Heartland

It's a bit sad really but now that Elon "Space Karen" Musk has reinstated (among others) Donald Trump and Jordan fcuking Peterson (to give him his full name) it's come time for me to deactivate my Twitter. I'm a bit sad about it really; I've been on there since 2008 when you could still tweet by SMS and my twitter ID is --was-- 1 digit shorter than most.

I like the theory that's going round that goes something like this: Musk has form for stock manipulation via his social media accounts. He only made the original $44B "offer" for Twitter to try to manipulate the price of the shares, so he could then sell the 9% of the company he already owned at a profit. Allegedly. Of course this plan backfired and he was forced into making the purchase anyway; now he's burning the thing to the ground rather than admit failure.

I'm sticking with it for now.
Easy enough to block the tw@ts so I never have to encounter them & there are many just as bad as the couple you mentioned.
I have set up on Mastodon though & having a look at Hive too in case the whole thing does implode.

To be fair I haven't really used twitter much over the past few years. I think I'd have probably just left it but I do like my dramatic gestures

i use twitter almost exclusively for football with only a handful of close friends outside of that but i do get sick of it often. i dont understand the seemingly endless number of wannabe glamour models who follow me from nowhere which i then immediately remove. yes i must have clicked a dodgy account once but you would think they might look at who they follow and unless they are rampant Liverpool fans i cant see why they would bother. the level of nastiness on twitter amazes me though.

I have only a few few friends in twitter and love every picture Steve posts with cats or renovations
To be honest i don't mind if people is unbanned like that on mentioned above, i believe trying to ban people and shut their mouths or accounts have the exact opposite effect. Let all people say what they want to say and then use our brains to what we hold on or not. It's better to know what each one believes and says on his own words than hear others say that someone is this or that. Unfortunately i gave up my beloved football from the time i went to a Bundesliga match in one of my trips to Germany and had the enlightment how bad things are in football in all levels. I only wish someday go to Hamburg and watch a St.Pauli match.

John Locke, in the *Letter on Toleration* wrote: ... the business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth and of every particular man’s goods and person. And so it ought to be. For the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received and, I fear, never will receive much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succours. But if Truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her.

I'm old-fashioned enough to think that the solution to bad speech is almost always more speech, and that when you censor someone, all you're doing is telling the world that someone with power fears what someone has to say.

That said, I'm pessimistic enough to think that free-speech had a good run, and that censorship and persecution for speech are, sadly, the historical norm for our species (i.e., Socrates - put to death by the Athenians; Eriugena - legend has it he was killed by his own students; Locke - had to flee England at least once; Spinoza - had to flee to the Netherlands, and so on and so forth). We late moderns or early post-moderns still take the Enlightenment and its principles for granted. But historically speaking, freedom of speech is an aberration.

I've never used Twitter other than occasionally reading the old Nihilist Arby's feed, and almost certainly never will.

markfiend wrote: ↑21 Nov 2022, 15:03 It's a bit sad really but now that Elon "Space Karen" Musk has reinstated (among others) Donald Trump and Jordan fcuking Peterson (to give him his full name) it's come time for me to deactivate my Twitter. I'm a bit sad about it really; I've been on there since 2008 when you could still tweet by SMS and my twitter ID is --was-- 1 digit shorter than most.

I like the theory that's going round that goes something like this: Musk has form for stock manipulation via his social media accounts. He only made the original $44B "offer" for Twitter to try to manipulate the price of the shares, so he could then sell the 9% of the company he already owned at a profit. Allegedly. Of course this plan backfired and he was forced into making the purchase anyway; now he's burning the thing to the ground rather than admit failure.

To be honest I think it for the good of the world to ban Trump from social media, as president he could very easily have released a message that could lhave led to a disaster/financial crash/ war etc.

Could never really see the problem with Jordan Peterson.... at least he's having a discussion and bringing in new insights if you agree with them or not. I jjust dont believe that Twiiter brings the best out of him (or anyone) for that matter.

Elon 'Space Karen" Musk

GC wrote: ↑26 Nov 2022, 14:07
To be honest I think it for the good of the world to ban Trump from social media, as president he could very easily have released a message that could lhave led to a disaster/financial crash/ war etc.

Personally, I don't think any politicians should be allowed any social media presence whatsoever.
It's just inviting flames from an already deeply divided population & I think much of that division has been exacerbated by social media & I'm not just talking about the twitters.
It's the platform of choice to spread messages, whether hate fuelled or just straight up lies. They know that message will reach more people than anything on the front of a newspaper or on the TV.
I read an interview with a premier league referee a couple of years back (I think it might have been Mike Dean) & the guy was saying that the PGMOL rules forbid them to have any social media presence. That's just football referees .
& yet people in positions of considerable power over our daily lives are still able to set up shop & spout their respective positions & theories completely unchecked.
Social media's never going to be utopia, but it used to be a fairly pleasant escape (remember when farcebook was just people documenting their every tiny mundane activity from making a cup of tea to taking the dog for a walk?). At least the twitters did when I first started an account. It was....well..... "social".
Nowadays, depending on who you follow, everyone seems to be there to just start arguments.
It's quite easy to mute/ block those conversations &/or users, but it gets quite tiring after a while.

