"Free speech massacre"? The hyperbole has gotten out of hand but I for one can't wait for the first article title that starts with "C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER"
On one hand, yes. On the other, there is a literal massacre of humans happening right now and this censorship is definitely related. So it is very dangerous in a real and urgent way.
Which one are you referring to there are too many ongoing for me to be certain and I don't want to think poorly of you for calling the military action in Gaza a massacre if you are referring to something else
If the accounts were suspended and almost immediately restored after Musk's intervention, couldn't the explanation be that some actors managed to trick the system into getting them banned (for example through a flood of reporting) rather than something initiated in Twitter itself?
Twitter's bot system is fundamentally broken right now.
If you look here you can see OpenAI being used en-masse across the platform all blue-ticked indicating that they will not be flagged as spam. And showing exactly what Musk said would not happen when he changed what blue-tick meant.
ChatGPT bots are one of the worse problem of Twitter, but I really don't get how the math can work for them. Between the blue tick and the OpenAI API costs, how can they make actually some profit with subpar-quality tweets that leech from big accounts and basically redescribe the original post? What am I missing?
There is a decent related question for how many of those followers are legitimate?
I think it is somewhat likely that any account with a lot of followers has a lot of bot followers. I could easily see any "clean up the bots" script being wrong on taking down some legitimate posters that are in the neighborhood of a lot of bots.
Oh, so Twitter ban-wave is a thing in the English world too? That has been a problem since long before the takeover, and I think it's also one of reasons why rather few aside from spammers use human names and sign up for paid plans.
Twitter the system bans prominent accounts in frequency and amount for no discernible reasons(it's "Twitter Rules"). That had completely normalized ban evasions to the point even its support personnel sometimes suggested it in the past.
Users won't pay to get banned[1]. Businesses can't rely on ID provider that unexist hard earned customers. People flee to competitors when the platform does this and require social graph reconstructions. It's not a new phenomenon, it's a plague somewhere within the system that needs to be fixed by a major re-architecture.
1: Anecdotally, but in fact I've seen users signing up for the paid Blue program when it was first introduced, hoping for preferential treatment for paid accounts with regard to bans, only to report back in disappointment - and I've seen it precisely because those users had promptly gone through the ban and evasion process and came back in the buzz.
Useful to consider how many accounts that are not high profile were deleted and if these high profile accounts were a casualty ofa much more aggressive attempt to silence a segment of voices
then then next question is, what is the criteria being used?
Musk's mistake, as others mention, was positioning himself as a free speech absolutist, which was a promise he could not possibly keep, nor did he really want to. He's following the same sort of approach as other tech CEOs.
there is of course a model for making completely outrageous, easily disproven assertions and running with them without ever having to walk them back, and it's called Donald Trump. Musk keeps trying to use the same playbook but lacks the skills.
How can people still be on the free speech narrative? PG and a lot of other famous people got punished just for the mere mention of 3rd-tier chat platforms.
Imagine you're setting a standard on free speech and you draw the line at the mention of Mastodon.
He seems to spout a lot of things about free speech, and about how Twitter is the only place to get your voice heard without censorship, etc. But if a journalist crosses him or pens an article that paints one of his companies in a negative light... they're gone.
Readit News
Dead Comment
This is obviously related to the cancel-thy-neighbour over Israel/Palestine that is going on at the moment. Mr. Musk is just too shy to admit it.
If you look here you can see OpenAI being used en-masse across the platform all blue-ticked indicating that they will not be flagged as spam. And showing exactly what Musk said would not happen when he changed what blue-tick meant.
https://www.threads.net/@parkermolloy/post/C14qS_CJp8q
I think it is somewhat likely that any account with a lot of followers has a lot of bot followers. I could easily see any "clean up the bots" script being wrong on taking down some legitimate posters that are in the neighborhood of a lot of bots.
Deleted Comment
Twitter the system bans prominent accounts in frequency and amount for no discernible reasons(it's "Twitter Rules"). That had completely normalized ban evasions to the point even its support personnel sometimes suggested it in the past.
Users won't pay to get banned[1]. Businesses can't rely on ID provider that unexist hard earned customers. People flee to competitors when the platform does this and require social graph reconstructions. It's not a new phenomenon, it's a plague somewhere within the system that needs to be fixed by a major re-architecture.
1: Anecdotally, but in fact I've seen users signing up for the paid Blue program when it was first introduced, hoping for preferential treatment for paid accounts with regard to bans, only to report back in disappointment - and I've seen it precisely because those users had promptly gone through the ban and evasion process and came back in the buzz.
edit: the parent comment has been edited since my reply, it used to make a bit more sense.
Imagine you're setting a standard on free speech and you draw the line at the mention of Mastodon.
The guy who runs GAB, pretty much everything that's not pornography is allowed there.