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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Part 2 of the Twitter Files have been released

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600

Instead of Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss is doing the honors

Twitter suppressed the virality of certain accounts and hashtags of conservatives and covid-skpetics, such as Sanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who came out against mask mandates, and Dan Bongino. Twitter also has different tiers of moderation. Highly controversial, high-traffic accounts have an extra layer of oversight.

I thought it would be worse, but still makes twitter look bad.

I am a little confused about the contents of tweets 21 and 22 in the thread. Reproduced below with emphasis added.

21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.

22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: "We reviewed the reported content, and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules." No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up.

Did Weiss mess up the date in tweet 21? Because Elon bought Twitter in late October 2022. He had been owner for over a month, apparently, when the tweet with the home address went up and when Twitter Support decided it did not violate their policies.

It also seems kind of weird to criticize previous Twitter management for limiting the reach of accounts they think violate their policies, since this is Elon's own position

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.

You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.

See here. All perfectly fine, I'm sure. https://twitter.com/KingChristianCS/status/1594848557843943429

No rules being violated here, no sir ma'am https://twitter.com/Droidytv25/status/1595123798466269184

Definitely no calls for immediate violence here that are apparently perfectly ok as long as it's happening to a "fascist terf woman" https://twitter.com/A7aKoala/status/1595101534047576072

Definitely no bias on the part of Twitter's moderation team. What a thing to pick on as if this makes their behavior look any better...

I agree, Elon Musk's moderation is very biased.

  • -11

Do you really think this is helping you? The obvious deflection, the sneering, what's even the point of it? Acting exactly like everyone in that twitter thread isn't going to convince anyone.

You started it, man. You can't lay on the thick sarcasm like "all perfectly fine", "no rules being violated here", and "definitely no bias" and not expect @Gillitrut to respond in kind.

The fact of the matter is the old Twitter team is literally not in charge anymore. Musk has owned the company for a month and a half. Every tweet you linked happened almost a month after Elon took over. How on earth do you blame pre-Musk Twitter for content that was created and remains up after he is in charge?

Because while he fired a lit of people, he didn't replace everyone, and even if he did, at the moment he can only draw from a pool of Californians. Regardless of management they will have the same bias.

Unless you're implying Elon should have hooked everyone up to Neuralink and control every single thing they do, I don't see how it's reasonable to claim he should be able to rid the company of it's pre-existing bias so quickly.

Hey hey, not all of us Californians are bonkers. Only most of us.

How long do we have to wait, post-acquisition, to start holding the CEO and owner responsible for the moderation decisions of the company he is CEO and owner of?

Funny enough

https://twitter.com/annecollier/status/1600889250761027585

This is from today - looks like the progressive entryists don't just all disappear when the technically formal ownership of an organization changes.

I'd give him 6 months to a year.

Keep mind, I find the project rather hopeless, and will be extremely surprised if he pulls it off. But at that point it will only be his fault.

Now, can you answer any of my questions? Do think company owners have the ability to read minds, and control all employees at once? If not, what is you expectation that the bias should be fixed by now based on?

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Because A) all the 3rd world contractors are still using the rules the previous team set up, and B) the exact same thing happened when they did this to Rowling last year.

Believe me, I'd be tremendously happy if Musk's new moderation eliminated this and anyone defending it, laughing at their sudden change of position on "free speech". Hopefully it will, in time.

For how long post-Musk takeover do you think it will be reasonable to blame moderation decisions on previous management? If the tweets are still up six months from now will it still be the previous Twitter managements fault? Or will it be on Musk then?

Absolutely. If that behavior towards us is tolerated in six months I'd call his takeover a pathetic waste of time.