>We’re currently expanding our safety and elections teams to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.
Not even a year ago they fired the majority of staff and disbanded entire teams. Whatever expansion there is now is dwarfed by those massive cuts. Twitter's policy has been, and continues to be, to keep moderation to a skeleton crew as a cost-cutting measure.
It's going to be extremely funny to see what happens to Community Notes on political advertising. Although this is very much "after the lie has got halfway round the world, we're going to help truth get its boots on".
I see no reason why "select" advertisers (where "select" means, "Elon selects them") would not be offered an option to pay extra to disable community notes from being on their ads, even though they are implying that's not the case here. why would Musk refuse more cash to support propaganda he agrees with anyway?
Because he's in the lucky position of not needing it. They already split their revenue with creators, accepting such a bribe would not benefit him. So awful PR for no real benefit.
EDIT: thread is getting derailed by whether or not people have seen specifically Cheech and Chong. Recentering: ads are widely weed edibles, AliExpress dropshippers, and sexual apps/content.
Pleased to say that since I switched to using the website in a browser with adblock and stopped using the app, I've not seen _any_ ads.
I was sort of hoping the extra inconvenience would wean me off it, but it hasn't yet. What is noticeable is how much non-political content is just gradually getting quieter and drifting off the platform.
I sometimes wonder where Google would have been if those "buy cheap Rx meds from Canada" internet ads of the early 2000s were stamped out earlier. Those ads ran for years, and health, law and insurance ads are the most expensive ones to place from a cost per click standpoint.
Says a lot about the state of Twitter when its most notorious bannee returned only to drop a link to his personal website, which apparently also functions as a begging bowl.
I think journalists are allowed as long as they don't publish realtime location data of individuals, which seems consistent with safety policies elsewhere.
Edit: not complaining about downmodding, but if someone has a factual response, please post it, because I read a lot about civil liberties and haven't heard of any journalists being banned for non-safety reasons.
"Rules for thee, but not for me" is not a consistent policy. Especially when the "rules for thee" bit is twisted wildly out of shape to resemble nothing beyond a schoolyard bully's lies.
I don’t like inconsistency either. The policy is fairly clear. If Musk or another person on Twitter is revealing someone else’s location and Twitter is not applying the policy consistently please provide supporting evidence of this.
I don't need to. Musk himself does it pretty well. The time when he tweeted to his mob to find a guy by posting his face and car number. Just two days ago when he posted a video of himself driving to what he claimed was Zuckerberg's house.
How about the journalist whom Musk doxxed before he bought Twitter? That journalist never reported on anything regarding the jet tracker. Musk still banned her. And all she'd done was post portions of court documents of a case she was involved in, where a witness claims Musk had her devices hacked. Because she'd reported on Tesla.
Is there more than one case where Musk did this? TBH, I wouldn't be surprised, but my internet searches turned up only the one case.
> Was it when the guy attacked a car with his child in it?
Alleged, by Musk, a flagrant liar, who also lied in the very same tweet claiming the jet tracker was responsible. Later analysis of location data from Musk's own posted media showed they weren't taken anywhere close to an airport.
Nevertheless, Musk did doxx a man. Even if the man did stalk and attack his car, that's a matter to be dealt with by law enforcement, not Musk's rabid fanatics on the open internet.
There is still no argument to be made that somehow, doxxing is okay when Musk does it.
----
> He didn’t make the rules on Twitter before he bought twitter.
He did make the rules after he bought them. Specifically, the one about location revealing. Then he used the rule to shut down the jet tracker — which was not violating the rule, because it only revealed publicly available information. Then he used it to ban journalists — who did not violate the rule, because they only linked to sites containing publicly available information.
Since then, Musk has again doxxed people on Twitter and claimed it wasn't doxxing because he was only revealing publicly available information.
Is that sufficient evidence to show Musk's "rules for thee, but not for me" attitude to you?
----
> Of course you need to provide evidence to an assertion.
I did. Sorry for not citing precise links — I thought this was a settled topic — but I did put enough info in the comment that is easily corroborated by light searching on Google.
Why hasn't a group of newspapers and other media together launched an exact knockoff of old twitter yet? Just neutral ground for all of them. If they have a whitehouse press pass, they're cleared as legit.
It's not technically hard to build and if you run your own servers not that expensive even at scale in the millions.
We have blazingly fast web servers and database software these days compared to when twitter and facebook first launched, even the hardware is exponentially faster and you don't have to support SMS anymore like how twitter got it's start.
It's the audience that's valuable, and on Old Twitter the huge diversity of sources. It used to be a valuable input into news, and that's one of the things that basically been destroyed without replacement. No doubt individual journos are keeping eyes on parts of Mastodon, but it's fundamentally not as suitable.
Mastodon is basically wordpress micro-blogging with trackbacks
We actually need a monolith
If every major newspaper and media outlet had their own unified independent social media network and mentioned it at the end of every article and video segment, it would be millions of people within a year.
That's literally how twitter audience was built, every media outlet kept mentioning it the first few years.
X is still merely acting like a BBS. It is not offering a tech-solution. Community-Notes could become that if AI moderation is trustworthy (judging for facts, and tone).
...
Forums for political discourse are chock full of opinion. Facts are under-quantified.
This article's set of rules describes a Gentlemen's Handshake, and offers nothing technologically-speaking.
"No":
> .. posting or sharing content that may suppress participation or mislead people about when, where, or how to participate in a civic process
> You may not impersonate ..
