I was thinking that opening X up to more free speech could actually work against people who post hateful things, more than if they didn't. If by law they have to report such things, that is. That's where things get uneven quickly.
Platforms often don't have to report such things - and do anyway.
Sometimes they want to cozy up to Gov. Sometimes a desire to acquiesce to authority gets in line first. Sometimes decision makers don't know that rights can and should be protected. Sometimes speech protections are a lower priority than shareholder dividends.
A platform may also be too broke to pay it's required bills. Affording counsel to protect uses could be a tough sell there.
I would be super interested to hear some inside perspective on how twitter is doing (also just from people using the platform a lot). My own predictions on how twitter would fare were apparently quite wrong, around a year ago I was suggesting that twitter would lose a lot of the "woke" crowd, as well as academia, but both are still engaging in seemingly the same numbers. I also predicted more and more tech debt would become visible as they lost so many core developers, but overall it seems the platform is still quite stable.
The platform seems less stable, it fairly frequently crashes my browser now. Also they've had significant outages since Musk took over. It's not completely falling apart yet, but it definitely is less stable.
If you aren't even a regular enough user to have an account, how can you possibly count yourself as addicted to it? For me nothing much has changed except the logo.
I do have an account with probably thousands of tweets over the last few years.
There’s a sign out button.
The reason I initially signed out was because I was tired of scrolling past dozens of 0 follower, 0 likes, 0 RT, low value commentary by people who paid for Blue in order to get to the first substantive comment by someone who didn’t. That of course is also a significant change (not sure if he rolled this back since then and thankfully don’t care if he did).
Twitter as a platform is noticeably less stable; however, I have noticed the same thing using a lot of services (google maps, instagram, youtube) from big tech companies in the last year coincidentally following the mass layoffs in late 2022/early 2023. Twitter has still probably degraded the most compared to others just based on my personal usage of the site.
My suspicion is that these companies that hold such market share are making the calculation that they can get away with degraded performance in their apps because users either can't or refuse to move to alternative sites. It seems to be working too since most of twitter's user base that was reacting hysterically to Elon Musk purchasing the company has still not left.
I'm not really sure how to get statistics that aren't a bit cherry picked when it comes to any of the social networks.
I still occasionally encounter links here and accidentally click, if I had an account I would be an engaged user? For content on the platform it seems easy enough to boost whatever users remain active.
Facebook had a short period where I thought I might have to join to not miss FB only content, then twitter had a phase where you kind of had to read someone's stream of rant to get a specific piece of info directly. Both of those are completely past and they are just another way people link to primary content that remains on the real web. The only dark web that seems relevant to me, at rare times, is behind a newspaper paywall.
Twitter has become significantly glitchy. You can notice glitches more where there are new features, like long videos, etc.
Twitter recommendation algorithm has actually become better- a lot less of content that are appealing to the mass, and much more that are appealing to me. I am spending more time on twitter now.
One downside now is Blue Tick spam. Before, top replies to a famous tweet would be smart, or a good counterpoint, and now it is just dumb blue-tickers, stans, and newsletter salesmen. As twitter boosts posts of paying customers, I am also seeing poor posts appear on my feed out of the blue- it's like someone thinking in the lines of- "he's an engineer, won't he like an 8th grade math puzzle?".
I am not paying for it, but my engagement has grown (I never try).
I can't copy/paste because the stupid paywall popup, but it says Twitter has complied with German hate-speech requests. I'm not sure how many requests Twitter complied with before Musk. I'm sure with their relationship with government agencies, it was more than I would prefer.
Of course the original complaint of Twitter/X from the Twitter files was that they were suppressing speech sometimes due to government coercion, not that they were providing government with data, particularly with a warrant.
"Before Elon Musk, Twitter would regularly evaluate and eventually push back against government requests if they were a threat to dissidents or free speech," Yoel Roth, the former head of the company’s trust and safety team, said in an interview. But that requires vast resources. "Compliance, on the other hand, is the easy option."
> Elon Musk
@elonmusk
14h
At the risk of stating the obvious, I don’t know what’s going on with every part of this platform all the time, but our policy worldwide is to fight for maximum freedom of speech under the law.
Anyone working for X Corp who does not operate according to this principle will be invited to further their career at any one of the other social media companies who sell their soul for a buck
Nilay Patel’s piece continues to be pretty much on the money, a year on. Turns out dealing with governments is hard, and if you don’t employ experts, you pretty much have to just roll over: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadPlatforms often don't have to report such things - and do anyway.
Sometimes they want to cozy up to Gov. Sometimes a desire to acquiesce to authority gets in line first. Sometimes decision makers don't know that rights can and should be protected. Sometimes speech protections are a lower priority than shareholder dividends.
A platform may also be too broke to pay it's required bills. Affording counsel to protect uses could be a tough sell there.
Super easy to open one tweet a person sends me and due to either immediate login wall or due to a new bug, bounce right out of there.
Twitter links are starting to feel like those ExpertsExchange results in old Google searches.
There’s a sign out button.
The reason I initially signed out was because I was tired of scrolling past dozens of 0 follower, 0 likes, 0 RT, low value commentary by people who paid for Blue in order to get to the first substantive comment by someone who didn’t. That of course is also a significant change (not sure if he rolled this back since then and thankfully don’t care if he did).
I still occasionally encounter links here and accidentally click, if I had an account I would be an engaged user? For content on the platform it seems easy enough to boost whatever users remain active.
Facebook had a short period where I thought I might have to join to not miss FB only content, then twitter had a phase where you kind of had to read someone's stream of rant to get a specific piece of info directly. Both of those are completely past and they are just another way people link to primary content that remains on the real web. The only dark web that seems relevant to me, at rare times, is behind a newspaper paywall.
Twitter recommendation algorithm has actually become better- a lot less of content that are appealing to the mass, and much more that are appealing to me. I am spending more time on twitter now.
One downside now is Blue Tick spam. Before, top replies to a famous tweet would be smart, or a good counterpoint, and now it is just dumb blue-tickers, stans, and newsletter salesmen. As twitter boosts posts of paying customers, I am also seeing poor posts appear on my feed out of the blue- it's like someone thinking in the lines of- "he's an engineer, won't he like an 8th grade math puzzle?".
I am not paying for it, but my engagement has grown (I never try).
I am seeing more posts from my follows, too.
Of course the original complaint of Twitter/X from the Twitter files was that they were suppressing speech sometimes due to government coercion, not that they were providing government with data, particularly with a warrant.
Can anyone who actually pays for WaPo elaborate?
"Before Elon Musk, Twitter would regularly evaluate and eventually push back against government requests if they were a threat to dissidents or free speech," Yoel Roth, the former head of the company’s trust and safety team, said in an interview. But that requires vast resources. "Compliance, on the other hand, is the easy option."
> Elon Musk @elonmusk 14h At the risk of stating the obvious, I don’t know what’s going on with every part of this platform all the time, but our policy worldwide is to fight for maximum freedom of speech under the law.
Anyone working for X Corp who does not operate according to this principle will be invited to further their career at any one of the other social media companies who sell their soul for a buck
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1703333337199468952