This is a thoughtful take that makes some insightful points. I like the degree of nuance.
Some points on the idea that Musk turned to “extremely divisive” journalists and thus undermined his ostensible goal:
-In a situation where someone has information they believe can move the Overton window of national conversation, this can be precisely what you want. Snowden doing this with surveillance through Glenn Greenwald, because he believed Greenwald would actually publish his revelations, is just one example; Taibbi’s sources on finance turned to him to get around captured beat reporters, people came to Gawker all the time with real stories as you know for similar reasons. Obviously whether Musk actually had that information is a matter of controversy, but I think it’s also obvious he believes he does and that his goals may comport with the preceding.
-The term “divisive” is often used as an indirect insult against journalists who people merely disagree with. I’m not saying you’re doing that here, and presumably you’d say this relates to your bigger point about credibility, but to the extent it scans as a general comment on quality it seems like a non sequitur: Any journalist sufficiently ahead of the curve on a given topic is going to say things many people disagree with, even if they are ultimately “proven right.” Yes, sometimes they can write one story that goes against the conventional wisdom but is so deep and persuasive it wins most people over and the journalist is never in a state of being “divisive.” But most often people (especially *cough* in whatever longstanding powerful industry they critique) will loudly criticize them for a while. One way to avoid this is never to provide people with information that is particularly novel or analysis that is particularly controversial or critical. But it stands to reason that some of the “best” journalists will be “divisive,” where “best” roughly speaking includes criticizing powerful institutions using information and insights most journalists don’t yet have and eventually producing a change in how society perceives those institutions and what specifically it expects from them.
-Lastly, I’d argue that however they are perceived in a particular corner of Twitter and (sorry yes I’m going to say this cliched thing) professional class of broadly Brooklyn adjacent coastal media professionals, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are not widely perceived as particularly divisive journalists. obviously that’s a subjective call! Still, I think a similar critique could be made of the idea that Musk’s goals are particularly political.
was also fascinated by this release and found the number of people saying this "wasn't a story" to be pretty ridiculous.
IMO, I think this is less about Elon doing this for more clicks and more about settling a score.
This is one thing you can do after a successful coup d'état—share what the other org was obscuring the whole time.
And for people who have been banned or shadow banned from twitter, there's plenty of stuff to look into. I hope Bari's piece takes a deeper dive in article form.
Tangentially related to your point about the lack of clarity around the tags--something sorely missing from every discussion about this bullshit is a real glossary of what people have in mind when they say stuff like "deboosted" and "shadow banned". For the forum heads, those terms used to mean something! Now a bunch of boomers are using them to mean... "crypto bots stopped trying to scam me"? Though I am looking forward to the possibility of Ted Cruz bleating about getting "beecocked".
Not going to search for it, but somebody commented on Twitter that the secondary purpose of all this is to lay the groundwork for everyone's TL to be filled up by Libs of TikTok and Ben Shapiro posts whether you want them or not and that makes a lot of sense.
All interesting points. I think this is the start of what will be an ongoing discussion around moderation with AI etc., if twitter can solve this problem better than his competitors than ultimately his platform becomes attractive, so that is the meaning that could go behind the initial salacious clickbait. However all the doxing, and the manner in which this is all being done is so politically motivated that it almost cancels out the negative effect it would have to prior administrators, and it just wouldn't beget any loyalty in me if I saw my boss doing that now. In general, Twitter feels now like you are hanging out an auditorium with the principle. Musk should stop tweeting so much.
This is a thoughtful take that makes some insightful points. I like the degree of nuance.
Some points on the idea that Musk turned to “extremely divisive” journalists and thus undermined his ostensible goal:
-In a situation where someone has information they believe can move the Overton window of national conversation, this can be precisely what you want. Snowden doing this with surveillance through Glenn Greenwald, because he believed Greenwald would actually publish his revelations, is just one example; Taibbi’s sources on finance turned to him to get around captured beat reporters, people came to Gawker all the time with real stories as you know for similar reasons. Obviously whether Musk actually had that information is a matter of controversy, but I think it’s also obvious he believes he does and that his goals may comport with the preceding.
-The term “divisive” is often used as an indirect insult against journalists who people merely disagree with. I’m not saying you’re doing that here, and presumably you’d say this relates to your bigger point about credibility, but to the extent it scans as a general comment on quality it seems like a non sequitur: Any journalist sufficiently ahead of the curve on a given topic is going to say things many people disagree with, even if they are ultimately “proven right.” Yes, sometimes they can write one story that goes against the conventional wisdom but is so deep and persuasive it wins most people over and the journalist is never in a state of being “divisive.” But most often people (especially *cough* in whatever longstanding powerful industry they critique) will loudly criticize them for a while. One way to avoid this is never to provide people with information that is particularly novel or analysis that is particularly controversial or critical. But it stands to reason that some of the “best” journalists will be “divisive,” where “best” roughly speaking includes criticizing powerful institutions using information and insights most journalists don’t yet have and eventually producing a change in how society perceives those institutions and what specifically it expects from them.
-Lastly, I’d argue that however they are perceived in a particular corner of Twitter and (sorry yes I’m going to say this cliched thing) professional class of broadly Brooklyn adjacent coastal media professionals, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are not widely perceived as particularly divisive journalists. obviously that’s a subjective call! Still, I think a similar critique could be made of the idea that Musk’s goals are particularly political.
was also fascinated by this release and found the number of people saying this "wasn't a story" to be pretty ridiculous.
IMO, I think this is less about Elon doing this for more clicks and more about settling a score.
This is one thing you can do after a successful coup d'état—share what the other org was obscuring the whole time.
And for people who have been banned or shadow banned from twitter, there's plenty of stuff to look into. I hope Bari's piece takes a deeper dive in article form.
Tangentially related to your point about the lack of clarity around the tags--something sorely missing from every discussion about this bullshit is a real glossary of what people have in mind when they say stuff like "deboosted" and "shadow banned". For the forum heads, those terms used to mean something! Now a bunch of boomers are using them to mean... "crypto bots stopped trying to scam me"? Though I am looking forward to the possibility of Ted Cruz bleating about getting "beecocked".
Twitter Files as an important™️ story is super lame(and *very* Elon!). but i really wanna know what's behind the "Guano" tab in the dashboard lol
Not going to search for it, but somebody commented on Twitter that the secondary purpose of all this is to lay the groundwork for everyone's TL to be filled up by Libs of TikTok and Ben Shapiro posts whether you want them or not and that makes a lot of sense.
All interesting points. I think this is the start of what will be an ongoing discussion around moderation with AI etc., if twitter can solve this problem better than his competitors than ultimately his platform becomes attractive, so that is the meaning that could go behind the initial salacious clickbait. However all the doxing, and the manner in which this is all being done is so politically motivated that it almost cancels out the negative effect it would have to prior administrators, and it just wouldn't beget any loyalty in me if I saw my boss doing that now. In general, Twitter feels now like you are hanging out an auditorium with the principle. Musk should stop tweeting so much.