your hotel bed as a protest against bad service, then realising you now have to sleep in a shitted bed.”
We have Reagan to thank for it.
And it's not like this is a one-sided conflicts. Governments are actively working to suppress their citizens from standing up to them - by restricting free speech that would allow those citizens to organize, by trying to shape the thoughts of their citizens through various forms of propaganda and ultimately by doing everything they can to retain the state's monopoly on violence.
"Defund the Federal government" is right-coded; "defund the police" is left-coded. No analysis connects the two.
> retain the state's monopoly on violence
Places like Italy know that when the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it gets messy ("years of lead").
Please explain the logic.
>i voted for that, i voted for the destruction of the federal government because it's bankrupting us by stealing our money
If you're concerned about the federal government bankrupting "us" by stealing our money then ask yourself why one of the first things that happened was the firing of OIG personnel. The Inspectors General and their OIG employees are the federal employees with the mandate to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in every federal program regardless of size. They have the power to audit any recipient of taxpayer monies and to work with US Attorney federal prosecutors to prosecute those who steal, waste, or otherwise violate plan guidelines in disbursing money. US Attorneys will not even take a case to trial unless agency auditors can document in detail that a crime has occurred and that crime fits within prosecutorial guidelines and a conviction is nearly guaranteed. To take a case that has any weaknesses risks wasting public money prosecuting a case you might not win. The whole point is to make sure you have the evidence that forces the defendant to either make restitution or to spend some time in a federal lock-up.
It's suspicious to me that the first thing they do is fire all the people who not only can watch, but who have the Congressional mandate to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse of federal programs that disburse money to individuals, small businesses, cities and other non-federal entities, non-profits, and corporations.
Though I am not a doctor, I do think that you should seriously work on your mental health. Start by changing your diet to include less kool-aid as the sugar high you're on can cause metabolic changes that lead to seriously bad health outcomes.
My spouse has spent a career in a federal department working to insure that the money Congress allocates to specific programs ends up being spent for purposes that are allowed under the guidelines of those federal programs. If you think the federal government is the one stealing your money you are sadly mistaken.
Federal programs are full of fraud but the fraud occurs at the recipient end, not within the department.
If you or anyone else are so concerned about where your tax money goes then the last agency entity that you would eliminate would be the one charged with insuring that all the monies in all the programs administered by the agency are disbursed lawfully according to plan guidelines which were approved by Congress. These people, as part of their job, have to read and internalize all the nuances, conflicts with existing programs, and contradictions in all the programs that they serve as watchdog over and it is their skills that allow federal prosecutors to take fraud cases to trial and to convict those who have abused federal programs for personal gain.
You voted for someone who has a documented history of fraudulent use of federal money who made it a point in both of his administrations to remove the specific persons and agencies that would guarantee oversight so that they can do anything without worrying about accountability. Internalize that.
There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru. Do you think the OIG was doing a good job?
And please don't link to X. I don't have an account so I cannot read X threads, which is very surprising because the owner said he really wanted to make it so logged-out users could read X easily, but then changed his mind because he wanted to make more money. Sounds like a really untrustworthy person to me!
>There are more than 1 million 150-159 year old Americans that receive social security...
Your powers of reasoning are taking a siesta if you believe this. It begs the question of how many people not only in America, but globally, are in the age group 150-159 years old? You claim that there are more than one million in the US alone.
I have worked with lots of demographic data and I have seen zero evidence that there are any people with a clinically detectable pulse on planet earth in that age group. How did you arrive at such an unreasonable number that is entirely unsupported by any demographic evidence available publicly?
The answer of course is that you musk've listened to or read about a post your newest right-wing jesus made on his misinformation network or at a white house back-patting session and, lacking any deductive reasoning skills of your own to help parse the post you just took it to be true since it was easier than thinking rationally about a collection of words. Minimum energy expended.
Though I have seen posts on HN addressing age issues of Social Security recipients, I haven't been following this part of the dysfunction very closely so I had to do some digging to try to understand where the idea that anyone might be that old came from.
It appears that musk posted a table of ages of recipients in the SS database where the Death field was set to FALSE implying that they might be alive and receiving benefits. He had some white house appearance where he stated that people over the age of 150 were receiving benefits.
Since all that happened the issue has been debated rigorously. It is likely not smart to conclude that anyone over the age of 150 is receiving SS benefits, anywhere. Instead it turns out that this is a known issue, detected in audits back in 2023 which were designed to detect and eliminate fraud in the benefits payment system at the SSA. The OIG auditor at the time, appointed by Trump during his first administration, Gail Ennis, took on the task of identifying and quantifying the problem of SS payees whose personal information in the SS databases implied an age greater than the maximum that could reasonably be expected. That audit report is here [0].
[0] https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
On completion of the audit, it was concluded that correcting the database would waste money and effort so instead, new methods were introduced to help eliminate payments to non-qualifying recipients through a couple of initiatives called "Do Not Pay" and "Earnings After Death".
Basically your DoGE people didn't discover anything that the SS administration had not already discovered but it does serve as rage bait for those like yourself who refuse to do any independent research to help themselves understand whether something they heard is true or false.
There's a bit of additional info that may also help you. The acting Inspector General of the SSA at the time, Gail Ennis, later retired from her position because of charges that she obstructed a DoJ investigation into her own ethics violations. [1] Her retirement letter if I read it right is right here. [2] She toots her own horn quite a bit and in reading that, which I assume you will since it is only a few short paragraphs with no disturbing content, she provides a short summary to the reader about how an OIG office operates. As a citizen it is useful to know that these people are on our side. She served under two presidents, being appointed by Trump and retained by Biden. That illustrates a commitment by both administrations to the work that the SSA-OIG was doing during her term.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2] https://oig.ssa.gov/news-releases/2024-06-05-letter-from-ssa...
Anyway, let's move on now while I still have you in the audience.
>...and America is funding trans comic books for children in Peru.
I work on cars a lot so I had to put this into context. Seeing how you are feeding on the rage bait I decided that these comics were not trade school training for automotive techs in Peru. Lucky guess for me I'm sure.
This whole blurb of misinformation can evidently be attributed, of course, to the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in an interview after USAID was shuttered, [3] evidently got some facts crossed in her memory banks causing some people in the audience to see red again and shout at the sky about government waste in USAID programs. According to reports by FactCheck.org [4] the claims that she made about USAID's funding of several things were false in 3 of 4 claims.
Only one of the projects was funded by USAID, the others were funded by the US Dept of State, including the comic book.
If you dig into that looking for facts you will discover that not only did the comic book in question not have a trans character but it won an award in Peru. The comic book designer ultimately produced three comics for distribution in Peru, none of which used transsexual characters though the second one did have a gay guy as the main character hero at the request of the State Department. The total cost of this comic edition is documented here [5] but in case you are already burnt out with this wall of words, it cost $32000, and was paid to the Florida artist who did the work of producing the three comics for the DoS.
[3] https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/white-ho...
[4] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/sorting-out-the-facts-on-w...
[5] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_SPE50022CA0009_19...
>Do you think the OIG was doing a good job?
At this point I think it is obvious to anyone still reading where each of our individual biases lay.
As an arm of government charged by Congress with detecting fraud, waste, and abuse of federal money disbursements through any agency that dispenses money I think that OIGs are a vital component for accountability in federal programs. They have the responsibility and the ability to investigate anyone in their department at any level who receives federal money for any purpose. That includes the department heads and all staff under them, not just members of the general public, etc.
You will never know of some of the things that OIG auditors uncover that are never prosecuted though evidence to convict is there. In many cases, the subject being investigated has deep connections that shield them from accountability. In other cases the recoverable amount of fraud and waste does not meet a threshold for prosecution and the result is that the person or group committing the fraud loses their position and in the future is barred from any positions that would allow them access to federal funds.
The OIG and all the audit staff are frequently working simultaneously on multiple audits within their assigned regions. Each person involved must learn and know all of the program guidelines and in some cases the programs being audited have been operating for more than a decade and the program has received money in several budget phases with each infusion potentially having a different set of guidelines based on how and what Congress decided to allocate.
All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas. You're hungry for something delicious but will take whatever the other little fish around you leave. On the surface of this Sea of Misinformation we find fishermen, trolling for hungry fishies, their hooks securing morsels of rage bait knowing this is a preferred delicacy guaranteed to send their gullible quarry into a feeding frenzy.
It may be too late for you to escape the baited hook as it appears that the angler has already set the hook and landed you.
I think the part that tells the real story here that I forgot to add in that wall of text most won't read is that each of those links came up in the first 5 results for the simple searches I ran on DDG.
If any effort had been expended at all in attempting to understand whether anything in musk's post was accurate then they would easily have been able to find several high quality breakdowns from non-partisan sites.
Instead they made a choice to echo something, incorrectly too, that they thought they read somewhere. Didn't even provide a link.
I think if HN was to modify any rules that would improve the quality of discussions on contentious subjects that frequently devolve into unproductive political arguments then the posting rule could be changed to require posting of links to arguments that you are trying to make so that everyone can see the supporting data behind your beliefs and judge for themselves whether they should change their own beliefs or poke fun at the poster for believing nonsense.
Back when reddit was still a one-pager they tried to maintain a standard of backing up claims with data to support the claims. Over the years it has devolved into the site we have today where most posters do as this guy did and post simple one line replies to everything.
It's a hit and run way of trying to bring someone around to your way of thinking without giving them a reason to do so.
Thanks, that's a useful addition to the conversation.
> All things considered here I think you were a little fish swimming in search of food somewhere in the Sea of Misinformation which I can assure you is located between the west coast of Florida and the east coast of Texas.
If we're doing insults, which seems to be the new law on HN, you seem like a cunt.
That's pretty funny. I can assure you that as someone who spent 40 years working in the oil and gas industry your insult looks really green to me.
Thanks for jumping on the recycling initiative.
In our work profanity is a tool wielded by everyone for any situation whether it seems appropriate or not. We invent new insults and epithets instead of recycling all these ancients. We're at the forefront of insult technology every time a new worm shows up at the wellsite or a situation goes from rosy to catastrophic.
It makes the day go by, and so here I just made it through another 15 minutes with a chuckle.
Thanks.
EDIT: The more I think about it, reminiscing about all those glory days out in the oil patch, with that simple insult you may have just qualified as a potential friend. You're gonna need to up your game a bit though since most of my friends have multi-syllable nicknames for me, and I for them.
If you're in Texas maybe we could go get some ribs somewhere sometime and talk about things unrelated to right-wing jesus and his disciples.
In the meantime, since I know you must be bored from reading all this, here's a comic for you to enjoy. [0]
[0]https://www.scribd.com/document/825254795/The-Power-of-Educa...
Of course it's the one the DoS spent $32000 on. I figured you were unlikely to follow any of the links in the references I gave.
I hope you're not a life coach because there is clear evidence here of a deficiency in your skillsets.
* https://signal.miraheze.org/wiki/Signal.me_URLs
* https://signal.miraheze.org/wiki/Usernames#Username_links
Signal.me links are just a way to easily send either a phone number or user name to someone else. No cryptographic identity. No protection of the phone number or user name. So to get around the ban a Signal user could simply send their phone number or user name over Twitter/X.
It seems that the encrypted username form does provide some identity protection in that it can be cancelled, but for as long as it is active it appears that someone can just ask the Signal server what the associated user name is.
The people involved probably should not be using Twitter/X for this sort of thing in the first place. Mastodon comes to mind as an alternative, but really, anything else.
Usernames don't necessarily link someone with their real identity, and phone numbers can be hidden.
