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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29282 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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(At the same time we're currently working with a significant performance degradation because of a library bug. Hopefully we'll get that one solved soon too.)

Edit: So far there are 414 janitor submissions, y'all are great, I was expecting to have to wait a week or two to get a good chunk of useful data but nope this is going fast.

(one post is considered one submission, not one set of posts)

I have almost two hundred new notifications over the last 17 hours. It looks like I'm getting a notification every time someone comments on this thread.

Did you hit the "subscribe" button with the eye next to it?

I didn't think I did. But I just unsubscribed. Thanks.

I got a popup asking to rate a post.

Excellent! It appears to be working.

My too. Just some random comment. I rated it.

I also accidentally fat finger upvoted it. That should probably be disabled when rating comments.

The volunteer/janitor page has a link for the rules which should https://www.themotte.org/rules instead of localhost/rules.

Oops, not my finest moment. Should be fixed now, thanks!

Hmm, can you give me screenshot examples of those? I think this is the first I've heard of either, for the record.

Huh, I like the "double-tap to collapse" idea. I don't actually use mobile so I'm sorta in the dark on what people want there :V

Task added!

Today I learned there are lines indicating how replies are nested in the light theme on mobile! I have been using dark theme since launch and while I thought I remembered lines at one point, collapsing threads without using the minus next to a user name has always seemed like a random crapshoot when I tapped to the left of a comment. As another Johnny Bench I think double tapping would be light years better (and an option to remove the collapsing function of the lines if possible (oh and make the lines visible in dark theme please.))

Could we also see how many child comments a particular comment gets when collapsed?

I think this may actually be difficult, we don't track that info anywhere. But I'll add a task for it.

Works fine so far. Thank you for your efforts.

You might be jannies, but you're our jannies. <3

The janny volunteer popup dialog seems to be in light theme even if you're using dark theme.

Sigh, I admit the themes are an annoying amount of work. I'll fix this one though.

I didn't actually realize there was a 'dark' theme until this comment. White text on dark background is my preferred look, so I switched over. However, I'm pretty sure there's a bug with the dark themes ('dark', 'midnight', and 'tron' all share this issue), where the interface doesn't register if you've clicked the upvote or downvote button, it stays the same color regardless. Any chance this could be fixed as well?

The problem is that I've been making serious changes to the base theme but not wanting to invest the time on fixing up the other themes. I think I might:

  • Change TheMotte to light

  • Fix up dark a bit

  • Rename the other themes to include (unsupported)

  • Remap users to light or dark as appropriate

  • Send a message to everyone who was using an unsupported theme saying "your old theme is kind of deprecated and may look crummy, we've changed you to a supported theme, you're welcome to change back if you really want or volunteer to fix up the theme"

I should also do a check to see which themes are most popular.

actually lemme just do that now, I need to get into the DB anyway

TheMotte: 1477 (obviously a lot of these are "I just left it as the default")

reddit: 98

dark: 96

midnight: 74

dramblr: 27

coffee: 23

4chan: 19

win98: 15

tron: 7

light: 4

transparent: 1

Per Transtellung's comment I just switched to the 'reddit' theme, and already I can tell it is much better. It does leave the big 'The Motte' site name in the upper left black (unreadable against the background), but now all links are clearly highlighted in blue, and upvotes and downvotes are clearly visible as orange and light blue respectively. Very much support his recommendation to turn 'reddit' into the official dark theme.

EDIT: it appears that the 'reddit' theme does not highlight unread comments in the same way as the 'themotte' theme does. So if I had one other suggestion, it'd be to incorporate that change into this theme. Thanks!

I am one of the people using "reddit". It actually doesn't resemble Reddit very much; it's just a nice theme: dark, but not too dark like the actual "dark" theme. (The background on "dark" is apparently literally #000000, which no one ever does!) It seems "midnight" is basically just "reddit" but worse (the contrast is terrible), so if you combine the two, "reddit" is the de facto dark theme and therefore it should, in my totally unbiased opinion, become the official dark theme.

The "transparent" theme has something to do with custom backgrounds, which are non-functional, so I think you can just remove it completely. I can't even get it to work, no idea how that one person did it.

The background on "dark" is apparently literally #000000, which no one ever does!

OLED display users (mostly mobile, but not all) do.

>phoneposting

Edit: Oops, just noticed you said there are non-mobile OLED displays. My bad. Anyway, would it be too much to have a "dark", renamed from "reddit", and "OLED" or "superdark" or something, renamed from "dark"? Or perhaps rename "reddit" to "light dark"? Again, I am very biased, but "reddit" is the most popular non-default theme.

My suggestion would be for default theme to use the prefers-color-scheme @media query to switch the base colors to bright-on-dark-gray if you have your browser/OS set for dark mode. "Dark" would be moved to "OLED black".

Personally, I use "coffee".

NY Mag published a piece defending Yoel Roth from Musk's "smears", declaring that Musk "falsely implied" that Roth had advocated for normalising child sexualisation in his old tweets.

Turns out, he's apparently a Zionist too! Wonder how this will sit with sections of the left rigorously defending Roth knowing that he probably lobbies for an apartheid state, or the rigorously pro-Israel right exposing his bizarre tweets. And I doubt Musk is in any way interested in exposing the Israeli lobby.

It's not like Musk, specifically, has a history of insulting people by calling them pedophiles, right? It has been fascinating watching certain parts of right wing politics re-invent a Satanic Panic about Pedophilia over the last couple years.

Just that there has been a satanic panic once doesn't mean there can't be a pedophile-using organisation that uses allegations of a satanic panic, or directly whips up a satanic panic as cover for its operations.

The more low-IQ conspiracy theorists are around some topic, the worse is the signal to noise ratio.

A frequent ways spies recruit people to do things is ask them to do something relatively innocuous for them. Once you have done that, you're forced to cooperate, because they can threaten you with revealing the cooperation.

Pedophiles are ideal; once they find out someone is a pedophile, they can get them to cooperate just by asking.

No need to get them to do them a favor, thus implicating them.

They don't even have to spell it out.

"Why are you asking me to risk so much for you?"

"You damn well know why. Now be a good boy and get to it. We'll pay you, don't worry."

It's interesting how this particular manner of writing is common among people who are vaguely "conspiracy theorists", or who are vaguely but ominously musing about dark, shadowy conspiracies.

Very frequent line breaks, jumping from topic to topic, a narrative/story-like flow, vague hints.

[not saying this as evidence your points are wrong, good points are sometimes made with weird modes of speaking, but association is strong]

Where am I being "vague" ? The existence of pedophiles wasn't invalidated by there having been a panic about them.

Neither does panic about a non-existent nonsensical conspiracy make actual conspiracies less likely.

There's been at least two elite pedophile conspiracies that have come to light that are rather .. solid- the Dutroux affair, and the Pedophile Information Exchange / MI6 thing.

The former is well known, and seeing as secret service leadership is 'elite'. In the 1970s, the deputy head of MI6 being a pedophile is significant.. During the same time frame, the head of MI6 was Oldfield, who in late 1980s admitted to having had sex with 'houseboys' in the 40s and 50s.

In retrospect, the leadership of MI6 during the 1970s included a pedophile deputy director, and at least a homosexual director.

As pedophilia and homosexuality are both rather rare, it seems very unlikely that they did not know about each other, and got into these position by complete accident.

There's nothing 'vague' about saying people on whom blackmail material exists are more easily influenced either.

There's been at least two elite pedophile conspiracies that have come to light that are rather .. solid- the Dutroux affair, and the Pedophile Information Exchange / MI6 thing.

sure. but 'some elites are pedophiles' isn't surprising. there are a lot of elites. hundreds of thousands at least, certainly if we can look to the past and any area of significance in any significant country. There's gonna be some pedophile rings in any randomly selected group of 200k people. I mean, there have been "12,421 individuals" in the US Congress since the US's founding! that's just one specific very important institution!

As pedophilia and homosexuality are both rather rare, it seems very unlikely that they did not know about each other, and got into these position by complete accident.

this is vague. "unlikely got into position by accident". it's not actually saying anything. it's vaguely implied pedophilia somehow makes one elite.

There's nothing 'vague' about saying people on whom blackmail material exists are more easily influenced either.

yes, that is very vague and ambiguous! "people on whom [what] blackmail material exists are [how much] more easily influenced [by whom, to what, for what purpose]"

As pedophilia and homosexuality are both rather rare, it seems very unlikely that they did not know about each other, and got into these position by complete accident.

pedophilia and homosexuality aren't independent here, for actual pedophiles (in the sense of 'wanting to molest 12yos) 95% aren't "straight". Also, yoyoel's thesis is discussing "16yos using grindr", which is very different than "i want to molest 12yos".

sure. but 'some elites are pedophiles' isn't surprising.

The people in question were director (certainly homosexual, possibly a pedophile) and deputy director of MI6 (almost certainly).

Positions to which people are not appointed without having undergone serious vetting.

Positions that have perhaps seen, during the entire 20th century been held by only 20-30 different people.

So these people have either kept their homosexuality completely secret, despite being in a position, where they were supposedly vetted, or they were part of some homosexual conspiracy in the secret service. The former seems rather less likely than the latter.

yes, that is very vague and ambiguous! "people on whom [what] blackmail material exists are [how much] more easily influenced [by whom, to what, for what purpose]"

Nonsensical objection. Having covert influence over a person in an influential position is of interest to every conspiracy out there, from simple criminal organisation, to foreign spies, etc.

Head of secret service is one maybe top 10 most important posts in a nation.

Also, yoyoel's thesis is discussing "16yos using grindr", which is very different than "i want to molest 12yos".

One of the people in question, Hayman, was investigated because he lost a large amount of pornographic pedophilic material and it was traced back to him.

