Analyzing (The) Rabbit Hole
Rabbit Hole argues that:
‘Twitter, at its core, is offering Trust as a Service (TaaS) to its user base. Twitter is trying to sell its audience on the idea that we can entrust it to host important conversations on its platform without engaging in unethical moderation tactics to censor information deemed ‘inappropriate.’ In addition, Twitter is attempting to prove to what extent it can act as a "trust broker" since conversations that happen on Twitter can make or break trust in people, institutions, and other entities.’
He goes on to focus on the biased reporting of the Mainstream Media.
Before we go on, let us just look at the turn of events before saying anything more.
Elon Musk buys Twitter and declares himself pro-Republican, immediately indicating a Pro-Republican, partisan, slanted bias.
I refer especially to the above point: ‘to host important conversations on its platform without engaging in unethical moderation tactics to censor information deemed ‘inappropriate’’.
So, as a declared pro-Republican advocate should we ask ourselves whether there might be a link between the idea of declaring oneself Republican, after becoming a private owner of a 10-44 billion dollar social media platform, and the idea of unethically, via algorithms we are now Lord and Master over (note as a programmer what we have achieved as ceo or founder or manager of SpaceX, Tesla, and Paypal), moderating our platform, and de-amplifying causes we do not support, and amplifying causes we do (note as ceo of twitter, how we are biased in what causes we amplify on our own account, foregrounded as a result of our buy out. Note also Joe Rogan’s statement in his recent clip, reposted by Elon, in regard Sean Penn’s views on vaccinations, and how as such a famous person he should stay Schtum. The irony is almost as mindblasting as a good hit of China White). I am happy to award a Crackerjack pencil (old English tv kids programme) to anyone who can tell me how many anti-vaccination posts Elon has made on his account. Is this bias?
The Rabbit Hole goes on:
‘Twitter has become the place for real-time news updates. There’s no competition when you can hear from direct sources and watch the “wisdom of the crowd” play out in disseminating information. Anything in a traditional media format is delayed, less scrutinized, and riddled with bias…... When audiences are presented with a free platform that lets regular people directly interact with information and prominent figures, how can a decrepit media landscape hope to compete? It can not.’
The chart referred to is used to support all these arguments. Nevermind those of us using social media for 27 years who are very aware that the crowd often doesn’t ‘disseminate information’ but will often jerk off all over it, puke on it, shit on it, spit on it, and generally make a mockery of real scientific endeavour. It will spread rumour, untruth, hysteria and lies. Twitter, with its clunky AI moderation, and reduced to 1 moderation team (Elon?!) – I jest, but he has fired pretty much all his moderation teams – is not now a fully scrutinised platform suddenly levelled into an equal playing field by the wonderful new scientific theory (see Wikipedia) of the Wisdom of the Crowd. It sounds alarmingly like Liz Truss’s trickle down economic theories, recently tested out in the UK. That somehow opening up a platform run by a declared Republican with strong views on conspiracy theories and the uselessness of vaccines especially will result in a consensus that is a genuine purveyor of the real truth.
I just love that last line. Let me reword it maybe.
When audiences made of all sorts flame and rant and scream and shout on the platform, and character assassinate the views of anyone they disagree with, how can mainstream media ever hope to provide anything close to the real truth that an anarchic, only very slighly possibly weighted, platform can?
The Rabbit Hole then justifies Elon’s massacre of moderators -
‘With each passing year, such [Mainstream Media] act more as overfunded Twitter curation tools (and as propaganda outlets in the worst of cases) than actual disseminators of news and information.’
Well let us not get into whether the mainstream media is now acting as a free moderation service in favour of liberalism. After all, isn’t the idea that a proper moderation service - where a neutral method is ensured through a neutral ceo - will in fact remove most of the (excessive?) criticism of the mainstream media? It will ensure safety. Otherwise, perhaps we should just not have a police force, and let everyone’s inner moral core police the streets, through collective wisdom. Or maybe only police the black neighbourhoods?
The idea that a huge global social media service with zero moderation other than clunky AI will not be prey to misinformation or propaganda is exactly why liberals are so in fear of right wing radicalism. Because it simply argues, repeatedly, an irrational point of view, and expects(with some justification) therefore that it will then become true This line of argument must support the view that Trump was right (about election fraud), the attack on Congress was a teddy bears picnic, and Q Anon is a rational reasonable group.
