Around one-in-five U.S. adults (23%) say they use Twitter. The share of Americans who use the platform has remained consistent over the past several years and is similar to the share who use Snapchat (25%) and WhatsApp (23%). But a much larger share of U.S. adults use YouTube (81%), Facebook (69%) and Instagram (40%).
Considering all the attention the acquisition received I was surprised to read that more people don't use Twitter. The idea that what gets posted on Twitter automatically becomes what the average Joe talks about is probably overstated.
It's indirect. Many of the people who influence what the average Joe talks about use Twitter, and few of them are self-aware enough to recognize Twitter is a fishbowl at a cafe by the ocean.
I've seen the exact opposite, everyone either doesn't care (specifically non-US citizens don't care) and people in the US are cheering him on. There was tremendous support for him when he reinstated the babylon bee and they haven't even posted anything yet
In my friend group there were a handful of specific blunders that significantly changed the tide of opinion against him, all around the 2018 timeframe. "Pedo guy" was the biggest one mostly because of how stupid and unnecessary it was and his unwillingness to back down, but the "taking Tesla private for $420/share" drama was a close second.
The increasingly pubic tawdriness of his love life was a factor too; prior to then he'd done a good job cultivating an image of a family man.
Specifically on Reddit I've never seen anybody support him anywhere near what one could consider "faboyism". They have this funny feedback loop where there's a (usually negative, or only marginally relevant) Musk post on the front page at least once a week, and the comments are all about how they hate Musk and how people need to stop giving him attention. Somehow everybody is completely oblivious to the fact that these posts are the only ones that most people ever see.
Musk is banning people who make fun of him... I don't think anyone is under any illusion that Twitter is somehow becoming more open lol
Anyways I think the biggest concern is obviously that blue checkmark tweets will now be prioritized by the algorithm. Making it a pay-to-influence media platform. That's definitely why I quit (or at least unfollowed every single blue checkmark) and that seems to be the biggest concern amongst my friends
No. He's banning accounts which are impersonating others, and such accounts are now required to add "Parody" to their name to avoid confusing users. I welcome this policy change, as well as the democratization of verification marks.
I would rephrase it to "political propaganda machine dislikes and distrusts Musk". It is telling that Tesla was not invited to the EV summit or that or was removed from S&P 500 ESG.
Depends which political propaganda machine you are talking about: the one that is outraged at their speakers husband being hit by a hammer or the one flately making stuff up to justify that attack.
P.S. I am not an US citizen so I couldn't care less, but when "my" party over here would defend a guy who breaks into someone's home and hit an old man with an hammer because of — you name it — political propaganda I would pause for a moment and revaluate whether I am still who I think I was.
Why do you feel a need to defend political propaganda? Did you not just try to show that it is instrumental? If anything I guess you agree that there is this top down attack on Musk. Well, he became so influential that shady political interests are in play.
Tesla has really helped push EVs over the adoption hump and into the mainstream. Quite a lot of incredibly wealthy people and governments (petro-states) would love to see Tesla (and Musk personally) fail. Upending the global energy order is a big deal and will make you serious enemies.
SpaceX has also almost single handedly taken the entire launch industry. Nowhere near as big as the oil and internal combustion engine industries but it's very wrapped up with large powerful states like Russia. Roscosmos is basically dead now.
The idea that Musk is pro-Russian is kind of dubious for many reasons, and Russia certainly has zero reason to be pro-Musk. He's destroyed their space industry, threatens the fossil fuel basis of their economy, and helped Ukraine.
If you are the richest man on earth and are attacked by political elites how would you defend yourself? Mind that they control, to some extent, media and institutions. There are things beyond money.
Gonna have to agree with this. Musk may be rich but rich doesn't necessarily mean you have the same access to certain networks as other oligarchs.
If anything we should sit back and let them eat their own. I mean they've been doing it to us for so long that it's a bit refreshing to see them attack each other.
You do not become the richest man on earth if you are not intermingling with political actors and institutions on a grand scale. It might be shock you to hear, but the man does not need your support to defend himself.
It speaks of his PR department that you think he does.
I am not defending political propaganda, I am observing the area where it transitions into action with worry and thus critizising it.
Living in an area of the world where you are given more than two political choices might make you think a little differently on a lot of stuff. For example you don't have to take sides like in a team sport and cheer on "your" team independent of it's actions. What I am saying here is that the US is an absolute mid-pit in terms of propaganda and this includes Republicans and Democrats alike. Yet by my standards (the standards of someone whose grandfather was an actual Nazi) one of those propaganda machines is more dangerous than the other.