Positions that have perhaps seen, during the entire 20th century been held by only 20-30 different people.

the idea is that there's lots of different positions, and if instead of MI5 director as pedo the DCCC chair or army general were pedos that'd be your evidence instead

So these people have either kept their homosexuality completely secret, despite being in a position, where they were supposedly vetted, or they were part of some homosexual conspiracy in the secret service. The former seems rather less likely than the latter.

you swapped 'homosexual' for 'pedophile'? homosexuality isn't illegal in current_year, and in the '50s you could keep it secret by just not telling anyone. How is 'not telling anyone you're gay' less plausible than 'secret service homo conspiracy'

Nonsensical objection. Having covert influence over a person in an influential position is of interest to every conspiracy out there, from simple criminal organisation, to foreign spies, etc.

your claim is a "pedophile secret service conspiracy". there's a profound difference between 'one secret agency head was a pedo' and 'there is a world-spanning pedo conspiracy enforced by blackmail'. If head of "secret service" is '10 most important positions in a nation' ... and there are 10 nations ... 10x10 is 100, 1 in 100 people are pedos, nothing to explain!

you swapped 'homosexual' for 'pedophile'? homosexuality isn't illegal in current_year, and in the '50s you could keep it secret by just not telling anyone. How is 'not telling anyone you're gay' less plausible than 'secret service homo conspiracy'

The secrets "weren't really kept", if you were to read the links, at least one of these people had nasty rumors swirling all around him. And iirc, the British counter-intelligence service filed on Hayman all but concluded he was a pedophile.

If head of "secret service" is '10 most important positions in a nation' ... and there are 10 nations ... 10x10 is 100, 1 in 100 people are pedos, nothing to explain!

You're making the unwarranted assumption we know about all of these conspiracies. It's far more likely most of such networks are never exposed, so we only ever know about few of them..

With Dutroux, we don't even know who was in on it, though given the cover-up it must have been someone important.

Positions to which people are not appointed without having undergone serious vetting.

This was the UK though; that vetting consisted of asking his Oxford/Cambridge schoolmates if he was a good chap. Which backfired on them quite often when all the guy's buddies and professors were fellow members of the communist-homopaedo/theatre club who were all working for the Soviets too.

That guy doesn't have a corpus of work about adult-child sex relations.

Here is Roth's dissertation, available for free for download.

Here's the abstract of the paper:

Since its launch in 2009, the geosocial networking service Grindr has become an increasingly mainstream and prominent part of gay culture, both in the United States and globally. Mobile applications like Grindr give users the ability to quickly and easily share information about themselves (in the form of text, numbers, and pictures), and connect with each other in real time on the basis of geographic proximity. I argue that these services constitute an important site for examining how bodies, identities, and communities are translated into data, as well as how data becomes a tool for forming, understanding, and managing personal relationships. Throughout this work, I articulate a model of networked interactivity that conceptualizes self-expression as an act determined by three sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting sets of affordances and constraints: (1) technocommercial structures of software and business; (2) cultural and subcultural norms, mores, histories, and standards of acceptable and expected conduct; and (3) sociopolitical tendencies that appear to be (but in fact are not) fixed technocommercial structures. In these discussions, Grindr serves both as a model of processes that apply to social networking more generally, as well as a particular study into how networked interactivity is complicated by the histories and particularities of Western gay culture. Over the course of this dissertation, I suggest ways in which users, policymakers, and developers can productively recognize the liveness, vitality, and durability of personal information in the design, implementation, and use of gay-targeted social networking services. Specifically, I argue that through a focus on (1) open-ended structures of interface design, (2) clear and transparent articulations of service policies, and the rationales behind them, and (3) approaches to user information that promote data sovereignty, designers, developers, and advocates can work to make social networking services, including Grindr, safer and more representative of their users throughout their data’s lifecycle.

Can you tell me, in what sense is the paper "about adult-child sex relations?"

I read the section you're describing (it starts with the last paragraph on page 246 of the thesis, PDF page 259) and I don't think it's accurate to characterize Roth's statements as dismissing the concern as "impossible/problem on privacy grounds." Rather, while acknowledging the possibility Grindr may be "too lewd or too hook-up oriented to be a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers" he's worried that underage users may still use the platform to network with other peers in ways that don't involve having sex and removing this platform for them to have those discussions. To which point he recommends Grindr take steps to separate the lewd/hookup purpose of the app from the more general discussion platform it enables. One illustrative page:

These accounts echo many of the classic tropes of online child safety narratives: the essentially dangerous nature of new media; the need to impose strict, top-down controls on how minors use the internet; a digital reincarnation of “stranger danger” in the figure of the older male sexual predator; and the importance of raising children to be safety-savvy and highly private. Yet, absent from these discussions is even a cursory recognition that the new medium of gay-targeted social networking may be a crucial social outlet for gay, bisexual, and questioning youth. While gay youth-oriented chat rooms and social networking services were available in the early 2000s, these services have largely fallen by the wayside, in favor of general-purpose platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. Perhaps this is truly representative of an increasingly absent demand among young adults for networked spaces to engage with peers about their sexuality; but it’s worth considering how, if at all, the current generation of popular sites of gay networked sociability might fit into an overall queer social landscape that increasingly includes individuals under the age of 18. Even with the service’s extensive content management, Grindr may well be too lewd or too hook-up-oriented to be a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers; but the fact that people under 18 are on these services already indicates that we can’t readily dismiss these platforms out of hand as loci for queer youth culture. Rather than merely trying to absolve themselves of legal responsibility or, worse, trying to drive out teenagers entirely, service providers should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety of use cases for platforms like Grindr — including, possibly, their role in safely connecting queer young adults.

I'm also curious how this makes him a hypocrite.

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The idea of using a hook-up/dating app for finding friends is... bizarre to me, to say the least, but well maybe it happens. I can see how maybe it's a thing in the gay community, but I still find it bizarre.

I am told by straight friends that they do this too. Many women seek social interactions on tinder with the lure of possible sex to rope guys in.

I also know of one very hot but socially awkward straight guy who does this. Step 1: display abs and do hookup. Step 2: friends with benefits. Step 3: some of the friends with benefits become genuine friendships. Or maybe he's just buff nerd bodybuilder with a harem, I can't tell.

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There's a lot more space in gay communities for the concept of a friend that you like, have fucked or could fuck, but aren't especially sexually compatible with, sometimes to extremes. And Grindr's long pretended it wasn't just a hookup app, but also a local community social media app; I don't know whether this was to avoid getting booted by Apple or a genuine marketing approach, but cfe here for someone complaining that they found more Facebook friends on the platform than fuckbuddies.

There's also an issue that's broader than just finding friends, but broader communication. There's a lot of things that... while not easy for straight people, have broader social transmission of knowledge, in ways that a lot of gay people don't. As bad of romantic advice or that any romantic comedy or agony aunt might be, having Dan Savage's weekly notes is worse. Some are only weakly romantic, and even some of the non-platonic ones aren't very sexual, but there's a lot of awkwardness in any puberty. Worse, a lot of norms for gay stuff are highly regional: the extent it might be appropriate to discuss someone's orientation or gender identity without them having explicitly said they were out in a given context is drastically different from Massachusetts to California to Florida to Kentucky. Many of these are difficult to communicate in mixed-orientation communities or even mixed LGB communities (trivial example: "how do I let down a girl that's hitting on me, possibly without having to come out?").

I agree that Grindr's especially poorly-suited for such purposes, but I think (while poorly written) in that paper "including", here, is meant to modify "services providers like" rather than Grindr, specifically. And while Roth overlooked a few SFW gay-focused online phpBB-style groups that do exist, the high difficulty of maintaining such services in a Discord/Twitter/so on world is pretty hard to overstate.

That said, I'd go further to suggest that Roth is incredibly blithe about the issues such networks face, both obvious and not-obvious. Even non-sexuality-focused social networks face serious challenges (eg: this was the explicit purpose behind the recent report-to-Mojang function for Minecraft). I think Bernd overstates some of the problems the furry fandom has, but they definitely exist, and perhaps worse they exist as much or more in SFW-specific spaces because predators can tell that such a larger percentage of common users are younger. Fighting to keep division of NSFW content from a FFXIV free company's discord is a constant battle. And I'm starting to see signs of a similar-enough pattern happening or having happened in and around VR spheres.

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Not a hypocrite, necessarily, but the three cases of sexual assault he discusses, which were facilitated by Grindr, are:

(1) Threesome arranged by two adult guys with under-18 (doesn't say how much under 18 so could be 17 year old)

(2) HIV-positive guy had sex with 15 year old

(3) Guy sexually assaulted 14 year old, met on Grindr

Roth makes the point (that every sex ed promoter makes) that even if Grindr does try to keep it over-18s there are probably younger gay guys using it, and that they'll be having sex with strangers anyway, so all Grindr can do is try and be aware that there are under 18 users and make it easier and safer for them (and also, yeah, it's up to the parents etc. to keep their kids out of trouble).

That's not necessarily advocating for "sure, adults should be able to hook up with 14 year olds" but like I said, it's the same pro-sex ed message: the kids are gonna be doing it anyway, so all you can do is make sure they know to use condoms and birth control, even if legally 12 year olds should not be having sex.

I'm more surprised you can get a doctorate in philosophy just for writing a paper on a hook-up app. We're not exactly talking Plato's Academy, are we? (or maybe we are, if the attendees of the Academy were also hooking up with younger guys for sex).

I quoted Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance last week and had to look up the exact wording. It was, in fact, Plato arguing for (and against) the special relationship between boy and lover. The broader context is...still incredibly gay.

So, yes.

What worries me is that some of the voices I like on twitter are departing (Popehat, Coding horror). Left leaning but usually worth paying attention to. Those are the type of users (unlike journo-s) that twitter can't afford to lose. Not sure if network effects will be that strong.

Musk should probably tone down the things a bit to at least try to boil the frog.

Those are the type of users (unlike journo-s) that twitter can't afford to lose.

On what basis?

You might like esoteric lawfare longform posts, but in that I don't think you're the median Twitter user. Popehat's departure would cause, what, at most perhaps a 3-digit number of people to decide that Twitter is no longer worth being on? He's hardly a load bearing fixture there.

