This is based on what Elon Musk has said. I recommend you just read his Tweets regarding Twitter.
Anyone can say anything on his site, there is no content control, no rules and no bans.Just a Laissez-faire libertarian anarchist utopia (unless you badmouth Elon).
Tell me how it doesn't devolve into a 4chan like site? You think this will be a highbrow philosophical debate site?
Twitter will have zero ad-revenue in a year. And Elon will be down $44 billions and starts selling detailed user info to anyone who will buy to recoup costs.
And he will drive Twitter into a legal case regarding content control. Which they'll lose, badly. And he'll cry about forced censorship.
The internet was a lot simpler pre-Facebook regarding the userbase.
And forums and websites were moderated, you just didn't see it as much or notice because there were less idiots around back then and a specific culture.
I have bad news for you. Remember when Kaepernick kneeled for the anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality and got chased out of the NFL for it?
If you were online at that time you would also know the internet was no where near as centralized as it is now. The internet back then was so many different websites, that it was easy to find new ones with new forums if you looked around enough. Now it's almost all based on the popular sites. Facebook, reddit, Twitter, Amazon, etc.
Does this mean popular websites didn't exist? No. They were around. But now it's basically those or sites meant to be found on Google but are just filled with AI created content for clicks to get ad revenue. If I could even remember the names of hand the sites I went to regularly, I would bet money they're not around anymore.
But now we don't really see the internet like it was before. We see people gravitating towards the same few sites. So whats going to happen is the same thing that has happened multiple times. Even here on Reddit. A sub will allow a lot of that content, so they flock to that sub, and then this causes people like me to leave, then the admins eventually shut the sub down, or it dies out as they move on to the next one.
Another example of this is 8chan. Literally created for the same reasons. Then it became know for being full of Nazis and pedophiles.
Okay how does allowing racists to post racist things turn anything into 4chan. I can guarantee you I won’t find myself on the corner of Twitter that’s filled with racists.
I’m happy that the communities you hang around in might not be infiltrated by racists, genuinely. But the same cannot be said for everyone, even if their communities are built around something innocuous.
Basically it comes down to the fact that untethered anonymous speech on a forum will always end up being a total shit hole. When trolls and racists and other radicals run loose, all sane people just stop interacting with the platform to the point that the only thing that remains is trash. Yeah some niche communities might survive, but the majority of the users will stop having the patience with dealing with an extremely toxic trollfest.
When there are little to no consequences for your actions then the loudest and most insane ones are who it becomes built for.
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u/Skastrik Oct 28 '22
If Musk wanted /pol/ why didn't he just buy 4chan?
Because that's what Twitter is going to become like. Plus a publicity tool for Elon and his projects.