> may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to ...
Nothing here is enforceable from a tech perspective. It's all requiring passive human moderation. To contrast, Reddit's Up / Down vote mechanizes moderation, making it active. And one naive evolution could be an AI judging factuality and tone-appropriateness.
Clever voting schemes (Reddit, +) don't scale. AI scales but could be "wrong". Human moderation is easily subject to astroturfing.
Q: What is the right next-step in moderating conversation to fit within the boundaries of the forum?
I am just wondering how one would balance speech against the
obvious revenue by ads bias as with newspapers the claim was that
the editorial was that structural to balance it which then turn out
to be somewhat a farcical lie.
Plus, one has the system bias of the limit of characters and the way posting
as implement promotes trash talking rather than other forms of discourse and
it is my understanding that was done to correspond to mobile SMS at the time.
Interesting discussion would be what routes Elon had at disposal to attempt:
-buy twitter out-right and hope to hobble it to change it.
-buy twitter hobble it and then find an upcoming competitor to buy to transform twitter into.
-etc.
"Starting in the U.S., we’ll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts. This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election"
Yeah, right. And Fox News is fair and balanced.
The problem with prohibiting "false or misleading content" is that you have to somehow adjudicate what is false and misleading. Is it "false and misleading" to say that (say) Joe Biden is "the most corrupt president in American history"? [1] I certainly think so [2], but there are literally tens of millions of people who would profess to disagree. So who gets to decide? In the case of X, the answer is: Elon Musk.
The problem is not that there's anything wrong with the policy statement. The problem is that we as a society have totally lost our grip on what is false and misleading, and this can be laid squarely at the feet of Donald Trump, whom Elon supports (or at least has supported in the past). So no, a commitment from X to "prohibit the promotion of false and misleading content" does not inspire confidence in me. Quite the opposite. It feels North-Korea kind of creepy.
Humans have invented a reliable way of adjudicating truth. It's called the scientific method, a closely related cousin of which is professional journalism. There's a reason that it takes years to develop the expertise to be a scientist or a journalist. It's hard work. But it is the only defense against demagoguery.
So yes, I would feel a lot better about it if the decisions were being made by someone -- or, even better, a group of people -- who were committed to a process of adjudicating truth on the basis of evidence rather than ideology. And yes, I tend to agree with such people because I personally try to hew to evidence over ideology. One of the benefits of adjudicating truth on the basis of evidence rather than ideology is that it tends to converge, and so it tends result in people who adhere to this process agreeing with each other. Superficially this looks a lot like agreement based on ideology, but there is one big difference, and that is that dissent is actually welcome -- if you can back it up with evidence. In science, progress is possible. In a system that bases truth on ideology, particularly one whose ideology is rooted in an individual (i.e. a personality cult), it isn't. That's what scares me.
> is that the professional journalism you speak of
No. Obviously not.
> It takes zero years to be a modern journalist
Yes. That's obviously not what I meant by "professional journalist." Most web "journalists" are professional journalists in the same way the Kent Hovind is a professional scientist.
There isn't a sharp distinction, just like there isn't a sharp definition of what pornography is. But most people can nonetheless recognize it when they see it.
> This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election
I think the recent mugshots of election fraudsters getting arrested in Georgia is probably concentrating the mind here on the question of "Is Twitter liable for amplifying election fraud messages?"
> Is it "false and misleading" to say that (say) Joe Biden is "the most corrupt president in American history"? [1] I certainly think so [2], but there are literally tens of millions of people who would profess to disagree. So who gets to decide?
Notes don't work based on political agreement - the opposite in fact, users must be diverse to add a note. They're applied to Musk's posts too.
> Is it "false and misleading" to say that (say) Joe Biden is corrupt? I certainly think so, but there are literally tens of millions of people who would profess to disagree.
Serious question: Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not corrupt? As far as I've seen, which is a lot, he's been a paid tool of the Delaware financial industry for his entire career. (By the way, I don't identify with any political party or politician, in case you think this criticism is partisan.)
Corrupt to what degree? Ensuring his donors get their money's worth or actually committing crimes for self-enrichment?
It's clear he was beholden to the financial industry and that stinks but is technically above board. I'm going to hazard a guess that his legacy matters more to him then cash in the bank.
I find it fascinating that those that obsess over "Crooked Joe" seem to change their tune when their preferred candidate comes under scrutiny. Maybe I'm too stupid but it's almost like they don't care about the crime, only in destroying their political enemies.
- Hunter Biden extracting 5 million dollars from the Chinese businessman with apparent knowledge of Joe Biden (per the taped phone call)
- His son's Burisma appointment with little to no experience in the energy industry and nothing to add apart from his father's connections (matter of public knowledge).
- FBI election tampering regarding suppressing the true story of his son's laptop (revealed during the Twitter files).
However:
- they haven't been tried, much less proven in a US court
- these actions may be less severe than previous instances of corruption amongst US presidents
- Biden may not have been aware of the FBI's action concerning suppressing the laptop story
Hunter Biden clearly was engaging in shenanigans based off of his father's name (the board membership was technically legal, morally unpalatable). There's no evidence that Joe actually sold his influence directly.
Virtually all Biden supporters agree that if Hunter did illegal acts he should face trial and resulting consequences, and the same for his father. But we also agree that such rigor be applied across the aisle. Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I am not aware of any such agreement on the other side.
