Elon’s Commitment To Free Speech Rapidly Replaced By His Commitment To Blatant Hypocrisy: Bans The JoinMastodon Account
from the a-hypocrite-is-hypocriting dept
Oh, Elon. Following on yesterday’s nonsense in banning the ElonJet account that robotically posted the public information regarding Elon’s private plane flights, and then trying to justify it later (after initially promising to keep the account alive to demonstrate his “commitment to free speech”), it appears that Elon’s commitment to free speech continues to dwindle.
This afternoon it showed itself in the form of banning the @JoinMastodon account, which is the official account of the Mastodon federated, open source, social media network that has been growing by leaps and bounds, mostly from people exiting Twitter.
Its crime? From the Internet Archive, it appears that its last tweet was… to let people know that the @ElonJet account exists on Mastodon:
Just earlier this week, in a Twitter spaces, Elon mocked Mastodon by claiming that people weren’t going there because “no one’s listening,” implying that the audience is too small. I’ll just note that, personally, I’ve found the opposite to be true. The engagement on Mastodon has been a lot more interesting and valuable than on Twitter of late.
Either way, it does seem like Musk is doing the classic content moderation learning curve in quite incredible speed — and still without actually learning anything.
Now, we’re the first to admit that content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and that it’s important to give the benefit of the doubt to mistakes. But, seriously, how does one explain this?
The Mastodon account did not violate even the new policy. I guess, if you did a really, really strained reading of the new policy, by linking to the ElonJet account on Mastodon, it was, in some twisted way, linking to travel routes, and that’s banned? That’s the best explanation for this. But… it’s still not a good one.
And it definitely does not show a commitment to free speech.
Then, of course, there are the worst explanations for this, which is that Musk actually is nervous about how much Mastodon is growing. As impulsive as Musk appears to be, I actually doubt that’s why this happened at all. But it still looks pretty, pretty bad.
But, yeah. Every social media network needs some form of content moderation. It’s not about “censorship,” as some people keep claiming. But how that moderation plays out is very much dependent on who is in control over the site. And sometimes it may be a hypocritical billionaire surrounded by sycophants with no real commitment to anything other than himself.
Anyway, I’ve been hanging out at Mastodon myself, and it’s been great. Come follow me there. I’m hoping to have some more posts soon about some of what I’ve learned while there.
Filed Under: content moderation, elon musk, elonjet, hypocrisy, mastodon
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Elon’s Commitment To Free Speech Rapidly Replaced By His Commitment To Blatant Hypocrisy: Bans The JoinMastodon Account”
Too frustrating to buy the cookie jar and not be allowed inside
Free speech is valuable to the powerless. Musk no longer belongs to that group. All the talk about fair cookie distribution just stopped making sense to him.
I mean, this kind of mutation frequently happens when people come into power. That’s what makes electing people on reform platforms such a frustrating experience: more often than not, the reform is left to the next office holder.
“I guess they were banned for revealing the location of where all the Twitter users were going.”
-Jason Goldman
Re:
Last to leave switch off the Likes.
'No one uses Mastodon... especially if I have anything to say about it.'
I’m reminded of the whole Hunter Biden laptop story were the source material still existed but the links to it were taken down due to a claimed rules violation…
Welp, I’m sure the same people who lost their minds and have been screaming about the ‘censorship’ of that story will be here any minute to roundly condemn Musk for his hypocrisy and censorship.
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… any … minute….
In other werds... I mean wurds..... I mean blerbs..... I mean slurs
At least he makes an RFC for each of his decisions. It looked like 30k+ comments on his doxxing kahments.
He even had 30k+ comments on his 5th installment of the twitturd files (waiting to binge the micro-series on dizknee).
Speaking another language about a whole lot of nothing is sooooooooooo so fis teh Kate’d. Must be from mhirs….
Its so funny that Musk is a slur word now
Enough already
Since it is so totally obvious that what Elon most wants is for everyone to pay attention to him, perhaps this would be a good time to ignore him and Twitter for a while.
Like you, I like Mastodon just fine.
Re: Not all attention is good
He’ll stop getting coverage when he stops finding new and/or hypocritical ways to burn a well known and popular social media platform to the ground.
While it’s possible that he’s a masochist that gets his warm fuzzies from people pointing out what an idiot/hypocrite he is, or only cares that people are paying attention to him without caring whether they’re laughing with or at him barring that I rather doubt that articles pointing out how how incompetent and hypocritical he is are what he’s aiming for.
Why do you still link to Twitter on your posts? Shouldn’t the world just cancel it?