This isn't the weirdest apology I've ever heard for the behavior of Elon Musk and X's censorship policies, but it's definitely in the top 5.
https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-doge-records-public-inf...
Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the right one: they're fascists and the rules are not applicable to them.
which is pretty absurd and you would need to have a really corrupt court IMHO for this to hold up
I don't think it's actually hopeless - they have constrained him at times. But I would also avoid getting my hopes up.
During Trump 1 there was quite a habit of ripping up papers by the president. So there were some dudes hired to go take the ripped up papers and tape them back together. Really looking forwards to seeing some of those next year! https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers-filin...
I suspect that what's happening is flagrantly incredibly evil & immoral, is a heinous crime against democracy. The people need to be ae to see what governments do and are, need to have some chance to learn and see what their governments really do. My dear is that the Presidential Records Act is being thrown out the window by these folks, that we will have nearly no record of so much of what this administration & it's "advisors" (Musk) do.
Trump seems to have it out for NARA since they originally reported the missing classified documents that Trump refused to return. I would not expect records to be kept in the manner they have been in previous administrations.
The FBI investigation https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-dir... is at odds with your description. It appears nothing was as anywhere as severe as the recent intelligence breach of when DOGE posted NOFORN material publicly (https://abcnews.go.com/US/agency-data-shared-doge-online-spa...)
When you perform an HTTP(S) request you never provide the part after the # in the request URL, it's only interpreted by the web browser itself. It's likely that their antispam thing does the same and ignores the hash altogether.
————
Example of link (blocked): https://signal.me/#eu/P01wpUmC4nT2BBTwMrPAw7Nxcp81055tKHGbYw...
Without the hash (blocked): https://signal.me/
There is no blocking if you add any letters in the path (e.g. “abc”): https://signal.me/abc#eu/P01wpUmC4nT2BBTwMrPAw7Nxcp81055tKHG...
https://link-in-a-box.vercel.app
If you think someone might benefit from it, please share. Also, spam if you have feedback!
People already started using this thing, so if there's an issue with it, I'd like to respond/apply fixes if needed.
https://cornucopia.se/2025/02/forsvarsmakten-infor-krav-pa-s... (Swedish)
(The page is in the Bing index, but it seems "signal.me" is treated as a stop word by the search engine.)
Everyone knows it.
Even in North Korea, people are allowed to freely express their love for their Dear Leader. Those who express a different view are swiftly disposed of. If you love Dear Leader you could live your entire life believing that you and everyone else has free speech, simply because you have never encountered evidence to the contrary.
It feels inappropriate that progressives have decided that it's okay to use Nazi as a generic insult for mainstream right wing parties. It waters down the true horrors of the Nazi party.
Anyway, as to censorship coming from Germany:
"Germany submits the highest number of legal demands for user data to X within the European Union, with ~87% of these requests targeting speech-related offenses. "
Personally, I think that the full accusation of Nazism should be reserved for when it's really needed. But I assume that Germans know better than I do how to go about keeping Nazis out of their country.
Are you sure you're using all of these words correctly?
https://extremismterms.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/altern...
AFAIK they don't terribly mind what Israel is doing in Gaza, and even the ADL has that page about them.
There is a lot more if you are not convinced. At any rate Alice Weidel being lesbian means as much as some of the original Nazi leadership being homosexual, nothing. Homosexuality isn't a taboo anymore, holocaust revisionism is. Those to whom it isn't are anathema to those to whom it is.
You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.
There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..
The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.
This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.
I think the French might have some quibbles about how free their speech is.
I find their ranking highly suspect because they put the Netherlands at number #4, one of the highest rankings, while in reality the press in the Netherlands is in a dire state: literally all newspapers of record are collectively owned by just two Belgian (not even Dutch) mega-corporations. Is this really one of the most free countries? It's like Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg together owned all newspapers in the US.
And the US is ranked suspiciously low, at #55, below a country like Belize. Belize! Look at what RSF itself writes about Belize:
> With no daily newspapers, the pool of media outlets is small, and of those considered mainstream, some are supportive of political parties, even when privately owned. Independent media are scarce and access to funding is limited. Most of the advertising funds that media publishers rely on come from the government and their distribution are often dependent on the party in power.
Am I supposed to take it seriously that this is better than the US? That Belizeans have access to a more free press than Americans do? It seems more plausible the ranking is bogus.
It has newspapers across the spectrum. Volkskrant and Parool are left-wing, AD is centrist, Telegraaf is center-right. To name a few. This reflects our political system which is a distribution rather than a binary system.
In addition, there's state-owned news that reports very factually, with little to no bias in any direction.
We also have excellent deep journalism, my favorite being Follow The Money: https://www.ftm.nl/
EU edition: https://www.ftm.eu/articles
...the type of journalism the entire world needs.
The Netherlands has no hard-right or alt-right newspapers or TV channels. Not because it's not allowed, we just don't have the equivalent of Fox.
In my view, this is a blessing. It's not because I'm left wing. I'm center-right. Alt-right with their misinformation and alternative facts are an attack on information itself. It's not just "another view", it undermines reality itself.
And for the record, we have no hard-left in mainstream media either. Not because it's not allowed, it just doesn't work over here.
It is like the Bible before Martin Luther translated it into German, and all christians just had to accept blindly that whatever the priests said was written in the bible actually was. Most humans now have so little input other than whatever priests they follow we might as well be back in the dark ages.
A network of techno-feudal states run by a joint-stock corporation headed by a CEO with absolute power. Like Hunger Games, fancy dress, bad tans, and all.
It’s really lame and shortsighted. Never mind philosophically broken.
Edit:
In my opinion, Elon Musk initially endorsed Signal because of its strong encryption, security, and commitment to privacy. Now, he's blocking it for those very same reasons—what a blatant double standard!
On a related note, one of the key advantages of the modern internet—and more specifically, social media—is that everything you say publicly is archived. This means that if you ever do a complete 180° on your claims or principles, it can easily come back to haunt you. So, it's always wise to be mindful of what you say and stay true to your values.
It was the same when URLs to Mastodon/Fediverse instances was banned on X, in an attempt to hamper the network effect for those who migrated. Meta does the same with Pixelfed these days, to hamper migration away from Instagram.
Elon and Mark are all for competition and free markets, but as soon as alternatives that can't be bought and controlled pops up, they outright ban any mention of it on their platforms.
Signal links are odd, in that all the identifies are after the #, so to a spam filter this just looks like a single url, https://signal.me , being sent out in mass.
Though I think they were forced to stop.
The stripped those promises from us, tried to flog memecoins to steal from us and now pushing AI garbage onto us.
This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.
Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.
It’s bonkers to me.
However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like.
These mental gymnastics are remarkable to see.
Free speech eh.
I think a more apt one would be: Imagine asking for a shit-free meal, and you're served a meal with just a little bit of shit in it.
Musk has /claimed/ (repeatedly) that he is a free speech absolutist, and by extension that twitter is as well.
This is false: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...
I'm not clear on how you're defining edge cases here, and regardless, it doesnt matter.
"Sorry officer, those murders back there were just a few edge cases! I've publicly pledged to a murder free life!"
I see very few in this thread pretending anything
X is blocking private messages on the basis of their content. Every competitor with E2E as even an option clears this bar handily.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600?lang=en-GB...
Immediately you get one very specific "sect" of free speech.
Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.
Therefore the only standard should be the legality of that speech in a particular country. In the US those things you put as exemptions are permitted. So pre-musk Twitter wasn't about free-speech as those exemptions are restrictions on speech that are greater than US law restricts (which isn't much tbh).
Generally you have a trade off on any of these platforms between what you can say without breaking terms of service and the popularity of that platform. Generally less popular platforms are less restrictive.
If you don't want your speech restricted, you should probably just go back to hosting your blog and using a mailing list.
> about free speech
> fight hate speech
Do you realize how absurd you sound?
Not sure if that's what we're talking about here. For the record I am against that practice.
The funny thing is if he was Russian he would be called an "oligarch" in every news piece. Since he's American he's an entrepreneur :)
Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.
You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.
Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.
It's a mistake to treat people with mental disorders as having an internally consistent view of the world. Or as actually believing what they say.
They are paperclip optimizers, this one optimizing for worship and power. In other words he has the antagonistic and communal subtypes: https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-diso...
/s
You cannot even say the word "cisgender" on X.
"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
Meanwhile Musk has already banned the accounts of journalists for the crime of being too critical of him (on top of frivolous lawsuits clearly aimed at draining their money). The proof is not "how many people he hasn't banned" but "how many he has".
That proves that its ok to criticise Musk on Twitter/X, which is what the OP was denying.
https://x.com/cerpin415/status/1889763808874258448
What part of this is not allowed on X?
Not that it's news that he's a hypocrite.
I would even argue he's worse.
Correct. It still makes him a liar, given what he claimed before the purchase to have meant:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/06/elon-musk...
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376
Plus this pair:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/musk-threatens-to-sue-adl-for-...
vs.
https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/tesla-boss-elon-m...
I agree, it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law. But, how you or anyone else can continue to defend Musk when he has made clear multiple times he’s a lying hypocrite is beyond my understanding.
But liberals do seem to stick to their principles of free market capitalism, "it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law". I see now why you are so ineffective in combating Trump/Musk if the only problem you have with them is their hypocrisy.
Perhaps you need to come to the realization that if you want liberal democracy you really do need to regulate mass communication platforms in a way that doesn't leech peoples brains out of their ears.
I have a lot of problems with both of them beyond hypocrisy, that was simply the big issue in this thread. And I do agree with your point. How can the left stick to some basic principles like following the law and still combat someone like Trump/Musk who ignore it at every turn. I really don't know what the answer is here, and it worries me that people will feel more and more trapped which can lead to violence.
I also think there could be some smart regulation around mass communication, but the problem is we have so few people in government who even understand social media. The average age in the senate is almost 65. The last two POTUSs will leave office in their 80s.
This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE.
Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action.
(Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.)
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy...
Trump team has said that Musk will self-determine conflict of interest when gutting govt. agencies.
It is lost on them that self-determination of conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.
On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose.
Unfortunately, I think this is just a comfortable illusion that most of us choose to believe.
Between https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bribery-rates?tab=table&t... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, I think it's fairly likely almost everyone both knows personally someone corrupt, and has done business with someone who is corrupt, even in the UK, Germany, and the USA.
This is ignoring his very confused notion of what free speech is[2]
> By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
> I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
> If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Not only is this inconsistent with his 'free speech absolutist' views, and inconsistent with Twitter's actions, but it states that he's actually all for the government censoring people. That's not even non-absolutist free speech.
Before the Internet this was not the case. In Marsh v. Alabama, it was ruled (in line with all previous precedent) that privately owned roadways and sidewalks had to allow religious pamphleters, even though it is private property. The court asserted that anywhere that is the forum for public discussion is de facto allowed for political and religious speech regardless of property rights. In the very early days of the Internet things changed, when people tried to assert First Amendment claims on Compuserve chats. Compuserve claimed they weren't the public square, that they were a private service. I think they were correct, in that Compuserve was a very marginal private space and couldn't possibly have been "the public square". But precedent over this tiny service were eventually laundered into much larger and more critical bits of social infrastructure.
In contrast to Compuserve, Twitter and Facebook are definitely the public square. You cannot petition for a redress of grievances or lobby for policy changes without using them. And the political left delights in suppressing their opponents on them but files lawsuits claiming their rights are infringed when they aren't given access to every inch -- such as when they sued Trump for blocking them on his Twitter account:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-t...
