Twitter suspends journalists...

[George K]

Vox: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/15/23512158/elon-musk-twitter-journalist-purge-has-begun

Many journalists on Thursday night expressed concern about Twitter’s decisions. The move could prompt more reporters or the media outlets they work for to leave Twitter and try using alternate platforms, such as Mastodon, Discord, and Post.

“It’s very shady,” said Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz, who said her account hasn’t been suspended in this wave, despite worries from some of her followers that it might have been. “I don’t understand how news organizations are going to continue to use this platform if they are censoring journalists.”

This is the woman who doxxed @libsoftiktok

Wonder what she's hiding?

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

Meet the new boss…

Clearly different from the old boss with clearly more transparent and generally agreed upon moderation policies.

I was thinking arbitrary and capricious and ever-changing, then and now.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@Horace said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

Meet the new boss…

Clearly different from the old boss with clearly more transparent and generally agreed upon moderation policies.

I was thinking arbitrary and capricious and ever-changing, then and now.

Defining a transparent rule about "doxxing" is the opposite of arbitrary, as I'm sure you would agree, to the extent we're having a real discussion.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace

Zoom out a bit.

He first said he would go by first amendment rules. If it’s not illegal it’s allowed.

Later he said he’d convene a new panel before making any decisions.

Then he restored accounts based on ad hoc polls.

Then he said he’d moderate tweets rather than accounts.

Then he banned Kanye.

Then he said he wouldn’t ban the airplane location guy.

Then he banned the airplane location account AND the guy behind it.

And now he’s banning retweets of him.

What’s next? No one knows. Not even Elon is aware of what next week’s whims will bring.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@Horace

Zoom out a bit.

He first said he would go by first amendment rules. If it’s not illegal it’s allowed.

Later he said he’d convene a new panel before making any decisions.

Then he restored accounts based on ad hoc polls.

Then he said he’d moderate tweets rather than accounts.

Then he banned Kanye.

Then he said he wouldn’t ban the airplane location guy.

Then he banned the airplane location account AND the guy behind it.

And now he’s banning retweets of him.

What’s next? No one knows. Not even Elon is aware of what next week’s whims will bring.

I'm aware of him saying that things would change and that it would take time to settle on a set of rules. I don't remember any promises that any given process in place at any given time was set in stone. Nobody expected zero moderation but for illegal stuff, and nobody expected the rules in place on day one, or day n, would be permanent. This particular move of clearly defining and enforcing a rule against doxxing, is the opposite of arbitrary. Capricious? Well, do you expect the rule to be rescinded? I'll go ahead and predict it won't be. I'm sure we'll all have reason to question the moderation going forward, but this rule against doxxing seems a strange time to pronounce things as arbitrary and capricious and just the same as before. Unless one were motivated to wash away any shame of how things were before.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace None of the actions, or few of them at least, are capricious on their own. It’s the constant contradiction. Those radically different policies were all ‘transparently’ communicated in the last 45 days.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@Horace None of the actions, or few of them at least, are capricious on their own. It’s the constant contradiction. Those radically different policies were all ‘transparently’ communicated in the last 45 days.

I think you’re overselling the notion that Musk made any promises about hard and fast permanent rules that he then goes around constantly changing. He has in fact admitted that there would be a bumpy road to stable processes.

[George K]

[jon-nyc]

@Horace I guess if we decide to arbitrarily and capriciously determine which of his tweets are rules and which are musings then we can tell whatever story we want.

I will concede that midway through this he did tweet about it taking time to sort out, which he did to stem the exodus of paid advertisers.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

@Horace I guess if we decide to arbitrarily and capriciously determine which of his tweets are rules and which are musings then we can tell whatever story we want.

I will concede that midway through this he did tweet about it taking time to sort out, which he did to stem the exodus of paid advertisers.

Until he makes decisions that are clearly politically biased, he is safely distanced from the prior administration’s worst moderation practices. Nobody cares if he rethinks issues around doxxing until it becomes tribally valent. At this time it doesn’t appear to be.

[jon-nyc]

It definitely seems less political. It’s more the case, I think, that he thought it was much easier than it turned out to be.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

It definitely seems less political. It’s more the case, I think, that he thought it was much easier than it turned out to be.

Somebody wrote that Twitter isn't an engineering problem, it's more of a political problem, even if it's not overtly partisan politics it's working with social issues. I'm not convinced that Elon is very good at handling those personal feeling type issues in the way that he has used engineering to solve some other really complex technical problems with his other companies. He's not very smooth when it comes to that stuff.

[Aqua Letifer]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

It definitely seems less political. It’s more the case, I think, that he thought it was much easier than it turned out to be.

Who else is out there trying to fix a social media platform from a user perspective?

I'm not saying he's successful or that he even cares about the outcome. But compared to who's out there fixing Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, well, c'mon.

[George K]

The ever-wonderful Iowahawk chimes in (screenshots).

And the last one - tweet is worth reading for the comments.

[jon-nyc]

Dissent from Bari Weiss

[jon-nyc]

I’m getting support for my take in unlikely places.

Or maybe they’re not unlikely, I just misjudged how well they’d adhere to principles.

[jon-nyc]

I’m thinking the Musk move on the airplane guy is having a Streisand effect, rather ironically like Twitter’s 36hr banning of the laptop story did 2 years ago.

Now the guy’s trending on FB, which has 10x the user base of Twitter.

[Horace]

[jon-nyc]

Well gee, I thought I was criticizing it as being arbitrary (a word Rufo also used) and capricious (seconded by Weiss) and ever-changing. But I guess I made a mistake in making a clarification post without first asking you what I think.

I’ll do better.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:

Twitter’s 36hr banning

The Post claims it was 8 days.

As does the Guardian.

As does Fox.