# The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here
## Metadata
- Author:: [[Justin Peters]]
- Full Title:: The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://apple.news/AHAglwaVxTjK8re8aXtj7ww
## Highlights
> It is not at all surprising to watch Musk preen about exposing his predecessors’ alleged abuses of power while simultaneously engaging in the exact same behaviors that he had promised to avoid. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbhzg8z147xcm59r7cptsb))
> The Twitter Files are inherently interesting if only because they help to illuminate the inner workings of one of the world’s most prominent tech companies during several pressure-cooker episodes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbjj0fqj0591877qp7yf9v))
> American democracy has indeed taken a bit of a beating over the past few years, but the most violent blows have been landed by the Trumpist right and its opportunistic enablers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbn2jnm79gt71kdqrrq5ns))
> We are living in the Golden Age of Getting Rich and Wielding Influence By Pretending That Your Voice Has Been Silenced. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbne0zey68xdjrscqkkzgx))
- Tags: [[favorite]]
> For decades now, American right-wing discourse has been rooted in two bedrock principles. The first is that the American right is under attack, constantly, from all leftward angles. The second principle is that there is a lot of money to be made in convincing low-information values voters that *they* are under attack, and that Hollywood, government, the academy, big business, and the media are now and always have been conspiring against them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbp2de2q3f35q0y9n2wk29))
> Conspiracy is the cornerstone of the modern conservative movement. The premise that the entire world is aligned against the right in an ongoing effort to demote their values, their freedoms, and their right to use ethnic slurs in public is a tribal identifier for contemporary conservatives, and surfacing evidence of these conspiracies is right-wing media’s most important work. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbpgq6c8gep02p878ea95g))
> But this ongoing victim narrative is undermined by the plain fact that, far from being marginalized and undervalued, by most available metrics, right-wing news and opinion is very popular and profitable. Fox News consistently tops the cable news ratings. Conservative radio shows and podcasts top the leaderboards in their respective disciplines. Right-wing Facebook pages are consistently among the most popular issues-based Facebook pages. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbr8h0m4j4kpg6ytfh4ktd))
> We are literally living in the Golden Age of Getting Rich and Wielding Influence By Pretending That Your Voice Has Been Silenced ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbrgtxny51csgt6fzxadt4))
> This sequence of events doesn’t reveal some huge partisan conspiracy so much as a group of people apparently struggling in real time to make good decisions, while being responsive enough to reverse course when they got those decisions wrong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbvdqnyrvqjzahb10b7qc4))
> The six threads we’ve seen thus far show that Twitter had a clear, albeit evolving, system for content moderation, and that it took that system seriously. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbw9x8zxmrnjabze1xawj2))
> The system seems to have existed to ensure that content moderation decisions were not made arbitrarily, and it also seems that only in chaotic or extraordinary circumstances was the system superseded by other considerations ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbwmd4dczm20jgswtd6nj0))
> Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbxe7m102gbk3jzj3dj4w8))
> The Twitter Files show that the company’s executives were exquisitely sensitive to conservative charges of bias, and that they treated the most volatile prominent right-leaning accounts with kid gloves—even as those accounts were almost exclusively dedicated to flooding the platform with malignant garbage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbzbvt0211x47rrd8fxezf))
> It seems obvious to me that the fact that Twitter intervened with some of these accounts anyway has less to do with those accounts’ conservative leanings than it does with the fact that these accounts were run by unscrupulous trolls who excel at exploiting good-faith rules to their own bad-faith advantage ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc03syga3ssw39qxs1m29e))
> Privileging credible content over maniacally inaccurate content isn’t anti-conservative bias: It’s bias against malevolent trolls. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc16t7kj7cdqkytpr8qd7h))
> It isn’t Twitter’s fault that so much conservative discourse in the Trump era is so deeply, fundamentally dishonest; in response to that tilted dynamic, Twitter’s moderation personnel *still* went out of their way to give bad-faith pundits the benefit of the doubt. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc1hneej62ksz9f69dedk2))
> But another way to describe *wokeness* is *accountability*, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc2s07r6jxxehxm8nxr0sd))
> Donald Trump, who went from using his Twitter account to take potshots at Rosie O’Donnell to using it to set the stage for a violent Capitol riot meant to impede the certification of a presidential election that his ego would not allow him to admit that he lost, and whose subsequent Twitter ban made him a cause célèbre for all those who think freedom of speech means never having to answer for their own bullshit. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc4zchzn7kp999tdqnbdy2))
> What it means is that Musk has chosen to make common cause with the idiot trolls and unapologetic bigots who cheer and emulate mercurial, unscrupulous strongmen. He will dismantle the accountability structures at Twitter and will wield his power there unilaterally, while his handpicked muckrakers focus on his predecessors’ “power trips.” He will safeguard “the future of civilization” for those, like himself, who would gladly destroy it in order to secure their own short-term advantage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc7ecjsxygtqaa540ny507))