> because of — you name it — political propaganda I would pause for a moment and revaluate whether I am still who I think I was.
We don't know why Pelosi's husband was attacked. The guy who attacked him appears to be left wing (nudist activist, pro lgbt, he made hemp jewelry, and was a member of the green party). Pelosi appears to have said the attacker was his friend on the police call.
> We just don't know enough to say it is political.
If you read my comment again you will realize that I did not say whether the attack was political or not.
I said the defense of the attack certainly is exactly that: political.
So it does not matter anymore whether the attack itself was political at this point.
The question now is: Why would anybody defend an supposed "non-political" attack like this one? This is literal "supporting-horror-movie-villain"-territory. Or as I said: If they made me defend that, I would definitely reconsider why I let them manipulate me into this. I am not sure what I would gain from letting them do this to me, other than offsetting the realization that they duped me for yet another day.
On a side note: given what we know this attack was indeed political. If you are consume actual news outlets you might know that the attacker is quoted to have said to the police he wanted to wait for the speaker and "break her kneecaps” to show other members of Congress there were “consequences to actions".
Attacking a public representative for their political actions is as political as it gets. If you don't like what your representatives do in a democracy, you vote them out. What you don't do is this psycho killer bullshit.
>I said the defense of the attack certainly is exactly that: political.
>So it does not matter anymore whether the attack itself was political at this point.
I misread what you wrote.
>The question now is: Why would anybody defend an supposed "non-political" attack like this one? This is literal "supporting-horror-movie-villain"-territory. Or as I said: If they made me defend that, I would definitely reconsider why I let them manipulate me into this. I am not sure what I would gain from letting them do this to me, other than offsetting the realization that they duped me for yet another day.
I don't think any mainstream person is defending this. There have been comparisons to Rand Paul's attack since various people who were supportive of the attack on Rand (including the Pelosi's daughter) are opposed to this one.
There has also been some lack of sympathy, which is unfortunate.
>On a side note: given what we know this attack was indeed political. If you are consume actual news outlets you might know that the attacker is quoted to have said to the police he wanted to wait for the speaker and "break her kneecaps” to show other members of Congress there were “consequences to actions".
I haven't seen anybody provide evidence to that. I have seen some claims, but nobody involved is quoted as hearing it (as far as I have seen).
Seeing how the media has been lying from the very beginning of this case I will wait until somebody reputable provides evidence to that statement.
The defense lawyer said there has been a lot of misinformation regarding this case, so I think trusting the people spreading the misinformation isn't a wise decision.
>Attacking a public representative for their political actions is as political as it gets.
>If you don't like what your representatives do in a democracy, you vote them out. What you don't do is this psycho killer bullshit.
I agree you shouldn't attack people over politics, but you are assuming this was an attack over political actions...
He appears to be similar politically to the Pelosis.
Some people don’t like elevating leaders who openly flout and degrade our culture’s expectations of how leaders behave. Some of those are silly, of course, but some of them are not. For example, a leader should be knocked down a few notches if they’re calling rescue workers pedophiles for no reason. They should be knocked down a few more for impregnating their employees. They should be knocked down for throwing childish insults at their business associates.
Nothing to do with politics and everything to do with not wanting to live in a world where all of these things become the norm.
I feel the same about Hillary. She shared a conspiracy theory this last week that Paul Pelosi's attacker was a right-wing extremist.
It was found later that the alleged "blog" David created wasn't created long ago and was taken down pretty swiftly after the attack, showing that this was created as a prop for a political stunt before midterms.
The residence for the attacker, David, was found to be a hippie commune with a gay pride marijuana flag in their front yard. Does anyone really think this guy was a far righty? Give me a break.
For readers, AFAICT the evidence that his blogs were created immediately before and deleted immediately after the attack is that the Wayback Machine hadn't indexed them prior to being linked to by major media outlets.
> He published multiple blogs laced with statements about the QAnon mass delusion, whose adherents believe former President Donald Trump stands against an alliance of Satan-worshipping Democratic pedophiles. The blog also included bigoted commentary directed at people of color, women, Jewish people, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ community and immigrants.
