Elon Musk

inbetween said:
This isn't because of standards at all. This is outright criminal behaviour. There is no standard which allows you to commit libel or hack sombody's phone.

They did these things because that's what the media does because the media is driven by profit. The media does not exist to report fact-checked news according to some standard or regulatory code, it's utter nonsense. How much bollocks have they spouted and written about city over the years?

If we're worried about criminal behaviour on X then how come hundreds of people were put in prison recently for saying bad things on X and rioting as a result of it? What are we seriously worried about other than a rise of politics that we dislike on a platform that is run by a guy that we dislike?
Click to expand...
Criminal behaviour can be actioned if it’s posted in the country that takes the action. Twitter can be full of the same comments from elsewhere and nothing can be done.

I know a 14 year old who killed herself due to online abuse and the police couldn’t do anything as the offending account wasn’t in the Uk.

So it can be full of illegal content and nothing can be done bar blocking the whole thing.
 
Last edited:
Seeing Musk increasingly commenting on British politics and the accounts he’s promoting in doing so is enough for me. Shame, used to like Twitter over any other platform.
 
inbetween said:
So what you're saying is that the real problem of this new media is the lack of control? Hmm. Does that not worry you because who should be in control of the opinion of a population? If I decide to say something on X then are you saying that I should be fact-checked? Why isn't this forum held to the same standards because isn't it the same thing?

These level of standards actually don't apply to the media either and you're wrong on that. You mention fact-checking, quality and tone but the media has never operated on that basis. For a start there have been hundreds of successful criminal prosecutions against the media in the UK to tackle illegal phone hacking, lies, libels, deceptions and press intrusions..... You name it, they've done it.

The closest thing we have to a fact-checked neutral outlet in the UK is the BBC but barely anybody digests their news from the BBC alone. They don't do that because the BBC is neutral and people do not want neutrality which is why both the left and right hate the BBC. The BBC however isn't immune either and is itself littered with controversy and horrific criminal legacies such as with Jimmy Savile.

X however resolves all of this because at the end of the day those standards don't need to apply because they don't matter because you're talking to a person. As in real life you have a choice to ignore that person, call them batshit crazy, or whatever you want. It's absolutely no different to this forum except the audience is on a very different scale and that's probably the real problem.
Click to expand...
There is a difference between a news story and an editorial. And then what news stories and editorials are included in a collection. There is also a knowledge and contact base and capital required to pursue truth, along with time. That’s why old school media outlets are inherently more trustworthy. That’s said — new media also brings immediacy, so being informed of an event is far easier via new media. But the explanation as to cause and effect of said event are better left to old media; I.e. experts trained in the field; I.e. reporters and editors.

It doesn’t mean old media can’t make mistakes and be biased. But like so much of the world today, one mistake is cause for “can’t trust it” because one mistake can spread so rapidly. As my old man said “Todays news story is tomorrow’s bird cage liner” — he meant it as a “be a goldfish” lesson but in practical terms it means reputations live on and conclusions are reached more quickly today than in the past — in part because we are inundated with so much more information we have to reach faster conclusions to consume it.

As I have said in threads like this countless times previously, I recogniz(s)e I come at this question as a Yank where our core “average” news set was for a long time probably higher quality than the average Brit set (though I am not wed to this view), and where the best Brit media outshines the best Yank media, and as a former member of the media and as a person who speaks with the media on a weekly basis in my job. So I am biased for sure.

For me Twitter/X will never replace the Economist. And in fact as of last week, it won’t even supplement it — X is gone from my life for good. And while I miss some things, I have found life surprisingly easy to live without it.
 
Last edited:
Super hi IQ people who are willing to work 80 hours a week and pay for Twitter. I suppose if you are a committed "small government revolutionary" it's a calling ...

 
grunge said:
At what point do you draw the line? Moderation isn’t just fact checking.

Online bullying? Openly Racist posts not getting deleted? Someone calling someone a pedo and not getting moderated even when proof is supplied ( happened to Richard Coles ), sexual abuse videos not getting removed when reported? Snuff videos? Torture videos? Without moderation of these things Twitter is a cesspool, it’s like 90’s 4chan on steroids.
Click to expand...
But again those things aren't exactly open to moderation because they're criminal issues and they should be dealt with criminally. We've seen that happen over the last few months where many people have gone to prison for the things they have said. So actually there is regulation and there are standards because people can be held responsible for what they post.

