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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15594 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Steve Sailer has been suspended from Twitter for allegedly violating their rules against hateful conduct.

His tweet said

Blacks suffer and perpetrate the majority of homicides/murders in the U.S., so anytime there's a sizable change in the national trend, it's usually driven by changes in black behavior. During the BLM Eras, black homicides [and] black traffic fatalities have trended together.

He appealed and the decision was upheld.

This is yet another way in which Elon Musk is going back on what he said in April.

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

Did Elon directly respond about this one? Some people were suspended for posting negative things about Dear Leader (ie Zelensky). When brought to Elon’s attention, he stated unequivocally the tweets were not a violation of TOS, the tweeters were unsuspended, and Elon vouched to look into it.

I imagine there are still holdovers from the prior regime. Rome isn’t built in a day.

If Elon has to intervene personally with each banning to see it if it was really justified by reading the tweets and getting background info on the person, he will have no time for anything else. This seems like a huge waste of his talents when he has multiple companies to run. There has to be a better way of doing this.

100% agreed. But the fact there were curious bans by Twitter doesn’t mean Elon is a hypocrite; it could mean that but could also mean he hasn’t succeeded yet in changing Twitter culture / moderation.

What did they post? I couldn't find anything, all the results on Google are about the suspensions related to Musk's jet.

Basically images of Pelosi and Harris displaying the Ukrainian flag and comments about how this is America last.

Here’s a screenshot: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Elon-Musk-Jacks-Magic-Coffee-Shop-2.jpg

The article it’s embedded in is not about this censorship, but uses it to introduce a broader screed, practically a manifesto, against the FBI for acting as the fist of a power which works against the American people, both online through censorship and in the real world.

/images/16718142177968981.webp — EDIT: Not sure why TheMotte made a local copy. This feature could be used by bad actors to add illegal images to our site and get it shut down. Insertion of insurrectionary or subversive material could also be used as “sources and methods” to get wiretap warrants on us all and our closest associates. (Farfetched? It’s how the FBI got Operation Hurricane started, the Russia collusion investigation against Trump.)

@ZorbaTHut im kind of surprised we do hosting too. is it the architecture for profile pictures/banners? how much of a liability is this?

It's not great, but you're right in saying that it's necessary for profile pictures. In the end, if you allow users to submit any content, there are potential problems, and I'm not sure that hosting full images really leaves us worse off.

It's something I've meant to revisit at some point with some kind of review process but right now I'm just not worrying about it; it doesn't seem to be common for this attack to be used.

@DuplexFields:

Insertion of insurrectionary or subversive material could also be used as “sources and methods” to get wiretap warrants on us all and our closest associates.

Yeah, but you can do that with text also, and I ain't gonna shut down text submissions.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

Obviously this is speculative, but I actually do think in his heart, there is a difference. Elon's problem is that he is politically naïve. He didn't understand that Twitter is basically a platform controlled by the Five Eyes deep state(s). A free and open platform probably isn't politically possible anymore in the West, the way it was up until ~2015. The only reason why this site has escaped scrutiny is because we're so small.

Once Elon basically understood that he'd just be a janny for people who are much poorer than him (but politically much more powerful), it was no longer fun. He threw in the towel. He doesn't want to be CEO anymore and is looking for sellers. He's going for the exit. And as he does, he sees no reason to stick his neck out for zero profit. Profit in this context shouldn't mean monetary but rather social/cultural.

selling would be a personal disaster and admitting defeat by returning twitter to its old ideological guard. he will not sell, but rather appoint a new CEO whose beliefs align with his own..

Worth noting this is a temporary suspension, if he presses the 'delete tweet' button he'll be back in 1-14 days depending on how many strikes he has.

Probably the most sanctimonious feature Twitter ever implemented.

They could just delete it like reddit, so I assume the humiliation is the point.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

It's likely the suspension was done automatically. This occurs when a lot of people report a tweet, and then Twitter automatically suspends the account. This has nothing to do with Musk. This policy long predates Musk. It's a stupid policy and Musk should disable it. It is disappointing though that people are still being suspended for expressing certain viewpoints.

I think temporary suspension based on lots of reports is a smart policy, moderators can't always react fast enough, and it's a safe way to make sure anything that could give super bad PR doesn't go too viral. That said, the tweet should've been restored after the appeal.

