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I looked at SYL's Twitter account yesterday and saw a woman called Amy Mek who was posting lots of things that he retweeted. I Googled her and she's an anti-Muslim 'campaigner' from America.

Her Twitter account has apparently been banned in Germany and France. I didn't know this was possible.

Anyone know how that works? Who enforces it? The ISPs? Twitter in those countries? The last option seems unlikely.
Seems like this is the mechanism:


If you are a law enforcement agent, government official, or other third-party intending to submit a valid legal request and would like to have potentially illegal content or accounts removed from X, we ask that you first review the X Rules and, if applicable, submit a request to have the content reviewed for possible violations of X’s Terms of Service, here: https://help.twitter.com/forms.
 
I think the best thing we can do is to remove the exemption that they have under US law (section 230) which has effectively been granted in most countries in the West as well.

This in effect says that no platform can be held responsible for the postings on the platform, something which absolutely doesn’t apply to other forms of media. It’s a considerable advantage that they possess and it’s one that is heavily exploited by them given that they profit off that content themselves as well as sell data services.

You could protect smaller operators like here who don’t monetise / have effective content moderation policies, it would be legally sound (as mentioned they are the exception to the rule) and it wouldn’t cost much to implement as it would enable the victims of slander, harassment and so on to sue someone with deeper pockets.
 
It’s very bad at context. AI is okay for removing pornography and CSAM but hopeless at distinguishing between truth and lies, or between fair comment and coded hate speech. Offshored human moderators reviewing dozens of pieces of content every minute aren’t much good at that, either.
Even referring to it as AI is a misnomer, as it is just programmed to search for things across the Web, and is not actually learning.
 
Very well said.
Great post.
Should probably have made it clearer with italics or a link or something, but the first half of that post absolutely wasn't my own original observation or something, it was just me copy-posting a bit of Debord, thesis 28 to be precise.

Anyway, beyond the specifics of how awful Musk is, think it's worth thinking about the economics of all this - I think as long as you rely on an advertising/attention-funded model, it'd be difficult to break with the hatewatch algorithm model. I think U75 is different in an important way to commercial social media cos it's not driven by the incentive to push whatever gets clicks and views.
Once you introduce that economic incentive, you have a powerful reason to make sure that the likes of Fox/Yaxley-Lennon/Musk/Goddard etc are seen by as many people as possible, cos some people will say "this is brilliant, I want to show this to everyone and watch more of this content" and some people will say "this is terrible, I need to show this to people to warn them and watch more of this content to see what else this arsehole is up to", and both of those reactions serve to create value for advertisers in a way that me banging on about Wirral healthcare assistants getting regraded, or Moaner typing out a few earnest paragraphs about Byung-Chul Han, or someone posting about Dulwich Hamlet's latest 0-0 draw to Fulchester Rovers just doesn't. And maybe for a while you can carry on having an advertiser-attention funded site that doesn't push Yaxley-Lennon posts more than the above, but you're going to keep on having to explain to your shareholders about why you're failing to provide the optimal return on their investments as long as you do.

As mentioned above, I think U75 is one example of an alternative funding system; the substack/patreon walled garden subscription system is another. I have to admit I don't fully understand how the economics of Discord and Whatsapp work - I guess Discord at least is funded by a few people paying for premium membership and that carries the whole site? But I'm sure other models are possible - would a nationalised social media network be possible or desirable? What about that special French internet from the old days? Etc etc.
 
Elon Musk has called the prime minister “two-tier Keir” in reference to the conspiracy theory that police are treating white far-right “protesters” more harshly than minority groups.

Downing Street would not engage again with the billionaire owner of X, having previously said his comments about a potential civil war in the UK had “no justification”. Since that criticism, Musk has been repeatedly targeting Keir Starmer on his social media platform.

Another Trump style man-baby, playing with his toy (twitter), when he hasn't got a fucking clue what he's talking about, and the damage he is doing in spreading this nonsense conspiracy theory.

 
As I said on the other thread, personally I would be happy to see twitter banned in the UK, until this whole situation is resolved.

It's not about banning SM in general, it's just this one man and one platform that is a very special case.

But how? The government don't currently have the power to just decide to ban a media outlet because they don't like it. Do you want them to have that power?

