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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Just as an FYI, we just deployed a major performance improvement for this site. It also might be buggy. Please report any issues you run into, especially those involving the display of the front page or comment threads (like this one).

(At the same time we're currently working with a significant performance degradation because of a library bug. Hopefully we'll get that one solved soon too.)

Edit: So far there are 414 janitor submissions, y'all are great, I was expecting to have to wait a week or two to get a good chunk of useful data but nope this is going fast.

(one post is considered one submission, not one set of posts)

I have almost two hundred new notifications over the last 17 hours. It looks like I'm getting a notification every time someone comments on this thread.

Did you hit the "subscribe" button with the eye next to it?

I didn't think I did. But I just unsubscribed. Thanks.

I got a popup asking to rate a post.

Excellent! It appears to be working.

My too. Just some random comment. I rated it.

I also accidentally fat finger upvoted it. That should probably be disabled when rating comments.

Works fine so far. Thank you for your efforts.

You might be jannies, but you're our jannies. <3

The janny volunteer popup dialog seems to be in light theme even if you're using dark theme.

Sigh, I admit the themes are an annoying amount of work. I'll fix this one though.

I didn't actually realize there was a 'dark' theme until this comment. White text on dark background is my preferred look, so I switched over. However, I'm pretty sure there's a bug with the dark themes ('dark', 'midnight', and 'tron' all share this issue), where the interface doesn't register if you've clicked the upvote or downvote button, it stays the same color regardless. Any chance this could be fixed as well?

The problem is that I've been making serious changes to the base theme but not wanting to invest the time on fixing up the other themes. I think I might:

  • Change TheMotte to light

  • Fix up dark a bit

  • Rename the other themes to include (unsupported)

  • Remap users to light or dark as appropriate

  • Send a message to everyone who was using an unsupported theme saying "your old theme is kind of deprecated and may look crummy, we've changed you to a supported theme, you're welcome to change back if you really want or volunteer to fix up the theme"

I should also do a check to see which themes are most popular.

actually lemme just do that now, I need to get into the DB anyway

TheMotte: 1477 (obviously a lot of these are "I just left it as the default")

reddit: 98

dark: 96

midnight: 74

dramblr: 27

coffee: 23

4chan: 19

win98: 15

tron: 7

light: 4

transparent: 1

Per Transtellung's comment I just switched to the 'reddit' theme, and already I can tell it is much better. It does leave the big 'The Motte' site name in the upper left black (unreadable against the background), but now all links are clearly highlighted in blue, and upvotes and downvotes are clearly visible as orange and light blue respectively. Very much support his recommendation to turn 'reddit' into the official dark theme.

EDIT: it appears that the 'reddit' theme does not highlight unread comments in the same way as the 'themotte' theme does. So if I had one other suggestion, it'd be to incorporate that change into this theme. Thanks!

I am one of the people using "reddit". It actually doesn't resemble Reddit very much; it's just a nice theme: dark, but not too dark like the actual "dark" theme. (The background on "dark" is apparently literally #000000, which no one ever does!) It seems "midnight" is basically just "reddit" but worse (the contrast is terrible), so if you combine the two, "reddit" is the de facto dark theme and therefore it should, in my totally unbiased opinion, become the official dark theme.

The "transparent" theme has something to do with custom backgrounds, which are non-functional, so I think you can just remove it completely. I can't even get it to work, no idea how that one person did it.

The background on "dark" is apparently literally #000000, which no one ever does!

OLED display users (mostly mobile, but not all) do.

>phoneposting

Edit: Oops, just noticed you said there are non-mobile OLED displays. My bad. Anyway, would it be too much to have a "dark", renamed from "reddit", and "OLED" or "superdark" or something, renamed from "dark"? Or perhaps rename "reddit" to "light dark"? Again, I am very biased, but "reddit" is the most popular non-default theme.

My suggestion would be for default theme to use the prefers-color-scheme @media query to switch the base colors to bright-on-dark-gray if you have your browser/OS set for dark mode. "Dark" would be moved to "OLED black".

Personally, I use "coffee".

The volunteer/janitor page has a link for the rules which should https://www.themotte.org/rules instead of localhost/rules.

Oops, not my finest moment. Should be fixed now, thanks!

Hmm, can you give me screenshot examples of those? I think this is the first I've heard of either, for the record.

Huh, I like the "double-tap to collapse" idea. I don't actually use mobile so I'm sorta in the dark on what people want there :V

Task added!

Today I learned there are lines indicating how replies are nested in the light theme on mobile! I have been using dark theme since launch and while I thought I remembered lines at one point, collapsing threads without using the minus next to a user name has always seemed like a random crapshoot when I tapped to the left of a comment. As another Johnny Bench I think double tapping would be light years better (and an option to remove the collapsing function of the lines if possible (oh and make the lines visible in dark theme please.))

Could we also see how many child comments a particular comment gets when collapsed?

I think this may actually be difficult, we don't track that info anywhere. But I'll add a task for it.

On topic of quite literal culture wars, but differently than usually defined here: my family is buying electricity generator for an Ukrainian family.

It is about 500 euro, goes directly to family member of refugee family that we are hosting so there is a decent chance that it will reach intended targets - and I am far more sure about this than with many charities.

Mentioning that mostly as a possibility if someone would be interested in doing something similar.

If you're Europeean, you might want to buy one for yourself as well.

There is no plausible scenario under which I would benefit from owning one. And I am in situation where benefits are far smaller and costs are larger than average - so even if it would make sense for 70% of people in EU to buy power generator it still would make no sense for me.

Also, it seems that you are jumping into doomerism of some kind.

I mean my government has literally been warning people about possible blackouts, and electricity prices have gone up so bad that the town I used to live in had to cancel their electricity contract and buy a bunch of generators to run their services. The diesel somehow ends up cheaper for them.

I could get into why this is happening but it's all very boring legalese about the EU energy market, shock enabled speculation and stupid decisions from decades ago. None of which anyone has the will to fix, as usual.

I haven't actually considered much what the future of Europe will be like, I just know it sucks right now, it's likely going to suck harder this winter and there's no telling for how long.

In these conditions it seems prudent to be prepared for the worst. Call it insurance.

my government has literally been warning people about possible blackouts

Which one? Not sure whether in Poland risk is lower or whether is the same or greater and government is more incompetent (or yours is more panicking)

France, which you'd think would be safer because of all those nuclear power plants right? But it's not because we have to sell that stuff to the Germans at the market price by EU law. Which means their woes are rising our prices.

Ironically Poland is probably safer on that front because your energy mix is mostly coal which is not sanctioned and you already had some of the highest energy prices in Europe before the crisis so the shock likely doesn't hit as bad. Worst case scenario you can reopen the once mighty Polish coal mines or import more.

Meanwhile the Germans have their whole economy based around cheap Russian gas and petroleum that isn't easily replaced (the logistics to substitute pipelines and get imports from somewhere else are quite complicated), is sanctioned and they were already buying a lot of our nuclear at the best of times.

which is not sanctioned

strictly speaking Poland sanctioned Russian coal on its own, but problem is "high prices" not "we will freeze to death", and transport coal from new source is much easier to achieve than for gas.

How are you making sure it gets to the intended recipients?

Is fuel for the generator generally available?

How are you making sure it gets to the intended recipients?

Giving it to person well known to us who will transfer it to her direct family. There is low chance of some obscure scam, but it seems reasonably low.

Petrol/oil remains accessible for now, but power is intermittent and getting worse.

Culture War or fashion news? You decide!

So Sam Brinton, former deputy assistant secretary since they have been fired, appeared in court in Las Vegas on Wednesday on one of the two charges against them for stealing luggage. This was just a bail hearing, so nothing juicy to report yet.

Well, except for clothing choices. Whether advised to do so by counsel or whatever, for their court appearance Mx. Brinton decided to go for male-presenting and masked. If they were wearing their red lipstick, nobody knows. No heels, jewellery, dresses, or capes today, just a black suit and shirt with white tie combo (not too impressed with that myself, it's a bit retro but however).

So being out, loud and proud non-binary/gender fluid/trans (as the case may be) is okay when representing the government, but when it's your own case, convention wins? General opinion seems to be that "when showing up for bail on a charge of stealing women's clothing, better not to dress in women's clothing" which is fair enough. But it just amused me that once they're in real trouble (as distinct from the stories they told of being beaten by their parents and abused by torture camps), they drop all the affectation and try to look as normal as possible. Be interesting to see what they wear to the Minneapolis hearing, when/if that happens.

(What also amuses/interests me is the quick No True Scotsman turnaround where the former poster non-binary person for the campaign against conversion therapy is now somehow "we knew he was dodgy all along" once the negative publicity starts).

Well, at least he is not a complete idiot. Which should be normally a default for a MIT graduate but now you never know.

Compared to Michael Saylor , he's not the dumbest or most unethical MIT alumni. Having impressive credentials and not being stupid, are two different things.

I interview a lot of people. I am not a hiring manager, but if you want to get hired at my major tech company, then you get to chat with a few people like me. I would be entirely unimpressed with a MS from MIT. But also I would not care if someone's BS was from some state school. Neither help or hurt a candidate. We don't care about your impressive pedigree. In the many interviews I have participated in, the particular school has never been mentioned by any interviewer.

Having relevant degrees and experience from any university or business and being able to pass a brief phone screen gets you the interview. Actually passing the gauntlet gets you the job.

