It's Elon's platform. He can do what he wants with it. I disagree with his decisions, and I think they're far more capricious and arbitrary than any previous moderation, but they're his decisions to make.

But the thing I can't abide by is going down this path whilst simultaneously claiming that he's Defending Freedom of Speech. "Comedy is now legal on Twitter", he says, immediately before banning parody accounts. "Doxxing is not allowed", he says, immediately before soliciting his 100+ million followers to identify a video of someone's face and license plate.

Again, he's an asshole, but I don't think he should somehow be legally prevented from doing what he's doing. I just want him and his stans to drop the charade.

"Their side?"

Anyone who posts Mastadon links are being banned regardless of political affiliations.

Also whether censorship is right or wrong is normally based on what is being censored not the person.

> Anyone who posts Mastadon links are being banned regardless of political affiliations.

This is simply not true, just search Mastodon.social links on Twitter via this link, and notice that posters are not banned: https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmastodon.social&s...

You could even search https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmastodon.social%2... , who post specifically about banned @elonjet account, and my first ten clicks on posters all happened to be non-suspended account. I don't think there is a need to check it further, your point is already invalidated.

You're right about those users not being summarily banned. But it's still interesting what happens when you try to click one of those Mastodon links...

What is interesting about landing on https://mastodon.social/@elonjet ? I just did it. Not even a warning 'you are opening a link', like many sane apps do, including mine.

There is a warning, I’ve just tried that. You can ignore it and continue.

> it's still interesting what happens when you try to click one of those Mastodon links...

For those who Nitterize their Twitter: Twitter sends Mastadon clicks to a Unsafe Link Warning page.

Man. I'm kind of in awe of Musk's limitless ability to diminish himself.

> Twitter sends Mastadon clicks to a Unsafe Link Warning page.

At the moment, it doesn't. If you don't believe me on my word, I can record a screen capture video for you.

I clicked on the link and it sent me to the warning page. Do you want me to record a screen capture video for you?

Edit: Adding screen capture: https://imgur.io/a/RGk5Jx6

This sounds to me like there might be some A/B testing going on.

I was talking about clicking on a link from a desktop browser. No warning at all.

...and on mobile it is beyond sensible to make a warning when leaving to view external links: mobile apps and mobile browsers do do not have the capability to show the exact url you are about to open (in desktop you call hover over a link), which can lead to all sorts of bad things, first of which is spoofing your ip address.

Hell, even we in our open source xmpp clients show a mandatory warning with full URL you are about to open, so you know where you will land. This is a safety feature, not malice! (I'd actually add it to desktop web version of Twitter too)

> on mobile it is beyond sensible to make a warning when leaving to view external links: mobile apps and mobile browsers do do not have the capability to show the exact url you are about to open (in desktop you call hover over a link), which can lead to all sorts of bad things, first of which is spoofing your ip address.

Informing your users that they are being redirected to an external link is very different from blatantly lying to them about your competitor. The text of the warning explicitly says that mastodon is “spammy or unsafe”.

I am pretty sure if someone pastes a discord link in your xmpp client, you’ll not say that Discord is spammy or unsafe. You’ll just inform the user that they are being led to an external link.

Twitter was showing such warnings for external links long before Musk took over. Here [0] is the link to an article from May 2020, discussing this very thing.

[0]: https://wptavern.com/bringing-back-blogs-in-the-age-of-socia...

>> Anyone who posts Mastadon links are being banned regardless of political affiliations.

> This is simply not true, just search Mastodon.social links on Twitter via this link,

As referenced by phoe-krk above, Twitter appears to be blocking Mastadon addresses in bios, not in tweets. That makes it a slightly different scumbaggery than we thought.

I find the BBC headline is confusing; it says users are blocked for 'Sharing' Mastadon links, which sort of (wrongly) hints that one can't tweet Mastadon links.

I'm amused as heck, myself, not sure what you're talking about. This is exactly the sort of genius management I was hoping he would bring to the table. Just a sec, my popcorn just dinged, I wanna see what he does next. Maybe turn off the air conditioning in the server room save costs? If the workers in his family emerald mines could sweat a bit, why not the Sysadmins!

This is WAY more entertaining than anything Robert Downey Jr's done in a Marvel movie.

i think all it does is show us two things. we now know for absolute certain that:

1) he recognizes that posts can have real world implications.

2) he thinks its ok to mitigate those implications through suspending accounts and deleting posts.

we now know these for absolute certain.

so how do he (and his fans) justify the mockery they give to other groups who ask for help due to very real and immediate dangers--he goes on "cancel culture" rants and "wokewokewoke" rants. even though he fully understands why they're concerned and has shown that he thinks its entirely acceptable to suspend and remove accounts.

well well well indeed.

Are you so hyperfocused on the supposed hypocrisy on the left that you're blind to Elon's hypocrisy of claiming to be making Twitter a true platform for free speech and then banning people for criticizing him?

> Who could have thought that social platform neutrality is a good thing?!

I've been on HN for 6 years and this is the most intellectually dishonest question I've ever seen. Elon Musk's Twitter is anything but neutral. Banning your dissidents is as far from neutral as it gets.