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I find this whole situation to be incredibly depressing, especially with Musk tweeting out a fact free insinuation about Paul Pelosi (since deleted without apol

I find this whole situation to be incredibly depressing, especially with Musk tweeting out a fact free insinuation about Paul Pelosi (since deleted without apology.) The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. I'd love to live in a country where we could have nice things, but apparently America is not it.

Zigurd 4y ago
It also isn't as if Elon was just thumbing his nose at naysayers. A day earlier he pledged to advertisers Twitter would not become a "free for all hellscape." Now that's the new tagline.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  It will be easy to switch to another platform and there will be tools to help as this post indicates. 4chan users are having fun saying the N word on Twitter and Le Bron James is complaining about it. And this is only day 2. I certainly think people should be able to exercise free speech, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. I can go somewhere else if Twitter gets too depressing.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > I certainly think people should be able to exercise free speech, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. Would that be different on Mastodon? I've never used it, but as a decentralized service, I assume it won't have a central authority banning users?
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      The difference is that each node has its own set of moderators. So jerks will get moderated there. And when they do that, they'll probably jump servers. And so get cordoned off into wherever federated node that they isolate themselves into. Note that each server decides which other servers it will federate and share content with. So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut from most of the rest of the federation. It's certainly vulnerable to abuse. But it also leaves more room for community response. And it also doesn't have a recommendation "algorithm". You see the content you explicitly subscribe to. In chronological order. So dark patterns that arise out of feeding people rage tweets and engagement hacking and amplifying "controversial" crap for engagement... doesn't happen. So the platform isn't going to give an outsized "recommended" audience for crap just because it has high "likes" -- that's not how the platform works.
      - leereeves 4y ago
        That seems likely to result in a split. Not a few isolated servers with jerks, but one big federation with free speech types like Elon Musk, and a different federation with heavy moderation. But returning to a chronological feed would be nice.
        cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        It's already heavily federated so it wouldn't be a binary split like you describe. Like, it wouldn't be "one federation with Musk types" vs "another with heavy moderation" but actually already a whole bunch of nodes with different types of moderation choosing to isolate away the Musk node. Or not. It would be up to each node. Note that "Gab" and "Truth Social" are both built on Mastodon. But they're isolated from the rest of the federated nodes.
        leereeves 4y ago
        How does "it would be up to each node" work? Suppose there are three servers (A, B, C), and A is federated with both, but B isn't federated with C, and there's conversation between people on A and B. Do people on C only see the A side of the conversation?
        LuisAPI 4y ago
        No. Server A also sends messages coming from servers it federates with, so those on server C can see server B's messages, but C'ers just can't reply to them and expect B'ers to actually receive those messages.
        leereeves 4y ago
        > C'ers just can't reply to them and expect B'ers to actually receive those messages. Wouldn't A also forward those replies to B?
        cmrdporcupine 4y ago
rybosome 4y ago
The shit hitting the fan on election night will not be limited to Twitter. Expect chaos in meatspace, exacerbated in part by Twitter.
- alwillis 4y ago
  Right. There are some people who may decide to not vote due to what they’re seeing on Twitter in places where it may matter.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fazfq 4y ago
>The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. What exactly is he supposed to do? I don't see how Nov 8 is megacorp's business.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  > What exactly is he supposed to do? When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may have to.
  - RobotToaster 4y ago
    Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a private police force, judge, jury, and executioner?
    - BeetleB 4y ago
      Yes - they can clamp down on channels that are used to incite violence.
    - dd36 4y ago
      Not policing content would destroy Twitter.
    - michaelwww 4y ago
      If you owned Twitter and the site was suddenly flooded with calls to attack election officials and raid election offices what would you do? You'd probably meet with your lawyers and find out what kind of liability you had, then you'd field calls from advertisers saying they are all leaving unless you stop it. You'd also field calls from all your friends telling you that you need to stop it. Then you'd go for a walk and contemplate how you feel about people using your site to facilitate armed rebellion. Then you'd figure out how much money you were willing to lose over doing it your way. The most sensible thing to do at the point is pull the plug for a few weeks for "technical issues related to the purchase' and go home and get a good nights sleep.
commandlinefan 4y ago
I think it’s depressing that droves of people are leaving Twitter because they believe that they might tone down all the censorship.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  I get what you're saying but I don't think it's that depressing or surprising, but that's a big discussion better had in other places.

