Elon Musk announces changes as 'too much negativity' being pushed on X

Ah, so he's going to stop posting there? Right?

Now that the election is over and we won, let's remove our bots. - musk

Oh, c'mon, who's going to tell him he is the best dad? He needs them.
- I mean, he will on an alt.
- https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/tech/elon-musk-daughter-vivian-jenna-wilson-criticizes-posts/index.html
  Very good father…
Ah, but there are still elections in other parts of the world, like Germany, where he is also very active
No, bots are still needed for hating illegal immigrants.
- Immigration hate causing backlash against H1Bs, abort, abort!
The bots are removed! All 9 users (8 of them are EM sockpuppets) celebrate!

He’s shutting down his account?

No he's gonna ban anyone who disagrees with him.
- That ain't going to turn down the negativity though

No no, guys, you're misunderstanding. He MEANS there's too much negativity from people saying things like "X sucks since musk bought twitter....."

He's going to change those people's tweets to say "X is great!"

And by that I mean he's going to have a team to edit tweets that he doesn't like!

If that's not free speech, then Musk doesn't know what is!

This is exactly what he means.
Next up the sanctioned daily hate.
A team? You mean ChatGPT?
- ......also yes.
This has nothing to do with Twitters image. He could have enforced that decision sooner if it was. This is about Trump. The negativity was helpful during Bidens presidency. Now that Trump is about to take over everything has to look like the world is happy again. It's political manipulation.
- It is all good now. Our elections are suddenly secure and our economy is great!

free speech absolutist

Free speech abolitionist, more like.

my puppet is in power — everyone be nice now.

Instead of “bad” you have to say “ungood” from now on.

Double plus ungood!
"Maybe if you tell me the bad news in a good way, it won't sound so bad."
- The bad news in a good way. Yes, I can do that. The bad news in a good way. Well, here it goes...

Lol. Free Speech guy!

A cisgender guy.
(This comment has been removed for violating X's policy on the use of derogatory slurs)

X/Twitter is a misinformation platform. If you know a major influencer that uses, consider informing and directing them to the ActivityPub alternatives and even consider advertising on their platforms if you can.

Sadly we lost that fight to the other centralised platform in Bluesky
- Anything that’s not Twitter is good
I like how you say "that uses" instead of "that uses it" because the former generally implies drug use.
- Good point, best to leave it like that 🙃

Closing the shop will achieve that goal perfectly.

negativity about him.

Yeah the best thing Trump can do for himself is Epstein another friend

I thought the whole point of being right wing was being negative?

When your whole identity is consumed by boundless, baseless, joyless hatred of "the other", yes, you're gonna be negative.
I don't believe Musk is controlled by any of that though. He might share in it, but it doesn't quite dictate him as much as it dictates those in actual misery. For example, he isn't actually opposed to letting immigrants in, if they'll make him richer. He's motivated by greed and grift, and no small helping of pride.
I suspect he just doesn't want people criticising him and his cronies. Particularly when they inevitably start enacting policies that affect their base negatively (we've already seen our share of face-eating leopard voters shocked to find out that their face isn't off limits), social media could help pissed off people realise how many others are pissed off too. I don't think I need to spell out why that could be dangerous for him.
Better to quell dissent entirely. If nobody can complain about the government, it's harder to organise against it. Suppress criticism, censor the media, manipulate what you get to see to shape your view...
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
(Obligatory note that calling a dictatorship communism doesn't make it less authoritarian than a capitalist dictatorship. Red boots hurt just as much as any other color if they step on your neck, no matter how tasty they might be. That has nothing to do with the topic, I'm just bracing for tankie whataboutisms.)

He's such a fucking baby

Right, he should remove the last few humans and replace them with bots.

Incumbent wants everyone to talk about how great things are.

More circus and bread. Classic move

Big Macs, M4 Macbooks and AI Slop about the danger of woke to human civilization.

Project mayhem needs to take his balls

Don't want any Debbie-downers on Shitter once his bestie is in the big chair.

Now that the election is over, he’s hiding the lightning rod.

I mean in principle this is just a matter of moderation being different from censorship.

But really, an "algorithm tweak"? I am still wondering when or why who decided that we needed to have "algorithms" that someone could "tweak" on the Internet at all. The first kind of "social media" I ever used was web forums where the entire "algorithm" was thread bumping, and even if you insist that we need to have the structure of a microblog: Mastodon does fine without an "algorithm" beyond reverse-chronological sorting.

I think Mastodon does fine, too, but I've often heard people complain about the lack of an algorithm. Like, they don't know how to find things if they aren't being shoveled into their feed
- Personally I follow slightly more than 100 accounts plus less than 10 hashtags and feel I'm already getting plenty of things into my feed, nowadays I tend to unfollow things that post too many irrelevant things more than I follow new ones.
But you had all these rightwing weirdos complaining they were being censored because "the algorithm" didn't promote their weird little ideas enough!
Back when.
So tweaking the algorithm is quite literally censorship!
Not that this "free-speech absolutist" has proven particularly true to his word.
- I strongly agree with the point made in the linked article that censorship is when a sender wants to send something, the receiver wants to receive it, but a third party (government, social media platform, whoever) keeps them from doing so.
  If I want to see "weird little ideas of rightwing weirdos" (or of leftwing weirdos or any others), I should be allowed to. If I don't, I shouldn't have to.

My bet is on a scenario where Elon is going to ban people for using 'cisgender' term rather than downranking them.

Should just use his AI to turn all the negative comments into positive ones.

Problem solved 🙃

Um, Elon Musk is a... brilliant man with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. He is insuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.
- Also spend at least two hours with each of his kids each day. Of course that add up to 24+ hours a day but that just shows you how amazing he is. He still finds time to be CEO of two companies, be involved in five others, and now help run the US government. It is amazing what you can do if you have 60+ hours everyday.
Elon Musk is a disgusting piece of shit.
Positivity Bot: Elon musk is a silly poop particle 😁
- Flip you, you're a silly sausage!

I'm curious whether Truth Social will acquire Xitter, or vice versa.

And when.

Reading the title I thought he'll retire.

Yes, that town square needs to be happy. That's a happy democracy!

Mate, the bunting looks awfully like swastikas...

But happy, less negative swastikas, right?

Sure.

What an unserious human Musk is.

Now that his pick has won the election there’ll be no need for negativity now!

Dont shit where you eat Elon. Its your own turd sandwich so yeah....

First things first, the nah-seas were also good people? Is that Elong's message of hope?

Maybe he wants X to be more MAGA friendly? Like maybe just empty the swamp and replenish the swamp monster?

He wants to be more inclusive. More types of nazis.

Before even reading the comments I predict it's all negative and cynical because what ever Musk does needs to be opposed.

Maybe the people here feel personally threatened because negativity is all you have to offer.