from the thus-spake dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Elon Musk’s latest Twitter misadventure:

Musk’s just announced that he’s going to start deleting unused profiles.

As always, he has completely failed to consider the ramifications of this (people are going to be just thrilled when their dead loved ones’ profiles disappear), so expect the usual butthurt backpedaling in the next few days.

In second place, it’s Anathema Device identifying the challenges of a social media policy based on a “no assholes” rule:

It’s an interesting, even appealing approach, but all too often I’ve seen rules about civility and ‘niceness’ weaponised against the very people they claim to protect, by the very people who threaten them.

If your rules allow a TERF or a racist to spew bigotry politely using big words and sounding oh so reasonable, but ban the victims of transphobia or racism from saying ‘fuck’ or being angry, all you’ve done is make bigots the winners.

I’ve seen this over and over and over again in communities going back to Yahoo groups. Angry people are punished no matter what the cause, and those deliberately provoking or trolling are protected. It doesn’t matter if the subject is fanfiction, knitting, or Nazis. Those who seek to remove the weak or non-conforming find comfort in rules about decorum.

Did we not just see a perfect example of how this works in Montana?

Mozilla is going to have to be very careful not to let that be the default, and I suspect the cost of active, balanced moderation will defeat the project.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments about the Ed Sheeran copyright lawsuit. First, it’s Thomas reminding everyone how this particular incarnation of the copyright nightmare started:

It would have helped if they had lost the Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines lawsuit. They never should have won that case and winning just pushed them and others to go after more people.

Next, it’s Marc summing up the ridiculousness of the whole thing:

Every musician knows this is BS

As an old fart, and a folksinger and songwriter for decades, it used to be a compliment if you did a variation or a different arrangement or even a cover of somebody else’s tune. Every musician knows, as Sheeran says, there are very few chords and notes and rhythms in pop or folk or blues or even jazz music, and the whole point of a song is the unique energy and approach every musician brings. We all benefit and grow from passing music around, nobody loses, trying to own a chord progression is like trying to own the air we breathe.

Over on the funny side, both our winners come in response to the already-hilarious failure of Twitter Blue subscriptions. In first place, it’s pbryan with a Musk-approved response:

(insert poop emoji here)

In second place, it’s Bobson Dugnutt pitching a book title:

How to Try in Business Without Really Succeeding

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the WGA strike and writers’ demands for a bigger share of Hollywood profits:

Given Hollywood Accounting methods, no movie has ever turned a profit so there is no profit to share.

Finally, it’s Eric Goldman summing up Twitter’s non-encrypted encrypted DMs:

The Twitter encryption equivalent of Tesla’s “full self driving” feature

That’s all for this week, folks!