It's real. Twitter Shadowbanning is back.

Jat620DH27@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 643 points –
Freedom of Speech, Not Reach: An update on our enforcement philosophy
blog.twitter.com

“Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach - our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”

Surprise! Our great 'X' CEO has brought back one more bad thing that we hated about twitter 1.0: Shadowbanning. And they’ve given it a new name: "Freedom of Speech, Not Reach".

Perhaps the new approach by X is an improvement? At least they would “politely” tell you when you’re being shadow banned.

I think freedom of speech implies that people have the autonomy to decide what they want to see, rather than being manipulated by algorithm codes. Now it feels like they’re saying, “you can still have your microphone... We're just gonna cut the power to it if you say something we don't like”.

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So originally, it was that he was a "free speech absolutist," then it was that he was in favor of free speech "within the bounds of the law," and now he's not even in favor of that.

He never was, that was just an excuse to amplify the voice of his far-right buddies.

I don't believe this because it gives Elon Musk too much credit and honestly I think he's just a big loser who will latch on to whoever likes him at the time.

A series of stupid events led to Twitter being full of stupid far right nutjobs and stupid Elon decided they're his people now because they use his stupid platform.

I'm not so sure about that. The big tell is that whenever a far-right user complained to him about getting a tweet removed or the account getting banned or something like that, he'd respond that he'll personally take care of it. Just imagine, a billionare running a platform with millions of users personally taking care of a single one. This never happened with other people.

I personally haven't heard of this, but if it's true it's probably just because he's latched on to them like I was saying. He didn't buy Twitter with some nefarious conservative intent to unblock far right accounts, he bought it because he's an idiot who got into a pissing match on social media. He even tried to get out of the sale claiming "bots" and the owners threatened to sue the shit out of him.

Edit: Lol people downvoting because I haven't heard of this? Never said it's not true, I just haven't heard of it.

Example: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgKSQUrXoAABPWi.jpg

I agree with your assessment. I'm not claiming that he has a plan of any sorts, things just happen in a spur of the moment. However, that's also the appeal of the far-right. It doesn't need research or having a solid base of knowledge to base their opinions on, it's just random stuff these people read on the Internet that feels good to them.

He didn’t buy Twitter with some nefarious conservative intent to unblock far right accounts

Yet less than a month after he finished the acquisition he unblocked the orange excrescence. That's the fastest he could get to it, because the first week he was firing execs, the second week he was laying off half the workforce, and the third week he was already dicking around with Twitter Blue and charging for the checkmark.

Admittedly, the sink in the lobby was a higher priority timewise, but he got around to unblocking Donald Trump as quickly as he could, AND while janitorial staff were still available to clean the Twitter HQ bathrooms.

Coincidence? I think not.

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By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to say whatever they want.

By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to force you to listen to them say whatever they want.

I guess it's all about his political ambition.

Oh god, I just had a flash of a near future where he's on the US ballot somehow. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if he found a way. He could change the name of the States to X too!

For any office except president (possibly not VP either, but that would be a technical issue for constitutional scholars to debate). You have to be native-born to be president.

I mean freedom of speech, not reach describes one boundary of the law in that nobody is required to give you a platform as far as i know.

However it does absolutely not fit to the free speech absolutism purported last year.

You gotta be really stupid to believe people like him. They are all the same. It's like a mental sickness. You can feel it even just hearing him talk on TV. Sadly he seems to have the type of mental illness that America accepts and it's actually useful for greed and the American dream. Meanwhile good neurodivergent people suffer life long because society doesn't fit them.

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