At the end of 2023 will manifold users think Twitter has changed for the better?
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resolved Jan 9
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NO

This is intended to be part of a series of markets evaluating how Twitter is doing a bit over a year after ownership by Elon Musk.

At the end of 2023 after market close I will link a poll in the comments that asks Manifold users if Twitter has improved for the better. If the majority result is YES, this market resolves YES.


Post of related markets:
https://manifold.markets/post/evaluating-twitter-after-a-year-of

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Poll is up:

@SneakySly Poll has finished. Resolving!

predicted NO

How one reacts to Musk unbanning Alex Jones is a great indicator of how one might feel if Twitter has "changed for the better".

predicted YES

@Spice_N_Wolf also:

pro-America -> pro X

anti-America -> pro Twitter

respect for the masses -> pro X

hatred for the masses -> pro Twitter

pro freedom of speech -> pro X

pro censorship -> pro Twitter

predicted YES

I honestly think that community notes is so good that it outweighs everything else that happened in 2023.

predicted YES

@Rwin well, it got massively expanded to the world in 2023 so that's still improvement in my book

bought Ṁ60 of NO

The distribution of poll participants tends to be a lot more left-leaning than the distribution of commenters, and I expect the votes in this poll to mostly fall along party lines.

bought Ṁ100 NO at 14%
predicted YES

@adele oh, you're obviously right, forgot about this.

predicted NO

I will be voting no purely because Ezra Klein left.

bought Ṁ10 of NO

As someone who does not have a Twitter account and is not interested in getting one, Twitter is now much worse.

A year ago, I could read a blog that linked to a Twitter Thread, click on it, and then read through the whole thread and many replies with only a popup nagging me to join Twitter. Now I cannot. Half the time I'm able to see one directly linked tweet, but that is it. This loginwall has made Twitter far less useful to me, and it's even hurt my readership of other blogs like @ZviMowshowitz who frequently links to Twitter threads, almost all of which I can no longer read, so it's tough to know what he's talking about.

I will be voting NO.

@TiredCliche Yes, as far as I know, it is no longer possible to see more than one tweet without being logged in. I agree that is at least one change for the worse, and it is inconsistent at least with the spirit of what Elon has said about blocking.

predicted NO

@DavidBolin I really think that Twitter users- especially government figures with a duty to share info to the public- should no longer rely on Twitter to disseminate info to a wide audience. It used to be that I'd check my local police department or transit agency's recent tweets like every other day so I could know if there was anything wild or crazy going on, or public safety info I should know. Now this too is no longer possible. Maybe they should get a WordPress or Tumblr or something where nonusers can read it

predicted YES

I am excited for this market, I think X has ended up in very much a better place than it was before Elon took over. I do not have serious issues with bots anymore, and even though I just have a small account the amount and quality of interaction I have been getting on my posts has increased dramatically.

bought Ṁ250 YES from 17% to 24%
bought Ṁ250 of YES

@jim I agree

(Edit: our ads are super botted sometimes, and it’s not offsite bots like you get with google - where people try to increase their ad profits - it’s literally Twitter onsite bots lol)

(Edit2: still agree tho, I use Twitter much more than I did before, and not just for my job)

It is way better for me. "For you" actually works at picking out tweets that are interesting to me. And almost everyone that left after Musk purchased Twitter were annoying people (from my POV), which automatically made the site better.

2 traders bought Ṁ80 YES
predicted NO

“Go fuck yourself.” Elon Musk (November 29, 2023)

I’m interested in hearing the reasoning that people who vote yes on the survey have.

sold Ṁ58 of YES

@DanPowell Say what you will about Twitter-2023, but it undeniably has a year's worth of additional tweets on it, and they're informative about the events of the year 2023 in a way that Twitter-2022 was never able to achieve

predicted YES

@DanPowell For me it's way better. People say things that are actually controversial and where disagreement is meaningful and allowed. Pre-musk twitter, a huge percent of the time when someone says "X" and doesn't get banned, saying "!X or even giving reasons/evidence" was just not allowed.

Also a lot more people feel not as cancellable so there is a lot more serious debate.

Also, the social tech for how to provide and argue things has improved. Also AI art has improved a ton so lots more posts have interesting visualizations on them, same as on manifold.

predicted YES

@SneakySly yeah that doesn't look good. if that's the real state of things for everyone, seems not right?

technical question, do we know if hiding is scoped to source, or is stateless? if this account were marked as "trans, and aggressively anti-cis" it might lead to an outcome like this (i.e. since the filter evaluator would not be looking for "anti-trans" comments from them but would be looking for "anti-cis"). This is only an assumption/question, not an invalidation of the wrongness of the image if the background for it does turn out to be a true inequality in treatment

@Ernie I’ve seen multiple people post repros of this. We know Elon is very anti trans so don’t need anything crazy to explain this.

predicted YES

@SneakySly huh, yeah I don't like the inconsistency there. Seems like it should be symmetrical, and just not go on about hating whole groups either way

predicted NO

@Ernie Looks like it’s specific to cis and neither symmetrical nor consistent.

To be clear, I think all of those should have been censored.

predicted YES

@DanPowell I'd rather my social media networks not explicitly take a side in american culture wars

predicted YES

@DanPowell does "all trannies should be killed" or "all kikes should be killed" get a similar label? If yes then it's sorta defensible.

@Ernie I don't think the amount of censorship has changed, it's just switched from censoring both the extreme left and right to censoring the left more and not the right.

There are some positive changes though.

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