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Elon’s Twitter Carnival of Stupidity (No Politics)

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Fuz

Banned
It's weird because Elon Musk was probably the most impersonated person on Twitter, and I don't just mean people changing their account names to him after he took over. I've seen loads of bots claiming to be him and posting replies to all kinds of tweets saying that he's doing a bitcoin giveaway or something like that. It's in the public interest that some people are verified and it shouldn't rely on that person paying for it.
If someone believes Elon is giving away money or bitcoin, a blue checkmark won't make a difference for them.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Guy is a hero for the Twitter Files imo. Government should never pressure companies to take away people’s right to speak.

Can’t speak to or support all his decisions, but he did a really courageous thing that has made him lots of enemies

Courageous? how? He lost nothing by releasing those files and won some public support which considering the way he tweets he's desperately ln need to feel public validation. It's also a nice distraction from the usual stories about his management blunders at twitter.

A hero? Jesus.

Snowden is a hero who took the courageos decision to expose the extent of mass spionage that the US government carries across the globe and on its own citiens. Man ended up a fugitive.
 

93xfan

Banned
Projecting. And I don't need to answer shit. I am not going to be baited into getting too political with a brick wall. It's pointless, I will just sensibly chuckle.
Good call. I found he doesn’t argue in good faith and makes you explain things that anybody knowledgeable should be well read on.

“Big tech censored conversations on Covid origins? Can you show me”.
 
Good call. I found he doesn’t argue in good faith and makes you explain things that anybody knowledgeable should be well read on.

“Big tech censored conversations on Covid origins? Can you show me”.

Bruh I'm right here, asking you about Twitter Files. A topic you raised. If it's obvious should be a quick answer for you. If you don't have the answer that's fine, just admit it.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Good call. I found he doesn’t argue in good faith and makes you explain things that anybody knowledgeable should be well read on.

“Big tech censored conversations on Covid origins? Can you show me”.
In a good faith discussion about a topic, the sources that inform the discussion should be laid out to bear. This is essential to any kind of constructive communication, and is completely reasonable. Not everyone has the same sources of information, and everyone's sources should be compared in order to make sure that all discussion participants are on the same page and not talking past each other.

If you are knowledgeable and well read on a particular subject, it should be trivial to paraphrase the issue or present supporting evidence when asked. This is how it works. More citing. Less complaining please.
 
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DKehoe

Member
If someone believes Elon is giving away money or bitcoin, a blue checkmark won't make a difference for them.
I mean sure, they were hardly subtle scams. But it benefits the platform to minimise the risk scammers pose to its user base and the checkmark does help with that.
 

LegendOfKage

Gold Member
Which Twitter Files specifically speak to that? A lot are politicians asking Twitter to moderate content, some of which were actioned, some which weren’t. The important thing is that the same requests could have come from private citizens, through the same channels.
No, they were not the same channels. The government had a very specific channel that was open only to them. They also paid twitter a lot of money to do the work of censoring. This is the most in-depth post I made about the topic:

And as I said in that post, removing section 230 for platforms that won't censor as much as you want them to is a threat.
 

LegendOfKage

Gold Member


So…that’s the Twitter files guy…?

And if the media treated EVERYONE like that, people wouldn't have lost faith in them, and media as a whole wouldn't be at the absurd lowest trust levels that it is currently.

You said it was this date, but it was really this date!

You said they flagged this many, but really they flagged this many!

And of course the clip cuts off before Taibbi can start speaking again. Actually, having now watched a much larger portion of the same interview, the host immediately moves on to another subject rather than having an actual conversation where he can respond.

Dude, you're running cover for the government who want to police what citizens can say on the internet beyond what the constitution allows.* That's the real story, not arguing semantics over what the definition of "flagged" means, only what was reported or what appeared in the report. Ultimately none of this matters when the core idea of the government pushing for the censorship of legal speech still remains.

[edit] Having watched a lot more of this interview, this was a disaster all around. No one should go on television programs where the host will ask you a question and then talk over your answer. This is why people would rather listen to Joe Rogan and other podcasts over Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. Plenty of disagreement, but it's respectful, and you have a full understanding of what people think and why they think that way. Where they agree, and where they disagree. I was hopeful when I saw this was 30 minutes, but this was the same garbage as usual.


* Not you, Thaedolus Thaedolus , but the journalist in this video.
 
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BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!


So…that’s the Twitter files guy…?


Yes that is him. Taibbi fell off hard after his time living in Russia. There was a time, once long ago, when he was a legit journalist. Now he spreads dumb conspiracy theories that even teenagers looked at for ten minutes, laughed, and moved on.

Meta side note: someone who has demonstrated repeatedly that they cannot entertain the opinion of another that they disagree with, nor have a civil discussion with them, should google the word "fascist" so that they realize they should be applying the term to themselves.
 