Twitter's market value is in connecting journos to each other and the cancel-mob. Popehat and his devotees aren't in either of those groups; he's exactly the kind of user Twitter can afford to lose.

I don't want Twitter to turn into right wing echo chamber. So you actually need the lefties that show at least some sanity to stay.

They're not leaving.

Practically every account that says they're 'leaving' gets back in the next days.

Really? I thought his whole niche was writing snarky lawspainers promoting blue positions on a level journalists could understand, with quotable sneers the cancel mob could chant without understanding.

A public intellectual in the Hayekian sense.

I'm shocked Ken is capable of leaving Twitter. Terrifying to think what he'll end up like in an even more radicalized echo chamber.

Popehat hasn't been the same for a while, sadly, at least to my mind.

True. But while he is gone full blown sjw since adopting the kids, when it comes to his area of expertise - law he is still pretty solid.

While some of the accounts on Twitter can be replaced with Markov chains for popehat you need at least chatgpt.

he is gone full blown sjw since adopting the kids

Huh, usually it is a bit other way. Was it coincidental or there is some reason to suspect causation?

If an area is over a threshold of progressivism then becoming a family man actually solidifies progressive opinion, because you're more institutionally invested and it's vital to keep up appearances among friends of friends and whatnot. My married friends or more woke than my unmarried friends. I'm in California.

Dynamics could be completely flipped in Alabama.

They are Korean and he suddenly started seeing systemic racism and bigotry everywhere and racism suddenly started becoming Really Bad Thing.

Am I correct in assuming he sees anti-asian bigotry in precisely the opposite of the places it actually festers?

cc-ing @Smok IIRC a lot of Vox and Dickinson's(?) lads were calling him a psycho jewloving cuck race-traitor in all his replies back in... 2015(?), because of the whole mental breakdown and adopting foreign kids thing. I can see how that would send someone up the wall.

The alt-right guys never learned how to bully people into actual submission the way the other side is so good at. They mostly just pissed people off and made permanent enemies of them.

were calling him a psycho jewloving cuck race-traitor in all his replies back in... 2015(?), because of the whole mental breakdown and adopting foreign kids thing.

After that I would consider being extreme Zionist SJW and fund Mason lodge and reptilarium out of pure spite.

Yoel Roth is newsworthy, and clearly Culture War material, but what point are you trying to make by dredging Twitter to find evidence that he's a "Zionist"? This looks like a clear example of booing your outgroup and waging the Culture War.

Roth may be the scariest person I have ever come across in my entire life. A straight out of comic book QANON casting Jewish Gay Grooming Pedohpile who actually controls all speech proclaiming that his type doesn’t exists.

I don’t know if he’s actually a groomer; I do feel very confident that he’s completely out of touch with most America. Lots of negative kid vibes. Maybe he just writes and tweets a lot so easy to dig up something but he still seems to be not representative of society.

Musk should probably tone it down some and not risks alienated users. It would be better to maintain a strong platform.

In my view, 50/50 he has committed criminal sexual acts. He posted a lot of very edgy jokes on Twitter.

And logic dictates when you put someone somewhere to censor content, you want someone who will be easy to handle, hence, a guy whom you know to be a nonce is the logical choice.

Meanwhile, FBI has about 16 ex* employees working at Twitter in various senior positions.

*I'm not sure people ever 'leave' such agencies, same way as people never really leave the Mob without disappearing entirely.

*I'm not sure people ever 'leave' such agencies, same way as people never really leave the Mob without disappearing entirely.

Yes, federal employees absolutely leave their former agencies and are no longer bound by anything but (in the case of those who held security clearances) their lifetime obligation not to disclose classified information. US federal agencies do not in any way "own" former employees, nor they do they make them "disappear."

And you do believe this unironically ?

Yes. I have factual reason to believe this. What is your basis for believing otherwise?

Yes. I have factual reason to believe this. What is your basis for believing otherwise?

It's generally not true in other countries. People get attached to the their classmates, former companies and so on.

It's generally not true in other countries. People get attached to the their classmates, former companies and so on.

Well, first of all, the United States has very different norms, and stricter regulations, about federal service.

Second, people getting attached to their classmates and former companies is not the argument you made. Of course ex-feds maintain a professional and social network that typically includes other current and former feds. But you were claiming something much different, that they constitute in effect a "Mob" that they not only do not but cannot really leave, and that their former agencies can still compel them to do work for them after they've left. This is flatly untrue.

Well, first of all, the United States has very different norms, and stricter regulations, about federal service.

Strict ? You have generals retiring and then getting cushy board or consultant positions at defence contractors.

There's the infamous 'revolving door' problem at all kinds of agencies.

that their former agencies can still compel them to do work for them after they've left.

I should've been more clear- what I had in mind was more that these are special jobs that confer life-long status by association, and that people who've gone through them typically have a specific outlook and set of contacts that make them unique.

However-

We know feds compel people who fucked up to serve them. They're called confidential informants.

Is this a practice that cannot be used on agents who messed up ? Say, some boss 'misplaces' a crucial piece of evidence, agent is exonerated.

Retires, but knows he'll be asked to do favors for feds, unless he wants that piece accidentally found during an unrelated investigation..

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No one is bound by anything and no one claims they are. The claim is that the employees, current and former, become an influence network where it is in the interest of the participants to prioritize their reputation within the network over their fiduciary duties.

Moreover, this stuff is generally handled via implicit escalation. "Ok I'll crack down on the beheading videos and build a connection with people still on the inside." "Ok, I guess advocating for beheading is pretty similar." ... "Advocating for Trump is basically the same as the previous step."

No one is bound by anything and no one claims they are.

Indeed, @No_one claims they are.

The claim is that the employees, current and former, become an influence network where it is in the interest of the participants to prioritize their reputation within the network over their fiduciary duties.

It's an interesting claim, but where is the evidence for it?

It's no more true than the network of ex-military, ex-police officers, etc. They might feel a sense of affinity for others who worked for the same organization, which may manifest in hiring decisions and the like, but considering the size of the federal workforce, it's a much weaker "network" than, say, Yale grads.

Moreover, this stuff is generally handled via implicit escalation. "Ok I'll crack down on the beheading videos and build a connection with people still on the inside." "Ok, I guess advocating for beheading is pretty similar." ... "Advocating for Trump is basically the same as the previous step."

When you say "this stuff is generally handled via implicit escalation," you appear to making a statement of fact, based on knowledge. Which you followed up with a very specific scenario. Do you have any knowledge this this is how "this stuff" is actually handled, or only conjecture? Because it sounds like you are building a conjecture around a statement you made with certainty but no actual knowledge. It sounds like "Well, it makes sense to me that this is how people would go from banning beheading videos to banning pro-Trump statements," but I think you are making this up and just assuming "that's how it works" because it fits your worldview.

I cannot reveal the anecdata on which I've based this without being either super vague or alternately revealing details which are likely traceable to a small set of people. The tl;dr; is that someone I trust was briefly involved in a situation of this sort on the periphery, hated it tremendously, but described the process to me.

Feel free to dismiss it as you see fit.

I cannot reveal the anecdata on this without being either super vague or alternately revealing details which are likely traceable to a small set of people.

Feel free to dismiss it as you see fit.

Given that I too have first-hand knowledge that I cannot reveal without doxxing myself to win an Internet argument, yes, I will dismiss your anecdata.

I covered this I think here the other day. The problem with the FBI (or CIA etc) being at twitter is the alphabets have become extremely color coded. They are viewed as blue tribe captured.

I have no problem with fbi guys taking their pension and finding a $250k twitter job focused on child porn or all the actions that most of society still disagrees with. It’s their training. The issue happens if their doing moderating tribal speech battles.

I covered this I think here the other day. The problem with the FBI (or CIA etc) being at twitter is the alphabets have become extremely color coded. They are viewed as blue tribe captured.

All of these agencies very heavily employ ex-military. Also, Mormons for some reason gravitate to the three-letter agencies.

Is there a lot of blue-tribe HR bullshit in all federal agencies? Yes, but it's not as "captured" as you think.

You have to realize to a segment of online people, "Blue Tribe" means being opposed to anything Trump or anything adjacent anti-woke people do. At this point, Mike Pence is 'Blue Tribe' is some because of his actions on 1/6.

Nah, blue tribe means "laptop class" and adjacent. the sort of person who pays more attention to what's trending on twitter than what's going on with their next-door neighbor

Sounds right to me and I said below I bet lower levels are more mixed. Since the 50 agents thing and Hunter Laptop interference the alphabets at the top have lost any red tribe respect.

Also, Mormons for some reason gravitate to the three-letter agencies.

Bc. Mormons have compulsory missionareeing (ah, my English, fix it), often in another countries, so which has a lot overlap with what three-letters do. Also Mormons missionaries work in pair and each reports to superiors on the other one. Perfect!

They are viewed as blue tribe captured.

With reason, no ? As I understand most of the people who have been tied to the Trump dossier scandal were FBI alumni.

Similarly, FBI seems heavily involved in J6, with the person who was in charge of investigation retiring recently., perhaps to make it less likely that he could be asked awkward questions such as why Ray Epps was not arrested or investigated despite there being videos of him organising the event and urging people to enter the capitol.

I believe so for reason but didn’t want to state it that way. I assume the FBI at lower to medium levels still has some red tribe members and their not completely extinct yet.

I've seen rumors of bad morale and people bitching about being re-directed from investigating criminals into investigating "online hate", but nothing substantial.

"Edgy Twitter jokes" is not the same as "has sex with 14 year olds". If all of us were judged by everything we've ever said on social media, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Edgy jokes that imply the person who made the joke is watching sadistic pornography featuring children ... are pretty weird.

Or is this some sort of 'typical minding' and I'm the only one who can't easily confuse usual porn sounds and infant crying ?

