Twitter abandons disinformation pledge, may be tossed out of Europe

Originally published at: Twitter abandons disinformation pledge, may be tossed out of Europe | Boing Boing

9 Likes

I’d be interested to know what the calculus looks like from the perspective of the disinformation ‘customer’ here.

In the immediate term I assume that the tröll farmers appreciate having an easier time of it; and the rogues’ gallery probably doesn’t mind having Musk throw what’s left of his crediblity their way; but I’d also have to imagine(especially for larger markets with analogous local entities; like both China and Russia) that the disinformation value of a given platform deteriorates if it cooperates too enthusiastically:

It certainly makes the tröll farmers’ jobs harder day-to-day; but the twitter that is most useful is the one that appears to be taking a relatively hard line on disinformation and cultivates a skeptical international audience; while the one that is most cooperative, at the cost of its own reach and credibility, is the one that’s basically a redundant foreign competitor to an already-cooperative domestic outfit like Tencent or VK.

Edit: am I running into a special-case word here? I thought that I’d made a typo when I saw “trolley farmers”; but it’s definitely just being adjusted between edit pane and preview pane:

11 Likes

If you write m o i s t it becomes ■■■■■ and if you write t r o l l it becomes trolley.

12 Likes

Thanks, looks like there are good homoglyph options for “o”; but I’ll go with umlauts in this case.

9 Likes

I think for reasonable people, the degradation of the platform certainly renders it less appealing, but for people susceptible or seeking the TRUTH™️ about the lizard people and 9/11 being an inside job, they may be further sucked in. They don’t have to fool all the people all the time, but fooling the gullible is lucrative and can lead to horrible people winning close elections. Smaller market overall, yes, and much less legitimacy for the platform, but Elno may accept that as the cost of doing business.

7 Likes

More evidence that Musk’s “Free-speech absolutism” amounts to “I want to enable fascists and grifters”.

14 Likes

Möist Tröll was a very underappreciated entry in the Bog Metal genre.

21 Likes

Moist Troll?
Never heard of them.

10 Likes

Show off :smile::smile::smile:

10 Likes

Also…

caitlin-doughty-■■■■■

8 Likes

■■■■■

huh.

7 Likes

IIRC, part of Musk’s plan is to cut the researchers off from Twitter APIs. If no one can afford to collect hate speech data on the platform, only anecdotes will remain.

7 Likes

“Hitler was right… Hitler was far, far Right.”

8 Likes

It’s the newest business plan for global capitalists. We already have international arms dealers; now we have international propaganda platform dealers.

5 Likes

Good. Twitter is over researched already. That shit is old. Move on researchers. It’s been their favourite toy since it came out. Hasn’t ended well for us all.

6 Likes

Twitter: Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines pour le 21e siècle

3 Likes

I hope this policy can be changed in the eventuality BoingBoing needs an urgent discussion about Norway’s indigenous man-eating, church-bothering mountain monsters.

5 Likes

And how do we comment when they raid a supermarket?

ETA: Interesting language choice from the prompt. All the images used a shopping cart for “trolley”, not something I’ve heard here in the US, although I am familiar with the usage.

5 Likes

Ah, the Trolley-Car Problem; or, how to get your shopping from the super store to your car.

5 Likes

I’ve noticed that Twitter has been swelling up with bots these days. I’ve had probably a couple dozen fake people accounts (the typical pretty woman profile pic with a normal seeming name but no history of random tweets at all). I’ve been blocking them since I don’t want them to harass anyone that follows me that comments on anything I post. It’s gotten to the point that I might just hang it up and delete the account.

3 Likes