“Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach - our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”
Surprise! Our great ‘X’ CEO has brought back one more bad thing that we hated about twitter 1.0: Shadowbanning. And they’ve given it a new name: “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach”.
Perhaps the new approach by X is an improvement? At least they would “politely” tell you when you’re being shadow banned.
I think freedom of speech implies that people have the autonomy to decide what they want to see, rather than being manipulated by algorithm codes. Now it feels like they’re saying, “you can still have your microphone… We’re just gonna cut the power to it if you say something we don’t like”.
If you’re still on Twitter, you’re part of the problem.
People keep repeating this for easy self-righteousness. Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?
Fuck Musk, but for better or worse this isn’t just about him.
I’m not an artist but I know a lot of them and basically only use twitter to follow them. And honestly, the ball is in their court. I see a lot of them complaining about shadowbans and it being impossible to grow a following. But nobody wants to jump ship to a place without an audience.
The problem being there will be no audience sitting around a new platform waiting for a show to start. They need to start double posting, IMO. Being the change they want in the world. They don’t have to quit twitter, but posting content to twitter and mastodon (for example) would give their audience a reason to move, would give them a chance to grow, etc.
There’s even apps like PostyBirb that can do the multiposting for you.
Yes, and many of them do that, but for most the audience on other platforms isn’t enough to drop Twitter yet. They can join every single alternative but they can’t make others do the same.
All the more reason to give their following a chance to find them elsewhere, and to follow them there when they do. There are other options; ideally standards-based federated options not susceptible to hostile takeovers by unstable billionaires
Of course, but there is a whole transition period. They can change platforms but getting their followers to join along with them takes a lot more effort. Especially given that Twitter is suppressing any links for alternative platforms.
It doesn’t work like this and you know it. If you’re selling something you have to take it to the markets where people are. They don’t come to you if they don’t know who you are. You’d have to be Taylor swift levels to not give a fuck about the major socials.
Yeah I disagree with OP that people still using X to make a living are a part of the problem. But I do think that if they’re not diversifying the platforms they use to make it easier for people to move then they are.
It might seem like X is where everyone is but it’s relatively niche as social networks go. You can’t trust the metrics that they put on posts. When they rolled out view counts, people with newly created private accounts with zero followers were somehow getting dozens of views on their posts.
I always viewed Twitter and Facebook as analogous to AOL - walled gardens. Eventually people ditched AOL for the web, and I hope that eventually they’ll do the same for those dinosaurs.
I have already had a lot of trouble to change family for signal. I can’t even imagine forcing your audience (people you don’t know) to find you on a niche platform
Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?
hope the artists like playing the Nazi bar, because that’s twitter now.
What a cool comparison to make towards all the minority artists who might be left without a living.
But I guess you just want to moralize rather than have actual empathy.
artists that think playing a nazi bar are fine aren’t artists I want to succeed.
If you don’t love fascism you’d be in the same situation.
Cool thought-terminating cliche. So you really don’t give a single shit for minorities in a hard situation if they don’t sacrifice their livelihood out of your weird sense of moral purity. I hope you pay Fediverse artists pretty well at the very least.
Calling a platform of hundred millions of users a “nazi bar” as if they could pick a different venue the next street is a massive understatement. You also don’t seem to realize that even if all these small artists move, those nazis can still have a lot of influence over clueless people who remain there because they haven’t realized what’s happening. But rather than seeing the risks of widespread radicalization and the value of challenging it, you’d rather call everyone a nazi and not think about it.
If you want to blame anyone, you should point your outrage towards large media organizations and celebrities who keep posting there business as usual as if nothing changed. They are the ones keeping that place alive and giving it legitimacy. Not small artists and those denouncing the nazi shit.
I apply to a lot of online contests and most have me ‘retweet’ the contest submission link or follow people on the platform. That is literally all I use it for.
Ever win anything?
More ads!
Not OP but my mom enters literally every contest she sees and has won a surprising amount.
Is it stuff she actually wants or needs, or is the garage full of junk she won from defunct companies and a years supply of RC Cola?
Off the top of my head, not counting the plethora of gift cards:
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A first edition Kindle Fire a month after it released. For being tech-illiterate, she ended up loving it and upgraded a few times through the years.
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Several Roku boxes and Fire TV sticks, which are just now getting used because my parents are finally cutting the cord.
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Lots of concert tickets for various bands, including Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Kiss.
