This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Recent takeover of Twitter by Mr. Musk and the consternation it has caused even on moderate sites such as HN has me thinking about defences of censorship and complaints about "politically unreliable" figures having the power to shape peer-to-peer discourse online.
A possible reason to oppose Mr. Musk here is that perhaps conservatives have it wrong: maybe the moderation team before was fair-minded and pluralist, but now it will replaced with die-hard partisans hell-bent on preventing inconvenient truth from reaching the masses. This argument doesn't require one to defend partisanship of SNS moderation, so it can be deployed in a wider range of situations. Were the premise correct it is at least possible for the change to be for the worse. However recent revelation that leftists from around the world are given privileged access to twitter curation team which would then promote their niche perspectives thus giving them dispropotinate reach, has harmed the prospects of premise being true. As the decline of politics related "trending" since Mr. Musk is in charge.
Maybe one thinks that moderation wasn't neutral before, and won't be after, but still wants to oppose Mr. Musk. If one feels that ownership of a platform with 400M MAU confers unlimited right to influence public discourse, ie "It is a private company.", then one can hardly object now that show is on the other food.
But sometimes a smarter argument is made, namely that what was removed was hatred and incitement to violence. And if this meant that it was overwhelmingly rightists that were shut-down, this reflects poorly on them, and not on Twitter. But as Twitter itself promoted a racially preferential movement, the deathtoll of which is, despite its short existence, in the dozens (not to mention the second-order Ferguson Effect), one questions if minimizing violence is its goal.
But maybe all BLM violence is justified as it brings us towards a more just and peaceful world in the future ("Can't make an omelette without shattering shells."), while rightist violence only hastens the descent into a dystopia. For this to work, it has to be shown that a BLM protest which neither burnt, looted, nor murdered, is less effective of convicing the people of its cause, than what actually occured. To this one can object in two ways a) violent protest can show the necessity of a thin blue line that protects the people, thus backfiring and showing that actually Fund the Police is the answer or b) more empirically, that studies show that violence decreases support of cause in favour of which violence occurs.
Well recent events at Twitter and reporting around those events has been really helpful for me to understand the forces at effect here. The whining and hand wringing is simply that "the establishment" lost the control of crown jewel social media as controlled medium. The establishment stopped being the power brokers of who is successful or not. The more we see things like you pointed out that politics disappeared in trending like this article. It simply means that they can't construct a commercial success with commanding attention alone. There is this whole history of Payola in the past and we are seeing it being repeated. We are seeing the corruption from Twitter now in plain sight with $15000 verification badges and the US government agencies getting a dashboard to prebunk stuff and mainstream media is not reporting about it because it is not important to report on their own corruption. It is not a culture war we are seeing but a corruption scandal unfolding painted desperately by the old power brokers as a culture war.
More options
Context Copy link
Why is twitter green? It shows up as <span style="color: darkgreen;">Twitter</span> in the html.
Another concern is that twitter is actively still working on "reducing impressions on hateful content". Other than that, as musk says, twitter hasn't changed its moderation practices significantly - when will it, and to what? No clue what twitter's moderation or speech landscape looks like in a year or two, but will it necessarily be less suspend-rightwing-y? (not saying it will or won't be, I genuinely have no idea). Musk's recent space also mentioned his desire to crack down on "untruthful" content, and as a rdramacel, idk - being forced to distinguish funny troll content from true content is incredibly useful in teaching people (and was for me) how to figure those things out.
More options
Context Copy link
Remember CHAZ? Multiple children were killed and it was memory holed. That is what this is about...
Why the Musk hate? Seriously... Why does Bill Gates get a pass? How many times was that guy on the lolita express? Why does Bezos get a pass? How much media does that guy own? It's like Vice news says something and all the hipsters get into lockstep.
Everything I've heard about Gates relationship with Epstein sounded mostly like Epstein being a bro during a time when Melinda Gates was being a bitch prepping for divorce. (Which I suspect is a fairly effective strategy for a guy like Epstein who seems to derive value from getting close to important people.) Do you have any contradictory info?
More options
Context Copy link
Do you regularly refer to 17 year olds as children?
Because the youngest people who were killed in CHAZ wre 17 and 16.
They weren't 17. So what's your point?
And yes, even at 17 they were children.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes.
And even if I didn't, it would still be an accurate characterisation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure why you think Gates and Bezos get a pass. I've seen plenty of hate for both. I've seen very serious articles written about how the Gates' charitable foundations are actually evil because no single person should be in charge of how much money is donated to good causes, it should be THE PEOPLE in charge.