Again, it's almost like they don't care about the crime, only in smearing their political rivals. But the party of law and order wouldn't do that, right?
The suppression of the laptop story was trying to tamp down a political ops maneuver (an October surprise). I can understand the frustration in seeing that happen, as it worked so well when they did the same thing to HRC in the prior election.
There's a reason why the phrase "buttery males" exists -- for this is the exact same "buttery males" playbook: all that matters is that the story exists and is damaging and voters will lap it up.
Disclaimer: I voted for the current president but I'm not a member of his party and am strongly anti-partisan.
> The suppression of the laptop story was trying to tamp down a political ops maneuver (an October surprise). I can understand the frustration in seeing that happen, as it worked so well when they did the same thing to HRC in the prior election.
It's also worth noting that Joe Biden was not President during the 2020 election season.
Sure but Hunter has stated on tape that Joe was in the room with him. That could be a lie but it’s definitely worth investigating.
> Virtually all Biden supporters agree that if Hunter did illegal acts he should face trial and resulting consequences, and the same for his father.
I don’t think most Biden supporters even realise the tape exists, so the idea of criminal investigation would be so far fetched. In their minds China / Burisma didn’t happen and they probably don’t know about government agencies suppressing the laptop story to influence the election. Not because they’re bad but because the US treats politics like a team sport and TV news only reports on what benefits their ‘team’.
And sure, investigate Trump over paying Stormy using campaign money.
> The suppression of the laptop story was trying to tamp down a political ops maneuver (an October surprise).
Government agencies (who falsely briefed Twitter and Meta about the laptop being Russian disinformation) should not be working for any candidate.
> so well when they did the same thing to HRC in the prior election.
I haven’t heard about gov agencies doing anything in aid of Trump or against HRC.
Again, we recognize that corruption took place but is unfortunately legal and endemic (certainly not limited to one specific party). This corruption should be ended, but there's one little problem. You. And all the others making a stink about this.
You don't care about corruption, only in smiting your political enemies. Neither does any of the members of the senate committee or anyone else obsessed with this.
The only thing that matters is "the story" and the taint of its implications.
This is frustrating beyond belief, because most of us non-believers in this nonsense would love to right these wrongs but it will only happen if addressed in a bipartisan manner.
That would require an interest in good government rather than power, and day by day it's clearer and clearer that power itself is the only goal.
Meanwhile, the cult continues its worship of a man who is literally corrupt to the core whose only interest is in self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement.
I take no pleasure in these observations (quite the opposite, in fact). As with any other cult, there is no possibility for reason or reflection and the only reaction to that engagement is to double down on their beliefs.
Political discussion is usually avoided in polite society because it devolves into tribal warfare. That's most unfortunate because the actions of the political class have literally life and death repercussions and strongly shape the health of the country.
So while I did point out flaws in your tribe, I didn't do it to claim my tribe is better. First and foremost, I am not a member of any political party, and equally important, I believe we should have a nation that operates under the rule of law in a manner that serves us all the best it can (regardless of affiliation).
edit: the committee's been at it for some time and the only thing they've come up with is the appearance of impropriety. That's it.
One would think that with all their resources and zeal to stamp out this corruption that they'd have a smoking gun by now and would use that to try and convict Biden Sr. But they won't (because it's quite likely nothing exists) and they don't want their game to end as it works so well to keep you and others up in arms and ready to "vote the bad guys out".
Who is we? The comment you’re replying to make a very solid case that most people don’t.
> but is unfortunately legal
Burisma may be legal but I doubt Chinese extortion or election interference by a government agency would be considered legal
> certainly not limited to one specific party
I don’t think anyone pretended it was.
> This corruption should be ended, but there's one little problem. You.
As in me?
> You don't care about corruption
You are being awful and have no reason to write such a thing about someone that is conversing with you politely. I don’t think you actually want to discuss anything, since you don’t seem to be responding to any of the points you are replying to and I’m going to ignore you now.
> Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is not corrupt?
I have no idea. But I do think that if he were the most corrupt in history, there would be more evidence. Donald Trump set the bar pretty high here.
I think it's actually quite likely that Biden is not corrupt at all, because if there were even the tiniest shred of credible evidence of corruption against him, the Republicans would have impeached him for it already. I think the only reason they haven't done it is that there is no evidence. That doesn't mean he's not corrupt. But if he is, he seems to have concealed it pretty effectively.
If that's your definition of corruption then it is not possible for a non-corrupt person to get elected in the U.S. since the Citizens United decision. So on that view, calling a politician corrupt is vacuous.
My definition of corruption is someone who uses the power of their elected position to enrich themselves personally. And no, I see no evidence that Biden has done that.
The dictionary definition of "corrupt" is "Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved". The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is that they use their power and influence to some unfair advantage. Enriching yourself at the expense of your constituents qualifies. Doing legal things that are required under our current system to get elected doesn't.
Words are only useful insofar as they allow you to draw distinctions between different concepts. Your definition (and it is yours -- you may not have invented the word, but you did advance one particular definition) isn't useful because it applies necessarily to all U.S. politicians since Citizens United. On your definition, calling a politician "corrupt" adds no more information than calling them "human".
> The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is that they use their power and influence to some unfair advantage.
Agreed.
> Enriching yourself at the expense of your constituents qualifies.
Agreed.
> Doing legal things that are required under our current system to get elected doesn't.