For deputy assistant secretary of something nuclear waste management something, his credentials look fine by me. But I don't work in that one industry or government. Maybe they are credentialists to a degree I'm not used to.

Seconded. School only matters for two reasons: a particular department in a particular time period has a reputation for something seriously awry, in which case some probing around that or extra care, depending on the nature of the repute; they went to the same place you did in an overlapping time period and you want to know how you don't know of them already.

Yeah but he gets to put MIT on his resume. Which some people really care about apparently.

"I can see your MIT education really pays for itself!" - Barney Calhoun, Half-Life 2

This story shows how something so inconsequential can be such a big deal. It shows how closely watched everything and everyone is, contrary to the popular narrative that powerful people in high places can act with impunity.

This story shows how something so inconsequential can be such a big deal. It shows how closely watched everything and everyone is, contrary to the popular narrative that powerful people in high places can act with impunity.

When people talk about "powerful people in high places" they usually mean higher places than deputy assistant secretary.

Billionaire held in filthy rat infested jail is better recent example.

Except that if this had been him harassing DOE employees by being sexual in the ladies bathrooms it probably would have never seen the light of day. Or if he abused his clearance to run background checks on ex-boyfriends. Or if he targeted a company he didn't like and financially crippled it (which happening to have other green investments that benefit from his action). None of those things would come to light.

He only got hit because of a few unique properties to his crime, all of which were needed:

  1. Concrete victim;

  2. In public;

  3. On Video;

  4. Not plausibly part of his official duties.

You seem very certain about a claim for which no evidence exists. In fact, no evidence can exist, because if it did, it would mean the offences had come to light.

Edit: Nor can the claim be falsified, since it's always possible that something did happen and it's being covered up.

The Horowitz IG report contains dozens of #4 happening at DOJ an resulted in no prosecutions. The Lerner IRS scandal resulted in 0 prosecutions. The background check thing was revealed in a different IG report that I cant remember the name of out of the State Department. No prosecutions.

Its not that there is no evidence that these things happen. We know they have! Its just that they don't get documented in real time and then prosecuted. They get reported way after the fact in an IG report, which most closely resembles a sanitized CYA memo.

I don't know quite how broken my reasoning is, but being exposed to people claiming that this sort of thing never happens and never will, then thst it never happens and is misinformation, and then it does happen but isn't weird at all its just a normal mistake anyone could make, all set my priors up that I am more suspicious of the intrinsic nefarious nature of the individual in question than had I not been primed with evidently false a priori conceits.

Usually acts that get impunity is like stealing billions of dollars and causing deaths of tens of thousands, but acts that get consequences is something like stealing a bag.

If only we could find one with an insatiable fetish for reprocessing high level nuclear waste, we might actually get something done for once.

Too bad if it turns out the same genetic constellation also activates an unsatiable urge to steal suitcases in airports...

Knowing the state of this reality, it probably strongly overlaps with eating crayons and shitting yourself in public.

Given the extent to which the caprice of individual judges can affect the outcome of your case, it is probably to your benefit to minimize weirdness and maximize respectability (and respectfulness). In an ideal world you could show up to court in a clown suit and not have it affect the outcome, but in reality the judge may feel disrespected, the jury may not take you seriously, etc...

If you were a pre-op transwoman going to court I'd recommend wearing a suit and tie even if it makes you uncomfortable. Life isn't fair.

In an ideal world you could show up to court in a clown suit and not have it affect the outcome

You can make the argument backwards: that is because we insist on a much more stringent set of grounds for judgement in courtrooms.

We do not in the rest of our lives. So, by this logic, it's actually more justifiable to discriminate against Brinton for his behavior outside of court, given it represents a flouting of social norms in a way that he can clearly restrain himself from if he feels it's in his interests.

for his behavior outside of court

Extremely hard disagree. I very much hope that general adherence to social norms is not used as a criterion of judgement by actual criminal trial judges. It is by happenstance alone that my sexual tastes and general aesthetic are commonly accepted today. My choice in partners would be scandalous in rather recent memory. I'm not a weirdo subversive by 2022 standards. I'm even straight.

Perhaps we could separate social aesthetic norms that are frankly not the government's damned business and the serious matters of criminal law.

Extremely hard disagree. I very much hope that general adherence to social norms is not used as a criterion of judgement by actual criminal trial judges.

Except that is literally the opposite of my claim: that courts may need to be held to a higher standard to achieve important social goods, but this doesn't mean that we're all obligated to do the same.

Basically the same argument for why "innocent until proven guilty" can be an asinine response. For a recent example, see Kevin O'Leary's apology tour on FTX and crypto.

No because adherance to social norms implies a higher likelihood of being better adapted to ones environment. Being maladapted, I naively assume*, being as likely to arise from an adapted equilibrium maintianing piece of information being flipped to more or less adaptive.

So that your predilections may not have been accepted in the past gives the information that something in you is broken from that equilibrium, and it might not have a monotonic effect, i.e., the biological, DNA, hormonal,etc or cultural, etc driver that is the root cause of the downstream behavioural manifestation may do other things too that we can't see. Or it is posisble that the non conventional behavior has second or higher order negative consequences in our environment thst wr are unaware of. All we know is that it is at best 50/50 beneficial to you, and might be actually very bad for us.

So in conclusion it is actually entirely reasonable to use adherance to social norms to inform whether someone is more or less likely to engage in criminal behaviour, if we assume wuch behaviour is not the wrll adapted norm in our society. However, it might be reasonable for the maintenance of power for a regime to give the appearance of blind justice, etc formal procedural laws not influenced by this entirely salient and freely available information, in which case the judge has to appear not to give any credence (but if not maladapted themsleves will be aware of).

So that your predilections may not have been accepted in the past gives the information that something in you is broken from that equilibrium, and it might not have a monotonic effect, i.e., the biological, DNA, hormonal,etc or cultural, etc driver that is the root cause of the downstream behavioural manifestation may do other things too that we can't see. Or it is posisble that the non conventional behavior has second or higher order negative consequences in our environment thst wr are unaware of. All we know is that it is at best 50/50 beneficial to you, and might be actually very bad for us.

Or it is possible – and should be the default assumption unless you're some kind of ultra-reactionary who thinks the world has only got worse since the 18th century – that people in the past had irrational, unfounded, capricious prejudices, the elimination of which has resulted in a better society for everyone. With this corrected prior, you would have arrived at a very different probability from 50/50.

Yes, sometimes the fence is there for a good reason, but in many cases it's only there because if anyone suggests removing it, he'll get laughed at or ostracized or "all citizens [will] unite to kill that person".

I really don't understand this impulse, apparently relatively common on TheMotte, whenever someone suggests that some widespread belief or practice is irrational and arbitrary, to try to find a brain-genius-tier explanation for why it actually makes perfect sense. OK, fine, maybe religion is so universal because, as atheists fail to understand, it keeps society stable and is a good mechanism to promote pro-social norms and strengthen communal ties, and so forth; but why must a mammal both chew cud and have cloven hooves to be edible? Why is music haram? Why is a beaver a fish during Lent?

Sorry, but sometimes something that seems silly at first glance is still silly after a careful analysis that considers the possibility of higher-order effects and the broader historical and social context.

Whether something seems silly, is silly, or is not is completely and utterly irrelevant to my point.

It is by happenstance alone that my sexual tastes and general aesthetic are commonly accepted today.

"How convenient", said the puddle, "That this hole in the road is exactly the same shape I am"

To speak plainly: I don't think it's happenstance at all, your desires - while certainly grounded in reptilian-brain evopsych - have a large socially conditioned superstructure on top of them. One remembers Ye Olde Fat Venus statues. Idk whether it's liking fat chicks that's biologically immutable and liking thin chicks that's the social meme or vice versa, but one CAN be memed into being attracted to stuff one would not be absent the social conditioning.

Sure. There is some component of socialization in my behavior. If I had grown up centuries ago in Europe it would not having occurred to me to be horny for some sorts of brown-skinned women.

But to push back a bit: it is happenstance of genes and/or prenatal environment that I didn't come out gay. I could, but for the grace of God, have come out a few decades ago as a gay puddle in an entirely hetero world. Then polite respectability (of my open and honest self) could have been forever beyond me. I got lucky being straight and oriented towards certain sorts of women today. Change any of those and I am the one being discriminated against in criminal court.

As a larger principle I don't want criminal trial judges looking at someone's partner or aesthetic tastes in court and deciding to get much stricter based on social norms. "He likes blacks/Mexicans/Asian immigrants" would have caught me. And I can't promise a lack of non-socialized preference for those women, at least after having been exposed to them.

I'll go so very far as to extend this empathy to openly gay men and people with odd consensual kinks. Again: there but for the grace of God go I.

I'm trying to think of something that's gotten less scandalous in currentyear outside the queer umbrella... Fat or muscle chicks? Gilfs?

I mean race mixing. And by "recent memory" I mean support for interracial marriage crossed 50% in the 90s. I don't literally mean 4chan style paraphilias.

Tomboys, perhaps?

I mean boring old, all American race mixing. Which was actually unpopular until recently. Back in the 1700s it was cool. In the 90s it was barely majority accepted. Today it is again cool.

By no merit of my own I happen to appeal to 2022 standards of acceptable behavior. And based on my coworkers' stated views, I'd better hold my tongue when non-contrarian progressives are speaking. I got lucky in this sense. When inevitably progressives "long march through institutions" their way into criminal judge positions I damned hope they don't sniff me out as a contrarian.

