Thoughts on Elon Musk buying a stake in Twitter?

Nope, that is incorrect. What I didn’t understand is why someone would continue to participate on a website that allowed/enabled(?) vile and despicable people to also post on it. That would certainly be a place I woudl avoid. (And I do avoid Twitter.)

Whatever you say. :roll_eyes:

But here is what you said . . .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/22/australia-elon-musk-twitter-hate/

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia has ordered Twitter to explain what it is doing to tackle online hate, saying there had been a sharp increase in “toxicity and hate” since Elon Musk took over the company last year.

Twitter could be fined as much as $475,000 a day if it doesn’t comply, under an online safety law that Australia touted as world-first when it was introduced in 2021.
. . .

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I am on Twitter daily. I’ve never seen anyone use the n word. Nor have I seen anything worse than what I’ve seen on other social media sites. Is it due to an algorithm or something??

Twitter is NOT a terrible place for nursing engagement. News on nursing issues is diseminated, research studies and articles are linked, case studies are published, diagnostic exercises are linked to help medical professionals hone their critical thinking skills, news on nursing activism is pubished, etc. There are many great things that one can learn by following various nursing organizations, individual nurses and doctors, nurse attorneys, etc. that one could really not find anywhere else all in one particular place. Prior to Musk taking over, accounts that posted threats against HCW were immediately banned. This did not in ANY fashion squelch constructive dialogue, unless one sees racist and violent rhetoric as something to be defended.

Twitter used to moderate death threats and racist language. It would seem that any decent person would agree that those things don’t belong on any social media platform, no matter who owns it. Clearly, many people are perfectly happy to see this kind of rhetoric

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I don’t know, but I’ve seen lots of racist, misogynist, homophobic stuff. It may depend on how many people you follow and what types of people you follow. If you follow politicians, you are going to see tons of stuff like that. The specific account that had the N word response was that of a black Canadian nurse activist.

I have my RN credentials in my profile. Someone commented to me that I’m a “baby killer” because I supported vaccination. I guess they figure all RNs give covid vaccines, even if their specialty is plastic surgery OR.

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Musk has been clear that he supports free speech that is legal, and that Twitter will comply with local laws around the world. If someone doesn’t like what is being said, get a law passed.

He doesn’t, though. He has banned many accounts that didn’t violate TOS, journalists among them. Yes, it is his right, but he cannot be portrayed as someone who supports free speech, because he certainly does not.

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Free speech? Musk declared that the words “cis” and “cisgender” slurs on Twitter, but not the N-word?

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If he supports “speech that is legal” then explain to me:

Why is Twitter banning ads from pro-choice candidates stating their position?
Why does Twitter ban accounts that make jokes about Musk?
Why does he ban journalists and accounts that criticize him?
Why does he ban former employees talking about the layoffs?
Why did he ban elonjet?
Why did he ban journalists reporting on his banning of elonjet?
Why does he ban users who mention their other social media accounts?
Why has he banned anti-fascist accounts?

I get that you really, really, really support Elon Musk. But Musk’s words are very obviously contradicted by his actions. He’s clearly not supportive of free speech, and he’s basically running Twitter according to his ultra-conservative whims.

No laws are going to be passed here in the US, but he is running afoul of laws in the EU and Australia so we’ll get to see how that plays out.

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https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/musk-will-train-if-las-vegas-martial-arts-cage-match-takes-hold-2023-06-24/

I wouldn’t go so far as three really’s :smirk:, as everyone has their faults. Free speech is a philosophy, not a TOS. But your list of questions about Musk’s actions is quite long, giving the impression that he can do no right and/or is fundamentally evil. This simply doesn’t match public perception. There is always more to the story than a gotcha line.

I won’t address each one, but the two that stand out most are about the political ads, and elonjet. Appropriate political ad content has always been an issue on Twitter, and elonjet giving Musk’s exact whereabouts is exactly what Musk said it is—giving “assassination coordinates.” I find it hard to believe that people on this forum wouldn’t be worried about personal security if they were worth $200B.

