Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X

This. It's not just The Guardian, though. It's pretty much all moss media. They got too used to an era where they could talk and the public couldn't talk back (or they could but only through letters to the editor which they could conveniently filter to just the voices they wanted to hear).

It's difficult to tell because the tweet doesn't link to the original, screenshotting it instead. But the explanation is probably that these are two different meanings of the term "two-tier policing".

I don't think that's true. But if it is, can you blame them? Community notes are not impartial and X has become incredibly biased towards the far right.

Twitter could make itself real interesting if it took "community notes" web-wide. So many attempts at this have tried and failed, but Elon may just have the itch, audience, and disposable money to do it. Would also necessitate forking a special browser, since there would be no way to support web page comments in a first-class way in stock mobile browsers.

They said that their content can still be shared there.

Also that community note just says they have been consistently saying the same thing for decades which sounds okay to me.

There is power to slow news. Taking time to consider what to say next and how to reply, especially if you are wrong, is very important. That also applies to when you should stop commenting, even if you are wrong. Eventually every story needs to end because the resources needed to constantly follow up on old stories, and comments on them, need to be balanced with keeping up with new things. Basically, I am saying that comments sections, even if they occasionally point out important things, can be detrimental to keeping a higher level, slower paced and more thoughtful approach to journalism.

Are community notes impartial?

This is incorrect. The example you give is perfect. Twitters community notes reflect the received wisdom of a mob. Not the truth. They stand when the Twitter user base thinks they should.

As a right wing hub they oppose realities which don’t fit their world view.

Using the example you linked there is a long documented history of minorities in the Uk, including the Irish, being treated much more harshly by British police. Stop and search laws and multiple incidents of innocent people being framed for crimes.

The rights which to pretend this is targeted at the white majority, simply because multiply convicted criminals like Tommy Robinson are being jailed, is a myth.

No British policeman can stop you on the street by psychically intuiting your political views. They can stop you if you are breaking windows, chanting slogans, or have a different skin color.

The Guardian publishing real journalism (the paper has broken more significant news stories in recent decades than any other British outlet) into a toilet of right wing opinion doesn’t make sense.

As there is no way to rebut a community note the last word is always with the mob.

A screenshot on X? It must be true! I’m sure those links back up the assertion. No one would just post something misleading on X, right? /s

Maybe the assertion in the tweet is true and maybe it isn’t, but to me, this is the real reason that X should be abandoned. No one on X can be trusted to engage in honest discourse. I don’t believe anything, whether it’s coming from the right or the left if it’s posted on X. You might as well have posted something from 4Chan.

I deleted Twitter as soon as musk took over because he’s a feudalist

Imagine selling Twitter just to create it again. Then some desperate billionaire buys this new Twitter as well, because the audience escaped the old Twitter.

Maybe this isn't something you believe, but actual adults can have different opinions and then choose not to associate with one another. There's nothing childish about that.

Help me understand, though: what are you actually proposing? That The Guardian, while feeling they can't get their own message out given how Musk runs Twitter, should stay on Twitter? Should anyone disadvantaged by how Twitter is run stay there?

Is it "childish antics" for the Guardian to have their own political viewpoint?

Musk can have a preferred candidate and political stance. And he can run Twitter accordingly.

The Guardian can have a preferred candidate and political stance. And they can choose the platforms they use accordingly.

It all seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The richest man in the world using his own social media company to get someone elected President so he can benefit personally from writing his own regulations is something EVERYONE should be very VERY concerned about. The US is on the path to Russian style oligarchic kleptocracy.

> The Guardian itself used their own platform to publicly endorse Harris.

Isn’t The Guardian a UK publication?

Not quite the same.

There’s a bit of difference between encouraging votes for the good of the people and encouraging votes to help you personally.

But if I’m mistaken and Harris promised the Guardian a govt position they could use to pass laws to help them personally, do tell.

Generally, when newspapers endorse a candidate that runs on the editorial page.

How did Musk use Twitter to promote his candidate? Was it on whatever the Twitter equivalent of editorial pages are? Was it promoting posts favorable to that candidate in people's feed and/or demoting posts favorable to other candidates?

