Six and a half paragraphs into the rant, and I think I found the argument:
“every mute and block is now treated, per Musk, as a ‘downvote’ of that account, and there is virtually no degree of positive engagement that can counterbalance a mass muting or blocking or false-reporting campaign. But the worst part is this: the ‘disappeared’ account-holder may take months to realize that they have been made virtually invisible on Twitter, or may never even find out at all.”
Unmentioned and uncited is the actual policy change: you can now pay for a downvoting account [1].
Musk is monetising fringe anger at our elites. If I run an influence campaign, I’m sure as hell going to pay Twitter tens of thousands of dollars to silence my opposition.
That is good for Twitter and good for me. It is good for the incumbency (who do you think benefits from a vote-by-wealth scheme). It’s terrible for public discourse. And it does nothing for the fringe.
> What does twitter have to do with public discourse?
It’s the only public, text-based venue where almost every influential person converses. Some less. Most too much. But getting something trending on Twitter leads to a significant number of people gaining awareness of it, directly and through amplification channels.
Wait… are they saying what I think they’re saying, “shadow banning is unfair”
That’s fantastic. A little late but fantastic nonetheless.
The funny part is that they’re essentially arguing for you to leave now because you might not get as much engagement later… and instead you should go to their platform where you will definitely not get as much engagement and you’ll have a bunch of vague arbitrary rules applied to you that will require you to only use pre-approved speech.
Yes, I upvoted the article, because despite being an unhinged rant, I think there is something worthy of discussion in here. How should moderation work in a community? Should everyone who wants to get their message out to an audience willing to listen be able to do so, or should a minority of people be able to deny them the ability to do so?
I think the OP author is wrong to cast this as "left" vs "right", but correct to see that allowing a vocal minority to decide how a larger group is allowed to communicate is an unstable situation. The parallels to "flagging" and "downvoting" on HN are also interesting to contemplate.
I think the answer is that such a system can mostly work if-and-only-if there is a trusted authority who can override the mob on a case-by-case basis. Dan does this as well as can be hoped, but Elon seems to still be struggling. But at Twitter's scale, they obviously need a much larger trusted team for this to have a chance of working.
Ok, I think you’ve answered my question. “Bluechecks” is innuendo for liberals, regardless of whether Ben Shapiro or Donald Trump possesses/possessed the same verified badge.
Paid downvoting has interesting incentives problems. For example, it's very attractive to foreign adversaries who want to amplify their own content via exclusion, or remove content they deem contra to their interests. These are issues with downvoting in general, but tying it to cash promotes the voices the with the most money.
This is the sort of thing that Elon rails against the mass media doing.
This is about the new Twitter policy of letting people pay to remove content from trending and high visibility portions of the site. The feature is that if an account that paid $8 a month, it has the ability to downvote your post's visibility.
“Public” generally means publicly traded. Musk’s purchase of Twitter was “taking it private”, meaning it was removed from stock exchanges and all public investors were bought out.
You’re using it to mean publicly owned in the sense of a utility or transit company. Both valid uses but very different in meaning.
Twitter is probably here to stay, for sure. Musk has just made the business decision to focus on the Fox News crowd, which is probably a smart business decision, but a catalyst for this “screeching” you note.
I'll be polite and characterize Twitter and FB demographics as, well, different age-wise, than the demographics of InstaSnapTok and communities like them. We've seen how that works out long term with past social media companies. If Twitter wants to be "here to stay", they need to make serious changes to their format. At the very least, video content has to be more naturally integrated. And even that will likely not be enough.
28 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 71.2 ms ] thread“every mute and block is now treated, per Musk, as a ‘downvote’ of that account, and there is virtually no degree of positive engagement that can counterbalance a mass muting or blocking or false-reporting campaign. But the worst part is this: the ‘disappeared’ account-holder may take months to realize that they have been made virtually invisible on Twitter, or may never even find out at all.”
Unmentioned and uncited is the actual policy change: you can now pay for a downvoting account [1].
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16039854915057950...
Musk is monetising fringe anger at our elites. If I run an influence campaign, I’m sure as hell going to pay Twitter tens of thousands of dollars to silence my opposition.
That is good for Twitter and good for me. It is good for the incumbency (who do you think benefits from a vote-by-wealth scheme). It’s terrible for public discourse. And it does nothing for the fringe.
It’s the only public, text-based venue where almost every influential person converses. Some less. Most too much. But getting something trending on Twitter leads to a significant number of people gaining awareness of it, directly and through amplification channels.
That’s fantastic. A little late but fantastic nonetheless.
The funny part is that they’re essentially arguing for you to leave now because you might not get as much engagement later… and instead you should go to their platform where you will definitely not get as much engagement and you’ll have a bunch of vague arbitrary rules applied to you that will require you to only use pre-approved speech.
I think the OP author is wrong to cast this as "left" vs "right", but correct to see that allowing a vocal minority to decide how a larger group is allowed to communicate is an unstable situation. The parallels to "flagging" and "downvoting" on HN are also interesting to contemplate.
I think the answer is that such a system can mostly work if-and-only-if there is a trusted authority who can override the mob on a case-by-case basis. Dan does this as well as can be hoped, but Elon seems to still be struggling. But at Twitter's scale, they obviously need a much larger trusted team for this to have a chance of working.
Do “bluechecks” here refer to all accounts with blue checkmarks, or are you referring to a specific political class within that group?
"Twitter will start incorporating mute & block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes"
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038061
Is it an argument against downvoting in general? Or just paid-only downvoting I guess.
This is the sort of thing that Elon rails against the mass media doing.
You’re using it to mean publicly owned in the sense of a utility or transit company. Both valid uses but very different in meaning.
Twitter is probably here to stay, for sure. Musk has just made the business decision to focus on the Fox News crowd, which is probably a smart business decision, but a catalyst for this “screeching” you note.
This comment won't age well.
I'll be polite and characterize Twitter and FB demographics as, well, different age-wise, than the demographics of InstaSnapTok and communities like them. We've seen how that works out long term with past social media companies. If Twitter wants to be "here to stay", they need to make serious changes to their format. At the very least, video content has to be more naturally integrated. And even that will likely not be enough.
So if you don’t leave Twitter because we his guy told you to you are a far-right troll or Neo-Nazi? Why is this on HN?