Pista wrote: ↑27 Nov 2022, 08:59
Nowadays, depending on who you follow, everyone seems to be there to just start arguments.

Ive only just recently joined Twitter.... and I find it the most toxic of places. Everybody 'calling out each other'.... jeez.

At least with 4Chan (not that I ever was a user) you kind of knew it was a cesspit which kind of made it more interesting than real. Twitter is just a constant drone of complaints, arguments, lame apoligies, virtue signalling, nazi namecalling, transphobia/trans worship etc etc etc. Any middle ground has disappeared and people accept that this is normal behaviour. No wonder everyone has increasing mental health problems.

Never had a twitter account or facebook and don't feel like I've missed out on much .

Never had tw@ter account, but at some point, before "Space Karen" (that's a really good one @markfiend ) buy/forced-to-buy it, or even before that shenaningan started, thought about it as an alternative to FB. Well, gave up that idea, as i couldn't see nothing better there.
I'm kinda agree what you @Pista wrote, i guess the whole idea of any PM, Minister, secretrary and that kind of VIP are there is just political marketing: to appear to be closer to people, to respond more quickly, directly, because in the instant time of omnipresence people, and journalist would like to demand instant reaction to any things happening. But yeah, that could be a weapon also.
But on the other hand i am for total freedom of speach (even knowing historic background why we in Europe are not for this), no that truth will defend itself, it was proven it's not, but because finding reason to suppres it, it's a like openning a pandora's box, and always "security" wil be first to be "defended".

i am all for freedom of speech so long as my freedom to respond is as sacred. if you are a racist fascist gobshiite spouting vile toxic opinions which the hate-speech bots miss then when i spot it & identify it for what it is then i shouldn't be sanctioned for calling a cunt a cunt.

if i see vaguely-obscured bullying and verbally challenge it why should it be me who gets slapped with a ban for hate-speech?

when i read someone stating that (and i kid you not)

"Black people are all the low dirty ugly things whites say we are, but ONLY because white people have done all this s**t to us and its white folk who actually are all THE WORST KIND OF SCUM. i hate white people because blah-blah-blah-bollocks"

i think that its perfectly reasonable for me to suggest that someone with such a lowdown all-encompassing and irrepairably fuckked-up view of the world and humanity in its entirety would really be better off leaving its ranks,; maybe by throwing themselves off of an NCP car park (i even asked them politely to please, please, please f**k off and die) without getting told to behave myself or else!
Or else? or else what? or else i have to use another amusingly-named email account & start a new twatter sccount....what a gyp.

sultan2075 wrote: ↑26 Nov 2022, 00:49 I'm old-fashioned enough to think that the solution to bad speech is almost always more speech, and that when you censor someone, all you're doing is telling the world that someone with power fears what someone has to say.

In an ideal world yes. But empirically speaking it doesn't work. As some wit once observed, Jello Biafra didn't write "Let's sit down with Nazi Punks and explain our differences of opinion". There is no compromise to be reached between "we are humans with our own hopes, needs and desires" and "you are subhuman scum who deserve to die".

Jean Paul Sartre wrote:Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

I'm sure I don't need to go into Popper's "Paradox of tolerance" as well.

I sympathize, Mark, but... this is Boromir's "Give me the ring and I'll use it for good" argument. To give you an example from here in the US, American liberals were perfectly happy to use the Supreme Court as a super-legislature up until American conservatives got the majority on that very same Court and used it for the very same purposes. The power to censor, when granted, will inevitably be used - and not always by those we might want using it. If there's anything the last 20+ years should have taught us it's that we need to be very careful about the powers we allow government to exercise. Bartek's right, I fear, that "security" or "safety" will always be the excuse that's ready-at-hand to justify all sorts of new and interesting political depravities. I simply don't trust the political class (and we can take this in a broad sense that would include influential oligarchs as well) of any nation enough to be comfortable granting them any more power than is absolutely necessary. As I age, I tend toward the view that there is something in human nature that naturally tends toward tyranny - and since it cannot be rooted out, we need to be very careful when thinking through the power we are willing to grant to authorities (including people like Space Karen).

I think we're confusing moderation with censorship. It's hardly the case that Donald Trump was censored when he was suspended from Twitter given that he immediately set up his own "social media" site. He repeatedly broke the rules of Twitter (you know, the terms and conditions that you have to click "I agree" when you sign up for an account) and was banned for it. The same thing has happened on this site to a number of folk over the years. This is standard practice in virtually all online spaces. The owners of websites should be allowed to say "I will not allow my resources to be used to promote (whatever)"; if not, well is forced speech not as much an affront to free speech as is silenced speech?

And now Musk has offered a general amnesty to all suspended accounts. Including accounts that were suspended for harassment campaigns. Accounts that did their best to drive other users off the platform. If we only protect voices that are already privileged, that's not free speech at all, it's the tyranny of the majority (or at least of the loudest). And this is what I'm objecting to: Musk is changing the rules to destroy what little moderation Twitter had in place.