That's where I disagree, and again, "legal" is irrelevant if the lawmakers themselves are corrupt. There's a massive difference between legal and ethical. That's the whole purpose of corrupting lawmakers, to get them to write the laws in your favor.
> it applies necessarily to all U.S. politicians since Citizens United
You appear to misunderstand Citizens United, which applies to independent expenditures, not to direct campaign contributions.
[EDIT:] Besides, Joe Biden joined the US Senate in 1973. The Citizens United decision in 2010 is not temporarily available to him as an excuse and has nothing to do with whether he was a paid tool of the financial industry.
> On your definition, calling a politician "corrupt" adds no more information than calling them "human".
You can not run for office. I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt.
You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible.
(Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt?)
> I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt.
That's true. But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in.
> You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible.
Aside from allowing vastly more money into the process, which is of course bad in itself, how do you think Citizens United changed or changes the nature of the corruption of individual politicians? As I mentioned, Biden joined the US Senate in 1973, decades before Citizens United. Legalized bribery in the form of campaign contributions has been around forever. Unless you're claiming, implausibly, that politicians somehow weren't corrupted by campaign contributions until 2010, I'm unclear why Citizens United is relevant to our (semantic?) disagreement.
> Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt?
Deeply.
> But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in.
Agreed. Perhaps the only real difference here is that I'm willing to admit the unfortunate, inconvenient truth that most of our representatives are corrupt.
It feels to me like there's a kind of excuse being given here, like, "You have to be corrupt in order to win, so it's not truly corruption". But I don't buy that. You certainly have to raise money to win, but there are different ways of going about that, and also different ways to handle it after you've raised the funds and won the election. There's a common refrain among Democrats that the Democratic politicians are always just doing the best they can under the political circumstances, they mean well, but they can't actually do significant things to help the people they represent, because of... reasons >mumble< >mumble<. And I don't believe that junk for a second. Politics tends to attract a certain type of ladder-climber who is willing to throw away any principles, if they had any principles in the first place, to achieve power and notoriety. It's not necessarily a route to great financial fortune (though sometimes it can be after leaving office, see for example Bill Clinton), but it's a route to great power, and money is power anyway, so those are just two different ways of achieving fundamentally the same goal.
There are people who profess to believe that taxation is theft. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (it doesn't, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between being held up at gunpoint in a dark alley and being audited by the IRS.
Likewise, there are people like you who profess to believe that acting in the interests of campaign donors is corruption. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (and it very well might) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between voting for a bill because someone donated to your campaign, and voting for a bill because someone flew you to their hunting lodge in their private jet.
There is a broad range of activities that can be labelled "corruption" but using the same word for all of them means intentionally discarding important information and nuance. There is a line -- not a sharp one, but a line nonetheless -- between "corruption" that is acceptable, even necessary, under our current system, and "corruption" that is not, and I choose to reserve the word "corruption", with its pejorative implications, for the latter and use some other word to refer to the former.
There isn't really a good word for the former kind of "corruption" because it's not corruption, it's just the Way Things Work, for better or for worse. But fine, if you insist, I will refer to the former as "type 1 corruption" and the latter as "type 2 corruption". Type 1 corruption may be distasteful, but it is clearly legal. Type 2 corruption is nominally illegal, but rarely prosecuted, in no small measure because the line between the two is blurry and it's hard to prove that a given act was in fact type 2 corruption. This has gotten even harder since Citizens United because it moved the line that delineates the two kinds of corruption, making things that were once unacceptable now acceptable or even necessary.
AFAICT, Joe Biden has never engaged in type 2 corruption, which IMHO is the kind that matters. I don't like type 1 corruption any more than you do, but the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it -- because that includes every democratically elected official in the country.
> "corruption" that is acceptable, even necessary, under our current system
> There isn't really a good word for the former kind of "corruption" because it's not corruption, it's just the Way Things Work
> the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it
See, this is exactly what I meant when I said, "It feels to me like there's a kind of excuse being given here, like, You have to be corrupt in order to win, so it's not truly corruption."
I also said, "I don't buy that." In fact I vehemently disagree.
I don't actually think that money in politics corrupts politicians as much as politics appeals to the corruptible, i.e., the "type of ladder-climber" that I mentioned. It's possible to be "courageous" (i.e., not corrupt) in politics, as long as you care more about your principles than you do about election and especially reelection. "Type 1 corruption", as you call it, is a deliberate choice.
Your same argument could be made about business in general, that everyone in business must be unethical, because unethical businesspeople are more likely to succeed. But empirically it's untrue that everyone in business is unethical. Although there are indeed many, too many in business who are unethical, and perhaps they're more successful on average, there are also many people in business who refuse to throw out their principles for the sake of more cash. There are good people in the business world.
What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market; rather, it's a duopoly. Thus, if you want to be part of one of the two major parties, who are already corrupted by money, you've got to play along with the team, join the perverse game. Otherwise they'll crush you like a bug. Perhaps you could make some excuses for the minor party politicians, but there are no excuses for the leaders of the parties. They're the ringleaders of the whole corrupt operation.
