Musk said in a statement that Twitter has applied the following temporary limits on users, with new unverified accounts limited to reading just 600 posts per day.
Claiming the sudden change is being implemented to combat “extreme
levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” Musk said the daily
restrictions would eventually be raised to 8,000 posts for verified users, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified users.
Immediately, the socials came alive with claims of 'free speech' suppression etc...
But the irony went to '11'...
So they want 'more' twitter not less? But we thought it was a cesspool of nazi porn?
Musk said at the time that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter
data “extremely aggressively,” with a negative impact on user experience.
However, there may be more to this than 'user experience' deterioration, or an
effort by Musk force more monetization.
Musk hinted at the 'other' reason in April, when he threatened to sue Microsoft,
which has invested billions into OpenAI, after accusing the company of using
Twitter data for training.
“They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” Musk wrote on
Twitter on April 19.
Which brings us to Mike Benz's excellent discussion this morning of what
may really be going on behind the scenes, that yet again - the world's richest
man could be the only one uncancellable enough to battle.
Benz begins his trek with the statement: "AI censorship is where all of the
magic happens."
He points out, the Twitter Files showed how The FBI might come in and
get 22 tweets censored, but AI is how IEP (and other 3rd-party censorship
groups) were able to get 22 million tweets censored."
Before 2016, Benz explains, you could not 'control' the internet; but since then,
there has been an "AI Censorship Deathstar" under construction, which
"relies on massive scraping of Twitter data to track trending narratives,
to systemically surveil, to build intelligence dossiers, and to track and
turn down - all at one - communities online."
Twitter is the best social network of all for this massive data scraping
(and training) since all consumers of information are also creators.
This explicitly makes scraping data there far more important for early
narrative detection and countering 'wrongthink' via fact-checking,
Google Ad suppression, political pressure (possibly enforcing hate
speech laws like Michigan just passed), or mainstream media
propaganda focus.
Also, on the other side, while Musk appears to have got the 'Trust & Safety'
censors/bannner/throttlers out of the loop, this massive data scrape allows
any establishment-favored narratives to be amplified.
And it appears to be working as ChatGPT admitted it was unable to
access real-time tweets this morning...
Which apparently pleased Musk...
Elon reacts to this news: https://t.co/tqab98Oice— T(w)itter Daily News (@TitterDaily)
July 2, 2023
So - is this just another money-making scheme for Twitter; or is Musk really
the world's last best hope for 'freedom' of speech.
"You are going to see the censorship industry howl over this," Benz
concludes, and "whether Musk knows it or not, he has stepped on a
rattlesnake."
While the censorship-industry will "in a wierd way, while the
boot [of Musk's tweet-read-limit] may be cutting off some amount
of openness of Twitter, it may also represent in some way, the boot of freedom."
Watch the full Benz clip below:
Finally, one wonders did Musk's move just nuke the AI-stock-boom's 100x
forward-revenue-multiple case?
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