Re:
Not seeing a twitter link in this post. Seeing twitter screenshots, because they’re more likely to last, though.
Then why is Twitter banning all links to mastodon?
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Its all bs they are just trying to DISTROY a little more! Our UNITED STATES OF CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA WASNR ENOUGHT FOR THEM!!!
Re:
Sir, this is an Arby’s.
When did flaming fall out of favor
Some here know how forums work. The owner of forum made rules and moderators enforced rules (I’m mod at (X) but on a sanity break). The difference between Twitter and Forums. A forum is usually specific and has common interest users – product help to bird watching, Twitter is anyone can have an account and follows users of choice – quite useful.
In a forum “free speech” flame wars I had to deal with resulted in me sending those fussing to their room – can’t post for x days (chill). A few kicked out because they could not stop pissing on any thread that they didn’t like – If you were such a dick that ‘Off Topic’ folks complained about you and your history is attention seeking child screaming at everyone I banned. There are plenty of folks who equate ‘free speech’ with saying anything obnoxious and abusive. Bye, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
In Twitter “free speech” is so mixed up I’m not going to try to say anything about moderation except read – https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/
Methinks Mr. Elon is the straw that breaks my brain. Once I was on a really useful forum that went batshit crazy after the owner passed it to cofounder.
Random rule changes because ego, abusive mods allowed and the knowledgeable users left. I closed and never looked back.
Unless Twitter gets its shit together I will do what I do with Facebook, check now and then to see what is happening.
Slash Rant
While it is a bit different, there are some interesting parallels between this Musk-Twitter thing, and the the Freenode take over (mismanagement of platform, suppression of otherwise fine topics the new owner doesn’t like, people fleeing, and probably more).
Quite a few users I follow on Twitter have replaced their handles with their Mastodon address, and many others have been tweeting out where to find them there and on other media. When this became a trend, I did wonder how long it would be before Musk started ordering such things to be blocked, focussing as ever on the wrong thing (in this case where people flee to instead of why people are leaving, as if they would all stay if only people weren’t allowed to tell them they have a choice).
While it seems to be that this move is more about Musk’s tiny mind being occupied with a perceived personal slight than it is with the larger pursuit, it wouldn’t surprise me if before the end of the year we see a blanket ban on mentioning Mastodon (which I also firmly expect to be issued in a way that blocks the band and not the federated social media, such is the competence we are coming to expect).
Anything you can do I can do better...
If you’ve ever managed an online community… at least once you’ve had a Community member tell you that, “you suck as a moderator; it’s easy, I could do your job better”.
We are seeing what their “moderation” would look like in real time, on Twitter. It’s reactionary, with no forethought or foresight, which leads to more reactionary actions when it goes sideways.
Re: Liars and Trolls, and Spammers, Oh My!
Taking the population into account, its obvious that content moderation is an afterthought.
As I recall, email SPAM around 2000-2005 was getting out of hand and mostly sent by offshore accounts.
Mixing on a global network and expecting anything coherent is the punchline to the joke. It costs nothing to send SPAM. Knowing that the content moderators are “SPAM filters” is what makes all of that a futile endeavour.
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publishing live location
I recommend you publish live location of one of the reporters of CNN or NYT or may be location of Arifirce one and see what happens.
Re:
“This is Pamela Brown for CNN reporting live from Pennsylvania Avenue”
“This is Vivian Yee for NY Times reporting live from Beirut”
Airforce One can turn off its ADS-B when it isn’t in an airport’s airspace.
Did you have a point or are you just expending straws willy-nilly?
Re:
The few entities who could use that sort of information, outside of lone wolves, would be criminal entities or nation-states.
And criminal entities prefer to NOT draw public attention to themselves in the real world where possible.
Which leaves us with nation-states. Oh, and they don’t need the publicly-available data to do what they want to do.
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They left out, they were tracking non public info that gave Musks real time location and stalkers were showing up, and the ban kinda makes a lot more sense. Musk is a hero and the blue pill woke mob ain’t happy.
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… said nobody not on hallucinogens, ever.
Re:
Well, the FAA should be arrested, all of them then.
Re:
“non public info”
Untrue.
“Musks real time location”
Untrue, unless you think a plane is a car.
“stalkers were showing up”
Like they did at Pelosi’s house, or various other right-wing terrorist attempts? Or, if that different when someone else does it?
“Musk is a hero and the blue pill woke mob”
Fun fact – the transwomen who made The Matrix specifically referenced the red coloured hormone pill when they made that metaphor in their script. You’re on the side of the trans community when you use that reference.