Even I am stary to wary of the black crime narrative, although I strongly oppose Saylor being suspended for the tweet. Yeah, maybe it's true in terms of smaller crime or property crime or drug crime, but blacks are not creating madoff, theranos, or FTX-sized crimes. Look at the people involved in FTX...not a black among them. Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried , and Gary Wang...real black-sounding names, huh. Look at the FBI most wanted list..no blacks among them, although it's quite diverse. Look at the race of people who commit investor fraud or identity theft, no blacks, even though those crimes have way more victims and damage. A single hacker can compromise thousands of identities, steal millions of dollars. It's like there is no one group or race that is immune to doing crime. It's just that different races more more likely to engage in different types of crimes, which affect people in different ways. Financial fraud affects a lot of people at once, often involving a lot of money, whereas murder is way worse for the victim, but only a single victim. Hell ,even the Amish commit crime https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/16-sentenced-in-amish-beard-cutting-case

FTX scam is moving money from one pocket to another with small net loss to society. While violent crime creates large burden on victim with very small benefit to attacker.

It's just that different races more more likely to engage in different types of crimes,

different types, when summed, all perfectly align to a harm value equal for every other race?

Is there no over represented particularly swindle prone minority that commits financial crimes?

Regarding Jews and financial crime, Jews are overrepresented, but this could be explained by more Jews overall being employed in the financial services sector. Jews seem to be drawn to these high-status professions, such as law, government, or finance. You you would have to determine what percentage of Jew-run vs gentile-run financial firms or investments engage in fraud, which tells you more than just looking at the population. There are enough gentiles who engage in major investment fraud, like Enron, that it's hardly only a Jewish problem.

Enron: evidence for the heuristic that any company feting a female executive is a bad investment.

Are you referring to Rebecca Mark, who was a CEO of a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enron? And in what way was she feted? You're not making your argument, and this is a bad comment. At most, women made up 1 out of 4 of the key scumbags of that operation, and the fraction drops lower if you look at people outside the top executives.

Check the early-life entry for the Enron CFO.

Enron CFO.

good catch. thank you Wikipedia

Woah there buddy, some racial crime statistics are off limits here.

(Now I'm really curious if the reaction against "2 do ??" would be stronger than against "13 do 60")

I agree that financial crimes should be dealt with more harshly, but violent crime affects more than the victim and are costly to society as a whole. Chicago is taking funds out of pensions because the city is in debt, but it would not be in debt if it has the violent crime rate of Tokyo. The costs of crime are

  • increased need for police funding, training, officers

  • increased need for ambulances, EMTs

  • A significant drain on medical services from all the emergency room stabbing and shooting victims who never pay the debt

  • Flight of intelligent and wealthy people

  • Reduced investment in the city

  • Reduced civic engagement and a concomitant social decay (ugliness)

  • Need for more judges, public defenders

  • Need to pay to bring the criminals to trial, and then to house them

  • The lower class has to pay for more/better locks, can’t use a bicycle so might have to buy a car, Dashcam, Ring, security system, personal defense weapon, different insurances policies

  • Reduced use of public transit

There are also behaviors that go alongside criminality

  • A general feeling of doom and unease when walking certain areas of city

  • A horrifying fear that your daughter is subject to gang culture propaganda as a child and ruins her life, or your son gets into a gang, or either of them get into drugs and alcohol

  • A fear that your childrens’ peers are terrible for their development and hold them back or instill in them a raw consumerism/avarice/narcissism

  • Worry that your partner or female friends may be assaulted or raped

  • Increased risk of riots with property taxes

This is unconvincing for several reasons. One being the obvious one that violent crime is different than other crime. Another being that FTX is just one instance of fraud; you have presented no data showing that fraud is committed disproportionately by whites and Asians. A third being that the Most Wanted List isn't about criminals generally; it's about fugitives specifically; it's a very small and non-random selection and may in fact be subject to political pressure on the race issue.

Alternatively, blacks could just be worse at avoiding capture.

you have presented no data showing that fraud is committed disproportionately by whites and Asians.

I mean major financial fraud. I far as I know, there are zero notable cases of African Americans engaging in major financial fraud. I could only find one example on the FBI most wanted list https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wcc/james-stewart-jr But this is tiny relative to Enron-sized frauds. Meanwhile, if you look at the break down of the biggest frauds ever, no African American to be found. Idenity theft, stolen IDs, crypto scams, ransomware, etc. no blacks (unless you include Nigerians) but lots of Eastern Europeans and Russians.

