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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29323 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Frankly, my opinion is the opposite as I mention in another comment. I would rather someone be hypocritically good than consistently evil. That seems like a no-brainer. There was definitely a period in my life where I would have cared more about the hypocrisy than whether it was good or bad, but not now. I feel a little bad about contributing to a lowering of political discourse with my OP, by appealing to hypocrisy rather than discussing why it was good or bad on its own merits.

So, to circle back, do you have an object-level opinion about the new Twitter policy?

I still think it's a dumb policy. It seems to me there's tons of innocuous content that would be prohibited by it (say, tweeting you're at a concert with friends while at the concert) and it's not clear to me what the benefit is. Especially as this pertains to publicly available information. I think there situations where sharing someone's location can be problematic, but if I were writing the policy I'd probably require at least some kind of malicious intent element.

tweeting you're at a concert with friends while at the concert

The most literal and strict possible interpretation of the rules is not what actually happens. "Hanging out at the beach today!" type tweets would probably not get banned.

Every time a rule is proposed people pretend like really poorly programed robots are going to rigidly enforce the strictest possible interpretation.

Every time a rule is proposed people pretend like really poorly programed robots are going to rigidly enforce the strictest possible interpretation.

What seems to actually happen is selective enforcement, where e.g. normally "hanging at the beach today" is OK, but if the wrong person posts it, they get banned for violation of policy. One might imagine Trump posting a picture of a rally and getting banned for doxing a reporter visible in the pic. (Consider the "hacked materials policy" as applied to the New York Post)

I have a really hard time understanding your worldview.

I do actually care about hypocrisy, but I think when you point it out you should be careful to compare behaviors of the same kind and scale. "Dude upset at a social media monopoly banning a newspaper in order to influence an election, is now upset he has a stalker" isn't much of a dunk.

But to go full "I don't care about hypocrisy" is a bit of a mindfuck for me.

I think it is too strong to say I don't care about hypocrisy. I do think hypocrisy is bad, but I would rather someone were a hypocrite who did good some of the time than be consistent and evil. There are (many!) worse things than being a hypocrite.

Depending on the magnitude of the hypocrisy, and the good they are doing, I suppose you could come up with a case where I'd agree, but as a general statement that's a hard sell, especially when the good is directly related to the subject of their hypocrisy.

I could never trust a person who flaunts their own rules.

Which of course also further fuels my point this was just a “boo outgroup” post.

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