When Democrats were barred from interacting even with a very small part of a platform, it is a critical First Amendment violation. When conservatives, racists, sexists, or whatever term you want to use are barred, well, it's a private company bigot.
This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict. There must be open, public debate on every major platform, and Americans must be entitled to express their opinions because the only other alternative is violence.
Just don't pretend that trying to censor people on social media is somehow a trait of the Left (in fact, in a thread about the right doing precisely that!)
The country is currently massively pushing for violent conflict abroad...
Nobody (sane) would allow a psychotic individual to run for president or become a CEO. This is the same thing, except they are less of a danger to themselves and more to others.
And of course they're able to craft more convincing lies. Mr. Musk never cared about free speech, only about being worshipped and the best way to achieve that is to say what people want to hear.
Can this be titled clearly?
Trust in society is being eradicated and that's how authoritarian regimes win.
Great video to understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/nknYtlOvaQ0?si=1LP6QsbFgIvpfIay
It's sad
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/12/elon-musk-admits-he-only-b...
OTOH, I recall Elon's comment about "vote Dem in House and GOP in Senate, divided is better", something like that. Given his position as Donald's right hand man, that comment takes on new meaning.
The righthand man for Trump stuff was never the intention initially. Musk went gaga for Trump rather late, he was a DeSantis supporter after all, with DeSantis launching his terrible presidential bid on Elon's twitter.
If you were using a VPN, this might have been why.
Given that Telegram has very publicly failed at that kind of moderation, it is pretty defensible to block it. If only they would do something about the weirdo Instagram mommies that flood the network with pictures of their preteen daughters in swimsuit and leotards... It's gross what some people do for anything resembling Internet clout.
Pre-Musk Twitter was indeed bad, a sign of it’s time and dying. Now it’s even worse and quite pathetic.
I don't mind the slight political aspects of things, but reading a ton of hate and "I already deleted X" (pun intended) and "Just use Y other platform" (that no normal user can figure out) comments is just uninteresting and should stay on Reddit or wherever these nonproductive comments fit into.
I'd love to hear more about this case, the technical aspects and the follow-ups/investigations. Let's focus on that, no? Maybe it's just me.
In terms of moderation, you also get to flag/vouch posts, so moderation isn't entirely binary.
Our ability for collective sense making seems to be permanently destroyed. Two people who seem to agree on everything point-by-point then reach different conclusions on the final step. Its bewildering.
I remember as a teen how much of a pain it was to find a good forum. Too few users and it'd feel like a graveyard, not worth checking in on often enough to build up a habit. Too many and it was impossible to keep track of anything or gain enough of an understanding of the regulars to know how to read their posts. Even the sweet spot in the middle would be frequently torn to shreds by one troll or mentally ill poster spamming the forum in a frenzy. Far preferred it to the reddit tree based vote setup but I can understand how this is what most people have settled on.
It doesn't appear to be nonsense, it appears to be entirely true that any tweet with "signal.me" in it is blocked.
Occam's razor says they're blocking Signal. Hanlon's razor says they're just idiots. Either way: An important tool for communication is being blocked by twitter, which is both dangerous and not "nonsense".
Given Elon Musk's current propensity for authoritarianism and censorship, I'm leaning towards Occam's explanation. If you have evidence otherwise, I would genuinely like to see it, but honestly Hanlon's explanation that it's incompetence is not much better.
When you attempt to gaslight the entirety of the planet that hard, you get your "Benefit of the Doubt" card revoked.
2- X is full of people arguing about DOGE, positive and negative, and Elon is constantly attacked on his own platform by both small and large accounts. These posts are not censored.
3- Elon routinely talks about the importance of free speech, and yet I keep reading claims he’s against it from people advertising bsky and mastodon, which absolutely do not (by any reasonable definition) represent free speech platforms. They are more heavily moderated than even old Twitter was.
4- I have seen no evidence of Elon having a “propensity for authoritarianism and censorship”. Every time he gives a speech he specifically talks about being pro 1st amendment, regularly responds to his detractors, and actively defends the constitution.
I do not know what version of Elon you see, but from my perspective you are talking about a cartoonish media caricature that is the opposite of the reality that I see. We appear to be see the same person, same events, and are drawing opposite conclusions. Hence my point about sense making no longer seems possible, even when we actually appear to agree. (If anybody comes out as pro-censorship, I would be the first to call it out.)
https://xcancel.com/ThatsMauvelous/status/189135619250239902...
This is a piece of misinformation coming from Twitter/X post.
You don't need to trust me on that, you can just go check the standard.
Or you can claim that it's misinformation too. Up to you.
It's not hard to imagine that something like this actually happened. Dismissing it outright just because COBOL does not have a datetime data type and the standard is only 21 years old (that far pre-dates node.js btw) could be playing into the hands of the Muskians who surely love any possibility to get out of this BS in case they made a mistake. Would not be the first they made nor the first they handled that way.
Is that so? How do you know? Afaik that data is confidential and access is highly restricted. Or are you saying that that's what Elon said and we should take his word for it?
> This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.
I don't follow. Could you please explain?
(There probably is some fraud! There is in any large money handling system! Japan had a problem with elderly people claiming pensions after they'd died, for example. It's just that you need a better standard of evidence before cutting off money that people are legally entitled to, because otherwise the fraud detection process is going to have false positives.)
You will need to define your threshold for standard of evidence. If you automatically disbelieve everything on doge.gov, then there is nothing one can do to convince you. You have chosen to shut your eyes.
Please note: I am not an American citizen. As for "rumours", when I was a junior developer working in a service company in Bangalore over 15 years ago, developing tax filing software for an American state, during a test run on live data, I filed bug-tickets for duplicate SSN, SSN's with folks over 150 years of age, obviously spurious unemployment claims, etc. All of them were closed and the contractor told my manager not to file such tickets. (I am really thankful I left that line of work)
These problems are actually very well-known. They really aren't "rumours". You can choose to put in a few hours or a few days of effort in talking to people and figuring this out yourself.
Right now there is an interesting convergence of tech, politics and general newsworthiness that is going to stress the content moderation system. But people flagging a story as obviously political is the system working as designed.
Edit: Also, it's not clear that the death field is the sole criteria for determining the eligibility for payments (i.e. determining the recipient is alive)
I can’t say how annoyed it makes me that Elon’s initial reaction to anything odd seems to be “fraud!!” rather than curiosity
To be fair, being curious about things isn't going to get as much support as screaming "GUBBERMINT FRAUD!" (a red rag to the GOP bull) when you're trying to trash any government departments that stand between you and more money.
These platforms are massively net-negative for the vast majority of people.
Go outside!
At best it's less toxic, but only marginally. They implemented even more dunk mechanisms that X has, so it's primed to be a terrible place long-term.
User-owned, federated social media is absolutely the safest bet if you want low toxicity and freedom from corporate control.
"In theory", because so far, there are very few nodes (one?), very few (if any?) alternative implementations, most is controlled and operated by a small team paid for by a.o. Jack Dorsey and other funds. Mastodon (using the ActivityPub protocol) has one main repo, managed by one person under a non-profit that also operates the biggest instance. But also has dozens of other implementations in other languages, with other niches, with more, less, other features and so on.
So, "best bet" would probably be to:
- Sign up at both a Mastodon and Bsky. Try them both for while.
- See which one fits your needs, style and practical needs best. Stick with that one.
I wouldn't let that stop you from signing up for bluesky -- in my experience it is definitely the best of the options for a twitter alternative -- but you should know exactly what it is you're getting into before you get into it.
And if you want to know exactly what you're getting into with bluesky, you should read this, which tells you more than you really want to know: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
> And at present, there's really only one each of the Relay and (Twitter-like) AppView components used in practice, but there is a real possibility of this changing and real architectural affordance work to allow it. So perhaps things to not seem all that bad.
Mastodon has failed to show any signs of hitting a critical mass so I kind of feel like it's a different level of social network altogether. A lot more durable and worth making an effort with but unlikely to ever become much more significant than it currently is.
There can be only one winner I presume.
(other than grumpy old neckbeards bickering over their Prefered Thing and blocking any progress towards cooperation or interoperability. Which is actually a thing in "The Fediverse" even right now. Yes, really. A few loud voices manage to bully down projects that build bridges between both.)
I also didn't like that I had 30 different followers the moment I signed up.
No they don't, blue-sky belongs to the former twitter owner, aka THE BUBBLE ;)
BTW: He was not welcomed at FOSDEM because he is billionaire, when a movement eats itself ;)
https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares...
Minorities with loud voices always wins because people don't want to deal with bullshit
I'm mildly curious to see how X tries to justify this, but I suspect they've reached the stage where they don't even need to pretend to pay lip service to their notional values.
Are the people with these views not also entitled to free speech and equal rights to express themselves the same as everybody else?
Free speech and equal rights in a legal sense, meaning staying out of jail? Sure, with caveats about threats and abuse.
Free to use a private platform? No, nobody's entitled to the support of someone else's private platform. Equal rights are about protection from the state, not from others' opinions.
Platforms themselves also have speech-based rights. Even if one portrays itself as a neutral 'town square,' it puts its own rights to work as soon as it implements an algorithmic feed, implicitly deciding what content to promote or hide.
You are entitled to your opinion: good, bad, or irrelevant. You are entitled to your words. You are not entitled to an audience.
Brilliant statement, I fully agree.
The issue is who chooses to give them an audience. IMO it is up to the audience not to listen, but it seems to be the opinion of a lot of people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't.
Which puts a hole into the underlying theory. If people do not naturally gravitate towards alternative ideas, and network effects keep people in one place, then these networks should be made government owned.
Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
What you are saying is actively happening right now.
Certain people dont like that another certain group of people have been allowed back onto Twitter, and so they are going in droves to Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads/TruthSocial etc.
Twitter has received an 87% drop in revenue since reinstating previously blocked accounts.
Id say people are flocking to alternatives.
This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see. History has shown that where this happens it increases aggression and intense reaction, where people are not used to seeing things they disagree with and so when they do they react more violently.
> Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of how they maximize revenue on it.
Of course they do, but what this generally turns into in the modern age is 'The left doesnt like what the right have to say, block them plz". Then this turns into a political argument, when in fact one group of people just dont want to hear what a different group of people have to say because 'it offends them'.
> I mean, should the head of a media firm be threatened by the Government or President, and forced to comply with their preferred style of gatekeeping?
We have rules and laws to prevent this as it is recognised as being a threat.
>What you are saying is actively happening right now.
Oh. I am wrong.
SO we don't need to enforce rules on free speech, People are able to choose who to interact with.
>This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see
So we SHOULD enforce rules of free speech, because people dont want to hear what others are saying?
So we should have free speech, but we should control listening?
>We have rules and laws to prevent this as it is recognised as being a threat.
Wait really? Someone is suing the President for threatening Meta/Zuckerberg? Who?
Would you be on board with launching a lawsuit against a government which threatened a media firm ?
You seem to be trying to pin me down to an opinion, and Im not really sure why. Do I, a random person on the internet, matter to you that much that you need to clarify my exact opinion on stuff?
Your position:
>Your position:
>… t and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
Firms have a right to do what they please, as long as it is legal.
You dont like what firms do.
You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
This kills free speech.
——- The position that you set up, is inherently in contradiction to the norms of reality. I am a policy person and understand the trade offs here intimately, which is leading to me playing fast and loose, resulting in confusion.
And yes - you matter to me. Why shouldn’t you? You seem intelligent, or if not, you value looking intelligent.
It would be interesting to see how you resolve the contradiction that your position throws up.
———
> You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.
