As someone who never really used Twitter before the LLM stuff started happening, and still I only pick it up once or twice per week, I've personally felt that I've had a better experience on there recently than I did a while ago. I appreciate the efforts Musk has made towards pushing back against the censorship of language that it seems like everyone nowadays wants to enforce, regardless of their background. I think he'd be doing better financially if he would shut up for 5 minutes, but hey, it's his money, not mine, haha.
Although, I would like to see humans make it Mars within my life. So c'mon, Elon, just keep your trap closed for a bit, let Linda do the talking for you, and continue to be the egotistic, megalomaniac manager in the same vein as Steve Jobs, and just make really good products, please.
People are downvoting you because you're saying "Twitter okay" and the hivemind says "Twitter bad". Fwiw I had the same experience, I never cared about Twitter (had tried it a few times and just lost interest) and I've immensely enjoyed Twitter recently. So many weird people just putting ideas out there. TPOT and e/acc in particular are full of smart people I can't find elsewhere (I don't live in SF or even the US, so these aren't people I could access in my community).
I also agree that the real source of the drama seems to be Musk. People are annoyed at him so they have to say "Twitter bad" as a matter of principle.
> I appreciate the efforts Musk has made towards pushing back against the censorship of language that it seems like everyone nowadays wants to enforce, regardless of their background.
Musks censorship is well-documented. There are only two ways one could sincerely make this argument:
- by fully ignoring Musks censorship
- by accepting it as good
Neither option makes the commenter seem honest or well-meaning, hence the downvotes.
Musk didn't declare it a forbidden slur. What he declared forbidden was "repeated, targeted harassment" and that cis will be considered a slur by Twitter in the context of assessing whether something is "repeated, targeted harassment". Personally I think that's fair enough. There are countless words which can be slurs when used to harass.
If a transgender woman asks to not be referred to as a man, I would argue that use of male pronouns can constitute a slur. It can be a slur even if it's technically correct that they are still a biologically male person.
Calling an openly gay man "a homo" is widely accepted to be a serious slur, even though it's a term derived from Latin and the factual imputation conveyed by the word isn't in dispute.
It doesn't matter if a person happens to fit the technical definition of "cisgender" because slur-ness is never about technical correctness, or whether a word has Latin roots. It's about the reasons why the word was chosen and the purpose it is serving in the conversation.
I don't think you're right. Musk wrote:
> Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.
> The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.
This does mention repeated, targeted harassment, but the "slur-ness" isn't predicated upon it. On Twitter, as it stands right now, "cis" is a slur, as Musk decreed.
I agree with your parsing as technically sound, though I personally have a rule to give benefit of the doubt about nuance and specificity when reading posts on a platform which encourages an off-the-cuff style of writing and is famous for enforced brevity.
The benefit of the doubt I extend is that being "considered slurs on this platform" is a no-op when the platform doesn't have a policy regarding arbitrary use of slur words. So whether a platform considers a word a slur is only relevant when there's a context — in this case, the context of assessing for repeated, targeted harassment.
> The benefit of the doubt I extend is that being "considered slurs on this platform" is a no-op when the platform doesn't have a policy regarding arbitrary use of slur words. So whether a platform considers a word a slur is only relevant when there's a context — in this case, the context of assessing for repeated, targeted harassment.
I can understand this perspective from a non-affected person, but the signal sent to affected minority groups seems very clear to me, and this makes it relevant for any interaction of the minority group with the platform.
There is no such thing as a "non-affected" person. Everyone is the cumulation of a thousand traits; many of these traits make a person some kind of minority when considered from one perspective or another. What changes from year to year is which traits are enjoying attention, and how minority members of that trait are exploiting that attention.
> As someone who never really used Twitter before the LLM stuff started happening, and still I only pick it up once or twice per week, I've personally felt that I've had a better experience on there recently than I did a while ago.
so with the release of ChatGPT on 2022-11-30 being the watershed moment for LLMs, you're saying that you've been using twitter for less than a year? if that's the case, i got news for you buddy--you've only ever known the shitshow twitter
You must be a GOP fan, then. Because it has turned into a disgusting cesspool of disinformation, bigotry, and hate. Just like 4chan, the_donald, and voat before it. But dare you speak against Mr. Free Speech Absolutist himself, you’ll get the hammer.