And how do his political views figure in to this? Is that really the root of the discontent?

This has already been discussed. The terms themselves are acceptable, but directing them disparagingly at someone is not. I don’t know the details of the N-word tweet, but that sounds like a miss by the moderation AI. Musk is very much a big-picture kind of thinker, and won’t allow small details like this to consume his time. The irony is that the advertisers that fled Twitter out of fear of being associated with hate speech forced Musk’s hand to cut the staff that would deal with hate speech.

The broader effort to link Musk to hate speech is the proverbial slippery slope of the arbitrary and transient definition of what constitutes hate speech. Musk has been open about his ASD, and the lack of ability to catch nuanced meaning in communications. An argument could easily be made that the hypercriticism of his perceived inaction on certain types of speech is actually an affront on those with ASD.

Isn’t it about time, after 1500+ posts in this thread, to mention the new CEO that has been on the job for three weeks now? Linda Yaccarino (yes, Musk picked a woman) comes to Twitter with impressive professional credentials, daughter of 1st gen Italian immigrant mother, native of Long Island and Penn State grad. She will bring the advertisers back.

You miss my point entirely. You quoted Elon as saying essentially “free speech is anything that isn’t illegal”. Obviously he’s not following that principle at Twitter, and not even in edge cases but in quite silly ways e.g. banning people who parody him. His political views are a factor because he has bans viewpoints he doesn’t like, again contrary to his stated free speech principles.

The elonjet account utilized publicly accessible information (i.e. not illegal), which is available for all aircraft. And the journalists reporting on the story were not providing any aircraft coordinates, they were simply reporting on the ban.

But all of this comes back to my point which you ignored - Elon is very clearly not operating Twitter with any kind of attempt to align with his stated “free speech” principles. Which is totally his right, but let’s at least acknowledge the reality that he’s randomly banning speech on any topic he doesn’t like from one day to the next.

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You’re twisting yourself into a pretzel to defend Musk, which is fine, but I’m not buying it.

Something must be wrong with the AI? Is this AI 1.0 from 1970? It’s the N-word? You would think that any AI ever coded by an engineer would have the N-word as one of the top words, if not the top word, to be moderated? No?

And the N-word isn’t directed to someone disparagingly? But cis-gender is?

Musk is operating under “house rules,” not “free speech.” Which is fine, “house rules” is cool, and I wouldn’t care at all, but the dude calls himself a free speech absolutist, which is obviously utter nonsense.

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@anomander and @sushiritto , I think we are on different wavelengths. But I respect your perspectives.

If advertisers are still turned off by lack of moderation, Yaccarino is going to tell Musk, “We need to do X, Y, and Z.” If he doesn’t do them, she will resign, and he knows that would be hard to recover from. So, I do foresee changes coming that will at least have some positive impact to those that are not liking the platform now.

Is she also going to tell Musk to stop posting stupid tweets that turn advertisers off the company? Because if she has, then so far it hasn’t worked.

If that is a concern with the advertisers, I don’t see why not.

Twitter will be stress tested on August 25 to determine compliance with the EU’s new Digital Services Act, which is all about online safety, hate speech protection, etc. She seems determined to position Twitter for success in the European market.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/01/elon-musk-new-twitter-user-limits/

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There is not a shred of doubt left in my mind that Elon Musk is one of the dumbest people on the planet. That said, if one wanted to kill a platform that is used for global communication and organizing, I’m not sure there would be a better way to do it than what he’s done.

Oh and apparently Tesla quarterly report is due out shortly and it sounds like they are making more cars than they are shipping. Pity nobody will be able to read about that if they’ve exceeded their 600 tweets. Hmmmm :thinking:

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Is dumb really the word you’re looking for? I find it hard to believe that anyone would agree with that assessment.