This week, our first place winner on the insightful side comes in the form of a reply that builds on the second place winner. So for clarity’s sake, we’ll present them in reverse order! In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a piece-by-piece reply to yet another comment on our post about how Twitter is already doing most of the things Musk claims he wants to do with the company:
Elon did more than simply purchase Twitter.
Technically, he hasn’t bought it yet. He’s made an offer to buy it, and that offer could still fall apart before the sale is finalized (which will take months). Hell, Elon himself could pull the offer, considering how much it’s already fucked up the stock price of Tesla.
This stuff, if it was occurring behind the scenes, is now going to get exposed.
Okay, and…so what? What do you think is going to happen, some grand revolution where everyone abandons Twitter for Truth Social or a mass conservative convergence on Twitter headquarters for some “political discourse” involving pitchforks and torches?
If there truly was no bias at Twitter
Here’s the thing: There is always going to be some bias at Twitter becase humans can’t be unbiased. Even on something as simple as a single type of food (e.g., cheese), people will be biased towards one kind or another (e.g., preferring chedder over Swiss, preferring Kraft over other brands). People working Twitter moderation do their best to put those biases aside for the sake of their jobs, but a little bias will always slip through because they’re only human.
And as pointed out in the article, given how Twitter bent over backwards to make sure certain Republican/conservative accounts were given leeway to break the rules, the bias would arguably be in favor of conservatives. I mean, Twitter let Donald Trump say all kinds of wild shit until they finally banned his ass after the insurrection.
But more to the point: If conservatives are being dinged at a higher rate than liberals/progressives because conservatives are more likely to post content that breaks the rules, what does that say about conservatives and what is considered “conservative speech”?
In first place, it’s That One Guy replying to that comment and building on the part about Twitter’s special carve-outs for Republicans:
It takes a stunning level of dishonesty or at the very least overwhelming self-entitlement and ego to be treated better than everyone else and yet still be screaming about how persecuted you are.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the Houston ordinance forcing businesses to install cameras and provide warrantless access to the footage:
It’s like Texas, Florida, New York and California are all one-upping each other to see who can pass the most blatantly unconstitutional law.
Next, it’s PaulT responding to the question in the headline of our post about how drug patents drive up drug prices — “why is this even up for debate?”:
The same reason why there’s constant opposition to the idea of a universal public healthcare system in the US, even though the current system already costs way more per capita that other western democracies (and many countries who aren’t) and is extremely inefficient with many duplicated functions, while covering a far lower proportion of the population – there’s a lot of money to be made.
Once you’ve decided that profits outweigh the health and public benefits that easier access to drugs or healthcare provide, you can then come up with all sorts of reasons why overpriced monopolies are great.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is apparently-not-actually davec continuing a confusing long-running discussion on last week’s comments post about parody comments and spotting them via the lack of certain recurring content:
I’ll keep that in mind for next week, thanks.
In second place, it’s Thad on our post about Musk and Twitter, responding to a commenter who asserted “this is just wrong”:
Thanks for warning us in advance, but if you already knew it was wrong you could have just not posted it.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with one more comment from That One Guy, this time on our post about ways that Musk taking over Twitter could be good:
The general vibe I’m getting from the article is that if Musk can reign in his ego, listen to and admit that other people might know more on the subject than him things have a possibility of going well.
Arguably I’m not that familiar with the guy but based upon previous articles I’m sure that will work out great.
Finally, it’s Pixelation with another comment about the Houston camera ordinance:
Based on experience with police cameras, they will understand when you tell them the camera was not on.
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon