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Forums - Politics Discussion - Twitter is now X

 

Is free speech suppressed on the internet's main public squares

Yes 54 52.94%
 
No 44 43.14%
 
Undecided 4 3.92%
 
Total:102

One more reason to avoid Twitter I guess



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What does Twitter have to do with "public squares"? It's a digital equivalent of a private auditorium.



Was I happy about Twitter and Facebook censoring conservatives? No.

Did I pretty much quit using those services? Yep.

Did I support calls for them to be investigated and regulated? No. They are companies that owe their allegiance to their shareholders, and if the shareholders leave those same leaders in place, then the majority of the shares must support censorship of conservatives, and that's their choice.

Now that Elon Musk is a major shareholder, and potentially about to be a majority share owner...

Am I happy Twitter will be censoring less conservative voices and being more neutral? Yes.

Will I use Twitter if it becomes less censoring of ideas the far left hates? Probably not.

Do I think liberals freaking out over Musk are being ridiculous? Absolutely. He is a moderate. He isn't going to take over Twitter and shut down liberal ideas, he just is going to push for everyone's voices to be heard and not just ones supported by the far left. The vast majority of conservatives are not Alt Right, just like the vast majority of liberals aren't Antifa, Musk just wants people to be treated fairly and ideas to be treated fairly.



Pretty good video on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuc1RGNLe8



Elon might be voicesterous but he isn't going to do something with Twitter that is going to get him sued and costs him billions. It's funny and sad that just the amount of money Tesla's stock fluctuates from week to week is enough money for Elon to purchase Twitter's 40 billion dollar market cap outright.  Edit also funny that after democrats were pushing for Elon to pay more taxes, so he put up a twitter poll asking if he should sell shares of his stock to pay taxes (which he had to do anyways) but than goes and spends the money he sold that stock for to buy 9% of Twitter.



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Generally, the “Conservatives” aren’t getting banned over conservatism. They’re getting banned over libel and hate speech that breaks the terms of service and the law. There is a world of difference between speech that makes a political point, and speech designed to demean, bring suspicion, incite harassment, or incite the murder of minorities. These are rules that every site has because most countries don’t consider hate speech or libel as protected free speech for obvious historical reasons.

In addition. The Internet is full of anonymous people being complete anti-social assholes, and people forget that this isn’t generally acceptable behaviour in regular society. That’s why sites generally have anti-trolling, anti-flaming, and other decorum rules.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Good. I dont think he is going to be able to make any change at the end of the day and it will still be a place very unfriendly for everyone to the right of Stalin, but it will be interesting to see him try. Personally I think he should just leave twitter and start to use other options, even if they are not popular amongst journalists. A person like Musk starting to use other platforms would probably make those platforms much more viable and maybe, who knows, start to generate some competition to Twitter. Probably not though, most likely what we will see in the future is more division, with center and right wing people moving to other platforms or stop using twitter (which is what I think everyone should do anyway).



Dulfite said:

Was I happy about Twitter and Facebook censoring conservatives? No.

Did I pretty much quit using those services? Yep.

Did I support calls for them to be investigated and regulated? No. They are companies that owe their allegiance to their shareholders, and if the shareholders leave those same leaders in place, then the majority of the shares must support censorship of conservatives, and that's their choice.

Now that Elon Musk is a major shareholder, and potentially about to be a majority share owner...

Am I happy Twitter will be censoring less conservative voices and being more neutral? Yes.

Will I use Twitter if it becomes less censoring of ideas the far left hates? Probably not.

Do I think liberals freaking out over Musk are being ridiculous? Absolutely. He is a moderate. He isn't going to take over Twitter and shut down liberal ideas, he just is going to push for everyone's voices to be heard and not just ones supported by the far left. The vast majority of conservatives are not Alt Right, just like the vast majority of liberals aren't Antifa, Musk just wants people to be treated fairly and ideas to be treated fairly.

Thats a very good take, almost exactly what I think. But it's interesting to see all the discussion. He is a crazy guy indeed. 



Let's be real here for a second. It wouldn't be right for twitter to keep existing WITHOUT a shitposter on their board. This just makes sense lol



EnricoPallazzo said:
Dulfite said:

Was I happy about Twitter and Facebook censoring conservatives? No.

Did I pretty much quit using those services? Yep.

Did I support calls for them to be investigated and regulated? No. They are companies that owe their allegiance to their shareholders, and if the shareholders leave those same leaders in place, then the majority of the shares must support censorship of conservatives, and that's their choice.

Now that Elon Musk is a major shareholder, and potentially about to be a majority share owner...

Am I happy Twitter will be censoring less conservative voices and being more neutral? Yes.

Will I use Twitter if it becomes less censoring of ideas the far left hates? Probably not.

Do I think liberals freaking out over Musk are being ridiculous? Absolutely. He is a moderate. He isn't going to take over Twitter and shut down liberal ideas, he just is going to push for everyone's voices to be heard and not just ones supported by the far left. The vast majority of conservatives are not Alt Right, just like the vast majority of liberals aren't Antifa, Musk just wants people to be treated fairly and ideas to be treated fairly.

Thats a very good take, almost exactly what I think. But it's interesting to see all the discussion. He is a crazy guy indeed. 

It's too bad that it's too long after the perfect timing for this. It wasn't that long ago really, last weeks flavor.

When complaints were piling up, the go to excuse was, they're all private businesses and can do whatever they want.

Which of course was a shot at conservatives and capitalism, but it had foundation and legitimacy for those who didn't like it.

Now we have a private multi billionaire who's using that same type of excuse to get their way, and all of the sudden it's a concern now.

I personally hope Musk doesn't go crazy and turn Twitter into a right wing echo chamber, but I do hope he tries to balance it better.

Seeing how Elon rolls, I wouldn't put it past him to start by changing Twitter's blue logo to red. Then later, just poll about Trumps account.

While I'd have to assume he actually has big plans, he's crazy enough this could just be to allow him to become The King troll, discipline free.