We (theoretically) hold the courts to higher standards of judgment because they wield the power of the state. The consequences of a capricious or bigoted judge acting in a discriminatory manner are (usually) more severe that a capricious or bigoted private citizen and thus they are subject to more scrutiny. So in a sense it is more acceptable (or, rather, less unacceptable) to discriminate a gender non-conforming individual outside of court, but that has nothing to do with their ability to avoid flouting social norms. It is because we (theoretically) hold the courts to a higher standard than private citizens.

So in a sense it is more acceptable (or, rather, less unacceptable) to discriminate a gender non-conforming individual outside of court, but that has nothing to do with their ability to avoid flouting social norms. It is because we (theoretically) hold the courts to a higher standard than private citizens.

You seem to be assuming that discriminating against people who flout social norms is prima facie wrong. That isn't my assumption, and that seems to be the bone of contention.

Replace the case with something else: e.g. a man with ludicrous face tattoos. There I think we're at least fine making certain judgements about such people (e.g. I don't want him as a cashier, he doesn't look "professional"). But we could still be against a judge doing the same in a case about...I dunno weed.

So we can simultaneously restrain some of our institutions without feeling like the underlying judgment is wrong or avoiding it in our daily lives. And there their ability to avoid the flouting of norms is absolutely relevant. Which norm violations should matter is obviously a YMMV case.

The exact same argument applies when performing important government duties, doesn't it? Don't burn your weirdness points on clothing and presentation, when you can spend them moving the status quo somewhere better.

Don't burn your weirdness points on clothing and presentation, when you can spend them moving the status quo somewhere better.

The obvious retort is that Sam thinks being a presenting transgender person is moving the status quo somewhere better.

Well, in that case it's mightily convenient he only tries to move the status quo in that way when it isn't his but rather the public's skin in the game.

Not really. It's a practical admonition that the judge has the power to fuck you over if they don't like you, so go out of your way to not annoy them (even if it's total bullshit). Showing up to court in "inappropriate" clothing doesn't have any bearing on the case, except it actually does because it may make the judge discriminate against you or judge you more harshly because they feel disrespected. This doesn't really apply to day-to-day work as a government official, where if someone has a problem with your gender presentation that's their problem.

Don't burn your weirdness points on clothing and presentation, when you can spend them moving the status quo somewhere better.

Clothing and presentation is trying to move the status quo.

You can advise someone to minimize weirdness, you can't demand them of it

I mean, this is just manifestly false.

We demand it of people all the time. Hell, the average man still feels like it's demanded of him to follow standard dress codes at work. That norm is under assault now (by people like Brinton) but it's not forgotten.

We could just as easily continue to apply it to people claiming an LGBTSomething exception but the will apparently isn't there.

I don't really see what's weird about this. Of course you dress conservatively when you're in court.

As pointed out by MatWizard, if they really are so non-binary and gender-fluid that it's a vital part of their identity and personality, and they went around dressing in women's clothing even for a government reception by the French ambassador, dressing down to "I'm a guy wearing guy's clothing" is a bit odd.

Brinton has dressed casually, of course, including that T-shirt which helped identify them as the person who stole the luggage in Vegas. So they don't always go around looking like a Pride parade. And yes, you'll be told to dress respectably for a court appearance. But Brinton could dress in respectable women's clothing for the court appearance, so that does make all the "Whee look at me wearing stilettos!" stuff seem to have been self-aggrandisement for publicity or even a fetish. And making it seem like a fetish is, of course, not helpful when being accused of stealing women's luggage because you have a fetish about women's clothing.

"I'm the stilettos guy in Congress" (before they got the deputy assistant secretary job) is one thing, but when it's "I need to be sure I'm granted bail, so I look, dress and present like a cis man", it is plainly another thing:

Brinton doesn’t let the trauma stop them from being out and proud. The non-binary activist and MIT grad is an engineer and a senior policy analyst in Washington D.C. who advises Congress on nuclear power issues. Brinton is known around the nation’s capitol “as the red mohawk guy in stilettos.”

“It is not uncommon to see me in a Congressional hearing with my stilettos,” Brinton said. “People from both sides of the aisle take me quite seriously, because they know I’m good at what I do regardless of how I look.”

I suppose how I feel about this is that it makes it hard for me to take the whole 'non-binary genderfluid' thing seriously, when it's presented as being so very vital a part of their identity that dressing in male attire for the job would be oppression, but somehow it's an identity they can put on and take off when they need to take it off. Maybe I just don't understand the genderfluid thing, and that they happened to be in their male mode for the court date. But it makes it hard to know what is the mask they are just dressing up in, and what really is their core identity. How serious is the non-binary, and how much of it is dressing up to shock the normies?

But Brinton could dress in respectable women's clothing for the court appearance, so that does make all the "Whee look at me wearing stilettos!" stuff seem to have been self-aggrandisement for publicity or even a fetish.

I don't know. Maybe sometimes he genuinely wakes up and feels like throwing a frock on. I like wearing a tanktop, and if I could wear one to work I would, but I wouldn't wear one in court. Or maybe he does like the attention. Who cares?

I suppose how I feel about this is that it makes it hard for me to take the whole 'non-binary genderfluid' thing seriously, when it's presented as being so very vital a part of their identity that dressing in male attire for the job would be oppression, but somehow it's an identity they can put on and take off when they need to take it off.

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see any claim that occasionally having to dress in men's clothes is oppressive, or a claim that wearing women's clothes is a fundamental part of his identity, as opposed to a thing he does for fun (though the things you do for fun, I would argue, are a part of your identity).

But it makes it hard to know what is the mask they are just dressing up in, and what really is their core identity.

Much ink has been spilled over the distinction between one's persona and personality. I don't really have anything to add - it's not of any interest to me to know what lurks in anyone's heart. Sam Brinton seems to be a fabulist, a serial attention whore, and a pervert - that he occupied a position of significance in the government is nothing new.

  1. The same would apply to a lesser degree when working for the government in a prominent position.

  2. Conservative women's clothing exists: women go to court all the time. A non-binary/gender fluid/trans person who stuck to their guns that they are genuinely a woman and didn't believe their gender nonconformity was obnoxious and unprofessional could wear respectable women's clothing to court.

He doesn’t claim to be a woman, or so I thought. He claims to be one of the 72 other genders that I don’t pretend to understand. This is somehow different from being transgender, where he would be claiming to be a member of one of the two genders that I do understand, just not the one that I would naively assume.

In any case, the normal-ish court attire doesn’t tell us how he feels about it- nearly any attorney is going to tell him to wear a conservative suit and tie, and the court itself probably sent him a pamphlet telling him to do so- it just tells us he’s capable of acting normal for a few hours at a time if he thinks it’s to his benefit. Which means that he would have been able to wear a suit and act like a normal guy at a reception thrown by the French ambassador, he just decided not to. This is, I would think, an even more profound claim, because, well, his whole claim to fame was that he had to adopt the weird looking appearance because that was his true self and it was deeply traumatic not to express it.

In any case, the normal-ish court attire doesn’t tell us how he feels about it- nearly any attorney is going to tell him to wear a conservative suit and tie, and the court itself probably sent him a pamphlet telling him to do so- it just tells us he’s capable of acting normal for a few hours at a time if he thinks it’s to his benefit.

Isn't that just adult human behavior? I personally don't like wearing dresses - if wearing one for a few hours would get me out of jail, then I would do it. It doesn't make my personally held identity as a man who likes wearing man clothes any weaker or compromised.

Well sure, but most of us do that for work, too, which he ostentatiously did not.

I wouldn't submit to wearing a dress every day for work, and given the option to choose, I would never do so - so I don't see how it's unusual that Brinton chose to do that, given that it wasn't against any rules (so far as I can tell).

I don't think Sam Brinton claims to be a woman, just non-binary or whatever. I don't believe that he sees his nonconformity as obnoxious or unprofessional. Most likely, his lawyer told him that he wants to make the best possible impression and that he would do that by dressing as a man.

Trying as hard as he could to look like a woman would be sensible too. What looks worse: a woman stealing expensive women's underwear, or a man stealing expensive women's underwear.

One just seems like theft, the other intolerable perversion against a "protected class"/higher caste

Perhaps he knows that dressing like a woman - or, perhaps more relevantly, being unable to keep your kinks under wraps in formal settings - strikes normies as the perversion. Which is bad when you're being accused of a crime that can have strong "perv" connotations.

It's a weirdness flag, and you want to minimize any risks in court

Well, perhaps if you're hired for your identity, you have to parade it constantly to be a good talisman to the people who gave you the job, and once you're fired from it, it no longer matters?

If nothing else it certainly signals that he knows his normal mode of dress would not go over well to a judge or any onlookers.

IIRC he dressed like that well before he was hired by the government.

Hi! Would you please present evindence (not conjecture) that they were hired for their identity?

Thank you!

A characteristic of contemporary identity-politics hiring is that the perpetrators go to great lengths to obfuscate evidence that they're performing identity-politics hiring.

It is normally good practice to demand evidence rather than conjecture, but when operating in a zeitgeist where such evidence is scrupulously concealed behind bureaucratic efforts towards plausible deniability, you are raising a bar which is impossible to clear.

What would even constitute evidence that Brinton was hired based solely or primarily on his identity? He has a master's degree in the relevant field (from MIT, though other comments are telling me that doesn't really matter) and has co-authored several research papers. To me it looks like he's about as qualified as anyone.

