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Just days after promising advertisers that Twitter would not be a “free-for-all,” Elon Musk promoted a right-wing rumor about the vicious hammer assault on Paul Pelosi
Link information
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- Title
- Elon Musk Amplifies Baseless Conspiracy Theory in Pelosi Attack
- Published
- Oct 30 2022
- Word count
- 307 words
There have been stats going around that racial slurs have multiplied in occurrence on the platform after he took over already.
I hope he'll learn why moderation exists quickly. It'll be bad if the platform spirals for too long before going into disuse.
Would you mind sharing these stats? Thanks!
This is the article that has been going around
Um... grooming is bad... It's one of the main tools of abusers.
If people are misuing the term please enlighten me. I don't like the dillution of the term...much like the dillution of gaslighting.
It's used a lot by the kinds of social conservatives who believe that all gay men are child molesters and that there's a "trans agenda" turning men effeminate and "stealing our girls".
American fascists and other reactionaries use the term to refer to LGBT+ people. Painting them with the term is a cornerstone of republican propaganda of the last few years.
Calling someone a child abuser is offensive, and there are also conspiracy theories about child abuse. Depending on how they do it, someone going on about child abuse might be a Q-anon type. Specifically using the word "groomer" probably makes that more likely.
But that doesn't mean we should assume that anyone who talks about child abuse is doing it in bad faith. Context matters.
It would be futile to deny that conspiracies could happen, given that we know about Jefferey Epstein and the people surrounding him. We do want actual child abusers to be prosecuted.
But uninformed concern about child abuse creates conditions for witch hunts and that's dangerous. We need to insist on due process. (Even that may not be enough. Not long ago, people went to jail based on false 'recovered' memories.)
That’s exactly the loophole people are exploiting in using the term.
“All LGBT people are groomers” is the bailey, and “only child abusers are groomers” is the motte.
If we push back against the bailey it makes us look like we’re supporting child abuse, but if we only address the motte then their prejudicial implications go unchecked. Bad faith discourse like this hides behind good faith as a shield, which has a caustic effect on any actual discourse in the first place.
Associating LGBT people with pedophilia is a time-worn discrimination we have to face, and it hasn’t stopped. “Groomer” usage on Twitter is an obvious extension of that because it generally characterizes it as an LGBT issue (ignoring that the largest number of child abusers are cis and heterosexual on account of mere demographics) and because “groomer” isn’t generally the word most people talking about this in good faith would use. You’d much more likely see “grooming” used instead in actual discussions of child abuse.
This tracks, explains context I questioned.
Yes, I agree. Not sure what to do about motte-and-bailey arguments other than making distinctions similar to what we just did, which may mean repeating some fairly obvious things. Or else avoiding the people who make them.
I like to assume ignorance rather than arguing in bad faith to begin with, though. People pick up words from what they read and watch, and from other people they talk to. Some words are a "tell" (in Poker terms) of the influence of a certain media diet.
Pouncing on a suspicious term isn't likely to win anyone over, though. There's more to people than their word choices, and nobody likes getting criticized for how they talk or write. (I really should remember that more.)
But wait, how did we get here? Someone at the Washington Post wrote an article after doing some kind of quick analysis of Twitter posts. (The Business Insider article seems to be based on it.) We don't know what sort of searches they did or how much they looked at context. But I have no trouble believing that hateful posts went up, and I'm not interested in looking closer. I'm thankful that it doesn't show up in my Twitter feed.
It's looking like the transition will be chaos. This is the opposite of most acquisitions where there is bland reassurance that nothing will change in the short term, and we don't find out what the new management is planning for months.
I have low expectations in the short term. Hopefully they can keep the site running and most users aren't directly affected. We'll see if the reorganized Twitter can pick up the pieces and clean up the place after the internal chaos settles.
Child abuse is by far a trust issue. Abusers get in community positions of trust, then gradually groom their targets to accept (and not report!) abuse.
Random gays on the internet talking in public: Almost certainly not grooming.
Random neighbor that likes your kids more than you: Should probably keep an eye out.
Online social spaces are a place that makes it easy for abusers to cast a wide net and groom with little consequence.