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1-week all expenses paid trip to Nashville for some big New Year’s party that some celebs showed up to.
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$600 cowboy boots.
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$300 KitchenAid mixer.
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A full set of Paula Dean cookware, and she LOVES Paula Dean.
That’s the good stuff. How much bad stuff? Like, sounds awesome, but if she also got 10,000 beer coozies and bad water bottles and whatever other tchotchke nonsense….
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Sorry just noticed this notification. Yes actually! A $500 shopping spree on a gaming website.
So originally, it was that he was a “free speech absolutist,” then it was that he was in favor of free speech “within the bounds of the law,” and now he’s not even in favor of that.
He never was, that was just an excuse to amplify the voice of his far-right buddies.
I know. It was more about what he said.
Freedom of (my) speech.
I wish I was free from his speech, specifically.
I don’t believe this because it gives Elon Musk too much credit and honestly I think he’s just a big loser who will latch on to whoever likes him at the time.
A series of stupid events led to Twitter being full of stupid far right nutjobs and stupid Elon decided they’re his people now because they use his stupid platform.
This seems more accurate somehow
I’m not so sure about that. The big tell is that whenever a far-right user complained to him about getting a tweet removed or the account getting banned or something like that, he’d respond that he’ll personally take care of it. Just imagine, a billionare running a platform with millions of users personally taking care of a single one. This never happened with other people.
I personally haven’t heard of this, but if it’s true it’s probably just because he’s latched on to them like I was saying. He didn’t buy Twitter with some nefarious conservative intent to unblock far right accounts, he bought it because he’s an idiot who got into a pissing match on social media. He even tried to get out of the sale claiming “bots” and the owners threatened to sue the shit out of him.
Edit: Lol people downvoting because I haven’t heard of this? Never said it’s not true, I just haven’t heard of it.
Example: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgKSQUrXoAABPWi.jpg
I agree with your assessment. I’m not claiming that he has a plan of any sorts, things just happen in a spur of the moment. However, that’s also the appeal of the far-right. It doesn’t need research or having a solid base of knowledge to base their opinions on, it’s just random stuff these people read on the Internet that feels good to them.
He didn’t buy Twitter with some nefarious conservative intent to unblock far right accounts
Yet less than a month after he finished the acquisition he unblocked the orange excrescence. That’s the fastest he could get to it, because the first week he was firing execs, the second week he was laying off half the workforce, and the third week he was already dicking around with Twitter Blue and charging for the checkmark.
Admittedly, the sink in the lobby was a higher priority timewise, but he got around to unblocking Donald Trump as quickly as he could, AND while janitorial staff were still available to clean the Twitter HQ bathrooms.
Coincidence? I think not.
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By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to say whatever they want.
By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to force you to listen to them say whatever they want.
“Down with fascism! No more free political speech!”
Non sequitur
Freedom for me but not for thee
I guess it’s all about his political ambition.
Oh god, I just had a flash of a near future where he’s on the US ballot somehow. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he found a way. He could change the name of the States to X too!
X party. Yikes.
Please, I beg you, don’t scare me.
For any office except president (possibly not VP either, but that would be a technical issue for constitutional scholars to debate). You have to be native-born to be president.
You gotta be really stupid to believe people like him. They are all the same. It’s like a mental sickness. You can feel it even just hearing him talk on TV. Sadly he seems to have the type of mental illness that America accepts and it’s actually useful for greed and the American dream. Meanwhile good neurodivergent people suffer life long because society doesn’t fit them.
I mean freedom of speech, not reach describes one boundary of the law in that nobody is required to give you a platform as far as i know.
However it does absolutely not fit to the free speech absolutism purported last year.
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“No one can act as a moderator to remove my content” This claim does align with with the principle of freedom of speech, but we have to admit that for now, complete freedom without any control can be unsafe. It could potentially lead to spams and political issues. However, the feature of not asking for phone numbers or email addresses sounds interesting, especially considering Elon is planning to introduce government ID verification.
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This is blatant advertisement. Doesn’t it violate the instance rules?
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Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.
This community has a weird fetish for anything elon musk. If he scratches his butt, this community will post and comment about how much fingernail he used. And you are correct, everyone claiming to hate twitter/musk do a great job of keeping his company and name recognition relevant.
Yeah I was enjoying a lot of the drama, not so now, sick of seeing his mug plastered all over Lemmy.
