I’m surprised when I see people uncritically repeating the claim that Twitter now aims for “free speech.” It’s clear that was never true and always meant “Speech Elon wants to allow.”
There are several instances of left wing folks being banned, he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform, he's removed tweets at the behest of governments like the Saudis, and this post is literally about text disappearing, lol.
It's not hard to find instances.
Note, I think it's fine for companies to moderate speech on their platforms. No objections there. Just don't simultaneously claim you are some sort of free speech absolutist.
> There are several instances of left wing folks being banned
You understand that you were asked for one, right? This is not one, this is a vague claim being repeated.
> he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform
No, he didn't. He said that "cis" being thrown as an insult to people who didn't wish to be called "cis" wouldn't automatically be discounted as harassment. Maybe I'm wrong about this - can you find a single person that was banned or censored by twitter for saying "cis?"
> It's not hard to find instances.
If it's too hard for you to do, why do you expect others to believe you when you say this?
Left or right, anarchic or authoritarian, theocratic (of any flavour) or atheist, populist or technocratic, radical or conservative, Apollonian or Dionysian.
There's more ways to be outside the Overton window, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
On what planet were liberal voices being censored in any way on twitter? Left-wingers were being banned because the liberals that filled their responses with invective, invitations for them to kill themselves, and appeals that they be arrested were mass reporting them.
Right because that's objectionable speech. You don't need to worry about non-objectionable speech because no one would care to censor it.
I don't know what you mean by freedom on consequences. I guess a consequence of speech could be to get your account banned? If anything Twitter leaving up your objectionable content would result in more likely conferences of being fired or something.
And yet, Elon has decided that a term used in academic medical research for nearly a century, “cisgender”, is a slur and banned from the platform. Funny how he wants to protect objectionable speech that aligns with his political view while restricting “objectionable” speech that doesn’t.
From Wikipedia, while the concept has been discussed since at least 1914 the actual term cisgender has apparently only been used since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
Cisgender is recent, but it’s also primarily used to serve as the counter to transgender. To understand “cisgender”, it’s useful to study the history of “transgender”. Transgender was introduced as a term because it encompassed a larger group of people and avoided the stigma surrounding “transsexual”. Transsexual has a history dating back about a hundred years. Since “trans-“ and “cis-“ are antonym prefixes, once you have transsexual, you have cissexual. For the purposes of Elon’s rule, it doesn’t matter whether it’s CISsexual or CISgender, he objects to “cis”.
One reason why many people, particularly feminist women, find "cisgender" a disagreeable term is because it's a linguistic concession that makes it more difficult to argue for the rights of actual female women, as it implicitly redefines "woman" to include males and "man" to include females.
Disagreeing with a particular taxonomic way of describing different types of people simply because it makes it hard to advance your political beliefs does not mean the words involved in that taxonomy are slurs. “Slur” has a particular meaning, and it isn’t “makes it hard for me to achieve my political goals”.
Objectionable to whom? Elon seems to have no issue blocking speech objectionable to pseudo-dictators[1] or declaring that cis/cisgendered are slurs that can get you suspended. He seems fine with blocking speech objectionable to those that agree with his political sensibilities.
> It was always about the right wing kind of free speech
It was always about the kind of speech that was being banned. Movement Democrats like to think of themselves as left-wing, so everything that opposes their party becomes right-wing, including people to the left of them. Movement Democrats weren't being banned for spreading misinformation, they were being encouraged.
> free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences.
There were only consequences on one side with old twitter.
This problem is not unique to free speech. Whoever is in power doesn't see why they should follow a principle their opponents violated when they were in power, except that then no one follows the principle and everyone is worse off for it. It's no different for privacy or due process or free association.
This is why we try to put these things in constitutions for governments, and build decentralized systems with no bureaucratic chokepoints for communications networks.
That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values.
You could say it is simply a derivative of the mindset that nearly everyone holds "liberty for me, but not for thee". We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power.
Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
> That is true, but the principle of speech is violated by everyday individuals with no power who espouse such values.
The same is true of anything else. People demand their privacy and then look through their partner's phone etc.
> We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power.
"Nobody holds power over others" is an impossible perfection but getting closer to it is a primary goal of a good society.
> Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
"Everything app" is some kind of marketing BS. Is the same app supposed to protect your anonymity and do your taxes? Hold your medical records and implement opaque buggy video game anti-cheat systems? That is either a farce or a dystopia.