(tbf I think a bill being introduced in Parliament to just ban Twitter until Elon Musk fucks off because he's a dick would be pretty funny but it doesn't seem very likely)
 
But how? The government don't currently have the power to just decide to ban a media outlet because they don't like it. Do you want them to have that power?

(tbf I think a bill being introduced in Parliament to just ban Twitter until Elon Musk fucks off because he's a dick would be pretty funny but it doesn't seem very likely)
There are clearly already powers to block access to websites that break the law in particular ways (copyright infringement definitely, but I'm pretty sure there are others). The question is whether X or other sites are compliant with existing laws (suspect there are examples where they're not, but lack of enforcement). And secondly whether current social media regulation is appropriate given it's impact.

I think there's certainly a case for tighter regulation, especially around hate speech and algorithms, but clearly a danger that such regulation could be defined poorly and have an impact on, say, this site.
 
Musk is like some snot-faced kid who tries to insult you but you don't give a shit because he's a snot-faced kid, but he keeps flinging insults at your back as you walk away to prove he 'got' you. :rolleyes:
 
Why is Musk so obsessed with us and getting Starmer to notice him?

He is likely just mirroring the republican US political tactic of using a fictitious version of the UK to reinforce their shit, divisive talking points. Vance another recent example with his "suggested the UK is the "first truly Islamist country" to obtain nuclear weapons" bollocks. Its been visible in the past when they talked shit about particular UK cities, but does seem to get ramped up more when Labour are in power. In any case its more about their own domestic political dog-whistling than anything else.
 
...I have no idea why people genuinely believe we're a Muslim country when a five-second Google search will show otherwise. Our Prime Minister isn't Muslim and the last one was Hindu. Islam is not the majority religion and other European countries have big Muslim populations. It's so incredibly weird.

Also, Pakistan have nukes and they are an actual Muslim country.
 
They don’t do fact checking, do they? Mind you, the far right are not the only people who are guilty of this.
 
Guilty as charged, m'lud. :(
Me too. But I will hold my hand up if fact-checked after saying something that turned out to be bullshit. The bigots just stick their fingers in their ears and ignore any input that doesn’t confirm their bias.
I was reading some online reactions to last week’s swiftly-brought convictions.
Many, percieving ‘two-tier’ justice at work, were asking why the Harehills rioters hadn’t been brought to justice yet. They clearly hadn’t been reading the news, because people have already gone down for it, with similar sentences handed out.
 

"The worst part was that, left unchecked, this group [of white males] ruined the experience of the platform for everyone else. It’s hard to convince people now who didn’t use the product during happier days, through events such as the London 2012 Olympics or early X Factor, but Twitter used to be joyously good fun to use. A laissez-faire approach to abuse sadly allowed much of the carefree humour to be scared off. As much as X/Twitter loves framing itself as the “global town square”, such common spaces only thrive when everyone knows antisocial behaviour isn’t going to be tolerated."

👍
 
From the above link...

"As for Musk’s tweeting, there’s often a tell about his personal posting. The @elonmusksjet Instagram account, which uses public flight logs to track the movements of Musk’s private jets, gives a simple opportunity to match the billionaire’s social media posts with the timezone they were posted from. It was just after 4am in Texas when Musk reshared a fake post suggesting that Keir Starmer was planning to set up “detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands. Glancing at Musk’s X feed shows him regularly staying up long into the night posting and replying. He’s been open about his use of ketamine, apparently a medical prescription.

"While 4am tweets can be deleted (as the one about detainment camps was), real-world consequences hang around long after the buzz has gone."
 
I still love the internet, including parts of social media, it just needs moderating. They make billions they can afford to do it
Censorship is the last thing I want to see on social media. It doesn't deal with the problem, it just drives it underground.
Dealing with the real issues is the only answer, but that would involve taxing the rich, which won't be happening anytime soon.
 

"The worst part was that, left unchecked, this group [of white males] ruined the experience of the platform for everyone else. It’s hard to convince people now who didn’t use the product during happier days, through events such as the London 2012 Olympics or early X Factor, but Twitter used to be joyously good fun to use. A laissez-faire approach to abuse sadly allowed much of the carefree humour to be scared off. As much as X/Twitter loves framing itself as the “global town square”, such common spaces only thrive when everyone knows antisocial behaviour isn’t going to be tolerated."

👍
Whoever wrote that is deluded. Twitter was a toxic shithole long before Musk.
 
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