[noetic_techy]

It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics. That may be unavoidable anyways.

I think people outside the SV bubble (I grew up there, don't live there anymore) don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are. Musk has his pulse on that, so I'm happy to see him step in and shake up the group think.

[tedivm]

Outside of the SV bubble people have actual lives that don't resolve around tech companies. Until someone shows actual evidence with real numbers behind it it's hard to take the whole "people don't realize how much people do or think X" seriously.

[packetlost]

As someone who lives in the midwest, very disconnected from the SV bubble, this is spot on. I know several conservative-minded people that absolutely care about the censorship and policies SV companies push and despise them for it.

[tedivm]

I also live in the midwest, and literally no one I know (family or friends) outside of the tech industry cares at all about this. I'm sure that means my bubble is a bubble- but again, until I see real numbers either way this just looks like people pushing a narrative and using imaginary people to do it.

[packetlost]

It's more on Facebook than Twitter, but it absolutely happens. Maybe you live in a liberal bubble lol

[nonethewiser]

Well, are you liberal?

[sha256sum]

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

[mywittyname]

And yet, they all have Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts. You can hate them all you want, but you're not going to change them by shoveling money into their pockets. They care enough to bitch, but not enough to do anything about it.

These people who hate Twitter probably don't even use Twitter. If you're not interesting or important, then nobody on Twitter cares what you have to say. It's not like Facebook, where you can argue politics with someone from high school. A nobody on Twitter is just screaming at the clouds.

[systemvoltage]

Twitter is a monopoly. When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter, it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation. It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.

[awb]

> It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.

You provide no evidence and then try to shut down other opinions? This is certainly not a self-evident fact.

Maybe the public square is still the public square? Or the Internet itself?

Isn’t “public” in “public square” important? Twitter is a private company. The public square became important to free discussion because it was owned by the public. Twitter isn’t.

And between FB, YT, Reddit, podcasting, Google search, etc. we’ve actually never had this many different, non-siloed ways of communicating publicly. If Twitter went bankrupt tomorrow there would still be many ways for the public to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience.

I don’t understand how a website that the majority of my friends and family don’t use, isn’t public and isn’t in the top 10 visited sites can be the “de facto public square”.

Sure, it’s a major communication channel, but one of many.

[spsful]

This is very much up for debate. Elected officials actually have free postage and can send letters if they need to. Not only that, they likely enjoy direct access to their local news networks and can broadcast messages through that avenue. Most have email lists, and can send interested constituents updates through that platform. Most also have websites on official .gov accounts where they could host press releases as well.

Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.

[systemvoltage]

> Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.

NO! I am not saying that at all. I am saying that this is why Twitter is a de facto public square. I am not advocating that Twitter should be a public square. Frustrating to see a strawman of this sorts. You have completely and utterly misunderstood my points. Basically, 180 degrees opposite of what I was trying to say, may be a failure of mine to be less precise but jeez.

The observation that Twitter has become a public square is undenieable (this is different from advocating Twitter to be a public square. I actually wish it wasn't).

[dragonwriter]

> Twitter is a monopoly.

In what market? What is the evidence of non-substitution/pricing power?

> When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter

It’s...not the only way.

> it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation

First Amendment rights of private parties are not privileges.

> It is a de facto public square.

It is neither a de facto nor de jure public square.

> This is not up for debate.

Saying “This is not up for debate“ does not make your bare assertion into an actually unquestionable position.

[Breza]

I don't think they're a monopoly. If Twitter vanished tomorrow, people would quickly move on to a host of other platforms. That's the sad truth about network effects: they can unravel shockingly quickly. My mayor tweets, but her office also uses email, text messages, postal mail, press conferences, and other tools to communicate.

[bpodgursky]

Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.

People care because censorship does affect how they build their real lives.

[tedivm]

> Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.

This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship? In my experience far more of them are worried about harassment- I know far more women who can't use social media because of their stalkers than I do people who were kicked out of social media for having bad opinions.