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The fucking joke is that it shouldn't be hard to tell the difference between porn and a baby crying! That's why it's an awkward moment, because nobody ever wants to be in a situation where they can't tell if their neighbour is watching a crying baby or watching porn that sounds like a crying baby.

You mean, the joke was supposed to be he can't tell whether his neighbor is watching child porn ?

Yeah sort of, but it is more like "there are some very strange noises coming from my neighbour's place, but they are too loud for me to ignore. But they are so strange that I can't tell if I should rap on the wall and tell them to turn down the volume of their porn or feel sympathy for them for the baby they are having trouble calming. I definitely don't want to rap on the wall and tell them to shut up their baby, nor feel sympathy for their loud and revolting sounding masturbation session, so I am in an awkward spot."

As you said elsewhere, it's edgy. It's supposed to be transgressive and shock you by breaking taboos. Assuming it is a sincere expression of interest in pedophilia is like assuming an edgy 14 year old is a nazi because he scrawled a swastika on the bathroom stall door.

I mean, not to tell on myself or anything, but...haven't you ever come across excerpts from japanese AVs? Lots of high-pitched nasal squealing that, through a wall, could plausibly be confused with an infant. Or at least enough for comedic purposes.

That's about the only remotely innocuous explanation.

It's a reason why years ago I stopped trying to pirate Japanese porn; no matter how hot the actresses might be, the whole thing inevitably gets kind of rapey and also, the weird squealing.

But why would a gay man be familiar with how Japanese straight porn sounds?

Or is Japanese homosexual pornography also heavy on high-pitched nasal squealing ?

Or is Japanese homosexual pornography also heavy on high-pitched nasal squealing ?

No, I suspect it's more along the lines of OH MY SHOULDER

But why would a gay man be familiar with how Japanese straight porn sounds?

Probably for the same reason most people who watch YouTube videos know how a particular straight porn sounds (volume warning).

This isn't the only example, but it is the most infamous.

Or is Japanese homosexual pornography also heavy on high-pitched nasal squealing ?

Not just present there, not as constant, and both Japanese 'normal' gay porn and yaoi's got a slightly different form of obnoxious vocalisms, but yes. Both the obnoxious bottoms overselling how hard they're taking it, and the tops either have a kink or a script for aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

But why would a gay man be familiar with how Japanese straight porn sounds?

Because he read about it on internet? I know quite a lot about a lot of stuff that I never personally experienced or seen first hand, for start I never visited Venus. (not that visiting it would allow me to survive long enough to learn about it)

But why would a gay man be familiar with how Japanese straight porn sounds?

For the same or similar reason that I know what some gay porn clips look like - if you spent any time on 4chan or similar borderline internet sites during the past couple decades, you were gonna see all kinds of weird shit regardless of whether or not you, personally, are into it.

But would brief exposure create the kind of familiarity that leads you to confuse a common sound - crying infant, with an uncommon sound -something you heard once or twice online and didn't care for it at all ?

More comments

People posted JAVs to 4chan? TIL. Wouldn't that be on the straight board though, which it's not likely a gay guy would be hanging out on?

More comments

If all of us were judged by everything we've ever said on social media, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

I don’t know if he’s actually...

QANON casting Jewish Gay Grooming Pedohpile who actually controls all speech

If you’re going to assume the worst, pretending you’re not sure is just a fig leaf.

Oh come on, I don't know the guy or his politics but "grooming paedophile" based on the items quoted is very much off the mark.

deleted

Yep, agreed. I think Yoth is a fuckhead and I wouldn't spit on him if he was on fire, but this is donglegate levels of reaching for offence.

Who is Roth, why should I care what Elon says about him, and why on YHWH’s green Earth does it matter that he’s a Zionist?

There’s people in this world who don’t care about your fixation on the Jews.

Roth was head of moderation on Twitter. Guy who bragged about meeting with FBI so he could take orders on what to delete.

Helped bury the Biden scandal, apparently. Is being blamed for CP takedowns being slow on twitter.

Also has a suggestive twitter account, a now-deleted pornographic alt (otterriffic) , and a thesis about getting fucked on grindr, which includes some unfortunate musing about how to accomodate teenagers on that particular sex app. (excluding them would be unfortunate in his view).

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To be fair, I think the screengrab is taking the full thesis a little out of context. For the full paragraph:

These accounts echo many of the classic tropes of online child safety narratives: the essentially dangerous nature of new media; the need to impose strict, top-down controls on how minors use the internet; a digital reincarnation of “stranger danger” in the figure of the older male sexual predator; and the importance of raising children to be safety-savvy and highly private. Yet, absent from these discussions is even a cursory recognition that the new medium of gay-targeted social networking may be a crucial social outlet for gay, bisexual, and questioning youth. While gay youth-oriented chat rooms and social networking services were available in the early 2000s, these services have largely fallen by the wayside, in favor of general-purpose platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. Perhaps this is truly representative of an increasingly absent demand among young adults for networked spaces to engage with peers about their sexuality; but it’s worth considering how, if at all, the current generation of popular sites of gay networked sociability might fit into an overall queer social landscape that increasingly includes individuals under the age of 18. Even with the service’s extensive content management, Grindr may well be too lewd or too hook-up-oriented to be a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers; but the fact that people under 18 are on these services already indicates that we can’t readily dismiss these platforms out of hand as loci for queer youth culture. Rather than merely trying to absolve themselves of legal responsibility or, worse, trying to drive out teenagers entirely, service providers should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety of use cases for platforms like Grindr — including, possibly, their role in safely connecting queer young adults.

((Grindr argued at length that it wasn't 'just' a hookup app at this time, probably more to avoid getting Apple'd than anything else.))

I think Roth treats the problem of minor access to adult services a little too blithely for his role, but I think there's a more plausible read where he was arguing in favor of either a Grindr-run non-adult service, or (preferentially) a different party running strictly safe social content available for younger people. The latter has a lot of problems, both the obvious and the not-obvious, but sites like that have existed in ways that didn't immediately devolve into hookup forums; they largely just didn't make the transition from phpBB to modern social media well if at all.

I'm leaning more towards Roth being a horny, not very smart guy who fucked up and was thus deemed safe enough to be used for an important job, rather than him being some sinister sicko.

But who knows.

Really highlights the importance of "not being horny on main", had he simply completely segregated his horny stuff, he'd not have to worry now much apart from perhaps having to run away from Israel over the censorship issue.

The term, Zionist, simply means a proponent of Zionism, which simply is Jewish nationalism, just like other types of ethnic nationalism,* such as Kurdish nationalism, or Basque nationalism, or, for that matter, Palestinian nationalism. It is not a synonym for supporting Israeli policies toward Palestinians, as there are many on the left in Israeli who are both Zionists yet oppose those policicies.

*By which of course I mean this, rather than its common use as a near-synonym for patriotism.

PS: To be clear, this is not a defense of Zionism, since I generally oppose all forms of ethnic nationalism.

Sigh... Why do we need to do "It's the Jews!" literally every week? It's tedious and boring, given how much of a numerical minority they are if you don't like all the control they have then you should blame your own people for being weak, not them for their strengths.

Because if the Jews aren't to blame, society's losers - either genuine or just self-hating ones - might need to do some introspection. Since that'd hurt, it's much easier to decide others are to blame for where you are.

Bingo.

If you're a academically inclined progressive type who's drunk the kool-aid of Id-Pol and the sanctity of victimhood, etc... but have the misfortune of being a member of the oppressor class (IE straight and white) some greater "true oppressor" must be invented if one's ego is to be preserved. Jews are just the oldest and most obvious target, but I think that a lot of the visceral hate you'll occasionally see here for "Breeders", "Normies", Mormons Et Al... comes from a similar place.

I'm unsure whether or not I'm parsing your post correctly, but 'academically inclined progressives who have drunk the kool-aid of ID-Pol' describes approximately 0% of the userbase here. I'd also be shocked if any significant fraction of holocaust deniers or JAQers were academically inclined progressives, so unless your definition of anti-semitism extends to people who express doubts about Israel's treatment of Palestine, I'm not sure I follow your point.

I'm unsure whether or not I'm parsing your post correctly, but 'academically inclined progressives who have drunk the kool-aid of ID-Pol' describes approximately 0% of the userbase here.

I'm not so sure. Just as an example, the use of "Zionist" as a pejorative as something of a tell. As it's not something you're likely to encounter outside the context of academia and other explicitly progressive blue/gray-tribe spaces. I don't know if they constitute a "significant fraction" of the total, but I would say that the vast majority of holocaust deniers and JAQers that I have interacted with fall into that category. This isn't to say that there aren't non-progressive racists and anti-semites, just that it tends to manifest in different ways. The casual racism of the old south (and sunset north) has a distinctly different flavor from the sort of "you're a race traitor if you don't validate me" that seems to typify the average internet JAQer/Holocaust Denier on the internet.

Such a pattern of thought is quite common. At least anti-semites haven't get gotten so deep in blaming the outgroup for their own failure, as to have entire university departments conducting research with the assumption that "Judeoarchy" is real or searching for evidence that "Jewish supremacy" is real and harms gentiles.

Indeed. The constant bitching about men and white people is no less pathetic.

Numerical minority, but overrepresented in upper strata of society.

Billionaries, media personalities, media managers and so on.

Hence, a lot of flak caught.

I mean, that would be my first inclination if I were allowed to just do me. But I'm not, I'm subjected to endless struggle sessions in hobby spaces, work environments, education environments and civic environments about my "whiteness". I don't get to just go "Well, maybe black people need to figure out why they suck so much". Especially in the current environment where all it takes to make generally accepted claims of discrimination is to point out uneven outcomes, with zero evidence, or even a proposed theory, about how it's the fault of "whiteness".

I don't make the rules, I just know when I'm on the receiving end of hypocrisy dense enough to spark a gravity singularity.

At this point so many conspiracy theories have been shown to be at least partially true, I'm ready for straight up lizard people. Followed by endless gaslighting about it being a rare skin condition and we are all just bigots.

