this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has had his account on X - formerly Twitter - reinstated by Elon Musk.

Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.

Around 70% of roughly two million respondents voted to lift the ban.

Jones is most notorious for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults died, was "staged".

He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.

top 44 comments
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[–] vitamin@infosec.pub 139 points 9 months ago

This asshole always uses a poll as a cover when he does something shitty. "I want nazi's back on the site but it will be unpopular.... better poll my alt-right nazi fans! Heh, heh. I'm so clever."

[–] brawleryukon@lemmy.world 108 points 9 months ago
[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 68 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-vote-elon-musk-quit-ceo-poll-rcna62332

A year ago next Monday, Musk asked "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll". The votes came in, 57.5% to resign, 42.5% to stay. If you're wondering how much he care about polls where he hasn't pre-ordained the outcome.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

He did step down... he hired a CEO to run day to day.

He was going to do it either way though

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Also, don't think that CEO doesn't do whatever the fuck he wants, it's a puppet

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Probably true, but it wasn't the best choice of example to use above against him.

Edit: misread comment about CEOs gender, you were referring to Elon so I removed the correction.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 months ago

He didn't hire a CEO though.

He hired a scapegoat with the title of CEO.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 9 months ago

Now is a good time to debate following the letter of the law vs the intent of the law.

[–] Cranakis@lemmy.one 66 points 9 months ago

"Let's see, how can I make it even shittier.....?" -Elon

[–] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 47 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Coincidence that he just also appeared as a guest on Tucker’s show for the first time ever? I think Alex is getting some kind of push somehow/somewhere to spew his bile back into the limelight.

[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 34 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I’m sure it’s for the 2024 election… the right is drumming up the crazies to get out and vote for the orange traitor.

[–] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Hmmm I wonder if we’ll see Trump guest on Infowars like he did for the 2016 election.

[–] Catma@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

I mean if it happens he is going to have to pay the Sandy Hook families the money he owes. Dude is still on the hook for a cool billion with 2 trials to go.

[–] Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 9 months ago

He's been getting a lot of love from Russia, and the GOP and Russia are best friends

[–] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 42 points 9 months ago

There we go. Now it's officially Truth Social as run by Elon Musk. He could have just bought the actual Truth Social for way less.

[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago

Freedom of hate speech

[–] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Good, now advertisers have even less reason to spend money on that platform

[–] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

He seems to be going all in on "fuck those who left, I don't need them" philosophy

[–] SatanClaws@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

On the one hand, it is sad to see what Twitter has become. On the other hand, it is a bit funny, as Truth Social is more likely to fail the more X takes on their userbase. Which is hurting Trump right in the wallet.

[–] EurekaStockade@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Twitter has always sucked and destroying it at his own expense is the one good thing Musk has done. He should buy Facebook next.

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I see we're still reporting on X as if it retained any kind of importance or significance. Quaint.

[–] jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

I appreciate the heads up that we're going to be hearing from Alex Jones again soon, regardless of who, exactly, has chosen to platform him again. This is awful. He's a hateful, horrible person, and I don't look forward to the conspiracy theories he's going to create again.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 3 points 9 months ago

Thank you. Tired of hearing about this clown, as if doing alt-right shit is novel. It's only newsworthy when he does something progressive by accident.

[–] bender223@lemmy.today 20 points 9 months ago

Smells like desperation 😤

[–] garibaldi_biscuit@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

Xcho chamber

[–] TrendigOsthyvel@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago

Just keep adding more water to the ship, please!

[–] schwim@reddthat.com 14 points 9 months ago

I love anything that further sinks the site.

[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Sometimes I scroll YouTube shorts when I'm bored, and there will always be at LEAST one Alex Jones short that pops up, despite my only engagement being to quickly downvote it and skip it. It drives me crazy

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 26 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Clicking on the short is engagement.

Downvoting is engagement.

Commenting how much you hate, disagree, or feel stupider for watching, is engagement.

Scrolling past the clip and entirely ignoring it, is not engagement.

So... Don't engage, and remember:

Being happy reduces engagement.

Being angry increases engagement.

The algorithm doesn't care how you feel, just how long it can keep your attention.

[–] Sharpiemarker@feddit.de 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The lack of engagement? Believe it or not, still engagement!

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago

Only for the engagement metrics used to set advertising prices and bill the ad buyers.