Some of the things you mention really are a criticism of social media generally where a greater conversation is needed but nobody wanted those conversations about Twitter 2 years ago so why now? The other social media companies aren't innocent and should surely face the same scrutiny too?

Facebook literally sold your data without your knowledge to political entities so that they could target you at elections. Social media famously contributed massively to major political events such as Brexit and Trump, X didn't even exist for those two.

The only thing that troubles me about X is not the content because I can ignore that. What I worry about with X is that it's not run for the typical reasons. Musk is the richest man in the world several times over so clearly X is something else to him except money. I think he literally wants to replace all media in favour of the chaos of popular opinion and commentary. The biggest threat to that idea and therefore the entire idea of X is of course regulation.
 
Bluesky got a million new accounts so far today as Twitter is dying on its ass - Elmo goes to his lenders to raise the funds to put the opposition out of business by buying it and they day "you lost $35bn on a similar project Leon sorry but your credit is no good any more"
 
bluethrunthru said:
Bluesky got a million new accounts so far today as Twitter is dying on its ass - Elmo goes to his lenders to raise the funds to put the opposition out of business by buying it and they day "you lost $35bn on a similar project Leon sorry but your credit is no good any more"
Click to expand...
Plus Bluesky is open source and easily replicated so can't really be sold, well it probably can but not at a value that leave just dictators and dictators playthings in the market. The CEO of Bluesky seems like she's got her head screwed on as well, tonnes of safety features and accessibility features that makes you think why on Earth weren't X doing this.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
I think the issue isn't control, it's accountability. The problem is that the people who run these platforms like the argue that they are nothing but a tool and bear absolutely no responsibility for the content that appears on them. This allows, for example, Pornhub to literally host child porn and the owners of the website to have no legal consequences for doing so because they argue that they're just a tool and took it down when notified. Nevermind that they also had no way of stopping the exact same videos being uploaded again and again almost immediately after they were removed.

The reality is that these platforms are not publishers in the traditional sense because they don't choose and edit the content that goes on their platform. However, they are absolutely not just some tool, because they are publishing the content and disseminating it to a wide audience. They are also making editorial decisions about who gets to see what content. It's immaterial that a lot of that process is automated. And given those facts, it is absolutely a valid discussion to consider making them legally responsible for harm caused by things appearing on their platform, especially when they have demonstrably done little-to-nothing to stop it.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Website owners can be held accountable for aspects of their content if it's illegal. This has been tested many times for example by copyright owners with movie/tv show torrents, pirating and that kind of thing. They all argued the same thing which is they offered a tool for sharing files legally or illegally... And they were jailed.

The question really is what appetite do political leaders have to prosecute social media company owners or hold them accountable? The real answer is none because political parties and leaders directly benefit from it themselves. The former leader of the Lib Dems who campaigned against Brexit now has a major job at Facebook of all places! Social media has become the biggest political weapon in history.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
inbetween said:
I disagree. Website owners can be held accountable for aspects of their content if it's illegal. This has been tested many times for example by copyright owners with movie/tv show torrents, pirating and that kind of thing. They all argued the same thing which is they offered a tool for sharing files legally or illegally... And they were jailed.
Click to expand...
They do up until a point. And that point usually correlates with how big the website is. If I started a forum like this that allowed people (through negligence) to upload copyrighted content or illegal content, I would most likely end up in prison. But when it comes to Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc, the worst that can happen is that the company gets fined. There is absolutely no consequence for the people making the decisions. Hell, when it comes to pornographic websites, they were almost entirely built on stealing other people's content and sharing it, but they had the backing of huge venture capitalists, so they got away with it and basically destroyed the industry for a lot of people. Twitter (and all social media) publishes illegal content every day. Its algorithms recommend illegal content to its users every day. And yet we have created a system where as long as they pay enough lip service to removing it when it's reported, there are basically no consequences to publishing such material.

If a newspaper published an untrue story that led to someone's suicide, I suspect the consequences would be pretty severe. But social media can do the same and only the people spreading the story, if anyone, are even likely to get into trouble.
 
neel said:
Click to expand...

More drivel.

If you said some of the things that are put on X in the real world you'd be put in prison.

In fact people were in the recent riots, Musk wasn't adhering to the law then, he was encouraging and facilitating people to break it.

It's not censorship to remove racism, abuse, rape and death threats. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top