Soldato
I disagree. It has moments of being more heavily towards one subject or another, but those subjects typically are Elon related.
The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down
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I clearly havn't read all of this thread, but personally I think Elon as the owner of Twitter makes him an extremly dangerous individual. He can very overtly control what content it promotes. A prime example is the recent Carlson/Putin "interview". I don't follow carlson nor do I think any in his general sphere, but for 2 days solid, there was hardly a scroll that I didn't see the interview. Personally for me the abundance of it's appearance on my timeline felt very contrived.
When you have a guy who at times is clearly impetuous, having pretty much direct access to 100s of Millions of people, and being able to brute force (or more disturbingly, subtly) control the flavour of what they see, it's very dangerous. Especially when you can see that often he just considers it his personal plaything
When you have a guy who at times is clearly impetuous, having pretty much direct access to 100s of Millions of people, and being able to brute force (or more disturbingly, subtly) control the flavour of what they see, it's very dangerous. Especially when you can see that often he just considers it his personal plaything
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Now invert that, and just see the problem of social media (just media in general) as a whole. Why is Elon singled out in this regard?
Soldato
I think this thread just needs moving to SC and renamed "The rise and fall of Elon Musk".. that is precisely what it is documenting..
The amount of bad faith posts by a small number of protagonists in this thread has gone beyond the original OT by several country miles.
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Social media is definitely an issue. But no other single individual has unfettered uncontrolled ability to target absolutely everyone on such a widely used platform at a whim. As an extreme example, if he wanted he could put out a political message that would be seen by every single twitter user at the top of their feed. Yes many people can use tools, bots and cheap paid workforces to get a message exposed more than it otherwise would, but he is in an extremely privledged position, and given his lack of control in some past utterances, that's not a good thing. I think his ability to influence peoples thinking is very dangerous, given how much X is ingrained in many people's daily lives.
It's different when it is something like truth social, where you know exactly what you are signing up for, i.e. launched and paid for by Trump for him to speak to his people.
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He's not. Many people are concerned about the rise of alt facts and who controls certain parts of the media and have expressed those concerns in more appropriate threads
But also, if you're going to court publicity in the way that Elon does, make outlandish claims as to what you can/will deliver and start pushing conspiracy theories and racist tropes then you're likely to get publicity, just not the publicity you want.
Elon is a great example of the fine line between fame and infamy.
We're entering an age where not people, but AI's, are about to start spewing "alt-facts".
I think the onus is on the end user and developing their own critical thinking ability rather than Elon. He's not the problem, people believing his crap is the problem.
I think the onus is on the end user and developing their own critical thinking ability rather than Elon. He's not the problem, people believing his crap is the problem.
That's never going to happen, the same way we need to put 'This product may contain nuts' on packets of salted peanuts, some people are so stupid or ignorant that they need protecting.
Soldato
Tom (Anderson) didn't constantly make nutty tinfoil hat CT posts though...
I don't know to who you are referring, which probably answers that question.You can block Elon Musk.
Was Tom on MySpace also dangerous?
Is it his reach, or is it his views you have issue with?
It is Musk's unfettered (and unparalleled) reach combined with his well known tendancy to occasionally go rogue that is my issue.
I would see him posting "vote for Biden as Trump is an...." equally disturbing as "vote for Trump because Biden is an ..." . not that it would be as brute force as that of course. And who is to say that its a US thing. He clearly has the ability to, for example just target UK with negative Sunak posts if Sunak was promoting some social media legislation, or indeed just p*issed him off, with the possibility to ensure that every single UK user of Twitter sees the post multiple times, and they don't have to his posts, so blocking him does nothing. Just like blocking him would not have stopped me seeing the Carlson/Putin video 30-40 times on my timeline in a couple of days.
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So people need protecting, for their own good. Doesn't sound like a pro freedom stance, quite the opposite in fact.
Who will we get to do this? Please state preferences:
Chinese government.
Police Scotland.
Oprah.
Nigel Farage.
Intergalactic Federation of Manatees.
When you shut down Elon, all you get is another spring up in place, maybe better, maybe worse, depends on your point of view. Idiocracy is where we are headed with Trump later this year. Again.
Who will we get to do this? Please state preferences:
Chinese government.
Police Scotland.
Oprah.
Nigel Farage.
Intergalactic Federation of Manatees.
When you shut down Elon, all you get is another spring up in place, maybe better, maybe worse, depends on your point of view. Idiocracy is where we are headed with Trump later this year. Again.
You can block Elon Musk.
Was Tom on MySpace also dangerous?
Is it his reach, or is it his views you have issue with?
I think a key difference is that everyone was forced to follow Tom on MySpace by default, that isn't actually the case with Elon Musk. Everyone has to voluntarily click to follow. So what we have is a man who has a wide reach because people chose to give him that reach, who uses his platform to talk about whatever he wants. The issue people here have is that they don't like his views, so they want his ability to speak to be lessened/removed. Even though Elon Musk is a private individual speaking on a platform where people voluntarily choose to follow him.
Soldato
We left the wild west for a reason, social media platforms shouldn't be acting as such.
It was just a 'friend' in a list of all your other friends; you weren't subjected to constant CT theories and misinformation on your profile page.
You're right in that you can block Musk which would be fine if he was just another user however, he owns a large percentage of Xitter and what he spouts not only affects the platform and it's users but it still manages to roll in your feed via third-parties.
Which is what the old regime used to do.
I wish people would just be honest about this instead of framing it as "stupid people need protection".
It’s always been a problem with media in general. Robert Murdoch owning a huge chunk of traditional news media in the west has had a hugely damaging impact on democracy.
Why would anyone want to see the same happen to social media?
Yeah welcome to online media in 2024 then. I see plenty of rubbish online I'd rather not see and have no interest in.
These people are so deranged, what in the actual hell. The phrasing on the question, such venom and vitriol.
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