A search for Threads content on Twitter currently brings up zero results, despite plenty of links to Meta’s microblogging rival being posted on the platform.
Elon Musk runs the whole of Twitter like the jealous, power-drunk moderator of a small 5,000-member Discord server.
People are free to either agree with the CEO view or to not use the platform. Sad but true. At least it reminds us all that it is a private for-profit company and always has been. No matter whether the “value” of it was mostly provided by user-created contents.
He’s done everyone a few favors. He showed us that the government sticks it’s fingers into social media in ways that are illegal, and he also showed us that corpos aren’t a good alternative because they’ll stick their fingers into social media in ways that are legal.
Decentralization and self-hosting is ultimately the only protection against forces that want to force us to see what they want us to see and nothing else.
He showed us that the government sticks it’s fingers into social media in ways that are illegal
That’s what a few right wing media repeatedly claim but I haven’t seen anyone actually providing any proof. Or do you mean the recent crazy judge decision?
But, I really hope this twist of fate of how he accidentally bought Twitter in the first place helps people learn the lesson about all that “free speech” they were whining about. Your speech is not free when it is moderated by a corporation. Yes, the constitution allows you to say what’s on your mind, but it does not tell media corporations that they must allow you to say whatever is on your mind. If the uneducated people haven’t caught on yet, they shall never catch on, which really might mean stupid is just stupid, no matter how much education you throw at it.
It’s not even that, free speech is about the government, not private entities, it’s about not being arrested for what you say, it has nothing to do with what private companies do on their platforms, they’re free to do what they want and they’re not limiting any free speech by doing so because they’re not the government.
It’s baffling how many people still don’t understand that and go on crying about free speech related to private entities.
the constitution allows you
I thought the point of the constitution was that it confirms existing rights, not allows or forbids something. While the usual laws do allow or forbid.
Free speech in the web was really funny in the 00s, when moderators could partake in long discussions about it, and then just ban somebody for looking at them wrong (figuratively).
Maybe he is aware of that, but wants to remind us all how internet communities were in the 00s.
Banning people for mentioning competing platforms just brings nostalgic tears.
Or maybe he doesn’t, just all the benevolence social media owners would show goes down the pipe when there really are decentralized alternatives which work. When they didn’t feel threatened, they could seem wiser.
Maybe he is aware of that, but wants to remind us all how internet communities were in the 00s.
This i don’t know. Any news references or links?
That’s like asking for news references for somebody being kicked out of a bar (doesn’t matter whether it’s unjust).
It just was a common thing - posting links to competitor sites gets you disciplined and possibly banned. Of course, competition was not for money, but for people. Cause if nobody comes to your site, then your ego is hurt and you’re depressed. Also posts advertising other people’s sites spoil the mood in general, contributing nothing.
EDIT: There were also friendly\allied sites, of course. With little banners somewhere at the bottom of the page leading to those.
No surprise there. Weren’t they banning people for posting their Mastodon/Cohost accounts or something?
Yes. Twitter was at one point tagging links to Mastodon as “potentially harmful” and removing them.
But the one thing that’s been shown consistent about Mr. Musk’s ownership of Twitter is that it is consistently self-contradicting. So as Twitter positions itself as “free speech absolutist” one can rest assured that the reality will be “self-contradicting”.
Let us not forget that time that Musk said that “Elon Jet Tracker” would not be banned WHILE it was indeed banned. Literally tweeting verifiably false information and then subsequently being called out on it, only for Musk to do the traditional “ignore and move on”.
And no one is surprised.
Elon made it clear shortly after taking over that “free speech” was speech he happened to agree with, and he had no intentions of ethical consistency on ‘free speech’ when it came to speech that was critical of him or his platform. Twitter already went nuclear on links to Mastadon and similar alternative platforms earlier this year while their dumpster fire was raging.
Yeah, I think what he said was that anything allowed by law would be permitted, whatever that means. But then when they started impeding links to mastodon he was like “we don’t have to let you advertise our competition >>>:(.” Elon/Twitter has gotten so tedious to hear about.
I don’t like when people use their boosted presence to say that minorities are a threat and ought to be exterminated, yeah.
What’s with people pretending we are talking about pineapple on pizza whenever hate speech is mentioned?
Lol are the goalposts so far gone that we are trying to imply hate speech just isn’t a thing that exists anymore? They didn’t say what was classified as hate speech, just that it is definitely on Twitter. If you don’t believe there’s hate speech on Twitter, well… I’d offer to sell you the Golden Gate Bridge but I don’t want to take advantage of such low cognitive ability.
Ah yes. The exact kind of action I would expect from someone who has measured responses like “Zuck is a cuck”.
Use a platform ran by a five year-old, expect five year-old behavior.
Although it won’t absolve one of crimes, affluenza seems to be a real thing. The social isolation and deference that money brings seems to have a host of well-documented psychological issues that accompany it. Musk, like Trump, seems to believe that he can do whatever he wants without meaningful consequences, because he exists in a bubble of sycophants and wealth, where rules for the plebs do not apply. Normal people can’t burn this much good will and go on with their lives unhindered. Normal people would be permanently financially ruined if they lost that much doing stupid and illegal business moves.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IP2EKTCngiM
https://piped.video/watch?v=0b6ewG7hZXg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Geez that’s rough and must really suck. We should help all of those rich people get over their lack of personal connections. By taxing most of their money away.
Geez that’s rough and must really suck. We should help all of those rich people get over their lack of personal connections. By taxing most of their money away.
This could be done in a generation if we made sensible inheritance laws, a wealth tax, or did away with capital gains and implemented an income tax with the highest bracket >90% like the US did in the 1940s-1960s instead, (provided this is done without loopholes.) There’s huge benefits to living in a country with more economic equality in terms of crime, political engagement, home ownership, economic competition, social mobility, terrorism, poverty reduction, mental health, etc., It’s harder to exploit people when they have resources.
I just looked up the word, but isn’t this “affluenza” something rooted in guilt and which leads to near-conscious self-destructive actions? I don’t think it applies, Elon probably doesn’t even know what guilt feels like.
isn’t this “affluenza” something rooted in guilt and which leads to near-conscious self-destructive actions?
Not exactly. “Affluenza,” is loosely defined, and definitions vary, but was popularized as a defense presented at Ethan Couch’s trial with the premise that his killings were due to psychological effects of being wealthy and the lack of boundaries it afforded. Nowadays it’s generally used to mean a behavioral illness caused by wealth/affluence.
Though Wikipedia itself says that:
The word is thought to have been first used in 1954, but was popularised in 1997 with a PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (2001, revised in 2005, 2014).These works define affluenza as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”. A more informal definition of the term would describe it as “a quasi-illness caused by guilt for one’s own socio-economic superiority”.
The term “affluenza” has also been used to refer to an inability to understand the consequences of one’s actions because of financial privilege.
So the first “popularization” seems to frame it more as a negative thing even for the self, while other definitions fit the case of Ethan Couch/Musk. Seems like the two definitions are pretty much opposites that use the same word, it’s kinda confusing honestly lol