Im actually not doing that. I dont know where I gave you that impression but I do not believe the government should force any company to allow full free speech on their commercial platform.
> Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.
We are talking about twitter here in this context, which has been many times quoted as saying they are upholding free speech. The opinions you are referencing here apply to that company because that is what they state. Im not talking about all companies and their right to control what people say on their platforms, I feel this is more of an ideological discussion around Twitter/any social media which claims to uphold free speech in their public forum.
Therefore the contradiction does not really exist IMO, because they are being held to their own values and not mine.
Interesting thought experiment, I enjoyed chewing that over for a bit. Thanks :)
>people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.
Gatekeeping would be a right of platforms and I assumed that combating it would involve forcing them to behave in accordance with an external force.
And Since you are discussing only twitter, it does follow that Twitter has an anti-speech position, despite their stated intentions.
——-
For a bit more fun, I think what X was proclaiming is the naive version of free speech. The kind of “anyone can make this app” naive over generalization.
I have a mechanism which allows me to balance the needs of moderation and censorship with free speech. Its an interesting exercise, I think you might like working through it.
From personal experience - I have had to ban people, and it was a form of censorship. Resolving this contradiction effectively changed my career path.
So I have a 1000 users on my forum. One user is incredibly active, and spends their time abusing a specific local minority group.
Things like X minority needs to die, not arguing in good faith.
Now, ideally I shouldn’t ban him, and let counter speech do its things. But since they aren’t arguing in good faith, counter speech doesn’t work.
Over time, this is also creating second order effects in other conversations.
It’s attracting a new kind of user, its driving conversations to be more polarized, and its reducing time spent on longer more thoughtful posts.
How would you respond, and why?
It has always been thus. E.g. right wingers did not use twitter back in 2021.
I will grant it's getting worse though... for instance, the battle here on hackernews between left and right has strongly intensified and it looks like the left will win the downvote/flagging war and the right will stop posting in (and reading) political threads.
Regardless of whether someone is entitled to free speech, is a private company bound to the constitutional protection?
My understanding has always been that its specifically the government that can't censor me, a private company or citizen can. The NY Times isn't required to write an article I submit to them for example, that's no different than Twitter deciding not to keep a post a write.
I generally agree with your point about private companies and the 1A.
However, the NYT and Twitter/X are fundamentally different in that the NYT is not a user platform but rather a media company who decides what it wants to publish--meaning that is it's stated goal. Twitter/X stated goal is to provide a platform for users to publish whatever they want to say. Now, Twitter/X can have a policy saying "here's a platform where you can say whatever you want except for X, Y and Z" and that's fine. Just like HN has policies. As long as it's clear and transparent as to what they are allowing or disallowing, then users are informed enough to know what they're going to get when they log on to X. Just like I know what I'm going to get if I visit Fox News.
Prior to Elon, Twitter's policies were stricter and so there was a lot less "hate speech" (for lack of a better term). Those guardrails are gone, since for one Elon fired the whole moderation team, and also because of Elon's own immature posts setting the example, it's devolved into a reddit-style cesspool so I decided not to go there anymore.
Banning links to Signal would be no big deal if Elon hadn't loudly proclaimed himself as the "defender of free speech" and demonized the "censorship" of Twitter.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I've gotten too cynical to believe any company or rich individual making a business deal to actually tell the truth - its all marketing at that point.
I think that's reality, not cynicism
I agree with your viewpoint I think, but Im sure as always there are some edge cases which make this definition difficult.
Then you have no free speech. I can just refuse you internet access, or not sell ink and paper to you…
So my take is that no, it should not be allowed to private companies to censor arbitrarily. And of course an "algorithm" that sorts stuff in any other way than chronologically is censorship. The feed should just show chronological ordered stuff of followed accounts. No more and no less.
They are about ensuring that the government doesnt use its unique powers of force to ensure that certain ideas are not shared or discussed.
What the current government is doing, with Fox + Twitter, is fundamentally the opposite of free speech. They have the power to say something, then pretend it is true, and act on it.
Its not a fair fight.
Neither do you, unless you redefined it to be the super narrow description that you gave. So you can freely be censored but keep believing you have freedom.
You're the poster child of how europeans imagine usa citizens.
Private citizens and companies can censor. Twitter can have rules of conduct or terms of use, for example, and you have to play by their rules when posting on their service. The government isn't involved at all (twitter files not withstanding).
You can't say what you want in a shopping mall. They can decide who gets to stay in their premises, and for whatever reason they can eject you.
All the free speech cases, have been about government stopping speech. Whether its about deceny laws, or sedition - its always been the government vs a person / corporation.
So yeah - these have been the rights you lived under for all your life. Its never changed.
That is the operating definition of free speech that has worked in America since I started working in this space.
It hasn't worked. But you're too set in "USA IS PERFECT!" mindset to objectively think about it.
I think all of them are pretty crap for today’s environment.
But yes - the operating definition of Free speech, the one enforceable in courts, the one you have lived under, is the one I outlined.
Namely - no government over reach in speech. Not that people can’t do what they want as private individuals, and now corporations.
So you can in theory, have a corporation buy up all the local news channels, and then have them share one kind of point of view. It’s perfectly free speech.
You could stream porn, and the courts would side by you for your right to free speech.
This doesn’t mean you wont get sued for piracy, or actually earn money through your project - you still need a service people want.
I’m dead serious, you can check if you like - but these are the rules you live under even right now.
Don't sell me paper. Cut off my internet. That doesn't stop me from saying whatever I want, whether in public or private.
I mean, ok you have this right. What do you think was the INTENTION of this right? Do you think they intended for people to freely mumble to themselves or to tell their ideas to others?
Freedom of Speech goes hand in hand with Freedom of Association. You are free to speak and spread your ideas, you are not free to compel others to help you to do so and you are not entitled to an audience.
I don’t have to let you stand on my porch to speak anymore than Instagram has to allow you to post things or Costco has to allow you to hold lectures in the food court.
Calling for the eradication of people with certain sexual preferences or skin color for example.
I would still argue, though, that saying literally anything should be legal. Acting on hate speech, by plotting to commit a crime, may be illegal. The problem there is that you plotted a crime and in certain case that plot itself is illegal, it isn't about what you said but what you did.
This is not a simple matter of people saying things that are undesirable, or even heretical. It is not a matter of someone saying something hateful, then ignoring them as a hater, because chances are they want to suppress the speech of those they hate.
Child pornography, slander, and death threats are other examples of exceptions.
Slander and death threats are harder to define. You have to show an active plot to commit the crime, not just a statement. At that point the plot, the action you took, is the crime rather than your words.
Porn is 100% speech.
This is why the no asterisk position sets itself to implode.
The core defense of Free speech, one of the better articulated points is from Oliver Wendell Holmes. He articulates that free speech serves the search for truth, but the search for truth via the competition of ideas.
>that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,
This was his articulation in a sedition case brought by the government against citizens.
It is specifically in the case of government using its power to become a player in the market of ideas.
You clearly don't know anything about actual law and rights.
They also feel like they should be allowed to shut down other people's speech, because that is part of their idea of free speech. They should be allowed to tell you that you're not allowed to talk.
The more people understand that when people talk about "absolute free speech", it isn't a serious position, and is mostly held by people with this view, the better. I'm sure there are actual "free speech purists" out there, but they are few and far between. Instead it is mostly people using the guise of free speech so they can say and do what they want without consequences.
Yeah it does, at least in America. You can't yell fire in a theatre and incite panic.
Also there is the paradox of tolerance.
> Ultimately, whether it is legal in the United States to falsely shout "fire" in a theater depends on the circumstances in which it is done and the consequences of doing it. The act of shouting "fire" when there are no reasonable grounds for believing one exists is not in itself a crime, and nor would it be rendered a crime merely by having been carried out inside a theatre, crowded or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Incitement to violence is also permitted as long as it isn't immediate and/or likely. This is known as the Brandenburg Test:
There are obviously some restrictions on speech in every nation. However in the US the restrictions on speech by the state are far fewer than pretty much anywhere else and are enshrined by law. This is in stark contrast to other other Western nations such as the UK where there are far, far more restrictions on speech.
With regard to falsely shouting fire, there are no common misconceptions. The common understanding of the saying is identical with the understanding in the judgment, and that part of the judgment remains good law.
However, there is a modern meme that strives to obscure this reality by pointing out that the judgment reached conclusions that modern people generally disapprove of. This has no relevance to the issue.
The limit is basically “speech which threatens imminent violence”.
So saying “we should kill all group X” is fine. Saying “lets go kill those people from group X standing on Main St at 2pm” is not ok.
Even in his dissenting opinion in Abrams vs the United States, Holmes valued not free speech, but the market place of ideas - the competition of ideas that underlies the search for truth.
Slavishly sticking to free speech, and destroying the market of ideas - creating a monopilist propaganda force, with a symbiotic political party is NOT free speech.
Today we have far more information than any of the founders had anticipated. Monopolies of ideas, far more content than fact, the race to the bottom due to advertising - a source of stress in every pocket?
Yeah, your network is going to have a very specific signal to noise ratio. Your market place of ideas is going to be selling junk food, because its cheap and easy to make.
The idea of counter speech works, if counter speech is heard in the first place. If your message never gets to the other side, or the other party is completely enraged and unable to think past their fears - you have no market place of ideas.
If I said it was my political opinion that the gestapo should show up to your door, and drag you, your wife, and children to a death camp - we don't just have a "disagreement." Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
There's a line somewhere around political opinions that involve using the state to inflict violence on another that I believe should be inexpressible in public, and I think it's fine for non-state actors to ensure that's the case.
Yes we do, we disagree on that statement.
> Would you tolerate a discussion around somebody who said they personally wanted to do something like that to you?
Yes of course, why wouldnt I? Trying to understand that opinion and maybe bring us closer to agreeing on the underlying issues would be my first aim, not just to cry foul on free speech and expect them to be locked up just for saying something I dont like. That is barbaric.
You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
I think the promotion of liberalism and the lack of critical thinking has created a society of fanatics. For the vast majority of disagreements, it's good to try and understand other perspectives and to work towards compromise. What compromise should the German jews have offered the Nazis? What insights could they have gained from understanding the Nazi perspective?
> You can say anything you want, acting on it is what turns that into illegal activity.
Everything Hilter/Stalin did was legal. When families were gassed and thrown into ovens, that was legal. In fact, it was illegal to impede them. That started as somebody's political opinion, they were able to foment support for it, and it happened.
And finally, I understand what the law is in the US. The US basically allows any speech that doesn't threaten the government's monopoly on violence. I'm saying the Europeans are right to criminalize some political ideas. There's been no slippery slope in German because they don't let you wear swastikas.
Isn't that free speech?
If someone takes you up on that offer and you pay them, that crosses from free speech into illegal activity and you will be put in jail. But you are totally fine to talk about if you want.
Also, you never were in that situation, otherwise you would know there's no way to be fine while people are plotting to maim you. Or if you are, your family sure won't be.
If someone takes you up on that offer then they are breaking the law and committing an offense, regardless of what you said or did or didnt pay them.
If I tell you to go jump off a cliff and you do it, am I liable for murder?
I think you need to back off a little bit and stop trying to invent situations that you think fit your idea of what I think about implications of murder.
I think its fine to say what you want, thats it. You can agree or disagree with me to your hearts content, but do it amicably :)
How did you come to these conclusions about the goals and future of Twitter? My naive expectation was that Musk is mostly interested in enriching and aggrandizing himself, and that a crusade against some social group is only interesting as long as it serves the primary interests.