[ARandomerDude]

> This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship?

Many, in my experience. To the point that I get sick of hearing about it, and I'm not an alt-right Q-anon type or anywhere near it.

[Gene_Parmesan]

I'll take that as a given.

I think what you're missing is that most people don't want to run into vitriolic hate speech while they're going about trying to organize their neighborhood parties (and so on). We can talk about the idealism of free speech all we want; the problem is any platform that stakes a claim as caring about Free Speech almost immediately gets overrun by that sort of vitriolic hate that most people don't want to be around in their daily lives.

I went on one of the "free speech" video platforms about a year ago because I was curious, and on my first visit, right on the front page, were videos about how the Jews rule the world and Holocaust denial. I'm not remotely Jewish and I was immediately put off from ever revisiting.

This is a core problem that people who legitimately care about censorship and free speech need to address. It's extremely unfortunate, but "anti-censorship" has well and truly become a dog whistle in the modern era.

Remember that free speech is about the 'market of ideas.' In even totally free markets, not every product sells. An anti-censorship social network startup cratering because its platform immediately got overrun with hate is not censorship, it's the market at work. The vast majority of 'regular' people I know do not consider Facebook's rules prohibiting hate speech to be censorship. They're just grateful they aren't running into it every time they open their phones to scroll their feed.

[oriki]

This, honestly. It _feels_ more like the only people that care about SV censorship policies are the people affected by them: SV types that live almost entirely on the platforms they're scared of being censored from. Well, that and people who make their entire careers pushing other peoples' boundaries and, as a result, generate a big negative following.

[BurningFrog]

Most people get their information and communicate through internet tech companies.

If they think the information is censored by tech companies, they'll care a lot about that!

[timtas]

He's not asking you to take him seriously. He's taking executive action while others wait infinitely for some kind of "real numbers" to come in. Analysts make terrible entrepreneurs.

[memish]

Backing this up with some data, the most common reaction on twitter is:

"Elon will improve Twitter by expanding freedom of speech on the platform"

https://twitter.com/NarrativesProj/status/151139309757754574...

[and0]

That's what makes all of this so ironic to me. Social media platforms and their users (especially Facebook) are not left-leaning. That a vast majority of Twitter users feel he will improve it means that the bias is fictional.

[cbozeman]

I don't know how you got that sentiment from that graphic, which doesn't have jack shit to do with political affiliation.

I will put $100 down right now that if you did a statistically significant, unbiased, controlled, representative sample of verified Twitter users - as in people you can provably show are actual human beings - you'll find the majority are left-leaning.

Oh wait, I don't have to, Pew Research Group already did it...

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...

Facebook is a different animal because more than half the planet uses it, and what we consider "left" or "right" as Americans is dramatically different than what other nations would consider "left" or "right" or "liberal" or "conservative".

[enragedcacti]

> verified Twitter users - as in people you can provably show are actual human beings

Verified means the account is authentic and of public interest. It doesn't guarantee that you are a person and further, the vast, vast majority of real people on twitter aren't verified.

as for the pew survey, it isn't controlling for many of the things that we know correlate with political affiliation, it is just reporting them as isolated facts. Just education and age would likely explain the delta in political affiliations within that survey. [1]

Sure this doesn't change the fact that the slight majority is Dem-Leaning, but it should raise serious doubt that its because of bias on the part of twitter instead of just plain old demographics of the internet.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-...

[nonethewiser]

"Just education and age would likely explain the delta in political affiliations within that survey. [1]"

These concedes the point that Twitter users are liberal on average.

[WoahNoun]

Verified users. Not all users.

[colinmhayes]

Most of the verified users are journalists, who do lean left. I don't think that says anything about the overall user base of twitter.

[el_ravager]

Precisely, liberals aren't leftists in the least—at least not according to leftists. That is, world-wide, liberals and fascists have constantly worked hand-in-hand to form coalitions to keep the left out of power since WW1.

The true dialogue in America is happening amongst center-left vs. far-right ideologies.

