Is it time to quarantine and perhaps ban Twitter?

January 22, 2025 4:26 AM

So Twitter is now exposed as being a media company that is openly run by an actual seig-heiling Nazi, who also uses Twitter to promote extremist right-wing violence in Europe and other parts of the world. I don't like the idea of shutting down lines of communication, but I am seeing other online communities blocking links to URLs published by Twitter and related properties for these actions, and I'm asking if we should show solidarity as another online community, disavowing support for Nazism by filtering out links to Twitter and connected media entities in posts and comments.

To be clear, I am not asking to debate the gestures, or the individual, his actions, or entertain the incomprehensible and obscene opinions of the ADL or other compromised political entities. I would ask politely that people who need that debate go elsewhere. I would prefer to discuss whether there are things we can and should do to target, isolate, and quarantine the media of overt Nazism and similar violent right-wing extremist movements, both to protect our community and also to send a message of solidarity with others on the Internet in the United States and across the world, people who are doing what they can to limit the influence and extent of pro-Nazi communication networks. We do this for Stormfront, for instance, and maybe it is now time to do this for Twitter.

posted by They sucked his brains out! to Etiquette/Policy at 4:26 AM (262 comments total)

How many links to x.com/twitter are actually posted, considering you have to be logged in to view them?
posted by lalochezia at 4:44 AM on January 22

Mod note: So I saw this post in the queue, decided to open up Twitter and scrolled to see what it was showing me.

It wasn’t anything bad or terrible and there wasn’t anything Nazi related. I say this to point out that not everything on the platform is terrible and there are still people using it for good things. I do think it would be a mistake to completely ban the platform, while obviously removing posts or comments on MeFi that do like link to Nazi or other hateful material.

We are MetaFilter. We do not link to, endorse, or condone anything hateful, period. We will remove links or posters that do so. We’ve been doing that for close to 25 years, and we’re going to keep on doing that.

Otherwise, it's up to the community to talk about this, but just want to be clear that isn't a problem with nazi or hate related posts on MeFi.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:32 AM on January 22 [13 favorites]

It wasn’t anything bad or terrible and there wasn’t anything Nazi related. I say this to point out that not everything on the platform is terrible and there are still people using it for good things. I do think it would be a mistake to completely ban the platform, while obviously removing posts or comments on MeFi that do like link to Nazi or other hateful material.

On the one hand, I see the logic in this - but on the other hand there is the "Nazi bar" argument.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:34 AM on January 22 [46 favorites]

scrolled to see what it was showing me

I was curious after reading this, so I opened the site for the first time in awhile, and scrolling my timeline just showed me people I followed. Then I clicked on the Explore button, and the "For You" tab gave me MLB (baseball), Libs of TikTok, "End Wokeness", some account with dog pictures, a nazi named Benny Johnson, Alex Jones, and Major League Baseball (again).

That's what they've decided to promote - it's not just some neutral algorithm pulling popular accounts at random, or showing me things related to my interests.
posted by Umami Dearest at 6:08 AM on January 22 [19 favorites]

Fuck Twitter. Block unless there's a compelling reason not to.
posted by Diskeater at 6:11 AM on January 22 [15 favorites]

I don't remember seeing a link to Twitter in ages. I don't think we need to put in a rule against something unless people are actually doing it.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:26 AM on January 22 [8 favorites]

It should be banned, if only to make a point. I am not a huge believer in the power of a small online community to change the world through a terms-of-service update, but this is a step that costs nothing and draws a line.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:39 AM on January 22 [24 favorites]

I asked this a long time ago, right about when the site started blocking engagement from anyone who didn't have an account (If all I can see when clicking the link is "oops something went wrong" because I deleted my account and I am not using Chrome, what's the point of linking?)

The response at the time was "well... some people still use it. Wait and see."

We've waited. We've seen. It hasn't improved. The fascist who runs the site isn't pretending he's not a fascist any more.

We stopped allowing links to other sites in the past because they were known bad actors (LGF is the earliest one I can recall). That doesn't mean there wasn't some good buried in the dreck, it just meant that we recognized as a whole that the site was unhealthy for civil discourse.

I don't think we lose anything of value if Twitter is not linked to.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:40 AM on January 22 [23 favorites]

Some thoughts:

1. Exposure to Twitter via MeFi is not gonna turn anyone here into a Nazi
2. The platform is famously bad at monetizing and a link here or there on this small site is unlikely to provide any measurable income
3. MeFi exists to discuss the internet and like it or not, a bunch of that is still on Twitter
4. A link is not an endorsement
5. We've banned (or discouraged anyway) single sources, but Twitter isn't a single source; it's a platform with tens of thousands of sources
6. MeFi has an oft-noted problem with performative absolutism driving people away

posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:43 AM on January 22 [46 favorites]

on the other hand there is the "Nazi bar" argument.

I would like to take this opportunity to make clear my opposition to the "Nazi bar" parable. If we were to take that story seriously, then sites like Metafilter would cease to exist, because there would be nothing left to link to. We see this in so many discussions: Can't quote the Guardian, can't quote the Times, can't quote the Post, can't quote from a Substack. Not to throw around the equally vacuous "no ethical consumption under capitalism" line, but all our media comes pre-compromised. All of it. It's all owned by billionaires, it all platforms the worst people on earth, and it's all we have, if we would like to have conversations online.

The critique, such that it is, is always one-sided. Someone will say "you shouldn't post that, it's from Twitter," but they do not share their complete media-consumption history, so you're never able to give them the same scrutiny they have given your post.

We need to be able to separate compromised platforms from compromised writing. If we want to ruthlessly scrutinize a particular argument, great, go forth and do so, it can make for enlightening conversation. But at this point in the twenty-first century, pointing to a platform and saying "it's owned by a fascist" is neither informative nor ethically useful.
posted by mittens at 6:46 AM on January 22 [42 favorites]

I think refusing to engage with widely used platforms/spaces promotes echo-chamber thinking and reduces whatever small effect our words might have on others.
posted by Mid at 6:47 AM on January 22 [6 favorites]

DirtyOldTown: "Some thoughts:

1. Exposure to Twitter via MeFi is not gonna turn anyone here into a Nazi
2. The platform is famously bad at monetizing and a link here or there on this small site is unlikely to provide any measurable income
3. MeFi exists to discuss the internet and like it or not, a bunch of that is still on Twitter
4. A link is not an endorsement
5. We've banned single sources before, but Twitter isn't a single source; it's a platform with tens of thousands of sources
6. MeFi has an oft-noted problem with performative absolutism driving people away

"

I don't disagree. My initial ask for not linking there was due to the site literally not working for anyone without an account - I can't see value in an FPP if the main link is to a site that many MeFi users can't open. I don't think an outright ban on LINKING is worth the effort, but if the entire point of a post is a Twitter link? Comment, sure, but not for an FPP.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:48 AM on January 22 [7 favorites]

(Bias disclaimer: I spent a lot of time with my half-Gaza, half-movies Twitter feed until the election, when I decided to get rid of everything likely to show me political news. I deleted my account and haven’t missed it.)

I oppose this idea. In terms of normalizing fascism, Twitter is far behind The New York Times. And I don’t want them banned either.

If individuals want to link shame, let them fight their own battles.
posted by Lemkin at 6:50 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]

The New York Times actively aids the US government's genocide in Palestine, are we banning that next?
posted by Space Coyote at 7:13 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

If people link to Twitter, then I just don't read it. (Also, I think you have to login to see stuff now anyway, so I wouldn't be able to see it.)

It can be very hard to link to sources someone won't find an issue with; I'm thinking of linking to an article about Trump blustering over Canada on the Blue but it's from Maclean's, which I acknowledge can be hit or miss with their stories. (A stopped clock, etc.) But I know other Canadians will be big mad that I might do so given that yeah, they can be shitty at times. Mainstream media is pants, y'all and I hate it too. I don't know what the right call is for a lot of media anymore.
posted by Kitteh at 7:14 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

I dislike the Nazi bar argument a lot (we should ban iPhone / Mac users next!) but Elon literally Seig Heil'd at the inauguration. Fuck him, fuck Twitter.
posted by Diskeater at 7:19 AM on January 22 [14 favorites]

I'm on team Fuck Twitter. I deleted my account last night after people were screaming at me and calling me an antisemite for saying that yes, Elon actually did give a Nazi salute. And they were not Nazis. It is just... it is lost and irredeemable.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:20 AM on January 22 [6 favorites]

Twitter used to be a generally useful service with remote islands of deplorables. In the last 2 years the deplorables have become the default with remote islands of useful information. Even viewing tweets from celebrities or scientists can expose you explicitly Nazi content in the replies.

I am not advocating for a blanket ban on Twitter links but I wouldn't be sad never to see one again.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:29 AM on January 22 [7 favorites]

(Also, I think you have to login to see stuff now anyway, so I wouldn't be able to see it.)

I believe this was one of Phony Stark’s trial balloons that rapidly deflated.

I just tried it. It showed me tweets without being signed in.
posted by Lemkin at 7:40 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]

I just tried it. It showed me tweets without being signed in.

I ditched Twitter in about 2018 because it bored me, not really because of the politics of it all, and I can confirm this has always been and is still true. What you can't do as a non-user is see interactions - you can see a single linked tweet that someone posts, for instance, but you can't see replies unless someone posts them as a screenshot or from one of those services that formats them as a full story or whatever.
posted by pdb at 7:49 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Not to throw around the equally vacuous "no ethical consumption under capitalism" line, but all our media comes pre-compromised. All of it.

Not least because most if not all of it is delivered to us on servers run by Amazon Web Services, which is a thing people either do not realize, or do not remember, when they're talking about unsubscribing from Prime as a way of "hurting" Jeff Bezos.

I'm not saying protest isn't valid. It is. And it's needed. It's just...the scope of these people is so big. They're infrastructure.
posted by pdb at 7:53 AM on January 22 [8 favorites]

I will sometimes link to Twitter threads/posts in comments - generally as a courtesy I will put in brackets (Twitter link) in case people don't want to go to Twitter. I am mostly just a consumer of Twitter, and I have it set up so I just see journalists, academics, etc. who I consider to be trustworthy sources of information and analysis. I am not just linking to randos. But, if people are getting their information from randos on Twitter, I'd actually still prefer that they link to them because then I can better evaluate what someone is saying. I'd say it's good people share whatever their sources for their opinions are, rather than hide them. I don't think I've ever seen someone make a FFP with just a link to Twitter - I'd say that could be banned on the basis that Twitter links are usually pretty thin.
posted by coffeecat at 8:06 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]

A lot of the arguments in favour of allowing links to twitter absolutely apply to linking to e.g. the stormfront forums or 4chan.
posted by Dysk at 8:46 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]

as some added context, for example, a whole lot of big subreddits are discussing and/or implementing exactly this the past two days. of particular note to me are a lot of the big sports subs where historically a tweet would be posted about or by some sports-important person, for example a post-event trash-talk or a "i can't say this while i'm on the podium but fuck #EventSponsor" or breaking injury news or whatever, which would generate a lot of discussion, and ultimately make up a significant portion of that sub's content around events. so this isn't just us here on MeFi considering this idea right now.

i bring this up not as an argument for or against the idea, only to say this topic is currently on a lot of people's minds.
posted by glonous keming at 8:53 AM on January 22 [6 favorites]

A lot of the arguments in favour of allowing links to twitter absolutely apply to linking to e.g. the stormfront forums or 4chan.

No one would suggest that there is a wealth of stuff on Stormfront or 4chan that is worth discussing, not offensive, and not found anywhere else.

So that comparison falls apart pretty quickly, pretty entirely.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:57 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]

There are absolutely pockets of 4chan that aren't actively awful in themselves (/mu/ has a fairly positive reputation in a lot of circles). So much of internet culture originates on the *chans, and there are big (if dysfunctional) trans communities on many of them. I don't actually know shit about the stormfront forums, but I'm guessing racist assholes also discuss music and recipes like everyone else.

There are absolutely people who see twitter just as you see 4chan.
posted by Dysk at 9:04 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]

If someone can make a case that 4chan hosts important accounts from public figures, journalists, governments, etc. that aren't online elsewhere, I would be highly open to and interested in hearing that argument.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:08 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Much like with the chans, if any of what remains on twitter is important, it will be reported or reposted elsewhere.
posted by Dysk at 9:10 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

Or we could just wait a few weeks or months for a Wikipedia entry to emerge.

There aren't that many people here to teach all the new rules to anyway, so what's a few extra hurdles?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:16 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Again, I think the question is less "can anything important only be found on Twitter" and more "do you want people making claims in their comments to cite their sources or not?" Personally, I prefer people to always cite their sources, whatever they may be, and wherever they may be located.
posted by coffeecat at 9:18 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

A lot of the arguments in favour of allowing links to twitter absolutely apply to linking to e.g. the stormfront forums or 4chan.

This is why I said I disfavor excluding widely used platforms/fora. Some weird corner of the internet is one thing, but a platform used by tens of millions of people including influential media and business and political people is another. Refusing to look at widely used platforms/media is simply blinding yourself to what is happening all around us. That's a personal choice that could be made, I suppose, but it's not a good choice for a website that wants to discuss reality.
posted by Mid at 9:22 AM on January 22 [7 favorites]

There are absolutely pockets of 4chan that aren't actively awful in themselves

I suspect the awful/not-awful ratio is reversed between 4chan and Twitter.
posted by Lemkin at 9:28 AM on January 22

If there's something interesting on Twitter that's interesting enough to post (and it can only be found on Twitter), upload screenshots to a free image hosting site and link those.
posted by Diskeater at 9:34 AM on January 22 [8 favorites]

I've strongly supported banning it on sites with Twitter media embeds because the embeds encourage and privilege Twitter content while directly exposing readers to their tracking and analytics, which is a borderline safety risk at this point. It feels less pressing on MeFi because no one has to follow the link who doesn't want to.

One middle-ground option is to automatically replace all Twitter links with "xcancel.com" (aka Nitter), a free and open-source Twitter mirror that strips out all ads and tracking while still conveying replies, images, and even video. Only downside is the risk of Nitter going down and breaking those links, but imho that's worth not directly supporting what the site has become.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:00 AM on January 22 [19 favorites]

It should be banned, if only to make a point.

Virtue-signalling is a bad rationale for rule-making.
posted by Klipspringer at 10:07 AM on January 22 [15 favorites]

Let’s be frank. The ultimate impulse at work here is to make Twitter cease to be. To remove it from the group of Things That Exist.

While I am sympathetic to the idea of wanting Elon Musk to go away - along with his political ideology and its adherents - that is a separate project.
posted by Lemkin at 10:21 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]

This is not a Nazi bar argument because the Nazi is not in the bar. When Elon Musk shows up on MetaFilter I support banning him.

The bar is what we control, and the analogy is you don't let a person into the bar. The bar analogy was never that you ban trivia questions where the trivia publisher is a Nazi. I get why the analogy is so popular, but it's a property owner argument at the end of the day.

Anyways, I like to do up side/down side.