The key phrase is "disproportional". How many frauds of that level are there compared to the number of black people with such well-connected, high finance positions? Just saying that there are aren't many black frauds overall, ignores proportions.

The most notable overrepresented group is jews. Jews being around 2% of the US population, they are at least 9% of lower category white-collar crimes (bank embezzlement, tax fraud and bank fraud), at least 15% of moderate category white-collar crimes (mail fraud, false claims, and bribery), and at least 33% of high category white-collar crimes (antitrust and securities fraud). In total, according to Crimes of the Middle Classes: White-Collar Offenders in the Federal Courts from 1991, jews were responsible for 23.9% of all white collar crime.

So, when you say 'lots' with regards to Russians and Eastern Europeans, how large a percentage are you talking about?

So, when you say 'lots' with regards to Russians and Eastern Europeans, how large a percentage are you talking about?

I mean to say this type of crime, such as identity theft, ransomware, hacking, crypto scams, etc. is almost always done by this group . My point is that it's not one group has a monopoly on crime, but rather different groups seem to engage in different types of crime.

I don't understand the relevance of the point or how it relates to anything Sailer, or anyone else, has said.

I don't feel your post has much relevance to the tweet given it specifies homicides. Considering that specification it seems completely correct.

This feels somehow wrong, because despite occasionally producing SBF or Theranos, Palo Alto is still a nice civilized place and the same can’t be said for the black murder rate in places suffering from that. SBF had zero tangible effect on me, black crime has made entire neighborhoods and cities no-go zones.

One for one, a single SBF may produce more total harm than a single murderer, but for every one SBF there are probably thousands of murders, and innumerable assaults and lesser crimes.

deleted

"I Have Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Eight People."

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be... all those things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipwig. You Have Ruined Business And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Food From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipwig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game."

There is a difference between statistical deaths and murder. The first has enough links separating the action from the cause that one could be fairly said not to realize the specific harm. Murder of course one knows that he is killing another human.

This isn’t a defense of statistical deaths. White collar crime should be punished severely. SBF — assuming he is as guilty as he appears — shouldn’t be a free man until his 60s. Ditto Holmes.

Yet they aren’t murderers. I do believe murderers are worse morally. Further, I think rampant murder is worse for a community than fraud.

While I think white-collar crime and financial fraud is awful, it's also non-violent -- no one lost their lives because of SBF, and no one's home burned down

SBF is a bad example, FTX misappropriated ten thousand times the value of the median US home*. Even given the greater collateral damage and surprise of a physically burned home, FTX did more harm by wiping out investments, retirement funds. Very plausible he caused a suicide (although that's different from 'murder' because lots of suicides happen anyway, the effect needed to cause a suicide is less than that needed to kill a random person). Ten thousand retirement funds wiped out is comparable to 'destroying a neighborhood'.

It's more reasonable to compare smaller-scale white collar crime, e.g. defrauding $50k, to widespread theft and murder. Even then, how does one compare financial scams or hacking to theft?

*there are 20 reasons this is the wrong statistic, but they don't change the 10k

deleted

Er, ultimately it's children who can't afford college, someone who has to sell their house or shut down their business to pay back loans, someone being divorced because they lost money, etc. The 'numbers on a spreadsheet' are important because we use them to exchange all significant resources. If you burn down a house, that's "numbers on a spreadsheet" in insurance, but that insurance is the only reason the family can afford .

Let's say I switch some 'numbers in a spreadsheet' in a bank and steal all of a person's income and savings, and they lose their job, get evicted because they can't pay rent, get divorced and the wife takes the kids, etc. How is that different from burning down a house?

(again FTX is an unusually large-scale example of white-collar crime - $8B is a lot of money)

There's a separate issue here of culpability in that it's fraud - all the people who invested in FTX were either stupid or taking unnecessary risk, and should lose their money, which is somewhat true. Or that crypto trading is fundamentally parasitic anyway (HFT improves liquidity and allows for more efficient capital allocation or something, but what's being efficiently allocated here?). But that's not at all characteristic of white-collar crime generally. And a similar argument goes for theft, anyway - carry a gun, put criminals in jail, or it's your fault!

Weren't FTX's investors mostly institutional investors, VC funds, etc., meaning the damage will be widely distributed?

It's not just investors who lost money, users who had funds on the site are out right now as well

I mean investments as in ""investments"" retail ie random people made in bitcoin. Quite a few people put most or all funds into crypto.