This is clearly not true. X represents Elon’s politics. Best example: Elon has X officially blocked any usage of the term cis as part of his crusade against his trans daughter - and I don’t say that lightly, he was not anti trans until she came out.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91126082/elon-musk-x-cisgender-c...
No, because people acting with hate as motivator don’t care if they are within a social minority. They will cease any opportunity to use every aggression tool they have at their disposal to express loudly their will to oppress whoever looks like unaligned with their mindset.
This is in sharp contrast with minorities whose only wish is to live in a way that is aligned with with their own aspirations that perfectly fit in a specter of harmonious social differences even if it doesn’t fall right in the middle of the median mainstream stereotype.
Everybody is part of some minorities. But not everyone think that because they are a member of this or that minority they should be given some hegemony over everything and the rest in the political matter of their society.
Difference without distinction in this case. The left actually polices its luminaries to some degree (not perfectly but still) which makes it incompatible with the grifter class Musk is chief president of. He’s never going to drift leftward because we’re not going to metaphorically suck his balls because he promotes basic human decency. Figures like him only go rightward.
As for if he bought twitter explicitly to make it a greater hotbed for racism, I think you’d have a hard time proving it in court, but at the same time, he’s unbanned a lot of prominent alt-right figure heads, and boosted tons of their tweets to the financial detriment of the platform. Can’t say he bought it to do that but the huge drops in value because of it hasn’t deterred him so…
It isn't just a left issue. Liberatarians also don't really care about LGBT people expressing themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_LG...
So Musk isn't libertarian nor left on social issues. He is conservative right. Although his exact philosophy is hard to pin down because he isn't really a supporter of the traditional family.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8090810/
https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/the-way-we-never...
https://pixiedane.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/research/tradition...
https://www.humanities.org/spark/the-myth-of-the-traditional...
Moreover, it’s not that simple. Racists can express themselves. I was talking about racist discourse, not racists themselves. Racism is a hate speech, which has nothing to do with, for example, the right to enjoy one's body and have an abortion as a woman or the ability to express one's gender identity—something that, according to all scientific studies and meta-analyses on the subject, clearly improves the well-being of trans people.
I know very well that racists are experts at playing the victim and making it seem like they are the ones facing repression, but who runs the country? Who are the journalists on television? Are they women or men? White? Rich?
It’s outrageous to claim that the richest man in the world—Elon Musk, a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic white supremacist—is supposedly "censored" and unable to express himself freely! Remind me of a time in American history when a woman had as much power as Elon Musk over the country, or even over other countries (as we see with ALD in Germany)?
Maybe (if it's about black or white), but anti-Semites have a pretty loud and public voice in the "Western" world.
Just look how many likes Ye’s “I AM A NAZI” tweet has…
"Liberal Zionism" used to be in vogue in Israel, which takes a more moderate view and criticizes the Israeli occupation while still arguing for an Jewish state, but I think it's gotten less and less popular these days, at least from what I tell from the outside, and a more extreme form has become the popular one again.
Another part of the issue is that especially among young people, words have lost their meanings. Everything is toxic, a genocide, sexual assault, rape, cultural appropriation, god knows what else - the room for nuances in discussion has been entirely lost because large parts of society lack the vocabulary to talk about it, 1984 says hello.
The combination of hyper-social media, ever shorter dopamine feedings / gamification and a complete lack of awareness for the importance of basic education and history are disastrous.
So do Jews. So are we seeing full free speech in action? Or is whats right decided by which side people agree with?
Even free speech has its limits...for example calling for the extermination of a race.
>Or is whats right decided by which side people agree with?
Correct, most of the time it is, and that is exactly why laws (esp. international ones) exist and Justitia is/should be blind.
There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.
Even in the US, freedom of speech IS restricted: the Supreme Court put the bar very high but it didn't say you could say anything. State secrets can't be revealed willy-nilly; even lower, you can't enter a non-disclosure agreement and then violate it.
The "lane" is that we try as much as possible to put clear, consistent guideline that apply to everyone through a legislative (actual laws) and judicial (precedent) process. This is absolutely not the same as Musk deciding on his own, inconsistent, ridiculous fits of drug-addled rage, where he bans the word "cisgender" or @elonjet for his own safety and then allows complete nazi-"WE WILL KILL YOU BITCHES" stuff - and that's only one of many examples.
Progressives: Elon doesn't care about free speech, he cares about limiting the speech of progressives in favor of the extreme right
Also progressives: Free speech should have limits to protect minorities from aggressors
Nothing at all inconsistent about these two positions, regardless of whether you think that either one is a good idea, or even true.
Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.
No, a good society should not pick lanes, but cherries.
It doesnt though, thats the point.
Its the same as competition in a capitalist marketplace. A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
With free speech if somebody is saying something that other people think is terrible, they should stop listening to that person. They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
In reality, people are weak and do not do these things. They keep buying the terrible products because they dont want to have to think about looking for a better alternative. They keep listening to the hate speech because its easier to respond in anger than to ignore the person. The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Again in reality this wioll never happen, and so people will keep shouting and shouting about what they dont like until the world ends up destroying itself through hate and anger.
It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.
I agree, thanks for pointing that out. There are nuances on both sides which make it an interesting thought experiment to apply to the other side.
Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right?
>They keep listening to the hate speech
The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate
>>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies
It depends on context. The legal test is called the "Imminent Lawless Action" Test in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenbur...
Buddy, do a little bit of googling before you say plainly incorrect stuff like this. [1] [2]
Just because there’s not a single definition of a word does not mean the meaning of the word is unclear.
I think everyone on the planet could identify the vast majority of hate speech from the age of like 11. They say the edgiest stuff, after all.
Even if you agree with hate speech, you can still identify it.
Also like… all words are made-up
1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate%20speech 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
So, from the opposite direction, I have the same issue as the other commentator but with the divergent use of the word "woke" by those mostly on the right (and sarcastically by those on the left) — if the person hearing/reading it doesn't know what to expect, it's not a useful word.
Therefore, while I know what I mean by "hate speech" (demonising/dehumanising a group), I tend to avoid using the term as it doesn't successfully replicate my thoughts into the heads of other people.
If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal and I will call the police or defend myself. If they pay somebody else to act on their opinion and cause me harm then again it becomes illegal. But to expect the law to punish someone just because they said 'I want to kill you'? That IMO is barbaric and completely ridiculous.
In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
Yes agreed, and its also the reason we have an innocent until proven guilty justice system.
Things can be said in anger, and not really meant. In fact I would wager out of all the death threats made in the entire world, the vast majority are said in anger and not meant to be followed through on. This is why we dont lock people up for just saying things. There needs to be other motives and evidence behind it to show intent.
Unfortunately yes this means we have situations where people are not believed and go on to receieve harm. Humanity has decided as a society that this is less harmful than locking far too many innocent people up by mistake. I do not have an opinion on whether this is right or wrong, but it is what exists for us and created by us.
If you have a better idea for a more fair justice system then go advocate for it, but the whole history of humanity hasnt found one yet.
You are incorrect, at least in California
https://www.cronisraelsandstark.com/criminal-threats-califor...
Not quite
From your link: "the prosecutor must prove that the threats placed the victim in reasonable fear and that the fear was sustained"
You cant just be prosecuted for saying something. You always need to back it up and prove it was a real threat where harm was a real possibility or the victim was in sustained genuine fear of their life.
While I appreciate your free speech maximalism, I can't help but feel you're shutting the door after the horse has bolted.
My feeling is that someone should be allowed to say that they hate me, and that they'd like to kill me. All the same, if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
I'm fact I'm glad that they're allowed to express themselves like this because then I know who not to stand near cliff edges with.
For real though I think a lot (but not all) of opposition to things like hate speech is really an opposition to the feeling being expressed, rather than the expression itself. I'd prefer someone didn't have hatred in their heart, but once they do I prefer that they're open about it.
(You might say that that will only encourage others to become hateful, I don't necessarily agree, but it's a fair concern.)
> if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it.
This is the sticky issue which nobody is able to solve though. How do you prove someone will actually attemt to do it? Currently the legal system requires more than them just saying it to prosecute. There needs to be more motive, or evidence of actual persistent stalking or harm.
What do you think makes the difference between an idle threat and an actual intention of harm?
On the other hand, it may not be necessary. When I say the law can try to prevent my murder, I don't necessarily mean to deprive my would-be murder of liberty or privacy (since those should be protected in the absence of proven guilt). If you put the prevention on the other side, and offer e.g. a police escort or enforced blocks on communication media then maybe you can discourage/prevent my murder without answering difficult questions like intent.
You might well say, "I shouldn't have to do any of that, they should have to not murder", or "that's all fine but who's going to pay". I have a most marvellous answer to those, but is comment is too small to contain it.
> You might well say...
Well indeed I do say who is going to pay. If we had a society where you could get your own police escort or phone block just by saying that someone threatened you, I feel that service would be open to abuse and would end up costing the taxpayer a whole lot.
> I have a most marvellous answer to those
Please retort your answer, I am intrigued :)
If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech.
Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
> A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business.
Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
> They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence.
Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
> The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world.
Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.
As a more general approach to freedom, we can consider that freedom can only begin where it confirms others’ freedom. If we don’t act with reciprocity in mind, we are on the track to build some kind of hegemony, not to establish a society of free people.
Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it.
> Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election?
Yep, and if the majority of the world fully agrees that Twitter is in the wrong and is a horrible place then it will plummit further and cease to exist. The thing here is that there is a massive percent of the population that loves twitter as it is, and so it will continue as there are still enough people to justify the advertising.
> Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter.
He didnt. He is trying to and we will see what hapopens there. Personally I think his case will be thrown out but thats just an opinion.
> Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't.
I agree, I never said it was easy. In fact I said that the majority of the world will take the easy way out and not put the thought required into their reponses to things.
"Election".
Action very easy. They do it a lot. Did it this time, even, despite what they say.
> He didnt.
He did.
Here's the lawsuit that X Corp. filed: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.38...
That is him doing the thing.
I disagree.
> He did.
Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
This is not how people typically use the term. And if you look it up the dictionary also doesn't use it that way.
And while we're on this point, there's such a thing as vexation litigation. You should look that up too.
Because words are used to communicate between parties, one cannot unilaterally define an existing term to mean whatever they wish it to mean. (Another good thing to look up: Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of words.)
Yeah fair enough, I am not a laywer and so am not knowledgable on exact legal definitions. However you argued your point as if he was successful, which he is not, and so your point is moot until a ruling.
No need to go off on other tangents that I have not mentioned anything about, then again you have the right to free speech so feel free to rattle on about whatever you want!
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/14/media/white-house-ap-ban-...
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/julianne-moore-donald-tru...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/pentagon-sch... (Wasn't this the villain's plot in one episode of Buffy?)
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/13/trump-dei-ban-banned-wor... ("Trans" is a common prefix in chemical words, irregardless of humanity, this is stupid)
> Did he win? IMO saying he 'sued' someone means he was successful and they had to pay him. Otherwise he just filed a lawsuit.
To sue is to file.
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/sue#:~:text=Brit%20%2F...
For the case I linked to, the status appears to be "Oral argument in the Fifth Circuit is scheduled for February 18, 2025" i.e. tomorrow: https://knightcolumbia.org/cases/x-corp-v-media-matters
Lots of people can't fight lawsuits even if they're in the right. This is called "lawfare" or a "SLAPP".
Here's the result of a different SLAPP case that he was involved in, that was dismissed by a judge because it was identified as a SLAPP case by a judge in a jurisdiction where that's deemed anti freedom-of-speech:
"""A judge in California on Monday dismissed the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has published reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X, formerly Twitter, since Musk’s acquisition.