8/02 | Twitter Blue users can now hide their checkmarks, completing our destruction of both what we mistakenly thought they were (status symbols) and what their actual use was (verification - now available in $1,000 + $50 × user flavor!)
Blue checkmarks were absolutely treated as status symbols by many people, even if it was "mistaken" to consider them as such. While I do lament the loss of identity verification (hugely imperfect as the prior blue checkmark program was) I do see the abolishment of the status symbol as a sociological win that platform.
Nothing says “we’re doing great” like having to remind people about every small thing you managed to shove out to production in the last few months. I’m surprised she didn’t include that they successfully managed to replace the toilet paper in the bathrooms.
I mean they literally included just renaming a tab. Like, not changing any behavior, just replacing a string with another (well x times for internationalization.... but then again they probably fired that team and even if not it's certainly an afterthought to them).
Well, it's X CEO now and I don't know if I want that on my resume especially since it seems to be a puppet position which you have you no say at in any way.
On the other hand, for anything short of bankruptcy she can trot out a story.aboit how it's only thanks to her heroic efforts it didn't go worse. Whether true or not. And how she's dealt with the backseat driver from hell.
Idk, there might be a pretty decent supply of rich narcissistic fools. It could be that it's rather lucrative being the one to be the happy ceo for their dumb shit.
Tell me: Is it safer for People of Color, LGBTQ individuals and such to be there? Because that used to be a huge circus.
I killed my "Oh, God, this was a bad idea" personal account and haven't yet figured out what to do with the account I have left. So I don't really know.
I never know what to make of all the claims that Musk is transphobic. I don't really read much about him but I was friends at one time with someone who was friends with Elon and that mutual friend was trans.
He banned the word "cisgender" as a slur. This makes it difficult to talk about trans topics, because how are you going to refer to non-trans people? "Normal"? It's an arbitrary decision meant to alienate these groups further.
It is if your goal is to create a divide between the two groups. There is a reason this kind of classification isn't used with minorities, e.g. we say "hetero" instead of "non-hono".
It's different though, in that this adjective redefines the noun it's being applied to, away from the usual understanding.
Consider "homosexual woman" and "heterosexual woman". Both describe an aspect of "woman" - her sexual orientation - without changing what "woman" means.
Compare "cis woman" and "trans woman" though. The former refers to a female and the latter to a male. This changes "woman" away from the sex-based definition that the vast majority of people understand, to one where a subset of men claim to be women.
So by using "cis", this implies an agreement with this world view that men who call themselves women somehow actually are women. A view that most people don't actually hold.
This is also why in radical feminist circles they prefer terms like "trans-identified male" instead of "trans woman", to avoid adopting the linguistic contortions of the oppressor.
You can find differences everywhere if you look hard enough. The difference you identified is not objective, it's only your opinion that it "redefines the noun". I don't think that it does, at least not more than "homo"/"hetero" does.
> So by using "cis", this implies an agreement with this world view that men who call themselves women somehow actually are women. A view that most people don't actually hold.
You'll have to prove that most people don't hold this view, until you do it's pure conjecture. And you will also have to explain why banning the word isn't a bad thing for trans people who do subscribe to this world view, as that is the topic we're talking about.
We know that most people don't hold that view because that's what polling reveals, even in the countries where law and policy have been changed in favour of that view.
To further explain my linguistic point though, it's really down to an ambiguity as to whether "trans woman" and "trans man" are meant as compound nouns (in the open form, as the closed form, e.g. "transwoman", doesn't have this ambiguity) or noun phrases.
As compound nouns, these have the sense of a man or woman who wishes to be the opposite. That is, a "trans woman" is a man who desires to be a woman, and a "trans man" is a woman who wants to be a man. They may even end up believing themselves to be so, based on that desire.
As noun phrases, these apply the adjective "trans" as if a subset of the group the noun is describing. So a "trans woman" is understood as a woman who is male, and a "trans man" as man who is female. But this only works if you also believe that "woman" and "man" are "gender identity" categories that one can identify into, rather than based on the material biological reality of being, respectively, female or male.