Raise your hand if you are convinced this will not impact the people who pay for the blue checkmark. Meaning that a lot of Elon Fanbois / Bots / Fascists will be seen with theit shitty takes (since the checkmark pushes your comments up), while voices of reason will be dragged down further.
Twitter is rapidly becomming the new Truth Social and it’s sad to watch.
Well that was the whole point. His old friend Peter Thiel and others failed to set up a competing service against Twitter, so now they’re undermining Twitter. Either Twitter steps into line and becomes what they want it to be, or it dies due to the $13bn debt/tax avoidance scam that Musk performed.
$13bn debt/tax avoidance scam that Musk performed
Since I don’t follow Musk, please elaborate. I hope, you don’t mean his buying an unprofitable company for $40B was to avoid taxes…
Overpaying and then destroying the value means that eventually, he will be able to claim losses on his taxes. This will allow him to reduce his tax liability for his profitable businesses.
Sure but it doesn’t make sense to destroy more capital than you’re liable in taxes.
No. I’m referring to the $13bn out of the $44bn purchase price that Twitter paid itself. As Twitter is now deep in debt, it won’t be making a profit any time soon, so there will be no tax paid on that $13bn purchase.
The $44bn purchase is broken down more or less as:
- $26bn by Musk ($20bn of which was from Tesla shares),
- $5bn from other investors, including that Saudi prince,
- $13bn in a loan that Twitter took out to buy itself on behalf of its new owners.
The process is known as a leveraged buyout, and it’s what’s killed many staple businesses that were otherwise perfectly viable, eg Toys R Us.
Dear Elon,
You say you hate socialism yet you socialized around 40% of the acquisition money.
Curious.
That was always the point of the blue check under Elon. It’s very clear already that blue checks have vastly higher reach and engagement. This all started back in December.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/23/23523845/twitter-blue-paying-priority-replies-conversations
It ruined so much of the appeal. Previously when someone was being a fucking idiot you could see them getting absolutely dragged in the comments, and it was cathartic. Now it’s just blue check sycophants going “omg based”.
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Can we stop posting musk shit? It’s exhausting.
Have you considered joining “Enough Musk Spam”, another such community devoted entirely to posting about the thing they dont like seeing posts about?
Lol. I blocked that shit.
You understand that the point of these subs is the exact opposite of that?
Yes I understand that and am criticizing it. Aggregating posts about how a thing is bad is still posting about the thing. Rather than adding anti-XYZ posts to my feed I would rather just filter XYZ from me feed entirely.
You still seen confused, that’s the exact opposite purpose of the subs
Hoy shit dude i understand that completely. I am not talking about their purpose. I am talking about their content. their purpose is contradictory. I’m bored with you now, stop replying. it was a one off about how the subs are stupid. either say something substantial or go away
It’s doubly exhausting for the hundreds of millions of people who are still there and are affected by this.
Like it or not (I don’t), free speech has nothing to do with social media. Platforms are free to do this, it’s the government that can’t limit your speech like this.
Given those circumstances, I wonder if social media should be treated like infrastructure. That would fuse constitutional rights and the platform itself.
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Not even the US is a “freeze peach absolutist”. That’s a dog whistle term for people who want to do hate crimes without fear of reprisal
Or you just get beat up, and nobody on the street has seen anything: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/drunken-american-beaten-up-for-giving-nazi-salute-in-germany
While you’re right, I think the issue here is the hypocrisy of Musk claiming to be pro free speech (specifically on his platform) only to then repeatedly limit speech he doesn’t personally like.
I feel pretty numb to right wing hypocrisy at this point. Which is probably their exact playbook.
Indeed. Personally my problem isn’t with them limiting the “freedom of speech”. It’s with them claiming they have it or that it’s even relevant there, as you’ve said.
Same page club. I think centralized social media is going to die sooner or later anyway*, so I’m thinking it’s only a problem in the short term.
*Making money from social media just sounds like some weird shit in a history book to me, like merkins. We’ll see I guess.
It’s not a law for no reason at all. Free speech is also an ideal, a principle. It can apply, as a moral, to non-legal areas.