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If you believe the earth is flat and Putin is a champion of human rights Joe Rogan is the ideal interviewer as he'll just nod and ask you to talk more on your views.
 
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LegendOfKage

Gold Member
To put it succinctly: If you like the idea of encouraging or accepting the government using their power to silence people that you don't like and don't agree with, but you wouldn't like those same people that you don't like and don't agree with using that same power to silence you, maybe it's not a good idea to support or encourage that sort of thing in the first place. Does that make sense? It seems like sound reasoning to me.

If you believe the earth is flat and Putin is a champion of human rights Joe Rogan is the ideal interviewer as he'll just nod and ask you to talk more on your views.




On another note, though, I have to say that I've always loved your forum name. I assume that's a reference to the most famous line in the movie Die Hard when watched on broadcast television. It reminds me of it every time I see it.
 
To put it succinctly: If you like the idea of encouraging or accepting the government using their power to silence people that you don't like and don't agree with, but you wouldn't like those same people that you don't like and don't agree with using that same power to silence you, maybe it's not a good idea to support or encourage that sort of thing in the first place. Does that make sense? It seems like sound reasoning to me.

Are those people the government when they silence you? It's not really an equivalence if its random people you don't like vs the government doing things, since governments have privileges and accountability random people don't.
 

YCoCg

Member
So is the Doge icon a permanent thing or is it just a delayed broke April Fools thing that's not turning off? I like the konami code thing though.
 

Thaedolus

Gold Member
And if the media treated EVERYONE like that, people wouldn't have lost faith in them, and media as a whole wouldn't be at the absurd lowest trust levels that it is currently.

You said it was this date, but it was really this date!

You said they flagged this many, but really they flagged this many!

And of course the clip cuts off before Taibbi can start speaking again. Actually, having now watched a much larger portion of the same interview, the host immediately moves on to another subject rather than having an actual conversation where he can respond.

Dude, you're running cover for the government who want to police what citizens can say on the internet beyond what the constitution allows.* That's the real story, not arguing semantics over what the definition of "flagged" means, only what was reported or what appeared in the report. Ultimately none of this matters when the core idea of the government pushing for the censorship of legal speech still remains.

[edit] Having watched a lot more of this interview, this was a disaster all around. No one should go on television programs where the host will ask you a question and then talk over your answer. This is why people would rather listen to Joe Rogan and other podcasts over Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. Plenty of disagreement, but it's respectful, and you have a full understanding of what people think and why they think that way. Where they agree, and where they disagree. I was hopeful when I saw this was 30 minutes, but this was the same garbage as usual.


* Not you, Thaedolus Thaedolus , but the journalist in this video.
Well, I think the point the host was trying to make was that if someone like Taibbi is making basic factual errors left and right, it sort of calls into question the conclusions that can be drawn from what he’s putting out there, and/or his motivations and biases. Poking around, there were a lot of people disputing things he’s been representing as facts which are simply not true when looking at the source material, and pointing out how these things seem to be fairly one sided.

But honestly I haven’t been following it too closely. It just seems like another situation where people had a belief (eg Twitter is biased against my group!) and confirmation bias leads them to believe any and all things which support said belief.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Well, I think the point the host was trying to make was that if someone like Taibbi is making basic factual errors left and right, it sort of calls into question the conclusions that can be drawn from what he’s putting out there, and/or his motivations and biases. Poking around, there were a lot of people disputing things he’s been representing as facts which are simply not true when looking at the source material, and pointing out how these things seem to be fairly one sided.

But honestly I haven’t been following it too closely. It just seems like another situation where people had a belief (eg Twitter is biased against my group!) and confirmation bias leads them to believe any and all things which support said belief.

What Taibbi did was take misrepresented cherry-picked data, and then uncritically repeated it in an attempt to give it credibility since he's ostensibly a journalist. It was transparent to anyone who took the ten to fifteen minutes to analyze it. It was obvious what was going on even prior to that when Musk released the data to "journalists" who were critical of the so called "mainstream media".

Anyway, that story has been dead and gone the day it surfaced.
 

Thaedolus

Gold Member
What Taibbi did was take misrepresented cherry-picked data, and then uncritically repeated it in an attempt to give it credibility since he's ostensibly a journalist. It was transparent to anyone who took the ten to fifteen minutes to analyze it. It was obvious what was going on even prior to that when Musk released the data to "journalists" who were critical of the so called "mainstream media".

Anyway, that story has been dead and gone the day it surfaced.
Well, it seems like people still point to it as proof that Twitter was exclusively censoring certain points of view they agree with, when it does nothing of the sort. But that doesn’t matter, they’ll just keep believing it and pointing to it as proof…so it did the job it was supposed to do I guess, no matter how dishonest it was.
 

