1: Everyone on Twitter proceeds to follow every account they encounter to raise everyone's follower status to 30K
2: Everyone proceeds to tweet nothing except posts calling all of Musk's companies Cissy colonizers
3: Musk's brain undergoes "spontaneous catastrophic disassembly", to use the scientific vernacular, and firebombs his platform with Mein Kampf The Updated Version For Trump Project 2025, which lasts for over 100 million consecutive tweets
4: Advertisers clutch pearls and re-bolt, driving revenue back into a crater
"with only the illusion of participation for the rest." This line is on fire, I love it. All the more reason to switch to Substack and quit X, the sooner the better.
"For the Right-winger Free speech is above all threatened when celebrities, including minor celebrities, cannot say provocative things or even feel like they cannot say them. "
Not just the right - if anything centrists are even more sensitive on this point. The famous Harpers' letter reflected the same sentiment, as has the reaction of journalists like Leigh Sales when their criticism of others is turned back against them,
I'm not sure this is a policy which should in general be put at the feet of the Great Musk Satan, though some specific words might be his directives. The issue is that moderation at scale cannot be done all by humans for large social media platforms. It's just not technically possible at any reasonable cost. But automated systems tend to be very bad at distinctions such as use/mention, sarcasm, irony, etc. Thus there's an incentive to give more personalized "service" to the more powerful, as they can raise much more of a fuss for errors.
What would you propose to do about this problem? (and be economically realistic about it).
Note, I don't mean something like: "Tune the automated system to be more to the taboos of the Very Online Left". That's just special pleading.
On your main claim, that this is a result of economic incentives, I agree and I mention this in the article. I certainly don't think the source of the decision is primarily ideological (though I do think it echoes of right-wing approaches for the reasons I gave on the paragraph on the right and celebrity).
However, while I agree this was caused by economic incentives I feel it's necessary to clarify- these were not unavoidable incentives. According to the source, the change appears to have happened with Musk. I suspect this because the moderation budget has fallen massively under Musk. The moderation budget has fallen massively under Musk because when he came in, he had the idea that he was going to make massive savings by cutting the diversity beauracracy. He made those cuts, and lost massive amounts of advertising revenue as a result due to brand protection concerns. Afterwards, with a cut moderation team, he had to scramble for solutions to, and this is probably one of the ugly compromises that resulted. Maybe if he hadn't cut so many staff, or fiddled with the rules in ways that were transparently unsustainable, he wouldn't be in this situation with few advertisers and a gerrymandered moderation system. Alternatively, if he wanted to go full free speech except for material which is illegal in America, he should have just committed to that. Now we have a solution with no advertisers, a substantial moderation budget and transparently unfair rules.
What exactly is the specific claim? I understood the ideal to be something along the lines of "All accounts should be subjected to the exact same automated and human process no matter what their power/influence/followers/etc". Is that a correct understanding, or something else? My argument is that isn't economically sound.
Is the point "The more money spent on moderation, the more humans can be assigned rather than purely automated processes"? While true in the abstract, again, the economics involved quickly reaches a limit.
A different argument is "Musk's cutting the moderation budget was penny-wise and pound-foolish, losing more in advertising revenue than the savings". Well, that's not implausible on its face, but I'm skeptical without serious consideration. It just sounds too much to me like making up a story about what one desires to be true. It's like "Those liberal's tax increases just proved their economic stupidity, since it harmed job-creation and growth so much it ended up resulting in even less government revenue than before their destruction. Now we have a discouraged business community, a wrecked economic engine, and need even more austerity cuts to social services because of the wreckage!"
Inversely, "Money spent on moderation pays for itself in increased brand trust"has the same argument problem as "Money spent on rich people pays for itself in increased economic growth".
I would also be skeptical about things like "the change appears to have happened with Musk.". These investigations are difficult to do, and it's easy to get inferences wrong, and no social-media incentive to make sure it's right (quite the opposite).
Disclaimer: Per my phrase "Great Musk Satan", I'm not a fan of him. But I also think many people's primary issue with him is not that he's a jerk, but that he's a jerk to their political tribe, and he can't be "cancelled" in retaliation.
