[ExI] Review - TED interview with Elon Musk re Twitter takeover

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat

>...Many good points made in this article!

<https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-how-little-he-understands-about-content-moderation/>
--------
>...The problem is not “someone I dislike saying something I dislike” the problem is spam, abuse, harassment, threats of violence, dangerously misleading false information, and more.
--------

BillK

_______________________________________________



Thx BillK, the reason (one of the reasons) I am optimistic is that with Twitter, a user chooses which twitterer she wishes to follow.  In that sense, she creates a custom filter and can make her space as safe or as dangerous as she wishes.

Second: even with its 35k human moderators, Twitter was making some appalling mistakes.  They "proactively blocked" a guy who currently has eeeiiiighty niiiine miiiilllllion freaking followers.  It isn't even political: he is not eligible for high office, he's African American.  Not born here, can't run for POTUS so that isn't it.  Twitter proactively filtered a guy who now has nearly half the twitterverse following him, while allowing posts which openly call for violence.

What we have in the social media are companies with the power of a publisher but the legal protections of a platform.  Unaccountable power leads to abuse.  Evidence: Twitter proactively blocking Musk.

Elon is a guy who has inherent credibility because of his astonishing business successes (Lions and rockets and cars, oh my!)  Of course he is going to have skerjillions of followers.  Twitter "proactively blocked" him, not because of what he actually posted, but because of what they feared he would post.

Show me any other social medium owner in that situation please.  There are none?  OK then.  I am betting with the guy who wants to try to robo-moderate Twitter, and I think he can succeed where others failed.  I think software can find spam, abuse, harassment, threats of violence.

That whole "dangerously misleading false information" bit is clearly a lot more tricky, but all those human Twitter moderators collectively failed at that as well.  At some point a Ministry of Truth must arbitrate on what is truth.  The person chosen in the USA to head the newly-formed Ministry of Truth is the same person who told us the Russia dossier was true but the laptop story was fake.

Eh.  I choose... Elon Musk for 500 please Alex.

spike