Empowering the bullies
Musk tells us he is getting rid of the block feature. Auschwitz Museum tells him why that’s a terrible idea.
The whole reply:
Failing to address the antisemitic and Holocaust denial comments that appear under our posts commemorating the victims of Auschwitz would be a disservice to their memory.
We’ve chosen to block users who promote denial and hatred. This decision stems from our deep dedication to our mission. We need a secure space to do this.
Engaging in discussions with people and accounts that seek to abuse the memory of victims of Auschwitz is against the values we believe in. These individuals do not seek discourse; they aim to inflict pain. In this context, blocking is a necessary step to ensure that these harmful voices don’t persist in their repetitive attacks on memory.
In today’s digital age, social media platforms shoulder significant moral responsibility. They should actively counter hate speech and halt its normalization.
A platform that disregards the need to defend the memory of the victims demonstrates a disregard for creating a respectful and empathetic online environment.
Blocking users isn’t a mere action; it’s a practical measure. Often, reporting accounts that spread hostility remains an unanswered call. Blocking provides a way to protect the memory of people who suffered and were murdered in Auschwitz.
And this applies across the board. Muting just hides responses from the original account; blocking prevents the responses from appearing at all. Musk is throwing open the door to abusers and bullies and verbal sadists.
I dunno. We’ve clearly seen how blocking can be used to silence dissent from the Genderist doctrine in the name of fighting hate speech. That’s something I’d dearly like to avoid in the future. How can we prevent Genderists and other would-be theocrats and tyrants from using the block to present a false picture of reality while also allowing institutions like the Auschwitz Memorial to keep antisemitism out of their replies? I’m not sure it’s even possible. If we can’t do both, which do we choose?
I think the block feature is an absolute necessity to prevent harassment.
It’s true that mass-blocking tools were bad: the promotion of block-lists to true believers to get them to isolate themselves from dissenting views was a move straight out of the Scientology playbook. But I don’t think that problem — which appears to have largely abated anyway; I don’t hear about mass block-lists anymore — merits getting rid of the block feature altogether.
Very often we have to be able to block specific accounts from replying to our posts, because they harass us. It’s true that people can create sockpuppet accounts to circumvent blocks, but very often harassers want to reply under their real identities, with their main accounts that have amassed large followings, not under anonymous accounts with few followers.
Not all accounts are equal — some have vastly more reach than others — and we need to be able to block the accounts that have amassed large followings and use them for targeted harassment.
Muting isn’t good enough either. If someone’s following you around the internet and bringing along a gang to shout lies about you every time you speak, it’s not enough that you personally tune them out, because everyone else will see the lies.
Also, blocking harassers is a way to prevent them noticing when you speak. Once blocked, they would have to create a sockpuppet account and seek you out specifically in order to be notified when you tweet. Without that block feature, your speech could just show up in their twitter feed — an open invitation for them to harass you.
I can’t see how getting rid of the block feature will be anything but a disaster for victims of harassment.
Here again, Musk is doing this to increase profits. He knows pouring gasoline on the dumpster fire that is twitter (or X, whatever) will increase usage. The nastiness will increase as well, that’s for sure. It will be like a sewage treatment plant that ceases to process sewage. GIGO
Ain’t he brilliant? :P
Arty, that’s fair, but … Couldn’t the argument be made in the opposite direction by replacing “harass” and “harassment” with “debunk” and “debunking”? We could say,
Whether the blocking happens automatically via curated lists or manually (perhaps via curated lists), the result is the same. Of course, I don’t really have a horse in the race or a dog in the fight, since I don’t use Ex-Twitter anyway.
twiliter: To be fair, the Twitter algorithm was already a nastiness generator by design, rewarding and promoting that which stirs extreme responses.
If we lose the block function, the benefit to debunking myths will not outweigh the cost of increases in targeted harassment.
Debunking and harassment are two different things that don’t share the same contours of, I don’t know what to call it, something like information flow.
The goal of debunking is merely to present information to people. That can be done in many different ways. And if a specific person doesn’t want to hear certain information from you specficially, they should have the right not to listen. You shouldn’t have the right to force someone to hear your voice. The goal of harassment on the other hand is all about forcing someone to hear your voice.
A block feature doesn’t give much advantage to people trying to stop facts and truth getting out, because there are just so many avenues available to spread information, and the onus is ultimately on the person who doesn’t want to hear the truth to somehow block all such avenues.
On the other hand, a lack of a block feature gives much advantage to people engaging in targeted harassment, taking away the ability of a victim to quickly and easily curtail the largest and most troublemaking harassers’ attacks.
So the balance of power gets skewed towards bad actors when we lose the block function.
Ooh, that’s a much more interesting argument than I was expecting. I’ll have to give a think or two to the idea that harassment is intended to force someone to hear your voice (metaphorically speaking).
I didn’t see that, because I’ve blocked Elon Musk. I wonder if he’s been blocked too many times and that’s why he’s doing it. Guess it’s finally time to leave Twitter. Or X, I guess.
So moderation will be completely controlled by (the artist formerly known as) twitter, if at all, creating a gigantic, chaotic free-for-all. The bigger the better for Musk, because the free-for-all won’t be free, and more subscribers means more money, and the bigger the spectacle, the more attractive it is. It will become Schadenfreude Central. Allowing all these people who were previously banned to return was just the initial part of the plan. More people who’s opinions are dangerous, or worthless, means more revenue.
Luckily I have the ultimate ‘block function’ which is my refusal to participate in it. I feel sorry for those who find twitter necessary or a vital part of our internet infrastructure, because it sure as hell isn’t. You’d be surprised how easy it is to live without.
God I get so tired of hearing that. Yes I know it’s not “necessary” but it is useful for some purposes, and some of those purposes are purposes I have, so I find it useful despite its flaws. The fact that someone else doesn’t find it useful in any way doesn’t change that. I think I’ve pointed this out about 19 times now so I wish we could take it as read and move on.
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Yes I suppose I’m beating a dead horse. I’ve been trying to get a friend to not drink herself silly with much the same reaction. Sorry, I will refrain.
Excellent analogy, very persuasive and fair.
I think I am missing something by not being able to view twitter from a user’s perspective. I see some good arguments against eliminating the ability to block people, of which I would agree. Imagine not being able to block telemarketers on your phone, what a nightmare. Sorry about the analogy, I probably just can’t relate in a way that helps me understand the appeal of it.
Well, it’s not an irrational appeal like alcohol to an alcoholic or something…Or rather, I guess it can be, but my point is that it’s useful in a practical way for the kind of chattering I like to do. It’s a source for a particular kind of news, so I use it.
At some point there might be diminishing usage. Mutually pouring gasoline on dumpster fires doesn’t sound like a situation most people would like. It sounds more like burning everything down. Musk seems bound and determined to lose all $44 million that he spent purchasing the platform. I don’t get it.
Well you don’t give Sparkle Aspies tons of money because they need someone to tell them “no” or they’ll be a bloody nuisance. He bought Twitter because people were saying mean things about him; past that point it’s just chaos and whims.
That was $44 billion.
Funny. Just a week or so back I was corrected for writing 8 million instead of 8 billion for the human population of Earth. Just paying it forward….