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Resilience, Another Thing We Can’t Talk About [Freddie deBoer]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
January 2, 2023
191 views
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• Jonathan Haidt’s recent interview with the Wall Street Journal about the crisis of Generation Z was met with ridicule and dismissal.
• Haidt’s concerns about depression and anxiety among Gen Z were overshadowed by the culture war.
• Suffering is an inevitable part of life, and teaching people how to respond to suffering and grow from it is an essential task of any community.
• Criticisms of Haidt’s argument are valid, but his perspective is more nuanced than Ben Shapiro’s.
• Resilience is an essential trait that should be taught to young people, but talk of toughness and resilience can be used opportunistically to dismiss demands for justice.
• Social media creates incentives to always find yourself on the “right side” of every debate, making it difficult to engage in subtlety and nuance.

Published January 2, 2023. Visit Freddie deBoer’s substack to read the original post.

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How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate [David Zweig, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
December 26, 2022
302 views
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  • Twitter suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy.
  • The Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.
  • Twitter acted as a kind of FBI subsidiary, re-writing the platform’s policies on the fly to accommodate political bias and pressure.
  • Twitter suppressed views and even scientific evidence that ran to the contrary.
  • Bots and contractors were used to moderate content, leading to a significant error rate.
  • Higher level employees at Twitter chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and determined suspensions.
  • Content that was contrarian but true, and the people who conveyed that content, were still subject to getting flagged and suppressed.
  • Twitter propped up the official government line that prioritizing mitigation over other concerns was the best approach to the pandemic.
  • If Twitter had allowed the kind of open forum for debate that it claimed to believe in, could any of this have turned out differently?

Click HERE for original. Published December 26, 2022

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Twitter’s Link Ban [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
December 19, 2022
284 views
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• Twitter’s link ban to other social networks was met with widespread condemnation, including from prominent members of the tech industry.

• Network portability is the single most important thing to spurring competition, but government regulation is going in the opposite direction.

• China is ramping up production of decade-old chip technology, setting off alarm bells in the US and prompting some lawmakers to try to stop them.

• The US has a massive strategic weakness when it comes to trailing edge chips, and the CHIPS Act should have been focused on building trailing edge capacity.

Published December 19, 2022

Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post

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The Twitter dumpster fire, explained [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information], Politics
December 19, 2022
270 views
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  • Twitter chaos since Musk took over has made it difficult for news consumers to discern accurate accounts
  • Twitter is integral for new media organizations to reach new audiences
  • Musk’s selective release of internal communications has caused users to worry about their data
  • Data portability and interoperability could potentially make social media better
  • Subscribing to reliable sources is important, but there are too many to pay for them all

Click HERE for original. Published December 19, 2022

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The Twitter Files and the Future of the Democratic Party With Silicon Valley’s Congressman [Bari Weiss, TFP]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press], Politics
December 17, 2022
275 views
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  • Ro Khanna is a progressive congressman from Silicon Valley who speaks out on the unintended consequences of technology and the digital revolution.
  • Khanna’s policies on Big Tech are not what many would expect, and he was one of the few Democrats to criticize Twitter’s decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
  • Khanna believes there is a need to have a conversation about how free speech works on social media platforms, and how to make sure everyone has a fair shake on them.
  • He believes that Twitter should have documented Donald Trump’s tweets inciting violence in a consistent way before banning him.
  • Khanna suggests solutions such as giving people the right to their own data, reforming Section 230, and embracing a “new economic patriotism” that focuses on bringing production back to America.
  • Khanna is not yet considering a future presidential run, and is currently happy making a contribution from Silicon Valley.

Click HERE for original. Published December 17, 2022

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The internet wants to be fragmented [Noah Smith, Noahpinion]

By Spencer Chen
In Noah Smith [Noahpinion]
December 16, 2022
252 views
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  • The internet used to be an escape from the real world, but now the real world is an escape from the internet due to the centralization of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
  • Centralizing the world’s social interaction on two or three platforms was profitable, but it caused a lot of toxicity and outrage.
  • Twitter’s “dunk mechanism” encouraged toxicity and outrage, and the company’s hapless, incompetent management resisted any attempts to change this.
  • People are now taking their discussions off of Twitter and into smaller forums, like DM groups, WhatsApp, Signal, and Discord.
  • Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused further disruption, and it remains to be seen whether this will cause an exodus of users.
  • In place of centralized social media, we are seeing fragmentation, with apps like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram becoming more popular.
  • Fragmentation is necessary to restore the old internet, as it allows people to exit and move to a different forum if they don’t like the current one.

Click HERE for original. Published December 16, 2022

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Why Twitter Really Banned Trump [The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
December 15, 2022
246 views
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  • On January 8, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account, the first and only time a sitting head of state has been kicked off the platform.
  • Despite Trump’s tweets that morning not violating Twitter policies, the company decided to ban him due to pressure from employees, many of whom had been calling for his ban for months.
  • World leaders expressed their concerns, citing the precedent it set for freedom of speech and democratic rule.
  • Twitter had long resisted calls to ban Trump, citing their mission to provide a forum for people to engage their leaders directly.
  • Ultimately, Twitter’s decision to ban Trump raised questions about the power an individual or corporation has over public conversations.

Click HERE for original. Published December 15, 2022

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Twitter’s Secret Blacklists [Bari Weiss, Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger and Nellie Bowles, TFP]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
December 15, 2022
290 views
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  • Twitter secretly suppressed the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous without informing users.
  • Twitter denies shadow banning, but executives prefer the term “visibility filtering” which is used to suppress posts by conservative or non-woke thinkers.
  • Prominent figures such as Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk, and right-wing talk-show host Dan Bongino were all targeted.
  • Twitter’s Site Integrity Policy-Policy Escalation Support team (SIP-PES) was responsible for making the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions.
  • Twitter CEO Elon Musk believes the platform was sending civilization in a bad direction and is open to ideas to prevent censorship.

Click HERE for original. Published December 15, 2022

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How Elon botched his war on bots [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
December 12, 2022
190 views
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  • Elon Musk attempted to rid Twitter of spam by blocking traffic from roughly 30 mobile carriers around the world, impacting people with two-factor authentication.
  • Twitter quickly unblocked the carriers, but the incident highlights growing confusion within the company as it struggles to carry out Musk’s erratic commands.
  • Musk has fired employees seen as insufficiently loyal to him, and recently sent an email to Twitter employees threatening to sue people who leak confidential information.
  • He has also increasingly advanced the narrative that Twitter was a den of corruption before he bought it, and recently made a baseless smear against a former employee.
  • His full-throated embrace of the conservative mainstream has actively degraded Twitter as a news source, and caused anxiety for those who want to make jokes about tech.
  • It is time to start leaving Twitter behind and find new alternatives for gathering news and promoting work.

Published December 12, 2022

Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post

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The Twitter Files and Writing for the Maw [Freddie deBoer]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
December 12, 2022
206 views
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  • Freddie deBoer discusses the Twitter Files and the concept of the Maw, which is the expression of the culture war as operationalized by the consensus opinions of media.
  • He examines Eric Levitz’s article on the Twitter Files, noting that Levitz’s opinion is sufficiently nuanced to save face but which will in every instance satisfy the Maw.
  • He critiques Levitz’s dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story, noting that the sordid is mundane and that if it had been Eric Trump’s laptop, the media would have responded differently.
  • He concludes that there are interesting conversations to be had about the Twitter Files, but the Maw insists that there’s nothing there at all.

Click HERE for original. Published December 12, 2022

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