It gets worse:
The Rabbit Hole continues:
‘When outlets like Twitter exist where people can get news from direct sources and analysis of information occurs through the Wisdom of the Crowd, there are gradually fewer and fewer viable ways for Legacy Media to compete. All of this begs the question as to what Twitter is doing to market itself as a TaaS so it can earn the trust of its user base.’
So all the deregulation will result in the consensus trickling down to truth. There is no need for regulation. People will battle it out in a reasonable rational way and the truth will settle, like dust in the UAE desert. And the idea that: twitter is ‘a technical product…[that] still dishes out punishments using arbitrary criteria’ might therefore mean that there should be no punishments, at all. But hang on. The Rabbit Hole does identify some areas for improvement:
‘Fix the bug where some accounts are unable to appeal
Remove permanent suspensions (or require human review to issue a permanent ban)
Safeguards to mitigate mass reporting campaigns…’
This apparently will solve any residue of issues. There is no reference to stopping hate speech or at best ensuring some basic threshold of manners. This is the [(The) Rabbit Hole’s view, endorsed by Elon, on how to create a] minimal (cost free) way to develop twitter. Well, time will tell, won’t it?
And the conclusion becomes even more dangerous.
‘While it’s important to empower newly registered users, it is also important to recognize the malicious ways account creation can be abused - namely by bots and those creating alt accounts specifically to report ideological rivals. Along with restricting the ability of freshly made accounts to report users (perhaps even locking this ability to Twitter Blue subscribers), a potential solution in this department could be to do something akin to the Reddit Karma system where users need to meet certain Karma thresholds to use certain Twitter features which would include reporting tools.’
A minute ago we are talking about the Wisdom of the Crowd. But now, we are all equal, but some of us are more equal than others. While the argument here is not completely without merit, the argument appears to be that reports without merit can still be entertained by AI, and that ideological reports by new users without merit can still result in suspensions. It does not really add up.
Finally, in a totally balanced and none biased way, The Rabbit Hole continues to argue:
‘Via polls conducted by Elon Musk, Twitter users can, to some extent, influence company policy. This is in stark contrast to how other companies operate and different from prior ownership implementing politically driven policies like the 'misgendering' ban while doing relatively little to combat child content on its platform.’
So basically all the mainstream media outlets and all the advertisers are wrong, and Elon is right - Old twitter had it all wrong (but I knew that and just needed to spend 44 billion in order to set it all right) – Elon’s 125million followers can all interact with him effectively because Elon does not sleep, is a workaholic, and like myself is addicted to social media. And Trans issues under old twitter were politically biased, and not really important (‘I have lots of children, I can’t get on with every one of them – so what if one disowns me’). And child content issues are more important (they are very important too, yes), but I stay up late every night fixing the AI with my core of engineers so we really don’t need more moderators checking. Computers can do everything. Look, it’s perfectly safe. Because I say so.
The Rabbit Hole then goes on to talk more about the twitter files. It argues that
‘…by doing so, [Elon] set new standards for what transparency should look like from tech companies’, but sidesteps the issues of how important it might be not to alienate all your police forces in the US when you want to try and keep checks on crypto currency and child abuse issues on your platform, and how no one else in the mainstream media seems to think that there is such a powerful argument other than your own PR news outlet But of course that is because all mainstream media (ALL!) is corrupt and full of BS.
The argument that ‘the Twitter Files revealed that under its previous ownership, Twitter operated as an arm of the institutions’ seems slightly at odds with the argument at the start of The RH’s article about bias because it reads like – my internal investigations prove what I believe and therefore any investigation by me on my platform is completely true. Doesn’t that sound slightly hypocritical?
The Rabbit Hole’s conclusion:
‘To succeed as a TaaS, New Twitter must act as a defiant force by resisting pressure from Legacy Media to stifle conversations on its platform and by empowering citizen journalism in order to displace the role of old oligarchies in trust brokering.’
Seems to read a little like this for me:
New Twitter must support my views and foreground all my theories and must interact with people that I choose to support the dissemination of my arguments for a little while longer until my whole plan completely disintegrates under my feet.