Upside:
- people who believe in this kind of boycott feel good about themselves
- people without X accounts don't get the sign-up wall
- a miniscule amount of attention does not get directed to X

Downside:
- increasingly Byzantine rules discouraging posting
- members have to investigate not only the author but the platform before understanding the rules
- no consistency if you can still link to [long list that includes Murdoch media* and Bezos media]
- echo chamber effect

(If you're concerned about the algorithm, I watched one (1) right-wing-media video on YouTube followed by an old Antiques Roadshow clip and YouTube decided I'm a middle aged MAGA target and I got shit for weeks. This is not a X thing.

That said, I do support people putting their sources when they can, so others can avoid their clicks.

*Rupert Murdoch has been absolutely magnitudes better at creating racist and right-wing narrative than Elon Musk could ever be. And yes, that includes A&E and the History channel, as well as...Harper Collins.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:38 AM on January 22 [15 favorites]

No, this is silly.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:41 AM on January 22 [5 favorites]

I'll be honest, up until recently I wasn't very receptive to this as I thought twitter was still a compelling part of the internet infrastructure. But now a ton of city-based subreddits are banning links to twitter, and frankly I'm feeling like if the normies there are willing to do it there must be something there. And collective action is more powerful than taking a quixotic stand on one's own.
posted by dusty potato at 10:55 AM on January 22 [5 favorites]

New York Times - December 10, 2022

Critics Say Musk Has Revealed Himself as a Conservative. It’s Not So Simple.
posted by Lemkin at 11:10 AM on January 22

How often do people here even link Twitter? Not often, so I don’t know that it matters much one way or the other.

But I am willing to say directly that I am not a believer in this power

I am not a huge believer in the power of a small online community to change the world through a terms-of-service update

and that I’m not sure MetaFilter’s seeming belief in it has been a net plus for MetaFilter.
posted by atoxyl at 11:33 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]

Kind of weird to be at a point where MetaFilter is actually arguing about this and Reddit (a site which arguably contributed the most to the problem in the first place) is just going ahead and banning links to X across hundreds of subreddits with 1000s of subscribers.

Stop giving that tweaking Nazi fuck views and ad revenue. How is this even a question?
posted by fight or flight at 11:44 AM on January 22 [32 favorites]

A lot of the arguments in favour of allowing links to twitter absolutely apply to linking to e.g. the stormfront forums or 4chan.

Do we have a policy against linking 4chan, or is it just something nobody does anyway?
posted by atoxyl at 11:49 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

What you can't do as a non-user is see interactions - you can see a single linked tweet that someone posts, for instance, but you can't see replies unless someone posts them as a screenshot or from one of those services that formats them as a full story or whatever.

You also can’t see a user’s chronological timeline of tweets - it gives you a “best of.” Probably some other arbitrary restrictions, too.
posted by atoxyl at 11:59 AM on January 22

A subreddit deciding to ban X is equivalent to the many people right here who decide not to post links to Twitter - that is, it's the people running the subreddits, not Reddit-the-entity, deciding that (also that post says 'hundreds ARE CONSIDERING' and it's one of my pet peeves that this is presented as if this has actually happened. )

If you don't want a Twitter post don't post it, and if you don't want to click on a Twitter link you can mouseover/clickhold/whatever to check. That's the MetaFilter equivalent, because we have like 2500 active users and Reddit has over 100,000 active subreddits. If hundreds of them are considering banning Twitter, that's like .9%.

Worldwide visits to Reddit by billions
posted by warriorqueen at 12:15 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Banning Twitter is part of a purist trend on metafilter. There are still many peace/anti-war activists, human rights people, journalists, much of the osint community (else it is telegram), enviro campaigngets, unions....

I still buy diesel - and oil industry has led genocides and wars for a century.

I drink milk, which (for my country) depends on phosphate stolen from the deliberately wrecked nation of Western Sahara, with some of the wrecking done by my country.

Capitalism.is.a.system the only way to change it is to know it (and weaponise it against itself). That cannot be done if we choose to camp outside the walls, and refuse to know the language and trends of the enemy.

Agree atoxyl, 4chan is a good source for me researching groups like Atlas Network, and Federalist Soc.
posted by unearthed at 12:27 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

If you don't want a Twitter post don't post it, and if you don't want to click on a Twitter link you can mouseover/clickhold/whatever to check.

And the fact that there are vanishingly few such links in the first place makes me think this all.. dare I say… performative?
posted by Lemkin at 12:34 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

I prefer to think of these times being harsh for a left leaning site like MeFi and its members. We'd all, individually or collectively, like to be able control the levels of bs that are already present, so solutions are being proposed to this problem which may or may not fit site wise/ But I wouldn't fault anyone for attempting to lessen all the bad stuff going on.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 12:43 PM on January 22 [8 favorites]

Agree atoxyl, 4chan is a good source for me researching groups like Atlas Network, and Federalist Soc.

Well I wasn’t suggesting it should be encouraged (and when it does make sense to cite 4chan it still doesn’t make sense to link threads directly because they are too ephemeral) just that I kind of doubt that we ever even had to have a conversation about banning linking to it because it’s not something that people do anyway, and because if someone did it would be pretty easy to decide if it were contextually justified? And in general I prefer things here to be contextual. Being able to do that is an upside of a small site!

Twitter links are presumably a little more common, and the boycott logic a little more solid, but still - if your 1m user subreddit does it, that’s a meaningful stand, if MeFi, a site that is not based on single links to mildly amusing social media posts, a site where you can’t even embed the damn things, does it, who is going to notice? Certainly it doesn’t justify implementing a filter, as the OP seems to suggest.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

I don't want to single out individual people since a few have said it, but can someone who does not like the Nazi Bar analogy explain why not?

(Note: I'm not asking why it wouldn't apply to this situation. I've seen some people not liking it in general, and that's what I'm asking about. Also, I'm not asking as a "challenge" or anything. I'm legitimately curious about the potential flaws in the logic of the story and the conclusion it comes to.)
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:48 PM on January 22

There's always been a substantial group of twitter fans on metafilter. Personally I'm not a fan and I'd be happy to boot it.

The predominant twitter link I see (in comments primarily but posts as well) on metafilter is people simply tunneling comments over here, primarily "hot takes" and "zingers". I hate that. It's links of the form: here's something I read from some pseudonymous commenter on a different social media site. The esteem some folks hold twitter in seems to make it seem more acceptable than a random deep-link to a particularly great comment on reddit.
posted by Wood at 1:54 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]

...the Nazi Bar analogy is a great anecdote - as an analogy it kinda falls apart in that the group involved with the bar (punk rockers (in the telling I heard)) is quite narrow and the internet is absolutely not.

That said - fuck Nazis. Fuck Musk: ban twitter or don't I don't care, but I won't knowingly click any of links to it.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:57 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

This seems right.

Upside:
- people who believe in this kind of boycott feel good about themselves
- people without X accounts don't get the sign-up wall
- a miniscule amount of attention does not get directed to X

Downside:
- increasingly Byzantine rules discouraging posting
- members have to investigate not only the author but the platform before understanding the rules
- no consistency if you can still link to [long list that includes Murdoch media* and Bezos media]
- echo chamber effect


Pretty sure anyone who just posted a link to a Twitter thread that didn’t have a lot of context as to why would get flagged to hell, anyway.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:07 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Flagged to Hell: My Story of Surviving MetaFilter and the Long Road Back
posted by Lemkin at 2:16 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

I am taken aback by the sheer number of people who do not understand the meaning of the Nazi bar analogy and confidently misapply it in wildly off-base ways.

At this point, I would basically beg folks to sidestep that analogy and just speak plainly, because jumbled, overextended metaphors won't help either side of this discussion.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:34 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]

Are there any non-profit bars?
posted by Lemkin at 2:43 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Sort of?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:46 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Over 10,000 books were banned in public schools last year and we just elected a president who doesn't respect the constitution. Yet free speech is the first amendment to that same constitution, and it's what makes free opinion on sites like this one possible. So maybe we should recognize we don't live in an era where banning is a harmless option anymore.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:03 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

My least favourite thing on any website or social media is when people drag bad takes and awful content over from Twitter. Like, my brother in Christ, I don't care about your hot take on a bad take from another website. Repost that on your blog or on your own Twitter account.

Once I deleted my account, I have never found a reason to check in with the dumpster fire over there. I already know much of it is shitheads; why would I want to keep metaphorically punching myself in the face by hate-reading?
posted by Kitteh at 3:08 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]

I don't want to single out individual people since a few have said it, but can someone who does not like the Nazi Bar analogy explain why not?

It's a fun story. It's about one individual being kicked out of one place by the owner of that place (sometimes just the bartender). And then the owner/bartender tells a truism that if you keep letting Nazis come to the bar it becomes a Nazi bar. So moral of the story is to shun everyone who is a Nazi.

But in real life, the Nazis go to the next bar. Or if the Nazis own the one well-trafficked mall, the stores that don't open at the mall don't get enough customers and they shut down. Or if the Nazis are on the board of the bus service in town, avoiding the bus may mean people don't have access to the transportation they need.

And of course, the Nazi is obvious. I will give you that Elon Musk is obvious. But he's just - not in the bar. He's the guy that owns the fibre optic cable. The bar owner is not ripping his phone out of the wall and shutting down his DoorDash account and website and Yelp reviews.

In other words, the anecdote (edited) works because it's a) super obvious, b) consequence-less and c) the consequences that are outlined that would have happened (it becomes a Nazi bar) are hypothetical and simple.

The bar never suffers for it and never has to compete in a world where the Nazi bar has a significant market share. It's a one-night story. And like, I want that world too, where you just turf the guy out and he has no bar.

But it's a superhero story, and not really that relevant to most questions around media platforms, access to information, being informed, holding space for discourse, etc.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:09 PM on January 22 [20 favorites]

Oh, I forgot to add, the bar sells food and drink. How about a bar that bans whiskey.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:17 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

"And of course, the Nazi is obvious. I will give you that Elon Musk is obvious. But he's just - not in the bar. He's the guy that owns the fibre optic cable."

He's in the bar, he's the guy that owns the bar.
posted by EarnestDeer at 3:18 PM on January 22 [9 favorites]

Yeah I don't really want to argue about it, but it's like you have a bar where whenever someone orders a whiskey neat, you yell "DON'T ORDER THAT NAZI WHISKEY" and then all the people there who were going to order a rum and coke or a vodka soda are like, I'm going to a bar where I don't get yelled at for my drink.

But sure, we're not talking on Twitter, so Elon is not the guy that owns the bar here.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:21 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

I just went to Reddit to see what was happening and the first thing I saw was "X is just a sans-serif swastika" which is at least as useful a rubric as the Nazi bar story.
posted by Rumple at 3:41 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

Picturing Jon Taffer from Bar Rescue taking a hand.

“You’ve got NAZIS in your bar! And you’ve got a CHILD to support! SHAME on you! I will not rescue a Nazi bar. So in the morning, either the Nazis are gone… or I’M gone!”
posted by Lemkin at 3:42 PM on January 22

because we have like 2500 active users

Sidebar: there's a new chart showing users by activity level. We have either 2700 or 1000 or 500 active users across all sites, depending on whether you define "active" as 1 or 5 or 10 comments/posts per month.
posted by Klipspringer at 3:42 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

"Let's keep links to Twitter because there are also good things there" is the new "I only look at Playboy for the articles."
posted by yellowcandy at 3:50 PM on January 22 [4 favorites]

Before BlueSky gained traction, there really was nowhere like Twitter to connect with local community people in a real-time way. But now that it has, and everyone of value is migrating there, there is no point to Twitter.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:44 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, in Germany.

The reason to block Twitter is because it is run by a Nazi. If that's not a good enough reason for you, what else would it take?
posted by Diskeater at 5:49 PM on January 22 [19 favorites]

I'm for blocking the site. If citations are so important, why not take a screenshot and post that instead of linking to the site itself, or find some other workaround? Just because Metafilter is small and it might not make that big a difference doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do -- an accumulation of small steps in the right direction is how positive change happens. Simply going along with the flow because why not and its not that bad is how we end up with terrible, terrible things in the long run. Here is a small thing that we have control over, so why not do the right thing?
posted by cubby at 6:53 PM on January 22 [10 favorites]

But in real life, the Nazis go to the next bar....And like, I want that world too, where you just turf the guy out and he has no bar.

I guess i don't see the point of the story ad the guy having no bar. I think even in the story the guy goes to the next bar. Ithe bartender isnt trying to hurt or change the Nazi. The bartender is just protecting his own bar. The next bar is neither here nor there to that purpose.

This might suggest the metaphor doesnt fit here, but I'm not convinced that means the conclusions from nazi bar story (dont let nazis into your space because they will ruin yoir space) is wrong.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:47 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

i would like to point out the proscription against posting the guardian was a request i made a while back specifically with respect to trans issues, and the argument was that we shouldn't be linking institutionally or vehemently anti-trans media publications on matters specifically regarding trans people.

it was not and was never a global one.

using a narrowly targeted, narrowly argued request, and combining that with this larger one feels a little gross.
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:15 PM on January 22 [16 favorites]

Are there other sites that get a blanket ban already?

If Metafilter is blocking links to X/twitter, should it also block links to Tesla and SpaceX? They are run by the same guy. (If I can be parenthetically sarcastic, SpaceX is a rocket company for fuck's sake! Rocket's are pretty goddamn Nazi. Space Nazis on Mars!) SpaceX occasionally does things that are interesting to people like me who like space things. It kind of makes me sick to my stomach, nowadays, but there it is. Tesla has done interesting electric car things, and may do them again. I think those companies might get linked in good metafilter posts in the future.

As much as I find it pleasant to not do anything that enriches Musk, I think site rules against endorsing nazi content, and site norms against linking to content that isn't available on the open web means X/twitter links are already frowned upon.
posted by surlyben at 8:16 PM on January 22

Elon Musk performed two Nazi salutes.

Elon Musk bought Twitter and let actual Nazis (and white supremecists, et al) back on to Twitter after they had been banned.

Elon Musk promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories.

As far as I'm concerned, these things alone mean that he's a Nazi.

The fact is that he's the owner of his own bar, one that is rapidly filling up with Nazis, and lots of people (myself included) are leaving/have left to go to other bars.

Personally, I don't want our bar and his bar to be entwined any more than they need to be. Perhaps, once the new site is up and running, we could add a "warning: this contains a twitter link" thing to a post or comment that has a link to that site. This allows people who can't hover over links to know that it's a twitter link, and also provides extra caution to those of us who absolutely refuse to go to that site.
posted by juliebug at 8:24 PM on January 22 [11 favorites]

should it also block links to Tesla and SpaceX?

Blocking links to Twitter is different than blocking links to Tesla or SpaceX. Twitter.com IS the product.

I think those companies might get linked in good metafilter posts in the future.

If they do something newsworthy, it will be on the news. Same with Twitter.
posted by Diskeater at 9:08 PM on January 22 [4 favorites]

I've had a look now and I can't see anything banning any particular websites on the current guidelines, content policy, microaggressions or unacceptable words pages. As far as I know Metafilter has always relied on context and common sense rather than a list of banned sites.

If a ban was to be put in place, how would it work? Could we just add x.com and twitter.com to the unacceptable words list, which is an automatic filter? That might be inconvenient if it meant we couldn't even mention the site. Can we add HTML fragments to the list which would ban hrefs to them?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:09 AM on January 23

I think it’s important to note that Metafilter is actually *behind* the curve on this one - number of Reddit subreddits, even ones like r/nba, are banning x links right now. This isn’t us being precious, this is what people who oppose Nazi shit are doing. Mainstream news is even reporting on it.
posted by corb at 3:29 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

Yeah, but I think that's because people on most general interest subreddits aren't that politically aware and aren't sensitive to what they post.