Roth makes powerful jokes:

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And here's something he allegedly posted on an alt:

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Well, that one just sounds like the gay version of women talking about how hot guys with a child are even hotter.

Do they do that ?

I mean, gays have feminised brains, up to a point. But Roth is quite confused, he speaks about his dislike of children quite often.

I guess that's why the "inexplicable" is there.

The optics, however, are really bad given all that's happened in the recent past. Note that the word 'chicken' to refer to underage, is not new.

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gays have feminised brains

I was read to jump on this as unsourced, but...apparently it’s true. Or at least as true as any attempts to correlate a couple dozen brain scans.

I'd say it's apparent from their interests and personalities.

It's far from universal as the latest 'dog soldiers' US military scandal shows, but the stereotypes of gay caring about feminine things exists for a reason.

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And on the not-very secret alt that's been scrubbed, he allegedly tweeted this:

It might still be on web.archive.org, but that site is owned by the left, so it might get scrubbed like Taylor Lorenz's old tweets.

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He had a not-very-secret horny alt

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What Roth then argues is that protecting children from abuse and exploitation requires admitting this reality and then maybe working to provide younger gay guys with safer spaces where they won't be preyed on by older men, but where they can still meet guys their age. That also seems reasonable

Depends on how you spin it: "A new Sodom has been opened in our town where the so-called progressives invite our children to try gay sex with each other!"

If 15 year old straight boys had a large population of pretty adult women who would probably fuck them if they could plausibly pretend to be 18, I guarantee that most of them would lie, cheat and steal to do so. Denial of these facts is denying basic observed male sexuality.

And of course this is a who/whom issue. Milo got cancelled for openly discussing his own experiences with this. Dan Savage did not. Now the media is defending Roth for the same.

I will also suggest - based on my own personal experience - that useful insights can be gained by reading old greek literature. In the locale I lived as a teenager, gay sex was illegal until 2018. In my view I benefitted from a relationship with a considerably older man - he was a bit of a mentor and taught me quite a bit about bodybuilding, sex and navigating non-PMC Indian life as a homosexual. This seems to have been common and accepted by the Greeks - it's a part of gay relations that I don't think has much of a straight analogue.

By "non-PMC Indian life", I mean that the experience of a civil service guy in what is now Telangana will be quite different from that of a techbro in Bangalore.

I also think Roth is just wrong. Provided there is a culture where older bodybuilder + teenage twink relations are treated as necessarily being a mentor/mentee type relation, they are definitely superior to two teenagers smelling each other's farts. However my general impression of gay culture in the US is that there's absolutely no way this culture could be built. It fundamentally conflicts with the leftist "anything that sounds bad is good" culture that has fully colonized gay America.

Dan Savage did not.

I thought a lot of the younger set of LGBT people didn't like Dan Savage anyways.

By "non-PMC Indian life", I mean that the experience of a civil service guy in what is now Telangana will be quite different from that of a techbro in Bangalore.

Ah, this reminded me of a conversation I had with a classmate of mine back in med school in India:

"Ah, SMH, isn't it so fucking annoying when you get felt up by old men on the bus?"

"- I can't really say that's been my experience on the bus."

Then he went on for quite a while about how difficult public transport is for him, what with all the randy old goats who try and cop a feel of his ass on a regular basis.

I was floored when he pulled out his phone to show me his DMs, they were flooded with hundreds of messages, you'd have thought he had an OnlyFans from the sheer number and horniness. Apparently in India, or my parts of it, the moment you sleep with a gay guy, your number gets shared with every single other gay person in the state.

I wonder if he's out of the closet now. Not that even my atrophied gaydar couldn't tell, he just looked gay.

So, it appears the latest (and seemingly last) set of Twitter Files has come out via Bari Weiss. Link.

This one is about what was going on inside Twitter after Jan 6th, 2021, but before the Trump ban.

It seems, as common sense entails, that employees who disliked Trump were growing more agitated over the refusal to ban him. Per Weiss, Twitter had always refused to ban him before, but the rising condemnation for Jan 6th from inside and outside was growing. People were aware that nothing he did violated the rules directly, hence one employee saying that he would "thread the needle of incitement."

In a bizarrely pro-Trump interpretation of his tweets, one staffer who was supposed to actually evaluate his tweets said that when Trump referred to "American Patriots" in a tweet, he wasn't referring to the rioters, but to people who voted for him. I have no idea why this person thought that the people who rioted weren't Trump supporters.

Edit: As pointed out in the responses, I think I've misinterpreted the above. I don't think this staffer intended to separate Trump's supporters from the rioters, but it could be read that way due to the informal nature of the slack chat.

Hell, the decision of the Trust and Safety team was that no, Trump's tweets about patriots or not going to the inauguration. An official named Anika Navaroli is cited as declaring the tweets acceptable for Twitter's policies, but Weiss tries casting bad faith on her testimony to the Jan 6th committee when she said that she had been trying for months to get people to realize that if Twitter did nothing, then "people were going to die". I don't know why Weiss thinks this is a contradiction, you can believe that someone skirts the line for incitement and that particular tweets don't cross the line.

There are some points made about how Twitter never banned other heads of state for things that were far more clearly in violation of Twitter's policies and which were allowed to stay up with the speaker not banned.

Anyways, the conversation at Twitter shifted once Gadde asked if his tweets could be seen as "coded incitement to further violence". This is the line that Twitter's "scaled moderation team" (no idea what that is) then began pushing as well, with the idea that if Trump was referring to the rioters when he said "American patriots", then it would be a violation.

There's also a point where some employees apparently started referring to the Banality of Evil, with Yoel Roth explaining that was an accusation that Twitter's policy enforcers were like Nazis obeying orders.

Anyways, Twitter banned Trump. Employees in favor of this celebrated and Weiss suggests they moved on to the topic of tackling medical misinformation.

I'm not really sure how to feel about this latest (last?) reveal. The annoying thing about this is nothing is being fully made public. There are no dumps of slack chats for people to gauge how the company's employees felt about all this, just the screenshots that are deemed appropriate to be shared. We ultimately have to trust that Weiss' depiction of these people as substantially demanding Trump be banned as reflecting the consensus, but there were clearly dissenters to this policy. You even have one person saying that they disagreed with the "Twitter doesn't arbitrate truth" policy but respected it nonetheless.

A point of interest to me: the TTS team's refusal to declare Trump's tweets to be in violation of policy, with agreement from some key staffers that no coded incitement was present. That's counter to the narrative being written about the TTS team with the other Twitter Files threads.

I find this release mostly disappointing. I was hoping for a smoking gun in regards to Fauci. Some of Musk's comments about how Fauci should be prosecuted also got me thinking he had good inside evidence about Fauci misdeeds. Instead I just see more stuff that basically confirms that the obviously politically motivated banning of Donald Trump was in fact politically motivated.

There's no reason to believe Musk or Twitter has any evidence with regards to Fauci. Musk has teased a COVID installment of the Twitter Files, but it's most likely going to be more of the same -- politically motivated suppression of COVID heresy.

A point of interest to me: the TTS team’s refusal to declare Trump’s tweets to be in violation of policy, with agreement from some key staffers that no coded incitement was present. That’s counter to the narrative being written about the TTS team with the other Twitter Files threads.

I don’t understand. Didn’t they have to have eventually declared a policy violation in order to ban him?

That's explained in the linked thread. Vijaya Gadde proposed the "coded incitement" argument, it was taken up by the scalable enforcement team, and then that was eventually used (Weiss implies this, anyways) to ban him.

So the TTS team weren’t the ones who declared the violation, is that what you’re saying?

In this case, I don't think so. They were the ones who said the tweets in question were actually just fine.

They don't have to do anything. I mean, there's no due process amendment for Twitter accounts, they can ban anybody anytime for any reason or without one. They say they only ban for policy violations, and maybe in some cases that's required, but nothing prevents them from banning anybody just because they hate him so much that the rules go out of the window.

On one level, sure this is how they can choose to operate but the caveat is that this clearly means that twitter would be open to the charge that they are operating as a publisher - with all the potential liability that comes with that. On the other hand, the court system in the US in 2022 is run by people with the same outlook as Vajaya Gadde so legal consistence isn't something that can be expected - it all runs on who / whom now.

I don't particularly care about Trumps twitter ban, but these twitter files just add confirmation to what the last few years have led me to think.

That the problem isn't twitter, and it isn't twitters moderation or banning.

The problem is people. Specifically the two groups: who orchestrated and implimented censorship and bans, aka twitter employees, professionals, journalists, government employees (the people in Curtis Yarvins cathedral or Neema Parvinis octopus models); and the mass of semi normal people who accepted or supported this, as the joke goes insisting that it isn't happening and it happening is a good thing, insidting cancelling doesn't happen while cancelling or pouring hate on their colleagues or so called friends, etc.

The continued existence of either sets of people, not institutions, not moderation policies, not anything else but people, completely eliminates any trust in a liberal democratic system I might have.

Their continued existence itself sets that trust to zero, as it has been demonstrated to me that they can and will subvert and twist institutions, companies, governments, and even societies to favour their own dogmatic ideologies and in groups in ways are overbearingly totalitarian.

The expectation is that any new system, company, society, government etc will eventually be subverted again, unless it is rampantly intolerant of them in a way not compatible with liberal democracy at all.

As Karl Popper made clear, you can't have a tolerant society if you tolerate the intolerant, and I now think that he was right.

The problem is I don't think a tolerant non totalitarian society is possible anymore. Its internment camps for life for them, with North Korea style ancestry tracking or else we can't have a tolerant non-totalitarian society. Notice anything about that last sentence?

A flowery metaphor for it would be....

If you build a thousand bridges they'll call you the bridge builder, but fuck one goat.....

The PMC/liberals/tolerant empathetic individuals/communists/classical liberalsso tolerant they ignored it/whatever you want to call them have taken western civilisation and forced it to fuck goats non-stop for several years now.

