Such vignettes capture the core dysfunctionality of Twitter: Everyone thinks the place would be great, if only we could be rid of all those other guys. For doctrinaire progressives, the preferred means for doing so has always been top-down censorship (or, if you prefer, “community standards”). But that dream has now been crushed: Even if Musk doesn’t eliminate content moderation altogether, he’s never going to give the Jonah Simms crowd anything near the bubble-wrapped social-media experience they want. That’s why these goodbye-cruel-Twitter threads have such a glum, self-pitying quality to them. It’s one thing to put up with dissenting opinions. It’s another thing to know that you’ll always have to put up with them.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Twitter angst and other hilaritiesDecember 13th, 2022 |
 9 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Twitter angst and other hilarities |
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Social media may have some virtues, but the biggest problem is it has given everyone with an opinion a platform and the likeminded can self-reinforce to appear that there are more of them than there really is. Once upon a time, one guy standing on a streetcorner yelling, “Transwomen are women!” or “Jury Nullfication is legal!” could safely be ignored. But with something like Twitter, more people can say it so it appears that there are more of them than there really are. It becomes an echo chamber once you throw in censorship based on feelings and political stances instead of on something like posting obviously illegal things like child pornography or plans to shoot someone. And for those who were perfectly fine with political censorship because it was the “other side” being censored (and being part of the Outer Party, the idea that they could run afoul of the ever changing standards never crosses their minds), the idea that someone would buy their beloved platform and say “no, we’re not censoring based on politics” is akin to attacking their religion.
it’s almost like the invention of the printing press in that a small number of people can get their ideas out to a large number of people, but in this case comes with a real sense of entitlement and moral superiority because other people are ego massaging along the way.
Problem is, Musk needs both groups to stay and engage in discussion. If it turns into a right-wing site and the left bails on it, it will merely be another (very expensive) group hug, and it will just wither away. He’s going to need to make both groups equally unhappy.
Leftie narcissists who talk about leaving Twitter are like cats talking about giving up catnip. Musk is brilliant at trolling them, as was Trump. Lefties can’t ignore Musk or Trump, won’t leave Twitter, because of their reflexes for popularity and public display. Every Musk outrage is like jiggling a laser toy in front of a kitten. A very clever way to revive one of the older social platforms.
Elon Musk was a darling of the left – people forget this, but he was. Not only had he only voted Democrat before 2022 (yes he actually voted for Joseph Biden – so at least one of those “81 million” votes was real), and he was “Mr Tesla” – the electric car man!
Now Elon Musk, whom the left used to love, is hated (absolutely hated) by the left. Why? Because he reduced censorship on Twitter – that is it.
Mr Musk did not insist that all internet sites should allow conservatives to speak – just Twitter, the one he had bought (and, yes, like Donald John Trump, I still think Mr Musk paid too much money for Twitter – but it was his decision to make, and he had the courage to “put his money where his mouth is” I admire that courage).
Mr Musk has the courage of his convictions – for example he does not believe that the way to “win the debate on climate change” is to silence critics, such as Tony Heller, Mr Musk believes the truth his on his side of the debate, so that the use of arguments and evidence can prove his case, the case that C02 emissions are a deadly threat.
This is what the left used to say they believed in – freedom of debate, the right to dissent. But now they, the Guardian, the New York Times, and so on, believe that Freedom of Speech is “Repressive Tolerance” (hello Herbert Marcuse), which “harms disadvantaged groups”, that “racists” and “climate deniers” and so on, should be silenced – if not put in prison.
They, the left, have no faith in their arguments. They do not, deep down, believe in their own case.
Steven R, the other difference with the printing press, early on, the ones who owned it and decided what to print were by and large not crazy or amplifying the crazier things floating around the public square. From then on until the advent of social media, there were processes to winnow out the non-productive, stupid, evil ideas. Not suppress them, but just show they were bad and have most decent people see that because most decent people had gotten some sort of civics education whether formally in schools or by their elders.
Is anyone here aware of any good ideas to adjust how we do the online discourse thing to include the function of an editor, publisher, a “sifting and winnowing”? And by good idea I mean something that does not suppress the idiots, Marxists, and other “evil doers”. Unless by “suppress” you mean, not amplify or pay any attention to. Or is this happening and I just can’t see it? This is quite possible as I spend most of my days earning a living and not online learning and thinking about this.
The flip side is the censorship Twitter did was enter into a quasi-official agreement with government to lock certain accounts and the writer end up on yet another government watchdog list. We’ve come a long way from Elizabeth I ordering hands to be cut off for seditious writing because someone wrote a screed against her maybe marrying the Duke of Anjou.
I offer the suggestion that it starts as an unreflective belief in the obvious correctness of left-wing arguments. It is very basic to the left-wing view (or, to be pedantic, to a very common left-wing view, typically dominant in those who are the left’s ruling public face) that ways to solve the human condition, or some part of it that is ‘the cause’ for the moment, are not only possible but obvious. The existence of intelligent rational people who do not see this is not just outrageous, it is intellectually discomfiting. The existence of stupid people who don’t see this and evil people who don’t want to see this is much more intellectually acceptable – so as many as possible are classified as such.
It is therefore necessary to handle these people, humanely if possible, so arguments must be simplified for them. As the arguments they accepted themselves (when buying into whatever their current leftist crusade is) were already at least somewhat simplistic, these ‘picture truths for the ignorant people’ are sometimes simplistic indeed. Meanwhile, those who grow up and progress in the movement’s hierarchy evolve their ‘esoteric truth for the clergy’ to handle the occasional contra-indication that even they find they must address somehow – so it becomes less and less possible to tell the public the pure unvarnished truth of what they really believe.
This is the point at which they increasingly lose faith in their public arguments’ ability to persuade the masses (who now include their more naive followers – their younger selves). The followers think the arguments are obviously true but the leaders have progressed from that state to thinking the arguments are essentially true.
Between a deep contempt for the masses – a deeply arrogant conviction that stupidity and/or evil explains people who do not swiftly agree – and a known if never deeply examined memory of what they’ve claimed and done to avoid such people winning arguments, they get to a state where they can indeed disbelieve in their arguments’ persuasiveness while not questioning their own eliteness.
Some do then progress to the state Burke mentioned: vicious persecutors who don’t believe their own creed. But I think some stay, for a time that can be till death, in the state I’ve described.
it probably doesn’t matter if twitter loses the passionate left and right. i think normies would be happy with a twitter that showed them tweets of who they followed and promoted normie interests and not random political crap. apparently twitter japan completely changed after musk fired the curation team and it trended anime and other stuff people were interested in instead of divisive political drama: https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/11/15/japanese-twitter-users-report-political-content-no-longer-being-pushed-into-their-feeds-following-elon-musk-takeover/
No, Twitter is better without me. My ban has not been repealed but, given that I am a sociopathic cunt, that is all well and good.