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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.
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.
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