Introducing "cis" removes that ambiguity, implying noun phrases rather than compound nouns, and thus implies acceptance of the "gender identity" belief. When people object to the terms "cis woman" and "cis man", they are expressing a rejection of this belief system.
> We know that most people don't hold that view because that's what polling reveals, even in the countries where law and policy have been changed in favour of that view.
You have made this statement twice now, but that is not proof itself. Can you share the polls you are referencing?
> To further explain my linguistic point though, it's really down to an ambiguity as to whether "trans woman" and "trans man" are meant as compound nouns (in the open form, as the closed form, e.g. "transwoman", doesn't have this ambiguity) or noun phrases.
> As compound nouns, these have the sense of a man or woman who wishes to be the opposite. That is, a "trans woman" is a man who desires to be a woman, and a "trans man" is a woman who wants to be a man. They may even end up believing themselves to be so, based on that desire.
This is not objective truth, it is your subjective opinion.
> As noun phrases, these apply the adjective "trans" as if a subset of the group the noun is describing. So a "trans woman" is understood as a woman who is male, and a "trans man" as man who is female. But this only works if you also believe that "woman" and "man" are "gender identity" categories that one can identify into, rather than based on the material biological reality of being, respectively, female or male.
Yes, it only works if you use the words as they are used by others.
> Introducing "cis" removes that ambiguity, implying noun phrases rather than compound nouns, and thus implies acceptance of the "gender identity" belief. When people object to the terms "cis woman" and "cis man", they are expressing a rejection of this belief system.
Can you now circle back to the original topic - "cis" being defined as a slur? Because if the reason for Musk to define it as such is a rejection of the "belief system" of trans people, it seems pretty obvious that it's transphobic.
When people object to the terms "cis woman" and "cis man", they are expressing a rejection of this belief system.
Please don't paint with such a broad brush.
I'm not a huge fan of the term "cis" and use it somewhat reluctantly because it's the term I know to be in use to make this distinction. I also was very supportive of a trans youth for about nine months some years back.
I'm not interested in debating this with you. But for the record, it's possible to not like the term and also not be someone who outright rejects the concept that some people have a biological identity that doesn't match the identity in their brain.
I'm not a huge fan of labels. To me, it seems to add no real distinction. It is saying, basically, "What you thought the unmodified version of the following word meant before you learned some people feel that there is something very wrong with their life and it has to do with a mismatch between their body and their identity."
I don't know what the solution is. I think the LGBTQ community sees high levels of trauma due to social rejection and abuse, often from people very close to them who are supposed to protect them, not hurt them, and I think this complicates working out solutions.
But I think some of what gets done is probably not really in their best interest and it's hard to discuss that because any critique of current practices gets interpreted as "You are one of my enemies!"
"They?" The Romans? "cis" is just the Latin prefix antonym to "trans." The former means "on the same side (as)," the latter means "on the other side (of)."
I mean, trump has a lot of black friends too. The "cis is now a slur" thing is true on Twitter now. Musk's one trans child hates him (though he sends like a pretty shit parent in general). He fairly regular raises anti trans views. I mean, I guess you could still assume the best and that he's just an idiot and doesn't understand what he's saying.
The level of schadenfreude in these comments is hitherto unseen. Whatever your view of the management happens to be let's not forget that small features or changes to large systems are not as easy as one might think. That viewpoint is literally a meme [0].
Oh, you mean like when that comma.ai doofus said he'd join Twitter as an intern and fix search in a month? And then musk enthusiastically brought him on to do that?
When you fire most employees immediately after doing a "leveraged buyout" with strong odors of it being a hostile takeover as well, you don't get to complain things are hard.
Elon Musk bought twitter with some of his own money, yes, but also by giving twitter a massive loan which it now has to (and can't) repay.
This is entirely his doing, and if he thought it was too hard, why did he do this? I mean, I know, managers do this sort of stuff without giving it much thought at all while pretending to play 5D chess, and I suspect Musk is no different.