@Astranagant

Well this is the problem with identity hiring, isn't it? How does anyone know you didn't get the edge over your competitors because of that? Unless he was literally the only applicant for the job, I'd find it hard to swallow that the topic of his... presentation... never came up. Meaning the department most likely consciously chose him, and whether this is in spite of or because of his affectations would largely come down to whether he was wildly head-and-shoulders better than his competition. Employers will overlook some affectation for a genuine rockstar employee, but there's a limit proportionate to how irreplaceable you are.

So either Brinton is hyper-competent and got the job in spite of his affectations, which according to the rest of the thread -- and your own comment "as qualified as anyone" -- his education history and performance on the job doesn't bear out. So if it's not that, can we then assume that the affectations served the purpose of the administration somehow? This is a government job, it's impossible... alright, improbable to believe they didn't do their due diligence.

If the employer has whittled down the list of applicants to a group of people with similar qualifications, and more detailed information that might help the decision is impossible or infeasible to attain, then the choice of whom to hire will be arbitrary. In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

To me, the phrase "hired for your identity" implies that standards have been lowered and the candidate was picked over someone more qualified but with a less-favoured identity. As far as I can tell, this is not true in Brinton's case.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method. Indeed, if the group to which the candidate belongs really does face some kind of disadvantage, picking them is the rational choice for the self-interested employer, as it indicates that the candidate has achieved the same qualifications despite more difficult circumstances. Of course, simply considering a few categories such as race and gender can never provide the full picture: for example, among two candidates there may be a woman from a rich family and a man whose family was poor growing up; overall, the man had it worse, but an application generally includes gender but not family circumstances, so applying the method here would lead to the wrong choice. It is just a heuristic, and no heuristic is perfect, but as I said, at some point acquiring more information about the candidates becomes impossible or infeasible; except for some very specific positions, an employer won't hire a personal investigator to carefully investigate the candidate's past: this is where heuristics come in.

The above method is very different from lowered standards for different groups, or straight-up quotas, both of which I vehemently oppose. Finally, it must be noted that:

  1. In the real world, "historically marginalized" groups have been granted various advantages, which might reduce the method's accuracy.

  2. Situations where several candidates are, in fact, equally qualified, and only one belongs to a historically marginalized group, are not actually that common.

  3. The heuristic requires that the candidates' identity not be considered until the final choice: a woman must be just as good as a man, without considering the fact that she is a woman. Otherwise, we would be adjusting for identity twice, which would result in a lower standard for women.

Edit: Sorry for the off-topic wall of text. I have reposted the comment in this week's culture war thread so that more people can see it. If you want to reply, perhaps it would be better to do it there.

Male appearance in the mug shot and the surveillance photo. I'm guessing they dress male unless its for a public event or fetish.

I don't think it's necessarily signaling, it literally could just be more "no point in dressing up for your dressing-down."

New Twitter policy just dropped:

Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

...

What is a violation of this policy?

At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:

Prohibited platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr

3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio

Examples:

“follow me @username on Instagram”

“username@mastodon.social”

“check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”

Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended. Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on external links to the above prohibited social media platforms through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy. This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out “dot” for social media platforms that use “.” in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.

It's like the man himself says

The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!

ETA:

Seems like some large accounts are calling Twitter's bluff. Dril posted a link to their linktree hours ago and so far both post and account are still up.

ETA2:

Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.

ETA3:

The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.

link is gone https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy

that was super fast. Talk about getting instant feedback. That is the nice thing about having such a large public persona.

Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.

To put things in context, here is one alleged witness tweet (posted before Elon's new poll)

https://twitter.com/iamraisini/status/1604619857257025537

Screenshot:

https://twitter.com/TheKamillex/status/1604641087292932096

and obligatory classic literature quote:

https://twitter.com/ArielGonzalez_1/status/1604621934733524993

Remember that Saudi Prince @Alwaleed_Talal invested $1.89 Billion and Qatar @QIA about $400 Million in Twitter. They are the real Power at Twitter.

lmao what

Oh boy, that "pig to man" quote is potentially really spicy, given that the photo has Arab guys in it...

Anyways, I saw the "Arabian investors want to take over" theory advanced elsewhere, guess that's evidence for it.

An addendum: TheQuartering got Elon to reconsider the external links policy. The fucking Quartering. The simulation is truly breaking down.

I started wondering a few hours ago, because the rule seemed so obviously ridiculous. Is he trying the... is it called the "door in the face" trick? The same way that last year twitter updated their rules to ban all "media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted." Which they then quickly walked back and started only selectively enforcing on people they didn't like.

Is he doing a reverse Machiavelli's governor deal by focusing hatred on himself and then appointing someone else to head Twitter?

He's a war CEO, which means he eventually has to hand off to a peace CEO and it's extremely common to use this to let all the unpopular things you do in wartime stick to the man and start fresh. Consider how the British treated Churchill after WW2.

I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. And I'm really curious who will be the peace man.

It seems to mirror the anchoring strategy he used for pricing.

"This will cost twenty dollars"

"That's too much"

"K how about 8 then"

... and suddenly 8 doesn't seem that bad.

Is he doing a reverse Machiavelli's governor deal by focusing hatred on himself and then appointing someone else to head Twitter?

I'd call it the Lelouch Gambit, but that ended fatally, so...

Jesus I'd forgotten all about that show.

I think he's fast failing monetization methods beyond pure advertising. The $8 for a blue checkmark represents the money twitter makes per customer from advertisers a month, he's outsourcing and replacing advertisers with paying customers. The walled garden might be a way to create an ecosystem which doesn't send users to competitors media systems. Because of the sample size and data analytics just a few days of implementing policy can easily analyze changes traffic patterns. Maybe hold twitter hostage to other corps. They want twitter traffic? Those corps need to pay Twitter. Not a bad idea.

The question is if 1) I'm right, and he believes in his methodology enough to hold see it through even while all the whiners on twitter complain at him and hurts his popularity and 2) If he can find a successful model quickly enough to recoup his investment costs successfully.

Other platforms won't feel the need to pay for Twitter traffic, because they don't depend on it. What this change will do is enrage users who find it useful or even financially necessary to link to other platforms.

Looks like he's doing the New Coke strategy. Engagement is way up, no matter how much the media insist twitter is dying. People who promise to quit come back later. That is the genius of Musk's strategy...messing up twitter only makes it more popular and more media coverage about twitter.

Of course engagement is up - it's the world cup and American football time! The top of my "For You" page from a logged out browser in India is #fifaworldcup, ronaldo, #sachintendulkar, golden boot, france 4-2, money money money and greatest of all time. The non-football related topics are #sachintendulkar (a cricketer) and money money money.

A logged out page in America has 8/10 on top being NFL, the last two being "Happy Hannukah" and "Twitter CEO". The top of the page is literally Patriots vs Raiders scores.

I will take the opportunity to re-up a comment I left recently, explaining how Musk can make twitter profitable again: https://www.themotte.org/post/229/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/42105?context=8#context

tl;dr; sports + celebrities. No one cares about paul graham or taylor lorenz, lots of people care about Brady, Belichick and Dicker the Kicker. If you don't know who they are, that's your bubble. The only non-NFL humans that twitter America seems to care about are Tom Cruise, Elon Musk, Lionel Messi and (way down the list) Christina Aguilera.

tl;dr; sports + celebrities. No one cares about paul graham or taylor lorenz, lots of people care about Brady, Belichick and Dicker the Kicker

This policy has been an absolute disaster for that group, at least based on my little corner of non-political Twitter.

Until yesterday the effect of Musk on sports/hobby Twitter was zero to slightly positive - the only noticeable change was that the trending hashtags are less dominated by American politics. The Mastadon "migration" was never more than a handful, and even those that did set up accounts either forgot them after a week or just set them to mirror Twitter posts.

But the external links ban seems to have changed all that. Suddenly everyone is setting up alternative accounts, it's an order of magnitude bigger than the initial takeover. Linktree and similar services were very widely used so there are a lot of people that never cared about the takeover that now feel threatened. Even if you aren't personally affected Twitter has made itself look weak so people are concerned about it collapsing.

The policy has seriously undermined Twitter's standing in that area, in a way that looks like it will persist despite the U-turn.

But political Twitter has some power (hence the FBI's interest), and it should be possible to translate that power into money.

How do you propose to turn political twitter into an amount of money remotely proportional to the risk it poses to sports&celebs twitter?

Soft corruption. Twitter sells extremely expensive advertising to candidates and parties. It is known that if just one side pays for this advertising the algorithm overall greatly favors them.

No one cares about paul graham or taylor lorenz, lots of people care about Brady, Belichick and Dicker the Kicker

A lot of people cared about the twitter files. sports is a big part , but so is politics and other stuff.

I'm sure it is during the brief periods (presidential elections) when a spectacle is happening.

From what I recall of advertising analytics I've done in the past, it's even less profitable than the engagement numbers might suggest. Kellogs doesn't exactly love having Frosted Flakes associated with "Trump is the most raaaaacist guy ever", "Lock Her Up" or even "thousands dead in Somalia" and "plane crash" - it's just a negative mental association.

Tom Cruise, Aguilera and "Happy Hannukah" don't have this problem.

Imagine telling you-two-years-ago about that twitter poll. Why is Musk doing this? How are we feeling about moldbug's (iirc) "put any fortune 500 CEO in charge of the USA, even the second worst one, and it'll massively improve"?

Given the quote tweets, a twitter poll here is less "the will of the people" and more "who brigades and manipulates the poll more", so idk what the point is.

