It feels like a pointless exercise to call this out, but Musk himself has admitted that bots on Twitter are a problem. Wouldn't that mean that the results of this poll are bogus? Furthermore, the pool of voters is surely composed primarily of people who follow Musk's Twitter account, so pretty heavily biased. Of course, I don't actually believe Musk was trying to come at this decision logically.
Update: To clarify, I'm making a couple of points here: 1) Based on Musk's own statements, it feels hard to believe that he actually thinks this is a reasonable way to come to a decision on this issue and 2) it's reasonable to view the results of this poll as heavily biased, apart from the bot question. In Trump's case, I think there's actually a real debate as to whether or not his ban was justified. This does not feel like a sound way to reverse Twitter's decision. That should matter to both Trump's supporters and his detractors.
I'll put it another way. Musk could have claimed that he didn't want to ban political speech that was not directly calling for violence because slippery slope and all that. I still wouldn't have agreed with him, but at least I would have felt better about that. That would have at least indicated that he was interested in determining what was right. Instead, he justified his actions with a poll that seems patently unreliable, shirked responsibility for his decision, and threw in some poorly deployed Latin as a heady sounding justification. I'm not at all convinced that he would have maintained Trump's ban if the results would have come out the other way.
I don’t like it, but I’m guessing it serves two purposes for Elon: it gives Twitter more press, and it gives the public a new villain to take the heat off Elon for a while.
It looks like this was decided via an online poll. Has he abandoned the idea of a "content moderation council" or is he just reserving it for unimportant decisions?
I recall Elon saying he wanted to unban Trump as far back as May, so I see the poll as just another example of his fake 'power to the people' rhetoric.
I would be more inclined to believe this was Musk pointing out that the vast majority of people were ok with Trump being on twitter and he has the backing of the users of the site.
The "vast majority" being people who spend their weekend on twitter and follow Elon Musk. The poll didn't matter one iota. Elon would've made a big shitpost if it failed then he would've gone ahead in a few days/weeks.
Did you take my post to be including ethiopians who have no internet and are starving?
I don't think many people are going to be shocked by the idea that I meant the vast majority of people on twitter, you know, those people twitter is catering to?
No, I'm criticizing the polling technique. A short window on a weekend, and directed at people who follow Musk. It has the same faults as letting legislators pick their constituents (districting).
They get flagged because people flag them. I'm guessing given all the news on Twitter that has dominated the site recently that plenty of HNers are tied of it.
I think it is interesting news, unfortunately the discussion around Twitter and almost always around Trump is not interesting. There are few insightful comments and mostly people wildly speculating with high confidence on whatever confirms their priors
Apparently there used to be a "vouch" link that would appear to counteract flags, but it seems like they got rid of it at some point in the past few years.
There isn't much interesting or curious to discuss. We can all play guessing games about Musk's motivations or speculate on what will happen to Twitter/Elon/Truth/Trump.
Elon unbanned in a opaque way. He tried to offload responsibility onto twitter users even though it contradicts and confirms his past statements on lifting bans. We already knew he wanted to do it, but he also recently claimed some council would be involved.
It is only 'news' when it suits the majority of HNers, such as Trump schadenfreude that will certainly reach the front page. [0] They won't admit that, but they know it is true.
It is a complete lie when HNers are saying they are 'tired' of Elon, Trump, Truth Social, Twitter, etc. They are tired of articles and news that goes against their confirmation bias like this one.
Any articles confirming their bias on misery for the above, it is 'good news' here. HN is not tired of that hence why [0] wasn't flagged, unlike this post.
This was very obviously Musk’s plan from the start. Everyone who spent 2 seconds thinking about it knew it. It gives Musk enormous power over US politics and greatly increases the overall user engagement on the platform. Win-win for him. The whole political spectrum in the US cannot and will not stop clicking on everything Trump.
Elon: "Mr. Trump, I reinstated you on twitter and you won because of all the free media expose you get from it. Now please award me multibillion dollar contracts for Space X, my solar company, my satellite company, and Tesla."
Trump: "OK"
.
And now you know the real reason for why Musk purchased twitter. To get those fine juicy government contract when Trump becomes king."
Time to run for your lives then, the scary orange creature has been unleashed on the blue site.
Absolutely hilarious to see the reaction to all of this. Only when he got banned, it made it to the front-page. [0] But not when the account got reinstated.
Looks like flagging is a coping mechanism as an attempt to avoid both Elon and Trump living in the heads of commenters in [0] rent free as HNers continue to flag the news of an account of a former president being unbanned.
As always, I'm laughing at the Twitter chaos and everyone in [0].
Update: To clarify, I'm making a couple of points here: 1) Based on Musk's own statements, it feels hard to believe that he actually thinks this is a reasonable way to come to a decision on this issue and 2) it's reasonable to view the results of this poll as heavily biased, apart from the bot question. In Trump's case, I think there's actually a real debate as to whether or not his ban was justified. This does not feel like a sound way to reverse Twitter's decision. That should matter to both Trump's supporters and his detractors.
I'll put it another way. Musk could have claimed that he didn't want to ban political speech that was not directly calling for violence because slippery slope and all that. I still wouldn't have agreed with him, but at least I would have felt better about that. That would have at least indicated that he was interested in determining what was right. Instead, he justified his actions with a poll that seems patently unreliable, shirked responsibility for his decision, and threw in some poorly deployed Latin as a heady sounding justification. I'm not at all convinced that he would have maintained Trump's ban if the results would have come out the other way.