> I mean so far moderation on Mastodon seems to work, but it still does not sit right with me that we basically replaced a dictatorship with the (benevolt) oligoply of the group of most popular server's owners.
Elon Musk has made some dumb moderation calls, but he seems open to changing some of them in response to popular feedback and media pressure. I don’t know if the same is true of those people. If new Twitter bans whoever, odds are high everybody will hear about it, and if they shouldn’t be banned, odds are decent it will be reversed. I’m not sure the same is true for this “oligopoly” for whom few know who they are. Seems even worse than Twitter as far as transparency and accountability goes
Has he really though? Apparently now he's banning journalists asking him for comments on stories. It seems to be getting worse and more arbitrary on his end.
Ariadna Jacobs says that Taylor Lorenz doxxed her, by asking her for her home address for “fact-checking” purposes, promising that it was not for publication, and then publishing it anyway - https://mobile.twitter.com/littlemissjacob/status/1603575149...
Jacobs has been calling on Musk to ban Lorenz for doxxing her. Maybe he (or his staff) have listened. I’m sure Lorenz knows about this, so when she claims she “doesn’t know” why she was suspended, and implies that it was for asking Musk questions or criticising him, I think people should take that claim with a grain of salt
> That seems like a fairly big stretch for something, however bad, allegedly happening in 2020 off Twitter at all.
Jacobs argues it did happen on Twitter, because Lorenz and others used Twitter to promote the NYT article in which she doxxed her.
> Besides, isn't any legal content fair game on the new Twitter?
I think when Musk said that, he really meant “ideas” not mere “information”. It might be legal for me to post your home address, but I don’t think that is what he had in mind. I think what he meant was that people with unpopular social/political/etc views should be free to express them if they are legal. Someone’s home address isn’t a social/political/etc view.
So I don’t think banning people for doxxing is really contrary to what he meant when he said that. Now, he actually has gone backward on what he meant - re-banning Kanye for extremely antisemitic posts, implying that extreme antisemitism is not going to be allowed even if legal - but surely it is good he went back on that?
(The problem with banning “non-extreme” antisemitism, is few can agree on where to draw the line - some pro-Israel people claim that anyone who criticises Israel “too much” is being antisemitic, effectively implying that almost all pro-Palestinian activism is antisemitic - but surely we shouldn’t just ban everyone who is pro-Palestinian. On the other hand, few would deny that sometimes, some pro-Palestinian activists do get “carried away” and veer into more clearly antisemitic territory. But how far is too far? Reasonable people can disagree. This is why I think it is okay to ban clearcut cases of extreme antisemitism, like Ye, but trying to ban every possible instance of it is not sensible.)
Elon Musk has made some dumb moderation calls, but he seems open to changing some of them in response to popular feedback and media pressure. I don’t know if the same is true of those people. If new Twitter bans whoever, odds are high everybody will hear about it, and if they shouldn’t be banned, odds are decent it will be reversed. I’m not sure the same is true for this “oligopoly” for whom few know who they are. Seems even worse than Twitter as far as transparency and accountability goes