His description of "old internet" and freedom is wrong. The "old internet" was predominantly american ( 90%+ ) and we didn't just want to protect free speech from conservatives attacking porn, but from everyone ( soccer moms, woke leftist, europeans, ADL, canadians, etc ).
> it means you're standing up against EVERYONE, because every side is trying to take away the speech rights of the other side.
Exactly. That's why the old internet defaulted to free speech. Because everyone understood that taking their free speech meant my free speech was vulnerable and it was impossible to just censor one and not everyone else.
> It's also where Russia is fighting a real war against us
This nonsense. Just the russians? What about the british, israelis, canadians, australians, saudis, chinese, iranians, etc. Not to mention the biggest threat - our own government. What percentage of foreign propaganda is russian? 1%? Just like all the russian money spent on facebook gave trump the presidency? All $40K was it?
> I want you to pause for a minute and think about your political alignment and whether you're on the left or right of this issue, because you probably think one of those things.
I'm neither and social media clearly leans towards one side.
> Elon is one of those, because he doesn't understand what has happened to internet culture since 2004. Or as I call it, just culture.
The culture was formed by censorship. The social media companies are trying to change culture. Get rid of censorship and we'll see about the culture. If yishan is right, how come real world culture is so different from social media culture? Perhaps because censorship allows a tiny minority to have the most influence/say?
> Facebook's userbase has at various times been left-leaning, then right-leaning, then bifurcated. So has Reddit's. Twitter's also. The social platforms don't care.
Is that why they collectively banned trump. Because they don't care?
> It is because we brought all of our old horrible collective dysfunctions onto the internet
The horrible collective dysfunctions were on the old internet long before social media.
> They are censoring because they are large social platforms, and ideas are POWERFUL and DANGEROUS.
That must be why we censor libraries...
Instead of wasting pages of text and much of our time, he could have been honest and answered in less than 140 characters - "We censor because of money".
The only difference between old internet and new internet is money and shareholders and centralization. The guy talks about everything - culture, russians, old internet, etc but ignores the elephant int the room. Money makes the world go round and money makes social media censor. If you are dependent on ads, you probably will have to conform to money's demands. I do wonder how elon will deal with the problem of money/ads. Though taking the company private and owning it outright should give him more leeway, I doubt he's willing to lose money year after year on twitter.
> The "old internet" was predominantly american ( 90%+ ) and we didn't just want to protect free speech from conservatives attacking porn, but from everyone ( soccer moms, woke leftist, europeans, ADL, canadians, etc ).
No one was concerned with woke leftists in the 90s. No one. "Woke" wasn't a term, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, no one was worried about the corroding influence of leftists, or cultural marxism, or any of the bogeymen that resurfaced over the past decade.
I don't know about the 90s specifically (I was 6 when the new millennium started!), but people were definitely talking about "politicial correctness gone mad" and the "war on Christmas" in the early 00s.
Here's a comedy sketch from '05 that's making fun of many of the same "woke" concepts we have now:
Yes, but that's where it started becoming noticeable. Too much language was being changed in a non-evolutionary way. That's why Bill Maher named his show Politically Incorrect and George Carlin roasted the euphemism treadmill. They were pointing out the excesses.
> No one was concerned with woke leftists in the 90s. No one. "Woke" wasn't a term
I know woke wasn't a term. I grew up in the 90s. I just put it in there to emphasize "everyone". Thought people would be butthurt about me adding canadians/europeans, not woke leftist. But the precursors of modern "woke left" certainly existed in the 90s even though they didn't gain the power they did after the 2007 financial crisis.
ah yes, the well-known leftists of the CIA, FBI, and Army. They were playing the long-game murdering all those leftist governments of Central and South America, I guess.
> They were playing the long-game murdering all those leftist governments of Central and South America, I guess.
They were murdering right wing iraqis too. Also, there is a difference between left and woke leftists. Woke leftists hate leftists just as much as they hate everyone else.
> Maybe just give a definition of 'woke'?
What you believe in obviously. The CIA has been running woke ads and celebrating wokeism on their youtube channel and everywhere. Not to mention the FBI, Military, etc. Not sure why you are denying it when they've openly embraced wokeism.
They work against anyone they think are against American hegemony. There are some right wingers in that, but they consider all left wingers to be enemies.
The analogy doesn’t hold. Libraries don’t hold random internet posts.
You need to first have your work published as a book or similar, and then have the acquisitions team at the library buy copies. Yes self publishing is an option but convincing a library to stock your particular book will be more tricky. Sure the library of congress may hold a copy, but that’s about where it ends.
Donated books also aren’t guaranteed to hit the shelves either, they can end up in book sales or rejected if the library prioritises other books on its limited shelf space.
They also won’t for example carry books documenting how to commit suicide, construct a dirty bomb, child porn, well porn in general actually (you’ll still often find nudity and sex acts in books about sex, but those books are not designed to provide sexual gratification whereas porn is).
Or perhaps you're wanting torrents off of Archive.org? They have the biggest PS2 iso library anywhere in the world.
I really don't understand why people can't see this...
Face it: If book libraries were a new concept around 1998 (Napster), they too would be illegal dens of iniquity reviled by "copyright interests" and raided with the backing of federal copyright statute under criminal guidelines. .
> but from everyone ( soccer moms, woke leftist, europeans, ADL, canadians, etc ).
You literally mean _everyone_ I guess? You're talking about a few million people who were online early on. Now it's 100x that, your group owns a lot of the biggest social websites. YOU are the tiny minority having the most influence.
