Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
Twitter, Elon Musk, Moderation in Twitter, Content moderation
Content moderation
- Elon Admits His Content Moderation Council Was Always A Sham To Keep Advertisers On The Site
- Pretty Much Every Expert Agrees That Elon Has Made Twitter’s Child Sexual Abuse Problem Worse by Mike Masnick
- ‘Challenge accepted, Elon’: Mehdi lays out the hate on Musk’s Twitter in gory detail
Free speech and Compliance to government requests
- Stop Saying Elon Musk ‘Supports Free Speech.’ He Appears To Be Actively Against That
- Once Again, ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Caves To Authoritarian Censorial Bullies
Some moments
Elon’s poll about stepping down
https://twitter.com/bestofdyingtwit/status/1604686166556413954
New social media landscape
Since the takeover, there have been multiple alternative microblogging services. The most notable ones are probably Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky. Mastodon does not feature an algorithmic feed nor a strong recommendation engine for the following. The other two have an interesting contrast.
I think simple vs. complex contagion can have a rough parallel to broadcasting vs. community-based spreading. It seems like threads’ engine is heavily geared towards broadcasting model (probably due to the instagram’s influence) while Bluesky’s engine is geared towards communities and niches. (And Mastodon doesn’t have strong discovery mechanisms 😅)
Regarding Twitter’s early success, which is often mentioned with people like Oprah joining, Damon Centola argued that it’s not Oprah (and celebrities) that triggered Twitter’s explosion, but it’s the Twitter’s explosion that leads to the celebrities presence in Twitter.
If we follow this argument, Bluesky may have a pretty good shot by creating critical mass for small communities or ‘tribes’ of people, while threads is not yet capturing those communities.