[nickstinemates]

Honest question: have any far left politicians/celebrities/blue checkmark people been banned from twitter?

[klyrs]

What do you consider "far left"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

[nickstinemates]

This link answers my question - thanks.

Far left is the opposite of far right, for which we can all point to many of them that have been banned from twitter.

[klyrs]

I'd define the far right in terms of distance from center, personally.

So, I'll refine my question with an example from the list: who is the Anders Breivik of the left?

[colinmhayes]

Which far leftists do you think have done things on twitter similar to what caused far rightists to be banned?

[nickstinemates]

I think the framing you're proposing is off; what the right has done are things that are offensive to leftists and as a result they're banned. It's tautological. This is exactly the premise of the criticism levied in this thread and writ-large at Twitter censorship.

[twofornone]

Casual racism directed at white people is common and goes unpunished, for starters.

[colinmhayes]

Who’s been banned for racism?

[nonethewiser]

You're implying liberals dont want free speech on Twitter.

[tonguez]

“It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics. That may be unavoidable anyways.”

one can dream. as of now all corporations follow the same ideology of neoconservative imperialism because they are all owned by the same people (blackrock, etc)

[taf2]

You mean like the news? As an experiment try this for two months. On month 1 - watch only CNN. On month 2 - watch only Fox. Maybe take a 1 week break between both and write down your thoughts on the world... very interesting how it evolves based on what you watch/listen too... From what I hear if you just watched Russian state media it'd be an even more extreme version. The great thing about our free society is you have the choice to do this experiment, as I understand it you can't do this in Russia today...

[xanaxagoras]

Perhaps this is what is actually meant by "television programming"

[choward]

> as I understand it you can't do this in Russia today...

Or Ukraine or many other countries. Not sure why you singled out Russia specifically.

However, if you are just watching corporate media you're not getting the full picture either. CNN and Fox News have very similar opinions on non-culture war issues.

[Breza]

Russia has lots of people with access to technology and it also has wildly repressive speech laws. That combination makes it great for this example.

[nonethewiser]

"It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics."

Not ideal, but better than the status quo where there is 1 company catering to 1 group.

[raincom]

Wasn’t how Fox News born?

[jasonlotito]

> don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are.

Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit. I'm sure you can find some people on both sides of the spectrum regarding their policies, but the vast majority don't. As someone who isn't from SV or has ever worked for in or for an SV company, my bubble is surrounded by farmers.

[nonethewiser]

Doesnt seem that way from my perspective. Do you grant this is simply your impression? I tend to distrust you because you just assert this general truth that is rather controversial and you dont cite any data.

[whimsicalism]

The idea that an absolute majority of Americans have really spent any time even thinking about Twitter's censorship policies seems divorced from the reality I live in.

[cbozeman]

> Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit.

That's the problem with not giving a shit. When things finally do become bad enough that it affects you personally, it's too late. When it comes to standing up for what's right - and I define what's "right" as mostly what the Constitution of the United States lays forth as our inalienable rights, you better give a shit from the word "go" and you better oppose it stridently because once freedoms get stripped away from you, they're nearly impossible to recover.

I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.

And we can blather on all goddamn day about "muh private corporations!" but when these corporations are actively suppressing competitors and are working hand-in-hand with news outlets to label any new alterative as a Mos Eisley-esque shithole that no respectable person would frequent, the point is moot.

Facebook and Twitter are the modern day public square. Some people will want to claim it's "The Internet" itself; you can just go make your own public square and publish your own website, etc., but that's not actually how a public square works. Just because you hop on your tractor and box blade your front yard flat and pave it over with concrete and add some park benches to it, doesn't turn it into the public square. You actually have to have the public actively occupying it. The public square is where the people are. And the people are on Facebook and Twitter... at least in America.

[Broken_Hippo]

I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.

