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Comment by add-sub-mul-div

1 year ago

We're all sharing the same links, articles, jokes, memes, ideas, cat pictures. What differentiates a place is its sense of community, not its content. It's easy to forget that because Twitter long ago stopped being a community.

24 comments

add-sub-mul-div

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nomilk  1 year ago

[flagged]

  • lukan  1 year ago

    "many were banned for saying things that were unpopular but true"

    Can you cite one confirmed example?

    • nomilk  1 year ago

      There's sifting to be done, but a scan over the top few pages of results (of 35,000,000 news articles total) shows a handful of bans for true but unpopular stances and opinions: https://www.google.com/search?q=banned+from+twitter+-trump+b...

      Given only a fraction of account bans make the news, the problem was probably much bigger than the news indicates. Maybe 10-100x (what's the ratio of newsworthy to regular folks?). Also, when a prominent user is banned, others see that and clam up on the topic lest they face the same fate; they tread on egg shells, which doesn't constitute a healthy community for them.

      3 replies →

  • tga_d  1 year ago

    >The Elon era seems to emphasise truth over sensitivities

    I've never heard anyone claim that misinformation went down with the acquisition--Musk infamously gutted that department, and I've seen plenty of claims at least from journalists and the EU that the problem is now worse. Anecdotally, I left Twitter not for ideological reasons, but because my timeline become filled with algorithmic noise from what were clearly bots I wasn't following. Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

    >some suspected (but couldn't prove) being shadow banned for having contrarian viewpoints.

    I would think we would have seen actual indication of that by now if that were true; given all the "Twitter files" and whatnot that turned out to be a nothingburger, if there was a there there, employees were certainly motivated to air it after the acquisition, if not before. In any case, it's certainly indisputable that Musk has been more than willing to artificially inflate accounts he wants to promote (the latest I know of being the Mr. Beast debacle), which, outside of expressly labelled advertising, I don't remember being a thing before, though again, I'm open to the possibility of being wrong about that.

    • lobocinza  1 year ago

      Community notes are great and an important tool to fact check disinformation from politicians and VIPs to which traditional fact checkers often turn a blind eye. I say this from Brazil so your YMMV. While I'm not familiar with the Mr. Beast debacle on Twitter he and his content are extremely popular so it's natural for his content to be recommended. What wasn't "natural" was Twitter recommendations prior. Though there are many other reasons for not using Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

      12 replies →

    • Dalewyn  1 year ago

      >I've never heard anyone claim that misinformation went down with the acquisition

      Twitter Japan's recommendations feed was inundated with political bullshit nobody cared about.

      Musk came in, fired everyone at Twitter Japan, and the recommendations feed changed to anime, manga, visual novels, games, music, and other such pop cultural subjects that everyone cares about. Japanese Xers love Musk for cleaning house.

      The change was obvious to all, and personally I finally could justify making an account to better manage the handful of accounts I always kept tabs on (news postings from games I play, new art from illustrators I like, etc.).