I’m fine with the government shutting down anti-democratic movements. I’m not fine with anti-democratic governments shutting down legitimate discussion that looks bad on them, or serving a foreign power. These are not the same thing.
Then all it will take to lose your democracy is for a dictator to proclaim his opponents a danger to democracy. Maybe using a Reichstag fire. You can't fight evil with evil, or fight undemocratic tyrants with undemocratic measures. Introducing vulnerabilities into your democratic system is a double edged sword.
Exactly. What does anti-democratic mean? A brief reminder that North Korea's full name is Democratic People's Republic of Korea and East Germany was German Democratic Republic.
The reason we would usually go for the fullest amount of protection for speech was precisely because most of those issues are not simply a matter of "these people are democratic and those aren't".
Fortunately we can use our brains to think and realize that while both sides are calling the other a danger to democracy, only one of them made a concerted effort to overturn the results of an election (an overtly anti-democratic act)
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments (including ideological battle comments) to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot lately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we ban that sort of account.
I’d actually argue that the idea that the US tech ecosystem is almost exclusively ultra left leaning is the myth here. You’ve just presented that as some kind of a fact which is in stark contrast to thousands of threads filled with comments demonstrating the opposite.
Judging by the companies I've worked at and the people I know, it clearly is. This is biased towards the sv part of the industry, which is the largest concentration, though. It is also backed up by the data of who employees of large tech companies contribute to, which is overwhelmingly democrats.
I don’t think you seem to have any kind of understanding of what “ultra left leaning” means in this context.
You’re just repeating Fox News headlines here and pretending that it’s some black and white issue once again in spite of the overwhelming evidence in this very thread showing that not to be the case.
Would you also please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments (including ideological battle comments) to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot lately, even stooping to personal attacks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34131316). None of this is what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we ban that sort of account.
It happened for a few hours when the story was flagged as hacked materials (just like they’d do for, say, someone’s non-consensual nudes). Twitter did that on their own and removed it shortly later after their internal discussion agreed that it wasn’t a violation (they took down the tweets reposting actual nudes, not the media coverage).
I was referring specifically to the URL block we were talking about. They used their existing system for hacked material until confirming that it was not appropriate:
Maybe instead of just repeating that we should re-read them, you should point out exactly what is so aggrevating, and where in the files you're referring to?
Simply repeating things is a propaganda and brainwashing technique.
jumping in here, but what makes me worried is a strong power being used without proper controls, auditing, and system design.
From a system perspective it looks like the US Gov had elevated access to ban people, and had opportunity and reason to misuse it.
The initial rationale for the US Gov already admits this as a legit reason to ban foreign agents - "undue power/misleading influence". I hold that same view, but also consider that malicious elements in the US Government are also something to worry about, so I'd like their own power to shape the discussion to be limited and tracked, too.
It really doesn't look like the US Gov had unilateral access to ban people. Just to flag accounts for consideration by Twitter, differing from what normal users can do only in that the flag comes from a "trusted" source and moderation is expedited.
If a tweet didn't violate Twitter's terms, it's been shown the Twitter team wouldn't remove that tweet despite being flagged by the govt
I tried reading them closely. I see some new stuff that is of mild concern given our post-Snowden world, but I am also not able to see the great outrage.
You are acting contrarian with no evidence, no discussion of any particular component of the revealed data, nothing specific even to debate regarding the original comment. Yet the conspiracy is the downplaying of it!
I've seen a lot of hyperbole about the twitter files that, when I read it for myself, is not nearly what was claimed by the hyperbolist. For example, someone said "The FBI bribed Twitter with $3.4M to remove content!" - I looked into it, and the FBI compensated Twitter for work done over time to research and then take action on suspicious accounts. Now, that may be shady to work with the FBI on takedowns without a warrant or court order. But do I call that a bribe? Not really.
I am open to discussing what is wrong and suspicious in the files, but there is quite a correlation between "people raising hell about the Twitter files" and "people who have no problem with hate speech or adversary nation-state propaganda on social networks".
For example, I believe that actions taken by social networks (or any organization ever) on behalf of the government should be documented and released to the public after some period of time, even on the order of years. If the government believes a twitter account, facebook account or email address is a threat to national security, it should be documented. If the account is not a singular "threat" but is known to the IC to be a nation-state troll, that should be documented as the reason. I'm not convinced it should happen over email.