Details matter in these things.

The Guardian, note, isn't a social network, it's a newspaper. The idea that social networks and newspapers should be held to different standards is reasonable, because they are different things. It is _legal_ for Carface to use Twitter to promote ol' minihands, but, yeah, I mean, not everyone's going to like it and some people are going to leave due to that (or due to many other problems with Twitter over the last two years).

The Guardian is not a platform, it is editorialized content.

X doesn't control algorithms that promote content and suppress dissenting views on a major social network.

I think it's much more reasonable for a news outlet to have a political opinion than a social platform.

Musk claims he is trying to be an open and free speech town square. I don’t have an opinion on whether he did this or not but it is certainly the case that if he put his finger on the scales that goes against his claims.

The Guardian is a newspaper with a long-proclaimed left-wing bias. Musk has claimed that X is politically neutral.

Very disappointing to see that overt bias from Yann LeCun. Makes me wonder how much Meta and Llama can be trusted on AI.

That's a very silly conflation.

The Guardian is a newspaper. They broadly have two sections: reporting and editorial. Reporting is basically that. Now you can (correctly) argue that there is bias on the reporting side in how they choose to cover certain stories, how they choose what stories to cover, etc but there are still minimum standards they adhere to, like they won't knowingly print anything objectively false. They'll issue corrections and retractions if necessary.

The editorial side is quite literally opinion. The Guardian, like any publication, can issue their opinion on a given political race. But you know that's opinion. They'll argue why for their position. You can agree or disagree with their reasoning or conclusions. But it's intellectually honest.

Now compare that to Elon and Twitter. It's not even remotely the same. Twitter has an algorithm to decide what to show people. He's used it to push his own posts [1]. His own posts have openly pushed conspiracy theories [2], things that are provably false. This can go as far as pushing literal Nazi conspiracy theories (aka the Great Replacement [3]) and make sure as many people as possible see it.

It is utterly disingenuous to conflate the two.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/20/23730607/elon-musk-...

[3]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-...

Did the Guardian also use lies and fear mongering like Trump and Musk did?

Looking past the childish antics, don’t you think it’s kind of rich that;

1) The party which has been kvetching the most about being deplatformed and canceled by mainstream media and colleges etc. is now in power and in the name of promoting free speech promises to go after institutions in academia etc. that are full of their political opponents (who lean left) for “claming down on free speech and calling it disinformation”

2) One man bought Twitter and controls everything about the platform, some things definitely increase freedom of speech (eg proliferation of neo nazi and openly antisemitic viewpoints) and some of his own decisions clamp down on it (eg overnight declaring that “cis”, the opposite if “trans”, is a slur and cannot be said on Twitter anymore)

3) The same man will now be heading up D.O.G.E., the bureau of government efficiency, together with another private sectir billionaire (who got public sector money) to defund many public sector things, or at least make them more efficient

To sum up, we’ll be in the strange situation where the party in power is concerned about increasing freedom of speech (usually the counterculture wants this freedom while the ones in power want to repress dissent). We will have the world’s “most free social network” actually OWNED AND CONTROLLED by one guy, who happens to also work for the government, in fact head up a new government agency tasked with defunding others, and is a super-Fed.

People on the left will start to question the optics and unusualness of all this. Will the MAGA party (the acronym GOP seems very outdated) in good faith encourage speech against themselves, and will the owner of X, while heading up a major new agency in the federal government, also encourage loud criticism of their own activities?

Or will their algorithms — which one man will continue to ultimately control — silently (and maybe only as an emergent behavior) prioritize what they want and suppress what they don’t?

As long as Zuck controls Facebook (sorry, “Meta”), Elon controls Twitter (sorry, “X”), and a few on the top control Google, YouTube, TikTok etc. I do not see true power for the people. “Freedom of speech” is just another expression the owners and corporations co-opted and hijacked to mean “controlling a platform” and “owning an audience”.

Why do we simply donate our audience and content to these platforms? Because they have the backend software infrastructure and we don’t.