But in practice he probably just means they're going to add some Tesla integration or cryptocurrency thing to Twitter and then people can take it or leave it.
> To date, not a single document revealed has shown what people now falsely believe: that the US government and Twitter were working together to “censor” people based on their political viewpoints. Literally none of that has been shown at all. Instead, what’s been shown is that Twitter had a competent trust & safety team that debated tough questions around how to apply policies for users on their platform and did not seem at all politically motivated in their decisions.
>> Literally none of that has been shown at all. Instead, what’s been shown is that Twitter had a competent trust & safety team that debated tough questions around how to apply policies for users on their platform and did not seem at all politically motivated in their decisions.
...with the FBI providing unsolicited guidance along the way.
for examples of government censorship orders that were given to Twitter and then followed, look at Musk's Twitter. Such as orders from the authoritarian government of Turkey to suppress tweets critical of the ruling party during an election, and these orders were executed by dutifully followed without question in obedience by Musk's Twitter [1]. He is after all beholden to his Saudi investors now.
Musk's Twitter is now a fully authoritarian-censorship platform, increasing compliance to government censorship requests to 80% from a previous level of 50%, including from countries such as India:
Prior to Musk's takeover, Twitter went to court to directly challenge such requests - no such messiness under Musk where censorship on behalf of authoritarian governments is now a feature:
As with all things conservative, the biggest fake outrage they have always points to exactly the thing they are guilty of in actuality, only much worse than the claims.
You are providing examples that support your claim but ignoring the mountain of evidence (countless actual twitter posts) that contradict your claim. There's evidence for lot of things and clever rhetoric can make that evidence sing and dance however you'd like it to. But what rational people demand is an honest accounting of all of the evidence, not just the narrow slice that lets you craft fairy tales you find useful.
Citation(s) given. [0] The Hunter Biden laptop story [1] was censored on Twitter and The NY Post had their accounts locked over the story and the Twitter CEO at the time admitted that it was a 'mistake'.
EDIT: So there you have it.
Even when I have given citations and substantiated them with links, I still get censored for it for no reason because it is true. Of course.
Cannot begin to even reason with the folks here who cannot handle the facts and citations given at all.
Experience has shown that people who scream 'free speech' just mean 'my free speech only'. Doesn't matter whether it's left or right, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, When the 'liberals' were trying to push their agenda, they screamed 'free speech'. Once they succeeded, they pushed censorship everywhere. Elon was screaming 'free speech' at twitter. Once he got control, did he allow free speech? Of course not. He just introduced his version of censorship. Hypocrisy is part of human nature.
I'm surprised when I see a comment ascribing this to Elon deleting things upvoted higher than the comments that explain this is a normal part of how Community Notes work for so-so notes.
I'm a member of Community Notes and while it's common for an unpublished note to be downranked by members, I have never before seen an example of a published note (visible to all Twitter/X users) later be withdrawn from visibility. In fact, I don't think there's even a process for Community Notes members to make that happen.
I'm also a member of Community Notes and I've seen it several times, as well as explanations from Twitter staff that this is how it works (this was pre-Elon).
Is there any actual evidence of foul play here? Could just be the note got enough bad ratings to stop being featured. Not that removing it would be entirely out of character for him, but Musk has gotten community notes applied to his Tweets before and always maintained that that was allowed and a good thing.
Okay, but this is still an implied accusation with zero evidence. Surely losing the "benefit of the doubt" doesn't mean you can just make up any story you want about someone and use that to demonize them until there's definitive proof your accusation is wrong?
Life is not just this or that. Life is also highly likely this or likely that. When you have a track record and make a lot of people have this image about you, many people will operate on highly likely’s or likely’s about you. Musk is no exception.
Definitely true for many. Elon Musk is enemy number one since he disrupted social media. It is getting to the point that I have coworkers posting snide off-topic comments on internal chat throughout the day whenever he does something. All of his achievements are ascribed to luck, and every Twitter change is bad and attributed to his personal meddling. It's not entirely unwarranted considering there is some precedent, but the public hysteria is disproportionate for sure.
You, I and everyone else and when enough people operate on highly likely’s, we stop being as interested in the why. For good reason, too. People like Musk will expect us to look at each action with a clean pair of eyes, and use it to stall or confuse the masses.
I’m sure lynch mentality is more involved and includes other motivations such as wanting to kill somebody. You’re taking things a bit too far.
When someone is known to fabricate or exaggerate, a sensible recourse is be default skeptical of what they say. That isn't the same as to be default unskeptical of what their opponents say.
Removing it on Musk's orders wouldn't be foul play anyway. He owns the business. He can decide how it operates, including preferential treatment for himself.
But it would be hypocrisy. Which is great for stirring up a mob because people are rightly contemptuous of it, but then mobs don't always care for demanding strong evidence first, which can be a problem.
Is Musk a hypocrite? Sure, anybody who's been paying attention already knows this. It's completely unsurprising that he would grant himself special powers on the platform he owns.
Whether he actually did in this case hardly matters. Twitter/X is Musk's toy and he's going to play with it in whatever way pleases him.
One should already bake into their perception of Twitter/X an expectation that Musk will use it for his own ideological purposes, and weigh their trust in the platform accordingly.
> Is Musk a hypocrite? Sure, anybody who's been paying attention already knows this.
Musk is an infamous controversial figure. To find out if he's a hypocrite, or more of a hypocrite than the average rando, you would need some evidence. But because he's an infamous controversial figure, it's easy to find a mountain of unsubstantiated innuendo. The volume of it tells you nothing except that he has a lot of critics. To know anything you would have to look at specific examples.
Obviously vaccine × virus aren't an xor. Many people have already had the virus by the time they were forced to take the vaccine. For those people the myocarditis risk was a strict net negative.
I'm forced to wear pants in public at all times. If I showed up to Thanksgiving with no pants, they'd ask me to leave and id never get invited again. Tyranny ! Everyone should be free to endanger everyone around them with a deadly crippling virus at all times.
The vaccine didn't stop transmission though so being vaccinated made no difference as to whether you were "endangering people" (you weren't, mostly) with a "deadly" (not unless morbidly obese or with other serious health issues) "crippling" (still unconfirmed) virus.
I'm not sure what you are trying to point out here.
Vaccinations were a matter of public health. Vaccines did not prevent infections, but they prevented severe illness.
The healthcare system was collapsing under the pressure from hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from severe illness. This would put any other people seeking for care at risk, since they could not get it.
Since vaccinations would prevent severe illness, that would alleviate the pressure on the system, thus making care available to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to get it.
The original post claimed that by not being vaccinated you would "free to endanger everyone around them with a deadly crippling virus at all times". Not "endanger them via some 3rd party route if a hypothetical hospital was too busy at that time.".
You are arguing against a straw man of your own invention.
I'd love to read a good analysis of how much the vaccine contributed vs the attrition among those more vulnerable, along with a look at the final vaccination demographics.
People are still so polarized though, I expect the really interesting information is a few years out until it's somewhat settled.
Studies which looked at this found that the vaccine reduced transmission levels overall [1] [2] , to greater or lesser degrees depending on variant. possible avenues include less people having covid in the first place, possible shortening of the silent incubation period, reduction of viral load, shortening of the disease's span overall.
Define forced. Federal employees and federal contractors were required to be vaccinated or lose their jobs and this was also repeated in several US states. Military members were also forced to vaccinate or face other than honorable discharge or NJP at a minimum.
Yes, nobody came with a gun and "forced" them to take it, but significant economic coercision meets my definition of force.
> ... significant economic coercision meets my definition of force
Military members are vaccinated against a myriad of illnesses right after joining. They are also required to follow a bunch of rules, some of which severely restrict the practice of their first amendment rights.
They weren't "forced", as much as they have to agree with the DoD rules to work for them.
We should at least acknowledge the "trolley" problem here. You have two bad choices: join the marines or live in poverty. The US has a "volunteer" force but "volunteer" is a stretched euphemism in my mind. There aren't many people with options "volunteering" for the marines.
Marines are the most prestigious branch of the military, by a huge margin. Plenty of people willingly join the Marines, specifically because they know they get to spend the rest of their life saying they're a Marine and with that comes (near universal) respect.
The fact that the military lifts people out of poverty is a great thing. It's a damned hard life being in the military, especially if you make a career out of it. But four years of service with a decent shot at an education and solid employment when you get out is a fair trade.
That's exactly my point. You join the Marines and you get all of the benefits and drawbacks you enumerated. You don't and you get to live in poverty. I think that can be described as coercive.
To be clear, I'm not against the Marine corps or their vaccine policies. I just don't think coercion (even if it originates outside the Marine Corps) can be removed from _some_ people's choice to join.
It's not coercive because there are other options. I grew up in poverty and took the free money given to me to go to school (then dropped out, went back later - it's a whole ordeal). My friend from grade school did the military -> college route.
We both landed in largely the same spot. My friend just gets a ton of extra benefits from his service that have really added up over time. He hated being in the military, but he straight up says it's the best decision he's ever made.
My younger brother took the Navy enlisted -> retirement route (just hit rank where he can get 20 years, E6 I think), and while it's been hard, he says the same thing. Despite the injuries, moving constantly, deployments away from family, pay fuckups, and garbage housing, he loves it. And he'll retire at 42 or something with a pension and paid health care, after which, he'll get paid to go back to school then get a cushy tech gig at a DoD contractor.
Having seen people go through it, I think it's a good deal. Not just for people in poverty, but middle/upper class people too. I'm the last person you'd take for a "support our troops" guy, but I'd absolutely encourage my kids to do military service.
> Marines are the most prestigious branch of the military, by a huge margin.
I hope it lasts. Surely every generation has faced the challenge to uphold the same principles as The United States Marine Corps but, just as certainly, the struggle of today seem more perilous than before.
I often think of how the British refused to burn down a Marine Corps barracks during The War of 1812 out of respect for an honorable opponent.
Sure but we're talking about if people were forced to take a vaccine. Social pressure, conditions of employment, mandates by government agencies. All of these things can muddy what it means to make a "voluntary" choice.
I had more than one remote co-worker reach out to ask me about or commiserate over whether or not the business would fire them for not being vaccinated. I can certainly say people _felt_ coerced and manipulated which might be the most important part at the individual level.
I also watched a lot of people get vaccinated and rack up multiple infections in the following year.
My wife convinced me to do it but I was very conflicted internally. I ended up fine and still haven't had an infection, as far as I know.
My brother desisted and wore a mask all the time at work, he cought it once, maybe twice.
Whatever the results are in the end, the damage to people's trust in the government, pharmaceuticals, and media may never be repaired, pro or anti mRNA vaccine.
By this logic people are also forced to work for Uber/Amazon/other exploitative employers of low-skill labor. This undermines many arguments against unionization, treating "gig" workers as employees, or in favour of "right to work" laws. Yet the political leanings of those opposed to vaccination are often anti-union, pro "right to work", etc. So this doesn't help illuminate what they mean by "forced", unless this is a framing used out of convenience to justify their opinion in this specific case.
People can absolutely be "forced", "coerced", or "compelled" into doing something with no understanding on how to stop it. Or perhaps they do understand how to stop it but don't want the trade-offs a potential solution implies.
Either way, the coercion in the equation is constant. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing. But it is something we can acknowledge and then determine if X degree of coercion for Y outcome was moral, valid, justifiable, etc. But the coercion existed regardless of our conclusion of its utility.
> Yet the political leanings of those opposed to vaccination are often anti-union, pro "right to work", etc.
The fact that they have the most to gain from unionization, socialized healthcare, excellent public education, etc. yet seem to support the politics most beneficial to the wealthy and powerful seems like more than a coincidence to me.
Military is different - you go into it with the understanding that you're risking (guaranteed, really) bodily harm by joining. Military personnel are forced to get all kinds of shots as a matter of routine.
> significant economic coercision meets my definition of force.
Ok, but I hope you apply that criterion to every situation, and not just vaccination.
I find it interesting to consider the Venn diagram of people who claim that vaccination was forced and people who claim that everything (else) that happens in the free market is voluntary.
My personal views are somewhere between Bakunin and Benjamin Tucker. Private companies can be equally or even more coercive than a government. In this case, via the OSHA mandate and the executive orders on defense contractors, we saw both acting together.
On the other hand, Musk’s tweet was about whether myocarditis risk was “common” which it isn’t even for previously infected individuals who receives the vaccine whether it was voluntary or “forced”.
Moreover previously infected individuals did receive additional future immunity and protection against severe disease and death from vaccine shots so receiving the shot was not “strictly a net negative” regardless.
It has felt pretty odd to see Twitter evolve from the lightweight microblogging site it once was, to a political free-for-all, and then to some kind of Truth Social spinoff for geeks.
The concept of a "community note" never made sense to me.
The "community" itself isn't really one entity with a coherent position on any particular matter. The "community" is just a byproduct of people coming together to engage in discussion.
If somebody wanted to try to refute what somebody else claimed, it should have been done at an individual level, through the existing discussion mechanisms (a reply, or a new tweet, or an off-Twitter article/video, and so on).
