Paul Matzko

Elon opened the doors of content moderation jail and flooded this platform with vile idiots whose hate he actively promotes. I've deleted this app on my phone although I'll maintain my account for DMs. Find me on Threads at the same handle where I'll be more active.

@AlecStapp Anyways, I could go on -- as if "clickbait" is categorically different than "yellow journalism" etc -- but the point is that this chart doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny. And it was created in service of a flawed argument that boils down to the Simpson's could meme.

@AlecStapp Or consider video, where it marks dopamine culture as reels of short videos, as if the origins of the movie industry wasn't literal nickelodeons, hundreds of thousands of which lined boardwalks and entertainment venues all over this country in the early 20th century.

thinking about this again

@deanwball @mkratsios47 I'm happy for you, and I'd prefer you in that role over many others, but please use whatever internal influence you have to discourage the White House from using AI to implement its various fascist and authoritarian policies.

I am happy to announce that I have joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a Senior Policy Advisor on AI and Emerging Technology. It is a thrill and honor to serve my country in this role and work alongside the tremendous team @mkratsios47 has built.

@micsolana @DKThomp How about this: on a per dollar basis, public health aid is a remarkable investment in American soft power. This was a given reason for the creation of USAID and other post-WW2 aid programs, to generate affective bonds that advanced US interests in the middle of the Cold War.

@DKThomp a focus on american interest

The tragedy here has levels. It's not just that the U.S. has terminated congressionally mandated USAID contracts covering all of our global tuberculosis programs, all supplies of emergency food packets around the world, and malaria supplies for 50 million ppl. It's also folks in the comments—many of whom are already paying the lowest effective federal tax rate in decades, for their quintile—cheering the end of life-saving programs they never knew existed. It's like: "Hey bro, so we reduced your total federal tax rate several times in the last half century." "Awesome." "And we're gonna try to reduce it further." "I love it." "Oh, and for trivial savings you will never experience, or notice, or think about, we also canceled programs we had on the books that were saving millions of lives." "Hell ya! Incredible stuff. Thank you so much!"

@dansally @BMStudebaker Great thread, Dan!

Thanks to @BMStudebaker and @PMatzko for shaping my views on this. Follow both of them if this hits.

The recent TikTok ban and Congress's pattern of pressuring tech platforms over content moderation is reminiscent of how the federal government once regulated radio - not to manage frequencies, but to control who could say what. (1/13)

@DKThomp @marcelolima @paulg If Trump wanted to, here are the key ways he could weaponize the FCC to punish critical media outlets. Note: he's signaled his interest in abusing FCC authority repeatedly. theunpopulist.net/p/act-now-to-p…

@marcelolima @paulg Trump has repeatedly made clear that media companies who are critical of him shouldn't exist. Does this factor even slightly into your opinion of the relative free-speech merits of the candidates? x.com/DKThomp/status…

If you haven't decided yet who to vote for, here's why I think you should vote for Harris.

@PhilEdwardsInc Stryker's treatment of Lange vs firing Walker Evans ("I didn’t give a damn about the office in Washington—or about the New Deal, really.") was telling about the purpose of the information division.

@PMatzko I would have loved to get into Roy Stryker but I didn't know enough and didn't know how to package it to get people to click (though maybe I should have tried!).

New video: How did one of the 20th century's most famous photographs actually happen? I dove into the geography and history behind it. youtube.com/watch?v=PHJ9GN…

@energybants Love it. We have to teach every generation to feel gratitude towards the ways technological innovation makes their lives safer, healthier, happier, and more prosperous. libertarianism.org/podcasts/build…

The grid delivers you exactly as much energy as you call for exactly when you ask for it straight in into your house from giant electromagnetic force field generators up to hundreds of miles away with almost no losses along the way

@Noahpinion In re your point on a strong(er) Democratic Party, I think you'd find this article I wrote about the decline of the modern parties of interest. libertarianism.org/columns/death-…

In this week's roundup, I explain why Germany is still acting like a fundamentally unserious country, putting both itself and all of Europe in danger: noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-fiv…

@HansFBader Southern South America has lower adherence rates than northern South and Central America, but it's also not a major source of immigrants compared to those regions. You're right that African immigration -- with sky high adherence rates -- is the future.

@PMatzko A decade ago, Latin America was more Christian than the U.S., but it is very rapidly getting more secular & many Chileans hate the church (and Latin American birthrates are crashing. Future immigration may be more from Africa, which still has high birthrate).

A new paper estimates that Chernobyl cost 318 million life years by discouraging the construction of nuclear plants and thus increasing air pollution. If we conservatively estimate life expectancy at 80 years, that's about 4 million lives. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

Severely underrated innovation in content moderation.

@Meta_Myself Hmmm, I see it as a response to status anxiety in Hofstadter’s sense. Embattled-feeling Christians worried about falling respect for their place in an assumed cultural consensus are ripe for radicalization by opportunistic religio-political entrepreneurs.

@PMatzko Does this shift from theology to politics make the tent bigger?

I was raised fundamentalist, so the neo-fundamentalist movement is familiar in many ways although the key difference is that this version is organized primarily along political and cultural rather than theological lines.

@Tim1AP I’m not sure I agree. Many of those folks—Jerry Falwell Sr, Bob Jones Jr, Pat Robertson, etc—are dead, of course. And there are meaningful differences between the methods and ideology of the New Christian Right and the, shall we call it, the Alt Christian Right.

@PMatzko Note too that the folks that were prominent (theological) fundamentalists in the 80s & 90s and still have big platforms are happily in the neo-fundamentalist camp.

Just take a look at the online hubbub over Megan Basham’s book, which simply assumes that support for addressing climate change or defending minority rights or criticizing Trump is ipso facto proof of a pastor being a functional heretic.

This isn’t to say that old school fundamentalists were apolitical, but the organizing focus was on wayward theology as opposed to wayward politics. Eg, accusing someone of being a Democrat today fulfills the same function as a fundy in the 1920s labeling someone a “modernist.”