# The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here
## Metadata
- Author:: [[Justin Peters]]
- Full Title:: The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://apple.news/AHAglwaVxTjK8re8aXtj7ww
## Highlights
> It is not at all surprising to watch Musk preen about exposing his predecessors’ alleged abuses of power while simultaneously engaging in the exact same behaviors that he had promised to avoid. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbhzg8z147xcm59r7cptsb))
> The Twitter Files are inherently interesting if only because they help to illuminate the inner workings of one of the world’s most prominent tech companies during several pressure-cooker episodes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbjj0fqj0591877qp7yf9v))
> American democracy has indeed taken a bit of a beating over the past few years, but the most violent blows have been landed by the Trumpist right and its opportunistic enablers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbn2jnm79gt71kdqrrq5ns))
> We are living in the Golden Age of Getting Rich and Wielding Influence By Pretending That Your Voice Has Been Silenced. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbne0zey68xdjrscqkkzgx))
- Tags: [[favorite]]
> For decades now, American right-wing discourse has been rooted in two bedrock principles. The first is that the American right is under attack, constantly, from all leftward angles. The second principle is that there is a lot of money to be made in convincing low-information values voters that *they* are under attack, and that Hollywood, government, the academy, big business, and the media are now and always have been conspiring against them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbp2de2q3f35q0y9n2wk29))
> Conspiracy is the cornerstone of the modern conservative movement. The premise that the entire world is aligned against the right in an ongoing effort to demote their values, their freedoms, and their right to use ethnic slurs in public is a tribal identifier for contemporary conservatives, and surfacing evidence of these conspiracies is right-wing media’s most important work. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbpgq6c8gep02p878ea95g))
> But this ongoing victim narrative is undermined by the plain fact that, far from being marginalized and undervalued, by most available metrics, right-wing news and opinion is very popular and profitable. Fox News consistently tops the cable news ratings. Conservative radio shows and podcasts top the leaderboards in their respective disciplines. Right-wing Facebook pages are consistently among the most popular issues-based Facebook pages. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbr8h0m4j4kpg6ytfh4ktd))
> We are literally living in the Golden Age of Getting Rich and Wielding Influence By Pretending That Your Voice Has Been Silenced ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbrgtxny51csgt6fzxadt4))
> This sequence of events doesn’t reveal some huge partisan conspiracy so much as a group of people apparently struggling in real time to make good decisions, while being responsive enough to reverse course when they got those decisions wrong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbvdqnyrvqjzahb10b7qc4))
> The six threads we’ve seen thus far show that Twitter had a clear, albeit evolving, system for content moderation, and that it took that system seriously. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbw9x8zxmrnjabze1xawj2))
> The system seems to have existed to ensure that content moderation decisions were not made arbitrarily, and it also seems that only in chaotic or extraordinary circumstances was the system superseded by other considerations ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbwmd4dczm20jgswtd6nj0))
> Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbxe7m102gbk3jzj3dj4w8))
> The Twitter Files show that the company’s executives were exquisitely sensitive to conservative charges of bias, and that they treated the most volatile prominent right-leaning accounts with kid gloves—even as those accounts were almost exclusively dedicated to flooding the platform with malignant garbage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnbzbvt0211x47rrd8fxezf))
> It seems obvious to me that the fact that Twitter intervened with some of these accounts anyway has less to do with those accounts’ conservative leanings than it does with the fact that these accounts were run by unscrupulous trolls who excel at exploiting good-faith rules to their own bad-faith advantage ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc03syga3ssw39qxs1m29e))
> Privileging credible content over maniacally inaccurate content isn’t anti-conservative bias: It’s bias against malevolent trolls. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc16t7kj7cdqkytpr8qd7h))
> It isn’t Twitter’s fault that so much conservative discourse in the Trump era is so deeply, fundamentally dishonest; in response to that tilted dynamic, Twitter’s moderation personnel *still* went out of their way to give bad-faith pundits the benefit of the doubt. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc1hneej62ksz9f69dedk2))
> But another way to describe *wokeness* is *accountability*, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc2s07r6jxxehxm8nxr0sd))
> Donald Trump, who went from using his Twitter account to take potshots at Rosie O’Donnell to using it to set the stage for a violent Capitol riot meant to impede the certification of a presidential election that his ego would not allow him to admit that he lost, and whose subsequent Twitter ban made him a cause célèbre for all those who think freedom of speech means never having to answer for their own bullshit. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc4zchzn7kp999tdqnbdy2))
> What it means is that Musk has chosen to make common cause with the idiot trolls and unapologetic bigots who cheer and emulate mercurial, unscrupulous strongmen. He will dismantle the accountability structures at Twitter and will wield his power there unilaterally, while his handpicked muckrakers focus on his predecessors’ “power trips.” He will safeguard “the future of civilization” for those, like himself, who would gladly destroy it in order to secure their own short-term advantage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gmnc7ecjsxygtqaa540ny507))