[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

From socialvideoplaza.com

You've probably heard the myth that dislikes are a form of engagement. And since engagement is the social currency in which YouTube videos are paid, it makes your video perform better in the YouTube rankings. If that information was true in the first place, it is outdated now.

[the dislike button] is used in the algorithm for a couple of things: It is a sign to the algorithm that it should suggest less videos of that creator to the viewer.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

As trustworthy a source as socialvideoplaza.com clearly is...

Google has a different take:

YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785?hl=en

Mozilla also disagrees, here's a link to their study and some below articles diving into it

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/

https://www.androidauthority.com/study-youtube-dislike-button-bad-recommendations-3210676/

A Mozilla study found that YouTube’s “dislike” button was ineffective against bad recommendations.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/09/20/youtube-dislike-recommendations-mozilla/

...those buttons do little to purge unwanted videos from the personalized recommendations that YouTube feeds to users, according to a study published Tuesday by Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser.

For example, using the “Not Interested” button only prevented 11% of recommendations for similar videos, Mozilla said. The “Dislike” button only stopped 12%. The most effective control is the “Don’t recommend this channel” button, which works less than half of the time at 43%.

So..it looks like affirmatively engaging with a video, even with a dislike, is engagement and is unlikely to change what types of content YT feeds you.

Now, from my anecdotal experience, the only way to remove, or reduce, unwanted content categories from your YT feed is a combination of flagging them as not interested AND searching/watching a new category of content to replace it with. Not perfect, but manageable. Oh, and using Piped/proxied services e.g. Newpipe.

[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world -3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I don't click on it, I have never watched more than 10% of one before scrolling past, I have never commented.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 9 points 9 months ago

quickly downvote it and skip it

He's saying that's the engagement.

[–] Dee@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have never watched more than 10%

You gave 10% engagement and voted with your downvote! Double engagement!

[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

From socialvideoplaza.com

You've probably heard the myth that dislikes are a form of engagement. And since engagement is the social currency in which YouTube videos are paid, it makes your video perform better in the YouTube rankings. If that information was true in the first place, it is outdated now.

[the dislike button] is used in the algorithm for a couple of things: It is a sign to the algorithm that it should suggest less videos of that creator to the viewer.

[–] Dee@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Also from socialvideoplaza.com

This site is not a part of the YouTube website or Alphabet. Additionally, this site is not endorsed by YouTube in any way.

Your random quote from a random website doesn't mean much against the experience of myself and others and how massively disliked videos still get tons of traffic. If you don't want to see certain content don't dislike, just keep moving and don't engage at all. My feed only improved after doing this, when I was disliking videos I kept getting the content I disliked. I didn't engage and now I don't see content I don't want to anymore.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

If you're going to keep posting this same factually incorrect comment, I'll keep posting my response:

As trustworthy a source as socialvideoplaza.com clearly is...

Google has a different take:

YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785?hl=en

Mozilla also disagrees, here's a link to their study and some below articles diving into it

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/

https://www.androidauthority.com/study-youtube-dislike-button-bad-recommendations-3210676/

A Mozilla study found that YouTube’s “dislike” button was ineffective against bad recommendations.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/09/20/youtube-dislike-recommendations-mozilla/

...those buttons do little to purge unwanted videos from the personalized recommendations that YouTube feeds to users, according to a study published Tuesday by Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser.

For example, using the “Not Interested” button only prevented 11% of recommendations for similar videos, Mozilla said. The “Dislike” button only stopped 12%. The most effective control is the “Don’t recommend this channel” button, which works less than half of the time at 43%.

So..it looks like affirmatively engaging with a video, even with a dislike, is engagement and is unlikely to change what types of content YT feeds you.

Now, from my anecdotal experience, the only way to remove, or reduce, unwanted content categories from your YT feed is a combination of flagging them as not interested AND searching/watching a new category of content to replace it with. Not perfect, but manageable. Oh, and using Piped/proxied services e.g. Newpipe.

[–] DannyMac@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I get random right and far right posts too.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.

He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.

After buying the platform in October 2022, tech billionaire Musk rejected calls from some of Jones's supporters to reinstate his account.

After Musk posted the poll, Jones shared a video online in which he called on his supporters to vote in favour of his ban being overturned.

Responding to one user on Saturday, Musk said he "vehemently" disagreed with Jones's statements about Sandy Hook, adding: "but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?"

Last month he accused major advertisers of trying to "blackmail" him when they boycotted X over concerns about antisemitic content shared on the site - including a post by Musk himself, which he later apologised for.


The original article contains 390 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)