That said, I acknowledge that nation-state trolling and disinformation campaigns absolutely exist on Twitter and elsewhere, and need dealt with.
It's a display of power. "Yeah, we're censoring you, so what? Everyone knew this already, and it's a good thing". I'm not sure what the people who decided to publish this were expecting. Who knows though, maybe in the long run it will have some consequences.
I used to refuse to use those services, but then I got libredirect [1] which does a great job of decrapifying them and a lot of other anti-user websites.
This is absolutely true. But I think “smart” leadership avoids repeatedly doubling down on their mistakes. You can, very rarely, double down on what looks like a bad bet and come out ahead. I’m not even sure I’d call that smart but it does happen. But it takes a not-smart person to see the losses stacking up over and over and decide to dig in their heels.
Even if you’re absolutely certain your goals and overall strategy are right a smart person would understand that something needs to change in the messaging and/or execution given the overwhelmingly negative feedback.
I really don't want to be defending Elon, but I think saying "Elon must be stupid because of how he handled Twitter" is as silly as "Elon had success with Tesla and SpaceX therefore he knows how to run companies". Those two seem like two extremes.
The answer seems more along the lines of, Twitter and its problems are very very different from Tesla/SpaceX, and while Elon may have been good at the latter, he has zero experience with the former.
That being said, not realizing the above I guess makes him partly not-smart, and I assume the shortsightedness was due to the inflated ego caused by his previous two successes.
For a classic example see former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. By any conventional measure he was very smart, and yet he made a series of catastrophically bad decisions which are still impacting US national security today.
Intelligence is overrated in leaders. Character, humility, principles, and discipline are far more valuable in avoiding huge mistakes.
It really depends on the organization being led. Vision is not something you can easily outsource or task subordinates with. I mean one of the classic leader types would never set himself up to fail in early days SpaceX.
What a startup, a market leader and a government organization need are distinct types of leadership. Sometimes there are prodigies who can do two of these. Musk did.
I think they are laying the groundwork to allow creators to monetize their tweets and additional content. As it stands a lot of creators are monetizing their content off platform (patreon, substack, youtube, onlyfans, etc.) and the goal is to lock them and their content into twitter.
I think it's a good idea as content is king, but they should have rolled this out after they had established an ability to monetize. Once people leave the platform it will be tough to get them back unless they offer a very lucrative comission split with creators.
Do you even use twitter? Activity is the same as it's ever been. I think many people are overstating how many people are "fleeing" because of their personal disdain for Musk.
If they were actually concerned with people fleeing why would they do something which is more likely to make creators leave?
Someone can be both smart and Dunning-Kruger themselves in the face.
I don't know why someone who (self-diagnosed?) as having Asperger's thinks they'd be a good fit for leading a social media company, that feels like having a an amputee selling staircases [0]; but the rocket nerds I follow seem pretty convinced Musk genuinely knows actual rocket science.
[0] as in: it could work, but you'd not expect it by default
Elon is undoubtedly smart. It also seems like maybe he's on a mental health episode or just got so rich he decided he's done with building companies and just wants to be an asshole out of spite. Who knows? But he's accomplished plenty of things that suggest he's not an idiot.
How do I know? Because I am pretty smart as well, with a PhD from math, but that didn't stop me from making a series of stupid mistakes in my life. Sometimes out of sheer optimism, sometimes because I missed some crucial information, sometimes because closeness to some other person made me miss important red flags, sometimes because I overextended my abilities, sometimes because I underestimated my adversaries.
If I bought Twitter, I would have run it into the ground in days.
do morons get accepted into Stanford's STEM PhD programs? You can hate Musk for his personality and maybe say he has mental health issues but to say he's stupid seems strange
> do morons get accepted into Stanford's STEM PhD programs
is a lie perpetuated by Musk and co. [1] contains links to court documents.
According to the court documents, not only does he not have a physics or other technical degree, he obtained a bachelor in Econ in 1997, not a physics degree in 1995.
The scan of the diploma does not specify department, has no year date, and is a bachelor of arts.