The USA is not Twitter. And I'd argue anything would improve Twitter, including the site's complete destruction.

"put any fortune 500 CEO in charge of the USA, even the second worst one, and it'll massively improve"?

Didn't Trump's presidency falsify this idea?

Moldbug presumably meant dictatorial power, not merely the presidency.

Most fortune 500 CEOs seem vastly overpaid relative to their competence and much of apparent success or skill is just happenstance, and not only that, huge blunders. The idea that you will get better leadership with CEOs just seems risibly false. For every Eric Schmitt there are dozens of Carly Forinas. CEOs, just like politicians, quality is at best mixed to poor.

Seems to me like a ham fisted way of transitioning leadership to someone else (eg Blake masters) without it looking like you failed (eg never intended to be long term ceo, had a vote etc).

Wait, why Masters? And how?

Someone (guessing Thiel) suggested to Elon that a Masters type should run Twitter as CEO.

The how would be Elon appointing him.

How are we feeling about moldbug's (iirc) "put any fortune 500 CEO in charge of the USA, even the second worst one, and it'll massively improve"?

Here's the catch, there is no one person in charge of the USA. It's a bunch of bureaucrats, special interest groups, NGOs and career staffers that largely control the US.

Also, business people tend to make great bureaucrats, and are hardly outsiders once they gain some power. Pompeo comes to mind.

How are we feeling about moldbug's (iirc) "put any fortune 500 CEO in charge of the USA, even the second worst one, and it'll massively improve"?

Between Musk and SBF, I'm starting to become embarrassed that I ever took the proposition seriously.

So he is basically trying to prevent competing social media networks from using his network to gain market share and the claim is basically hypocrisy?

Is the argument this is a free speech issue? It isn’t so different from Apple’s closed system approach. Whether it makes economic sense … well that’s a different question.

He said anything that isn't illegal should be allowed on Twitter.

Context is everything. It would be like someone putting up trade secrets and Twitter taking it down. Musk’s context was about not censoring political speech. Here there is no censor; it is just trying to limit competition from using twitters network to gain market share. Don’t be strict constructionists; find the meaning.

I don't think it was at all implied that it referred only to political speech, particularly when the most common types of speech people would get in trouble for included things like racism and misinformation.

Expect what is racism or misinformation is inherently political.

I feel a strong desire to steel man this decision by Twitter. While the obvious "Elon hypocrisy!" applies here to some degree, based on the discussions so far, I think many have forgotten or don't understand what Elon's goal for Twitter is: A well functioning time square for proper discourse (to make it look more like the Motte perhaps?). I believe Elon bought Twitter cause he saw the potential for Twitter to be a powerful center for civic discourse, but thought that its previous management's propensity for censorship and allowance of bots to run wild failed to provide the platform to have good civic discourse.

I want to emphasize it again: Elon wants to make Twitter into a place with better civic discourse and engagement. Think the Motte, but at scale.

And while at first glance, this censorship runs counter to his sub-goal of free speech, but I think it does facilitate better civic discourse on the platform. As a hypothetical, if someone replies to a post on the motte with "Check out my Facebook!" It doesn't add anything to the conversation, at best it's nothing, at worst it sidetracks good conversation. And the same applies to Twitter. So this change doesn't strike me as being antithetical to Elon's main goal here based on my understanding of his goals are.

I think many have forgotten or don't understand what Elon's goal for Twitter is: A well functioning time square for proper discourse (to make it look more like the Motte perhaps?). I believe Elon bought Twitter cause he saw the potential for Twitter to be a powerful center for civic discourse, but thought that its previous management's propensity for censorship and allowance of bots to run wild failed to provide the platform to have good civic discourse.

I think you're being too charitable. I do not see any reason to think he's particularly principled in what he sees as "a well functioning time square for proper discourse", I think he simply rejects the biases that the old owners had. Regardless of what he says, he has not been at all clear about what is okay or not okay (he said he wouldn't ban the jet tracker, then did so). He said Jones couldn't come back because his own child died, so he couldn't tolerate people using the death of children for political gain. This is not any position you'd hear endorsed on themotte, because the reason for banning Jones would come down to his willingness to engage in good-faith without preaching, not about the particulars of what he is preaching about.

As a hypothetical, if someone replies to a post on the motte with "Check out my Facebook!" It doesn't add anything to the conversation, at best it's nothing, at worst it sidetracks good conversation. And the same applies to Twitter. So this change doesn't strike me as being antithetical to Elon's main goal here based on my understanding of his goals are.

It would only be a problem if someone did this over and over. I think this rule is too vague to be useful. Twitter already has anti-spam measures to prevent this.

I believe Elon bought Twitter cause he saw the potential for Twitter to be a powerful center for civic discourse

I don't really think you can square the vision of Elon as particularly ideological (for free speech, technolibertarianism or whatever else) with a lot of the revealed policy decisions, and this includes actions and positions before the Twitter acquisition. At the end of the day, he's just not a particularly ideologically committed person. He'd like to be seen as such, and post-rationalises a lot of his decisions in that frame, but the underlying interests just seem like the usual, not-very-deep collection of personal and material.

This isn't a case of Elon setting a new policy, and then the policy being enforced. Elon's hitting the button himself after some personal slight or bad experience and then the policy is hastily written after the fact. See elonjet or the various journos getting knocked off (even taking spaces itself down). Before this, look at the breaking point for him on Covid policies (e.g. shutting down his factories), or with Trump's council of advisors, or his unwillingness to extend his supposed free speech principles to criticisms of China. Hell, he's now picking up the crusade against the independence of the federal reserve -- which he'll wrap in some principle or another but really comes down to the dire serviceability of the Twitter debt.

The main reason he initially bought Twitter wasn't altruistic, it was because the company was stagnant and overstaffed and had leadership that was largely content with that. For various reasons, Elon's succeeded in wringing significantly more productivity per dollar out of expensive tech talent in other domains. Now it turns out he's massively overpaid and is looking to offload shares at the original purchase price to various MENA autocrats.

The main reason he initially bought Twitter wasn't altruistic, it was because the company was stagnant and overstaffed and had leadership that was largely content with that.

I think it was a giant joke and then he realized he would actually be forced to buy it.

I think this steelman is hard to square with the part of the policy that says they'll ban you just for having the link in your Twitter bio.

If violations of this policy are included in your bio and/or account name, we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension.

saying there. It's not just promoting your particular social media accounts that's banned. As far as I can tell they're b

This idea is so poorly thought out I think it will be reversed soon

All urls containing "facebook.com" are banned.

Ok, I'll admit, I didn't realize it was that severe a block. That is definitely going overboard on the block, if it was simply posts that had the appearance of: Follow me on Facebook at: foo_profile. Then I think my argument stands. You are absolutely right, that the restriction as currently implemented kills the ability to post content that might have substantive information from entering the discourse from one of the given sources and that is certainly too far a ban.

If my model of Elon's vision for Twitter is accurate, then this overreaching implimentation can potentially be explained by a lack of resources from Twitter right now. And will later be scaled back into something more reasonable on a per post level by implementing AI anomaly detection to pick up flagrant posts that are antithetical to good discourse.

If I'm not correct, well I'll be sad cause a Motte style discussion board at the scale of Twitter sounds like a dream. And I'd have to do some serious re-tuning on my model of Elon Musk.

I think Elon's lashing out of spite. Linking to any website should be allowed (save extreme cases like CP), if he's really serious about freedom of speech. The issue is that he was very loud about framing his takeover as a way to maximise freedom and it's hard to defend this.

I don't even mind the action itself. It's the inconsistency that bugs me.

He realized how much power he has and it went to his head

Well that's pretty stupid. I'd still rather have him in power than the previous ownership because at least the shitty abusive stuff he does isn't directed at my in groups but as far as justifying it as a general improvement all I have is that he's being more transparent, which isn't the most exciting rallying cry.

So we had what, 2 months of improved free speech on twitter? The Russian Revolution didn't go South this quickly. Either Elon has lost the plot (the mainstream narrative, but I refuse to succumb to Gell-Mann amnesia), or the user bleed is dire.

I keep noticing that all the accusations of hypocrisy neglect to include anything about the accuser actually opposing censorship; the argument appears to be "it's wrong when you do it," rather than "it's wrong."

And this doesn't make me any more supportive of giving them control over policy rather than the person they're attacking. Correct me if I'm misreading you.

If you can link me to where I've expressed support for the previous Twitter management banning links to alternate social media websites I would be fascinated to read it. Otherwise this seems like equivocation.

I mean, Musk explicitly talked about implementing free speech on Twitter, using the words "free speech". However I think before this policy dropped, there were many signs that he never actually followed through on the promise of free speech.

I agree with the rest of your comment, though. Calling out hypocrisy doesn't inherently make oneself better.

The policy also bans linktree, an aggregator of social media links into one link you put in your bio, needlessly inconveniencing existing users. It also inconveniences the many users who already had instagram links in their bio! Restricting users' advertising alternate platforms to prevent them from leaving, or seeing where their network left to, just inflames users more, causing more to leave - including paul graham, previously an elon defender. Paulg's tweets were occasionally interesting (as were Derek Lowe's, who left over elon's rightwing CW tweets and kanye).

But given the policy explicitly allows 'crossposting' individual posts from said sites, and given how poor enforcement of other twitter keyword / link bans has been in the past month, it won't actually prevent links to other sites - just crosspost an individual post, or obfuscate the link a bit.