The problem is how widely a shit-tier or dangerous or bullshit tweet can spread, yet few people are going to click into it to read the replies, and there's no guarantee that a tweet that goes "Um, this is BS and here's why: <link>" is going to appear at the top.
There's probably a better implementation of community notes. Like perhaps a way to vote existing replies or quote replies into community-note-status which you might agree with. But the value is showing a countervailing message inline with the original tweet since that's all people are going to read.
> Like perhaps a way to vote existing replies or quote replies into community-note-status which you might agree with.
If only social media sites had some kind of voting or points system that contributes to visibility?
The basic problem here is that high quality moderation is extremely expensive but low quality moderation outrages its victims and is susceptible to manipulation by partisans and SEO scum.
As far as I can tell the best solution is to make filtering modular so that it's independent of the hosting site. Then the site doesn't get dumped on for screwing it up and if you don't like some particular solution you personally can switch to another one without losing the network effect, or try your hand at doing it yourself to see how much fun it can be.
But controlling the filter through which everybody sees everything is valuable and it's hard to get anyone in a position of power to give that up.
Community notes disappear, but as I understand it, it's not so simple as "group a downvoted the note away." Because members of a group are likely to agree with one another, the algorithm means they their ability to affect the note will be very low. Also, those who tend to vote up low quality notes will also have their ability to affect outcomes throttled. The inner workings of algorithm is pretty interesting.
From what I've seen personally, bad notes only tend to make it through early and for a short duration. Once someone retweets with more credible information that wasn't well understood at first, the note isn't able to survive.
To be fair, that twitter context post is almost entirely useless.
Comparing the risk of myocarditis from vaccines to the risk of myocarditis from actually getting covid is not a helpful comparison.
Generally speaking, everyone is going to get covid whether you are vaxxed or unvaxxed. So the question is whether adding vaccines into the mix REDUCES the overall myocarditis risk or increases it.
"But the risk of myocarditis associated with the vaccine was lower than the risk associated with COVID-19 infection before or after vaccination – with one exception. Men under 40 who received a second dose of the Moderna vaccine had a higher risk of myocarditis following vaccination. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are available in the U.S."
Unless I am horribly misreading this, it seems that
(Covid infection + non-moderna vaccine), has a lower risk of myocarditis than (covid infection + no vaccine)
EXCEPT in men under 40 receiving moderna.
In that case, (covid infection + moderna), has a HIGHER risk than (covid infection + no vaccine)
Many if not most studies don’t clearly demarcate pre-omicron covid vs omicron. I’d love to know what the science is on myocarditis risk from just omicron is.
Can you provide some citations? My understanding is that omicron and prior strains have fundamentally different effects especially wrt synctia formation.
Here is recent, high quality one, but there are many more (and some with conflicting results - but to my eye the best studies all point to similar conclusions).
I disagree that the context post is almost useless. I bet there were a lot of people reading that who didn't know that myocarditis is a possible side-effect of Covid itself without the community pointing it out to them right there.
By itself, this carries a high "we found a link between green jelly beans and acne" flavor (xkcd/882). But even if it's not there, there are a lot of other complicating factors.
Those studies about myocarditis were important because they derived improvements on the procedure to apply intramuscular vaccines. But that improvement by itself is enough to invalidate any findings you will find on any such study from that time.
What is "anti-vaxx" about that tweet? It is absolutely mundane and trivially true.
And just for reference: I myself am triple vaccinated (waited a bit too long for my 4th booster and then got it, damn), and a total vaccine enthusiast. As in the vaccines are amazing, both in general and in particularly the COVID vaccines.
For further reference, last I checked the German health authorities still only recommend COVID vaccination for children with pre-existing conditions, pretty much due to the risk/reward tradeoff.
(I personally would be more in favour than they).
And the community note didn't really make sense, as what he said was not about relative frequencies, but about the question of whether myocarditis is a common side effect or not...and even on that he didn't give an opinion.
Thank you for explaining that this "community notes" system is broken and only serves to harrass people. Now that your idol is the target you came to realize that.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 34.4 ms ] thread[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...
It's not hard to find instances.
Note, I think it's fine for companies to moderate speech on their platforms. No objections there. Just don't simultaneously claim you are some sort of free speech absolutist.
You understand that you were asked for one, right? This is not one, this is a vague claim being repeated.