Zigurd 4y ago

It also isn't as if Elon was just thumbing his nose at naysayers. A day earlier he pledged to advertisers Twitter would not become a "free for all hellscape." Now that's the new tagline.

michaelwww 4y ago
It will be easy to switch to another platform and there will be tools to help as this post indicates. 4chan users are having fun saying the N word on Twitter and Le Bron James is complaining about it. And this is only day 2. I certainly think people should be able to exercise free speech, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. I can go somewhere else if Twitter gets too depressing.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > I certainly think people should be able to exercise free speech, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. Would that be different on Mastodon? I've never used it, but as a decentralized service, I assume it won't have a central authority banning users?
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    The difference is that each node has its own set of moderators. So jerks will get moderated there. And when they do that, they'll probably jump servers. And so get cordoned off into wherever federated node that they isolate themselves into. Note that each server decides which other servers it will federate and share content with. So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut from most of the rest of the federation. It's certainly vulnerable to abuse. But it also leaves more room for community response. And it also doesn't have a recommendation "algorithm". You see the content you explicitly subscribe to. In chronological order. So dark patterns that arise out of feeding people rage tweets and engagement hacking and amplifying "controversial" crap for engagement... doesn't happen. So the platform isn't going to give an outsized "recommended" audience for crap just because it has high "likes" -- that's not how the platform works.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      That seems likely to result in a split. Not a few isolated servers with jerks, but one big federation with free speech types like Elon Musk, and a different federation with heavy moderation. But returning to a chronological feed would be nice.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        It's already heavily federated so it wouldn't be a binary split like you describe. Like, it wouldn't be "one federation with Musk types" vs "another with heavy moderation" but actually already a whole bunch of nodes with different types of moderation choosing to isolate away the Musk node. Or not. It would be up to each node. Note that "Gab" and "Truth Social" are both built on Mastodon. But they're isolated from the rest of the federated nodes.
        leereeves 4y ago
        How does "it would be up to each node" work? Suppose there are three servers (A, B, C), and A is federated with both, but B isn't federated with C, and there's conversation between people on A and B. Do people on C only see the A side of the conversation?
        LuisAPI 4y ago
        No. Server A also sends messages coming from servers it federates with, so those on server C can see server B's messages, but C'ers just can't reply to them and expect B'ers to actually receive those messages.
        leereeves 4y ago
        > C'ers just can't reply to them and expect B'ers to actually receive those messages. Wouldn't A also forward those replies to B?
        cmrdporcupine 4y ago

rybosome 4y ago

The shit hitting the fan on election night will not be limited to Twitter. Expect chaos in meatspace, exacerbated in part by Twitter.

alwillis 4y ago
Right. There are some people who may decide to not vote due to what they’re seeing on Twitter in places where it may matter.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fazfq 4y ago

>The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. What exactly is he supposed to do? I don't see how Nov 8 is megacorp's business.

michaelwww 4y ago
> What exactly is he supposed to do? When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may have to.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a private police force, judge, jury, and executioner?
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    Yes - they can clamp down on channels that are used to incite violence.
  - dd36 4y ago
    Not policing content would destroy Twitter.
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    If you owned Twitter and the site was suddenly flooded with calls to attack election officials and raid election offices what would you do? You'd probably meet with your lawyers and find out what kind of liability you had, then you'd field calls from advertisers saying they are all leaving unless you stop it. You'd also field calls from all your friends telling you that you need to stop it. Then you'd go for a walk and contemplate how you feel about people using your site to facilitate armed rebellion. Then you'd figure out how much money you were willing to lose over doing it your way. The most sensible thing to do at the point is pull the plug for a few weeks for "technical issues related to the purchase' and go home and get a good nights sleep.

commandlinefan 4y ago

I think it’s depressing that droves of people are leaving Twitter because they believe that they might tone down all the censorship.

michaelwww 4y ago
I get what you're saying but I don't think it's that depressing or surprising, but that's a big discussion better had in other places.