Amusingly Graham's account seems to be suspended now. I guess you can violate the policy just by mentioning you have a personal blog where your other social media can be found, no actual post needed.

What is he doing? Tech people love paulg. the HN post over his suspension has 500 votes in 40 min!. idk. I love Barbara Streisand lol

It does appear to be blocking mastodon links in tweets right now. Including Instagram was a very strange choice.

Think I was right about flailing and turning the heat up too fast in untargeted ways.

Can you tell us how many people need to call Musk a hypocrite before you stop bringing up everything he does? Because boy am I sick of talking and reading about Twitter.

It's really interesting how Elon Musk taking over Twitter has been in the news cycle for like, what, a month at this point? Maybe even two? You'd think there'd be bigger news at some point, but no, all day every day it's just Musk Musk Musk.

I dunno, I'd rather hear more about fraud shenanigans in the world of cryptocurrency than what idiots on social media are doing

This is stupid. A huge amount of twitter traffic is for porn, which requires linking out. When the porn people leave you’re looking at a drop in ~6% of traffic and engagement. Seriously, type in “onlyfans” or “onlyfans . com/“ into Twitter search and be shocked at how much of twitter’s traffic is in the NSFW ecosystem. While Twitter ought to ban all porn, Musk should wait until he’s firmly hegemonic, not when he’s still on the brink of losing VIPs and advertisers. Btw, all the men who use Twitter to occasionally look at porn on their alts will follow wherever those accounts go, and that’s a lot of people.

Why should Twitter ban porn? Doing that at all will potentially kill it, regardless of how comfy Twitter and Musk's positions are.

Note the policy doesn't ban onlyfans links, just links to specific websites at the moment.

It will once Elon launches TwitterAfterDark to compete with Onlyfans.

I don't disagree that there's a lot of porn on Twitter, but most of the porn is located on the site, not offsite. So while some might leave I can't think of a reason why all of them would leave as long as the porn they came to the site for is still there.

There are a lot of NSFW artists and "content creators" on Twitter. These creators overwhelmingly have presences on other sites, and they very frequently use Linktree, Carrd, and other link-sites to help direct their followers to places like OnlyFans/Fansly, Gumroad, Newgrounds, Pixiv, and so on. Plus, on Twitter, as of this year, NSFW content is placed behind a hard login wall, limiting its visibility (probably on top of being de-ranked in the algo).

I'm not too familiar with Twitter porn, but if it's anything like Reddit then the on-platform content exists almost exclusively to promote off-platform services. Rigorous enforcement of the policy would end up removing the bulk of the NSFW content.

Banning onlyfans links would be bad for creators, who don't get compensated for the posing, camera, editing work it takes to make decent pics or videos - so their twitter serves to advertise the onlyfans, converting some percentage of free viewers to paying customers, incentivizing twitter use. (again onlyfans isn't banned so doesn't matter)

It's like the man himself says

The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!

I've seen this "gotcha, you're a hypocrite!" tweet linked every single time someone has brought up this new policy in a discussion space I'm in, and at no point has the argument (implied or otherwise) gotten any better. Social media platforms are not socioeconomic systems and this is not a "wall" that Elon "built" to "keep people from escaping". At any time people are free to choose to leave Twitter without much consequence, which is not remotely the case if you're, say, looking to move to the US from Mexico, or if it's the 1960s and you're living in the USSR. Yes, yes, you can gripe that you'll lose all your followers or tweets or what have you, but that is not remotely the same as needing to uproot your entire life to move across national borders or needing to go through the US's complicated immigration system, nevermind the risk of death if you tried to do the same in the USSR, and to pretend that they are the same is... to put it politely, a category error.

This sort of hyperbole seems to be the norm around anything Elon Musk does. If Elon bans a bunch of journalists (nevermind all the journalists that were banned before he took over which didn't receive this sort of outcry), it's suddenly a "Thursday Night Massacre" and deserving of its own article on Wikipedia, alongside other actual massacres that took place on Thursday such as:

Bloody Thursday, Thursday Massacre or Thursday Night Massacre may refer to:

  • The Chiquola Mill Massacre, on September 6, 1934, during the 1934 textile workers' strike in the eastern United States
  • "Bloody Thursday", on May 15, 1969, during protests at People's Park in Berkeley, California
  • "Bloody Thursday", on February 17, 2011, during the fourth day of the Bahraini uprising

And just to be sure, let's look at the Chiquola Hill Massacre:

Violence broke out when Dan Beacham, the mayor and magistrate in Honea Path as well as the superintendent of the mill, ordered an armed posse of strikebreakers to fire into the crowd. As the crowd fled, six strikers were shot in the back and killed, one mortally wounded, and thirty others suffered less than mortal wounds.

Beacham obstructed court proceedings against himself and the other strikebreakers, and ordered some of the strikers arrested. Dozens of unionized workers were fired or evicted from their company homes, and after the defeat of the larger strike on September 23, the unionization effort in Honea Path largely came to an end. Until the 1994 publication of "The Uprising of '34" and the subsequent journalistic work of Dan Beacham's grandson, Frank Beacham, the events of the massacre were largely undiscussed in Honea Path. Today, the event is memorialized by a stone marker in nearby Dogwood Park.

Yeah, that's right. People literally getting shot and murdered and evicted from their homes is placed on the same level of importance and described in the same way as some people being unable to use their accounts on a certain social media app. Nevermind the fact that they still have a huge massive platform to publish their views because, you know, they're journalists and they work at giant media companies, so really this didn't do anything, and to compound the amount of nothing this did, Elon ended up unsuspending them anyway.

I would say something to the effect of "touch grass", but I know everyone's already been told that and clearly it's not working. So instead I will just reiterate that the internet is not real life and Twitter is a platform barely used by less than 5% of the population. It's really not important. Whatever stupid shit Elon Musk does is not going to be the end of the world, and not even the end of Twitter for that matter. If Twitter ever does get run into the ground, life will go on and things will continue as normal.

Isn't this the same logic that progressives deployed as a coutnerargument to the right's complaints of deplatforming, though? I think the basic line went similarly: Twitter is a private company, not a country, free speech does not apply here and being booted off of Twitter (which you deserve) is not the end of the world, because "cancellation" doesn't real.

Yes, yes, I know, double-standards, hypocrisy, shoe on the other foot, etc. But even so, are the anti-Musk people not correct for the same reasons the rightists were?

Considering Musk's vision of turning Twitter into an uber-app with payment systems and crypto integration, could one not argue that being deplatformed for breaking an anti-competitive rule is essentially being walled into a socioeconomic system? You'd have the social, the economic, the system, and the wall.

First, Twitter is not the uber-app proposed forth (not yet at least). Second, I doubt Musk will be able to achieve his vision of said uber-app on any timescale relevant to us. But yes, if Twitter is an uber-app with payment systems and crypto integration, the comparison to a socioeconomic system that builds a wall to keep people from escaping might be warranted.

I'm not 100% sure though because despite all the deplatforming of right-wingers, many have still managed to keep an audience and even earn some revenue.

I've seen this "gotcha, you're a hypocrite!" tweet linked every single time someone has brought up this new policy in a discussion space I'm in, and at no point has the argument (implied or otherwise) gotten any better. Social media platforms are not socioeconomic systems and this is not a "wall" that Elon "built" to "keep people from escaping".

Indeed - this is just something that fucks with ordinary user for no benefit for Elon whatsoever. Ordinary users do not see social media as exclusive competing religious sects, ordinary users have no problem using twitter, instagram, facebook, tiktok etc. simultaneously.

What Elon thinks will happen:

"I cannot link to my grandma's Facebook page to show my friends latest cute pics of her cat? So be it. I will stay only on Twitter, never ever look at Facebook any more, and tell granny to delete her facebook and move to Twitter if she wants to stay in contact with me."

What will happen:

"I cannot link to my grandma's Facebook page to show my friends latest cute pics of her cat? @#$#%^&&&!!! FUCK YOU ELON!"

We will see whether Elon's mega ego prevails over common business sense.

He seems to be running it as a business. No business gives free publicity to its rivals. Coke is not going to have people posting social media about "hey check me out trying the new Pepsi flavour". The New York Times will not have 'letters to the editor' where Sam of Ninth Street suggests everyone should read the coverage of the story in the Washington Post to get a better perspective.

So there is that, as against how Twitter and other platforms have been run, where people posting use them as begging platforms ("follow me on Facebook Instagram TikTok here's my Venmo buy me a Ko-Fi my Kickstarter is here"). Since people are accustomed to using social media as a means of increasing their income by directing potential readers/viewers/followers to other streams, then of course they're going to object to Elon taking this tool away from them.

I don't know if it's hypocrisy or not. From Musk's point of view, if Facebook or Instagram is a competitor and they're all fighting for a market share of contributors, then it's business sense to say "if you want to advertise on here, pay for it". It's not business sense if people think they should be able to link their own sites for personal use (and personal gain), and as you say, "eff you Muskrat I'm leaving, Facebook lets me link" is the result.

He seems to be running it as a business. No business gives free publicity to its rivals. Coke is not going to have people posting social media about "hey check me out trying the new Pepsi flavour". The New York Times will not have 'letters to the editor' where Sam of Ninth Street suggests everyone should read the coverage of the story in the Washington Post to get a better perspective.

Twitter users are not customers, they are product. Advertisers are customers buying the product, and will pay according to quantity of product.

Will this policy increase or decrease total number of twitter users and total time they spend on twitter? Elon thinks so. Is he right? Only time will tell.