I hate how the right wing continually dilutes and misapplies important concepts to serve their agenda of demonizing women, gays, and minorities.
I've seen some Americans on Reddit calling groomers to men in any age-gap relationship.
I'll say it, as American who is in a loving marriage of 10+ years that borders on my own acceptable limits. It was honestly a factor in me almost breaking off early on.
If anyone over the age of 25 is getting with anyone under 21, it's definitely got the potential for being grooming. 5 years difference is huge for people under 23 still. If the participant is old enough to be a parent and the younger is less than 30, it has that exploititive air to it, even if not directly grooming.
I agree that's why I said it is an American thing.
I should specify it's true for women as well.
It's all about power dynamics. So while not every age gap relationship qualifies, anything involving one person under 25 definitely has the potential.
To add a visual I thought might exist, here's the Google Trend for the topic. Large increase after March 2020, and the interest drops when there isn't campaigning.
Yes but...
This has been done since before I was born in the 80s. Nothing new here, just using Groomer instead of the usual slurs that have been censored.
It's one reason I oppose language policing. Let them use the horrific slurs and reveal their true colors.
Tweet in question:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586693291231178753
Looks like he deleted it.
Archive:
https://archive.ph/vUmlt
Every time Twitter gets bad press I see people talk about how nice Mastodon is; until this whole fiasco. You are very the first person I've seen "in the wild" (and given that we are on Tildes, that's something of a stretch) to mention Mastodon in months.
I'm not sure how that could be possible unless the fediverse has been shrinking considerably these past two years, everyone on mastodon has now fully abandoned the bird site, I'm blind, or....
People commenting on Musk's buyout mostly just want something to complain about and suddenly have a shared hot topic with almost every other user on the site.
There's not people shouting about Mastodon everywhere now, but a fair number of people have brought it up on various sites. First mention I've seen of it here on Tildes though, not that I've veey actively searched.
People are trying Mastodon out a lot at the moment though, at least to the extent that many instances have gone down due to the large amount of traffic.
Every time there has been an Elon twitter 'event' that causes people to leave, many instances of Mastodon have seen a spike in signups. I have been on Mastodon for a couple of years now, but left Twitter in April as the news kept growing of Elon's likely purchase. It was a valid reason, and a good excuse, to get Twitter out of my life.
That said, I particularly see, on the instance I am on, and others, a desire to have Mastodon not become another Twitter (no doomscrolling, no constant bad news, no toxicity, no "quote retweet" type posts, very few, if any brand accounts). A lot of instances and users (including myself) don't want that critical mass or the 'atmosphere' of Twitter to bleed into Mastodon. While leavers of Twitter are welcomed, it is not without letting them know it's going to be a different experience, and purposely so.
I don't advertise Mastodon myself because I don't expect most people to desire to move to where critical mass isn't- nor do I want to actively invite those that wouldn't be a good fit
Any advice for someone who is a non-Twitter user/leaver who is interested in finding a community on Mastodon?
I'm in the same boat. I never really used Twitter. Mastodon seems to be modeled as a Twitter replacement, but I don't need a replacement, and therefore Mastodon never appealed to me.
You can search online for lists of mastodon instances (one result I have not vetted, for example: https://instances.social/list) and search/filter and see if you find one that seems like a good fit for you.
You can visit the instance's homepage and view their rules / description to get a feel of the kind of atmosphere they're trying to foster, as well as how strict they are in not allowing particular types of content (and/or what instances they block federation with)
The barrier to entry is a bit higher because of Mastodon's decentralization/federated design, but that's also a strength of the tool. It can also be a weakness (sometimes servers shutdown because their admin/leader decides it is time, or it gets too expensive to run, etc.). However, Mastodon makes changing instances quite easy when this happens, so even these weaknesses often expose other strengths.
If your question was in regards to some other aspect I didn't touch on, feel free to ask
This seems like an excellent opportunity for Suckerberg to actually be the better choice now for better or worse. While Suckerberg really isn't looking good right now and seems like a pretty weird and not connected guy he could position himself rather favorable compared to Musk and reel people back to his platforms. Just a thought.