Comment by dudus

1 year ago

Xitter is full of spam and fake news.

Elon decided to take the company in this direction where everything is fair game. Things just got worse.

If Xitter isn't going to up their game the legal system has to jump in and do it for them. It's not going to be pretty.

Now Elon is taking their ball home. Closing the offices, firing hundreds, burning bridges.

It's a power move where everyone loses but his ego.

62 comments

dudus

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akira2501  1 year ago

> Things just got worse.

I hated twitter 5 years ago, and I hate twitter today. People act as if Elon's presence changed anything. From an outside point of view, it changed nothing, the site never had any value to begin with.

It's original existential proposition was: "Artists can now talk to fans directly instead of going through third party media companies."

It really has done a _fantastic_ job with that. It was never possible that it could effectively do more. Unsurprisingly, the people who need this media exposure, are the most devoted to pretending that it could be, as it would mean their time spent there is not just naval gazing but somehow "social activism."

It's typical lazy American politick.

  • tim333  1 year ago

    > Things just got worse

    I quite like twitter now. I wasn't enough of a user five years ago to judge if it's better or worse.

    Even the 'free speech' stuff is not so bad. The mainstream media can be a bit prone to blocking things at times.

gruez  1 year ago

>Now Elon is taking their ball home. Closing the offices, firing hundreds, burning bridges.

Google did the same thing for China in the 2000s. Should they be castigated for the same reason? How are the circumstances different aside from "google is good and musk/x is bad?"

  • dudus  1 year ago

    They are both entitled to their decision. And I certainly wouldn't blame either X or Google for leaving in that situation. Even though I disagree with you it's the same circumstances.

    What I'm saying is that everyone loses when that happens.

    • meiraleal  1 year ago

      Nobody in Brazil loses with one badly managed social network leaving the country, it is not as if we don't have other 100 better tools to communicate than the tar pit Xitter is

    • knallfrosch  1 year ago

      Google won quite handsomely by shutting down in China. Remember that this was 2018, shortly before the social justice movement reached its fever pitch. At the time, Google employees would have burned the place down over project Dragonfly.

      As for Chinese customers, I believe their tech giants are competitive regarding Google search. But if the Chinsese tech giants werent competitive at least the Chinese consumers would be shielded from Google's monopolistic abuse ;)

  • soerxpso  1 year ago

    Opinion here basically seems to depend on whether a "fascism!!" fascist regime or a "democracy!!" fascist regime is doing the censorship. Brazil is run by a "democracy!!" fascist regime so any government overreach there is good. China is run by a "fascism!!" fascist regime so government overreach there is bad.

Teocali  1 year ago

If Elon and X thinks they cannot in good faith comply with the laws of a country in which X operate, they are right to leave it.

I personnaly see the attacks against the judiciary of Brazil more troublesome that this move.

davidmurdoch  1 year ago

I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech?

Community Notes seems to be highly effective at combatting misinformation, at least of the most popular tweets.

  • Hamuko  1 year ago

    I still remember when Elon was threatening to change how the block function works and how he got a community note saying that Apple's App Store rules would prohibit it, even though they said nothing about it.

    Good stuff.

  • troupo  1 year ago

    > I'm guessing you're not a huge proponent of free speech?

    Is Musk such a proponent? His professed absolutist views have been shown to be a lie and farce many times over

  • misiti3780  1 year ago

    ya, he/she preferred it when the nypost couldnt share a real article about hunter biden's laptop. I honestly cant believe people want to live in a world where anything (beyond the obvious illegal content like child porn, slander etc) is censored. If you dont like, it ignore it.

  • angoragoats  1 year ago

    Please clearly define what you mean when you say "free speech." It's an overloaded term that confuses people every time I see it in this context.

    I don't support the artificial broadcast/amplification of content that is hateful, bigoted, misinformation, etc to thousands or millions of people that otherwise wouldn't see it, were it not for an algorithm that picks it up due to it generating more eyeballs to sell advertisements to.

    If we, as a society, can manage to muster the courage to regulate social media algorithms, then we can start talking broadly about free speech rights. Until then, people who want to post vile garbage should be banned permanently and forever from participating in social media sites that use unregulated and opaque algorithms. They are, of course, still free to post whatever they want on their own sites, blogs, or on social media that doesn't make use of opaque algorithms (e.g. some Fediverse sites).

    • davidmurdoch  1 year ago

      I mean it in the context of being able to criticize the US government and its officials. I think that's what most from the US think is why free speech is so important.

      Hate speech is a slippery slope that I'm not knowledgeable enough in to speak to more in depth.

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