In the old days people used to quite often post cute Twitter threads on Metafilter, e.g. this from 2015, but that seems to have pretty much stopped already. I don't think MeFites need training wheels.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:44 AM on January 23

How would this work in practice - making a rule against linking to Twitter? There aren't any other sites we can't link to on MF, are there?

A person creates a post or comment with a twitter link. It gets flagged, and a mod deletes it? Or places a mod note reminding people of the rule? Or both? Then the mod has to deal with any fallout resulting, and prevent the thread getting derailed as we have a repeat of the conversation on this thread.

Or it's some kind of tech fix where links to Twitter don't work? And mods have to field repeated questions about why a link isn't working.

I'd prefer the mods to concentrate on the work they already have.

I prefer if people can link to whatever, other people can have opinions about wether the OP is a Nazi or not.


Boycotts work if they're organised by large groups with clear outcomes.

Individual people can do or not do things according to what they feel strongly about, and call others out for not sharing a strongly held belief.

We don't need a rule about this.
posted by Zumbador at 4:11 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

'Boycotts only work if lots of people are doing them' seems like a really weird justification for not taking part. Are people imagining that all successful boycotts started with lots of people already involved?
posted by Dysk at 4:41 AM on January 23 [9 favorites]

I think the only way this will really work is with a technical solution. I would support a fix that would kill all Twitter links, for all of the usual reasons. Please do not add another soft guideline that serve as another excuse for MeFites to attack each other over source quality. I don't think there's that much un-CW-ed Twitter linkage here at this point, in any case.

mittens' comment is so good, I am pasting the entire thing here, for the benefit of those who may have scrolled past it last time:

I would like to take this opportunity to make clear my opposition to the "Nazi bar" parable. If we were to take that story seriously, then sites like Metafilter would cease to exist, because there would be nothing left to link to. We see this in so many discussions: Can't quote the Guardian, can't quote the Times, can't quote the Post, can't quote from a Substack. Not to throw around the equally vacuous "no ethical consumption under capitalism" line, but all our media comes pre-compromised. All of it. It's all owned by billionaires, it all platforms the worst people on earth, and it's all we have, if we would like to have conversations online.

The critique, such that it is, is always one-sided. Someone will say "you shouldn't post that, it's from Twitter," but they do not share their complete media-consumption history, so you're never able to give them the same scrutiny they have given your post.

We need to be able to separate compromised platforms from compromised writing. If we want to ruthlessly scrutinize a particular argument, great, go forth and do so, it can make for enlightening conversation. But at this point in the twenty-first century, pointing to a platform and saying "it's owned by a fascist" is neither informative nor ethically useful.

I think this general topic is one that site leadership should take up down the road. Not Twitter, but the wholesale way we deal with terrible or disreputable sites. Right now, it's a bit of a free-for-all, and I think a consistent way forward would be useful.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:09 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

Are people imagining that all successful boycotts started with lots of people already involved?

No. I mean if you want to organise a boycott, go for it, and I'll probably help you. But individual people not doing something, or randomly adking other individual people not do do something, isn't a boycott.

A boycott means coming up with a specific, measurable goal, and a strategy for how to reach that goal. Figuring out a coherent message about the goal, probably different messages for different audiences and contexts, finding the best ways to broadcast those messages.

You're conflating two useful and valuable things and judging one as if it is the other.

Not doing a thing because it goes against your principles, whether or not this action has measurable consequences: useful and valuable!

Boycotting a thing / striking so that there are real world consequences: useful and valuable!

But the use and value of each is different.
posted by Zumbador at 5:11 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

I’m all for people boycotting Twitter. If my governments and other orgs weren’t using it as their official channel I would probably close my account and I don’t intend to post. Go ahead and boycott!

I don’t agree with continuing to drag MetaFilter into determining what’s morally pure. I’ll say again: Rupert Murdoch caused Brexit and MAGA. We don’t ban 20th Century Fox links from Fanfare. I do not think it’s a good idea to start making these decisions to limit a platform (not an individual writer or topic) because an ex-officio member of a right-wing populist government is trolling everyone. Shutting discussion down and turning thoughtful people against themselves for their media (the “medium is the message sense”) is what they want. Deplatforming the independent journalism that happens in Substack is what they want. Eliminating the possibility of the kind of organizing Twitter used to have also meets their goals. But regardless I just don’t think MetaFilter, at this stage in its development, should play the game at all. Moderate posts and comments and not platforms.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:16 AM on January 23 [5 favorites]

Not doing a thing because it goes against your principles, whether or not this action has measurable consequences: useful and valuable!

Boycotting a thing / striking so that there are real world consequences: useful and valuable!

The only difference is scale. Enough of the former becomes the latter.


The critique, such that it is, is always one-sided. Someone will say "you shouldn't post that, it's from Twitter," but they do not share their complete media-consumption history, so you're never able to give them the same scrutiny they have given your post.

This is a false equivalence - their posting history is just at public. They're not criticising your media consumption habits, but what you post. Attacking their consumption habits is a non-sequitur.
posted by Dysk at 5:17 AM on January 23 [4 favorites]

This is a false equivalence - their posting history is just at public. They're not criticising your media consumption habits, but what you post. Attacking their consumption habits is a non-sequitur.

I don't think this is true. Many, many MeFites past and current comment in posts as if they are standing on the highest of moral grounds, judging their fellow MeFites who use Bad Media. It's super-common here.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:29 AM on January 23 [4 favorites]

I don’t use twitter, but I am agnostic on whether there should be a ban. If there is a ban, it would be better if it was explicit, like you couldn’t post links to the site, rather than a ban listed on some policy page that no one looks at. If banning it was built into the new site, it might make sense to also ban hate sites as determined by some reputable source like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
posted by snofoam at 5:30 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

I don't think this is true. Many, many MeFites past and current comment in posts as if they are standing on the highest of moral grounds, judging their fellow MeFites who use Bad Media. It's super-common here.

If you're being asked not to read a particular thing, sure. But this is in response to requests not to link something here, which is different.
posted by Dysk at 5:45 AM on January 23

I have to say that the longer this thread has gone on, the more sympathetic I have become to the boycotters’ frame of mind.

That said, “there is a very small chance that I might unknowingly click on a Twitter link, thereby enriching by a fraction of a cent a Nazi worth hundreds of billions of dollars” is not a scenario that calls for a site-wide policy, let alone diverting scarce technical resources to it. If it happens, one is at liberty to contact the link-sharer by MeFi Mail to explain one’s objection.
posted by Lemkin at 6:26 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

It has been an entire month since anybody posted a link to either x.com or twitter.com on the front page.

I have just systematically checked this by repeatedly clicking "Older Posts" and searching the page source.

The last link was in this FPP which was a cute story about a meme from ten years earlier. It linked to this tweet in which the guy recreates the photo in the same spot.

People posting links to Twitter content does not appear to be a problem that we actually have. There are a lot of actual problems in the world. Please consider directing your energies into one of them.
posted by automatronic at 6:28 AM on January 23 [7 favorites]

But how come there ain’t no brothers up on the wall!
posted by Lemkin at 6:37 AM on January 23

It has been an entire month since anybody posted a link to either x.com or twitter.com on the front page.

Just as a data point, here's a comment on the Blue citing a Twitter thread with a link from earlier today.

I don't think there are many FPPs that use Twitter as a source these days (mostly because the site is increasingly difficult to use and full of dogshit content), but it does turn up in comments when people decide to link to some snarky commentary or whatever.
posted by fight or flight at 7:16 AM on January 23 [5 favorites]

What would we lose if we banned Twitter? FPP sources are varied enough that the loss of one source doesn't seem like it would have a serious effect. And driving Twitter page views down, which in turn makes advertisers think twice about supporting it, is a goal worth pursuing.
posted by tommasz at 7:39 AM on January 23 [4 favorites]

We don't have any mechanism for banning sites from being linked to. So we're talking about asking that the site's resources be spent on having staff implementing, maintaining and enforcing that banning feature, all to solve a problem that seems to be completely insignificant, for a purported benefit ("driving Twitter page views down") that will be equally insignificant because MeFi is not driving any significant traffic to anywhere.

The only thing this is going to drive down is MeFi's limited resources, all of which could be better spent on things that are actually productive. Like attracting new users to this site, rather than telling people off for using other ones.
posted by automatronic at 7:53 AM on January 23 [9 favorites]

We already have an unspoken rule about not linking directly to the Guardian/NYT/WaPo etc without a warning or alternative means of accessing the same content. "Don't link to hateful websites" is in the guidelines. I don't really see how suggesting that people who post Twitter links find an alternative source or means to convey the same content is that different. Even on Reddit it's not an actual ban of Twitter content, since many subreddits are still allowing screenshots from Twitter, just as long as it's not a direct link.

Though to be honest for me it's less of an actual issue and more of a line in the sand I assumed most people on this site would be happy to not cross. Less "grar grar never link this" and more "hey, this site is shitty and owned by shitty people, let's collectively agree to find some other way to do things". I'm pretty surprised at the amount of concentrated pushback going on, especially from site users I kind of assumed would be on the side of "how about we minimise Nazi-affiliated content in our community", which (imo) is what's essentially being asked.

Feels a little like perfect is once again the enemy of good. But so it goes on the grey, I guess.
posted by fight or flight at 8:14 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty surprised at the amount of concentrated pushback going on

This seems an elaborate way of saying “many people disagree with me”.
posted by Lemkin at 8:53 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

The only thing this is going to drive down is MeFi's limited resources, all of which could be better spent on things that are actually productive. Like attracting new users to this site, rather than telling people off for using other ones.

My assumption was that the latter is such an ingrained part of site culture that it was unreasonble to think that it wouldn't happen. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:56 AM on January 23

Yes? I'm not disputing that. Are we supposed to only say things on here that everyone agrees with? Isn't this the subsite for arguments, or is that down the hall?

It's just, I don't know. Of all the requests lately, I just didn't expect this to be the one where a bunch of Mefites would dig in their heels in the name of the status quo. Judging by this post Twitter seems to be both important enough to require protection from censorship and somehow simultaneously unimportant enough that hardly anyone uses it, so who cares. It strikes me as weird to see on a site I've always relied on to care very strongly for doing The Right Thing.
posted by fight or flight at 9:02 AM on January 23 [6 favorites]

but on the other hand there is the "Nazi bar" argument.

All of a sudden Bertolt Brecht and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny came to mind. But who wants to sing Oh, tell me the way to the next Nazi bar? Not I.

Life is so sad these days.
posted by y2karl at 9:13 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

We already have an unspoken rule about not linking directly to the Guardian/NYT/WaPo etc without a warning or alternative means of accessing the same content. "Don't link to hateful websites" is in the guidelines.

Right, and in the user survey we did it came through loud and clear that people frequently choose not to post or comment on the site -- or start posting and commenting and give up and hit the back button on their browser -- because they feel pre-judged for what they will say or accidentally link to despite being in general agreement with the principles of the site. And they don't feel like they can track from month to month what the "okay" things are vs. the "not okay" things.

Those "unspoken rules" are pretty difficult to navigate. Especially if you aren't a Very Online person, etc. Also hard to measure in results because the results rest way more in the Things People Aren't Doing for several reasons, than visible on the site in terms of people aggressively posting only links to those sites. I agree that if we are going to ban Twitter, make it impossible, but really I just think we need to take a pause on trying to make MetaFilter, The Community/Entity a part of that kind of boycotting.

I'm completely good with moderating the content here for its content - that's where the values are. But the boycott end to me is like...it's a tool we can leave in the toolkit for the site, and still post articles about why as individuals we can consider the same.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:46 AM on January 23 [11 favorites]

We already have an unspoken rule about not linking directly to the Guardian/NYT/WaPo [...]

That is very incorrect. There is a specific advisory about not linking to the Guardian's poor coverage of trans content, there is no rule about not linking to NY Times or Washington Post. You're mistaken because, since the NYT and the Post (and maybe Guardian too?) often require subscriptions to read full articles, people posting will often include Archive links along with the article for folks without subscriptions.

Also, I hate to say I was ahead of the curve on this but I WAS TOTALLY AHEAD OF THE CURVE WHERE'S MY COOKIE

The best solution is a technical one that keeps the information for us but avoids sending traffic to Twitter, and in fact now that the site is undergoing repairs this is actually the time to make this happen. Xcancel.com is a solution that works right now. Just as the site automatically stops someone from posting slurs, if someone makes a post or a comment with a Tw****r link in the text, the site should either stop them and offer them a chance to revise using xcancel.com, or it can automatically convert the link to xcancel when posting.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:53 AM on January 23 [3 favorites]

Nothing in my life has turned me against the NYTimes like the repeated observations here of their various wrongdoings. If we banned that website we might be one step closer to moral purity (but not there) and I would not have years of comments in my head pointing out the flaws of the Gray Lady.
Part of the value of Metafilter to me is the relentless observations of the gap between where we are and where we should be, if we are forbidden from discussing where we are then that productive discussion is lost.
posted by Vatnesine at 10:55 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

I just didn't expect this to be the one where a bunch of Mefites would dig in their heels in the name of the status quo

The status quo as I see it is:

• Elon Musk is a fascist.
• Users are already leaving Twitter in droves, in favour of Bluesky, Mastodon and other places.
• People are already not linking to Twitter much (both for protest reasons, and because of lack of good content).
• The already-low rate of Twitter links here will continue to decline as more users leave the platform.
• We don't have a mechanism to ban linking to specific sites, and would have to expend resources to build one.
• We seem to do just fine without specific bans on linking much more shitty sites (Stormfront, 4chan, KF).

I am certainly not "digging in my heels" to maintain that status quo; I just don't see it as an immediate priority to change it. I do also think that there are still legitimate reasons to link to content on Twitter, including:

• A lot of good content that was posted there long before Musk took over, which doesn't exist elsewhere.
• Some good content that is still being posted there even now.
• A lot of evidence that remains relevant, including tweets posted by many public figures going back many years, and a great deal of photos and videos of police actions, protests, and other historic events.

There will be times when people judge that the benefits of linking relevant content from Twitter into a discussion outweigh the negligible marginal benefit of that action to Elon Musk. That's a judgement call that I think should be made on a case-by-case basis; I don't think it's wise to make a blanket decision.

It strikes me as weird to see on a site I've always relied on to care very strongly for doing The Right Thing.

Doing the Right Thing includes making the right strategic choices about how to use finite resources (which include time, money, attention and goodwill).

I am objecting to MeFi spending those resources on implementing a ban on Twitter links, because:

• I do not think that action will have any meaningful effect on Elon Musk, or fascists in general.
• There are still legitimate reasons to link to content on Twitter which doesn't exist elsewhere.
• Adding more rules here has unwanted side effects on discouraging user participation.
• All of the resources that would be used doing this are better spent elsewhere.

You evidently disagree with me about that analysis, and that's fine.