There's a reason that our elections are so close, and that so many potential voters choose to sit them out entirely every cycle: the non-partisans don't see much practical difference between the two parties. There's a difference in rhetoric, but as far as taking significant action to help the majority of people, both parties do very little. Voters are not given the option of making big progress in solving societal problems; it's just a continual back-and-forth of replacing one party with the other in order to stop the latest horror. The electorate doesn't have much if any real hope, despite the empty promises of "hope" from the latest charismatic candidates; we've heard that rhetoric before and been disappointed. The only thing the parties offer is scaremongering: the other party is worse! Which may be true, but it's tiring, repetitive. In the end, the two parties can't help the public because they don't really want to help the public; above all, they want to help themselves to power and prestige. One of the dirty secrets is that powerful politicians love hobnobbing with wealthy business leaders. They don't really have to be forced to take the campaign contributions. It's one big, happy, exclusive, incestuous social club, with a revolving door between the public sector and the private sector.
> This has gotten even harder since Citizens United because it moved the line that delineates the two kinds of corruption, making things that were once unacceptable now acceptable or even necessary.
I'm not buying this. I've seen no evidence whatsoever that politicians were "holding back" in their level of "type 1" corruption before Citizens United, and it's not clear how Citizens United is relevant to "type 2" corruption.
> that includes every democratically elected official in the country.
I wouldn't go that far. I've seem some pretty good people. Though they usually don't ascend to the upper echelons of national politics.
I'm not taking a position on whether or not type 1 corruption is "truly corruption". That's just pointless quibbling over terminology. I'm just saying that these two things are different enough that they ought not to be conflated.
> everyone in business must be unethical, because unethical businesspeople are more likely to succeed
Yes, I think that's probably true.
> empirically it's untrue that everyone in business is unethical
How would you know? Part of the craft of business is making it appear that you are ethical even (especially!) when you aren't.
> What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market
ROTFL. There are no free, competitive markets. Even in commerce the vast majority of industries are dominated and controlled by a very small number (often just two, sometimes one) of major players.
Wow, and I considered myself to be extremely cynical, as evidenced by my previous comment, but you take the cake. Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive. I'm afraid that we live in different realities and cannot usefully communicate any further with such disagreement about basic facts.
> I've seen no evidence whatsoever that politicians were "holding back" in their level of "type 1" corruption before Citizens United
I think you're missing my point. To take the first example, Paul Ryan was not somehow magically transformed in the year 2010 from a principled saint into a unprincipled villain by Citizens United. The ruling of course allowed much mischief to take place, but mischief requires the mischievous. It merely provided an opportunity to those who were already inclined to take advantage of it, like a kid in a candy store.
> Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive.
I didn't say any of those things. You came close on the third item, but the operative word there was "free", not "competitive". There are competitive markets, but they aren't free. If you want to dispute that, give me a counterexample.
But if you're going to raise straw men then yes, perhaps it is time to call it a day.
>> Nobody in politics is ethical, nobody in business is ethical, no market is competitive.
> I didn't say any of those things.
Uh, you did:
> I don't like type 1 corruption any more than you do, but the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it -- because that includes every democratically elected official in the country.
>> everyone in business must be unethical, because unethical businesspeople are more likely to succeed
> Yes, I think that's probably true.
>> What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market
> ROTFL. There are no free, competitive markets. Even in commerce the vast majority of industries are dominated and controlled by a very small number (often just two, sometimes one) of major players.
So yes, you did say all of those things.
> There are competitive markets, but they aren't free. If you want to dispute that, give me a counterexample.
I don't even know what you mean by competitive but not free. I'm not interested in finding out, though, because you've already blatantly lied about what you said. I don't believe you're arguing in good faith, and thus it is indeed time to call it a day.
No. You are reading my words through the lens of your own opinions and prejudices. When you re-stated my positions, you changed the words, and when you did that, you changed the meaning in significant ways.
> Nobody in politics is ethical
What I said was that type 1 corruption is ubiquitous. I took no position on whether or not it is ethical. This is a complicated question. The only reason I'm using the word "corruption", with all of its pejorative connotations, to describe it is because English doesn't have a better word. I could call it "campaign finance". Private campaign finance is ubiquitous. Is it unethical? Reasonable people can disagree. Personally, I would prefer to have publicly financed campaigns, but we have this annoying First Amendment that makes it tough to implement.
> nobody in business is ethical
I didn't take a position on that either. What I said was to pose a rhetorical question: if a business person is unethical, how would you know? Because if a business person does something unethical they will generally try to conceal it.
There probably are ethical people in business, but I think they are probably rare. But that is neither here nor there. What matters is that you would have a very hard time demonstrating their existence since you would have to somehow demonstrate that they were not successfully concealing their unethical behavior. I think there are probably ethical people in politics too, and I think Joe Biden is probably about as close to that as you're going to get, at least at the national level. Do you have a better example?
> no market is competitive.
What I said was that there are no free competitive markets. The operative word was "free", not "competitive". Obviously there are competitive markets, and politics is one of them. There is no substantive difference between the dynamics of political markets and the dynamics of any other market where the nature of the product is such that there can be only one winner (e.g. large construction projects).
> You are reading my words through the lens of your own opinions and prejudices.
Have you considered that you just don't write very clearly?
> I could call it "campaign finance". Private campaign finance is ubiquitous.
No, it's not just about campaign finance. Of course every politician raises campaign funds, an empirical fact beyond dispute. The corrupt, unethical aspect of it is buying influence, trading campaign donations for access, favors, and votes. This is not an essential requirement of campaign finance, but it's a sadly common occurrence. I said way back at the beginning "As far as I've seen, which is a lot, he's been a paid tool of the Delaware financial industry for his entire career" and "I'm baffled that some people don't consider it corruption when politicians are owned by campaign contributors." I wasn't talking about the fact that Joe Biden has raised campaign funds; by itself, that's not interesting or worth noting. My point was that Biden has consistently, persistently served the interests of his big money donors rather than his constituents. That's corruption. Type 1 corruption, if you insist on using those terms. It doesn't personally enrich politicians, but it advances their political careers and power.
> What I said was to pose a rhetorical question: if a business person is unethical, how would you know? Because if a business person does something unethical they will generally try to conceal it.
This is ridiculous, absurdly cynical, even by my own standards of cynicism. Are you skeptical of the existence of true love too? Is everyone in your life just lying to you about everything?
I'm in business myself, and I know myself. I don't think I'm unique in the world. I've dealt with plenty of honest people. Moreover, in general, people are not particularly good at covering up their misdeeds and bad intentions. It's usually pretty obvious, if you're observant.
> The operative word was "free", not "competitive".
You still haven't stated what you mean by "free". Or "competitive", for that matter. (Have you considered that you just don't write very clearly?)
> Obviously there are competitive markets, and politics is one of them.
I wouldn't consider a duopoly to be very competitive. What do you even mean by "competitive"? Is any market except a monopoly competitive to you? Maybe we should call it "type 1" competitive...
In any case, whatever you mean by those words, I simply don't agree with this:
> Even in commerce the vast majority of industries are dominated and controlled by a very small number (often just two, sometimes one) of major players.
You can cherry-pick examples, but I see plenty of markets that aren't so dominated.
> Have you considered that you just don't write very clearly?
Sure. But I'm writing for an HN comment thread, not a submission to a peer-review journal. My standards are lower here.
Have you considered the possibility that you don't read very carefully?
> trading campaign donations for access, favors, and votes
This is not nearly as black-and-white as you are making it out to be. Consider these scenarios:
1. Joe Politician campaigns on a pledge to vote for a bill you support. You donate to Joe's campaign. Joe wins and votes for the bill.
2. Joe campaigns on a pledge to vote AGAINST the bill you want to see passed. He calls you on the phone asking you to donate. You refuse, explaining that you don't agree with his position. He asks you to explain why you support the bill. You do, and persuade Joe to change his mind. You then change your mind about donating. Joe wins, and votes for the bill.
3. Like scenario 2 above in all respects that are visible to you, except that unbeknownst to you Joe is not actually persuaded by your argument, he only pretends to be. In fact he has decided to make his vote contingent on your contribution. Does that change your answer?
4. Like scenario 3 except that Joe is honest with you and tells you he will vote for the bill if you make a large enough donation.
In which of these, if any, have you traded a campaign contribution for a vote? Because the net of the interaction is exactly the same in all four cases: you write Joe a check, Joe votes for your bill.
> Are you skeptical of the existence of true love too?
That depends on what you mean by "true love".
[UPDATE] I asked my wife of 27 years that question and her answer was exactly the same as mine. I guess that's one reason I love her :-)
> Is everyone in your life just lying to you about everything?
No. You don't understand how deception works. Have you ever played poker? Bluffing doesn't work if you do it too often.
Deploying unethical behavior effectively is a skill, and a big part of that skill is making people think you're not doing it. (Donald Trump is the absolute master of the craft. He is so good at it that he doesn't even have to hide it any more.)
> You still haven't stated what you mean by "free".
You're the one who introduced the word into the conversation, not me. You wrote:
> What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market
So you made a claim that there is something that distinguishes politics from business, and that this thing has something to do with the words "free and competitive". It doesn't really matter what you actually meant because my counter-claim is that there is no salient distinction between business and politics at all, and so you can't distinguish between them based on "freedom" or "competitiveness" no matter what those words mean.
In any case, the onus is on you as the one who made the claim to demonstrate that these words actually have a referent that allows business and politics to be distinguished, otherwise you have made a vacuous claim.
> I wouldn't consider a duopoly to be very competitive.
It isn't. But it's more competitive than a one-party system. Competitiveness is a continuum, not a a dichotomy. But the natural tendency of markets is to consolidate as they grow, and so most large markets trend towards duopolies (if you're lucky or have government intervention) or monopolies.
> I see plenty of markets that aren't so dominated.
> Have you considered the possibility that you don't read very carefully?
No. My philosophy degrees prove quite definitively that I do.
> He calls you on the phone asking you to donate.
Joe Politician doesn't personally call you on the phone unless you have big money. The vast majority of voters, indeed the vast majority of (small) campaign donors, have no opportunity whatsoever to trade donations for influence, because they can't even get access to Joe Politician. Joe Politician doesn't know me from Adam.
> You don't understand how deception works.
Ok, bud, whatever you say.
> Have you ever played poker?
Of course.
> Bluffing doesn't work if you do it too often.
When I said, "Is everyone in your life just lying to you about everything?" that was intended as a hyperbole and counterfactual. The point is that everyone isn't trying to deceive you, everyone isn't against you, everyone isn't trying to get something out of you all the time. The optimum poker strategy is irrelevant, because we're not all playing poker against each other. It's not always a zero sum game. Only extreme, unhealthy paranoia and cynicism would make one think so.
> Donald Trump is the absolute master of the craft. He is so good at it that he doesn't even have to hide it any more.
He's not. His lies are blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to fact check him. His supporters simply don't care.
> You're the one who introduced the word into the conversation, not me.
Fair enough, but you didn't ask me what I meant either, and nonetheless proceeded to lecture me about whether free, competitive markets exist, claiming the operative word was "free" without knowing what I meant by it.