LegendOfKage

Gold Member
Well, it seems like people still point to it as proof that Twitter was exclusively censoring certain points of view they agree with, when it does nothing of the sort. But that doesn’t matter, they’ll just keep believing it and pointing to it as proof…so it did the job it was supposed to do I guess, no matter how dishonest it was.
One of the most interesting things to come out of all this was finding out Twitter themselves, on their own, would have been fairly responsible with their power to silence people. For the most part, it was the government telling them that they need to censor people that resulted in the worst of it, and not ideological bias. There were internal e-mails talking about how government officials were calling them up and angry that they weren't censoring even more.

There were threats made by government officials because twitter wouldn't take action to remove people flagged as Russian bots, even though Twitter themselves had the data to know that those accounts were not bots, and said so in internal communication. There were admissions internally from twitter that they were banning a major account that had not broken their rules. There were government payments to twitter due to all the extra work they were demanding. Threats included government officials complaining to the press and creating bad PR, revoking section 230 protections if Twitter didn't censor as they the government requested, and also some vague threats of the "we'll be doing something about this" variety.

Again, for an overview of some of these things, try watching the Rising video I posted in this thread:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/elon-musk-likely-to-step-down-from-twitter-no-politics.1648115/page-13#post-267287677

There's a lot to talk about, but of course the MSNBC reporter ignored all of it to focus on whatever inconsequential errors he could find in the reporting. I will say, he seems really good at his job, and did very well at making Taibbi look bad. But he still ignored all the substance. Great for people cheering for their team, but pretty shitty for someone actually looking for a genuine good-faith debate about government overreach, and even worse when you actually know the facts involved because you've been closely following the issue.
 
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Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Continuing the long and arduous work of making Twitter better, the API has been further restricted (unless you pay, of course). Twitter is trying to sell it as "curtailing bots" but what it means is bot networks with a budget (run by states or corporations) can keep operating while community bots like Thread Reader or novelty ones like Possum Every Hour are now dead.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
?

I still see it. But they did label it as state-affiliated media, which is complete bullshit and once again a decision that seems to only benefit bad actors

My bad. I thought it was banned because they labeled them as "state affiliated" when they know they aren't. Not even PBS, being funded partially by our taxes, is state affiliated.

They'll do the same to AP soon enough, probably.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Voice Of America, a branch of the US government, isn't labelled "state affiliated".

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168...ated-media-label-might-not-have-been-accurate

Musk is looking into it, like always.

What is there to dig into? He was caught being a partisan (admittedly npr is left leaning but they always have been... And still received their small funding during the former President's term) and is taking his time to act like "oh, I'm making sure I'm doing the right thing"... When it takes just a cursory glance at NPR's funding and editorial content (like having articles criticizing the current President).

He's full of shit!
 

Mistake

Member
What is there to dig into? He was caught being a partisan (admittedly npr is left leaning but they always have been... And still received their small funding during the former President's term) and is taking his time to act like "oh, I'm making sure I'm doing the right thing"... When it takes just a cursory glance at NPR's funding and editorial content (like having articles criticizing the current President).

He's full of shit!
They said so themselves. Scroll down near the bottom https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
You guys also have a point with pbs and voice of america. Nothing wrong with transparency
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!

Mistake

Member
They receive a portion of their funding from state sources. The state has no influence over their content. They are nothing like actual state media like RT. It's just Musk doing more of Putin's bidding.
Money is influence. I don’t care what state they get their money from, that’s still government money.

And that’s quite the statement there…
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Blocking substack is a terrible move. Twitter won’t be used as the de facto public communications platform when you can’t even cross-promote your writing properly. Very short-sighted.

Making it impossible to distinguish Twitter Blue from legacy checkmarks is even worse for signal:noise.

NPR is not state media.
 

Mistake

Member
When they routinely criticize every administration, your statement doesn't work.
You can criticize whomever and still have bias. It just depends on the slant or how much it’s done. I don’t mind when they talk about some science stuff, but everything else is the same boo hoo topics all the time. Not my thing
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
You can criticize whomever and still have bias. It just depends on the slant or how much it’s done. I don’t mind when they talk about some science stuff, but everything else is the same boo hoo topics all the time. Not my thing
NPR has been overtaken by a monoculture of activists in recent years but that doesn’t make it state media. Bias and government control are very different. NPR is part of the free press.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
You can criticize whomever and still have bias. It just depends on the slant or how much it’s done. I don’t mind when they talk about some science stuff, but everything else is the same boo hoo topics all the time. Not my thing

You claimed they were state-run media. Now you've moved the goalposts into a different sport.
 
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