It's a funny analogy. Both capture the claimed libertarian idea of 'if you're preventing people from leaving, you're doing something wrong'. In the soviet union case - fleeing starvation or poverty, versus the twitter case of 'making the platform slightly worse, maybe being racist'. But it's using that as an analogy! A manager can 'kill' a project, a musician can 'butcher' a piece, none of those imply actual violence. None of that implies violence.

Elon Musk is the new Trump. I can't read a goddamn thing on the internet without having to read about twitter related shenanigans. And Wikipedia articles are propaganda for the future.

Alright, many not literal massacres are labelled as 'massacres'. Fair enough. But a few journalists getting banned from a social media website is newsworthy enough to have that label and a Wikipedia article on it?

That's not where it ends. The college student who made the ElonJet twitter page also has a Wikipedia. A college student!

I mean, the leader of the Armed Forces of The World Hegemon getting banned didn't have its own article. It was discussed briefly in another article.

History is being rewritten in front of us. If one political tribes' story is lionized and signal boosted in the epistemic commons for the future to look back on, I don't know what else to call it. A Wikipedia article makes an event a part of history, 'something that happened'. What's written about at which length is weightage to assign importance to by readers in the future.

Roughly modeled as;

historical_importance_event = (wikipedia_article_exists)*(length_article)*(n_articles)

Its not only that which point of view its written from, its the fact that its written at all combined with how much its written about and where.

The fights of {Elons Detractors plurality political tribe} want their fights to be remembered in the way they viewed it and they are doing a lot to make that happen, not just in this instance.

And Wikipedia articles are propaganda for the future.

This is a great way of putting it; I remember trying to grope ineffectually towards this sentiment on The Old Place a couple of times.

One incident was where the NYT (I think?) published a "Gamergate: 5 years on" retrospective, which was pure its-a-harrassment-campaign agitprop, but raised eyebrows mostly for the question of WHY an e-spat needs a retrospective in a national newspaper. The answer, of course, is to complete the epistemic circle of "Newspaper -> Wikipedia notability criteria -> Wikipedia's article -> public consciousness -> official history". And why this needs to be completed on an e-spat is because GG has (rightly or wrongly) been identified by some as a watershed in distrust of the media and thus Trumpism.

In the present, people remember "You retarded shills, I was there and it didn't go down like that". In 20 years, when that defence doesn't work? The most accessible resource, Wikipedia, tells everyone (and with inline citations to "respectable articles in real newspapers") that it was all misogynistic trolling. Who ya gonna believe? References to contemporary / near contemporary accounts, or Grandpa's ramblings?

Propaganda for the future is exactly it.

And just like, the holocaust became questionable. Did it really happen? was it 6 million?

Just grandpas ramblings.

Of course I didn't ever doubt it in the past, but seeing the future narrative so blatantly being written (not just this but on other issues, e.g., Brexit, Trump, Covid, and now Elon) in a way that is completely wrong (or at least to my perspective) casts doubt on everything I didn't witness and everything that I haven't personally materially verified.

Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article on the Elon banning journalists, and whoever wrote that NYTs piece on gamergate have done more to make me doubt the holocaust than ten thousand David Irvings ever could*.

I am forced to wonder what cognitive defect I have that makes it impossible to not forget the previous truths and experiences I knew and had and just accept the new reality as written, as most people seem to do.

*which is still not much, maybe 10% doubt up from about 0.00001% in 2015, but don't let that dampen the dramatic flair here!

Seems like Wikipedia's "notability" rule is the same as (pre-Musk) Twitter's "notability" rule for verified accounts. Namely, it's nothing to do with notability at all, and it seems entirely to do with whether Wikipedia editors like it or not (barring cases that are too obviously notable to be dismissed like Trump).

This strikes me as a gross overreaction. The "massacre" label is commonly applied to such non-lethal events, and has been for decades. Eg the Saturday Night Massacre. No one understands that to be a claim that they are equivalent in any way to actual killing.

True, but what really happened? A bunch of eight/ten/who knows how many journos got suspended for two days, then it was back to business as usual. The journos in question cooked up a slogan to describe the awful tribulation visited upon them by not being able to tweet for two whole days - presumably because nobody reads them anywhere else and certainly not in the papers they work for, so if they're not on Twitter, they're invisible?

That being the case, are they really important enough that we should care? if Joe Massacred On Thursday gets fired from his journalism job on the Snow Plough Report and loses his Twitter account that goes with the job, then we won't hear from him any more than if Musk suspended him.

Or how about when the media does it to one of their own? Is that different?

I wouldn't call the Watergate dismissals a massacre either, and I would much prefer to use the word "massacre" to mean killing rather than broadening and overloading its meaning, which would make it less useful (i.e. you would learn less about the world from hearing the word "massacre"). In any case the severity of what Elon Musk did is in no way, shape, or form equivalent to what Richard Nixon did. For starters, Nixon didn't un-dismiss the special prosecutor afterwards, and what Musk did isn't illegal.

No one understands that to be a claim that they are equivalent in any way to actual killing.

I mean... I did. And that's not how it works. If I didn't know anything about Watergate and you told me something called a "Saturday Night Massacre" happened, I would assume that Nixon killed someone or something like that. This is what I mean when I say that overloading the meaning of a word makes it less useful, because if I accept that "massacre" could mean not killing, then if I didn't know anything about the Chiquola Hill Massacre I would wonder if it was just people getting fired or people getting killed.

It is, of course, a metaphor, and a very common one that, in ordinarily parlance, simply not meant to imply equivalence to an actual killing.

And, yes, what Musk did is not equivalent to what Nixon did. But I didn't say it was. I said that taking people to task for the very ordinary use of a very common metaphor "strikes me as a gross overreaction." But now I see that perhaps it is the result of ignorance, rather than hysteria.

Yeah, agreed. When someone says "massacre" I take that to mean that not just someone, but many people were killed. People using the word in another context are using the word wrong.

This football world cup won't end without some American culture war injected on it of course. A week ago there was a Washington Post op-ed (https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/08/why-doesnt-argentina-have-more-black-players-world-cup/) noticing that Argentina football team didn't have Black players, a lot of hypothesis are made but the easiest explanation, if any, is assimilation.

After making the rounds online, the op-ed was corrected to point out that the black population (or so Afro-Argentines) is less than 1% (actual data is close to 0.32%), nonetheless the controversy made re-emerge news about how the Afro-Argentines need to be heard.

It's frustrating how the same identity politics issues from USA are trying to be pushed into Latam countries when there are obvious cultural and historic differences. Not surprisingly, these issues (and everything that can be related to "woke" culture) are embraced by left leaning political parties.

Quite an impressive mistake for someone who wrote a whole book on the subject.

Twitter Files 6

I thought we were done with this, but it seems not. Link

TF6 is written by Taibbi and covers the relationship between Twitter and the FBI + DHS. The arguments in order:

  1. Twitter's senior/important staff were in constant contact with the FBI (Evidence/Example: 150 emails between Yoel Roth and the FBI from Jan 2020 to Nov 2022)

  2. The FBI had a task force centered on identifying alleged foreign interference in our elections. This was made in 2016 and grew to 80 people eventually.

  3. The FBI and DHS had separate entry points into Twitter's reporting system compared to other people so that Twitter knew it was the federal government requesting moderation, not just some randoms.

  4. There were a great deal of requests made, with Taibbi alleging that humorless people must have been doing the ground-level collection because many of the flagged posts were obviously jokes (or, not obviously serious). Supposedly, the requests weren't that completely partisan, with a few left-wing jokesters getting flagged by the FBI as well.

  5. Many accounts were tiny, with some having follower counts below 10. It seems whoever was collecting all this from the government's side took no chances and combed through everyone, something even Twitter's staff noted.

  6. State governments were also involved, with one incident involving California officials asking Twitter why no action was taken against a flagged tweet.

Taibbi closes with the following:

The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.

I've said before that not every TF release is equal, with several coming across to me as limp and very much known to both sides beforehand. This is no exception, The Intercept had thoroughly covered attempts by the DHS to remove "misinformation" from social media a few months ago. I'm genuinely unsure what Taibbi or any of the other TF reporters think was revealed here. More evidence to throw onto an argument is always good, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing here that wasn't provable prior to this.

That's not to say what was going on is acceptable, I outlined my rejection of this state of affairs here. Only that none of this was even unknown or outside the mainstream.

What I like most in this one is FBI dressing Twitter down for not giving them enough fodder for their narrative of foreign government constantly attacking the US democracy over social media and heroic efforts necessary to combat this imaginary onslaught. Even Roth is kinda taken aback - he thought less foreign meddling would be good? Looks like he still didn't get the game - it's not about achieving some end goal, it's about establishing control. Oceania has always been, and will always be, at war with Eastasia. Foreign governments has always meddled and will always meddle, and always require heroic censors to stand in their way. And if to prove that you need to mine 10-follower accounts for ancient jokes about Wednesday elections - then so be it.

It's the same in offline world btw - how many "plots" turned out to be constructed by the FBI out of the whole cloth recently? That's what happens when you corrupt the watchdogs.

Only that none of this was even unknown or outside the mainstream.

When it was first reported, it was "libelous accusations without any proof, we won't lower ourselves to discuss such baseless rumors". When the proofs started appearing later, it's "old news, everybody knew that, we already discussed it years ago, nothing to discuss here, move on already!". Simple trick, but surprisingly effective.