> he stated that "cis" will be disallowed on the platform
No, he didn't. He said that "cis" being thrown as an insult to people who didn't wish to be called "cis" wouldn't automatically be discounted as harassment. Maybe I'm wrong about this - can you find a single person that was banned or censored by twitter for saying "cis?"
> It's not hard to find instances.
If it's too hard for you to do, why do you expect others to believe you when you say this?
There's more ways to be outside the Overton window, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
I don't know what you mean by freedom on consequences. I guess a consequence of speech could be to get your account banned? If anything Twitter leaving up your objectionable content would result in more likely conferences of being fired or something.
Objectionable to whom? Elon seems to have no issue blocking speech objectionable to pseudo-dictators[1] or declaring that cis/cisgendered are slurs that can get you suspended. He seems fine with blocking speech objectionable to those that agree with his political sensibilities.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/13/turkey-...
It was always about the kind of speech that was being banned. Movement Democrats like to think of themselves as left-wing, so everything that opposes their party becomes right-wing, including people to the left of them. Movement Democrats weren't being banned for spreading misinformation, they were being encouraged.
> free to harass and insult people, freedom from consequences.
There were only consequences on one side with old twitter.
This is why we try to put these things in constitutions for governments, and build decentralized systems with no bureaucratic chokepoints for communications networks.
You could say it is simply a derivative of the mindset that nearly everyone holds "liberty for me, but not for thee". We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power.
Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
The same is true of anything else. People demand their privacy and then look through their partner's phone etc.
> We just tend to ignore or think it is irrelevant when nobody holds power.
"Nobody holds power over others" is an impossible perfection but getting closer to it is a primary goal of a good society.
> Yes, Elon and X can never be taken seriously on free speech without a pivot towards decentralization. What is happening with X is precisely the opposite. The "everything" app only provides opportunity for more control which will result in less freedom inevitably.
"Everything app" is some kind of marketing BS. Is the same app supposed to protect your anonymity and do your taxes? Hold your medical records and implement opaque buggy video game anti-cheat systems? That is either a farce or a dystopia.
But in practice he probably just means they're going to add some Tesla integration or cryptocurrency thing to Twitter and then people can take it or leave it.
Read the Twitter Files from Tabibi, Weiss, Shellenberger etc. The evidence is all there.
It certainly fits, a show all about fictionalized conspiracies
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-...
...with the FBI providing unsolicited guidance along the way.
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4019109-twitters-turke...
Musk's Twitter is now a fully authoritarian-censorship platform, increasing compliance to government censorship requests to 80% from a previous level of 50%, including from countries such as India:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...
Prior to Musk's takeover, Twitter went to court to directly challenge such requests - no such messiness under Musk where censorship on behalf of authoritarian governments is now a feature:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/02/twitter-indi...
As with all things conservative, the biggest fake outrage they have always points to exactly the thing they are guilty of in actuality, only much worse than the claims.
EDIT: So there you have it.
Even when I have given citations and substantiated them with links, I still get censored for it for no reason because it is true. Of course.
Cannot begin to even reason with the folks here who cannot handle the facts and citations given at all.
[0] https://www.melovedata.com/twitter-still-hasnt-unlocked-the-...
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/hunter-biden-emails-show-lever...
Musk has lost all benefit of the doubt, and then some.
Definitely true for many. Elon Musk is enemy number one since he disrupted social media. It is getting to the point that I have coworkers posting snide off-topic comments on internal chat throughout the day whenever he does something. All of his achievements are ascribed to luck, and every Twitter change is bad and attributed to his personal meddling. It's not entirely unwarranted considering there is some precedent, but the public hysteria is disproportionate for sure.
I’m sure lynch mentality is more involved and includes other motivations such as wanting to kill somebody. You’re taking things a bit too far.
It takes far more energy to debunk bullshit than create it.
Whether he actually did in this case hardly matters. Twitter/X is Musk's toy and he's going to play with it in whatever way pleases him.
One should already bake into their perception of Twitter/X an expectation that Musk will use it for his own ideological purposes, and weigh their trust in the platform accordingly.
Musk is an infamous controversial figure. To find out if he's a hypocrite, or more of a hypocrite than the average rando, you would need some evidence. But because he's an infamous controversial figure, it's easy to find a mountain of unsubstantiated innuendo. The volume of it tells you nothing except that he has a lot of critics. To know anything you would have to look at specific examples.
This one doesn't seem strong.
Funny how wrong the Community Note was.
Obviously vaccine × virus aren't an xor. Many people have already had the virus by the time they were forced to take the vaccine. For those people the myocarditis risk was a strict net negative.
