> Elon is arguing that Twitter is mismanaged.

Anyone who thinks this is manifestly true should read this take from an ex-CEO of Reddit:

https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440

tl;dr: managing human interaction in any environment with limited accountability is a lot harder than it looks

Also, there's the question of by what metrics one would argue it's mismanaged. Revenue and engagement trends? Profitability trends?

I read it and am thoroughly unimpressed.

> It is because at Certain Times, given Certain Circumstances, humans will Behave Badly when confronted with Certain Ideas, and if you are The Main Platform Where That Idea is Being Discussed, you cannot do NOTHING, because otherwise humans will continue behaving badly.

To paraphrase: "Ideas are dangerous, people cannot be trusted to argue on the internet because it leads to violence, therefore people have to be censored, even if the things they're saying are true".

First, the idea that lab-leak theory was related to violence against East Asians is highly, highly dubious. Second, again and again, I see people arguing that we have to dispense with our ideals because they are Too Dangerous. At some point you have to realize that these people are just cowards.

> I see people arguing that we have to dispense with our ideals because they are Too Dangerous. At some point you have to realize that these people are just cowards.

We don’t have to dispense with the ideal. But that’s what it is, an ideal. We have to remain pragmatic.

No, we do not have to remain pragmatic. Pragmatism is the cowards way out of doing something hard or right.

It is both funny and sad that this country made it through a revolution, a civil war, various recessions, two world wars, the looming threat of nuclear holocaust, decades of ill-advised military adventurism but apparently it's "people arguing on the internet" that causes us to stop believing in free speech. Like I said, cowards.

It’s because during those times the crazies could only go shout at a street corner, so most people didn’t have a huge platform.

Bullshit. We did just fine, and the populace did just fine ignoring the quacks, just like we'll ignore all the quacks without tech companies censoring everyone. Lord above, we might come to terms with the fact we're all nuts, which would be a far more productive and unifying form of civil discourse.

it's not that we stopped believing in free speech, it's just that, like many other words and terms, "free speech" has been "Newspeaked", redefined before our very eyes, in our very lifetimes, and all they had to do to accomplish it was put the Internet in everyone's pocket and convince them it will brainwash them into being evil mindless automatons or something, unless The Right People oversee and moderate what can and cannot be discussed online. literally nobody thought this way 15 years ago.

> To paraphrase: "Ideas are dangerous"

More precisely: ideas are powerful, which means they can be dangerous.

Anyone who doesn't understand that is actually a deeper enemy of discourse than a platform owner who says their forum is not a venue for topic X or opinion Y.

Some stop here at a dichotomy: "you want to ban ideas, I will be oppressed!" or "I must literally be allowed to put my words in your speech vehicle and be given full access to its audience without any abrogation of that privilege or I am being oppressed!"

Others start to understand what the legal system has with both weapons and speech: perhaps there are some activities or forms it takes that need nuanced consideration. Time, place, manner, associated behavior, fire in a crowded theater, threats, etc. You will find these considerations where people actually take speech seriously.

> Ideas are dangerous, people cannot be trusted to argue on the internet because it leads to violence

You seem to be merely summarizing with scorn here rather than actually addressing the situations where this happens.

It's not hard to find stories where distorted worldviews oriented around agentive threats regarding the pandemic have led to people threatening and even assaulting health professionals. I know some of these people.

You probably know families or acquaintances that have banned certain topics from dinner gatherings because they lead to heated conversations or even violence. It's not that they believe no one should ever talk about them. It's that they understand what Wong is talking about here: there's problem behavior and carving out a domain where the related topic isn't carried is one way of fixing it.

And when it's your house that people are yelling or coming to blows at, I'll bet you try the same solution.

Arguing on "the internet" is a freedom that has never been threatened by limitation that Twitter and Reddit have put in place. What's at stake with Twitter and Reddit is what Wong describes well here: they're stewards of the platform where this is taking place, they get to see the effects. They feel an obligation to do something about it.

And you know what? Their right to do so as stewards of the platform is also a freedom of speech right. And it's every bit as important as an individual's right to spout off about whatever it is they want.

The freedoms to watch more strictly are those where the state or other entities impose violence or loss of physical freedom as a consequence for touching a topic. Twitter and Reddit battles are about people's sense of privilege.

You sir, are ascribing nuance where there is none.

Moderation's place is at the end agent. Period. I.e. it is the responsibility of people and end users to be aware of the actual physical world we share with others. To distort it is to do injustice to everyone.

I assure you. The poisoning of reality for "people's own good" leads to slippery slopes, and complete dysfunction and fraying around the edges which will always start targeted against undesirables, then be weaponized against everyone else by whomever happens to be in a position of power.

Either accept the world unfiltered, or don't try. Half efforts are doomed to abuse.

