Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter

Trevor Morley's Tache said:
It's not simply a case of Trolls and political acolytes uploading content to the platform, Twitter also has ways and means of filtering and controlling who sees what, aside from just blocking people like Trump.

I don't always see content from people I follow pop up in my feed. Feed content is the result of an algorithm which is based on a number of key factors and inputs such as what similar posts I'm interacting with, how long I'm viewing content, what time of the day is it, key words, etc.

Twitter can control those algorithms in real time and influence what people interact with without most folk even realising, and if someone wanted to influence say global stock prices or a particular political opinion (that may influence commerce or international trade, etc) that is a VERY powerful tool for someone like Musk to have FULL control over.
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I totally understand this but he's already said that the algorithm is a problem and so he'll make it open-source so anyone and everyone can view it or even change it. Everything that he has suggested so far would be an improvement and is the opposite of what a controlling billionaire would do. He's certainly no Rupert Murdoch and I respect him a lot because he's a very successful technologist above all else.

This is all in comparison to the current model which is a board of billionaires and foreign companies own and control the algorithm. He's more than stuck two fingers up at those people and it can't be about money because he's stumped up £35bn in cash which he will probably never see again so let's watch this space.
 
Octavian said:
Musk says he’s a free speech advocate and is going to censor less and they think it’s bad for democracy?
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In my experience, most of those who have complained about the lack of free speech on social media are those who basically want to spread hate speech (e.g. racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial).

What can these people not discuss or read on social media that they want to see more of?
 
Manc in London said:
In my experience, most of those who have complained about the lack of free speech on social media are those who basically want to spread hate speech (e.g. racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial).

What can these people not discuss or read on social media that they want to see more of?
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I would say that if you held a view on the trans issue that the cult pushing it don't like, you could be construed as transphobic. In fact even on here you can get called names ranging from Stalin to Hitler by people whose moral compass is pointing at the earths core.

If Twitter bans that dialogue then there is no discussion is there?
 
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mexico1970 said:
I would say that if you held a view on the trans issue that the cult pushing it don't like you could be construed as transphobic. In fact even on here you can get called names ranging from Stalin to Hitler by people whose moral compass is pointing at the earths core.

If Twitter bans that dialogue then there is no discussion is there?
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There is seemingly lots of discussion about trans on Twitter, often involving celebrities. Personally, I don't engage with it. These discussions involve people from both sides of the debate. The issue is that people quickly turn to personal attacks and become offensive. That's not 'discussion'.
 
Manc in London said:
In my experience, most of those who have complained about the lack of free speech on social media are those who basically want to spread hate speech (e.g. racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial).

What can these people not discuss or read on social media that they want to see more of?
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Anecdotal evidence of a societal-wide issue isn’t good evidence. But as an example, one I don’t actually agree with, there have been people banned from Twitter from discussing the Covid vaccines and alternative treatments. Some of those being banned were complete cranks and spread false information but some actually had legitimate points about alternative treatment. The moderators of Twitter aren’t qualified doctors and weren’t knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision.

I want to caveat the above by saying I’m not advocating anything other than the official line of get vaccinated and I’m an anti-anti-vaxxer (if that makes sense). I just think people should be allowed to discuss a government backed vaccine that has so much influence on public health. Twitter seemed to be far too heavy-handed with their approach to banning comments on medicine.

Like it or not Twitter, whilst being a private company, almost has a monopoly on political discourse online and it’s found itself banning the US President whilst allowing the Taliban a platform.

Whether or not Trump infringed on their policies of the time, that still doesn’t sit right with me and I feel there’s a problem with free speech in the West right now.
 
Manc in London said:
There is seemingly lots of discussion about trans on Twitter, often involving celebrities. Personally, I don't engage with it. These discussions involve people from both sides of the debate. The issue is that people quickly turn to personal attacks and become offensive. That's not 'discussion'.
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That IS the discussion when it comes to that certain discussion, there is no middle ground it's either you believe what we tell you or you're transphobic.

The fact you don't engage with it means you are out of the discussion, since Musk has come out and told people he has bought Twitter those activists are now up in arms because other twitter users might be able to question their stance without a moderators hammer hitting them.

The trans debate ( Let's be honest it's just a shouting match) isn't the only case in fact, twitter is an echo chamber of miscreants and idealogues.
 
Manc in London said:
In my experience, most of those who have complained about the lack of free speech on social media are those who basically want to spread hate speech (e.g. racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial).

What can these people not discuss or read on social media that they want to see more of?
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Where did you get the daft notion in your first para?
London l would guess.
 
mexico1970 said:
The fact you don't engage with it means you are out of the discussion, since Musk has come out and told people he has bought Twitter those activists are now up in arms because other twitter users might be able to question their stance without a moderators hammer hitting them.
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Shouldn't a moderator hit them if they violate the Terms of Use?
 
inbetween said:
I totally understand this but he's already said that the algorithm is a problem and so he'll make it open-source so anyone and everyone can view it or even change it. Everything that he has suggested so far would be an improvement and is the opposite of what a controlling billionaire would do. He's certainly no Rupert Murdoch and I respect him a lot because he's a very successful technologist above all else.

This is all in comparison to the current model which is a board of billionaires and foreign companies own and control the algorithm. He's more than stuck two fingers up at those people and it can't be about money because he's stumped up £35bn in cash which he will probably never see again so let's watch this space.
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You respect him accusing innocent people of being pedo's, jsut because he was ridiculed about his empty gestures? He might have been cleared but he still came out and did that.

If that happened now, well I guess we should just trust that he wouldnt have used Twitter to poison opinions on that case.

He's used twitter to increase his share prices, the guy cannot be trusted from what I have seen.

Hopefully he will do good with it, but Ive seen enough over the years to know someone who sepnds that much on social influencing has an awful lot of interest in influencing people. Maybe he just wants the associated power that comes with it. Presidents will fall over backwards for him now
 



....and there it is. He's in favour of free speech until it's illegal. Guess what? So was the previous board of twitter. Trump & everyone else who's banned got kicked off because they did things that made twitter legally culpable for their hate speech/incitement/libel.

Nothing is going to change.
 
domalino said:
Nothing is going to change.
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so you are of the opinion Elon has paid 44billion to keep twitter as it is.

He has already stated that spam reduction is his number one prio, follwed by user authenication, and open source algos for content.

Quite a lot of nothing when you think about it.
 
zerox said:
so you are of the opinion Elon has paid 44billion to keep twitter as it is.

He has already stated that spam reduction is his number one prio, follwed by user authenication, and open source algos for content.

Quite a lot of nothing when you think about it.
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Spam reduction was already a priority, user authentication will never happen and the EU was already forcing them to make the algorithm open source.

He's bought this out of vanity. The interest on the borrowed money alone is more than Twitter's entire revenue.

This is what he does. Flint Michigan water poisoning is in the news? He promises to fix it. Never does. Kids trapped in a cave in Thailand? Tries to be the hero, fails and calls the actual hero a pedophile.

Everything he does is to get attention, even down to paying the actual founders of Tesla to let him use the title of "founder" for a company he didn't found.
 
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