The case was dismissed in accordance with the state’s anti-Slapp law, which forbids nuisance lawsuits intended to punish the exercise of free speech.""" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/25/elon-musk...
> It doesnt though, thats the point.
In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific).
There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
So one can still be a free speech absolutist with respect to speech in itself, while still holding people responsible for unlawful activity that the speech is helping to facilitate.
You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.
Combine the two and it isn't that you said something that is illegal, its that the statement is interpreted as a clear signal of actively planning to do something which itself is illegal.
That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power.
According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech.
Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.
IMO it is
> Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits?
Feel free to, you have that right. If people choose to act on it I will deal with it on my end appropriately, and I wont be complaining to you to stop saying what you have the right to.
So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
Words are still just words until they are acted on, but this is just my opinion and you are entitled to yours.
> So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
Not sure where you got that from, of course it is possible. But we are all gatekeepers of our own minds.
You seem to be ignoring my responses and trying to lead me further into extreme examples to trap me. Carry on if you feel you must, but at the end of the day we both have our opinions and we are entitiled to them.
You overestimate the power of your mind. Constant attacks breaks everybody and don’t forget the mind of children and young people is even weaker. But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Back to extreme examples, what about Charles Manson? He didn’t kill anybody, was his imprisonment wrong?
> You overestimate the power of your mind
No I dont. I am fully aware of mine and everybody elses weakness and bias.
> But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all?
Exactly!
I think you are overestimating your opinion, you come across as if you know everything thats right and wrong and everybody should have the same opinion as you.
Luckily for myself and free speech, opinions are subjective. Here you are trying your hardest to offend me and back me into a corner about what I think. Yet my overarching opinion is that you are free to say anything you like about me. I have no issue with your opinions, and if you didnt have issue with mine this would be a much nicer world to live in.
Try tolerence of other peoples opinions sometime, even if you dont agree with them. Its actually quite refreshing and liberating.
To be clear, you're comparing anti-semites (a racist "group") with Jews (an ethnic/religious group). One is defined by holding a targeted, hateful ideology. The other is a group of human beings, by birth/existence.
I make no claim against you, but this framing represents the insidiously successful repackaging of hate as an "equal right", which racists have used to mainstream hateful ideas that, at-scale, ultimately infringe on the rights of groups of people. This can include (has included) incitement to violence. The latter is famously a limitation of free speech, and all rights are generally circumscribed by their infringement on the rights of others, in any case.
The other insidiously misleading argument around this issue is that Twitter is enforcing "free speech" in the first place. Only the government can infringe on the right, as it restrains only the government. Twitter is no "protector" of free speech, because it cannot be. It can, however, make the choice to allow and promote hateful speech against others, and that's exactly what it's doing.
So, the argument here is not whether promoting rights is good for society. The argument is whether promoting hate is good for society.
I disagree. In this context they are 2 groups of people who disagree about something, everything else is irrelevant. It is your opinion to colour one side or the other 'hateful', 'racist' or any other word. You are applying your opionin and bias to other people arguments to paint one side better than the other.
Take this same opinion and apply it to Israel/Palestine, and suddenly it becomes not so clear cut. Both sides claim something about the other side, and both are killing each other because if it. In this instance, who would you call hateful and racist? It completely depends on who you sympathise with as there is no correct answer here. It is no different to any other groups of people who you are not part of.
You should look up the word, antisemite.
>Take this same opinion and apply...
I understand why you'd want to change the subject, but no.
I also understand why you ignored the rest of my comment.
I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today. While it's infected too many people, it is heartening to watch the exodus underway that's rapidly evolving it into a 4chan-esque echo chamber.
Prejudice is completely different to hate. They are often associated but are not the same.
> I see now that you're a promoter of exactly the insidious "hate as an equal right" mantra that turned Twitter into what it is today.
You seem very quick to label and categorise people into boxes about what they think about. Be careful, that is a very dangerous road to go down as history has proved time and time again.
Your abridged definition is your cartoonish admission that you're aware that you're wrong.
With just a little more cleverness you could have easily avoided that reveal and actually challenged me.
>You seem very quick to label...
Ah yes, the old, "labeling the labelers is the real problem here" routine.
I'm seeing now that you're just kind of a lazy troll—boring and unimaginative. This is where I exit. Feel free to carry on with yourself!
Theres a main difference between you and I here which is becoming quite apparent at this point.
I respect your right to think and say anything you like. I have no issue with you or your opinions, and you are free to express them against me as you wish. This is the whole basis for all my posts as can plainly be seen.
You seem to have very strong feelings against me, resorting to labelling and name calling very quickly. You dont seem to respect my opinion or right to have one. You seem to think I am 'wrong' in the general sense, yet have nothing other than your opinion of me, a random person on the internet, to back that up.
Carry on with your offense throwing, I completely respect your right to express yourself in that way and will not tell you you are wrong or you should stop:)
This is an absurdly disingenuous way of phrasing the situation. One group is ideological and defined by its generalized hatred towards members of the other, while the other group is an ethnic/religious group. Being jewish does not imply that you subscribe to any particular opinion or identify with either end of the political spectrum. There is no possible way this can simply be seen as as a disagreement between "two sides".
Your attempt to equate this to the Israel/Palestine conflict is equally absurd. The Hamas and the government of Israel are both committing heinous acts of terrorism in the name of hatred, bigotry and racism.
I dont agree with your definitions or opinions and thats OK, we have the right to do that.
Are you affording me the same courtesy? Because it sounds like you are not.
It does not matter how politely you formulate your opinion if it legitimizes racism by reduction to a "two sides" argument. Merely existing as a religious or ethnic group is not the same as expressing an opinion, and it doesn't legitimize the expression of unqualified hatred towards the same group. We should tolerate the expression of opinions which we disagree with, but I think there is a limit, and we should not tolerate intolerance.
The Jewish people who are against genocide really do not appreciate people like you staining them with that lie.
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2024/02/14/travaglio-a-la7-...
But if you criticise israel, that's the standard answer you get.
I don't blame folks for being tired of this, but Gaza chose this route just like we in the US chose ours. Gaza made an extremely gross and unwise decision to go with the hamas losers. Its natural when a country picks poor quality folks to run their government that there may be consequences for their unwise choice. That goes for any country who picks the wrong leaders. I'm sure during world war 2 the civilians inhabiting axis territories probably experienced things you guys would call genocide.
All people need to do is to come up with something other than the complete destruction of Israel, and maybe there could be the start of a peace process.
I wouldn't agree with that, what I try to do is to gather the news the best I can, try to include the historical context and then try to reason about where the conflict exists. My intent with this process requires that by necessity I DO try to see the other side(s), because conflicts often arise from incompatible worldviews, so what are these worldviews?
Often with these long standing beefs, there is a chain of hostile actions met by more hostile actions by opposing sides or interests. I think the reason that the october 7 action is now forgotten was that it was sudden and ended pretty quickly for obvious reasons.
Is the destruction in Gaza disproportionate in nature, well it clearly looks that way, but on the other hand if I shoplift a candy bar and get arrested, the consequences are not comparable in magnitude to the price of the candy bar, heck its often hundreds of times more severe :)
>No point talking to you then :)
Its fine if you don't like to discuss things like this, I understand the frustration. Drilling down into these subjects seems suspiciously close to work and I know many of us just post here for fun. I do it to cultivate a "slander free" posting style and avoid things like assuming what sources of information others exclusively subscribe to.
If you did differently, you wouldn't have written what you wrote :)
Which thankfully when it's a platform it doesn't take long to find out which it is.
Unfortunately, in American culture any kind of regulation is seen as negative inherently, whereas in continental European cultures, regulation is seen as a vital and fundamental part of ensuring a place where everyone can thrive.
But if we abolish the state the way libertarians currently define it—meaning abolishing the state but not private property (which paradoxically forces the state to persist in order to determine who owns what, such as businesses, housing, etc.)—then it's an entirely different project. We would be abolishing the so-called oppression of the state only to replace it with an even worse and unchecked oppression by corporations and the billionaires who own them, with no means of voting (since "voting with your wallet" is a myth).
And yet, when you listen to them, it sounds as if they are liberating us from something, when in reality, they are freeing themselves from all control so they can better enslave us.
Part of the problem is that the “content policy” keeps differing from practice. Does sharing Signal links violate the policy?
They were literally being silenced for expressing their criticism of the ideology of gender identity and how it is being used to disadvantage and oppress women and girls.
On X, however, they are free to state this without fear of censorship, due to the broadening of permissible speech on the platform. So while it might not be the "free speech absolutism" that Musk disingenuously claims, it's an improvement to the pre-Musk era of censorship.
X, through Musk, is now a quasi-governmental platform - as can demonstrated by actions like this.
You should perhaps do more research before making claims like "flat out falsehood".
Would that change your view?
“before musk you as a feminist could not state (common anti trans positions held by feminists of a certain flavor)”
I provided the single biggest counterexample ever in JK rowling, so the original post is either a falsehood (I believe so) or very wrong, hope that’s more clear to you, since you seem to have issues following here.
You could search it yet you don’t provide those examples here which is why I’m not taking anything you’re saying in good faith because it isn’t. if you’re curious why I think that, read again the first part of this comment.
JKR is an interesting counterexample for a number of reasons. One is that she was very careful and tempered in her language, as one may expect from an expert writer and of someone with her keen perception of language. If you search her tweets on this topic prior to Musk's ownership (e.g. "from:jk_rowling until:2022-04-14 trans" in the X search box) you'll see what I mean. Another is that she spoke out on this topic fairly late on, and so would have witnessed the censorship and been aware of how best to express her views around these limitations. There is also the fact that hers is and was one of Twitter's most-followed accounts and in practice that would give her more leeway in terms of freedom of expression.
I could search X to confirm to you what I personally witnessed with regard to feminists who aren't JKR being censored and banned, but that would take some effort and I'm not yet convinced that it would be worth it, given that you're engaging with an attitude of aggressive cross-examination rather than curiosity and open-mindedness. This is also why I enquired as to if it might change your view.
Is it shitty that they censor? Absolutely. But is it a constitutional violation? Not unless I've horribly misunderstood my rights for more than 35 years.
Well, no -- you're conflating "freedom of speech" as a general concept with the first amendment as a legal principle. The first amendment is specifically the mechanism of law we use to ensure that freedom of speech is respected in our interactions with the political state.
The first amendment doesn't apply to our interactions with each other outside of the political sphere, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have expectations of conduct and cultural norms that uphold freedom of speech via other means in non-government contexts.
Cultural norms dictate some modicum of restraint on everyone. You have no obligation to tolerate me if I call your wife a whore. Any given community has its social norms that dictate what you can and can't say. To force them to accept "unacceptable" speech would violate freedom of speech itself.
In private you have severe restrictions on speech and expressions. Workplaces, stores, and schools have codes of conduct, dress codes, etc. to restrict expression.
What you call "extremely taboo subjects" is relative, based on your own biases and beliefs. "Woman should be more active in public life" is not an "extreme" view, even in more conservative sections of society. But in Ultra-orthodox jewish communities, or isolationist muslim communities, or even many christian sects, this would be controversial statement.
If a member faces social consequences for these statements, it is not a violation of their right to free speech. Nobody is obligated to tolerate you, no matter how in the right you may be. You can't force society to be on your side.
You might say, "But these social norms are repressive and harmful." Well then change them through activism. Stop whining about "free speech violations". That is, again, ass backwards.