They just don't stick their heads out of their foxholes quite as often as good ol' Musky does. If there only one thing to admire about Musk, it's that he genuinely seems to not give a shit what the chattering classes think about him.
Compare news articles about all of them... Gates and Bezos are getting a pass. Look at reddit...
Try this, go into reddit and say something negative about Musk and then say something negitive about Bezos. See how the comments treat you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The sheer power of media to influence public sentiment will never not be unsettling to me. And the fact that the public discourse is still in large part guided by a handful of entities that often seem to operate in lockstep is even more unsettling considering that the proliferation of social media should theoretically result in less narrative-control, yet media reporting in practice still informs most of the discussion, and with the help of censors social media has essentially become another one of their mouthpieces.
The underlying motivations on all sides aren't hard to figure out at all. The reason why the media absolutely hates the idea of freedom and neutrality on social media is because wrongthink on there takes some of their control away from them (so Musk is a threatening figure due to his stated free speech bent). Leftists go along with the censorship because the narrative being promoted by elites is theirs, and right-wingers oppose it because it's not theirs. And then there's the "moderate" majority, who, confronted with a skewed informational environment, largely take an anti-Musk and anti-free-speech slant on this topic due to lack of examination.
Unfortunately, this control that media currently has does mean they might potentially be able to shift sentiment enough to make Twitter haemorrhage blood if Musk steps out of line.
It was weird to watch people who were on tesla waiting lists change their opinion in real time. And the anger I get for pointing that out... lol
People change their opinions in response to new information. Elon Musk's public image has gotten both a lot harder to ignore and a lot more explicitly right-wing recently.
The quote in question from your article:
This statement that the article is reporting on does not seem "explicitly right-wing" to me at all - or particularly detestable and worthy of shunning, in my opinion. The idea of both parties acting as a check and balance for each other is not new and not particularly right-wing.
As to the remainder of the article speaking about his political lean, it does seem at a glance that he has been expressing greater support for Republican candidates (a shift from him having historically voted Democrat), but I still don't see why this is worthy of hatred. Public figures who are hard-line Democrats and who are critical of right-wing politics are not typically widely shunned like this.
I'm not even a Musk fan, but this basically admits that the widespread opposition to Musk largely exists for explicitly partisan reasons - for committing the crime of holding the "wrong" political opinions and daring to express them. And if he fell in line as yet another establishment mouthpiece, he would not be getting this heat.
EDIT: added more
Now I'm confused. I thought the topic of discussion was partisan opposition to Musk. There's other reasons to dislike him (his recent apparent incompetence running Twitter being the most salient at the moment). But a lot of the people pre-ordering electric cars are likely be to Democratic partisans, and it makes sense they would want to distance themselves from a brand that suddenly has much more visible ties to the Republican party.
Perhaps there was some miscommunication or misunderstanding - I thought the topic of discussion was still about why Musk generally gets a negative reception, and was of the impression that this was a continuation of that discussion.
Define "incompetence". The point of Musk's purchase was always sold as making Twitter function properly as a digital public square where people should be free to speak their minds. I would say the initial loss of users is to be expected, because Twitter's slant prior to Musk's acquisition would clearly have an effect on the user base - these users came to Twitter for a specific type of forum, and now that they're expecting that the focus of the platform might shift it's likely to attract a different base than it did before.
I also think that many of the issues Twitter is facing at the moment are fuelled by the disproportionately negative reporting on the topic of Musk, driven by the motivations I stated in my prior comment. This is basically sowing distrust and apprehension about a target, then claiming that the downstream effects of that negative reporting represents a failure on the part of the target. There's also the fact that orgs actually pressured advertisers to pause spending on Twitter in the wake of Musk's acquisition. Suffice to say that it's kind of hard for me to see all the issues as being his fault.
I'm actually not so sure if this holds for Tesla. "Surveys by research firm Morning Consult show that in January about 22% of Democrats were considering buying a Tesla, while 17% of Republicans were looking to purchase one. And that gap has been closing — Republican consideration of buying a Tesla has risen about 3 percentage points just since December’s survey. And Republicans are slightly more likely to trust the Tesla brand, 27% compared to 25% among Democrats. ... Data from Strategic Vision, which has surveyed hundreds of thousands of car buyers, shows that since 2019, 38% of Tesla buyers have identified themselves as Democrats, and 30% have said they’re Republicans."
None of this suggests a particularly Democrat-slanted customer base. The reason for the lack of political slant is because Tesla buyers are not primarily motivated by climate change concerns, rather it's performance and styling that concerns them.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/03/cars/tesla-buyer-politics/index.html
Fair. There's a lot of people commenting on his apparent incompetence like having destroyed the verification system (the checkmark now means "is really who their username says they are or paid Twitter $8"). Whether that actually will lead to Twitter being less profitable in whatever timeframe you want to give him remains to be seen.