As Karl Popper made clear, you can't have a tolerant society if you tolerate the intolerant, and I now think that he was right.

I'm pretty sure Popper defined intolerant as people who were actively unwilling to engage in any kind of discussion whatsoever and would be willing to even resort to force.

"But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."

Not a big correction to your point, but just a reminder that his problem wasn't people holding intolerant positions, but when they would also refuse to rationally debate them at all.

Yes but collusion between the state and private enterprise, both backed up by and encouraging mass mob movements, with the apparant aim of silencing any dissent, obfuscating any counter reason or evidence, and shaming and silencing any moral disagreement already meets the intolerance criteria.

EDIT:

To reply specifically to this:

"I'm pretty sure Popper defined intolerant as people who were actively unwilling to engage in any kind of discussion whatsoever and would be willing to even resort to force."

It would seem to me that a lot of people would be unwilling to discuss many things, e.g., human rights, etc. By popperian logic an insistence on any principle being undebatable is itself intolerant. I live in a society where questioning is, as far as I can tell, viewed as a supremely intolerant act despite being the inverse of what is true.

Why would you use what happened on Twitter as a knock against democracy? Twitter, like most websites, are almost entirely authoritarian. The wants of the masses are ignored unless it gets to a point where people leave the platform en-masse, and moderation decisions like this are ultimately beholden to whoever is at the top of the corporate food chain. There's no voting, there's no oversight, and the only reason we're seeing the "Twitter files" now is because Musk is releasing them to discredit the previous elites and cast legitimacy on his current endeavors.

Because its just another piece of evidence that there is a totaltarian (alwayd bad), authoritarian (sometimes bad, sometimes good), state -corporate collusion that shuts down debate, reason, exchange of evidence, and truthseeking in general. It appears that mass mob behaviours are encouraged, and that this system appears to select not for the health and prosperity of the people (like any good ol' fashioned good fascism***), but only for some highly individualistic lifestyle options and personal profits for a very small elite, as well as for the profusion of greater totalitarianism and refusals to discuss or accept compromise in society.

That twitter has recently demonstrated that resistance to this totalitarian state-corporate partnership requires that one be as rich and well connected as Elon Musk, on again off again worlds richest man, just highlights how, well, total the intolerant totalitarian regime is behind the facade.

I am not a billionaire, There are no options I think can guinely and effectively take to resist this regime as it appears to have fully co-opted discourse, debate, the

scientific process/establishment, elections and democracy, and markets. Or at least is capable of doing so ad-hoc if it is required to crush dissent or even honest debate and confusion.

Focusing on it as twitter as a tech company is the wrong layer of abstraction to correctly model what is apparently going on here, and in wider western society.

*** This is a joke, I may have some opinions that could be described as faschist by a Guardian article in the year of our lord 2022, but positive endorsement of good ol fashioned fascisms love for the Volk is 100% meant as tongue pressed firmly through the cheek and off 20 lightyears into space.

The solution to wokists co-opting and subverting the public square of the future is to set down regulations that push both sides to be treated equally. Democracies can have problems with pushing sides towards truth-seeking due to human nature, but using this as an argument to abandon democracy is farcical when dictatorships almost universally have a worse track record on this front.

No, that has been proven to not work. If treating "both sides" equally worked then wokists would not have been able to co opt and subvert not just the public square but the entire edifice of western civilisation. You cannot persuade me that something already empirically proven to be a failure will work a second time, just because of a slight change to the magic words that dictate how people are supposed to behave.

Dictatorship or monarchism having a worse track record over all is debatable and yet also utterly irrelevant, as long as it is better for me and mine. This is the lesson wokism teaches, and it teaches it well.

Dictatorship or monarchism having a worse track record over all is debatable and yet also utterly irrelevant, as long as it is better for me and mine. This is the lesson wokism teaches, and it teaches it well.

If you join the party early, you can indeed reap great benefits in dictatorship.

The same if you manage to get near the king and lick his boots hard enough to be promoted to nobility. Just work hard, trust in yourself and you will make it.

Party has already started, but if the best time to finish work and show up was 70 years ago, the second best time is now.

The problem is people.

I agree. But either there is always a somewhat fixed percentage of authoritarian personality types in any given cohort, or we created the cadre of current year neojacobins somehow. If the former, where was this personality type in the 90s/00s? They couldn't all have been running home owner associations / leading parent groups against satanism in video games. If the latter, we can correct course. Slowly, over decades.

I don't know where they were hiding in the 90s/00s.

But ultimately the path tode nazifying Germany couldn't occur until approx 5 million german combatants had been killed ong with the mass destruction of german industry.

So to correct course over decades I would expect something like Germanies treatment post 1945 to be reuqired.

The anology for the english speaking west in the era of state and corporate collusion to supress dissent would be something like the following.

Scale for population (include women too, as no longer limited to physical combat by men). This gives 20-40 million from the USA, 4-8 million in the UK, 2-5 in each of Canada and Australia, and that one guy in New zealand. These people don't have to be killed but they can't continue to participate in government, politics, ecience, education, etc. No voting, no participation in markets if any kind, no bank accounts, no healthcare, no property ownership, no internet access allowed, etc. They would need to be outlawed.

The destruction of the industries that they previously captured, which would be something along the lines of handicap the wests industry, science, and government and give China thrle 21st century. Sillicon valley gets deleted. No more google, etc. Servers get the c4 treatment en masse.

Prohibition of their sacred symbols and policy positions moving forward, so that's no more of any of the various shibboleths that I won't name here but you'll know what they are or might be I expect.

Mass propoganda and education campaigns to prevent their ideology/religion from being thought of well ever again.

Finally, their leader get the Nuremburg treatment and get trials which result in hanging or other death penalties if found guilty.

Then the decade long process of fixing things can begin.

Of course none of this is remotely realistic or even truely desirable given the sheer scale of it and sexond, third, etc order effects, the consequences to such damage to external force capabilities regarding e.g., Chinese or even Russian threats. I am merely demonstrating that the process of restoring trust in a tolerant non totalitarian system requires the removal of the old as well as credible demonstration that it isn't going to be reasserted next Tuesday.

Thank you for reading my peculiar thought experiment haha.

I would be amusing if out of retaliation Musk banned Biden

I am not sure why social networks need to act as arbiters of political matters or accuracy (such as determining what constitutes as Covid misinformation). Perhaps it's for fear of losing advertiser revenue if perceived as being too complacent about purported extremism. Pre-2016 it seemed like this was not as much of a problem. Now it's not just about social networking, but being a planform for government officials and the media.

The motive is more direct and personal: It’s not arbitration if you are already sure it’s the truth.

I think a lot of analysis of media bias overlooks this concept. It’s more appealing to posit a conspiracy or at least a class struggle. But the banal explanation is simpler.

Given that Twitter already influences The Discourse, its employees feel a perfectly normal tribal obligation to use that influence. On seeing something bad, stopping it feels good. For those who saw Trump as getting away with murder, so to speak, that meant trying to apply any sort of consequence. It’s the old “I know it when I see it” test from obscenity law.

I would be amusing if out of retaliation Musk banned Biden

I think that would be a really, really bad move. And not all that amusing, either.

they disagreed with the "Twitter doesn't arbitrate truth" policy but respected it nonetheless.

This is particularly hilarious combined with the "misinformation" angle where Twitter literally arbitrates truth. But I guess no censorship is ever enough.

the TTS team's refusal to declare Trump's tweets to be in violation of policy, with agreement from some key staffers that no coded incitement was present. That's counter to the narrative being written about the TTS team with the other Twitter Files threads

It looks like everybody has their own level of tolerance there. For some it's OK to have super strict rules as long as they are consistently applied, for some it's ok to follow "to friends, everything, to enemies - the law" and apply rules in some cases while ignoring them in others, to some it's ok if you can find the rule to ban, no matter how tenuous the connection, but the rule must be found - and to some the ban has to happen no matter what, and if the rules are not enough, just invent the new ones and ignore them. Maybe it helps the censors to feel they're good guys after all.

As for the narrative, I am not sure it is countered that much. Surely, there were discussions about how to ban a particular deplorable account, and whether a particular deplorable tweet can be matched to a particular rule. That doesn't mean the team didn't have common goal of suppressing certain kind of speech. I mean, it is known that Trotsky and Stalin became bitter enemies at the end, and no doubt argued a lot before that, but that doesn't mean they weren't both communists and didn't have the common goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and build the Communist society everywhere. If some of the Twitter team disagreed about whether a particular tweet should be suppressed in a particular manner, that does not exactly disprove the narrative of the existence of the system of suppression based on politics and point of view. It just gives us an insight on its inner workings.

Keep in mind that this was pre-COVID. Most of Twitter’s biggest “well, ackshuallys” hadn’t yet become so salient.

The existence of disagreement is important, even if it was ineffective. Frankly, all these threads are a blur, but I got the impression other releases wanted to paint TTS as leading the charge. The bailey is something like “Twitter was so captured you couldn’t even find rules-lawyers,” and this helps to argue against that particular form.

I'm not sure the existence of disagreement is that important. The communists over their history were constantly Judean People's Front vs. People's Front of Judea, but is that of any use for the victims of communism? (except for the fact that you're never safe even if you're a communist - you may end up in a wrong fraction and be goolaged with the rest of them) Dissent is only valuable if it can lead to substantial changes and improvement. If it's a squabble about how to oppress the enemies of the people more efficiently, then for those who are declared the enemies of the people, it's of little value. It's sure interesting to know that there were different approaches to censorship at Twitter, and different fractions struggling for control over the levers, but ultimately it doesn't change the overarching picture of systemic censorship-eagerness.

I thought most of this stuff was from October 2020 to January 2021; Twitter had begun well-ackshuallying in May 2020.

I suppose you’re right. I had the year wrong.

