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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36219 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.

FWIW Elon posted a statement this morning

It seems like he wants to make it so that users themselves have more control over what they see rather than top-down moderation. I also think he is okay with moderation of “hate speech” to a certain extent, but he will stop moderating “misinformation” like Twitter has done for covid, the 2020 election, hunter biden story, etc. in the past. My prediction is that moderation of slurs, calling for violence, etc. will be handled much the same way it has been, but that opinions which don’t use no-no words will be allowed. I think most people won’t notice a difference but all he really has to do is not ban for “misinformation” and 99% of the controversy about twitter’s moderation policy is gone. Most people won’t care that you still can’t use slurs or whatever and journalists will get over the “misinformation” thing when crying about it stops being a useful tactic.

Update: Elon is forming a content moderation council

Thanks for the update. I think you're reading him optimistically, though. "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can said with no consequences [...] our platform must be warm and welcoming to all" doesn't read as meaningfully different from the 2022 establishment line on free speech.

It's early but I'm feeling good about my predictions, where I guessed a modest pullback from the censorship spike of 2020 but not root-and-branch reform. We're already hearing rumblings of threats from EU officials, too, though it could be just one guy spouting off.

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