You can't control what other opinions people will have of you, or suppress their expression of those opinions, that's true. But that itself is part and parcel of freedom of speech. The social consequences of expressing opinions that other people find offensive or disgusting are yours to bear, and may indeed motivate others to want to have little to do with you.
But this is juxtaposed against an expectation of freedom of speech as a cultural norm -- the point above is precisely that the way this is expressed in other contexts is different from the way it's expressed with respect to the political state. So we do have an expectation that formal institutions will not engage in prior restraint, or punish people for speech itself within most (but not necessarily all) categories, etc.
For example, people might find it reasonable that someone be dismissed from a job for making overtly racist comments in the office. But the same people would consider it inappropriate if, for example, an employee was fired for expressing that he does not like the boss's favorite movie.
There are absolutely different boundaries and different weighing of consequences between how we apply the norm of freedom of speech to political vs. social situations, but to say that we do not adhere to freedom of speech as a cultural norm at all is quite incorrect.
Progressives: Elon doesn't care about freedom of speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)
Also progressives: Freedom of speech has its limits
Pick a lane.
The attacks on Musk are almost always that he doesn’t support freedom of speech, without any qualification.
If you’re trying to attack the much narrower position that he’s not a free speech absolutist you need to do it at the time your make the criticism, not retrospectively after you make the allegation.
His actions are inconsistent, and this one of many demonstrations that he doesn't care at all about liberty. That matters because he's now apparently in charge of every federal government agency.
It's the pot calling the kettle black.
Actually this argument makes no sense. I know that it's commonly repeated in propaganda, but that doesn't mean it isn't stupid on its face. You can't just throw people into a collective arbitrarily and then hold them responsible for everyone else you'd call that's actions
The statements "Elon Musk Musk doesn't care about free speech because he doesn't allow (edge case)." and "Free speech has limits." Are non-contradictory.
Additionally, not allowing links to Signal isn't an "edge case," but a considerable offense against free speech (the general concept, not the literal law in the constitution), especially for one who calls himself a "free speech absolutist."
No, it's "Elon claims to be a free speech absolutist yet somehow keeps denying freedom of speech to people who disagree with him". The hypocrisy is the problem.
You get banned for sharing identities of DOGE people, but Musk can share the name and tax documents of a federal judge.
Hypocrite.
This particular clause seens very unlikely. One could want an increase in racism and homophobia on a platform without specifically wanting there to be less black people (for example) speaking out. That the -isms cause said people to speak up less would likely be a (pleasant?) side effect rather than the primary goal.
1. Inherited rich kids like Elon often have a strong feeling that they are better then the rest of humanity.
2. But it turns out if you are a leech on society like that sooner or later people stop accepting that (remember: he pays less in taxes and gains more in government subsides than most people)
3. So in order for people not to turn against you sooner or later you need to keep them split into subsections that are in conflict with each other. The more split they are, the more wealth you can extract.
That is the age old strategy of divide and conquer and if you ever wondered why your political system seemed to be split down the middle 50:50, that is your answer: people with money profit from it being so.
Trying to silence LGBTQ+ etc people goes directly against the goal you posit.
It took 6 weeks for that milk to rot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
A justification [0] of sorts is provided for the journalist suspensions:
> Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...
Pick a company and you will almost certainly find contradictions in how they publicly represent themselves.
Stack Overflow has a pretty good model. It does not remove suspended accounts nor their posts (except those directly related to the suspension). It subtly signals that an account is in suspension by reducing the account's 'reputation' (internet points) to 1 and placing a small notice on the profile, usually stating the reason for the suspension (e.g. suspicious voting etc).
Wikipedia cops a lot of criticism for being politically biased. The fact it has a whole article around this seems to support that.
That is a complete lie. Musk "updated" twitter rules to ban the tracking of private jets (namely his) despite that being public information, and immediately proceeded to suspend accounts having relayed that public information, and accounts which had mentioned or linked to such, or to aviation tracker websites.
Musk also routinely singles out individuals of companies or administrations he dislikes e.g. https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-bullying-federal-wor...
Ultimately, there's little doubt that sharing the real time location of named private individuals is doxing.
It's true that Twitter suspended journalists only 24 hours after the ban on doxing went live, but the penality was minor, and journalists were allowed back after they removed the offending content.
A couple journalists broke a social media platform's rule on doxxing, and were temporarily suspended for it.
This wouldn't meet the standard for notability if it occurred on any other platform.
It is impossible to argue against you because it is an opinion. First of all there is not one "Wikipedia", second of all as politicians usually say "I can not comment on specific cases". There is some truth in that saying, you can only talk about the policy and the policy continues to be "neutral point of view". Considering the horribly biased alternatives to Wikipedia that has sprung up, I would say that Wikipedia is probably the best NPOV you are going to get.
Have you actually tried creating articles on Wikipedia? I've seen some pretty notable projects have pages that they wrote for Wikipedia be rejected as being "not noteworthy enough". Specifically Pleroma (a Fediverse application similar to Mastodon) comes to mind.
I feel for people who get their pet idea deleted.
Until a "free speech defender" can explain what CrimthInc did that was against free speech that warranted the ban (and not either ignore it or sweep it under the "mistake were made" rug), i will keep thinking they are only a Musk glazer, deal?
They were penalized only 24 hours after the ban took effect, but the penality was minor.
Musk is fine with censorship with his Chinese CCP friends, anyway, so the hypocrisy is as big as his Melon.
> Wikipedia’s political bias confirmed
Hardly equivalent in terms of notability.
The simple existence of a page that documents an event is not evidence of political bias, and that accusation says more about your own biases than it does Wikipedia editors.
The problem is that notability is very subjective, and wikipedia's editors are notorious for applying a low threshold for information critical of those on the right, and high threshold for information critical of the left.
Suspending a few journalists for doxxing would not meet the notability threshold for an article to exist, if it occured on any other platform.
The system is not perfect, and is still vulnerable to certain kinds of subterfuge, but the more critical thinkers involved in the process, the better. If you consider yourself a critical thinker, consider adding to the body of knowledge.
> if it occured on any other platform
Who cares? Those platforms are not Wikipedia, and serve different goals. You will find plenty of historical events covered in great depth on Wikipedia despite only involving a few people over a few days. Don't fall victim to cherry-picking.
Journalists get suspended from social media platforms for doxing all the time.
These events are not newsworthy, and wikipedia articles are not written about them.
The problem isn't the content of this article, it is that the article exists at all. It only exists because wikipedia editors apply different notability thresholds to one side of politics than the other.
They won't. They will say they're the champion of free speech, and that'll be enough for the fan base.
The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.
Tunisia is now arguably better off, but even beyond that: the longterm effects of such things aren't always immediately apparent. The French Revolution led to terror, then to an Empire and devastating wars and finally back to the old monarchy, but it cast a very long shadow on the 19th century and beyond.
What has happened since is the old order has mostly reasserted itself - with a clamp down on social media, and mechanisms put in place to cut access if things get too fiesty.
Take Egypt - they kicked out a miltary juntu - forced elections - then the 'wrong' people won the elections and the military took over again, clamped down on the media and are in still in place today ( president has been in power for 10+ years with no signs of stepping down ) - and they are so representative of the people that the US think they might be able to persuade the Egyptian leader to take part in ethnic cleansing of it's neighbour.
Whether that's a good thing depends on whether you think people like el-Sisi know what's best for their country, whether the people agree or not.
In the end I think it's easiest to stick to the facts - which is the elected PM was overthrown by the military and sentenced to death, and eventually died in prison.
In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed.
If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better.
Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed.
In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it.
In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
Also, the Arab spring overthrew several decades-long brutal dictatorships. Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
I don't believe either of those ended up positive either. The Taliban waited out the US; they may have been overthrown, but given that he Taliban are back in power it seems like the entire effort was waste. In Iraq, Saddam was the only force holding back the Shia majority. Iraq has largely devolved into another proxy for Iran, and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone. I'm not supportive of Saddam, either; he was truly evil in ways that people don't always understand. My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
The current worse state of Iraq ( post Saddam ) is nothing to do with populism - and all to do with foreign inference.
Though I agree with the general point about revolutions - one of the key problems with violent revolutions is quite often the most hardline nutters ( of whatever flavour ) tend to end up in charge as they are the most prepared to be violent.
I presume the grandparent was being rhetorical and trying to say Twitter was always a net negative for society as a whole.
Even today, its a net positive for plenty of people (myself included).
That occasional good information also succesful spread, doesn't mean that information would not have also flowed with different communication tools and maybe then even in a better way.
The big problem with any of these discussions (especially online) is that a lot of people are intellectually lazy and assume the other-side is comprised of brain dead zealots who only support the most extreme positions.
An honest assessment of the revelations of USAID spending and its funding of literally thousands of media companies via direct grants or voluntary purchases would suggest the information environment surrounding this is not entirely benign. And it would suggest that reasonable people can also dispute the pure intentions of a system that makes it almost entirely impossible to fire people, and was started as a soft power system for US foreign policy.
If a bunch of new people are being fired after having just moved or started new positions, why wouldn’t people try self organizing to support their coworkers who just had their lives upended?
But as to your assertion of "illegally terminated," let me provide some context.
Not a single lawsuit has provided evidence of damages under law. One of the TROs has been shot down outright. This is key, as the judiciary requires law to be violated to intervene. They are not an HR department, and there are existing remedies for this in the administration. No such violations warranting legal action outside of the existing system have been shown.
Not only this, they went district "judge shopping" on a Friday night, two hours prior to close. Many of these judges are now being shown with extremely inflammatory political rhetoric showing bias, and one will have articles of impeachment drawn.
The circumstances surrounding this judicial action are so unprecedented, that when the Administration appealed showing evidence of fraud and illegal behavior, they "asked" the judge if they should allow it. The point of this is to show the frivolity of the suit: not only does the judiciary not determine Executive Power under Article II, they're asking the judge if the judge should take executive action to break the law.
While law is subject to interpretation, it is not clear (and I do not believe) these employees are being terminated illegally, the least of which is they have yet to describe the legal circumstances under which their termination is unlawful. Unlike common wisdom, the federal judiciary is not-coequal with the Legislature and the Executive; the Supreme Court is. Article III specifies that federal courts called "inferior" courts are subject to the leisure of Congress. These courts have been disbanded twice in history and do not hold the power that popular culture thinks they do.
The very behavior of DOGE looks like kids unleashed in a factory they don’t understand, willing not to recognize their capacities are adequate to understand it in so little time.
There were knowledgeable people, they’ve been fired.
You wouldn’t accept it for a flying plane pilot or a surgeon in the surgery room, why would you accept it for state agencies?
I am fully aware of the widespread fraud they were encountering, as well as the technical difficulties of fixing it. I am also aware of the less-than-neutral culture that pervaded that organization at that time. I also have experience as a defense contractor and have personally met and interacted with many people in the administrative bureaucracy, including high ranking cabinet members.
My comments come from personal experience both with the precursor to DOGE (which is a division in USDS), as well as how the federal government operates.
And yet you believe that fixing this requires pulling the plug on most if not all, by people totally remote to how it works?
That’s a peculiar way of fixing this. Especially in administrative matters (where the side effects are as deadly as putting an untrained random person in charge of a civil airplane).
Let alone the fact that you need to have a subscription in order to obtain a "somewhat fair" exposure. It's ridiculous.
They don't have to pretend anymore. The man saluted at an inauguration, I think all pretense has left the building.
I mean, who knows, they may claim that; I believe they did after the period where they banned people for using the dread word 'mastodon': https://fortune.com/2022/12/18/twitter-suspends-paul-graham-...