The site seems allergic to using the X.com URL. I found a link labelled Go to X.com and it redirected to twitter.com. Even just browsing the English pages, you're about 10x as likely to see the old branding.
To [our users] and the world over -- the future of X belongs to YOU – blaze your glory!
Did this go through comms? There’s a typo (you can use a double-hyphen instead of an em-dash but not both), two slogans where one would do, and an all-caps shout.
Above all that though, I’m not sure what blaze your glory means. Am I blazing a trail or path to my own glory? Am I setting fire to my glory?
To those who reply: do you agree?: speed your comments!.
> To our passionate, growing communities of movie buffs, sports fanatics, tech trailblazers, and the world over
That sentence can't be correct.
"the world over" means "everywhere on the earth", e.g. "the love for music connects people from the world over" or "the Olympics unite athletes and fans the world over".
But Linda seems to use the phrase here to mean "everyone", as in "movie buffs, sports fanatics..., and everyone", which is just, well, incorrect. How did this pass the most basic review??
> Did this go through comms? There’s a typo (you can use a double-hyphen instead of an em-dash but not both), two slogans where one would do, and an all-caps shout.
In all seriousness, do you want a company that spends its time and money vetting feature announcements, or do you want a company that spends its time and money building the thing that it is supposed to be building?
I would much, MUCH rather do business with, or buy products from a company with poor marketing and a fantastic product than the seemingly thousands of companies out there now that spend more on marketing than actual products [1]
[1] Note: I may have PTSD about this. The Telco I formally worked for commonly spent 10x on marketing a new product a service compared to what it cost to roll out, which was also many times more money than the product was ever forecast to bring in in revenue.
The chief executive of a public company should have impeccable writing.
You could forgive a founder for poor writing on the assumption that they are bringing something else to the table, but as I understand it Yaccarino is in this role as a professional exec.
I disagree, I'm not an x fan just nitpicking. A CEO doesn't need impeccable anything, however they should have the ability to farm it out to somebody who does and if they can't they should be fired. She obviously can't figure pr out at all, which says something about someone being CEO of a social media company.
> Sure, but this company's entire mission is enabling human communication
Right, they enable people to communicate with each other. It simply doesn't matter how "they" communicate.
Like Ford's job is to build cars for people to get from A to B. Who cares how well the executive team at Ford can drive, that has nothing to do with making a good car.
> And yet the main reason Elon is famous and rich and owns Twitter is because he is a very successful communicator and Twitter's most adept user.
The dude also has Asperger's.
And personally, when I'm getting stuff done I don't really care about punctuation and spelling in the email I send to the VPs saying I got the system backonline and saved $10M in billing for the month.
> I think you will find that the people who work at Ford are, by and large, "car guys" (/gals/thems).
My meeetings with major OEMs in the US has sadly been the opposite. All the car enthusiasts were replaced with Marketing people long, long ago (which again emphasizes my point that actually doing is much more important than marketing that doing)
In the app it says "Posts" in some places where it used to say "Tweets" (and Reposts for Retweets). I imagine most people will continue to use "tweet" though.
And of course this page is on blog.twitter.com. It seems x.com redirects to twitter.com, but I wonder what's stopping them switching it over? I suppose there's a million places in their code and other in systems where "twitter.com" is still expected.
It's pretty sad that a guy that created SpaceX and Tesla (ok, not entirely true for Tesla but almost) is now trying to satisfy his ego by listing "View counts feature location moved to the right side of posts" as proof of the pace of innovation...
Put that in context when you consider all the "essential" employees he fired couldn't even muster that in the last 5 years. Which begs the question: what did these people do all day?
That is true of course, although I would think most competent rate limit implementations would set thresholds that deter bots while real users barely notice, unlike what was observed with twitter. Coincidentally, higher rate limits were a paid option. Spam might not have been the primary motivation for rate limits.
Elon Musk said it was due to "data scraping and system manipulation":
Although, I would like to see humans make it Mars within my life. So c'mon, Elon, just keep your trap closed for a bit, let Linda do the talking for you, and continue to be the egotistic, megalomaniac manager in the same vein as Steve Jobs, and just make really good products, please.