I can't even take this seriously. These are the same folks that kept people as property. Didn't make sure everyone could vote (male land owners only). They founded the country on land stolen from folks already living here. It isn't like the founders were really beacons of freedom, at least not if you use today's standards and honestly, they'd not even have a grasp of the events leading up to it. Perhaps they'd back it up considering how glaringly the world has changed since then.

I'm sure it is supposed to make folks think the country is straying from its foundations, but look around: People that aren't straight, white land owners are walking around with all these rights and freedom and stuff. That's already happened long ago. Maybe straying is a really good thing.

[bliteben]

Imagine being born into several flawed systems, risking everything, and many had a lot to risk to fix one aspect of a system and being judged because you didn't fix everything. You act like the founding fathers created slavery on their own. The freedom given to the world by the US and by extension Napoleon was not some inevitable thing and its not something that will necessarily persist either as we can easily judge from mankind's very limited written history.

[Breza]

Well said. Judging historical figures by modern standards isn't fair. We should look at each person as a flawed human being and take away lessons from what they did right and what they did wrong.

[Broken_Hippo]

It is fair when folks are speculating what the people from the past would say about modern problems - which is what this started out as. If one is wrong but not the other, some folks aren't arguing in good faith.

[Breza]

"I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act."

That might not be the best argument. Remember that the First Amendment passed only a few years before the awful Sedition Act, which would never pass modern judicial review.

[xanaxagoras]

> and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics.

That's exactly where we are now? When twitter censors right of center ideas and de-platforms those who think them, we invariably seek refuge in alternatives that engender far more radical thinking than if we had stayed in a larger public discussion.

[zht]

how much of that is Twitter and how much of that is Fox News?

[nonethewiser]

Twitter having a liberal bias is 100% Twitter, 0% Fox news

[xanaxagoras]

I don't follow.

[systemvoltage]

> one of its competitors rises

The ideological complex has not allowed anyone to rise. That's the issue. Even neutrality is considered distasteful.

[cbsmith]

Huh, wha?

[adventured]

If you're wondering about the neutrality premise.

The furthest ~25% on the left and right have an increasingly extreme, partisan, borderline psychotic view of the world that you're either with us or against us. That polarization has become radically more aggressive over the past decade.

Just to use a simple example: someone might might say it's not enough to not oppose men becoming women and dominating female swimming/sports (neutrality), you must support it. Anything else and you're an "enemy" and not an "ally." The left in particular has created an increasingly large vocabulary designed to polarize and split the population and draw lines between people (either or lines).

[Spivak]

This doesn’t really make sense what you described isn’t actually a neutral stance — hell just the framing alone betrays your feelings. You’re already using extremely polarizing vocabulary in your attempt to be neutral.

Someone in support of trans men and women being able to compete would take issue with:

* “men becoming women” — transitioning doesn’t change your gender, it only aligns your outward appearance to the gender you have always been.

* “dominating female sports” — the whole point of the opposing view is specifically that trans women don’t dominate sports.

You’ve twisted it in such a way that even accepting the premise of your “neutral” statement is already super political.

Here’s a real neutral stance that would be accepted by people on both sides of this particular issue.

“I’m not qualified to have an opinion on this matter, the decision is best left to the athletic clubs and people more knowledgeable about the effects of HRT.”

[not_sure_]

> transitioning doesn’t change your gender, it only aligns your outward appearance to the gender you have always been

Is that really true? There's a growing body of evidence that "the gender you have always been" doesn't really apply as a general case. For example: detransitioners, autogynephiles, abusive parents attempting to 'trans the gay away' in their kids, and so on.

Of course there are people who also report having felt like their dissonant gender identity for as long as they remember, and will for the rest of their lives. But this is not universal.

Seems there are many reasons why one may decide on transitioning, and not all of them are positive.

[Spivak]

First, since you used a throwaway for this, kudos for asking this in a way that is respectful and seemingly genuinely curious.

I think at some point it becomes a little bit semantics. If you transition for reasons other than your dissonance or because you suffer from dysphoria then you’re probably gonna have a bad time. And if you’re forced to transition by abusive parents or government you’re gonna cause dissonance or dysphoria.