We already know empirically, from the evidence of sites like 4chan, that unmoderated online spaces inevitably degenerate into, well, the likes of 4chan. I don't want to be a part of a Twitter that is a cesspit like that. So I've deleted my account and I'm staying away.

I get the argument - it's moderation when a private entity does it, etc. - I'm just less concerned with who exercises the power than I am with the existence of the power at all (what does Locke say? A good prince is the greatest danger to a people, because they won't hold him within the bounds of the law, and his successor is unlikely to be equally good). But additionally, it's worth pointing out that Musk is one of those rare exceptions where the demands of political power and the demands of economic power (or technological power) do not, in this case, overlap. But prior to Musk they absolutely did overlap, and that should have been a concern, especially given the role twitter has, lamentably or not, come to play in our public discourse.

I guess I'm less bothered by twitter being a cesspit because a) I've never had an account to begin with and b) i increasingly think the internet has been a Very Bad Thing for human beings (Shakespeare and charming cat videos? I'm all in favor. Porn and 4-chan? No thank you). But I'm extremely pessimistic about human nature (and like I said, moreso every day), and I think that the historical condition of humanity is usually some variety of tyranny. Post-enlightenment liberalism, of which I am a great admirer, is - as i said above - a historical aberration. Tyranny and despotism in their various forms are more usually the run of things, hence my skepticism about all usages of or concentrations of power, especially when those tyrannical tendencies are augmented by various technologies.

The "nazi bar" story is probably the best description of this I've seen:

I was at a s**t crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those s**t where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi s**t. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh s**t, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

It comes down to nobody's rights are being violated, but they'll just have to go somewhere else if they want to exercise those rights.

Nice analogy.

Andrew Anglin has apparently been let back in so Twitter is a Nazi sh1thole bar now.

Elon seems also to have his own agenda.... anti-fauci, anti pronouns etc. Now I'm not saying he's right or wrong but when the owner of the 'town square' has certain views it'll definitely give leverage to certain groups who want to use the square and alienate others. I think that's his biggest mistake.

I have no brief for Jordan "fat-shamer" Peterson, purely on the basis of his problem with lovely Rubenesque ladies. Sorry, but I'm an irredeemable chubby chaser. Actually, I'm not sorry. At all. And I'm not in need of redemption, well, not about this.

"That's right Wayne, lower the tone." Andrew Eldritch, maybe.

GC wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 09:46 anti-fauci, ....

Fraudci should be already in jail and wating to be executed publicly in guillotine.
Ofc, i am open to hear anyone that has proves that he is not guilty for the deaths for thousands upon thousands of people around the globe. If you know something that i don't know please step up and change my mind.

XidiouX wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 16:45 I have no brief for Jordan "fat-shamer" Peterson, purely on the basis of his problem with lovely Rubenesque ladies. Sorry, but I'm an irredeemable chubby chaser. Actually, I'm not sorry. At all. And I'm not in need of redemption, well, not about this.

"That's right Wayne, lower the tone." Andrew Eldritch, maybe.

I'll say it quitely but I quite like JP although he has become a bit of an expert on everything since 2020 which he most certainly is n't. I do think that his arguments adds much to a conversation even though he could advance his views with a bit more compassion. I quite liked his earlier conversations on finding meaning etc.

To be fair, he does have some interesting insights into the Old Testament. But he's clueless when it comes to Jung, at least when it comes to personae and the practical application of the concept, e.g. on Twitter, and here. And his interview with Benjamin Netanyahu was an exercise in sycophancy toward a corrupt, evil bastard and war criminal.

GC wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 19:23

XidiouX wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 16:45 I have no brief for Jordan "fat-shamer" Peterson, purely on the basis of his problem with lovely Rubenesque ladies. Sorry, but I'm an irredeemable chubby chaser. Actually, I'm not sorry. At all. And I'm not in need of redemption, well, not about this.

I'll say it quitely but I quite like JP although he has become a bit of an expert on everything since 2020 which he most certainly is n't. I do think that his arguments adds much to a conversation even though he could advance his views with a bit more compassion. I quite liked his earlier conversations on finding meaning etc.

XidiouX wrote: ↑12 Dec 2022, 22:55 To be fair, he does have some interesting insights into the Old Testament. But he's clueless when it comes to Jung, at least when it comes to personae and the practical application of the concept, e.g. on Twitter, and here. And his interview with Benjamin Netanyahu was an exercise in sycophancy toward a corrupt, evil bastard and war criminal.

I'll admit that I know next to nothing about the guy beyond that the advice he gives to young people seems to be so desperately needed by this generation of university students (why yes, it is the end of the semester...). I have a bit of an academic interest in the Old Testament and have heard some similar things, but haven't gotten 'round to checking out what he has to say yet (still trying to find time to work through Kass's recent book on Exodus).

I should probably make an "all-beef diet" joke here but I'm far too tired to think of one.

JP has become a bit of a Jesus character for the right anti woke movement in the last few years which does distract a bit from his earlier talks which were very interesting in discussing religion and meaning making in modern life.

YT videos of "JP destroying Woke feminist" have become a bit of a guilty pleasure in my old age but I am scared he's become a bit of a doorway drug for me in that I've also started watching a lot of Ben Shapiro lately.