This is evidence, laid down in broad swaths in specific tranches, so left-media figures can’t say “Musk claimed, without evidence, …” on later, more investigative reporting from right-media.

I'm genuinely unsure what Taibbi or any of the other TF reporters think was revealed here.

There are two ways to react along the lines above:

(1) I was hoping/expecting/wondering if we would get new information, but there's nothing here we haven't seen before.

(2) Nothing to be seen here, move along please. What is all the big deal the right-wingers were making out of this, we knew they were just trying to spread fake news.

(1) is non-partisan, anyone on any or no side could make this observation - 'no new info'. (2) is partisan, in the 'it's a private company and they can do what they like, it didn't happen but if it did they deserved it, this is not censorship or government interference this is needed crackdown on hate speech' way, and generally yes, it does come from the left side (the right would do it as well when it's their outgroup getting "hey Twitter, Man From The Government Here, why are you letting this stochastic terrorist spread their propaganda" treatment).

To combat (2), more information is better, even if it's "we already knew this" or "nothing new here", because the counter-argument will always be "that was only one source/nobody else is reporting on it/that's a crackpot guy why should we believe what he says?". If you have one guy saying "this happened", it can be challenged. If you have twelve guys saying "this happened", it can still be challenged, but not as easily, and not as easily hidden.

So uh... there's a wikipedia page about the recent suspensions, and it's dubbed the "Thursday Night Massacre". Three letter agencies involved in the generation of such pages? I'm genuinely asking.

"Thursday Night Massacre" is something dreamed up by some online keyboard-basher. Journalists are so self-important, they really do need to realise that they are not Lois Lane and this is not The Daily Planet, their job is to generate eyeball-grabbing content so their employers can sell ad clicks.

What makes it even funnier is that the suspension only lasted one day, so Mr. "I Am So Important, I'm One of the Gang Of Eight Persecuted" barely had time to get his piece out to make the most of his martyrdom. Though apparently he also fancies himself as a techie, which makes me ask "so why does he need a sideline churning out written content?"

I absolutely hate the fact that, due to the reactions that 90% of what Elon does now causes in the likes of this guy, they're starting to make me take his side. I don't like Elon! Back when these same guys were all over him as their tech hero I didn't like him! But the self-important inflated notions that journalists and online activists have about themselves, that come pouring out once he does or doesn't do something, are so annoying that I have to say "yeah, the chubby billionaire who thinks he's God is in the right here".

I mean, look at this, which our Thursday Night Massacre hero is "a member of the Distributed Denial of Secrets advisory board". It's supposed to be journos working to make information free or something, so of course they had to include the newest version of the Pride flag. Of course they did. What the hell does "yay we are good allies if you're BIPOC queer" to do with ensuring secrecy isn't misused? Nothing, but it signals so hard you could use it to contact any possible alien civilisations (to warn them 'don't bother trying to paperclip us, we're managing that just fine by ourselves').

Distributed Denial of Secrets is a journalist 501(c)(3) non-profit devoted to enabling the free transmission of data in the public interest.

We aim to avoid political, corporate or personal leanings, to act as a beacon of available information. As a transparency collective, we don't support any cause, idea or message beyond ensuring that information is available to those who need it most—the people.

We don't have any personal leanings, we don't support any message, sure we don't (look at our logo! look at our logo! that reassures you that we are the right kind of thinkers!)

I absolutely hate the fact that, due to the reactions that 90% of what Elon does now causes in the likes of this guy, they're starting to make me take his side. I don't like Elon!

Now you understand why some people voted for Trump, even though they didn't like him.

The Intercept had thoroughly covered attempts by the DHS to remove "misinformation" from social media a few months ago. I'm genuinely unsure what Taibbi or any of the other TF reporters think was revealed here.

Contemporaneously, the defenses of 'FBI misinformation teams', not just in the last few months but even eg the Jankowicz controversies well before that often involved some combination of :

  • the FBI had a valid role in combating fraud or other federal crimes related to false statements, and it wasn't going far outside of that here,

  • the majority of stricken content involved Bad Actors, either likely foreign governments, foreign-government-inspired 'third parties', and/or domestic near-criminals, and/or

  • the government's requests were 'just like anyone else', in that they were not prioritized, and did not result in takedowns that were unlikely if reported by normal people.

Note even in your Intercept link -- in addition to the low trust a lot of people have with the Intercept specifically -- mentions that "the extent to which the DHS initiatives affect Americans’ daily social feeds is unclear." The lawsuit the Intercept links is impressively limited in its references to the FBI (consisting almost solely of mentioning the FBI-Zuckerberg meeting mentioned in a Rogan interview), but more generally spends little focus on blocking of specific content, almost purely limited to the CDC's use of example posts. Those are controversial enough, but they were highly limited in both scope and topic. And while part of that reflects poor competence from the lawsuit's filers, more of it reflects that simply not being known anywhere. Because it was never known if any given censorship action was driven from state actors, it has been trivial to avoid object-level claims. People still pretend the Hunter Biden laptop was organically blocked!

This seems kinda like a pretty major revelations for all three of these things!

A number of posts are clearly protected political speech, satire, or rarely even plausible (if wrong) beliefs. The accounts do not show signs of domestic terrorism, nor of "boosting" or other signs of foreign intervention. And while Twitter didn't suspend 100% of posters the FBI gave, they are clearly willing to err far further on the side of moderating anyone brought through these formats than any posts brought forward through normal reports would be.

The strong case that it doesn't matter goes like: the removed content doesn't really have any strong political affiliation, and removing it is perfectly in like with twitter's retarded moderation policies generally. There were all sorts of people suspended for making election-fraud-related obvious jokes in 2016, but that isn't exactly out of the norm from people being suspended for entirely benign uses of 'kill' or 'die'.

The accusations were like "the FBI ordered twitter to suppress conservatives", and this isn't that, none of the FBI's actions here had large-scale 'suppress conservative' effects.

That's entirely fair. I keep assuming that people would conclude, like me, that "the government is trying to tell private actors what to censor" to be a maximally red flag and all following evidence just icing on said flag, but I shouldn't doubt that there are people who unironically would say that there isn't anything inherently wrong with that.

I don't really understand why the response to the FBI wasn't "feel free to click 'report this tweet' if you think it violates our AUP".

The fact that they wanted an inside line but still couldn't produce any legal process compelling them to take tweets/accounts down doesn't look very good? If you were Twitter would you want to normalize this? Why would you want to be in a place where you're continuously negotiating with law enforcement about what you can and can't take down?

This seems like humoring computer illiterate people at the FBI slash keeping them from getting mad and asking for burdensome regulation.

It seems like an appropriate response to this would be to say "sure, we'll take all government legal requests. Just send it to this address, clearly stating it is a legal request."

The problem is not that the government can make demands, it's that the government, or Twitter laundering censorship through the government, can make demands backed by government force, but then retreat to "we were just warning them about the AUP, no threat of force here" when called on it.

If you were Twitter would you want to normalize this?

Good Boy Points from the hegemon are the world's most valuable currency, and this generates them. If I were Twitter I would certainly be tempted to be owed favours by Alphabet Agencies.

Your examples are:

  1. Refuses to help a Republican attorney general silence a blogger who's critical of him

  2. Refuses to dox an Occupy Wall Street guy

  3. Refuses to shut down an account parodying a California Republican

  4. Refuses to shut down accounts tagged @OccupyBoston at the request of local PD

NONE of these examples represents Twitter spurning the hegemon. They're all Twitter spurning the Red Tribe.

Is it just me or do these 4 examples seem kinda like they're fighting subpoenas for left wing causes?

See also: JPM adding Ukraine to its bond index immediately before the invasion (when the news was reporting USA predictions of invasion nightly). Addition to the index of a country that could see its entire economy destroyed is utterly insanely irrational... Unless it was done to please the US government by making Ukrainian financing mildly easier.

Big corporations are creatures of big government, one cannot exist without the other. They're perpetually trading favors.

Why would you want to be in a place where you're continuously negotiating with law enforcement about what you can and can't take down?

When you think you are some important opinion-shaping national influencing world player, not a gossip site? I think the journalism and activist side of Twitter have a vastly inflated notion of their importance and vital role in protecting democracy (which will die in darkness, remember!), possibly because for journos it has become part of their job and a performance metric about "how much did you tweet under the company masthead, how many views did you get, are you being quoted online?" In reality, I think most people who use it, use it like they would have used Facebook when that was the popular thing - tweeting snippets of their lives, chatting with friends online, sharing links, etc.

And I think whoever the powers that were at Twitter were, they thought they were this big important "democracy dies in darkness" social media project, so working with law enforcement about 'hate speech' and 'fake news' was all part of the War On Badthink. Also, co-operating with the government/law enforcement to prove you are a good citizen because they were a business enterprise after all, and didn't need to be cracked down on themselves.

It's worth noting that one account inexplicably targeted was a parody account primarily about professional wrestler The Undertaker shitting his pants.

It's one thing to have it from the govt's side via FOIA, it's another to have it from Twitter directly. Independent corroboration is always good, and making this stuff even better-known, even common knowledge (which I don't think the Intercept story did), also seems like a plus.

Many accounts were tiny, with some having follower counts below 10. It seems whoever was collecting all this from the government's side took no chances and combed through everyone, something even Twitter's staff noted.

This is as simple as just doing Twitter searches for keywords "voting" or "vote" . I am sure the FBI has some people whose job it is to go through keywords during elections


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