In your long, meandering post that reminds me of the long, meandering thread you linked, you claim that anyone who supports free speech is "actually a deeper enemy of discourse" than a censor. That's creepy Orwellian nonsense and anyone "smart" enough to convince themselves that up is down should not be making decisions.

This actually isn't hard. Ban racial slurs, "doxxing," calls to genocide, and low effort provocations. Don't ban ideas because you're convinced they are wrong or dangerous.

> you claim that anyone who supports free speech is "actually a deeper enemy of discourse" than a censor

Not what I said. If you care about speech, try to be careful about parsing, interpreting, and summarizing it. If something still doesn't make sense, try asking questions.

It's exactly what you said. I took your dissembling and accurately reproduced its message in one sentence.

> More precisely: ideas are powerful, which means they can be dangerous.

> Anyone who doesn't understand that is actually a deeper enemy of discourse than a platform owner who says their forum is not a venue for topic X or opinion Y.

In order to have REAL FREE SPEECH (which you call DISCOURSE) we have to CENSOR BAD OPINIONS.

No. Stop playing whack-a-mole with "bad ideas". "X idea leads to Y bad thing" is almost always wrong, the world is chaotic, no one knows the result of a tweet, and people who claim to are just looking for excuse to shut down debates they're afraid to have.

I'd just stick with banning what's already illegal - libel, inciting violence, fraud, threats, harassment, criminal activity, etc.

> Ban racial slurs, "doxxing," calls to genocide, and low effort provocations.

Hey everyone, look here! We have the answer to the thorny issue of what governs free speech in clear black and white. Twitter, facebook, reddit execs, take note!

I could easily do this job. It's not hard, it merely requires not being a coward.

But my rate is quite high.

"Low effort provocations" is disinformation, is trolling, is spreading knowable lies. Then we agree those should be moderated.

No, "low effort provocations" has nothing to do with "disinformation" or "spreading knowable lies". I am genuinly astonished that you think all those things are synonyms.

news.ycombinator.com does this right -- moderators rarely moderate based on the message or idea in a post and their opinion about its truth-value. Rather, posts are moderated for being provocative, overly rude, including slurs, low effort, and so on.

I'm making the point that deliberate misinformation is provocation. Claims without evidence, baseless contrarian assertions with no semblance of logic, is provocation. Posting snarky one-liner "rebuttals" to a paragraphs-long post is provocation.

Not all of those things deserve the same level of reaction, but they are a disservice to useful conversation and should be moderated/downvoted accordingly.

I agree that HN does it correctly, so I wonder where our disconnect is.

> is spreading knowable lies

How about lies like the Earth revolves around the Sun?

>even if the things they're saying are true".

You added that part in yourself. You seem to be ignoring the concepts of disinformation, trolling, and bad faith actors.

No I didn't. The twitter thread we're talking about used "lab leak" as an example of something that had to be censored but the author also admitted he thinks the lab leak hypothesis is true. Something that was true had to be censored! (I don't think lab leak is true, I'd give it a ~30% vs ~70% for zoonotic).

I don't care about trolling, it's just a neologism for "making a joke" or "taking the piss". "Bad faith" and "disinformation" are words used by people who want to shut down certain debates.

That's only from a content moderation point of view. I would argue Twitter is incredibly mismanaged from a product POV. Barely any new features, buff Android app (at least for me), and Twitter Blue being pretty useless.

I mean, if you take it as a case for why moderation is hard, that's fair. But while Elon describes himself (identity politics) as a "free speech absolutist", his concrete proposals seem to include things like an edit button, long-form tweets and some monetization strategies.

I think the fairer critique of modern Twitter is that it prioritizes the needs of media personalities and PR firms over ordinary users, not that it isn't "free" enough. I am blandly optimistic about the prospects of things being shaken up at Twitter, and for who Elon is, it could easily be someone much worse.

> his concrete proposals seem to include things like an edit button, long-form tweets and some monetization strategies.

This sounds like an opportunity to diversify the media (and discourse) landscape with a different product.

It's not just harder than it looks, I would argue it's one of the hardest problems imaginable.

As insightful as this thread is, Elons reply is gold:

> My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets!

It's very clever. It redirects of a raft of points Wong makes into a narrative Musk is pushing. It probably represents one of the reasons why he's so successful. :)

It also loses its luster on a bit of reflection -- this particular novella was in fact published on Twitter, and obviously got plenty of attention, including from Musk, so it's not exactly clear that Twitter's an unacceptable venue for novellas. Also, there's other long-form platforms that don't seem to have competed well with Twitter so far.

But maybe someone could pull off making such a thing work. Which is why personally what I'd like to see Musk do is take the assets he was going to use to purchase Twitter and build another platform, one with the features and values he's envisioning from the ground up. He might have the juice to pull it off, and it would help diversify the media landscape and discourse culture rather than just being a tug-of-war.

By the “I personally don’t like your policies” metric.