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 -
New Twitter policy just dropped:
It's like the man himself says
ETA:
Seems like some large accounts are calling Twitter's bluff. Dril posted a link to their linktree hours ago and so far both post and account are still up.
ETA2:
Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.
ETA3:
The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.
I feel a strong desire to steel man this decision by Twitter. While the obvious "Elon hypocrisy!" applies here to some degree, based on the discussions so far, I think many have forgotten or don't understand what Elon's goal for Twitter is: A well functioning time square for proper discourse (to make it look more like the Motte perhaps?). I believe Elon bought Twitter cause he saw the potential for Twitter to be a powerful center for civic discourse, but thought that its previous management's propensity for censorship and allowance of bots to run wild failed to provide the platform to have good civic discourse.
I want to emphasize it again: Elon wants to make Twitter into a place with better civic discourse and engagement. Think the Motte, but at scale.
And while at first glance, this censorship runs counter to his sub-goal of free speech, but I think it does facilitate better civic discourse on the platform. As a hypothetical, if someone replies to a post on the motte with "Check out my Facebook!" It doesn't add anything to the conversation, at best it's nothing, at worst it sidetracks good conversation. And the same applies to Twitter. So this change doesn't strike me as being antithetical to Elon's main goal here based on my understanding of his goals are.
Ok, I'll admit, I didn't realize it was that severe a block. That is definitely going overboard on the block, if it was simply posts that had the appearance of: Follow me on Facebook at: foo_profile. Then I think my argument stands. You are absolutely right, that the restriction as currently implemented kills the ability to post content that might have substantive information from entering the discourse from one of the given sources and that is certainly too far a ban.
If my model of Elon's vision for Twitter is accurate, then this overreaching implimentation can potentially be explained by a lack of resources from Twitter right now. And will later be scaled back into something more reasonable on a per post level by implementing AI anomaly detection to pick up flagrant posts that are antithetical to good discourse.
If I'm not correct, well I'll be sad cause a Motte style discussion board at the scale of Twitter sounds like a dream. And I'd have to do some serious re-tuning on my model of Elon Musk.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link