Elon Musk needs to learn that more debate does not mean more truth
John Naughton
Beneath the billionaire’s blurry vision for Twitter lies the notion that it’s good to have a ‘marketplace of ideas’
The authoritarian every -where and -when. What the hell do you mean the proles get to discuss things? There is the revealed truth and they’d better get on with what we tell them to do. Or I tell them……
Don’t make me read it, but is there any exposition of what’s wrong with a marketplace of ideas? If there’s only one revealed truth what do we need the Guardian for? What’s it guarding?
The authoritarian every -where and -when. What the hell do you mean the proles get to discuss things? There is the revealed truth and they’d better get on with what we tell them to do. Or I tell them……
Exactly what is happening in Hong Kong now with official protestations about still having freedom of speech and press freedom – and rule of law. Laughable…if it weren’t so tragically misguided.
I remember the debates about legalising CB radio here in the UK(*), and one member of the House of Lords arguing that “we can’t have the people of this country just talking to whoever they like, that way lies anarchy”.
(*) A major exercise in stable door bolting.
Twitter just had a vote on whether or not to restore Donald J. Trump as a user. 15 million people participated (or some number + lots of bots) and the outcome was a narrow, but decisive win in favour of his being restored.
Can’t see anything wrong with that sort of thing. Sure, it ignores a whole swathe of arguments around “Orange Man Bad”, but it Twitter users a democratic voice on the matter (voice, rather than choice, because Elon Musk could still have said “Lol, no!”. 🙂
Then again, I think he should never have been silenced in the first place, but that’s a complaint against previous management, not the current one.
Arthur
CB radio was a bloody menace. I used to get ghostly voices coming out of my ancient tape recorder when I was a kid because of it.
JG
Why offer a vote? What if the vote had said “No”? Ah, now that would be amusing. If Musk decided to have the voting algorithms copy certain current election practices? Oh, it looks like “Yes”…..
At the end of last month, just after Elon Musk had bought Twitter, I wrote that having him responsible for an important part of the world’s public sphere could turn out to be “like entrusting a delicate clock to a monkey
The public sphere should be gatekept by trusted people who have your best interests at heart.
Such as imported Indian popinjays who are always seething about white people still existing, that nice Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, BlackRock and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Used to interfere with the TV as well, when the next door neighbours boy hit transmit the TV picture went wavy and distorted the sound.
Sounds like the old buffer was foreshadowing the Internet. 🙂
‘… more debate does not mean more truth…’
It makes being told the truth more likely, when those telling us what we must believe know their version can be falsified by the evidence and knowledge and intellect of many other minds, and their lies exposed.
The weird thing about the CB craze was it was mostly about doing something because it was illegal. Having bought the rig & installed it, the majority of users found they didn’t have anything useful to do with it. Most communications were communicating that they could communicate.
It makes being told the truth more likely, when those telling us what we must believe know their version can be falsified by the evidence and knowledge and intellect of many other minds, and their lies exposed.
Ah! If only…
Arthur, found a reference to it on some UK CB history site at https://ukspec.tripod.com/rf/cb/
“25.April.1978
A debate took place in parliament to discuss Citizens Band Radio. Lord Wells-Pestell said “I think we have seriously to consider the enormous disadvantages of having a vast army of people who can communicate with each other very easily.”! The Labour government of the time were not in favour of CB, so it was going to be an uphill struggle.”
And the part of the debate is on Hansard at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1978-04-25/debates/aae89d56-fcb0-42c5-a489-714c2b4ae157/RadioFrequenciesCitizenSBand
What a joy to read to hear people who think they know better than the plebs in how people should run their lives.
He looks like fun. Lemme know when he’s throwing his next dinner party. He serves sandwiches with alfalfa sprouts in them, doesn’t he?
I had an uncle who was an enthusiastic HAM radio operator. He would talk with people all over the world about how well they were receiving the signal.
Generally when an unprofitable company is taken over the new owners try to do the restructuring as quietly as they can. Musk, however, loves attention, so apparently he intends to make whatever changes he will make in the limelight. Business is very much about trial and error, and if you’re inclined to pay attention we’ll see all the error and perhaps eventually a success. Who knows? But it’s all going to be very public.
Wells-Pestell was a government minister (-of-state, probably) at the time, so just spouting the government’s line. Perhaps he also really though the proles shouldn’t communicate that way.
A friend who knew some of the principals told me there was a club set up in London that would pay the fine and provide a new rig for any member who was caught using CB. The idea was to make enforcement so difficult for the Radio Investigation Service with the volume of ‘offenders’ that they just gave up.
I’m quite confident that Elon’s new Twitter will go from strength to strength:
https://twitter.com/TheLaurenChen/status/1594101861564534784
“more debate does not mean more truth”
For a given value of Truth™..
The whole(some) fact that debate even exist is a clear sign that Truth™ may have a low value, because then the cat-herding wouldn’t be necessary to begin with.
@BiS
CB made far more sense in the US, where there are 3.5 million truckers hauling loads for many hundreds or thousands of miles, than it ever did in the UK. Seems to be still a thing, albeit moving to FM.
When I started my Army apprenticeship in ‘72 one of the radio instructors was also a Ham radio enthusiast. He’d been a radio operator in the war and knew his radio engineering and Morse code.
He developed a paddle that allowed him to send Morse code at a phenomenal rate and he and his fellow enthusiasts were challenging each other to send and be able to read increasingly faster.
He received a letter from the GPO telling him that hair he didn’t slow down his licence would be revoked. The reason, not given, was that the GPO monitors couldn’t read what he was sending.
BiND: which is rather funny as ‘squirt’ morse code had been developed by then for espionage purposes. I guess the RIS weren’t let in on the tech.
There has always been a restriction on Amateur Radio that it should all be ‘in clear’, i.e. no crypto. Also any codes used should be published. This applies as much to modern digital comms as it did to Morse.