This week, the US journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi released documents which suggested that Twitter had blacklisted conservatives. Under the liberal owners who ran Twitter prior to Elon Musk's takeover, high-level moderators seem to have restricted the reach of prominent conservative accounts, this practice being known as ‘shadowbanning’.
Personally fascinated by the intensity of motivated reasoning on this story and the misleading heuristics that underpin 'vibes'.
X is NOT happening, you paranoid fools.
X is apparently confirmed.
Everyone knew about X. This is not news.
Also, the concept of lies being 'directionally true'. Real life Newspeak is so casual in that culture.
Also, the now classic 'reality has a liberal bias'. Which is an obvious way of shortcutting even a need for evidence.
I think that such is the need to conform to the hegemony, to maintain good standing, that they don't even begin to consider an argument on its merits. I call this the 'advance straight to Mayfair' move.
Since you wrote this, Tom, the involvement of the police and intelligence services (FBI especially) in much of the censorship (effectively shielding themselves behind a corporate actor) has emerged. This is deeply alarming and something I associate with weak or failed states when in developing countries, or catastrophic failure of corporate governance in developed countries.
When the Australian Wheat Board was caught engaging in similar behaviour after the Iraq War (the “Oil for Food” scandal), the entire government instrumentality was dissolved.
Yoel Roth (the worst and most censorious of the Twitter mandarins) also completed an "auto-ethnography" of his Grindr use over three years to get his "Communications" PhD. The whole business is a mess.
Thanks for taking note of the Twitter situation over on this side of the pond. I would like to label it a ‘kerfuffle’ but it is potentially more than that. Particularly since the side of the political football that used to tout its openness and tolerance seems to have been mugged by a very different perspective and apparently has no plans to revert to its old ways. But that’s been a tendency for awhile now. The political instincts of their top cohort are exclusively oriented towards political expediency as they conceive of it. As far as the highest-profile American media outlets go, Taibi nailed it a few years ago in his book “Hate Inc.” The old strategy of appealing to the broad national audience has been eclipsed by the current approach of cultivating a niche appeal.The results aren’t encouraging so far.
A quite entertaining and illuminating read - as always Tom - if quite depressing in one sense.
I’m probably in the liberal cohort, certainly economically although possibly a little less so socially.
Observing as dispassionately as possibly, therefore. Certain conservative values can be argued as being disadvantageous to those outside the majority power group. What certain parties refer to as ‘The One Percent’. However, this relates to economic conservatism - the maintenance of the status quo in order to keep (and accentuate) stasis. Forgive my imprecision in expressing this - words fail me at gone midnight!
However, social conservatism is more about maintaining the current socio-political and/or socio-cultural stasis. And here things get much more problematic. What is a social ‘good’? How much are people motivated by fear? And how much by greed?
Is it therefore right to allow a platform to those who would sow the seeds of division, thereby causing additional and potentially avoidable negative impact on those perceived outsiders?
Liberals are not above gerrymandering online results if it suits them, but then again, if you predicate your worldview on what goes on in social media, which after all is commercial and with voluntary participation you will eventually form the opinion that aliens are living among us and worse, they move things around the house so that I can never find them. The antidote is serious reading, looking and seeing. To cite Cardinal Newman on the concept of a Liberal Education, it is about teaching people to have a 'connected view of things'. I can think of many examples of how this simply is not happening, most of which are too hot to even mention these days, but that is the point. Our very language is being challenged and sabotaged by those with a political agenda, making it very difficult, if not impossible to think certain thoughts.
Personally fascinated by the intensity of motivated reasoning on this story and the misleading heuristics that underpin 'vibes'.
X is NOT happening, you paranoid fools.
X is apparently confirmed.
Everyone knew about X. This is not news.
Also, the concept of lies being 'directionally true'. Real life Newspeak is so casual in that culture.
Also, the now classic 'reality has a liberal bias'. Which is an obvious way of shortcutting even a need for evidence.
I think that such is the need to conform to the hegemony, to maintain good standing, that they don't even begin to consider an argument on its merits. I call this the 'advance straight to Mayfair' move.
Since you wrote this, Tom, the involvement of the police and intelligence services (FBI especially) in much of the censorship (effectively shielding themselves behind a corporate actor) has emerged. This is deeply alarming and something I associate with weak or failed states when in developing countries, or catastrophic failure of corporate governance in developed countries.
When the Australian Wheat Board was caught engaging in similar behaviour after the Iraq War (the “Oil for Food” scandal), the entire government instrumentality was dissolved.
Yoel Roth (the worst and most censorious of the Twitter mandarins) also completed an "auto-ethnography" of his Grindr use over three years to get his "Communications" PhD. The whole business is a mess.
Thanks for taking note of the Twitter situation over on this side of the pond. I would like to label it a ‘kerfuffle’ but it is potentially more than that. Particularly since the side of the political football that used to tout its openness and tolerance seems to have been mugged by a very different perspective and apparently has no plans to revert to its old ways. But that’s been a tendency for awhile now. The political instincts of their top cohort are exclusively oriented towards political expediency as they conceive of it. As far as the highest-profile American media outlets go, Taibi nailed it a few years ago in his book “Hate Inc.” The old strategy of appealing to the broad national audience has been eclipsed by the current approach of cultivating a niche appeal.The results aren’t encouraging so far.
A quite entertaining and illuminating read - as always Tom - if quite depressing in one sense.
I’m probably in the liberal cohort, certainly economically although possibly a little less so socially.
Observing as dispassionately as possibly, therefore. Certain conservative values can be argued as being disadvantageous to those outside the majority power group. What certain parties refer to as ‘The One Percent’. However, this relates to economic conservatism - the maintenance of the status quo in order to keep (and accentuate) stasis. Forgive my imprecision in expressing this - words fail me at gone midnight!
However, social conservatism is more about maintaining the current socio-political and/or socio-cultural stasis. And here things get much more problematic. What is a social ‘good’? How much are people motivated by fear? And how much by greed?
Is it therefore right to allow a platform to those who would sow the seeds of division, thereby causing additional and potentially avoidable negative impact on those perceived outsiders?
Liberals are not above gerrymandering online results if it suits them, but then again, if you predicate your worldview on what goes on in social media, which after all is commercial and with voluntary participation you will eventually form the opinion that aliens are living among us and worse, they move things around the house so that I can never find them. The antidote is serious reading, looking and seeing. To cite Cardinal Newman on the concept of a Liberal Education, it is about teaching people to have a 'connected view of things'. I can think of many examples of how this simply is not happening, most of which are too hot to even mention these days, but that is the point. Our very language is being challenged and sabotaged by those with a political agenda, making it very difficult, if not impossible to think certain thoughts.