I actually didn't mean much by it. It's just a common phrase that I borrowed and introduced casually into the conversation, so there's no point in overanalyzing these words, which I never intended to be precise.
> So you made a claim that there is something that distinguishes politics from business, and that this thing has something to do with the words "free and competitive".
It wasn't just "something". What I literally said was, "What differentiates politics, in large part, is that it's not a free, competitive market; rather, it's a duopoly." The contrast is clearly with duopoly.
There are of course some duopolies in business, e.g., Apple and Google in mobile operating systems, Apple and Microsoft in desktop operating systems. But not every market is a duopoly. Anyway, my point in discussing the political duopoly was that politicians usually need to join one of the two major parties in order to be viable. Even Bernie Sanders decided to run for President as a Democrat rather than as an independent Socialist, which only worked in tiny Vermont. And the point of mentioning that politcians have to join one of the two major parties is that in joining a party they have to corrupt themselves, become corrupt, in order to be accepted into those organizations by the party leaders.
The same kind of scenario doesn't have a good analogy in the business world. As an independent businessperson, you don't join Apple or Google per se. That's not even an option. You can join those organizations as an employee, which is not quite the same. And while Apple and Google have a duopoly over operating systems, they don't have a duopoly over employment; one does not, as a software engineer for example, need to work for either Apple or Google. There are many other employment options. To be sure, it's still possible to become "corrupted" by joining Apple or Google as employee, to drink the kool-aid, as it were. But since employees can come and go as they please, the necessity of corruption is not there like it is in the political parties. You could also "join" Apple or Google by publishing apps in their apps stores, but that's not the same as joining a political party either. As long as Apple and Google get their cut, you can come and go as you please and be as ethical or unethical as you like toward your users/customers.
> Name one.
Sure. Off the top of my head: I reside in Wisconsin, and we have a lot of bars and taverns. Practically one every street corner, it often seems. I believe there are more per capita here than in any state in the nation. And they're mostly owned by different people. The industry is not dominated by a few players. Indeed, drinkers often go "bar hopping", which wouldn't make any sense if they were all the same.
> My philosophy degrees prove quite definitively that I do.
At best your degree proves that you read carefully at one time (and even that is open to doubt because your degree manifestly did not imbue you with the ability to identify logical fallacies like over-generalization and argument from authority).
> Joe Politician doesn't personally call you on the phone unless you have big money.
That depends on what you consider "big money". It only takes a few hundred dollars to get a meeting with a congressman. A few thousand will get you an audience with a senator or a governor. And once you start writing checks, your phone will be ringing constantly. It actually gets annoying after a while.
> everyone isn't against you
I never said they were. The poker analogy was not meant to imply that life is a zero-sum game, it was just meant to illustrate my actual point, which is that deception is not generally effective if you do it constantly. To be an effective deceiver you have to be judicious. You have to appear to be honest. That makes it hard to tell the difference between an honest person and an effective deceiver.
And BTW, not all deception is bad. There are "white lies". There are even professions -- magic and acting -- dedicated to honing deception literally to the level of a fine art. In the right circumstances, people actually pay good money to be deceived.
> His supporters simply don't care.
Some of them don't, but there is a significant contingent who actually believe he is telling the truth.
(See my point above about people paying good money to be deceived.)
> you didn't ask me what I meant either
Because it didn't matter, and it still doesn't. Any feature you describe in the non-political market, I can find you an analogy in the political market. For example:
> I reside in Wisconsin, and we have a lot of bars and taverns.
OK. You also reside on planet earth and you have a lot of national governments to choose from. About 200 in fact. If that's not enough variety for you, or if changing nationalities is too much friction for you, you can just come here to California where we have seven officially registered political parties and God only knows how many different activist organizations and fringe groups. So how is your choice of tavern different from your choice of government?
> while Apple and Google have a duopoly over operating systems, they don't have a duopoly over employment
Of course they do. If you want to make a living writing mobile apps, you can write for Apple devices or you can write for Android devices. Those are quite literally your only options.
This limited choice extends to nearly every part of software development. If you want to write desktop apps, you have two and a half choices: MacOS, Windows, or Linux (that's the half-a-choice because no one is actually making a living writing desktop apps for Linux). If you want to write Web apps it won't be long before your only choice is Chrome. And if you want to write enterprise apps, well, you're pretty much just hosed.
Yes, there are lot of different companies for which you can go to work, but this is an illusory choice because one way or another your work will be constrained by one of the (very few) major players. It's kind of like the apparent choice you have of what hotel to stay in. On the surface it looks like there is a lot of choice, dozens of different hotel brands, but in fact they are all the same, just with different signage, because they are all owned either by Hilton or Marriott. It's the same in just about every industry. There are lots of different brands of eyeglasses but they are all owned by Luxottica. There are a lot of different restaurants, but the vast majority of them are chains.
This is not to say that there aren't any fragmented industries left -- obviously there are a few (charter private jets, for example). But the overwhelming trend is towards consolidation. And it's easy to see why: once a company starts to dominate in its industry it can use its power and influence to crush competitors even the competitors offer a superior product. That becomes a positive feedback loop and so an established leader becomes nearly impossible to dislodge unless they somehow shoot themselves in the foot or the government (!) intervenes.
Actually, I edited it before I saw your replay, because it occurred to me after I posted that the way I had originally phrased it was open to exactly that criticism.
