Kind: Reads

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’ by Mike Masnick

Sigh. Look. I want to stop writing about Twitter. I want to write about lots of other stuff. I have a huge list of other stories that I’m trying to get through, but then Elon Musk does something dumb again, and people run wild with it, and (for reasons that perplex me) much of the […]

I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy by Mike Masnick

The last few days on Twitter have been, well, chaotic, I guess? Beyond the blocking of the ElonJet account, followed by the blocking of the @JoinMastodon account, then the blocking of journalists asking about all this and the silly made up defense of it, over the weekend, Twitter announced a new policy banning linking to […]

On Chanukah and the sweet myths we tell ourselves

Moving Past Two-Mindedness

Pluralistic: Better failure for social media (19 Dec 2022) by Cory Doctorow

https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/19Dec2022.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/19Dec2022.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 Today's links Better failure for social media: The right of exit, freedom of reach, and technological self-determination. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This da...

Twitter is a soap opera where Musk is the star, the only actor in the spotlight. The world should look away, says Roger McNamee

Elon Musk has used the same playbook at all of his companies from Tesla to SpaceX. Sadly for him, his model will cause Twitter to go down in flames.

Why You Should Clarify Which Free Speech Value You’re Debating

The incident last week underscored how Elon Musk’s personal concerns can influence his governance of a social media platform used by hundreds of millions of people.

But here we are.

It started as a fringe philosophical theory about humanity’s future. It’s now richly funded and increasingly dangerous

The idea of an all-knowing computer program comes from science fiction and should stay there. Despite the seductive fluency of ChatGPT and other language models, they remain unsuitable as sources of knowledge. We must fight against the instinct to trust a human-sounding machine, argue Emily M. Bender & Chirag Shah.,

There are tough sells, and there are tough sells. Selling shares of Twitter at $54.20 today could be grist for a sequel to *Glengarry Glen Ross*.

Did the GPT3 Chatbot Pass the Lovelace Creativity Test? by Robert J. Marks

excerpt

Elon’s Commitment To Free Speech Rapidly Replaced By His Commitment To Blatant Hypocrisy: Bans The JoinMastodon Account by Mike Masnick

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. […]

Elon’s Promise Not To Ban Account Tracking His Jet Didn’t Last Very Long At All; Also Bans Guy’s Personal Account by Mike Masnick

Hilarious Update: A few minutes ago, the @ElonJet account returned to Twitter, but that came about 20 minutes after Elon himself justified the ban, saying it violated the company’s (new) doxxing policies (see the original update to this story at the bottom. Anyway, in the meantime, the original post is here: Earlier this week, we […]

PLUS: Why it's time to start leaving Twitter behind

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, left his home after criticism from Musk unleashed a torrent of online harassment.

Whenever you hear a Silicon Valley influencer talking about “freedom of speech,” it’s often fair to assume that they’re finding a way to justify taking away someone else’s. This is either done through the outright banning of certain voices - such as banning prominent left-wing accounts

Everything Ends, And That’s Okay.