But I am very, very tired with folks taking disagreements like this, which are purely about priorities and strategy, and using them to imply that the people disagreeing with them must be secretly pro-fascist. Lay off with that crap.
posted by automatronic at 10:58 AM on January 23 [15 favorites]

Cool, thanks for putting words in my mouth. Another productive MetaTalk everyone. This definitely isn't the kind of thing driving existing long term users off the site in droves. But hey, we're attracting all those fun new users instead! Job done! Peace, y'all.
posted by fight or flight at 11:05 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

As best I can tell, what the clamorers are clamoring for is to reduce the near-zero amount of Twitter content on MetaFilter to actual zero.

Leaving aside for the sake of argument the practicalities involved, what specific benefit for MetaFilter is this expected to produce?
posted by Lemkin at 11:33 AM on January 23

That is very incorrect. There is a specific advisory about not linking to the Guardian's poor coverage of trans content, there is no rule about not linking to NY Times or Washington Post.

No specific advisory, but posts that link to the NYT or WaPo frequently get dismissive or snarky comments about why they are worthless sources, etc. It may not be the worst thing in the world, but it does feel like yet one more thing why you may not make that post about something.
posted by PussKillian at 11:40 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

So, I mean, to me this is squarely a pile of sand problem. Which is a thought experiment I heard awhile ago and can't remember the context for.

Basically, there's a person and their job is to take away one grain of sand from a pile, and then stop as soon as they take grain of sand that causes the collection of sand to not be a pile anymore. The problem is this, the border between "pile" and "not pile" is very fuzzy. For any individual point they stop at, if someone else came by the new comer could probably still say "it's still a pile, keep going." On the other hand, by the time a new person would agree that there's not a pile there, if they added another grain of sand, the new person would still say that it wasn't a pile yet, so they obviously went to far. BUT, and here's the thing, all throughout the time the person is working everyone's going to agree that they are in fact, working on removing a pile of sand. That's why calculus exists, because charting how something is changing direction is sometimes more useful than figuring out where it is at a particular moment.

So for me, the question here shouldn't be "at what point do we say that Twitter has stopped being what it used to be and started being an hateful website?", because there's never going to be a point that everyone agrees on. I think what we really should be asking is "can we say that twitter is clearly in the process of becoming a hateful website?", and to me the answer is pretty clearly yes. Like every policy decision the company has made in the last how ever many years has been to make it more friendly to white nationalists.

I don't know, I think it's perfectly fine to say "this is becoming something bad, I don't want to associate with it" before something is at whatever the line for officially bad is. It's fine for individuals to say that, and it's fine for communities to say that. All sorts of people and groups are saying that in this particular case: private and public individuals; folks on Reddit; universities in Germany; governments and civic organizations around the world. At this point nobody is going to be surprised if we (as a community) join in that in the way that makes sense for our community. And just like the loss of am individual grain of sand isn't going to make it not a pile, no individual or single organization's movement away from twitter is going to make it stop being a giant social network, but if enough people make those individual and collective choices, that will.

Yeah, we'll probably miss out on content, but like... that's the linear and finite nature of time. We're always going to miss out on content, the point is this way we're being intentional about what we're missing and why.

For me, the fix for folks being scared of breaking the rules here isn't to just reject all new rules. It's taking a look at how we react when people make those mistakes and demonstrating that we're the kind of community where grace is given. The system around community norms is already busted, regardless of if we allow linking to Twitter or not. I think establishing clear expectations about what is and isn't allowed, expectations that include how community members should react to breaches in norms, is going to go a long way toward fixing that.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:42 AM on January 23 [5 favorites]

what the clamorers are clamoring for

Okay, look: There is no clamoring here. Further, you and another user have the bulk of the comments in this thread, by far, and you are saying the same thing over and over. You've made your sympathies more than clear by now. If you cannot allow others to express their opinions, and if you have to repeat your own, then can you at least please try to be respectful about it?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:58 AM on January 23 [5 favorites]

I’ve been saying for years that Twitter is a garbage site and that the worst takes come from there; however, I am completely against banning links to it. I would like to think that Metafilter treats people like adults who are capable of choosing to click a link or not click.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:47 PM on January 23 [3 favorites]

So, I haven't read this thread. So apologies if this has already been mentioned. I am in different communities that are also discussing this same thing however, and one of the solutions that keeps coming up is that instead of linking to x directly, we link to screenshots of the tweet instead. This solves several problems, but the primary one is that people don't need to be logged in to see it. In addition, we're not sending any sort of traffic to the x platform and instead of signalling support for the platform, we're merely supporting a discussion around a specific piece of content.

Sure, it add some friction because creating a screenshot is harder than just pasting in a link, but it could be a good compromise.
posted by cgg at 12:51 PM on January 23 [4 favorites]

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick this thread is fucking vile.
Twitter is a nazi site now. It is owned by a Nazi, features nazis, and pushes a Nazi agenda.

This shouldn’t be a debate. This is an EASY FUCKING QUESTION. Quit the hand wringing and do the right thing.

“But we’re only little, our small number of views doesn’t matter”
Then it doesn’t matter if we ban links. Every page view is revenue (actual or social).

“Too many rules! It’s discouraging new users!”
If a new user is discouraged because they can’t link to the nazi site then good.
If there are too many rules making things cumbersome, fix the damned system!! But in the meantime STIP SUPPORTING NAZIS.
posted by coriolisdave at 1:05 PM on January 23 [10 favorites]

Technological compromises would definitely address some of the reasonable concerns expressed by some.

For instance, a screenshot or a pointer to Nitter would provide access to so-called "good content" that is still published on Twitter, while eliminating some or all of the monetary and other benefits that Twitter and its Nazi owner would get with a direct link to the property.

Anything that promotes the Nazi's properties monetarily enriches him and provides him with resources to continue spreading his Nazi ideology. For this same reason, I do think that SpaceX and Tesla links could be easily quarantined via mirror or screenshot — or banned outright — but I realize that this is probably a separate conversation, given how shiny rockets and electric cars are popular topics.

We all can and should do better about doing our part to fight the rising tide of Nazism worldwide, and there are relatively easy solutions to this particular problem that do not impact this online community in any real significant way — other than maybe disturbing the status quo for some.

However small we are, we can also do our part to express solidarity with others, by stating unequivocally that enough is enough, and that we have no obligation to amplify content that enriches and empowers Nazis.

Because if the Metafilter userbase cannot survive when we cannot access content that enriches and empowers Nazis, then what kind of community do we profess to have? Mainly, what kind of people are we? What kind of society are we accepting?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:15 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

So many left wing journalists have left Twitter for Bluesky recently, that it is becoming, like Substack an enclave of right wing edgelords.

I don't think we need to ban dubious websites, the fact that it is increasingly difficult for anyone to craft a good post from content found there really solves the problem automatically.

Also if Xitter was banned from Mefi, it would only be logical for the sake of consistency to also ban (or hide) every historical post which links to Twitter too, which would be quite an undertaking.
posted by Lanark at 1:18 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

it is becoming, like Substack an enclave of right wing edgelords

Heather Cox Richardson publishes on Substack.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:21 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

Holy smoke, Doris Kearns Goodwin on sub stack and X.

I would provide links but I'm out on the links playing snow golf and I don't want to Nazi to pop out on the links.
posted by clavdivs at 1:53 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

But I am very, very tired with folks taking disagreements like this, which are purely about priorities and strategy, and using them to imply that the people disagreeing with them must be secretly pro-fascist. Lay off with that crap.

"If you're not 100% right you're 100% wrong" has long been the guiding principle of MeFi discourse.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:30 PM on January 23 [3 favorites]

There aren't any other sites we can't link to on MF, are there?

Long ago, cortex mentioned stormfront as a site you can't link to. I don't know if that's enforced by the software that runs the site, or if it's up to a moderator to delete it, etc. But the general idea of a verboten site is not new.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 2:30 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

Some links about what's happening on Reddit:

• Reddit groups ban X links in protest at Musk arm gesture
• Reddit Users Boycott X Links After Elon Musk’s Gesture at Inaugural Event
• Reddit won’t interfere with users revolting against X with subreddit bans
• Hundreds of Subreddits Are Considering Banning All Links to X
• Reddit search for banning links to X
• Google News search

What most surprises me is this seems like a genuine grassroots movement. Folks on Reddit see one subreddit ban X links and ask "hey, why not my favorite sub too?"
posted by Nelson at 3:50 PM on January 23 [8 favorites]

Xcancel.com is a solution that works right now

“Use xcancel” is definitely the best guideline both for avoiding sending traffic straight to Twitter and for making the links fully functional for people who don’t want to make an account/log in. It has been my personal solution for viewing anything on Twitter… well, since they killed the other Nitter instances, which were my solution before that going back to when it became login-required.

It is, however, a fragile unapproved thing that goes down on its own from time to time and that Twitter presumably could take down (at least temporarily) on purpose whenever. In this case the small scale of MeFi may be a plus, though (unlike reddit we’re probably not going to be able to take it down).
posted by atoxyl at 3:52 PM on January 23

Hi, just dropping in to ask people to be kind to their fellow community members and refrain from making absolute judgements about others use of Twitter.

Currently there are not a lot of links to Twitter on the site, so there’s no major issues there.

Personally I think MeFi is best served as a platform for spreading ideas and knowledge as opposed to being the spear tip in a fight. Finding a few organizations or individuals to donate or direct people to is a better use of MeFi’s currently limited resources, IMO.

Does anyone have suggestions which organizations for this?
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:54 PM on January 23

Personally I think MeFi is best served as a platform for spreading ideas and knowledge as opposed to being the spear tip in a fight.

I am not interested in ideas from a Nazi site.

At this point metafilter would barely be on the spear at all, let alone the tip.
posted by coriolisdave at 6:01 PM on January 23 [9 favorites]

For me, if this is not something we can do, personally, I will button.
Not even out of malice. But the lack of moment on this, will continue to show me, this is not a site I can really trust.

Because between the beanplating of years of issues that POCs have had, to the recent argument here that we should be trying to lure Republicans back to the site to hear their side, it's just too much. I'll honestly miss this, but not enough to listen to beanplating about platforming Nazis.

Completely abusing edit to say: no, I'm not accusing everyone of using Twitter/arguing for it of being a fascist.
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 6:55 PM on January 23 [8 favorites]

At this point metafilter would barely be on the spear at all, let alone the tip.

metafilter is not our private Jai alai court, not a missle that can be purchased for 8 g.p. almost anywhere. gygax, thats half a pound of gold.
posted by clavdivs at 8:33 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

Ban it. This is not a difficult question.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:39 PM on January 23 [11 favorites]

Personally I think MeFi is best served as a platform for spreading ideas and knowledge as opposed to being the spear tip in a fight. Finding a few organizations or individuals to donate or direct people to is a better use of MeFi’s currently limited resources, IMO.

Whether or not you want to be in a fight, you are in one regardless.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:52 PM on January 23 [9 favorites]

beanplating about platforming Nazis

As Brandon made clear at the start of this thread, platforming hate has not been, is not, and never will be the issue.

The issue - if I understand you - is that you think MetaFilter not making site policy to prohibit Twitter links is tantamount to it supporting Nazism. On the evidence of this thread, it appears that this idea is not universally held.
posted by Lemkin at 9:42 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

Neither is your idea that it doesn't universally held. So it's just as false to say that "platforming hate has not been, is not, and never will be the issue."
posted by Dysk at 9:51 PM on January 23

One of the most powerful men in the world just made a nazi salute. Twice, just to be sure we saw him the first time. And we are debating whether we continue to engage with his website, which he specifically bought to be able to use as a fascist propaganda machine.

What am I missing?
posted by EarnestDeer at 12:55 AM on January 24 [16 favorites]

I literally cannot believe that this is a debate. If Metafilter truly cannot draw the lie at refraining from supporting Nazi businesses, what is the point of this project?

If nothing else, let your pride at not being Reddit guide you to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
posted by overglow at 1:36 AM on January 24 [5 favorites]

I cannot believe this is a debate either. It takes ten minutes for the staff:

- Send the mods a note that there's a policy against X links so they'll know what to do when things are flagged.
- Post an announcement.

DONE. NO CODING NEEDED. NO EXPENSE. The old links can stay but we could at least take a stand against future links.

THIS SHOULD NOT BE A QUESTION for a site with any moral stance at all.

Please don't let this turn into a 500-comment thread with several users deleting themselves and no final decision.
posted by mmoncur at 2:08 AM on January 24 [9 favorites]

Society is still figuring out in our new post-truth world how to process a Nazi salute behind a presidential podeum. Media fuels a public debate about whether or not what we all saw actually happened, and it questions whether or not it means what it would mean if it did.

In this context small individual grassroots groups are finding their courage to say, yes we saw it and we disavow it and will disassociate with it. The hosting media company clarifies that their communities are still allowed to not associate with Nazis, which is somehow, shockingly a newsworthy clarification at all. Online communities have the right to avoid associating with Nazis and their media platforms! Imagine!

The grassroots groups become a fledgling movement. A bonafide populist sentiment, not driven by the algorithms or bots, but by real individual people who are sickened by what's happening on social media.

Meanwhile Metafilter seems against taking any stance. Not because it is unclear about Nazis, but because it doubts the efficacy of grassroots movements. Strange.
posted by cotterpin at 2:29 AM on January 24 [5 favorites]

Meanwhile Metafilter seems against taking any stance.

We don't know what Metafilter thinks, we only know what a handful of people on this thread think. We don't even really know what the mods think, or the owners think.

For what it's worth, I also think it's wrong to link to Twitter. I don't click on Twitter links myself.
I don't think making a rule about it here will help. I don't think it's wrong for a person to call out another person about it, if it's done without derailing the conversation.

There's a tendency to black and white thinking going on in this thread - if you're not with us, you're against us. I don't think that is helpful.
posted by Zumbador at 2:49 AM on January 24 [5 favorites]

We don't know what Metafilter thinks, we only know what a handful of people on this thread think. We don't even really know what the mods think, or the owners think.

I'm uncomfortable with the site unilaterally deciding what media platform its members should have access to. But I do sleep ok knowing that links to specific posts on any platform that are condoning or encouraging Nazis would be heavily flagged and then removed. That's a good point about MetaFilter and no one can mistake the site as a supporter of Nazis

Rhaomi, President of the MetaFilter Community Foundation, did suggest a decent compromise.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:13 AM on January 24 [8 favorites]

I'm uncomfortable with the site unilaterally deciding what media platform its members should have access to

It wouldn't be? First off, with the community ownership and governance that we already have and are getting, this would be the community making decisions for itself, and not about what anyone has access to, but what they can post on metafilter. If we institute a total, no-exceptions ban, nobody would be being denied access to any media platform. Being banned from linking something on one specific site is not the same as being banned from reading it.

It would be much easier to have this argument in his faith if people could stick to discussing what's actually under consideration, not "metafilter making a unilateral decision about which platforms its members should have access to". That is so far removed from what's actually being discussed, so far removed from what's possible by making rules on this site.
posted by Dysk at 3:31 AM on January 24 [11 favorites]

(I have no idea how my phone turned good faith into his faith there)
posted by Dysk at 5:05 AM on January 24

IIRC, the slur filter was a bodge that was put together in a few days. It scans through the clear-text of posts and comments, and if it detects certain words it gives the user a prompt to revise. With that in place, it does not seem like a large technical burden to add the text strings “x.com” and “Twitter.com” to the filter. If those URLs are detected, prompt the user to try Xcancel (or link to the list of Nitter instances).

