The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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Chris Wilson said:
Perhaps if these academics stayed off challenging social media sites and got on with some work they wouldn't feel so hurt? Another kitchen and heat misunderstanding. I get the odd bit of grief on here, I could just stop posting if i felt it was getting to me, it's quite a simple binary choice.
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So scientists either learn to take abuse on Twitter when they share their thoughts in their chosen field or leave, those that can shout loudest win. Why am I not surprised that is what you believe.

You're just a troll on a forum who likes to shock people with your posts. They are experts in their field trying to share their expertise with other users. See the difference?
 
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Colonel_Klinck said:
So scientists either learn to take abuse on Twitter when they share their thoughts in their chosen field or leave, those that can shout loudest win. Why am I not surprised that is what you believe.

You're just a troll on a forum who likes to shock people with your posts. They are experts in their field trying to share their expertise with other users. See the difference?
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They may be alleged experts, but even as such expecting the whole of a huge social media site to lap up what they say without any robust challenges shows the cloistered arrogance that is often commonplace amongst academics.

Again, if they can't stand the heat, stay out of the social media kitchens.
 
Chris Wilson said:
They may be alleged experts, but even as such expecting the whole of a huge social media site to lap up what they say without any robust challenges shows the cloistered arrogance that is often commonplace amongst academics.

Again, if they can't stand the heat, stay out of the social media kitchens.
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Of course they can take challenges, that is what their whole work life involves, its how the scientific method works. What they and no one should have to take is abuse and you seem to think being abused it perfectly acceptable because they are experts or maybe you just think abuse is acceptable full stop.
 
If they find the abuse troublesome they have lots of other means of projecting their thoughts and work that are not directly interactive. Any on line site that isn't small enough for pre vetting of every posting will have elements of abuse uploaded. `Tis the way of it. They need to be thick skinned enough to ignore it, or stick to the discipline (?) of the classroom or publishing papers and books.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
So scientists either learn to take abuse on Twitter when they share their thoughts in their chosen field or leave, those that can shout loudest win. Why am I not surprised that is what you believe.

You're just a troll on a forum who likes to shock people with your posts. They are experts in their field trying to share their expertise with other users. See the difference?
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I mean, what type of abuse? Can you give us an example? I think the worst of it you'd just hit the block button, and I doubt it's more than a couple of dozen accounts. Eventually you'll have very few abusive posts on your timeline
 
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Twitter, as far as someone who has minimal active knowledge of it can tell, seems to be the electronic version of the real Speaker's Corner, (not the sanitised one on here), where someone ululates their thoughts, alleged knowledge or opinion and accepts there may well be both agreement and dissent.

Responses are often typed or voiced in the strongest possible terms, including using ridicule and chastisement. Choosing such a forum, (note the word choosing...), means you accept that you may potentially receive strongly positive comment, rather neutral comment or strongly negative comment, maybe all three, made both eloquently and obscenely.

If my view of how a free speech platform is to be run and used is wildly wrong, kindly correct me.
 
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Chris Wilson said:
Twitter, as far as someone who has minimal active knowledge of it can tell, seems to be the electronic version of the real Speaker's Corner, (not the sanitised one on here), where someone ululates their thoughts, alleged knowledge or opinion and accepts there may well be both agreement and dissent.

Responses are often typed or voiced in the strongest possible terms, including using ridicule and chastisement. Choosing such a forum, (note the word choosing...), means you accept that you may potentially receive strongly positive comment, rather neutral comment or strongly negative comment, maybe all three, made both eloquently and obscenely.

If my view of how a free speech platform is to be run and used is wildly wrong, kindly correct me.
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Unless you're a Turkish dictator.
 
Roar87 said:
I mean, what type of abuse? Can you give us an example? I think the worst of it you'd just hit the block button, and I doubt it's more than a couple of dozen accounts. Eventually you'll have very few abusive posts on your timeline
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I didn't bring up abuse, I was just commenting on Chris's post.

You only have to witness when scientists post/comment on something that is their field but goes against what the majority in a thread believe. The pile-on can get really toxic, really quickly and just overwhelm the thread. Why should anyone have to spend their time blocking account after account. And there aren't a couple of dozen of them, there are thousands of such accounts who engage in abusive language. Back when it was kicking off on covid vaccines an British doctor who worked in the field commented that he had blocked thousands of accounts for abuse.
 
If they're true experts in their field the TV media will give them a platform that won't see them harangued by "nasty people". Lesser experts have to accept that wishing to media their thoughts and data involves some bi-directional discourse.

One slight caveat is the TV media do seem to have a very broad idea of what an "expert" is, given the dross they present both from and to their platform...
 
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Colonel_Klinck said:
I didn't bring up abuse, I was just commenting on Chris's post.

You only have to witness when scientists post/comment on something that is their field but goes against what the majority in a thread believe. The pile-on can get really toxic, really quickly and just overwhelm the thread. Why should anyone have to spend their time blocking account after account. And there aren't a couple of dozen of them, there are thousands of such accounts who engage in abusive language. Back when it was kicking off on covid vaccines an British doctor who worked in the field commented that he had blocked thousands of accounts for abuse.
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Abusive comments are now hidden, no at the bottom of replies, and you have to click to view them too. I'm honestly not sure what reasonable steps you want Twitter to take to moderate a platform with millions of tweets per day
 
Chris Wilson said:
If they're true experts in their field the TV media will give them a platform that won't see them harangued by "nasty people". Lesser experts have to accept that wishing to media their thoughts and data involves some bi-directional discourse.

One slight caveat is the TV media do seem to have a very broad idea of what an "expert" is, given the dross they present both from and to their platform...
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So if they're 'true' experts they get to go on TV but it appears you have no faith in TV media.

Makes it a bit tricky to meet your standards, no?
 
Roar87 said:
... in Turkey Twitter can be blocked indefinitely which is obviously not good for anyone. I think you'd prefer to see Twitter damaged and you'd be happy for them to self sabotage, but Elon has to balance people being able to use the service.
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You're making it out this is the first time a regime/corrupt government has censored social media but it's been happening for many years with regimes/corrupt governments blocking at national level. But in the majority of cases it's blocked during major events, elections, unrest etc, and then unblocked afterwards.
@NetBlocks is a good resource for (near) real-time global outages and regularly report on this happening...


Unfortunately, this now sets precedence which has resulted in Twitter now not being seen as a safe haven for information as they're happy to abide by the wishes of regimes and corrupt governments and censor at will.
Yes, this is a 'private' company and they can do whatever they want with their platform but, this directly goes against what Musk preached as the primary reason for purchasing Twitter in the first place.
 
visibleman said:
You're making it out this is the first time a regime/corrupt government has censored social media but it's been happening for many years with regimes/corrupt governments blocking at national level. But in the majority of cases it's blocked during major events, elections, unrest etc, and then unblocked afterwards.
@NetBlocks is a good resource for (near) real-time global outages and regularly report on this happening...


Unfortunately, this now sets precedence which has resulted in Twitter now not being seen as a safe haven for information as they're happy to abide by the wishes of regimes and corrupt governments and censor at will.
Yes, this is a 'private' company and they can do whatever they want with their platform but, this directly goes against what Musk preached as the primary reason for purchasing Twitter in the first place.
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Elon said he'd show what the Turkish government sent them, maybe he'll have a rethink on how he handles requests like that, but he did say Twitter must follow the law. It isn't like he banned the Hunter Biden story though, people in Turkey must be pretty used to their government showing one sided information. I have friends in Turkey and they're using VPNs basically.
 
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