Twitter suspends journalists...
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@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:
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 Well, do you expect the rule to be rescinded?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.
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@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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:29 last edited by@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.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:32 last edited by
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@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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:33 last edited by@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.
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@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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:36 last edited by@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.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:39 last edited by
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.
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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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:43 last edited by@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.
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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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:44 last edited by@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.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 15:57 last edited by
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 17:13 last edited by
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 17:16 last edited by
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 17:26 last edited by 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.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 17:43 last edited by
@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:
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.
Is Musk's policy unclear at this point? If so then I'm sure we all agree that he should be clear about it.
It seems nobody is, in principle, against moderating doxxers. So it is unclear which principle you doubted people would adhere to. There are several facile principles in play, such as "clarity in policy is good" and "changing policy for no good reason is bad". I am sure Musk could be doing better with both of those principles, but let's not pretend he is in the league of institutionalized biased or arbitrary moderating as the previous regime, which was your point. A point which neither Weiss nor Rufo are actually supporting.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:02 last edited by 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.
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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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:14 last edited by@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.
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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.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:18 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:
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.
“New boss same as the old boss” is your point I am referring to.
Weiss and Rufo are saying “do better”, which of course we can all agree with.
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@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:
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.
“New boss same as the old boss” is your point I am referring to.
Weiss and Rufo are saying “do better”, which of course we can all agree with.
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Right and I clarified that to mean, and I quote, “arbitrary and capricious and ever-changing”.
wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:30 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Twitter suspends journalists...:
Right and I clarified that to mean, and I quote, “arbitrary and capricious and ever-changing”.
In a binary judgement where moderation processes do or do not contain some amount of arbitrariness or capriciousness, I agree that the previous regime and the current regime are equal. That will remain a trivially true point forever regardless of what Musk does.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:35 last edited by
That’s weak.
Imagine someone defending the ancien regime by saying “everybody’s biases affect their decision making so on that simple binary, new Twitter and old Twitter are the same.
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wrote on 16 Dec 2022, 18:41 last edited by
Twitter rules?
Work in progress. I think he's done some things right, some things wrong, but I still heartily agree about the doxxing policy.