That surprises me. Thanks for the info.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is bothering me ... Why did you make the word Twitter green?
I think a some(/most?) of the anger over Twitter is that it was a partisan tool for the left, and with Musk taking over its no longer so clearly a partisan tool for the left. Partisans without a principled bone in their body are of course going to be unhappy about this. Just like they'd be happy if we lived in a mirror world where big tech had a right leaning bias, and musk came in and said 'get rid of this right leaning bias'. But this all the boring take, of course 'partisans gonna partisan'.
There are a variety of "principled" reasons why people might be upset with the Musk takeover.
The least complicated of these reasons is just a general sentiment against change. If you currently like a thing and someone new takes over and say "I'm totally gonna change this thing to make it great." Then of course you are against them. Change is more likely to be bad if you like the status quo.
Musk is a nerd. It is a little weird that some of the countries biggest nerds end up running social networks. My only other example is Zuck over at facebook, but one was already too many for a bunch of people. Jack Dorsey looks more like the guy who got into yoga so he could fuck a bunch of women, and that is the kind of caliber of person we should expect to start a social media website.
Musk is a billionaire. Something something class interests. Marx teaches us yada yada yada.
Twitter is a worldwide social media company. It feels important. It has had real impacts on the world. Seems kinda crazy to hand the reins over to a single person. I mean sure Musk is going to appoint people and stuff, but ultimately he is steering the ship. Before the ship was being steered by a committee, and that committee was nominally overseen by investors in the company, and the employees had some say too. Even if you think Musk is going to change twitter for the better, there have got to be some people upset that this is how it has to be done.
More options
Context Copy link
You’ve shown reasons Musk probably shouldn’t be attacked on those specific grounds. Great. I don’t think that’s the main objection to his control.
If Twitter users think that Musk will turn Twitter into a cesspit, they should like to avoid such an outcome. It just so happens that their idea of a cesspit covers various right-wing opinions.
I think it’s important to skip the elaborate castles of blame. You don’t need to talk about BLM to tar Twitter as partisan. The main objection to free speech is that people will say things that suck, and telling opponents that they already suck is unlikely to be convincing.
Well, I guess I really think the main objection in this case is a reflexive distaste for billionaires, of which Elon is perhaps the most visible. Whether this is survival instinct, envy, or class consciousness? Who can say?
This is not the main objection. The main objection to free speech is that people aren't responsible with it. They let biases affect their judgments, or worse choose to deliberately stoke partisan emotions, and this counteracts efforts at maintaining a good/better society.
I would be willing to bet that most social media users don’t care about that. People get upset by things they don’t like. Sometimes those are downstream of social preferences, sometimes they’re more aesthetic.
Imagine that Musk starts posting dick pics on Twitter. He encourages others to do the same and removes all moderation of such pictures. The NSFW tag no longer is partitioned off from trending.
People would flip out not because of partisanship or bias, but because they didn’t sign up for this. There would follow plenty of (accurate) criticism for how it damages society—but the knee jerk response is a complaint at personally getting something one doesn’t want.
Now replace dicks with racial slurs. Or with anti-trans posts, or with calls for deportation. Change the scale, but the underlying response remains: we don’t want this here.
Musk has explicitly and repeatedly stated that if you don't want to see racial slurs or dicks, you will be able to set the filters to match your preferences. Much like email.
The actual issue is quite clearly controlling whether other people get to read what they want, e.g. true stories by the NY Post about Hunter Biden.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But there is a reason this isn't the argument put forward. Because it's a really terrible argument unsupportable under a liberal framework, which the critics aren't quite ready to abandon.
I really don't think it's the billionaire thing. Maybe that is an element to it but the people who hate him would hate him if he were broke. He was especially now that he's signaling rightward sympathies. Soros buying Twitter and banning most right wing opinions would be hailed as a victory for progress.
More options
Context Copy link
I think there has to be more than that, since it's not like Twitter wasn't owned by a billionaire before Elon. If it was truly reflexive distaste for billionaires, it would be odd for it to be triggered just now. Elon is perhaps the most visible billionaire, but I think the distaste directed his way before the Twitter deal, which seems to be the main source of the distaste towards the deal, wasn't primarily because of him being a billionaire that was the most visible. Rather, I think him being the most visible billionaire is in a large part due to the distaste he garners from people for his awkward public appearances and statements where he shows off his all-too-techbro/classical liberal stylings.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link