I wonder if social media companies will relearn some of the lessons that our legal system learned a long time ago, such as the virtue of having an impartial and disinterested judge rule on a case after hearing arguments from both sides. Twitter had a mob of politically motivated employees lobby for a result, which was reached using a secretive ad hoc process.

Or maybe there is some reason that this method works better for these companies. When unimportant people are affected, most bad decisions are put down to these companies using cheap and efficient but often unfair moderation practices.

I'm not sure that applies here. In Trump's case, it seems like there were just too many people with political motivations and not enough who cared very much about the integrity and fairness of the system.

"scaled moderation team"

The lizardmen are real and they work for Twitter! Heh.

Ha, I didn’t catch that at all. I hope it’s really the origin of that team’s name.

As a former Facebook employee, I recognize some similarities in how Twitter employees have learned to buy media narratives without question.

When I first joined it was eye-opening to see the contrast in what was printed in the media and what insiders had to say. The media would say one thing, and inside you'd have someone saying, "no, I wrote the code, here's a link to the code, this story is wrong." Fellow employees would mostly thank the person and express disappointment in the media.

In the last few years this changed. You'd have people at the center of some media controversy clarifying what happened, and then their coworkers would argue back, citing articles that were clearly wrong in light of the testimony and evidence from those insiders.

For Jan 6th, a media narrative developed that Trump incited the violence. The evidence, as far as I can tell: holding a rally and telling supporters to march to the Capitol and make their voice heard. That he had said to do this peaceably was either dismissed or ignored.

At Twitter this incitement narrative appears to have been received without question.

A very small group of us at Facebook pushed back on this narrative, arguing that Trump was at most guilty of moving too slowly to call for the rioters to stop. This wasn't well received. Most of the company and 100% of everyone that mattered bought into the incitement narrative, or at least pretended to.

At Twitter this incitement narrative appears to have been received without question.

There were clearly people in power who didn't agree with the narrative. That they were overruled doesn't mean they don't exist.

In a bizarrely pro-Trump interpretation of his tweets, one staffer who was supposed to actually evaluate his tweets said that when Trump referred to "American Patriots" in a tweet, he wasn't referring to the rioters, but to people who voted for him. I have no idea why this person thought that the people who rioted weren't Trump supporters.

Bizarrely pro-Trump? The tweet was this:

"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

Were there 75,000,000 rioters? Did Trump actually say in this very tweet he was referring to people who voted for him?

What this release amounts to is many people inside Twitter were looking for a reason, any reason, to ban Trump, and despite some initial resistance by some more process-oriented people, he was indeed banned.

The staffer in question said the following according to Weiss.

“It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”

"voted for him" and "terrorists" (referring to the Jan 6th rioters) are not mutually exclusive. I'd expect that sort of interpretation from a Trump supporter looking to deny, deny, deny. When I ask myself who was there, I don't think the answer is ever going to be "people who aren't Trump supporters but decided to riot inside".

What this release amounts to is many people inside Twitter were looking for a reason, any reason, to ban Trump, and despite some initial resistance by some more process-oriented people, he was indeed banned.

We have no idea how many people wanted him banned that way. This is why I said not having the full logs to comb through makes this frustrating - we literally cannot assess accurately how many people wanted Trump gone. We can only speculate about it based on things like political donations, and we have no reason to assume the process-oriented people weren't also left-leaning or anti-Trump. The phrase "vocal minority" exists for a reason.

  • -19

Is this just confusion about the Twitter staffer's unclear grammar? The "not" in that sentence refers to the "he's saying" part, not the "voted for him" part. Another way to say it would be "It's pretty clear he's referring to people who voted for him, not the rioters". The Twitter staffer was not denying that the rioters were a subset of the voters, he was claiming they were not the group Trump was referring to, because Trump was referring to the set of all Trump voters.

I think the unnessesary "and" might be adding more ambiguity to an already ambiguous sentence, would it have been clearer if he said "He's saying the "American Patriots" are the ones who voted for him, not the terrorists"? Of course it also comes from whatever the grammatical term is for the thing where you omit the verb-phrase in the second half rather than repeating it from the first half, it would have been clear if he said "It's pretty clear he's saying the "American Patriots" are the ones who voted for him, not saying the "American Patriots" are the terrorists"). For instance:

https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/omitting-a-verb-when-it-appears-the-second-time.170698/

Sheet 1 of the attached file shows the data on the male students and Sheet 2 the female students.

And then all the people replying to you are confused because they don't understand that you're interpreting the "not" as meaning "the rioters are not Trump voters" and think you mean that referring to a superset necessarily must be referring to each individual subset.

Now this would be an interesting error on my part, but I don't think I'm misinterpreting the staffer's sentence. For clarity, I'll reproduce it here.

“It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”

If this person wanted to say that Trump was referring to all his supporters as opposed to only his rioting ones, it would have been clearer to say:

“It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not just the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”

I don't think this is some arcane or less-used way of writing either, and it would make the point clearer to anyone I asked about it, pro or anti-Trump. This is why I think this person, perhaps accidentally, did imply that Trump supporters don't include the rioters. They might not have meant it, but this is why I read it this way.

Of course the sentence could have been clearer. It's sloppy conversational English relying on the reader to fill in part of the sentence which accidentally ended up having a more straightforward meaning that the writer did not intend, something akin to a garden-path sentence. If there was no context your interpretation would have been the more intuitive one. But there is context, and it's very unlikely that a Twitter employee would claim the rioters were all false flaggers rather than Trump voters, or argue it that particular way if he did. And I think that not only does my reading of it match what he meant, it matches how the other Twitter employees in the conversation interpreted it, how the reporters posting the conversation interpreted it, and how the people responding to you in this thread are interpreting it. So while it's a bit interesting that your reading of it is also possible based on the text it doesn't seem particularly significant.

Your interpretation still has the same problem for me. To quote your rephrasing:

It's pretty clear he's referring to people who voted for him, not the rioters

This rephrasing still implies that the rioters are not people who voted for him.

I think I've honed in further on our point of disagreement. You think that I'm implying this person intended to exclude the rioters. I can see why you thought that (ironically enough, it's the same issue between me and this staffer - how something is read vs. intentions). I'll edit my post to make this clearer, thanks.

This rephrasing still implies that the rioters are not people who voted for him.

No, it says he is not referring to that set of people. Let us say that someone writes an article saying "email is an insecure medium, since it is transmitted in plain text". Someone writes a headline about it saying "Computer researcher says Yahoo Mail is insecure". Even though Yahoo Mail is a subset of email, he was not referring to it, he was referring to a broader category that it happens to be a subset of.

I'm not sure what our disagreement is over. I would agree that the intention is not to be specifically about Yahoo Mail (analogously, the staffer might not have thought Trump was referring only to the rioting supporters), but a plain-text reading could be interpreted my way.

If it's the significance of my interpretation, then I would agree with your previous point that my interpretation is probably not that important. I just found it odd, that's all.

He didn't add the word just, so you read it in a way that nobody else - including probably the author - would read it. All so you could paint him as bizarrely pro Trump, because for some reason you are really keen on convincing everyone that half of twitter were Trump loving deplorables.

You must be from another universe's themotte.org, because you're referring to some comment not present in this thread that would suggest my motivation is to paint Twitter's staff as Trump supporters by a large percentage. I invite you to demonstrate what I've said that would in any way support your argument because I can tell for a fact you didn't read any of my comments, and if you did, you assigned maximum uncharitability to them.

As you wish.

In a bizarrely pro-Trump interpretation of his tweets,

Hell, the decision of the Trust and Safety team was that no, Trump's tweets about patriots or not going to the inauguration.

Hell he says, an exclamation, because that's how outlandish it is to suggest bias at Twitter.

An official named Anika Navaroli is cited as declaring the tweets acceptable for Twitter's policies, but Weiss tries casting bad faith on her testimony to the Jan 6th committee when she said that she had been trying for months to get people to realize that if Twitter did nothing, then "people were going to die". I don't know why Weiss thinks this is a contradiction, you can believe that someone skirts the line for incitement and that particular tweets don't cross the line.

Accusing Weiss of trying to cast her as a bad faith actor for telling the house that she had struggled for months to get Trump banned, which by necessity implies that she is in fact acting in good faith. Which maybe doesn't make her a Trump loving deplorable, but sure looks like an attempt to paint the woman lying to the house about how dangerous Trump and his supporters are as neutral - shifting the balance away from Twitter leaning left.

A point of interest to me: the TTS team's refusal to declare Trump's tweets to be in violation of policy, with agreement from some key staffers that no coded incitement was present.

At this point I was growing suspicious of your motives. I can see reasonable alternative explanations for every point I've mentioned, in isolation at least.

We have no idea how many people wanted him banned that way. This is why I said not having the full logs to comb through makes this frustrating - we literally cannot assess accurately how many people wanted Trump gone. We can only speculate about it based on things like political donations, and we have no reason to assume the process-oriented people weren't also left-leaning or anti-Trump. The phrase "vocal minority" exists for a reason.

My charity begins running out here. I am suspecting your goal is to downplay the left lean at Twitter.

There were clearly people in power who didn't agree with the narrative. That they were overruled doesn't mean they don't exist.

I don't think most companies rely on democratic voting to determine policy, so it shouldn't surprise us that a small number of vocal people can have an effect much larger than themselves. But there was clear pushback, that pushback just wasn't enough. If we consider it as reasonable that voters get to decide what happens, then the people who "voted" in this case to ban him seem to be much more in number than those who don't. A democratic outcome, even if it conflicts with the morality of others.

There could have been a vocal minority. We don't know because the slack logs aren't available for us to peruse. There was also pushback from the TTS team and a few others who didn't see the tweets as violating any rules.

I honestly can't figure out what you were trying to do with all of these posts if not obfuscate the level of left wing bias at Twitter. Just rampant contrarianism?

In a bizarrely pro-Trump interpretation of his tweets,

That one's on me. It was about a less-likely interpretation of what that person said that also gave an odd conclusion about how this person was thinking. I don't think this person is a Trump supporter.