I've always been curious about that. Does Twitter forbid discussing lowering taxes? Maybe demanding harsher immigration policies? Higher prison sentences? Bans on abortion? Shutting down the department of education? Reinstating a monarchy? Who is more conservative than The Federalist? Quillette posts "race science" articles, and even the Claremont Institute, which is so reactionary that it balks at the term "conservative," posts articles on Twitter calling for ending democracy. Margarita Simonyan, a chief spokesperson for an ultraconservative authoritarian regime that is currently engaged in one of the deadliest wars in modern history against a budding democracy, has an account with over half a million followers. You want pre-Hellenic conceptions of the world? You got it! So seriously, what specific conservative content does Twitter disallow?
I'm not a big Twitter user but am often bombarded with right wing content on other sites like Reddit and Youtube no matter how often I try to tell the site/train the algorithm that it's not content I'm interested in seeing whatsoever, the idea that conservatives are being silenced when I (a left wing Brit) am constantly seeing their content is frankly ridiculous
> the idea that conservatives are being silenced when I (a left wing Brit) am constantly seeing their content is frankly ridiculous
It doesn't matter if you're "left wing" or not - The algorithm decided that certain people should be steered toward that content and others away from it. So the content is not reaching people organically or through merit. Rather, you're selected based on a hidden formula that nobody gets to see, and certainly doesn't serve the interests of the viewers or the uploaders. If you don't understand how that is censorship, you're missing the point of the whole show.
As a member of NAFO I get bombarded by Pro-Russian views every single time I refresh my timeline it seems, and I never like any of it or follow any of those genocidal maniacs or their cheerleaders :-/
This statistic is completely irrelevant because we have massive outliers like WW1 and WW2 and then a host of small, proxy conflicts afterwards. You don't make statistics based on mixing apples and oranges together and then making classifications out of it.
Plus, that Post article is ridiculous, you would obviously not put conflicts 200 years old like the US-Mexican war next to a conflict with modern weapons which are by nature much more deadly. If we go by this definition then most conflicts these days are in the upper 1% of fatalities compared to the whole of Human history, and that virtually says nothing interesting.
First the problem was that it's hyperbole and now that it's too obvious to be interesting? In any event, that statement was true and the fact remains that it is not only probably the most intense of the ongoing fifty or so armed conflicts -- which very much makes it stand out -- it is also among the most deadly in a long time, so I think pointing that out is pertinent, despite your stylistic reservations. Also, you can reach out to Paul Poast if you want further explanation about the conflict: https://www.paulpoast.com/bio-cv
It's very hard to estimate casulties in Russia's war on Ukraine but I think it's possible for it already to be over 200k soldiers and civilians, definitely over 100k since over 30k civilians died in Mariupol (likely many more some say 100k in Marioupol alone). We probably won't get good numbers till after the war
Multiple people have been locked out for saying that a man cannot get pregnant. Saying that cutting the healthy breasts of a young girl is child abuse, or saying that giving a child puberty blockers is also child abuse. Stop being so obtuse
I don't know the particular circumstances of those sanctions, but all of these opinions have been widely disseminated on Twitter. Exactly none of them have been suppressed, as a quick Twitter search would immediately reveal.
I understand that the feeling that conservative/reactionary ideas are suppressed has been an important myth in conservative circles for at least a century (to varying degrees), and that opinion itself is one of those conservative notions so prevalent on Twitter, but as a statement of fact, it is very easily disproved.
So they're claiming things, that are part of being a supportive parent and are not abuse, are abusive. And possibly encouraging harrasment of supporting parents and doctors?
Also I'm pretty sure vast majority of those getting top surgery are 18 or older.
Twitter suppressed the NY Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop right before the 2020 presidential election.
Calling a surgeon who performed sex reassignment surgery a criminal is what got Jordan Peterson suspended until he'll remove that tweet.
Trump was banned despite never telling anybody to go inside the Capitol building and even posting a video telling his supporters to go home.
Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for making fun of an actress.
Alex Jones was banned for posting a video where he insulted a CNN journalist.
Nick Fuentes was banned for repeated violations but Twitter has never made clear what the relevant tweets were.
These were just off the top of my head. I also remember tweets calling for mass reeducation of white people or the eradication of whiteness being allowed.
All of these ideas/notions/opinions/stories were very widely disseminated on Twitter to an audience of millions (BTW, the legality of Trump's behaviour, including what exactly he urged his followers to do, is under ongoing investigation). The suppression of the Post's story on Hunter Biden might have been an overreaction, that story itself was all over Twitter (that's how I heard about it). It's possible some tweets "calling for mass reeducation of white people or the eradication of whiteness" were not removed, but neither were tweets with vile racism/misogyny/antisemitism that constantly flood the platform.