Detransitioners are an interesting case because while it’s absolutely possible for people to be wrong the majority of cases of people doing it are because of external factors like violence, discrimination, and unsupportive friends and family. However, there are lots of safeguards to keep people from making mistakes. You need the sign off from a doctor, two psychologists, and have to be living as your post-transition gender for at least a year to get reassignment surgery, HRT is broadly speaking reversible, nobody is giving HRT at all to kids, teens only get puberty blockers until they and their doctors are sure, and adults still have to go through an interview. This process is supposed to catch autogynephiliacs (although this terminology is really really dated) and I suppose someone could lie their way into getting reassignment but that’s on them then.

So yeah, I think we’re basically in agreement. I think a better way to say it so it’s universal is “transitioning doesn’t change your gender.” A gay woman forced to transition against her will is still a woman, a man who detransitions because it doesn’t alleviate problems misidentified as dysphoria is still a man, and a trans woman is and always has been a woman.

[cbsmith]

It does not seem like the solution to the problem would be change the mission of the mainstream platform. It would undoubtedly fall victim to whatever these mysterious forces are.

[valenaut]

I haven't encountered a single person in my young, left-wing, NYC bubble that demands I actively support trans women in female sport leagues, as opposed to not opposing them. I don't even know what the difference is between these things (does active support mean lobbying or volunteering?).

I do, however, have some family members that demand I actively oppose this, and get very mad when I profess neutrality.

[cbozeman]

So we moderates kill off each half of our crazier cousins and live in moderate harmony!

(this is extreme sarcasm, for those that can't tell)

[systemvoltage]

Well, the problem I see is the following:

- Claim that Twitter is a private corporation and its their rules (Btw, you can check my history in 2020 where I did support purge of Trump from social media, but I am now comtemplating).

- But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces, but rather with censorship, algorithms, political and misinformation driven opposition.

So now we have public square that enjoys monopolistic powers (yes, government officials exclusively publishing on Twitter. Your tax money cannot buy a platform where you can listen to the constitutuents that you voted for), but also prevents incumbents from rising through political proxies that I mentioned earlier.

This is scary.

[csee]

What scares me to no end is foreign interference by intelligence agencies in domestic affairs done via social media. That is the real danger here. We are seeing the destabilizing effects of that since 2015.

I also just don't see the widespread censorship of conservative opinions that you do. JK Rowling is still there with her TERF views (which I actually largely agree with). Jordan Peterson is still there denying the predominant view on human-caused climate change. r/conservative; nobody wants to censor this or anything like it. Bret Weinstein is still there spreading his Covid vaccine misinformation. Donald Trump got kicked off after repeated ToS violations. Far-leftists also get kicked off (I know they recently shut down a bunch of far-left subreddits) and you don't see that because of your echo chamber.

[nemothekid]

When someone says that _Twitter_ does heavy handed exercising of censorship or algorithmic manipulation just shows me that most people don't actually use Twitter and instead consume it view headlines. That wouldn't be surprising considering is the 15th largest social network by MAU globally. The Twitter product today is still largely the same as it was 10 years ago; Meta & friends do far more to stifle "free speech" but are never given the same sort of criticism because they do the "right" kind of amplification and moderating. Twitter is probably the least moderated of all the big social networks but it gets the most criticism for having too much moderation. What people actually want from Twitter is freedom from criticism from the mob, i.e "free speech for me, but not for thee".

>But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces,

Not with market forces? You mean to say that censorship is what is actually holding Gab back from mainstream adoption? This sentiment has always been incredibly myopic. I don't know why American conservatives are always surprised when their flavor of politics aren't popular. For some reason Europe and the rest of the West, who are farther left than Americans, cease to exist and the reasons why sites like Gab aren't huge is because of censorship.

[cbsmith]

There seems like there's a presumption that already successful companies are not subject to the same forces as other companies, despite all the evidence (including Twitter's experience) to the contrary.