Free speech has nothing to do with social media or governments. Freedom of speech is a universal, natural right that has been with our species since we gained the power of speech through evolution.
yeah not sure about that. Most of human history would say freedom of speech (and most of the concept of natural rights) is a rather newish ideology. In the past, speaking negatively of higher powers (religious organizations, ruling class, etc) could lead to sanctions, imprisonment, or death and that is still very much the case in many countries to this day. We can argue _____ is a “natural right” till you have arthritis in your hand joints but you have to be blind to think governments have nothing to do with it and its enforcement. In a utopia, maybe it is granted naturally on birth but in reality it is a “right” that has to be “fought” for (legally or with arms). Like are you seriously arguing the people of North Kor… Sorry, I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are born with this “natural right” of free speech but if they dare use it they and possibly their immediate family may be subject to torture, rape, reeducation camps, and/or work camps.
I would agree. As long as it doesn’t violate the law, people should have the right to express their opinions freely. But nowadays it’s getting pretty hard to do so.
I mean it depends, what are you talking about? Yeah I can see the point of not arresting people for dropping the N word or something or maybe doing a Hitler salute but are you referring to people using their own freedom of speech to argue/debate one’s own opinion? Maybe a companies right to associate with only those it choose to do so with (unless that discrimination is against those of protected classes). Like no company would probably want to be associated with a known verbal racist, it just hurts their possibility to get new clients or possibly sever current client relations. The reason why many companies go “woke” or stray to the left is because companies never want to have one of their advertisements right next to a Nazi/race supremacist rant, people will start associating the company with what their ad is paying for. Elon is learning in the most ass backwards way of why Twitter did X thing, in this case why twitter wasn’t the “haven” of free speech is because advertisers don’t want this and advertisers are the ones who pay a hefty chunk of the bills.
Most of human history would say freedom of speech (and most of the concept of natural rights) is a rather newish ideology.
It’s “newish” for Homo sapiens, but it originated during the Enlightenment in the 17th century. I struggle to call that “new.” However I don’t subscribe to the concept of natural rights. Rights are what people afford each other in a society. In a democracy, we vote on rights. In anarchy, rights are given and taken at the end of a gun.
It’s definitely new in the context of their comment, which says it’s been around since we had the power of speech.
My last house was older than free speech as a concept.
Universal? So I can go to all of your neighbors and tell them you’re a pedophile and that’s ok?
That’s a very strange takeaway from my comment.
I’m not sure what else universal means other than ‘applies in all circumstances.’
Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
You’re generally right and I have nothing to take away from that. Right now I’m talking specifically about the “law” of free speech with regard to the US Constitution.
Sounds like it doesn’t matter what Twitter does then. Human history spans several thousand years, possibly ten thousand. If freedom of speech has been there throughout, then Twitter is completely inconsequential, considering free speech was doing fine literally thousands of years before it.
So much for that free speech he was talking about.
"Free speech absolutist"®©™
(Terms and conditions apply)
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Someone predicted that they were going to slowly add back all the stuff they took out and they were right
I think most people could have predicted that. Most of the things Musk removed were there for a reason (Regardless of whether they where popular with Twitter’s users or not). Mostly of economical or legal nature. You cannot simply remove them if you want Twitter to someday make a profit.
Right at the beginning I said they would add it all back and/or get a never ending chain of lawsuits thrown at them and right now it’s looking a bit like both.
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I don’t give a fuck about Twitter, stop posting this garbage already!
it’s not a revolution if you don’t wind up where you started
Why are there people still using that garbage? It’s fucking hilarious watching everyone complain about twitter, YouTube, etc and then continue using it.
lol such a Loser shitshow.
Everyone complaining or saying leave but nobody talking about alternatives that solve some of the problems. Mastodon exists. Nostr exists. BlueSky kind of exists.
The problem with the alternatives is there’s no draw to any of these sites. Like people aren’t going to Mastodon because it has some amazing features that everyone wishes Twitter had, they’re going because they don’t like Musk.
There’s so much on Twitter that these other sites don’t have that it’s hard to justify leaving. There are so many politicians, reporters, athletes and teams, bands, artists, etc all on Twitter. I follow hockey pretty closely and every major trade that happened last season was first reported on Twitter. Will I get that breaking news on Mastodon? No, so what is the draw to Mastodon? What does the average user get out of moving over?
What do content creators get out of moving? An artist can have years of their work on their account as a portfolio to draw new fans and get work, but if they move none of those posts show up on Mastodon. Now they have to post their entire portfolio again, and that doesn’t even guarantee that their audience will follow them. Now they’re on a much smaller website with a much smaller audience and they’re probably not going to get the same exposure or opportunities that they had when on Twitter.
The only thing absolute about Elmo is being a cuck.
Elmu!