I assume a claim could be made (although it would be hard to support) that, on average, more conservatives are suspended than progressives for similar behaviour but that still amounts to zero conservative ideas suppressed. On the other hand, there's also a bias in violent acts between conservatives and progressives. If there's any conservative content banned or suppressed, I've yet to see a single example.
That doesn't limit in any way the expression of the belief that there are only two genders. Feel free to run a Twitter search and confirm that for yourself (I just did). I have to say I am genuinely curious to find a conservative belief that I wouldn't find thousands of (unironic/uncritical) hits for in a matter of seconds.
It does, you can't tell a non-binary person that they're a man or a woman, if your tweet is reported it will be deleted. If you can find any examples of this they simply haven't been reported or reviewed yet.
Intentional misgendering of an individual could be sexual harassment; it is certainly not a form of "conservative speech" regardless of beliefs. However, the belief that there only two genders is not only not banned by Twitter but is, in fact, widely disseminated.
"I assume a claim could be made (although it would be hard to support) that, on average, more conservatives are suspended than progressives for similar behaviour"
That is the subject of an ongoing US DOJ and Congress investigations. In case you missed the public hearings (where, for example, DOJ officials testified they were told by the former President to declare the 2020 election fraudulent even though they informed him it wasn't; this is known as a "self-coup"), the House Select Committee is expected to publish its findings in a final report by the end of this year; criminal indictments, if any (although we don't know yet if Mr Trump will be charged with insurrection), would likely be served within a year.
Those topics aren't on the minds of conservatives lately, and if you think they are, you're either out of touch or making your point in bad faith. Since those ideas don't carry weight at the moment, they aren't a liability and therefore there's no reason to censor at this time.
You mentioned in another comment that the "censorship myth" is "easily disproved". You might want to re-think your logic, or stop spreading such BS, even if it sounded clever to you.
I think you're wrong (e.g. The Federalist, Claremont, and Quillette are pretty much the zeitgeist of the more-extreme-than-mainstream right these days; Claremont pretty much is the pro-Trump/pro-fascist/anti-democratic section of conservative writers), but regardless, could you name a conservative opinion/idea/belief that Twitter does not widely disseminate?
> could you name a conservative opinion/idea/belief that Twitter does not widely disseminate?
I do not necessarily endorse or agree with the viewpoints of those who were banned. But some confirmed examples include: QAnon, vaccines, Hunter Biden laptop, use of gender pronouns. Anything Pro-Putin (there's growing support of Putin among conservatives, but I'm not one of them). Claiming that the 2020 election was stolen (where was Twitter in 2016?). Being a member of Proud Boys.
Meanwhile: https://rdi.org/twitters-dictator-problem/ - Same thing happened in India FYI. You should learn to understand that iron and velvet are two sides of the same coin.
That some accounts were suspended under specific circumstances does not mean that conservative content is suppressed. Potential bias in moderation policies of specific behaviours/events and the matter of suppressing ideas are two separate issues (although the moderation of the Hunter Biden story, as I mentioned earlier, was probably a mistake).
Twitter is flooded with pro-Putin, anti-vaxx, stolen election, and "only two genders" content. The claim that these ideas are suppressed is so easily debunked (with a quick search) as thoroughly false, that I doubt that those making that claim actually believe it.
I don't know if Twitter punishes conservative Twitterers more harshly under similar circumstances, but it is simply and verifiably untrue that conservative content, of any flavour and level of extremism, is not widely disseminated by Twitter. I know that suppression has been a fundamental narrative for the right for some generations now, but like its other incarnations -- "the war on Christmas" and "cancel culture" -- it is just not real.
> That some accounts were suspended under specific circumstances does not mean that conservative content is suppressed.
I never said anything about "Conservative content is being suppressed", which is in and of itself an incredibly vague and arbitrarily defined assertion. The commenter you replied to was the one who said it. Hopefully my points are clearer than that, but there is some overlap.
> Potential bias in moderation policies of specific behaviours/events and the matter of suppressing ideas are two separate issues
A suspended account suppresses content in at least four ways:
1) The specific tweet, and all retweets, are memory-holed.
2) The user is directly prevented from posting additional tweets, different (or equal) in content but always compatible in motive.
3) The suspension serves as a warning to discourage others from doing the same.
4) The suspension is a clear message to discourage others with similar views from investing time and resources to build a following on Twitter.
