[cmrdporcupine]

Right? Mass random firings of employees in multiple incompetent waves, blocking and expelling journalists and activists, re-enabling known hate-speech accounts, walking out of press conferences when questioned, spreading QAnon adjacent conspiracy theories... none of this annoyed Paul Graham enough to leave.. and in fact he defended the guy...

But blocking links to Mastodon? That makes him leave? Like, uh, fine, but... maybe he could have not mocked us for pointing out the dysfunction weeks and weeks ago?

Between all the crypto implosions happening and this, wealthy Silicon Valley investor types and their hanger-ons are really having a "moment" these past few months. Sheesh.

[diydsp]

This was the straw that broke the camel's back. that doesn't mean he adores the other changes.

[willis936]

None of those things incurred opportunity cost. I don't know who invests in what, but a cynical, logical explanation is on the table.

[908B64B197]

In a free country there's this thing called the first amendment and freedom of speech; because someone doesn't like a certain opinion doesn't make it hate speech.

However, blocking links to a competitor is pretty clear-cut anticompetitive behavior. Imagine AT&T refusing to serve Verizon's websites.

[josteink]

> re-enabling known hate-speech accounts

“Hate speech” is left-wing code for “someone with an opposing point of view”.

Having those accounts unbanned, if nothing else, is a healthy sign.

What this thread is about though (banning outbound links to other platforms), not so much. That plain reeks of desperation.

[UncleMeat]

"Deathcon 3 on jews" is more valuable speech than links to facebook profiles, gotcha.

[josteink]

Uh. Did you miss the part of my comment which said that link-banning being bad?

Also nice hyperbole you got there.

[UncleMeat]

What hyperbole? We've got a policy that is link-banning while unbanning people who are holding "legally allowed opinions" (nice edit) like Mr. West and other racists.

[josteink]

The edit was a clarification based on your comment which was clearly misunderstanding what I was trying to say. Nothing malicious/nefarious intended.

Also: while Kanye is clearly his own kind of category of crazy, what “other racists”?

I don’t know a single such case.

[optionalsquid]

> Also: while Kanye is clearly his own kind of category of crazy, what “other racists”?

>

> I don’t know a single such case.

One example I remember reading about was Andrew Anglin [1], the founder of The Daily Stormer [2], a website that, to save you a click, Wikipedia describes as "an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews".

As his Wikipedia article [1] notes,

> Anglin was banned from Twitter in 2013, but was reinstated weeks after the site was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Anglin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer

[bfrog]

That seems to be a real boon for advertising revenue there at twitter. Just what advertisers dream of, their ad next to a post by some antisemitism/racism/lgbt hate.

You just lost a large group of potential customers. Brilliant marketing strategy.

Maybe if you sell flags that go on oversized pickups. About everyone else is a miss in that sort of stupidity.

[cmrdporcupine]

No, it's not code in this case. Many of the accounts he re-enabled were full-on white supremacists. That's not an "opposing point of view" it's beyond the pale of civilized society and we literally fought wars to defeat it last century.

And the list of accounts he banned were from a list left-wing/anarchist accounts given to him by known self-proclaimed fascists.

If you think that's healthy, you have problems.

[rossjudson]

Conversely, "an opposing point of view" is right-wing code used to mask hate speech, when it occurs.

Does hate speech exist? Yes. Are we in danger of overusing the term? Yes.