But c'mon, now, if you believe that you'll believe anything.
(This is the case for most people who go on about 'free speech' a lot, really.)
X is not Twitter.
Twitter was a tool for free speech. X is a tool for Nazi propaganda.
I think people still haven't come to terms with that.
Please provide actual evidence of said government meddling with Twitter.
I would say there is all sorts of "government meddling" going on right now, with all the uncertanty and mess with all the services + departments we all rely on over the last month....
Otherwise you are appointing some group of people to decide what is "good speech" and "bad speech" and banning the latter.
The Twitter Files also conveniently omitted that Twitter also got requests from the Trump campaign and accepted some of them.
It got requests from both the Trump administration and the Biden campaign. Joe Biden was not President in 2020. Donald Trump was still running the government that was "censoring" social media.
I don't know why this never comes up when people talk about the Twitter Files. .
Remember how Taibbi got an agency name wrong and used that to make a bunch of conjectures that didn't actually align to reality?
If you don't, maybe you should refresh your memory.
From the article, no they can't.
That was a pure US State Department/the Blob move, as soon as social media turned against them they were very quick into crying wolf and saying that said social media needs to be curtailed and protected against outside foreign influences.
I'm a mr. Calin Georgescu voter from Romania (you might have heard of him in VP Vance's recent speech held in Munich), so you can understand how come I view things this way.
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
Hard to see how he doesn't fit this criteria? That DOGE thing is clearly a US government agency of some sort.
> The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.
If you take the Louis XIV "I am the state" approach, then, well, he has, right? He promoted Trump on the platform during the election, then walked into a job with the state.
Elon's proclamation that he is fighting "them" (deep state/democrats/...) has turned around and he is the same now. He is the USAID-ish funding for his cause. The cause could be different but the tools are the same, albeit in different names.
Coordination should not be about "hey, let's all make a lot of noise about his last move", because you're overwhelmed. It's about making sure not too many people are working on the same line.
You pick a line. One where you can act.
You get one executive order rescinded. Someone else work on another one. You legislate one doggy doger at a time. You focus like crazy. (First action to focus is, of course, to delete your Twitter account.)
You make noise about all the times where you win, and they loose.
In two years, you get the voters out.
If you don't have any other control then "not playing their game, and wait", that's at least something. There's probably a food bank close to your place. Keep the lights on there.
I’m sympathetic to Tesla owners who've had their car for a while. If Akio Toyoda turned out to be a bastard, I wouldn't buy another new Toyota, but I’d continue to drive our current one until the wheels fall off. Same with Teslas. It's unreasonable to ask someone to get rid of their working, paid-for family transport. We can't just scrap all of them.
But. Anyone driving an Incel Camino just bought the thing, and I will continue pointing at them and laughing.
So ideally, we want to reduce the purchases of new Teslas and bring the stock down.
Even nicce's parent comment only concerned buying new Teslas.
It's been overvalued before, and now it's cruising on "how good will the government corruption money be". Needless to say, you can look at how things worked out in Russia for who gets paid, and how much that winds up being worth in the end.
The pussyfooting around this from some countries is genuinely surprising. Like, how are the Germans of all people confused about whether the oligarch courting their neo Nazis is a threat to their national security?
AfD are also anti-science proponents of climate change denial, and are quite happy to hold opposing views from one day to the next.
By all means ask me for receipts
It’s about national identity, “us and them”. If it wasn’t about immigrants it would be about “experts”. If it wasn’t about experts it would be about “the gays”.
This kind of thing doesn’t go away with appeasement: orgs like AfD just point their weapons at somebody else. It has always been the way with facists.
Dual citizenship is as legal as you can get, the AfD opposed it until they realised it meant they could get away with later stripping undesirable people of German citizenship.
Germany decided to accept a million *perfectly legal* asylum seekers in the Syrian crisis, and another million from Ukraine. The AfD opposes it, even as they accept the suffering of Ukranians is real.
Germany is also in the EU, so has, totally lawful, free movement of people from every country they share a border with. The AfD opposes it.
The AfD aren't fascists and the attempts to win elections by just screaming slurs until they lose all meaning has stopped working. People have realised that calling everything "racist" or "fascist" or "Nazi" or whatever doesn't mean it actually is, and the left's entire political strategy is just labelling things it doesn't like with bad words.
And yes part of the issue with immigration is national identity. Germany is a nation-state and always has been, just like France and Poland and Italy and Spain and Portugal and Czechia and Hungary and Ireland and Greece are. There are still some non-national states in Europe like the UK (which contains multiple nations: England, Scotland and Wales, arguably part of Ireland (although some claim Northern Ireland has been separate long enough to have its own national identity) and arguably Cornwall if you listen to Cornish nationalists which you probably shouldn't).
Economic migrants, falsely claiming to be refugees, from Somalia and Syria, aren't German. Or French. Or Italian. Or Greek. They are Somalian, or Syrian. To pretend migration policy debates don't raise issues of national identity is fucking insane.
Do you think the systematic repression of Polish people during the German Empire, which was seen as necessary to achieve the 19th century ideal of a nation-state, was appropriate?
Because you make it sound like Germanisation was a good thing, as otherwise it wouldn't have been a nation-state.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_...
> Within Bismarck's Kulturkampf policy, the Poles were purposefully presented as "foes of the empire" (German: Reichsfeinde).[7] Bismarck himself privately believed that the only solution to Polish Question was the extermination of Poles.[8] As the Prussian authorities suppressed Catholic services in Polish by Polish priests, the Poles had to rely on German Catholic priests. Later, in 1885, the Prussian Settlement Commission was set up from the national government's funds with a mission to buy land from Polish owners and distribute it among German colonists.
If that's what needed for a nation-state, I reject it as a worthy goal to achieve or use as a basis for identity, just like I reject my country's racist and expansionist history of exploiting African slaves and Native Americans as being something to re-attain.
(Apropos: "Frederick the Great ... likened the newly conquered West Prussia to a Prussian Canada and its inhabitants (which were German and Polish) to the Iroquois, who he saw as equally uncivilised.")
How Germany became a nation-state, which was generally by the unification of German polities (like Italy, or as happened in France many many centuries earlier), is quite irrelevant to its status today as one. Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. There are presumably people still alive today that were expelled. That is much more recent history but it doesn't take away from the fact that Poland is a nation-state or make that somehow a bad or invalid status.
I didn't say it was a good thing to expel cultural minorities, and nation-states can and do obviously have cultural minorities without issue.
The problem is people denying that Germany is a nation, often denying the very notion that there is something validly called a nation. The problem is people saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country on this basis. There are people that think unironically that identifying ethnic groups is racist if you are doing it for any reason except to give "affirmative action" benefits to non-white ethnic minorities.
Your country is presumably the US so you likely have no actual conception of what a nation-state is. The US is not one.
You are the one which talked about how Germany has always been a nation state, as if that were a good thing.
> Poland basically expelled its German population after WW2 for example. ...
> Poland is a nation-state
Umm, you should mention the additional role of the Allied powers and the Postsdam Agreement in the ethnic cleansing of Germans from post-war Poland, and how it was based on the belief that a homogeneous population would be be more stable. And you should mention how the nation-state could only exist because of the near extermination of the Jewish population.
Had that not happened, Poland would now be as much a nation-state as Belgium or Finland.
So far I am not liking the processes used to make nation states.
Let's see, you said Italy is a nation-state, right? I've visited the autonomous region of South Tyrol. I guess the native German speakers are a cultural minority that a nation-state can have, right?
> saying that Germans don't have the right to control their borders and maintain their country as their country
I think I've spotted the racism. Define German. Define "their borders." Is Austria German? Is South Tyrol German? Should they be in German borders?
Is the Danish minority of Southern Schleswig German?
Do Germans need to be Catholic? Or Protestant? Can Germans be Muslim? Can Germans be black? Can Somalian refugees be German? Can the grandchildren of Turkish guest workers be German?
As an American, I find it bizarre and bigoted to call native-born Germans "Ausländer" just because their parents didn't come from Germany. Is that the nation-state you're talking about?
To me that just seems like a continuation of 19th century racist nationalism.
I don't see the popular Twitter personalities there such as naval, balajis, paulg, etc. or folks from TOPT, etc.
Most of the people you mentioned wouldn't risk their money for something like moral values so they haven't left X. A large number of interesting, less self motivated people have migrated already.
None, obviously - every network is unique. However, that doesn't contradict the premise. If one accepts that continuing to use twitter makes one "part of the problem", a desire to read PG's tweets doesn't seem like a meaningful justification. In my view, the only justification is "I don't care how twitter operates" or "I think twitter's new mission is good".
Such content doesn't seem possible on other platforms. FB is dead here. Insta is only images/videos. Threads is a no-no. I don't know any alternatives as of yet where my network is active.
If you want celeb VCs, then, yeah, you're probably stuck with Twitter. Most people don't, though.
Dunno, no interest.
> thought-leaders
I've never been quite sure what people mean when they say this.
> governments
An increasing number of governments, government agencies and politicians have presence on Bluesky or Mastodon or both. The EC has its _own mastodon instance_ (though, confusingly, some EC agencies are on other instances, or are just on bluesky).
> authors
Mostly Bluesky, also Threads to some extent.
BTW if I may clarify, by thought leader, I mean people who are leaders or popular figures in a particular industry, whose voices matter and shapes up that domain.
Think of Sam Altman for AI, Marc Andreessen for VC, Andrew Huberman for Mental Health, and figures like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Naval Ravikant, etc.
Usually, posting on Twitter or quitting it has a very tiny, almost imperceptible effect on the larger world and it's certainly not something to get worked up about.
For example, keeping a Twitter account in case someone wants to contact you seems pretty harmless.
But I think it's bad for your mental health to lose perspective about it. It all adds up, but it's 99.999% other people doing the adding, and unless you're in the right position to use leverage, you are mostly an observer of national and global events.
This means that morally, you don't need to feel responsible for big stuff like that - unless you see a way to end up in a position where you have that kind of leverage.
Using big, negative events as justification to scold random nearby individuals is mostly just making your local community more unpleasant.
Example: I do encourage people to vote, but I'm not going to worry about one voter more or less.
It was never much of a driver of traffic outside news and most news consumers that click have already left. And most news sources you'd want to click are behind paywalls The users that remain are more likely to watch Twitter videos and read those long-ass tweets, out of loyalty to Papa Elon.
Backatcha. If it's about twitter, specifically 'x', musk has a lot to do with it...somewhere in the region of 100%. It may be unfortunate, but that's just the way it is. And he's the reason many stay away from it. As another poster asked, why do you (continue to) use it? Similarly, someone (else) is highly likely to mention a certain brand of vehicles but not me.
I’ve never used signal.
No clue about CSAM but I'd really doubt it considering it requires a phone number.
I misread your top post as though it meant Signal was the main source for those things. Sorry for the confusion.
If they ban Signal links, a competitor platform, that’s a shame, but whatever you say on Signal you can say on X instead.
Seems like some people think a “free speech platform” would be some sort of moderated debating space where opinions you dislike are silenced on your behalf and the downstream political ramifications are things that you personally enjoy, or else it’s not free speech but “fascism” (lol).
Except one of them allows Elon to read what you write, the other doesn't.
But it's not the first time they banned links to other social media?
here is another: https://x.com/tomwarren
edit: the url's are still visible in the mouse-over text popup, and the obfuscated site-redirection url does have the url in the address bar - but only time will tell before those vanish
honestly, any site that visibly displays one url as a hyperlink (underlines ect) and links to another site is practicing in malware style link hijacking. stop using those sites