[somenameforme]

As a person who occasionally uses Twitter, but has no interest in having an account, he has dramatically improved the experience. Before he took over it was made impossible to view replies from a user, users were spammed with popup login dialogues that could not be closed with a single click, and more. I expect Twitter probably drove more people away from the site with all this nonsense, than they coerced into registering.

I also think many of the changes to make Twitter more open, such as now open sourcing the recommendation algorithm, publishing view counts (which indirectly makes it clear when something or somebody has been shadow banned), and more are all big steps forward in creating a much better and open service for all. Really most of every change he's pursued since taking over Twitter, from my perspective at least, seems to have been big steps forward.

What would you say has been irrational?

[random314]

> What would you say has been irrational?

Really? You can't even think of one single thing?

[s__s]

It sounds like you can’t either. Do you have an example to share?

[ActorNightly]

He accused Twitter of being politically biased to the left and suppressing tweets, so he bought it to "allow free speech", except in his mind free speech apparently equates to being able to promote right wing propaganda.

As a platform, sure it can be better, and it wasn't exactly under the best management before (although the Twitter file leak actually made the old management look better than everyone thought). But lets not pretend that Musk is in this for the platform - he wants control of information to boost Republican leaders because in his mind, he is the savior of human race, so the best leadership is that which allows him to do the things he wants to do.

[_ktx2]

> He accused Twitter of being politically biased to the left and suppressing tweets, so he bought it to "allow free speech", except in his mind free speech apparently equates to being able to promote right wing propaganda.

I'm not a fan of Elon at all at this point. That said, this is more an indictment of the tech industry than Twitter alone. Most employees are some form of left, many of those employees sit on committees, have outsized wealth compared to the average citizen, donate accordingly, the executives among them have power, etc and tech plays an outsized roll on our lives now. This was made a lot more evident when Twitters head of trust and safety was interviewed and she was unable to identify, or had let situations go on, that were offensive to people you'd commonly call right where anything that was offensively to what people would commonly call left was getting combed over and at times over enforced. I'd also say that my perception of her was more that she had large gaps rather than outright hate. The biggest one that comes to mind is "#learntocode" which a bunch of journalists not only wrote articles but also used that hash tag on people working blue collar jobs, such as coal mining, that were under threat at the time. It's an isolated example, but that hash tag stayed promoted for quite a while.

This isn't to say that right-leaning oppression and left-leaninf oppression at categorically the same or have the same categorical effects. It does point to that we have larger class issues at play.

[nailer]

Twitter was politically biased to the left. Yes right wing ideas can be there now. Yes that’s part of free speech.

[ActorNightly]

Sure, except Twitter doesn't have free speech. Twitter can and does issues bans for thing said, notably in the Kanye case, and when Elon banned the elonjet account.

It's either free speech absolutionism, or not free speech. If you claim you are for free speech in the moral sense of the word, you have to let everything be posted.

As soon as you start removing things, it becomes your version of controlled narrative. And there is nothing wrong with just that, because of course you want to minimize potential damage. But then you have to be responsible for the things you let slide.

So when Twitter allows right wing rhetoric, a.k.a conspiracy theories about Nancy pelocies husband, pushed by the CEO, or things like Fauci gain of function research, it's clearly a controlled narrative.

[random314]

Damn, you got me!

[TeMPOraL]

If everyone in the anti-Musk crowd was this honest, we'd have much less drama on the Internet in the past half year.

[random314]

Not everyone can be as honest, brilliant, insightful and just as you dear Sir.