1: Everyone on Twitter proceeds to follow every account they encounter to raise everyone's follower status to 30K
2: Everyone proceeds to tweet nothing except posts calling all of Musk's companies Cissy colonizers
3: Musk's brain undergoes "spontaneous catastrophic disassembly", to use the scientific vernacular, and firebombs his platform with Mein Kampf The Updated Version For Trump Project 2025, which lasts for over 100 million consecutive tweets
4: Advertisers clutch pearls and re-bolt, driving revenue back into a crater
5: Humanity profits, Musk loses!
"with only the illusion of participation for the rest." This line is on fire, I love it. All the more reason to switch to Substack and quit X, the sooner the better.
"For the Right-winger Free speech is above all threatened when celebrities, including minor celebrities, cannot say provocative things or even feel like they cannot say them. "
Not just the right - if anything centrists are even more sensitive on this point. The famous Harpers' letter reflected the same sentiment, as has the reaction of journalists like Leigh Sales when their criticism of others is turned back against them,
I'm not sure this is a policy which should in general be put at the feet of the Great Musk Satan, though some specific words might be his directives. The issue is that moderation at scale cannot be done all by humans for large social media platforms. It's just not technically possible at any reasonable cost. But automated systems tend to be very bad at distinctions such as use/mention, sarcasm, irony, etc. Thus there's an incentive to give more personalized "service" to the more powerful, as they can raise much more of a fuss for errors.
What would you propose to do about this problem? (and be economically realistic about it).
Note, I don't mean something like: "Tune the automated system to be more to the taboos of the Very Online Left". That's just special pleading.
On your main claim, that this is a result of economic incentives, I agree and I mention this in the article. I certainly don't think the source of the decision is primarily ideological (though I do think it echoes of right-wing approaches for the reasons I gave on the paragraph on the right and celebrity).
However, while I agree this was caused by economic incentives I feel it's necessary to clarify- these were not unavoidable incentives. According to the source, the change appears to have happened with Musk. I suspect this because the moderation budget has fallen massively under Musk. The moderation budget has fallen massively under Musk because when he came in, he had the idea that he was going to make massive savings by cutting the diversity beauracracy. He made those cuts, and lost massive amounts of advertising revenue as a result due to brand protection concerns. Afterwards, with a cut moderation team, he had to scramble for solutions to, and this is probably one of the ugly compromises that resulted. Maybe if he hadn't cut so many staff, or fiddled with the rules in ways that were transparently unsustainable, he wouldn't be in this situation with few advertisers and a gerrymandered moderation system. Alternatively, if he wanted to go full free speech except for material which is illegal in America, he should have just committed to that. Now we have a solution with no advertisers, a substantial moderation budget and transparently unfair rules.
What exactly is the specific claim? I understood the ideal to be something along the lines of "All accounts should be subjected to the exact same automated and human process no matter what their power/influence/followers/etc". Is that a correct understanding, or something else? My argument is that isn't economically sound.
Is the point "The more money spent on moderation, the more humans can be assigned rather than purely automated processes"? While true in the abstract, again, the economics involved quickly reaches a limit.
A different argument is "Musk's cutting the moderation budget was penny-wise and pound-foolish, losing more in advertising revenue than the savings". Well, that's not implausible on its face, but I'm skeptical without serious consideration. It just sounds too much to me like making up a story about what one desires to be true. It's like "Those liberal's tax increases just proved their economic stupidity, since it harmed job-creation and growth so much it ended up resulting in even less government revenue than before their destruction. Now we have a discouraged business community, a wrecked economic engine, and need even more austerity cuts to social services because of the wreckage!"
Inversely, "Money spent on moderation pays for itself in increased brand trust"has the same argument problem as "Money spent on rich people pays for itself in increased economic growth".
I would also be skeptical about things like "the change appears to have happened with Musk.". These investigations are difficult to do, and it's easy to get inferences wrong, and no social-media incentive to make sure it's right (quite the opposite).
Disclaimer: Per my phrase "Great Musk Satan", I'm not a fan of him. But I also think many people's primary issue with him is not that he's a jerk, but that he's a jerk to their political tribe, and he can't be "cancelled" in retaliation.
❌ the Twit!
(I never understood what people saw in it, and I don't understand why any right-thinking person would be there still.)