Now, this would have edge cases because it would catch any URL ending in “x.com”, for example just off the top of the dome I know goodrx.com exists. So maybe that filter is not as simple as it sounds.

@Rhoami and the rest of the board: If kirkarcha is busy and frimble currently out on medical, would this be an opportunity to solicit volunteer assistance?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:23 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Now, this would have edge cases because it would catch any URL ending in “x.com”

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, this isn't really my area, but couldn't you set filters for ".x.com" and "/x.com" instead, and catch far fewer false positives?
posted by Dysk at 5:30 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Maybe? I claim zero technical expertise and to be clear, I was not attempting to advance myself as the volunteer who could accomplish this work.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:41 AM on January 24

I don't follow Twitter links because I can't predict whether I will be allowed to see the post or Elon will tell me that I have to sign in first. It's not always the same -- and as often as not, the other posts shown to me were right wing trash, so why bother getting that stuck to my shoes?

Twitter lives and dies by ads. Deny them that nourishment. Don't go there.

How is this unclear? IT'S NAZIS.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:01 AM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Sometimes you have to take a stand

You won't profit from it, it might even kill you, but not taking a stand simply kills you in a worse way

This Twitter thing should be easy
posted by ginger.beef at 6:25 AM on January 24 [6 favorites]

Without taking a strong stand in either direction on the question at hand, I hope the mods and anyone with programming knowledge will forgive me if this is unworkable to the point of being a stupid suggestion, but aren't there already a couple of bits of code in place that could be re-purposed?

For a soft-ban, there's already a check when you post an FPP to see if a link has been posted in an FPP before. Would it be difficult to add the twitter or x domains to the watch-list manually? Or probably better, copy out that code again and replace the watch-list variable with one that just includes twitter/x, so it could be a separate flag for the poster: Your post includes a link to the X site. Metafilter strongly discourages links to X. Please consider whether the information in this post is so important it merits a link to this site or if the content you are trying to post might be available somewhere else." (or whatever.).

For a harder ban: Doesn't metafilter code already auto-edit all amazon links? Could that code be re-purposed for editing twitter links, including editing them out of existence? Just changing the link to a metafilter "we don't link to twitter" info page or something?

Again, my intention is to suggest some work-arounds to the problem of how much staff time this would eat up. If these are just not things that can be re-purposed easily in this way and I sound like a complete dumbass, please grant me some grace that my dumbassery was well-intention and I really was not trying to mansplain things to metafilter's programmers, who, I am aware, know way more than I do.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:29 AM on January 24

Sometimes you have to take a stand

If stand-taking is the issue, then let’s not pussyfoot around.

Amend the posting/commenting guidelines to say “MetaFilter does not platform hatemongers. Links to Twitter-hosted content are not permitted.”

Violations will be flagged and mods can deal with them as they come in.
posted by Lemkin at 7:17 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

I've read the whole thread. I've let it marinate. I want to add my voice to the "no official ban" side, mostly for practical reasons. To be clear, I have already banned twitter from my personal internet, as I don't see any value in using a tool owned by a fascist being consciously used for fascist purposes. It's just -- that's also true of Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok has been making mewling noises toward Trump too. The problem is not Twitter per se, it's social media, and specifically wealth and power concentrating in just a couple of large, evil platforms. As noted by others above, there's a pretty compelling argument to be made that anything owned by Jeff Bezos is among them. I don't know if it still does, but Metafilter at least used to append an affiliate link to Amazon URLs. In other words, the tendrils of evil are deep into the infrastructure of the web in a way that is probably impossible to avoid completely. I don't see how you could outright ban Twitter without banning Facebook and Instagram, for instance, and who knows what else.

In times like these, it's community that sustains people. For Metafilter to be a community, we have to treat it like one -- people within it are going to have different lived realities. But we're all here because of something we share, and that's not a function of rules or site guidelines. It's a function of the people who are here, full stop. The rules and guidelines are just ways to influence who stays and who leaves. There's a commonplace argument here from time to time: "Don't write off everyone in Texas / Red State just because the government is bad". Twitter is kind of like a Texas or Mississippi of the internet: I'm not ever going to go there on purpose, and I'm definitely not going to live there or look for a job, but if someone from those places shares my values I'm not going to reject them as a friend or ally either. Of course it's not a perfect analogy. But I think it's a useful one.
posted by dbx at 8:19 AM on January 24 [7 favorites]

I've also read all the arguments and I get all the "it's for show" and "Mefites are grown up enough to decide what they read" but in the end I'm in favor of the ban. But I don't think it needs to be a tech ban. As we used to say "Flag it and move on".
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:22 AM on January 24 [6 favorites]

I think that a lot of people have some somewhat distorted opinions of what organising for social change is, and how it compares to, for instance, an action taken to curate our experience, or an action taken to demonstrate rectitude or purity.

A boycott - for instance there have been fairly recent examples in the anti-apartheid boycott of the 80s and 90s - is something on a massive enormous scale. It may very well be that an organised multiplatform boycott of Twitter is in the offing but it’s not something that I have necessarily heard of yet, perhaps the reasons that people would be interested in banning Twitter links for MetaFilter would be for reasons of quality of life here on the site or reasons of comfort or community feelings within the sites users.

A very large amount of useful content still exists on Twitter, for instance narratives from the global south including from people who are profoundly antithetical to the ethos of Elon Musk and his cronies.

A very large amount of news is still broken on Twitter.

Also, and this is more of a personal concern, there has been a little bit of nuanced discussion from users of sites like Twitter and Facebook about people leaving. It is a little bit of a strategic concern when we have not yet established non-social media ways of discovering each other and connecting across distance for community, friendship, or even organising, that we are all encouraged to leave sites like Facebook.

Obviously, we want to have some operational security when communicating on these sites, and it is an enormously fucking good thing that sites like MetaFilter exist that are old school pre-Webb to pre-algorithm platforms.

Also, and this is personal, I have no choice whatsoever but to use Twitter for hours every day as I tweet for brands for a living. Disability gives me no other choice. I’m a worker, too, and I don’t have the luxury and safety to seek work that is more in line with my ethics. Anyone who sniffs at that is someone I need to get away from FAST, lest I say something unkind.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 8:42 AM on January 24 [4 favorites]

(If there IS a coherent boycott at scale , then the calculus changes and it may be worth considering here.)
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 8:43 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

The Last Sockpuppet, that's what I was trying to get at with my comments about boycotts. Maybe because I'm South African, a boycott to me doesn't mean individuals not doing a thing. It's a specific, targeted campaign. Grassroots campaign, even!
posted by Zumbador at 8:52 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

A boycott - for instance there have been fairly recent examples in the anti-apartheid boycott of the 80s and 90s - is something on a massive enormous scale.

Yes, but it didn't start with everyone agreeing to boycott at once. First it was done people and groups. Then more, and more, and eventually it became a big thing. It started with Liberal Women taking a stance for themselves, then students unions and councils banning South African fruit and cigarettes - it started with isolated initiatives. The academics, the sports, the more widespread refusal to have SA products came later, joining an already existent but small movement. You're trying to insist we run without walking or crawling first. And even then, it's not like it would be us against the world. There are others doing the same right now, having the same conversations right now. A movement dies if nobody joins it. It grows if people do. We can be those people, we are those people, and we can choose whether we try to contribute to its success, or to its failure.
posted by Dysk at 9:24 AM on January 24 [6 favorites]

So, yes, I agree that it's impossible these days to completely avoid using infrastructure owned/controlled by fascists. But I think it's strange that this reality is then used to argue that we therefore should not make any attempt as a community to do some form of harm reduction. It's like saying, "Microplastics are everywhere so therefore I'm going to guzzle right from this old, leaky hose and also serve that water at my party in a big blue punch bowl."

Also, when does a potential proto-boycott reach the level of being a true boycott? Who gets to decide when that threshold is reached? And how does a proto-boycott grow larger if communities who are aligned with its values and goals refuse to join because umm not enough people have already joined?

Look, there is already significant media reporting on the growing number of subreddits who have banned links to X.com as already linked in this thread. Who decides when that counts as a grassroots campaign? Would Metafilter, an old and storied web institution, joining in the umm spreading tendency that may or may not count as an official political grassroots campaign make it more less likely for that momentum to grow?
posted by overglow at 9:25 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

Is the idea then that not only would links be banned, but there would be some publicity about that ban?
posted by mittens at 9:40 AM on January 24

On the MetaFilter end, if it becomes fairly usual practice for any forum to have a Twitter linking policy then I think it wouldn't have as much of an impact on posting and so I'd feel better about it.

On the larger question of boycotting, my personal belief is that fracturing Twitter's power and getting those on the left to leave social media in a self-censorship game of purity is a result beyond the right wing's wildest dreams, particularly in service of the rise towards fascism.

Like, I don't think Elon Musk thought of that when he bought it. But seeing everyone set up their own little walled gardens of Mastodon bliss while right wing activists continue to blast into the social media spaces and dictate the narrative makes me feel really awful. I'm still close enough to my mainstream media career to be incredibly suspicious of the idea that media is going to be able to surface the "important stuff." A fleeting thought I've had is maybe this is how you get a population that "didn't know" about the Holocaust.

it is really great for fascists that we no longer really have a spot where we can get immediate eyewitness results (and yes, fakery abounds too), achieve solidarity like the moments of #MeToo that happened, and tag our government accounts at the same time. This is one reason I'm starting to be a bit active on Bluesky; it seems like maybe that will be an alternative until we can find better ways to understand the importance of social media networks.*

When it comes to information sources and online discourse I think this knee jerk response is just playing into the idea that consumer action effective or is the same as political action. I think it's clear that Twitter isn't going to fail as a company. People are going to invest in it - that's Musk's specialty, but also, it just delivered DOGE.

I sympathize with the black and white thinking around a Twitter ban but I think it is just that - wishful, black and white thinking. I wish it would work. I don't think it will.

But if there's little risk to MetaFilter's long-term health in terms of presenting a coherent posting policy that isn't Byzantine, and hosting a wide variety of links to diverse viewpoints and having meaningful discussions then my position for here is, whatever.

* There's a tent set up in my neighbourhood and this morning there was an uproar about it on Facebook and there were people like "grr get a job" and other people jumped in so fast around the housing crisis and shelters, and then a shelter worker was tagged in and set up a wellness check...without Facebook I think the person who was upset about the tent would have called the police and it would have been a worse outcome. But trust me, That Guy would never be invited to a small happy place.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:51 AM on January 24 [9 favorites]

I'm going to push back a little on the idea that a boycott needs to be a lot of people, all at once, especially when it comes to social media. If we're talking about boycotting, say Amazon or brand of toothpaste or avocados or a braind of vodka, then any change on the part of the boycotted party (or harm to that party) requires a big group of people all at once.

But that's because I get my stuff from Amazon whether you do or not. My toothpaste will clean plaque off just as effectively if it is the most popular brand or if it's just me and three other people who use it. My avocado will be just as delicious and likely cheaper if you don't eat avocados. And my vodka-drinking will get me just as much credibility over in that alcohol FPP even if I'm the only one drinking that brand.

But social media are different. Social media are completely useless if I'm the only person there. All the benefits that social media users derive from social media come because and only if there are other users there. And guess what, it's a network! And you know what networks do? They expand possible connections exponentially, not arithmetically. Which means the relationship between the number of users and the benefits are non-linear: The more users there are, the more each additional user adds benefit. And the fewer users there are, the less benefit is derived from the existing users. That means that every person who stays off twitter doesn't just take money from Elon Musk (if they do), they also make twitter less fun and useful and interesting for the users who remain. And so some of those users, even if they are low-knowledge people who don't even know Elon Muks is a nazi, will wander off, not because they want to boycott twitter but just because "twitter sucks now." And then twitter will be less fun/informative/useful, which will make it suck for the users who remain. And some of THOSE users would wander off...etc. etc.

Now of course if a million users left that would have a greater effect than a thousand users, but I think even a relatively small reduction in twitter interactions and views can have an effect disproportionate to the proportion of the user base that the site loses.

This is not the same as boycotting a brand of toothpaste. You don't necessarily need huge numbers to make a difference.

Oh, and if you're thinking "yes, but the number of views lost when r/modeltrains bands twitter wouldn't even be enough to make twitter a little less fun/useful etc." remember that networks are not a homogeneous mass. What can be an infinitesimally tiny portion of twitter can be small but not tiny portion of "the miniature appreciation community" on twitter, or the "model-painting community" or the "Seattle model train community" or whatever. And for the people for whom those are primary twitter engagements, twitter will become less fun. And of course most of those people will also participate in other communities "the tilt-shift photography community" and when they wander off, that community will get less fun, etc. etc.

You don't need a big proportion of the whole thing. You can start by putting a dent in subcommunities, because nobody on social media experiences "the whole thing". Each person's social media experience consists at the intersection of denser clusters. Remove enough from those clusters that they're not so dense anymore and twitter may not change, but the twitter, as experienced by some subset of people, will absolutely change.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:06 AM on January 24 [5 favorites]

I think the network effects are a fair analysis in terms of traffic.

But I still think, when it comes to political activity and influence, it misses the mark on effectiveness. Because if all the little groups can't see the videos of police violence or Gaza or the #MeToo hashtag or whatever, they just...don't see it. Or they see it from one person and they're like, huh, that's interesting. I mean I was in essentially #MeToo communities for at least a decade and it was still nothing like those three days, watching how people from all walks of life - celebrities, people with a few followers - were on the same page for a bit there.

If Twitter only has half the people it had before, but nowhere else has the other half, then it's still going to be able to dominate the kind of influence social networks have had on political decision-making. (Unless social listening gets way better, which is a possibility but...I don't think it will happen so that all the little Seattle model train communities get taken into account) especially if nowhere else does.

Also, this comes back to posting ABOUT something rather than ON it, I really think it's not within my personal comfort level (to be clear, not talking about MetaFilter itself here) to not ever click on something that might be important to see. I wish I had watched more FOX News when I was unaware of just how toxic it was so I could have pointed it out to people in my sphere in that immediate way like 'you know that's not true right?'
posted by warriorqueen at 10:28 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

If there are mechanisms in place today to block twitter/x.com links I think the site should do that because Elon is a Nazi piece of shit and Metafilter shouldn't drive any amount of traffic to it, however small that might be.

People can post about Twitter or Twitter-related happenings without posting direct links from twitter.com.
posted by Diskeater at 10:56 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

. Because if all the little groups can't see the videos of police violence or Gaza or the #MeToo hashtag or whatever, they just...don't see it.

They won't see it anyway because a Nazi owns the algorithm.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:58 AM on January 24 [8 favorites]

I am mostly on twitter* for energy twitter and people have been drifting to blue sky for at least the last year, but the last 2-3 months has seen a lot of movement away, and the result is it's now largely useless. So not a boycott by some definitions but certainly shifting of the critical mass to denude the site and make it an ineffective source for anyone remaining. I can see this happening with my most used bit of twitter and think it will be happening for other areas of interest. Quite possibly the groups who leave will follow the political split.

(*I'm contractually obliged to maintain two accounts as part of the comms strategy for research projects, they'll be done soon.)
posted by biffa at 1:12 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

I'm very anti-ban something. I sometimes mistakenly think this is a form of censorship.I have seen more arguments for a boycott than a ban.
Xcancel I have seen other members switch over to, I don't like a ban because there may be some pertinent information on X that could be shared that does not show up anywhere else but I'm thinking that this type of situation is becoming more narrow and more unlikely unless it's like like a breaking story from Timothy Snyder or something and you're going to find that somewhere else anyways.