---
> The claim that these ideas are suppressed is so easily debunked (with a quick search) as thoroughly false
The fact that you've admitted spending little enough time on research to be able to call it a "quick" search, and triumphantly so, doesn't help your argument. Nobody cares about suppressing last year's news, but what about when it was this year's news?
That's a think tank - Old guys in suits. Deep pockets. They're not grassroots-oriented, and don't need Twitter to reach their intended audience. They have the resources to fight back anyway, so it's not a high-value target. Not to mention they can afford to vet and craft their messages carefully to avoid getting blocked. Self-censorship.
---
> I don't know if Twitter punishes conservative Twitterers more harshly under similar circumstances, but it is simply and verifiably untrue that conservative content, of any flavour and level of extremism, is not widely disseminated by Twitter.
You can suppress content and still be overwhelmed by its sheer appeal at the end of the day. It happens all the time. Sometimes the other team wins. That's why we're not living under the flavor of totalitarianism that existed in medieval times.
That has nothing to do with conservatism, though. If a conservative is arrested while spraying "Stop the Steal" on your car, that doesn't mean that the police is suppressing conservatism. Twitter chooses to prevent certain behaviours and certain actions, and also doesn't wish to disseminate misinformation about a pandemic (progressives fell victim to those beliefs, too). Like every enforcement action, it's certainly possible that specific instances are misguided, and it's also possible that there is some bias, although whether there is or isn't is far from certain (it's also possible that conservatives are biased toward rule-infringing behaviour on Twitter just as they are biased toward political violence; more conservatives are also arrested for politically-motivated violence than progressives, while property vandalism might be biased the other way).
The fact remains that every conservative idea, including extreme ones, is widely disseminated on Twitter. Even fringe right wing ideas have far more reach today -- thanks, in part, to Twitter -- than ever before in history. The idea that they're being suppressed is downright ridiculous.
I wasn't having an argument, merely saying that no one has ever been able to present a conservative idea that Twitter has not widely publicised, let alone banned outright.
The dangerous misinformation about Covid that Twitter didn't want to publish is not a conservative idea at all; both conservatives and progressives fell victim to it and spread it. I think that there were more conservative victims because these days people who more easily believe conspiracy theories are more likely to be conservative, but that correlation is purely accidental and wasn't always the case. Certainly there is no conservative content to stories about chips in vaccines or miracle cures.
As to vandalism and violence, I was pointing out that not every action that's performed concurrently to expressing an opinion is just an expression of a belief (if I mutilate you, that I'm doing so to carve "Biden 2024" on your chest doesn't make my action protected political speech). So the fact that some people were sanctioned while expressing some ideas doesn't mean that the ideas themselves are the sole cause for their punishment, which is why I keep looking for any conservative idea that isn't expressed on Twitter. For example, the opinion that there are only two genders is widely expressed on Twitter without censorship, yet misgendering individuals could be sexual harassment performed in the course of expressing that opinion.
Chowderhead, Tim Pool, Shapiro, Owens, FoxNews, & and to some extent Rogan. Last I checked all of them have a heavy amount of followers and their accounts have not been banned from Twitter or FB?
I wish the Left experienced the same, then. Large, influential accounts calling for white genocide and education camps publicly with no consequences or media backlash is a travesty.
The fact that you are not witnessing the consequences a lot of people on the left are subjected to is part of the problem. Social media works better when it is able to isolate people into their own bubble, and to see the other as the source of all that is bad in the world. I wish you good luck, getting out of there is difficult.
Here's a video about how it was to feel cancellation of a leftist (from people also on the left!). It's long but you might find it entertaining.
Unfortunately I don't really bookmark tweets so I can share them 1-2 years later with folks who won't bother to search for them, themselves.
Sorry, you'll have to take my word for it, and you'll need to have enough interest and curiosity to care. I don't mean to assume you don't, and I want to think you're genuinely interested in knowing, but at the risk of sounding rude, people who usually ask for evidence or examples didn't spend any time looking on their own, and seek only to condemn, deny, or denounce the OP's claims at any cost — or worse, when evidence is shared, twist it into something it's not and make excuses for it.
A quick search got me reprehensible posts generalizing White people, or highlights patently racist behavior towards Whites by people (and news media) that are still allowed to exist quite freely on Twitter, like so:
Generally the most likely response at this point is "You're cherrypicking" (and thus invalidates my entire claim), right?
Disclaimer: my snark isn't directed at you by the way. I just find it fun to presume the outcomes of a — 1) share 2) evidence pls 3) shares evidence 4) ??? — interaction.
