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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36201 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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So it looks like Elon Musk officially owns all of Twitter now, and he's already fired the CEO, CFO, and policy chief. I don't have any strong opinions on this, but does anyone want to stake some predictions?

Musk presents himself as a free speech absolutist, which is encouraging to me, but I'd be concerned about the conflict of interest. I anticipate there will be some accusations of throttling unfavorable opinions about either him or his companies (RIP rogue driverless Tesla videos). I think the tension between unrestricted speech and a quality user experience will continue to be a problem, as I can't identify an obvious solution. Blue checkmarks are making hilariously cataclysmic remarks but I predict Twitter will remain a favored haven for the journalist class.

The tension is easy to resolve, and Reddit of all places almost had it with the quarantine idea. Whatever would have been taken off the platform is instead put behind a "whoah there, are you sure you want to see whatever nastiness the unfiltered internet can come up with?" button. The default feed doesn't have to change a single iota from today (moderators can even continue exactly as they are, but rather than remove/delete the content they flag, it just goes behind the barrier), but so long as people who want to see Alex Jones or whoever CAN do so by seeking him out and following/subscribing/whatever, then the promised freedom is there.

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