An overall take, I think members are acquiescing to this new trend of not using X for links or citations.

I was on the publications board and co-editor at University and a consultant to the university's newspaper.
I know, right.
I do not like to mix business and pleasure but I was asked on my third meeting, point blank, with everybody looking at me, my thoughts on censorship.

oddly my answer involved real Nazis.
The example of when my uncle was writing his book about being a p.o.w in Germany during the second World War. he hired a pretty famous editor and had me do a final editing and to examine the gallleys.
before publication, there was space, about a paragraph where he described his commanding officer, a United States colonel, who is a real son of a bitch to the enlisted guys but was a a famous Ace and he was ranking officer. one day the colonel is doing his rounds and confronts my uncle because his pants are torn and dirty.
uncle was from Chicago and didn't take s*** from anybody told him, sir, I'm lucky to have pants. oh, the colonel was pissed and asked his name and wrote it down with his serial number and when the colonel got back to the States he went into the office of a big wig at Pentagon with a list of hundreds of names, the infractions of US soldiers.
the general told him get the f*** out of his office.I told him to omit the story on the basis that we have to do further research to support this guy's short-sightedness and what does it add to the story, will it be received well as a lot of his peers view this guy as a hero in combat. it was omitted and I believe this is a case of self-censorship which I believe is the best policy concerning telling the story or using sources that are hard to back up or to inflame. Uncle didn't really like the idea but I told him, you were shot down, wounded, saw your best friend get killed, saw a few other people get killed, strafed by the RAF (FF) in Berlin, chased by dogs at two separate camps, shot at with machine guns, had your rations supplies taken and helped liberate a subcamp of ravensbruck, perhaps the colonel was doing what he thought was best for keeping order amongst his troops how irrational that may be.

after a moment he said, you know, I got to be more grateful, look what happened those guys that were imprisoned in Japan, we had it lucky.
posted by clavdivs at 1:28 PM on January 24 [4 favorites]

If Twitter only has half the people it had before, but nowhere else has the other half

Well yeah, but that's a big if. Aren't most of the other half on bluesky now?
posted by Dysk at 2:14 PM on January 24

I am in favor of a ban. I think this is an important stand for Metafilter to take. People want to belong to communities with consistent values. Sorry if it seems like "virtue signaling" to some, but I think it's the right thing to do, and not doing it is going to repel some of the site readership. I'm fine with asking commenters to remove X links and replace with Xcancel or Nitter. That doesn't seem burdensome to me.

For the record, I'd also be comfortable banning links to Facebook and Instagram. They might still have community value, and we might still need to use them in our lives but we don't need to be linking to them on Metafilter.
posted by daisystomper at 2:14 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]

do you want people making claims in their comments to cite their sources or not?

yes [me]
posted by HearHere at 3:28 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

I don't think MeFi should just ban links to a bunch of sites willy-nilly, but this seems like a genuine movement and a moment for taking a stand. Ban it. Allow Xcancel/Nitter. It's not hard.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:30 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]

Isn't MetaFilter's entire infrastructure hosted on AWS these days?
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:23 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

What does that have to do with blocking Twitter links?
posted by Diskeater at 6:30 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

If the MetaFilter community wants to take a group stand against fascism, i would like to gently suggest that "not paying fucktons of money every month to Jeff Bezos" is a better and more effective one to take than "not allowing people to link to Twitter in their comments".

Those of us who are discussing the Gaza genocide, for instance, and are getting information from people on the ground in Gaza? Are getting a lot of it from Twitter, because that is the platform that many Palestinians are still using. Is that changing? Yes! Is it changing fast enough that blocking all links to Twitter would be a nonissue for us to share info in genocide threads? No!

Elon is a fucking Nazi, the bulk of the remaining users on Twitter are brands and/or Nazis, and Twitter is absolutely worse than 4chan at this point (at least 4chan doesn't have advertising!) I don't disagree with any of that. But there are still whole communities, including in the Global South, using it for reasons that are not actually mine (or yours) to argue with, and i don't think a blanket ban makes sense for MetaFilter specifically.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:59 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]

For the record, I'd also be comfortable banning links to Facebook and Instagram. They might still have community value, and we might still need to use them in our lives but we don't need to be linking to them on Metafilter.

We don’t need to be linking to FB and Instagram on MetaFilter because they are even less useful than Twitter without logging in.
posted by atoxyl at 7:01 PM on January 24

at least 4chan doesn't have advertising

Can’t speak to now but I thought it did back in the day? I thought it was supported by rather seedy ads.
posted by atoxyl at 7:08 PM on January 24

The reason to ban Twitter links has nothing to do with the content or people being good or bad. It's the fact that every time someone clicks a twitter link, Elon Musk gets both his ego and his bank account funded.

So, I say we keep Twitter but every time someone links to it they have to send a thank you note and one dollar USD directly to Elon Musk. If people still want to link, they can link.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:12 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

The reason to ban Twitter links has nothing to do with the content or people being good or bad. It's the fact that every time someone clicks a twitter link, Elon Musk gets both his ego and his bank account funded.

And every time anyone visits MetaFilter, that's money in Jeff Bezos' pocket! (Rather more money than a logged-out user clicking a link gets Elon!)

Again, i think if MetaFilter as a community would like to take a stand against billionaires and fascists (but i repeat myself), migrating from AWS would be significantly more impactful.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:23 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Can’t speak to now but I thought it did back in the day? I thought it was supported by rather seedy ads.


Yeah, i guess it does have ads, but unlike Twitter they're blockable with an adblocker, and even if you're not using one (although please god do not visit any *chan without an adblocker!) they're significantly less intrusive than they have become on Twitter. You get an ad about every 5 tweets now.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:24 PM on January 24

billionaires and fascists

They're not the same thing though. Jeff Bezos is not exactly a lovely dude, but he isn't a literal Nazi.
posted by Dysk at 7:28 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

They are not the same thing at all and saying so just diminishes the specific awfulness of Musk's embrace of Nazism.
posted by Nelson at 7:29 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

lmao

Musk is extremely mask-off, and getting steadily more so. Don't let that lead you into making the mistake of thinking that any billionaire thinks of you as a human being.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:36 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Don't let that lead you into making the mistake of thinking that any billionaire thinks of you as a human being.

I don't, but thanks for the condescension. There is still a difference between that and being a literal Nazi.
posted by Dysk at 7:44 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]

i think if MetaFilter as a community would like to take a stand against billionaires and fascists (but i repeat myself), migrating from AWS would be significantly more impactful.

That's a great idea!

But it requires some technical work and some research and agreement about a better hosting situation.

While we're working on that, how about we put "It is Metafilter policy not to link to X.com" in the sidebar and consider a tiny bit of impact accomplished?

Also, Fun Fact:

- So far, Jeff Bezos has never posted the phrase "Bet you did nazi that coming" on a site owned by his company and read by millions of people
posted by mmoncur at 8:53 PM on January 24 [4 favorites]

If only I had a penguin...: "Doesn't metafilter code already auto-edit all amazon links? Could that code be re-purposed for editing twitter links, including editing them out of existence?"

This is a great point and probably something that can be repurposed (knock on wood). It doesn't look like there's consensus for hard-banning Twitter altogether, but it could at least be used to redirect Twitter links to an independent mirror like Nitter/XCancel. I'll ask frimble about this!
posted by Rhaomi at 8:58 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Yeah, i would be 100% fine with redirecting links to xcancel or another nitter instance. Twitter itself is an awful experience these days!
posted by adrienneleigh at 9:15 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Twitter links don't load consistently for me, for some reason, so just from a mere functionality standpoint I'd appreciate if people linked a publicly visible mirror, much as we do for paywalled sites.
posted by potrzebie at 10:16 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

The amount of pushback stemming from discussing not linking to a still (unfortunately) popular site, mostly filled with Nazis and other deplorables, run by AN ACTUAL NAZI ASSHOLE who gave the NAZI SALUTE, is astonishing to me. I had a possible middle-ground solution upthread and I take it back. Ban it. It shouldn't be this complicated.

I've been a member here since September 13, 2001. That is just shy of literally half my life. I love this site. And yet, as I've read through people complaining about the idea of banning Twitter/X links, I find myself strongly debating my continued support and engagement here if MetaFilter cannot make a stand against Elon Musk.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." (usually attributed falsely to Edmund Burke, it was actually John Stuart Mill, who said "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing".)

I keep thinking about how I used to think it was truly inconceivable to me that the Germans put Hitler into a position of power. I knew the facts. I knew the history. I just could not understand how people let it happen. After witnessing the last 8+ years, I no longer wonder how that was possible, because I've now witnessed it happening to the country south of me, and there's a fair amount of MAGA-esque support even up here in Canada. The new president of the US is following the German playbook from the late 1930s and we need to stand against bad people/evil/whatever you want to call it, whenever we can.

As a collective here, if all we can do is block links to a site filled with LITERAL NAZIS, run by the dude who presented as a LITERAL NAZI for millions to see, then we should just do it.

Also, while we're at it, while billionaires are not the same as fascist Nazis, IMHO, I would also enjoy seeing us migrate off of AWS to ... something else, though not Azure. However, I know that can be extremely difficult, so I'm much chiller about this, though I would hope this is eventually on someone's list of things to do. Also, as has been noted, Bezos hasn't stood at the inauguration of a president and GIVEN A NAZI SALUTE. TWICE.

It really shouldn't be this complicated. Do the right thing. Please.
posted by juliebug at 10:29 PM on January 24 [15 favorites]

Let's not be Kapos.
posted by brookeb at 11:23 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Redirecting to Nitter/XCancel also has the advantage of making the link readable by anyone (avoiding the issue of x.com randomly requiring a login). I think it's a good compromise.
posted by Lanark at 1:32 AM on January 25 [7 favorites]

If people don't have twitter accounts, or they do but just don't want to read a twitter link, the post probably won't get much engagement anyway. If it does, then it stands to reason there is enough interest in discussing it to warrant keeping twitter available, despite it being a catastrophic disaster.
posted by waving at 5:43 AM on January 25

So saying that I don't think it's a good idea to have a formal rule on this site that people should not link to Twitter, because I don't think it's a good use of resources, makes me a kapo? Really? OK wow.
posted by Zumbador at 5:54 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]

I'm gonna need to stop reading MeTa again for a while.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:01 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

If you believe there is symbolic value in banning totally innocuous content from people who set up accounts on what once was a general audience platform but is now owned by a guy who did a Nazi salute, that is something that might be addressed via a discussion here on MeTa.

If you think that the 650 million users still on that platform are all or even nearly all literal Nazis or at best Nazi sympathizers and that including, for instance a tweet from the NOAA in your MeFi post about a hurricane represents providing tangible, practical aid to Nazism, what you need is either a bunker or a therapist.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:19 AM on January 25 [6 favorites]

Hey, don't attack other members to make your point, please.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:31 AM on January 25 [5 favorites]

I know there has got to be some logic here that I'm missing. I wish I understood it. It's clearly not the content or users of Twitter itself that pose any problem, because the opinion appears to be that linking to that content or those users via another site is fine. There is talk of Musk profiting from ads, but I don't see how that rises to an ethical point rather than a technical point, because it's trivially easy to block twitter ads. One could suggest that clicking a twitter link is engagement and thus in aggregate something Musk could profit from by showing those numbers to his investors, but then the nitter/xcancel suggestion falls apart because the scraping those sites do, should appear as engagement to investors.

So I'm not following the logic. Is linking to twitter bad because it provides material support to Musk? Is linking to twitter bad because Musk is a Nazi and even if we don't provide material support, our links to his site are kinda poisoned by association? But if it's that second one, then why are the nitter solutions better? It's the same material drawn from the same site, why is the one degree of separation enough to un-poison the link? To use dysk's earlier analogy, if someone came up with a nitter for stormfront, we wouldn't use it here, it'd cause an outrage, not just because of the content of the post itself but because of its ultimate source.

I guess my core question is this: If Twitter is poison, then why is poison-at-one-remove okay?
posted by mittens at 6:36 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]

Hey, don't attack other members to make your point, please.

Unless you're talking about the person calling people Kapos, there is no attack intended.

But it is probably time for a reminder not to catastrophize to make a point, but simply to engage with the actual scale of the conversation. We all have big feelings about the state of the world in 2025, but it doesn't help us to slippery slope things to the degree that's happening here.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:40 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

This is a couple dozen nerds on a possibly dying all text group blog with maybe 500 active members deciding whether to allow a couple of links a month. There might be good reasons to go either way.

But if you find yourself streaking your cheeks with blood and practicing your warrior yell in a mighty fight to stop the Nazis, you might be processing some feelings this discussion cannot truly help you with.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:49 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

I've had it with MetaTalk. This is ridiculous. "Should we ban links to that Nazi's site" should not be both this contentious and end without resolution. I hope that MetaFilter is able to adopt other forms of gathering input and decision-making, not as a one-off, but standard tools and mechanisms. Likewise, I hope the site can move toward muting, blocking, and threaded comments. The lack of all of three harms the site and its users.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:56 AM on January 25 [5 favorites]

As Rhaomi mentioned, he's talking to frimble about implementing code we already havevto "redirect Twitter links to an independent mirror like Nitter/XCancel".

Just a note that action is being taken by your President!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:08 AM on January 25 [6 favorites]

Unless you're talking about the person calling people Kapos, there is no attack intended.

I'm going to go with implying other users have mental illness to be against the guidelines. So tired of the temperature in these threads, bye.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:41 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

If Twitter is poison, then why is poison-at-one-remove okay?

Scraping sites like Nitter will retrieve the content once via the API and cache it for quite a long time, serving hundreds or thousands of visitors.

So one possible downside is that this may not always return the latest data should the source be edited or deleted.
posted by Lanark at 9:45 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]

implying other users have mental illness

I explained in detail what I meant and it was not that.

I could stand to be more precise in my language, as the temperature here is indeed high, though. This sometimes happens when people accuse other people of enabling Nazis.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:50 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

what you need is either a bunker or a therapist.
[...]
"implying other users have mental illness"

I explained in detail what I meant and it was not that.


So what's the therapist for?
posted by Dysk at 10:09 AM on January 25

I checked. All my comments are still there.

If you're gonna try and stake out a position where telling someone they might want to talk through some feelings is calling someone crazy, I do not know how well that is gonna go for you here. Certainly, you'd want to nope out of the entirety of Ask.

I worded the first pass at my sentiments less than ideally, but I explained what I meant after a bit better. If I'm useful to you as a villain here, cool, but it's not hard to get what I was saying at all.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:19 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Musk is a terrible person, pronatalist, far right stooge, a liar, crypto-bro, drugged up billionaire oligarch mainly concerned with self enrichment, his websites enable far right extremism, and he definitely performed two Nazi salutes in front of millions in a wildly inappropriate venue, and then made Nazi jokes about it. The stuff he actually did and the nature of X is more than sufficient if you want to argue against linking to X.