SBF had zero tangible effect on me, black crime has made entire neighborhoods and cities no-go zones

that depends where you live, i suppose. Same for SBF...people who didn't invest in crypto or use FTX were not affected. Of course, one can choose to not invest in crypto, but way harder to relocate. Murder does have considerable ripple effects on overall neighborhood.

that depends where you live, i suppose.

Only if you mean to reference somewhere outside the United States. Basically every large metropolitan area is significantly warped by the question of black crime. Its represented in rents, commute times, taxes, etc. This is what white flight was all about. There are otherwise very good neighborhoods to live in (re:proximity to business hubs) that are essentially wasted because they are full of criminals and those who tolerate them.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

Or he's far more constrained than he assumed he would be for various reasons (e.g. institutional forces really are that powerful, he has people part the Twitter deal he has to consider, profitability is a very real concern especially given the overpaying for Twitter + Tesla stock drop, etc. )

I would prefer that he's just a hypocrite tbh. The world's richest man outright buying Twitter, firing the old guard and still not being able to stop Cthulu swimming left is...disheartening.

I would prefer that he's just a hypocrite tbh

I thought he was being pretty clear that he is just a hypocrite? He tweeted about his banning Kanye, as well as the flight tracker guy (who he specifically said he wouldn't ban). A suspicious amount of accounts which merely mock him have been banned.

I would prefer that he's just a hypocrite tbh. The world's richest man outright buying Twitter, firing the old guard and still not being able to stop Cthulu swimming left is...disheartening.

The elonjet fiasco was disappointing, but I still think he is more committed to free speech than his predecessors. The common reason for this is advertisers, although having certain accounts not display ads would be the simple solution, which for some reason social media companies cannot implement easily. Just banning an inconvenient account is easier than having to overhaul the ad platform. tech companies love to avoid easy solutions to common problems but waste billions of dollars on useless features or upgrades no one wants (such as Metaverse, youtube shorts ,etc.).

Whatever you do to be the account ads are not served to is going to be highly desirous. People don't wanna get ads. If getting reported or saying racial slurs gets it so you don't have to see ads anymore... some people will do that. So you create a viscous cycle effect.

There would be an option for advertisers to opt-in or out. The default is to opt out, to be safe, because most accounts are not naughty. This way some ads will still show up.

I think you have things slightly wrong. @greyenlightenment doesn't seem to be proposing that naughty users don't get ads served to them, but rather that naughty accounts don't get ads inserted alongside their tweets when others view them. So posting a bunch of racial slurs wouldn't have any benefit to the user doing so, as they'd still continue to see ads.

That being the case (at least if I'm right), point #2 is also mitigated. Because this wouldn't be about ads not being served to terrible people, it would actually be directly addressing the desire companies have for ads to not be served next to terrible people. Point #3 still may or may not stand, I guess it really depends. Twitter may be able to charge more for ads if they say "hey we can guarantee that your ads won't ever show up alongside some guy dropping the N-bomb", and they might be able to make more money this way. On the other hand, the lower ad volume (since this would certainly mean some number of fewer ads get shown) may mean they lose money on this. It really depends.

On the other hand, the lower ad volume (since this would certainly mean some number of fewer ads get shown) may mean they lose money on this. It really depends.

The widely cited numbers about an increase in hate speech come from here.

They suggest the word "nigger" was said 26k times/week, "tranny" 34k, "faggot" 22k, "kike" 2.5k and "w*g" (what is this?) 1.2k in the post Musk era. This is an increase of 30-50% over the pre-Musk average, meaning before Musk there were 17k "nigger" tweets on average.

Twitter has about 500M tweets daily.

Admittedly, the tweets which appear in feeds are not a uniform sampling of all tweets. Most tweets come from 23 follower account, whereas most tweet impressions come from accounts with lots of followers such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Cristiano Ronaldo and Justin Bieber.

That means the impact of 26k tweets with "nigger" / 3.5B tweets total is even lower.

tl;dr; the ad volume lost due to avoiding "nigger" and "#gasthejews" is negligible.

and "w*g" (what is this?)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cN7L_cte7PA&t=89s

Sir, if you don't recognize "wog", I'm going to have to ask you to change your name to "gaygroyper85pct." 92% at most.

While I admit I am a wog by birth, I consider myself to be a trans white man who aligns with 100% WN.

Given their archaic phrasing, I'm surprised they didn't also track the use of "h**t" and "w*h" to suggest that internet sexism also increased post Musk.

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