Those parroting this point forget to mention that hospitals across the country were collapsing because of COVID-19 patient admissions.
How does hospitals collapsing change that?
You are now suggesting that vaccines did not prevent severe illness, which is not true.
Vaccinations were a matter of public health. Vaccines did not prevent infections, but they prevented severe illness.
The healthcare system was collapsing under the pressure from hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from severe illness. This would put any other people seeking for care at risk, since they could not get it.
Since vaccinations would prevent severe illness, that would alleviate the pressure on the system, thus making care available to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to get it.
It's not that hard to understand.
You are arguing against a straw man of your own invention.
It seems that you aren't aware of the precarious situation of the healthcare system during the pandemic. Either that, or you like to move goalposts.
People are still so polarized though, I expect the really interesting information is a few years out until it's somewhat settled.
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298
[2] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/12/424546/covid-19-vaccines-p...
Yes, nobody came with a gun and "forced" them to take it, but significant economic coercision meets my definition of force.
Military members are vaccinated against a myriad of illnesses right after joining. They are also required to follow a bunch of rules, some of which severely restrict the practice of their first amendment rights.
They weren't "forced", as much as they have to agree with the DoD rules to work for them.
Obligatory "I'm pro vaccine".
The fact that the military lifts people out of poverty is a great thing. It's a damned hard life being in the military, especially if you make a career out of it. But four years of service with a decent shot at an education and solid employment when you get out is a fair trade.
That's exactly my point. You join the Marines and you get all of the benefits and drawbacks you enumerated. You don't and you get to live in poverty. I think that can be described as coercive.
To be clear, I'm not against the Marine corps or their vaccine policies. I just don't think coercion (even if it originates outside the Marine Corps) can be removed from _some_ people's choice to join.
We both landed in largely the same spot. My friend just gets a ton of extra benefits from his service that have really added up over time. He hated being in the military, but he straight up says it's the best decision he's ever made.
My younger brother took the Navy enlisted -> retirement route (just hit rank where he can get 20 years, E6 I think), and while it's been hard, he says the same thing. Despite the injuries, moving constantly, deployments away from family, pay fuckups, and garbage housing, he loves it. And he'll retire at 42 or something with a pension and paid health care, after which, he'll get paid to go back to school then get a cushy tech gig at a DoD contractor.
Having seen people go through it, I think it's a good deal. Not just for people in poverty, but middle/upper class people too. I'm the last person you'd take for a "support our troops" guy, but I'd absolutely encourage my kids to do military service.
I hope it lasts. Surely every generation has faced the challenge to uphold the same principles as The United States Marine Corps but, just as certainly, the struggle of today seem more perilous than before.
I often think of how the British refused to burn down a Marine Corps barracks during The War of 1812 out of respect for an honorable opponent.
That's a loaded conundrum, but isn't this also true about pretty much any other job, especially in the US?
I also watched a lot of people get vaccinated and rack up multiple infections in the following year.
My wife convinced me to do it but I was very conflicted internally. I ended up fine and still haven't had an infection, as far as I know.
My brother desisted and wore a mask all the time at work, he cought it once, maybe twice.
Whatever the results are in the end, the damage to people's trust in the government, pharmaceuticals, and media may never be repaired, pro or anti mRNA vaccine.
It's a real tragedy.
Either way, the coercion in the equation is constant. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing. But it is something we can acknowledge and then determine if X degree of coercion for Y outcome was moral, valid, justifiable, etc. But the coercion existed regardless of our conclusion of its utility.
The fact that they have the most to gain from unionization, socialized healthcare, excellent public education, etc. yet seem to support the politics most beneficial to the wealthy and powerful seems like more than a coincidence to me.
Ok, but I hope you apply that criterion to every situation, and not just vaccination.
I find it interesting to consider the Venn diagram of people who claim that vaccination was forced and people who claim that everything (else) that happens in the free market is voluntary.
The federally-imposed policy affected many people, given how it involved the transportation sector, in addition to federal government staff:
"Prime Minister announces mandatory vaccination for the federal workforce and federally regulated transportation sectors" (October 6, 2021)
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2021/10/06/prime-...
The largest cities forced their staff, too. Here are the announcements for Toronto and Vancouver, for example:
"City of Toronto announces mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for its employees" (August 19, 2021)
https://www.toronto.ca/news/city-of-toronto-announces-mandat...
