I have decided to re-start the practice of echoing my blog posts to Twitter. I still don’t participate in Twitter in any other fashion. If you direct a tweet at me, I probably will see it, but I will not respond.
Two reasons for re-starting.
1. I have been thinking lately that going off Twitter did not provide me with much benefit, other than letting me feel that I was making a statement.
2. I like that Jack Dorsey wants to refuse to take political ads on Twitter. I realize that this is a complicated issue. But I am hoping that, even though Dorsey does not intend it this way, that people see this as an indicator that social media and politics are a toxic mix.
I have to say that I don’t know how he is going to enforce it. If somebody pays for an ad campaign to de-fund Planned Parenthood, that might be construed as a political ad campaign. But if so, then wouldn’t a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood also be a political ad campaign?
So I understand that Facebook’s approach, of not censoring political ads, is easier to implement. But I hope that someday political discourse migrates to other forums that encourage reasonableness rather than posturing, snark, and anger.
“But if so, then wouldn’t a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood also be a political ad campaign?”
looks like they’ll ban those too..
via twitter’s legal lead Vijaya Gadded:
https://twitter.com/vijaya/status/1189664481263046656?s=20
“hi – here’s our current definition:
1/ Ads that refer to an election or a candidate, or
2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration, national security, taxes)”
Anger is the only reasonable response to the current state of affairs.
“…encourage reasonableness rather than posturing, snark, and anger.”
Simple enough — bring money into things. And a change in habits. And some software changes.
First let’s suppose it costs me a penny ($0.01) to send a message over the internet. One cent to send this post to arnoldkling.com, another cent if I send a copy off to a friend. 5000 bucks if I (or my friendly robot) sends an automated WHAT ABOUT HER EMAILS? message to each of the 500,000 people who mention Hilary Clinton on Facebook each day. Every time one cent, up front, through some account at my ISP.
Second, people getting email ought to rate it somehow. If it comes from a friend or otherwise seems acceptable, then they might right swipe it or push a button and automatically refund that penny. This ought to be an ingrained habit. Anyone else — just about every unsolicited advertiser — loses the penny.
Running a bot wouldn’t be profitable anymore. Sending spam would cost more than it brings in. The world would be a better place. We ought to have set the internet up this way once it became a commercial big deal. Yeah, there’d be less advertising, but so what?
I am not a tweeter.
So I ask, what is the format difference between a ad tweet and a personal tweet? Trump and the pols still tweet, no?
The difference is that you wouldn’t see the personal tweet unless you were following the politician or following someone who was following the politician, and chose to retweet the message. If you follow Trump, you’re choosing to see Trump’s messages.
This makes it hard for people without followers to broadcast a message on Twitter. With advertising, a PAC could simply spend a large sum of money and reach many people. Now, they’ll have to cultivate an audience or perhaps get someone famous to send the message or something.
You can avoid a lot of the drama on Twitter by being careful about who you follow.
Thanks.
So long as “deplatforming” and “disemploying” one’s opponents, and/or Antifa terrorism, are accepted by some as a legitimate part of politics, you can’t expect the opponents of the side that accepts them to treat that side as anything but enemies. It only takes acts of war by one side to create a war.
Of course Twitter’s “non-partisan” ban on political ads is nothing of the sort, and will only be enforced against one side. Twitter is at the forefront of the deplatforming movement.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Gordon Tullock already noticed something similar a long time ago, but my impression is that the most effective and increasingly widely adopted strategy for dealing with controversial and plausibly-deniable discretionary implementation of favoritism is a bureaucratic-like “diversion of responsibility into irresonlvable arguments about judgment calls on vague statements of principle.”
That’s a mouthful, so maybe you can do better and shorten it up into something more catchy and quippy. But the essence of the thing is to announce a “standard” or “rule” that may seem simple and clear and fair and neutral on first impression, but is actually hopelessly vague and fuzzy and full of potential for legalistic “it’s a matter of interpretation and perspective” word games and biased mischief in terms of a hidden thumb on the scales.
In sports, there are always occassions where the facts lie in some gray area of close-call ambiguity and a referee or umpire is permitted some forgiveness and flexibiltiy in making a rare on-the-spot judgments that most people disagree with, but is at least arguably in the range of ‘legitimate’ decision-making. However, if it turns out the umpire tends ot both push the envelope of the gray area and always sides with the home-team in those instances, then one starts to suspect that the scheme is really just a cover for corruption and favoritism.
But how to ‘prove’ it absent some kind of Disparate Impact statistical argument? And what recourse does one have even if one ‘proves’ it? Seems to me that Jack Dorsey and those similarly situated would be perfectly happy if every instance of exception-making or deplatforming just distracted everyone into these interminable debates about whether or not this or that particular instance is ‘valid’ under the standard. In the end, the only questions is “Does someone get to decide, and if so, who?” And while others may be tempted to pointlessly argue about compliance with quasi-law, Jack laughs and exercises dictatorial power under that pretense, just like every dictator does.
With regard to the state, this is why we have bright-line ‘rights’, because when it’s all a matter of discretion and interpretation (as it often is in the bureaucracy, because grants of authority are open-ended and vaguely-worded), we can’t trust interpreters to be reliably neutral, disinterested, fair, or restrained.
I’m sure these changes, in practice, will continue with the de-platforming of conservatives.
The demonization of Reps is a result of the indoctrination by colleges who have long been against, and discriminating against hiring Reps and pro-life professors. The increased intolerance of demonization has already advanced to multiple cases of low-level violence, and open public fantasizing about violence.
It’s funny sad that Arnold is re-starting Twitter. Especially since he claims he got so little benefit of going off Twitter, yet fails to specify what benefit he thinks he’ll have back on twitter.
Presumably, more followers, and probably more re-tweets / likes / comments.
What’s sad is that Arnold spends no time responding to comments here on his blog, which almost certainly would more folk comment more. I was hoping his comments here would be to increase conversations, tho I see that Tyler seldom responds, as well. Tho he often has hundreds of comments, while Arnold gets dozens.
To be “part of the conversation” among policy intellectuals, seems to be a big reason to be on Twitter — those you most want to converse are also there.
Since I had been suspended for months, after my first and only re-tweet (pro-Trump) with no posts of my own, I’ve stopped trying on Twitter. And FB is mostly for sharing with family.
Glad to see your echo back on Twitter. It is a convenience to get the email notices and Twitter feed of your latest blog posts. Thanks!