He is also a giant troll, which makes me very skeptical about claims that he is an actual, literal Nazi. I don't think he is, enabling of actual Nazis notwithstanding. What's more "lets laugh at the stupid libs flailing about while they overreact to bullshit" is a far-right recruitment strategy, and calling him a Nazi plays into that. Acting upset about it is delicious liberal tears. I think it weakens the argument that he's terrible.

On the other hand, if I am mistaken in my skepticism, and he is a literal Nazi, this whole discussion seems like a ludicrous under-reaction. "What did you do in the war?" "Well, I advocated for banning links to [one of] Göring's website[s]."
posted by surlyben at 10:38 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

>>"implying other users have mental illness"

>I explained in detail what I meant and it was not that.

So what's the therapist for?

There are a large number of reasons to be in therapy other than being mentally ill. Grieving over the loss of your country is one of them.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:46 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

If you're gonna try and stake out a position where telling someone they might want to talk through some feelings is calling someone crazy

Nobody used the word crazy. Words to the effect of "you need a therapist" in a discussion about site policy is pretty far out of line.
posted by Dysk at 10:48 AM on January 25

I'm really not after anything more complicated than hoping people could ease up on hyperbole and modulate their hopes for what we might accomplish here.

It's hard being alive in 2025. This site policy discussion is unlikely to be a huge salve to that.

The available level of symbolic action available to us is a lot closer to "The Frame Barn will be open normal hours on 9/12/2001 because otherwise the terrorists win" than it is "lone brave man risks life by refusing to salute Hitler at rally."

If your level of investment here is multiple levels of magnitude above the former, nothing in this MeTa is really going to help there.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:57 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

He is also a giant troll, which makes me very skeptical about claims that he is an actual, literal Nazi. I don't think he is, enabling of actual Nazis notwithstanding.

Of the observations being shared here, this one is puzzling. I am not sure if your distinction really matters? We know what literal Nazis want to achieve and we know billionaires are among the leading causes for a resurgence of literal Nazism. I will not wait till the last second, squinting, to make sure it's a literal bus about to run me over.

To each their own, here is hoping we solve this as a community
posted by ginger.beef at 11:16 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Hey, just chiming in to say that everyone needs a hug these days and will need many more hugs in the years to come. So let's be kind to each other, even in our disagreements, as we're all pretty much on the same side. Hell if it was up to MetaFilter (imagine that!) , Musk and company would have been in jail a long time ago at the very least, so that speaks well of how much we have common.

No comments have been removed from this thread, but I would hope that people take care of their own health and remember that it's never great to say people who disagree with you belong in X play or need to go see Y. If the disagreement gets to be too heated, folks always have the option of disengaging for their and the community's health.

The next few years are gonna be a marathon y'all, so let's try and pace ourselves.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 11:26 AM on January 25 [5 favorites]

Finally, just want to say that having a therapist is fine. I have one, she's great and we're at the point where I check in every month or so. But I have gone weekly or more when necessary, when things are bad and it's been great. I highly encourage any and everyone to find a good therapist and don't be afraid to shop around for one who you match well with.

None of the above should be taken as me accusing anyone of anything in their views on therapy. I'm just passionate about the subject and truly believe that having a good therapist outside of your friends and family can be a real boon to one's mental health and life.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 11:29 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

makes me very skeptical about claims that he is an actual, literal Nazi

Would it ease your skepticism if he did the Nazi salute three times instead of two?

"What did you do in the war?" "Well, I advocated for banning links to [one of] Göring's website[s]."

"What did you do in the war?' "Well, I argued against banning links to [one of] Göring's website[s]."
posted by Diskeater at 11:32 AM on January 25 [8 favorites]

I know there has got to be some logic here that I'm missing...

I guess my core question is this: If Twitter is poison, then why is poison-at-one-remove okay?

There has a popular surge of online communities banning links to Twitter. Like any strategy, this is probably not a totally perfect, foolproof strategy! But joining in this momentum is a way to take a stand, to convey, "We are not okay with what Musk is doing. We are not okay with Nazi salutes. We will do what we can to oppose this and to boycott the business owned by the man doing Nazi salutes."

Hopefully, the momentum builds and more and more people both stop engaging with Twitter (and also stop using Twitter and start using alternatives like Bluesky). Metafilter joining this potential movement adds to that momentum and hopefully reduces the power, money, and influence that Twitter and Musk have.

Is this definitely going to work? No, of course not.

Is it better to do something that might have a chance at working or is it better to critique a course of action that many, many people are already doing because it's not 100% perfect? Only you can answer that one.

I think the at-one-remove thing is a nuanced approach to some of the complexities you're naming. Yes, many average people signed up to Twitter in the before times (I am one of those people, though I hardly ever posted). Yes, many interesting people and totally non-objectionable organizations are still using Twitter.

The solution of using Nitter addresses those concerns! Also to your point, about those scraping websites still counting as engagement, well, I see the single click from Nitter scraping as far preferable to the potentially many more clicks from an actual link to Twitter in a Metafilter post.

More broadly, I think it's ironic that folks are arguing "hey, this is pointless because Metafilter is so tiny and has such little impact." If you think it doesn't matter, why do you care enough to argue against it? If you think this is a purely symbolic act, why are you opposed to symbolically opposing Nazis?

I also am thinking about the logic of this compared to the logic of other boycotts, especially the Montgomery Bus Boycott. "Totally average people were riding the bus! They weren't all white supremacists or supporters of Jim Crow. Many other systems were also white supremacist, so isn't it illogical to only boycott one of them?! The bus system is useful and it will be inconvenient or downright challenging to not ride the bus! Some people can't actually participate in the boycott! Some totally okay people work as bus drivers."

All of those statements are basically true and yet I personally am glad that many people chose to join in that boycott anyway. I think it would have been a good thing to join in that boycott, if I were alive in that time and place. I think this is true even if the boycott hadn't been a success and I personally would rather join a potential boycott that fails than refrain from joining one because it might fail.
posted by overglow at 12:46 PM on January 25 [6 favorites]

Let's not be Kapos.

so, don't get caught?

what what is the rationale for this kind of statement.

historically, who would want to be a kapo because most of them were shot or gassed.
posted by clavdivs at 2:09 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]

"What did you do in the war?' "Well, I argued against banning links to [one of] Göring's website[s]."

I've made two posts in this thread. The gist of the first one is that a formal ban might be unnecessary because linking to X is already frowned upon, and in the second I say that the things Musk has actually done are good reasons to ban links to X. I don't think we should make up fake bullshit to justify such a ban, so needless to say I am not thrilled when the fake bullshit is about me.

How many Nazi salutes would it take to convince me that Musk is a Nazi? I could be convinced with zero. But the salutes in question and his responses look like trolling to me. He would not be the first to use Nazi imagery to troll (the punks of the 1970s are the main example that comes to mind; also teenagers). It matters because it dictates the response. Not kidding when I say that banning links to twitter is a comically small thing if Musk is an actual Nazi.
posted by surlyben at 2:19 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Acting upset about it is delicious liberal tears.

I feel like they get off on us arguing about it way more than being upset or "crying." *Is he a real Nazi? what was his intention? what about all the people who can't leave Twitter?* back and forth we go. Musk probably thinks the genuine well-meaning debates about censorship and the value of certain gestures are hilarious.

All the more reason to just ban X links and be done with it.
posted by daisystomper at 2:27 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

Even if it were true, why does “trolling” lessen the impact of an action? How does that make it better?

Frankly, we already ‘ban’ links to 4Chan and other troll-forward websites. At this point, twitter is basically real time 4Chan so…
posted by coriolisdave at 3:28 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

But the salutes in question and his responses look like trolling to me.

For the record, Elon literally spoke at an AfD rally in Germany today. The AfD are a far right party with links to neo-Nazi extremists. Elon called them the future of Germany.

So, you know, the question becomes how far does this man have to go? As a queer Jew on this site, the fact that there are still people (apparently smart, thoughtful people) on here willing to say he's "just trolling" has gone from eye rollingly weird to being genuinely disturbing. Like.. come on. Let's stop kidding around. Ban the fucking Nazi site already.
posted by fight or flight at 3:38 PM on January 25 [19 favorites]

Yeah, I don't see the point in arguing over the Exact Definition of Musk. He's a nazi who likes to troll because he thinks he's funnier and smarter than everyone. It's all part of the same gross package.
posted by mittens at 4:10 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

"For the record, Elon literally spoke at an AfD rally in Germany today. The AfD are a far right party with links to neo-Nazi extremists. Elon called them the future of Germany."

He also interviewed Alice Weidel the co-chair of the AfD on X recently. But his activities extend beyond Germany. Elon Musk believes he got Trump elected. Now he’s coming for Europe. That Al Jazeera article focuses on England and Germany. This article on Euractif shows his ambition now extends to Poland: Musk’s backing could sway Polish presidential elections.

This Slate update on Reddit's delinking from X is interesting: They Used to Love Elon Musk. Now They’re His Biggest Enemies Online.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:24 PM on January 25 [3 favorites]

Musk didn't just speak at the AfD event, he echoed neo-Nazi talking points.

"It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything," ... "children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents," "There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,"

posted by Nelson at 4:50 PM on January 25 [10 favorites]

If I thought Musk possessed a capacity for self-reflection, I would say he's projecting his own guilt about the apartheid origin of his family's money.

If.

But like I said back in November, I think some people just don't.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:32 PM on January 25

I was just thinking what it will be like to revisit this thread after Metafilter is forced to move to offshore servers due to the restrictions it places on free speech.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:48 AM on January 26

Twitter is owned by a nazi. If you are against bankrolling a nazi, don't allow links to there. This is not complicated.
posted by zymil at 6:55 AM on January 26 [3 favorites]

restrictions it places on free speech

No.
posted by Diskeater at 7:18 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Not kidding when I say that banning links to twitter is a comically small thing if Musk is an actual Nazi.

Are you implying that once twitter links are banned on Metafilter that everyone will just hang up a giant "mission accomplished" banner and go home? Cause look, a lot of time, when you're looking to build momentum on a project or build a sense of community, or learn a new skill, or gain confidence, or whatever, the first thing you do is some low effort tasks with visible results. That way you're starting from success. In theory this should be a relatively low effort task with visible results. All it takes is the mods throwing up a banner about it, and some posts on the sub-sites saying "Hey, no longer allow links to twitter on because of the statements and actions of its owner" and then enforce that. Or hell, redirect all twitter links and do the same. This is something that we (as a community owned and run website) have control over.

And then, we've made a positive step that visibly shows the sites values. Maybe the site takes further steps, or maybe members of the site feel more comfortable pushing back publicly about twitter and Musk, because they know they're not alone. Either way, Metafilter is a slightly better place, and one easy thing was done. I'm pretty sure everyone involved in pushing for this sees it as a starting point not THE THING that will fix EVERYTHING.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:38 AM on January 26 [4 favorites]

Ban it. The owner doing a Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration isn't petty internet drama. If hardly anyone posts it in the first place then it's easy. Someone posts a link to Twitter, a mod comes in and says hey we edited that out because we don't link to Twitter after the owner did a Nazi salute. There. Nobody got jumped on, nobody got yelled at, nobody got judged, they were just told information about the norms of the site and why they're the norms. Everyone in this thread agrees that it was a Nazi salute, so there's no issue there.

Honestly it doesn't make a lot of sense to spin this into some kind of massive tech thing or having to make a list of rules about it or whatever. Just tell people what's going on when it happens. Obviously that won't work for things that happen frequently or constantly, but it seems fine for this situation. This also allows leeway in case genuinely important information is only available on Twitter for some reason. A mod comes in, says hey we're leaving this link because it has life-or-death information that can't be found anywhere else right now.

That's what I think we should do when someone posts a Twitter link. Now I'll explain why I think it's a good idea to ban Twitter links.

I think limiting the reach of Twitter is a good thing. It used to be a normal website, now the owner encourages and rewards the users who spread hate and misinformation on it. Ad revenue sharing is how the hateful people make money. Musk has whined about advertisers leaving. Advertisers leave because the website is seen as a toxic cesspit of hate. The more Twitter is pushed out of society the less money its hateful users get. (I'm specifically talking about users who spread hate, not saying everyone on Twitter is hateful.)

Metafilter itself has seen what happens to their money situation when something fucks up their ad revenue. Metafilter alone isn't going to fuck up Twitter's ad revenue, but it can be part of the movement to fuck it up. An ocean is made out of water droplets and all that.

This does have an effect, also. Read this article. (Jan. 25, 2025)

The debt has been an albatross on the banks since they backed Musk’s $44 billion deal with around $13 billion in financing. The price Musk paid for Twitter was high, even at the time of his purchase, and the company’s rocky performance had knocked down the value. The deal is considered one of the worst that banks agreed to finance since the 2008 financial crisis.

To sell the debt, bankers will have to convince investors that the company’s financials have stabilized. Musk’s recent rise in power and alliance with President Trump have seemed to help change the narrative around X’s fortunes.

Investors have been reaching out to the banks and have indicated interest in buying the company’s debt because they believe that the company’s financials are on an upward trajectory, one of the people familiar said.

In a January email to staff, Musk pointed to the company’s growing influence and power, but said the finances remain problematic.

“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” he said in the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

However, Twitter losing revenue is not a guaranteed outcome that will happen without any action on anyone's part:

After Musk bought the social-media company, major advertisers fled and the company’s revenue plunged. However, the company’s financials have been steadily improving as some brands have started spending again on the platform, people familiar with the company said.

Musk in his staff email tipped his hat to the current rising fortunes of the company.

“Over the last few months, we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes,” Musk wrote. “We are also seeing other platforms begin to adopt our commitment to free speech and unbiased truth,” he added, in a seeming reference to Meta Platforms’ recent decision to roll back fact-checking and adopt a user-driven Community Notes system similar to the one on X.

To add more context about the Meta policy change that Musk is praising and taking credit for, it's changed to allow blatant hate speech.

The article said that Musk's alliance with hate groups and Trump is drawing advertisers and investors back. The site is still struggling finanically, though. Now is the time to show that Twitter is an unprofitable cesspit and that people reject its hateful principles.
posted by tsunpei at 7:39 AM on January 26 [21 favorites]

For people who say No to banning, and say This is pointless and/or hypocritical e.g. But her Bezos

Better ideas, you have, hmm?
posted by ginger.beef at 8:08 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Better ideas, you have, hmm?

Yes. People can just not link to Twitter.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:31 AM on January 26 [3 favorites]

Better ideas, you have, hmm?

Yes. People can just not link to Twitter.

This is the best outcome, right? More and more the desired one, in as much as it's a pro-nazi site: like, overtly. Upthread, a couple days ago, I said I didn't care but I've started to care.

It's niche, it won't matter, no one will really care, the company is just an outlet it isn't the embodiment of him etc. - sure, fine - then why not go ahead and ban it. Or do the re-direct thing, but honestly I think a de-platforming is the best.

The future looks grim, take steps where we can and this is one. We don't post links to Stormfront - is there really a difference no really now, it was one thing, now it is something else - is that what you want to be affiliated with?
posted by From Bklyn at 12:33 PM on January 26 [8 favorites]

I was on team eh. But I agree with warriorqueen, a nazi has bought the bar. Let's boycott.

I like tsunpei's examples of what the ban would look like in practice.
posted by freethefeet at 3:16 PM on January 26 [9 favorites]

>restrictions it places on free speech

No.