I believe that we need open source alternatives that anyone can host, that no one can own the entire network. Not even Durov. Mastodon and Matric and Bluesky are a good start. I’m working on my own too:

https://community.qbix.com/t/growing-your-community/305

And yes, it is possible for the entire ecosystem to make money serving the people with open source infrastructure, just like Wordpress, Drupal etc. Here is how it could work:

https://qbix.com/ecosystem

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When they were on x, nothing stopped then from posting on bluesky and hosting their own mastodon instance.

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And from a slightly different angle, it's pretty amusing to watch all the people that were shocked that a platform could be so partisan as to consider suppressing a story allegedly involving a foreign power trying to swing an election totally not bothered as Twitter's new CEO runs Trump PACs whilst accounts running Harris fundraisers find themselves mysteriously blocked.

Things I haven't heard on the internet: "I was truly hoping that Musk would bring about free speech and political neutrality so now I'm pretty disappointed at the outcome"...

Because Mastodon and the entire Fediverse is infested with the most rabid sort of users that even Twitter couldn't stomach and has turned a blind eye to this fact? I mean, there's a reason why they keep getting brought up over and over and people continually nope out of signing up over there. They've got a demographic problem, they refuse to acknowledge it, and it's killing growth. Why would any media outlet want to participate knowing that?

that doesn't look official and doesn't have a verified url. some random person just put up a bot

Are you including Hacker News in that?

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I’m sick to death of everything being described as “opinions that challenge one’s worldview”. There are opinions and there are opinions. There are also philosophical differences of opinion vs things that blatantly factually untrue. Remember “alternative facts”? from the last US election? That was a thing that someone legitimately said in response to specific tangible factually incorrect statements being made about the nature of election fraud. Not wanting to be exposed to content from a news organisation that so aggressively promotes this “worldview” is not the same thing as being a thin-skinned snowflake that only wants to consume content that doesn’t challenge them.

The notion that I’m meant to ingest some unfiltered firehose of utter garbage because of some incorrect notion of “all opinions are equally valid” is complete and utter bullshit.

> It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them.

I can easily dismiss antisemitic conspiracy theories, queerphobia, bigotry, and racism. There's an infinite stream of garbage positions, why would would I engage with them?

I don't mind opinions that challenge my worldview. I despise complete lies like what Alex Jones spews.

Opinions are one thing. X has become a bastion of conspiracy theories and outright fabrications with it's hyper-partisan owner leading the charge.

You say "it's wild" and then give a reasonable explanation in the next sentence. Is it wild, or not?

And are you implying that the Guardian is being "run off" because it wants X to be an echo chamber? You don't think it's a bot-infested hellhole of hate, but some den of thoughtful, nuanced, balanced discussion?

For me it's not about the content. What would take a psychological toll is knowing I'm supporting the orange idiot's #1 fluffer.

The issue is that a huge chunk of journalists have been horrifically addicted to Twitter from long before Musk's time.

Realistically everyone in that field should've bailed the second subscribers got bumped to the top of replies across the website.

I don't think he needs to care. The election demonstrated that most people will believe anything they're told.

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> I do have a problem with Musk apparently tweaking the algorithm to specifically promote one candidate and to bombard me with political content that skews a certain way even when I selected other interests

He has been doing that since almost a year. The "For you" page would be filled with content you don't like, and clicking "not interested" doesn't help. The only solution I found was to mute the accounts that were showing up there that I didn't like. This was a major factor that led me to leave X / Twitter

I do have a problem with musk supporting a political candidate. Not for any kind of high minded reason. Just because I am uneasy that someone has so much power. It is simply a threat. And people get too wrapped up in the argument to notice that.

> I don't have a problem with Musk supporting one candidate or the other. But I do have a problem with Musk apparently tweaking the algorithm to specifically promote one candidate and to bombard me with political content that skews a certain way [...]

But for some reason, it was okay the other way around a few years ago?

I do not know if Musk tweaked the algorithm in favor of Trump as I've left Twitter several years ago due to getting tired of propaganda bots. But what I do know is that Google and Facebook (as well as previous Twitter owners) practicing targeted propaganda for years already, pushing political agenda in your throat no matter how you ask them to not recommend you specific authors, channels or topics. I don't think we actually have any social platform for free and open speech.