But it's neither here nor there. The only thing that matters is that there are examples of things being advanced as truth by large numbers of people that pretty clearly are not actually true (even though they sound plausible), and I think it's pretty clear that that is true even if a specific example that I picked out of a hat wasn't a particularly good one.
I agree that I was following a bit of a tangent. However, I do wonder how it's even possible to be committed to the idea of truth if one can so easily overlook the obvious flaws of one's own "side", always immediately changing the subject to the badness of the other side.
Rather than some vague "right" being proffered in a blog post, I prefer to exercise my right to not use Twitter since a very toxic oligarch has taken it over.
I cannot get used to Twitter being called X. When I see “on X” I think of X in algebraic terms, that it is standing in for some other value rather than being a name unto itself.
When facebook became Meta it sounded really stupid to me and I had a hard time referring to them as such. Now I actually think it's a better name. I don't know if that will happen with twitter but I expect well get used to it. After a brief peak in attention it's relevance is quickly waning anyway, so more likely we just won't care.
I still can't bring myself to call Facebook "Meta", and I can't bring myself to call Google "Alphabet". It feels too much like helping them to bury their bad reputations.
I can't refer to Twitter as X, either -- in part for the same reason, but in part because "X" is nondescript and already has meaning, so every time I use it, I'd have to follow it up with an explanation of what "X" I mean. Which means I'd have to say "Twitter" anyway. Which means I may as well just say "Twitter" to begin with.
Think of the X Games, WWF Attitude era, Tony Hawk skateboarding videogames, and other kewl activities for kids from the late 90s. That would the period in Musk locked in his vision for the most badass letter in the alphabet.
EDIT: A lot has happened in Twit-land over the last year, so I forgot all about the ElonJet affair. Twitter has banned people to try to suppress news the owner didn't like.
I disagree with Twitter's decision on the first count and don't have a good opinion about the second.
However these examples fall far short of what other social media companies are doing. On YouTube a year ago you could be banned for suggesting that Covid could started as a lab leak.
Or maybe its more "have the opinions you want, but stick to facts when making objective statements"? You can think that every Republican is a evil monster or that Democrats want to destroy America, but when it comes time to back up your argument just making stuff up certainly shouldn't be rewarded on social media sites.
I logged in for the first time in years hoping to get some real-time information on nearby forest fires. Wow. What a dumpster fire the platform has become.
I would have taken your comment as hyperbole had I not just signed into their platform.
Searching for information the top 3 of 4 posts were all right wing conspiracy theories. Switching to ‘latest’ there still wasn’t anything recent and I was getting days old posts reiterating the conspiracy theories.
We need a new cultural touchpoint to supplement 1984. Not that state propaganda isn’t a thing but outside of countries like China IMO one of the biggest information crises we face today is anonymous non-state actors pushing disinformation and having it spread virally until no one even knows what’s true any more. Same end result as 1984 I suppose but the means and power structure are very different.
The US one. Where it has always been absolutely clear that the government does not provide the right, that people are born with thrm, but they restrictions against the government for the people.
If you mean examples from the bill of rights, of rights that make demands on others: the big examples are trial by jury and the right to legal representation. Those rights demand that the government have the ability to compel labor (the accused in a trial has the specific right to compel testimony, even!) at least in certain narrow circumstances, for those rights to have any practical meaning. Unless we want to allow that the government may simply be unable to e.g. prosecute murderers if it can’t find enough volunteers to help, which I doubt was what anyone involved in drafting the document had in mind as an intended outcome, and besides, some parts make it clear that they mean participation may be forced if necessary. So, rights as understood solely from the us constitution & bill of rights (let alone later amendments, which aren’t necessarily concerned with rights per se) do explicitly allow the possibility of a right that makes demands on others, which is why I was surprised that was your basis for the initial claim.
The US Constitution does not mention a free lawyer.
I don’t know how many times you need to read this to understand it, so I will try once more: Rights are restrictions on the government, not gifts to the people from the government.
The government is not allowed to try you without representation. Read that again, and again once more.
It is not a gift to a free attorney. It is a statement saying if the government wants to try you, you will need a lawyer. The state doesn’t have to provide one, because it does not have to try you.
No lawyer is sitting around being forced to take pro-bono cases because “this guy has the right to an attorney”.
You do not have a right to anything that someone else is forced to provide. Read it again.
There is nothing in the constitution that explains “if you can not afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you”. That came much later and is a condition to a tax system.
So the right for the accused to compel testimony is…? Not a right?
I think you’ll find the constitution is rather too practically-minded for strict definitions that you’re advancing to be fully consistent in all cases. And that’s looking only at the text, not common law in which it’s wholly couched and assumes as context, or the constitutionally-endorsed and required interpretation of the document by the judiciary.
Besides, a right that demands forced labor if the government charges you… but doesn’t prohibit the government from charging you… sure looks like a right to make demands on others, if we’re not doing some hard equivocating. That it only kicks in if a certain choice is made hardly seems material to whether it’s a right that permits one to demand something of others.
And all this is beside the point of whether a particular conception of what a right is, is accurate or useful. The constitution’s framers do not appear to have held your definition as useful, which is why I thought it must have some other source.
If you take away any country's ability to defend itself, and if you take away its powerful allies, there's little to stop it from being exploited or conquered. Especially if the country has resources or is of strategic interest.
You're distorting what I'm saying, but in a way you're also eloquently arguing my point for me.
>Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising.
The rest is generic discussion of their Very Important Values.