It's not me you have to convince. Take it up with the co-president.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:55 AM on January 27

I guess my core question is this: If Twitter is poison, then why is poison-at-one-remove okay?

There is potentially a contradiction there but it’s okay because “literally everything on Twitter is poison” is not a convincing argument. And the stronger “Twitter is poison” argument is that their algorithms push noxious content, which using a proxy site actually does alleviate. And it’s also consistent with general MeFi guidelines and practice to avoid linking things with a login wall - yeah, you can see individual tweets without an account but nothing else really works right. Really the only major downside is that such sites are inherently pretty ephemeral and unstable, and may become more so if Elon takes notice of the boycott trend.
posted by atoxyl at 12:31 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

I used to deal with hazardous substances for my day job and my answer to “why is poison at one remove ok” is that that is how you handle poisons safely! Sometimes people need to handle poison and there are thoughtful ways (e.g. proxy sites, half face respirators, special gloves, tongs, etc ) to do it that are not dangerous.
posted by Vatnesine at 1:29 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]

I just want to take a moment to say that, whatever comes from this, I appreciate those who have been taking the time to treat the issue of rising Nazism with the seriousness it deserves, and who are agreeing to or suggesting reasonable measures we can take to show solidarity and strength with others to make it clear that this is not okay, and that we do not need to just look the other way. Thank you.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:36 PM on January 27 [7 favorites]

A very large amount of useful content still exists on Twitter, for instance narratives from the global south including from people who are profoundly antithetical to the ethos of Elon Musk and his cronies.

Amen. There is so much antifascist information and organizing still happening on Twitter, and so much non-U.S. content and analysis being shared. Metafilter should absolutely not ban links to Twitter. People should choose to click Twitter links or not.
posted by catspajamas at 7:52 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Mod note: One comment and follow up removed for its graphic depiction of violence. Do not do that on this site, period, even if it’s a publicly reviled person.

The comment will be MeFiMailed to the poster and they are welcome to repost it without the violent parts. But if they repost with the violence still in, it will result in a timeout.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:09 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]

Mod note: After thinking it over, user given a one day ban, comment emailed to them with explanation of why it caused a temporary ban.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:23 AM on January 28

People should choose to click Twitter links or not.

Agreed. I think it's fine if we want to require people to signal (this is a Twitter link), but I think it's good to keep in mind that:
-There are instances in where Twitter is still a good place to find on-the-ground perspectives that are hard to find elsewhere. (i.e. Gaza)
-Musk does not make money off of Twitter.
-Musk does benefit from the attention he gets because of Twitter and certainly has power with regard to the algorithm. If an individual user puts in the work, this can be avoided using lists and whatnot. And a single click to an individual link to follow another users sources is not subjecting you the algorithm unless you choose to stay.
posted by coffeecat at 9:02 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]

I was pretty ambivalent about a MeFi Twitter ban because the volume of traffic we send there is apparently negligible but now I'm for it if only to spite the people here with 10-ton chips on their shoulders who sneer about Virtue Signalling. Sorry someone snarked at you ten years ago and you haven't gotten over it, it doesn't mean people who have principles and values are wrong or should feel embarrassed about wanting to see those principles and values realized in some tangible way, however small it might be.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:33 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]

Forgot to add I also don't like Nazi Bar analogy, too broadly applied, pat, calculated to give the reader a frisson, simultaneously overused but also an in-group signifier.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:37 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]

Hey, just here to casually mention that SNAP, Meals On Wheels et al are now defunded, shit is going south at a dizzyingly rapid pace, and that it is freaking me the fuck out, and Musk is a material part of this, and please god just block X.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:43 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]

1. Be freaked the fuck out.
2. BAN the direct links to twitter! Use the strongest language to do so! Be very upset about these links!
3. ???
4. Federal funding is restored to various necessary programs

I have every sympathy, I really do. But it will not work. We will need to think of something else to save the country.
Really we need a different mindset altogether. When conservatives thought they were losing the country they stormed the Capitol and made elaborate plans to seize power at every level, and to disenfranchise voters they didn’t like. They were just effective enough.

When we think we are losing the country we cry and turn on each other.
I’m not even identifying “us” as left / liberal / progressive, there’s some nuanced distinction there that I’ve never cared about but by god we will fight about which one we are and why the other two categories are wrong.

It’s depressing to be in the group that spontaneously creates circular firing squads under pressure, it really is. Get in a circle, sure. But fire OUT.

We cannot get out of this hell that we voted for (the national “we” this time, certainly none of us) by banning twitter links.
posted by Vatnesine at 4:19 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]

We cannot get out of this hell that we voted for (the national “we” this time, certainly none of us) by banning twitter links.

Not filling the coffers of the enemy camp seems like a simple enough prospect. But Metafilter as an entity does not appear ready to make that sacrifice.

And honestly, if a sacrifice this small raises such a fierce resistance from the community it seems unlikely that Metafilter as an entity is going to make any difference whatsoever in this fight.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:02 PM on January 28 [5 favorites]

And honestly, if a sacrifice this small raises such a fierce resistance from the community it seems unlikely that Metafilter as an entity is going to make any difference whatsoever in this fight.

Well, certainly not any positive impact.
posted by coriolisdave at 8:57 PM on January 28 [5 favorites]

And honestly, if a sacrifice this small raises such a fierce resistance from the community ...

change is a process: for a long time Twitter was a reliable, well-nigh-reasonable space. Now it is not, precipitously, but some vestiges of that reasonable-ness remain, and so lots of people are still trying to make it work.

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
posted by From Bklyn at 12:10 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]

We cannot get out of this hell that we voted for (the national “we” this time, certainly none of us) by banning twitter links.

Again, nobody thinks this will solve the problem. They think that it will be a small investment into harm reduction.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:47 AM on January 29 [7 favorites]

Well, if this community that I have been a part of for over 20 years cannot get its shit together enough to do the relatively simple action of banning links to a site run by a Nazi, it's time for me to take a break -- in terms of engagement and funding.

I'll be back in a month or so and we'll see if anyone's made any kind of decision by then. In the meantime, I'll take what I normally send MetaFilter and give it to a group that works hard against hate groups.

Be kind to one another and punch Nazis in the face. ✌️
posted by juliebug at 12:52 PM on January 29 [11 favorites]

Again: there is so much useful anti-Nazi, anti-racist information and organizing still happening on Twitter, much of it from non-U.S. people who aren't easily found on other sites. We can do better than a ban on all links (warnings would be ideal), and the site will be much poorer if a blanket ban is instituted. The Gaza-related threads over the past year would have been so much less useful if Mefi had banned all Twitter links, as folks have noted above. As it was, many participants in those threads were already linking Nitter (which didn't always work) and/or including a warning about a link to Twitter. Please don't make this your line in the sand, folks. The site already has a ban on linking Nazi content.
posted by catspajamas at 2:04 AM on January 30 [4 favorites]

As it was, many participants in those threads were already linking Nitter
If that was ok, and useful, and other alternatives exist (and they do) why would we not ban direct linking to twitter?

Then we get the best of both worlds! You get your genuine-nazi-free-nazi-hosted content without the nazi hosting bit profiting, and we get to not link directly to the nazi host!

Please don't encourage people to keep using a site that profits nazis, folks.
posted by coriolisdave at 4:09 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

Mod note:After thinking it over, user given a one day ban, comment emailed to them with explanation of why it caused a temporary ban.

Honestly Brandon, I think that was intended as a permanent ban but you heard from people. And one thing I know from personal experience is that you, Brandon Blatcher can read the MeMails of problem users such as me as they are being written and delete them and prevent them from being sent or seen. You have done it to me for a long time.

Other people have noticed and written to me about it via outside channels.

Which makes you the self crowned secret king off MetaFilter. Or perhaps one of many.

I know I have to had correspond with people here through Gmail or other offsite emails for some time. Because MeMails are an open book to you.

MeMails should be private user to user conversations. But they are not. And that is so not right.

How is this site going to function as a self-governing nonprofit community tainted with a secret kings?

Long answer same as short answer: it's not. Not as long as mods can read and deep six what should be private communications between individual members with stealth impunity. Mods reading and deleting MeMails should beyond the pale. Otherwise that means, to paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, is we are all in this together but some of us are more together than others. That is my humble opinion. We cannot all drink from such a poisoned well and see this place survive as self governing institution. Your mileage may vary but that's how I see it. MeMails should not be open books to the select few.
posted by y2karl at 6:31 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

Dude you've posted on a forum where it's accepted that the mods routinely delete posts they feel like deleting for 24 years, this cannot be a surprise to you
posted by Sebmojo at 7:32 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

I see that a lot of mefites have decided that sieg heiling is not nazi enough for them. This will definitely color my perception of this site from now on.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 9:08 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

Brandon Blatcher can read the MeMails of problem users such as me as they are being written and delete them and prevent them from being sent or seen.

They can do that but they can't post the goddamn BIPOC board minutes?
posted by Diskeater at 9:16 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]

Honestly Brandon, I think that was intended as a permanent ban but you heard from people. And one thing I know from personal experience is that you, Brandon Blatcher can read the MeMails of problem users such as me as they are being written and delete them and prevent them from being sent or seen. You have done it to me for a long time.

This is an extremely large and serious claim and requires a formal and public response from the mods, please.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:17 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Honestly Brandon, I think that was intended as a permanent ban but you heard from people. And one thing I know from personal experience is that you, Brandon Blatcher can read the MeMails of problem users such as me as they are being written and delete them and prevent them from being sent or seen. You have done it to me for a long time.

What you’re accusing me of isn’t even technically possible, so i’m not sure where you’re drawing your conclusions from.

None the less, your accusations are extremely serious, impossible though they may be. So I invite you to bring this matter up to the interim board (directly at [e-mail]), to other moderators via the Contact Us form and to the Moderation Oversight Committee, which is headed up by warriorqueen.

Please express your concerns to any or all of them and send them a link to the comment you wrote above and we can go from there.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:23 PM on January 30

Mod note: Closing this thread temporarily while I create a new and separate MetaThread to discuss these accusations. Again, this is temporary closure, so please pause your comments and give me like 10 minutes to set up a new thread.

Edited to add: new MeTa thread is about y2karl’s accusation, please shift all discussion of that subject to the new thread so this thread can return to its topic regarding linking to to Twitter from MetaFilter. This thread will be reopened once it’s clear that discussion on the accusation has shifted to the new thread. Thanks for your patience!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:30 PM on January 30

Mod note: Reopening thread as agreed with the mod team.
posted by loup (staff) at 9:22 AM on January 31

Hi, apologies for the late reopening of this thread, I was up all night doing other things, then slept in the morning and am finally getting up.

As to the subject of this thread (whether to ban Twitter links from MeFi) Rhaomi's suggestion about implementing code we already have to "redirect Twitter links to an independent mirror like Nitter/XCancel" is a good one IMO. It'll let MeFi be able to link to Twitter (which rarely happens these days), while avoiding giving Musk any web clicks.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:24 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

What are we waiting on for implementation of that compromise? As far as I can see we’ve a majority of people in this thread in favour of banning links or the compromise, so… what’re we waiting on?

Could we maybe have a decision made? Action taken?
posted by coriolisdave at 12:07 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Thank you Brandon and other moderators: that seems like a perfectly reasonable and rational compromise, and thank you for considering it.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:20 PM on January 31

coriolisdave: "What are we waiting on for implementation of that compromise? As far as I can see we’ve a majority of people in this thread in favour of banning links or the compromise, so… what’re we waiting on?"

I asked frimble about this last week; latest update:

I’m looking at how to redirect to XCancel without committing ourselves to a website that may or may not stick around and testing options WRT doing it at a different step than the Amazon redirect. It’s doable, but I want to make sure that it doesn’t, eg. make Trump posts with lots of twitter links time out on load.

It might be a question of whether to alter all links vs. just new links going forward; it would be nice to find+replace or redirect all links sitewide, but that's necessarily a heavier lift than just repurposing the existing Amazon code or something like it. We all definitely agree on this though and want to make it happen.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:39 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]

Thanks Rhoami.
An alternate option could be requiring the poster to generate the nitter link themselves.

This would have the dual benefit of:
1) an easier technical lift (just block all links, display a message “we don’t link directly to twitter fuck nazis. Pls use (tool / tool / tool) to generate a clean link”)
2) behaviour change

Bonus 3) actually shows Metafilter stands for something
posted by coriolisdave at 4:00 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]

Does the new policy also ban posting Twitter urls here that are not active hypertext links?
posted by catspajamas at 6:45 AM on February 1

That seems like trying to get around the point of this, in bad faith, so I'd hope so.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:21 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Hi, I’ve been at work all week. Hoo boy, does this all somehow seem familiar. Mind you, this was posted not long after Sandy Hook, and with the gift of hindsight, we have seen how badly that spun off the rails for the entire nation, still unresolved.

Slippery slope, know your enemy, original sources, etc, these concerns have not aged well and there may be a thing to be learned here by studying the past. There’s no upside to driving eyeballs to Nazis.
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:46 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Hoo boy, does this all somehow seem familiar.

Oh man, the very first comment has a word that sent me reeling: "FYI: Stormfront links do often get axed."
posted by mittens at 5:53 AM on February 2

Just a few comments down jessamyn chimed in: Usually by accident because they've done a hastygoogle of something and the site turned up and they didn't click around to see what was up. We usually drop people a quick note "Um, you may want to find another source for that link" and usually we'll swap it out. People who do it just to be aggro jerks will find those comments deleted pretty quickly.

I don't think there was a grey area about stormfront links in MeFi in 2013.. maybe infrequently included to illustrate a point? e.g. "no dudes, this is actually what those nazi assholes are saying"
posted by ginger.beef at 8:33 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

@Rhaomi re: frimble's comment -- It's not necessary to force MetaFilter to auto-convert a Twitter link to XCancel or a Nitter instance. Instead, just like the slur filter prevents anyone from posting or commenting with certain words, if a Twitter URL is detected in the content, return a message saying something to the effect of "MetaFilter has made the decision not to directly link to this site. Instead, please consider using XCancel [link] or another Nitter instance [link]. If those are unavailable, consider finding a different source, or link to screenshots of the Twitter thread if no other option exists."

If a user deliberately tries to circumvent this by using a link shortener or something, that's a reason for users to flag the comment and notify the mods.

And in case anyone's still on the fence about this, just to really drive the point home, yesterday Musk expanded a lawsuit claiming that advertisers deserting him makes an "uncompetitve action.". Depriving his site of traffic and advertising really actually hurts him, which is why he's making a literal federal case out of it. He knows there's a valuation coming for his purchase loans that he can't possibly cover, which is why he's trying to make the government do it for him.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:30 PM on February 2 [8 favorites]

Thank you.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:50 PM on February 2

At this point it's not about whether Musk's site still holds utility for some, it's not about whether an outright ban would be costless. It's about the cost of doing nothing.
posted by ginger.beef at 7:32 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]

if a Twitter URL is detected in the content, return a message saying something to the effect of "MetaFilter has made the decision not to directly link to this site. Instead, please consider using XCancel [link] or another Nitter instance [link]. If those are unavailable, consider finding a different source, or link to screenshots of the Twitter thread if no other option exists."

Yeah, that's by far the simplest solution. Easy to implement, clear, and catches Twitter links before they appear.
posted by catspajamas at 11:33 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]