> They banned Trump because he incited a fucking riot on the nation's capitol and even after seeing the consequences of this incitement - in the form of a dead supporters of his and potentially members of our government being killed by an angry mob - Trump doubled down like he always does.
So what should happen to social media companies who supported BLM and the riots that ensued? Should they be banned? What about social media companies role in the color revolutions?
> Yishan's entire thread boils down to "social media companies don't give a shit about ideology until it manifests as an actual threat to public safety". I'm confused how you weren't able to glean that from his thread.
See the above comment.
> We absolutely censor libraries. Currently large portions of the country are obsessed with throwing out LGBT literature that kids might have access to. I'm sure you can guess as to why that is.
We talking libraries or elementary schools? Big difference.
> That doesn't make sense. For social media companies, engagement = money and having trolls, Trump, and outrage clicks is certainly more profitable than not having those things.
It makes sense if the advertisers don't like it. Advertisers aren't just interested in numbers. They are also interested in branding.
> Sometimes good business sense aligns with doing the right thing.
Most times good business sense aligns with doing the wrong thing.
Just in case you were wondering. Not a fan of Trump. Not a fan of the left or right.
Who cares? But isn't that even more of a reason not to ban someone? To ban a democratically elected president of the united states. Quite dystopian. To have people supporting it, sad. Also, how many people died due to trump's "riots". How many people died from social media company supported BLM riots? It's infinitely more actually.
> Please let us know if you've found any folks with 80m followers that have been left free to coordinate violence on social media platforms.
Social media platforms itself have. That was my point. They were part of the color revolution propaganda machine a decade ago.
> Schools have libraries, it's not a big difference.
It is a big difference if an elementary school library is for young children. As opposed to one for the general public.
> Well now its you who could've saved us a lot of characters and just said "I'm one of those guys that thinks they're non-ideological, but here's my obvious rightward bias anyways"
Rightward? Hilarious. The only comments I've had flagged here are what people would consider "left leaning" comments. I'm just anti-hypocrite and commmon sense type of guy. The type that the extremists hate.
> Also, how many people died due to trump's "riots". How many people died from social media company supported BLM riots? It's infinitely more actually.
1. "Infinitely more"? Are you sure you want to be so irresponsible with your language? Infinity people died? You're starting to go off the deep end here. 25 people died in 2020. [1] And as the commenter you replied to pointed out, they did ban accounts. You are not acknowledging this, and you are in bad faith suggesting that "everyone got a pass on BLM". False.
2. This is not just about deaths, though it is the trigger. Trump did and continues to encourage the overturning of elections in the US. He continues to claim that the current president is illegitimate. The former President is repeatedly telling everyone with the utmost urgency that the entire country has been "stolen," and that "if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." What do you think his followers will do in response?
We saw what they were willing to do on Jan 6. They didn't attack shops, they hit the seat of government with the explicit intent of stopping the election. We now know there were armed groups waiting to swoop in. Why do you think Twitter is obligated to continue to amplify his rhetoric?
> To ban a democratically elected president of the united states. Quite dystopian.
Actually the opposite - Trump did and said many things that would have gotten literally anyone else banned, and Twitter literally had to make a special exception in their rules for him because of it.
This is the old "when you're used to supremacy, equality feels like oppression" situation in action. Trump got more slack than anyone else ever would have, and when they finally did come down conservatives are still mad that it was "biased" and "unfair" somehow.
tbh I think the potential for retaliation likely also stayed Twitter's hand - if they had enforced the rules equally while he was still president, he likely would have found ways to retaliate against them.
> it means you're standing up against EVERYONE, because every side is trying to take away the speech rights of the other side.
Exactly. That's why the old internet defaulted to free speech. Because everyone understood that taking their free speech meant my free speech was vulnerable and it was impossible to just censor one and not everyone else.
> It's also where Russia is fighting a real war against us
This nonsense. Just the russians? What about the british, israelis, canadians, australians, saudis, chinese, iranians, etc. Not to mention the biggest threat - our own government. What percentage of foreign propaganda is russian? 1%? Just like all the russian money spent on facebook gave trump the presidency? All $40K was it?
> I want you to pause for a minute and think about your political alignment and whether you're on the left or right of this issue, because you probably think one of those things.
I'm neither and social media clearly leans towards one side.
> Elon is one of those, because he doesn't understand what has happened to internet culture since 2004. Or as I call it, just culture.
The culture was formed by censorship. The social media companies are trying to change culture. Get rid of censorship and we'll see about the culture. If yishan is right, how come real world culture is so different from social media culture? Perhaps because censorship allows a tiny minority to have the most influence/say?
> Facebook's userbase has at various times been left-leaning, then right-leaning, then bifurcated. So has Reddit's. Twitter's also. The social platforms don't care.
Is that why they collectively banned trump. Because they don't care?
> It is because we brought all of our old horrible collective dysfunctions onto the internet
The horrible collective dysfunctions were on the old internet long before social media.
> They are censoring because they are large social platforms, and ideas are POWERFUL and DANGEROUS.
That must be why we censor libraries...
Instead of wasting pages of text and much of our time, he could have been honest and answered in less than 140 characters - "We censor because of money".
The only difference between old internet and new internet is money and shareholders and centralization. The guy talks about everything - culture, russians, old internet, etc but ignores the elephant int the room. Money makes the world go round and money makes social media censor. If you are dependent on ads, you probably will have to conform to money's demands. I do wonder how elon will deal with the problem of money/ads. Though taking the company private and owning it outright should give him more leeway, I doubt he's willing to lose money year after year on twitter.