That doesn't feel likely. 1 because Guardian isn't really in a position to enter a legal battle vs ~unlimited spiteful money. 2 because this is likely not enforcible if anyone actually has a reason to sue them abroad where the company has presence. It's just terms of service rather than a contract binding you in other ways - they can deny you service after you sue.

Do business accounts have the same ToS as regular users?

Why would the Guardian expect to have to sue X?

The reason is their lack of engagement. Take a long scroll through their timeline: 11m followers and they have single/double digit likes and retweets. It’s been like that for many years.

> New terms of service that will take effect on 15 November specify that any lawsuits against X by users must be exclusively filed in the US district court for the northern district of Texas or state courts in Tarrant county, Texas.

Is this even something TOS can legally enforce?

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That seems largely irrelevant to the core thesis of the article.

I think the main effect of social media is just in neutralising emotion and real world action. It give people a place to vent. And then they get angry when nothing in the real world changes. The power is still in the hands of a few geriatrics that can be bothered to go outside and do something. For the moment this benefited trump but it could just as easily swing in another direction.

More like the fact that Elon Musk literally bought himself a cabinet position and basically the president himself in almost the most blatant and transparently corrupt way possible.

> it's sad

Even more sad when people lack the concept of nuance and see the world as entirely black and white.

I'm wondering if it's just economics. Are they losing money from X existing? Are they trying to start some "let's all move away from X" trend?

“All the people flocking to Bluesky — were you outraged at the Covid censorship and Hunter Biden laptop election interference in October 2020?”

And the same gaslighting was echoed here on HN as well, don’t hold your breath for any such acknowledgement though.

"some people having their feelings hurt that they don’t censor opposing views like they used to."

This is an extremely dishonest take on what is happening.

What is ACTUALLY happening is the world's richest man using his media company to manipulate an election.

Does that include going extinct?

> Someone on X summarised it pretty accurately

That screed sounds less like it was aiming for accuracy and more like it was aiming to be inflammatory. But what do I know, I haven't had a Twitter account since 2014.

X is not a place for "debate". It's designed to optimize for rumor mongering and mob outrage. Which is not a good recipe for a "signal" useful for any kind of decision making.

Is there anything concrete that would suggest this or is this just a gut feeling you’re sharing here?

As opposed to to users on other social networks fact checking their articles? I find their US politics coverage to be more balanced and factual than other news outlets.

This tired and unfunny 'joke' might at least be relevant when it's a little-known individual announcing their departure, but less so when it's a national newspaper with 11 million followers.

>Anyone else notice that CNN dialed down the hyperbole right around the time it became obvious Orange Man was going to win again?

"The cannibal has come out of his lair"

"The Corsican Ogre has landed at Golf Juan"

"The Tiger has arrived at Gap"

"The monster has spent the night at Grenoble"

"The Tyrant has crossed Lyon"

"The usurper has been seen 60 leagues from the capital"

"Bonaparte is advancing with great strides, but will never enter Paris"

"Napoleon will be under our ramparts tomorrow"

"The Emperor has arrived at Fontainbleu"

"His Imperial & Royal Majesty has made his entry into the Tuileries yesterday, amid his faithful subjects."

>tries to undermine the free flow and dissemination of information

Maybe I'm out of the loop here, where did the Guardian try to undermine the free flow of information?

They even went out of their way to clarify that:

>"X users will still be able to share our articles"

And

>Our reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for news-gathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we do not officially engage.

I highly recommend taking a look at some tech starter packs, as i've found them to be very helpful in moving away from that feed. I agree that the political discussion is definitely still in that stage though

Sometimes, the orange man just is bad.

You can hide all political crap using muted words. Just exclude any tweets with the words election(s), Biden, Trump, Kamala, Bitcoin, trading and you're good.

All I get is AI and rockets now.

What a uselessly glib way to summarize the state of politics today

Musk has one of the highest community note rates on his tweets. Has not stopped him one bit.

They were stating a technical reality for those that have less of an understanding of how the internet works. The target audience is more than…you.