"City announces mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy" (October 18, 2021)
https://vancouver.ca/news-calendar/city-announces-mandatory-...
Those are just a few examples that had a pretty widespread impact.
Moreover previously infected individuals did receive additional future immunity and protection against severe disease and death from vaccine shots so receiving the shot was not “strictly a net negative” regardless.
I frequently see someone screencapping someone's tweet + the community note to go "haha pwned" but then I visit the tweet and the note is long gone.
Also, a lot of notes are low quality and seemingly upvoted just because they counter the tweet at all.
The "community" itself isn't really one entity with a coherent position on any particular matter. The "community" is just a byproduct of people coming together to engage in discussion.
If somebody wanted to try to refute what somebody else claimed, it should have been done at an individual level, through the existing discussion mechanisms (a reply, or a new tweet, or an off-Twitter article/video, and so on).
The problem is how widely a shit-tier or dangerous or bullshit tweet can spread, yet few people are going to click into it to read the replies, and there's no guarantee that a tweet that goes "Um, this is BS and here's why: <link>" is going to appear at the top.
There's probably a better implementation of community notes. Like perhaps a way to vote existing replies or quote replies into community-note-status which you might agree with. But the value is showing a countervailing message inline with the original tweet since that's all people are going to read.
If only social media sites had some kind of voting or points system that contributes to visibility?
The basic problem here is that high quality moderation is extremely expensive but low quality moderation outrages its victims and is susceptible to manipulation by partisans and SEO scum.
As far as I can tell the best solution is to make filtering modular so that it's independent of the hosting site. Then the site doesn't get dumped on for screwing it up and if you don't like some particular solution you personally can switch to another one without losing the network effect, or try your hand at doing it yourself to see how much fun it can be.
But controlling the filter through which everybody sees everything is valuable and it's hard to get anyone in a position of power to give that up.
From what I've seen personally, bad notes only tend to make it through early and for a short duration. Once someone retweets with more credible information that wasn't well understood at first, the note isn't able to survive.
Comparing the risk of myocarditis from vaccines to the risk of myocarditis from actually getting covid is not a helpful comparison.
Generally speaking, everyone is going to get covid whether you are vaxxed or unvaxxed. So the question is whether adding vaccines into the mix REDUCES the overall myocarditis risk or increases it.
In other words
(Covid infection myocarditis risk + vaccine myocarditis risk) VS (covid infection myocarditis risk)
From https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
"But the risk of myocarditis associated with the vaccine was lower than the risk associated with COVID-19 infection before or after vaccination – with one exception. Men under 40 who received a second dose of the Moderna vaccine had a higher risk of myocarditis following vaccination. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are available in the U.S."
Unless I am horribly misreading this, it seems that
(Covid infection + non-moderna vaccine), has a lower risk of myocarditis than (covid infection + no vaccine)
EXCEPT in men under 40 receiving moderna.
In that case, (covid infection + moderna), has a HIGHER risk than (covid infection + no vaccine)
Can anyone correct me if I am reading this wrong?
The decrease in serious illness is due to prior immunity and vaccination.
Though it’s obviously a hard thing to prove either way. But certainly I do not think it should be assumed that omicron is inherently more mild.
Here is recent, high quality one, but there are many more (and some with conflicting results - but to my eye the best studies all point to similar conclusions).
By itself, this carries a high "we found a link between green jelly beans and acne" flavor (xkcd/882). But even if it's not there, there are a lot of other complicating factors.
Those studies about myocarditis were important because they derived improvements on the procedure to apply intramuscular vaccines. But that improvement by itself is enough to invalidate any findings you will find on any such study from that time.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...
What is "anti-vaxx" about that tweet? It is absolutely mundane and trivially true.
And just for reference: I myself am triple vaccinated (waited a bit too long for my 4th booster and then got it, damn), and a total vaccine enthusiast. As in the vaccines are amazing, both in general and in particularly the COVID vaccines.
For further reference, last I checked the German health authorities still only recommend COVID vaccination for children with pre-existing conditions, pretty much due to the risk/reward tradeoff.
(I personally would be more in favour than they).
And the community note didn't really make sense, as what he said was not about relative frequencies, but about the question of whether myocarditis is a common side effect or not...and even on that he didn't give an opinion.
Humor me. Musk made a very short statement with a single factual claim: "Myocarditis is a known side-effect [of a vaccine.]"
The community note correcting it says that Covid causes more myocarditis than that covid vaccine.
How is that a correction? It's a snarky verification.