Hell he says, an exclamation, because that's how outlandish it is to suggest bias at Twitter.

This is what I mean by not being charitable. I made a very specific claim about what that point contradicted in a prior TF, I said nothing about what it said about bias overall. I've never argued Twitter isn't biased in general. But you can't use "Someone is biased" to claim "Someone is being biased in this specific case".

which by necessity implies that she is in fact acting in good faith. Which maybe doesn't make her a Trump loving deplorable, but sure looks like an attempt to paint the woman lying to the house about how dangerous Trump and his supporters are as neutral

...

My charity begins running out here. I am suspecting your goal is to downplay the left lean at Twitter.

Unless you have access to the unfiltered slack/chat logs from Twitter, what Weiss and the others are showing us amounts what they think is relevant proof. It may be that they've honestly captured internal sentiment at Twitter, but we fundamentally cannot know this regardless, and the lack of posting the logs or any ban lists as mentioned in previous Twitter Files means we're forced to evaluate how reliable the reporters are. I don't think they're above letting bias infect their reporting.

Bias is not a substitute for an argument, only an initial evaluation metric.

I honestly can't figure out what you were trying to do with all of these posts if not obfuscate the level of left wing bias at Twitter. Just rampant contrarianism?

I'm giving my opinion on the Twitter Files based on my evaluation of them. That my evaluation disagrees with a popular right-wing view of the files is because those people and I see different things. I consider it important to be contrarian even if I agree with someone overall, yes, but you'll find a long history of me supporting the view of major institutions as biased against the right on multiple occasions. Importantly, no one is even disagreeing with most of what I have to say on the Twitter Files, they're trying to argue that I've misunderstood Trump's tweets (and based on the downvotes, I seem to have struck a nerve even when I agree with my opponents).

If I posted an argument that it was absurd to use a specific outcome from interacting with an institution to conclude it was racist against group A, I suspect I'd get lots of upvotes and supporting comments. But if I do the same against the anti-institution narrative, I get downvoted and accused of trying to hide said institution's bias.

It is this behavior that I especially despise because it indicates to me that people are abandoning the importance of being strict and conservative with their claims about something in favor of accepting more pleasing narratives. If I didn't accept that from the left, why would I accept that from the right (or anti-left)?

More comments

There was likely at least one non-Trump supporter that decided to.

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/2/17/22287763/activist-capitol-riot-video-sold-nbc-cnn-35k-each-john-sullivan-federal-charges

I mean, or you could just recognize that it’s utterly ridiculous to take “75,000,000 great American Patriots” as somehow intended to pick out rioters specifically and thus constitute “indirect incitement.” If merely referring positively to any group whatsoever of which they’re a subset is doing that, then Trump would never be allowed to praise “people who support me” ok social media ever again.

We have no idea how many people wanted him banned that way,

The phrase “vocal minority” exists for a reason.

OK, so either Twitter was set up in a way that allowed a minority of partisan wackadoos to get their way over a more reasonable “silent majority” on one of the biggest social media decisions in history, or it’s just stuffed with partisan wackadoos full stop. If anything the former seems worse than the latter.

I mean, or you could just recognize that it’s utterly ridiculous to take “75,000,000 great American Patriots” as somehow intended to pick out rioters specifically and thus constitute “indirect incitement.” If merely referring positively to any group whatsoever of which they’re a subset is doing that, then Trump would never be allowed to praise “people who support me” ok social media ever again.

I didn't say any of this.

OK, so either Twitter was set up in a way that allowed a minority of partisan wackadoos to get their way over a more reasonable “silent majority” on one of the biggest social media decisions in history, or it’s just full of partisan wackadoos full stop. If anything the former seems worse than the latter.

I don't think most companies rely on democratic voting to determine policy, so it shouldn't surprise us that a small number of vocal people can have an effect much larger than themselves. But there was clear pushback, that pushback just wasn't enough. If we consider it as reasonable that voters get to decide what happens, then the people who "voted" in this case to ban him seem to be much more in number than those who don't. A democratic outcome, even if it conflicts with the morality of others.

I thought you were saying that the people pushing to ban him were a vocal minority. Now I’m confused.

There could have been a vocal minority. We don't know because the slack logs aren't available for us to peruse. There was also pushback from the TTS team and a few others who didn't see the tweets as violating any rules.

I'm certain that some of the people rioting at the Capitol were part of the "75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me."

I'm not at all certain that this tweet was some dog whistle meant to praise those specific people. Trump's not known for subtlety. He'd already made a video telling the rioters he loves them.

If this is your standard, then a politician will never be able to praise their voters if some of those voters includes people who participated in a political riot. Given the summer of 2020 and the Capitol riots, that's practically everyone.

We have no idea how many people wanted him banned that way.

All of the Twitter Files stories have highlighted the little dissent they found. I can't see an incentive for misrepresenting that. What would change if instead of one person dissenting it was 10% of the company?

If this is your standard, then a politician will never be able to praise their voters if some of those voters includes people who participated in a political riot. Given the summer of 2020 and the Capitol riots, that's practically everyone.

My standard is not that you can't praise your voters, only that we shouldn't pretend your voters may include the anti-social and criminal. I would agree that those people by and large don't define any particular voter base.

  • -15

How would you change the tweet without spoiling its positive message?

I don't think it should be changed. I think it's clear he's talking about his voters overall, not a specific sub-group. But I wouldn't say that his tweet doesn't include those people.

But then it wasn’t bizarre. The whole point was people arguing that tweet was secretly trying to encourage more rioters when you are effectively saying no — that isn’t a reasonable interpretation.

The interpretation of by that employee was bizarre in that it tried to separate the rioters from Trump supporters. All I'm saying is that this isn't very reasonable - you probably don't have many non-Trump supporters rioting inside the building. This can be true even if we say that the modal supporter isn't a rioter.

More comments

What the staffer said doesn't change what the tweet said. So, either the "75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me" referred to the people who voted for Trump and was not a reference to the rioters.... or you're trying to claim that because some or all of the rioters presumably voted for Trump, the group of 'voters' includes the 'rioters' and therefore the tweet was rule-breaking. This latter interpretation is the bizarre one.

No, you're expanding my point beyond what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that the tweet is a violation, only that it's not reasonable to define "American patriots" in his tweet as mutually exclusive with the rioters. I agree that the tweet shouldn't be removed and isn't violating any policy.

deleted

"voted for him" and "terrorists" (referring to the Jan 6th rioters) are not mutually exclusive. I'd expect that sort of interpretation from a Trump supporter looking to deny

In colloquial English, when a person is referring to a large group of people who are defined by a single property, they are not making any claim about some infinitesimal small fraction of that group. When Obama spoke about how great Muslim Americans are, he’s referring to the normative case, not any who have murdered or beheaded. When Pelosi or whoever says Mexican Americans are our friends and neighbors, she’s not referring to the traffickers and rapists. When I say “I stand with Boston” after the bombing, I’m not referring to the worst possible cohort of Bostonians. This is just how it works for everyday English.

It’s clear Trump is referring to the normative member of a class of people defined by their having voted for Trump. It is ridiculous to assert that the non-normative 0.000005% cohort of rioters or whatever is being referred to in any sense. But, an argument can be made that this is coded language where the colloquial meaning means one thing but the intended meaning hints at another.

In colloquial English, when a person is referring to a large group of people who are defined by a single property, they are not making any claim about some infinitesimal small fraction of that group.

I think colloquial English also has many instances of people saying "the vast majority" or "most X" or "the general Y" or some other variant of that, in which people make it clear that while a category may contain some particular sub-faction, that sub-faction isn't the average case. So I think even people defending their points admit that the category includes the undesirable sub-faction, only that it isn't representative. So when Trump says "American patriots", both a Trump supporter and I would agree that this group who supported Trump includes the rioters, but that the vast majority of Trump supporters are not rioters.

Would any reasonable person interpret it this way in different contexts? For instance, when Biden said veterans are the backbone of the country, is he telling us that wife-beaters and murderers are the backbone of the country? If AOC says she is committed to protecting POC, does this mean she intends to protect serial killers and terrorists?

I think they're referring to the modal person of those groups, who are not bad people. Not that those bad people don't exist in those groups.

  • -10

So why isn’t Trump referring to the modal “great American Patriot” who voted for him?

He is. We just can't forget that "modal" isn't shifted much by the rioters.

More comments

The responses litigating exactly how many Republicans can fit on the head of a pin are missing the point.

“Coded incitement to violence” was a band-aid. Trump obviously didn’t explicitly call for violence, but there was a vocal contingent at Twitter who were sure they were enabling a turbulent-priest scenario.

As far as band-aids go...it was kind of, sort of, not the worst?

For an extreme case, you could imagine a leader who posts perfectly inoffensive general encouragement, but only exactly one week after members of his tribe commit an honor killing. He would be signaling that he is not ashamed, maybe even supportive. Might that not normalize the action? If this leader has consistently claimed he’ll go to bat for his team, such as with pardons, is he not shifting the cost-benefit?

We could tell this hypothetical leader apart by checking when he doesn’t speak up. If he’s only occasionally supportive after such a crime, and the timing is inconsistent, and sometimes there’s another’s good reason to give praise in the news, he’s got plausible deniability. More importantly, he is sending less information. His partisans can’t be quite so sure that honor killings are okay or that he’d bail them out. He doesn’t have to disavow, just not set up the classical conditioning.

But Trump does not shut up. You could have a mass shooting all over the news and he’d still take (figurative) shots at Pelosi. This is a downside for actually sending coded signals—while still giving enemies plenty of noise to sift for patterns. It’s the dog whistle argument all over again. Screech shrilly enough, and a dog could plausibly take notice.

So Twitter has a bunch of Democrat partisans who are predisposed to see incitement in Trump’s language. And Trump keeps giving them ammunition by running his same old strongman schtick regardless of what’s happening at the Capitol. The end result is that he gets banned not for a smoking gun, but for a reading of the tea leaves.


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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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