(Regardless I think that would be useless in the long run, since the millions of stranded users will still want another Twitter-like platform. And Twitter imploding without a designated archive will wipe out a tremendous amount of digital history.)
A lot of his decisions look pretty incompetent in the surface, like how could he not see how charging for verification devalue the system to whoever has the money?
Instead it could just be an intentional ploy to completely devalue Twitter disguised as incompetence. He can justify firing employees and charging for API access/verification as money-saving strategies, even if they're terrible strategies that have little chance of succeeding. And he could make enough people believe he's an idiot who makes things up as he goes rather than someone specifically driven or apathetic enough to run Twitter into the ground. Not to mention he was forced to buy them after changing his mind. Almost feels like a "so that's what happens" response.
I wonder how higher powers would be able to distinguish fake incompetence from real incompetence. Would they care how Twitter as a private company ends up if it's the case that it implodes from its own legitimately bad business decisions? It reminds me of how employers won't directly fire employees for discriminatory reasons, instead they make the employees' lives miserable so they're compelled to leave on their own, thus they escape scrutiny.
> (Regardless I think that would be useless in the long run, since the millions of stranded users will still want another Twitter-like platform.
If there's not an obvious successor, right when its shutdown, a lot of those people might get their habit broken and find something better to do. I know Mastodon was held up as a successor, but it's unclear to me if that's actually capable of scaling to that level.
i agree billionaires owning media companies is huge problem
That doesn’t mean we should propel poverty.
Midwits have been brainwashed into thinking “equity = good” with no critical thinking capability. The entire political college class screams “How can you be against equality!” followed by insinuations and fascism insults. The term “human rights” have been hijacked into socialism/communism propaganda.
It’s so deeply fucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cooperative#List_of_medi...
From your comment it sounds like you’ve been consuming the 30s soundbytes from those hearings and the misinformation spreading around the internet.
A long list of 3 letter agencies were compiling lists of citizens and journalists and sending them to social media companies to review for ToS violations.
There is a very real threat to civil rights here. When this cannon swings around and points back at LGBTQ, racial equality, stopping the war on drugs, etc. this is going to be “not pretty.”
And the hearings covering them were unbelievably shameful. Senators talk passed the guests in the room. Refused to abandon their “sick burn” scripts regardless of where the conversation went. Insulted their guests. Went in random directions of questioning that had little to do with the root problem…
At the core of this, 3 letter agencies (seemingly across the board) have decided that it’s acceptable to ask social media companies to prevent citizens from communicating on their platforms by selectively directing the attention of their moderation teams towards individuals. Whether this is legal, or a violation of 1st amendment rights, is for sure an open question.
Only one senator directly addressed that and only briefly by saying “maybe they’re trying their best” - a statement that doesn’t exempt anyone involved from following the law.
If I were to sum up the hearings, I would like this:
Guest) Hey I think the government is breaking the law? R) Wow, I can’t believe it, look at covid! D) So Elon Musk gave these to you right? Are you even a journalist? Guest) Well they might be breaking the law R) They targeted conservatives! D) No they didn’t, this is biased Guest) But… they might be breaking the law R) COVID! D) Wait did we get these docs? They’re not in my sick burn list?
At the end of the day, they never addressed whether the government is allowed to censor citizens by weaponizing their ToS for selective enforcement and, if the government can do that, where is the line drawn? How specific are they required to be? Can a platform ban all political speech and then only selectively enforce requests from the government without doing their own moderation? How far can we launder the 1st amendment through a public-private collaboration of enforcing ToS?
Honestly I’m not sure what the hearings were really meant for, the government is unlikely to hold itself accountable. At this point I do believe the ball is in the citizen’s court to bring suit against the agencies named in the Twitter files like we did with the presidential surveillance program.
go back to your cave.
What's worse, if you have a true point, then posting like this actually discredits the truth and gives people a reason to reject it. That isn't in your interest and in fact hurts everyone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...