Comment by kypro
1 year ago
I would give it at least 24 hours to see if these suspensions are legit. My understanding is that X does still suspend where they detect spam, illegal activity, etc. It's possible these accounts were all linked to something that got flagged up somewhere.
It's possible (not saying this is what happened though) that this is just mistake and their accounts will be reinstated shortly.
Or maybe Elon did personally ban these journalists. If it turned out he didn't though I think a lot of you guys need to reconsider your biases.
It's not bias when it's based on a pattern of past behaviour. Perhaps you need to reconsider why you are unable to accept this.
Not op, but I'm sure that not everyone watches everything that goes down on Twitter to be able to notice a "pattern of past behaviour".
True, but, 1. Musk is vocally anti-liberal (or really, vocally anti-things-associated-with-liberals, and vocally anti-other-things too), and 2. He expresses it in an antagonistic/mocking way.
Those two things combined are enough that it is reasonable to criticize him when a bias appears to occur. Of course, critics must be careful not to be too unreasonable. But such behavior as his is antithetical to big trust-based systems (e.g. moderation of large, entrenched social platforms), so it's important to criticize people in his position for commiting his behaviors, and to be critical/suspicious of moderation under his purview when there's a question of bias (this is the same criticism the right made, in not so many words, of pre-Musk Twitter, and which I don't think was totally unreasonable then either, though I do think the circumstances are far from perfect mirrors of each other).
Looks like they're all unsuspended now, https://twitter.com/stevanzetti
Was Elon just messing with them, or was it perhaps as I suggested and just a mistake? Will you reconsider, or are you unable to accept this as a possibility?
For what it's worth I think Elon was mismanaging Twitter so I have no interest in defending him. But equally I think the idea that he's sat around randomly suspending "left-wing" journalists is kinda silly.
I don't know why this is the case, but Twitter seems to trigger suspensions quite frequently. They seemed to have tightened their spam / abuse algorithms in recent months, but the pattern as of late is that that most genuine users who get suspended are reinstated on appeal.
It's unclear what exactly you're classifying as the opinions of "a lot of you guys", but the parent was crucially critiquing your specific assertion that those opinions are biased, which may be true, but it is irrelevant to any uncovered reality (though that uncovered reality participates in the analysis next time this happens). I.e. your defense against the parent's criticism seems to be irrational. Whether or not X is because of Y has nothing to do with whether or not it is reasonable to believe or suspect that X is because of Y. In other words, "See? It was true/false," is a fallacious argument in this context. This was just as true when analyzing moderation before Musk, too.
Musk stated he wanted transparency when he took over, and it is not silly to hold him to the standard he wanted. X could clear up all confusion in an instant. Personally, my benefit of the doubt well has run dry when it comes to this platform.
> Perhaps you need to reconsider why you are unable to accept this.
This is not acceptable rhetoric for HN.
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