The diploma is a bachelor of arts, so that's definitely not the business degree and is probably for physics. Penn, like most liberal arts schools, offers a bachelor's in arts for stem fields. IIRC he did an uncoordinated dual degree and his wharton degree would have been a bachelor of science in economics (its not really an econ major, its a business major, the real econ major is a bachelor of arts), while his college of arts and science degree was a bachelor of arts in physics.
So, if his only degree is a bachelor of science in economics like the filing claims, what's the scan of the bachelor of arts degree then? He's got some sort of secret other degree in biology or chemistry he's never told anyone about? Fwiw he's listed as having a ba physics and bs econ in the alumni directory, and penn has confirmed those in emails, so like, you can pretend that he doesn't have the degrees he has, but idk what that accomplishes. And maybe he said a few times that he had a b.s. in physics (which is not a thing at penn) instead of a ba but that's meaningless
I’m not an Elon basher but I’m genuinely confused by what you’re saying. You’re saying the fact he has a BA implies it’s something in STEM rather than Econ? Maybe I’m wrong but isn’t a BA the degree you would expect to get an basically any school when studying Econ?
This is specific to Penn, where elon went, and the post does mention that they believe he only has a BS in econ, not the ba, but then dont explain why they have a screenshot of a ba. (Also fwiw I am personally a bit of an elon basher now, I really think he's gone off the deep end with twitter).
Elon did a dual degree, one bachelor in the business school (wharton) and one in the arts and sciences school (aka the college). Basically, whether a degree is a bachelor of arts or sciences is totally meaningless, schools do whatever they want (science and math are both liberal arts). At penn, the undergrad business degree is a bachelor of science in economics. You wouldn't call yourself an econ major with that degree though, since you only take 3 or 4 econ classes for that degree, you would call yourself a business major or identify by your concentration (e.g. finance, marketing. The alumni portal shows that elon concentrated in entrepreneurial management, idk if thats complete since ive heard the university confirmed he has a second concentration). The college hosts your liberal arts majors - physics, biology, chemistry, math, English, history, sociology, (real) economics, anthropology, gender studies, the works. All these are bachelor of arts degrees. I believe there's even a BA version of computer science that's offered (as distinct from the bachelor of science in engineering (BSE) in Computer science or the bachelor of applied science (BAS) in computer science degrees the engineering school offers). So if you say he has a wharton business degree (the post mentions they've confirmed the b.s. economics), and you also have evidence of a bachelor of arts granted the same year, then that BA needs explanation. I guess theoretically he could have gotten an econ major from the college too, I'm sure some hedge fund wannabes do that. These sorts of dual degrees are super common at penn btw, through formal and informal programs (e.g. i have a ba biology and bs econ)
But the ground truth here is that he has a ba in physics from the college and a bs econ (aka business degree) from wharton and when asked to provide evidence of his physics degree, he correctly provided his ba. And also that at some point elok screwed up and said he had a bs physics (which is not a thing at penn) instead of a ba which they've latched onto.
Wait also the date is literally right there on the diploma so idk where the no date statement comes from - that frankly calls the credibility of that "reporting" into question when it literally says anno salutis mcmxvii right on the image they've annotated with the claim that the diploma doesn't contain the date
I think that, by leaving Twitter alone, he already has. If we've learned something about Elon so far, from previous episodes of the cursed news cycle we all inhabit, is that he's vindictive and petty to an irrational extent (calling rescue officers who don't agree with him pedophiles, banning journalists who report on the jet account, ...)
I am not an Elon fan, but I agree Musk is a smart guy. I just don't think smartness on its own is very valuable. Indeed, it can be very dangerous when it lets you think that you know better than everybody else despite them having way more experience in their fields. A classic example is the XKCD cartoon "Physicists": https://xkcd.com/793/
I've met some incredibly smart narcissists, and you know what they use their smarts for? The same sort of continuous ego inflation that less smart narcissists do. Their smartness just makes things worse, because they're less likely to have the sort of comeuppance that leads to a moment of clarity.
Intelligence is neither a binary nor a one-dimentional concept. Within certain contexts Musk is certainly a smart entrepreneur but I would not call him that without a lot of such qualifiers.
