Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

The degree of panic over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has been even more fun then watching Basketball folks melt down over Brooklyn being swept in the 1st round of the NBA Playoffs.

Lines like this are typical:

Stelter on Elon Musk buying Twitter: "If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party or are you going to decide to stay home?" pic.twitter.com/rhSmF04OUk

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 25, 2022

For those concerned that they will suddenly be exposed to all kinds of “hate” speech (which the left defines as any speech they hate) let me introduce you to two features included in Twitter, the “Block” and the “Mute” buttons.

For this example I will use Tweetdeck because that is what I use.

Let’s say you see a tweet that you don’t like say this one:

Amazing. Good on Kemp. You defeat Trump by defeating his clowns. https://t.co/FOMRPwH81X

— Soren Dayton (@sorendayton) April 26, 2022

Now for the record I wouldn’t block someone for this tweet but for the purposes of this example I am going to do so and because people on twitter can sometimes resemble a bad high school clique I’ve put out the fact that I’m doing said muting and blocking only as a demo.

So lets say however I got angry at this tweet and wanted it out of my timeline I have two options: The “Mute” and the “Block” features.

The “Mute” button allows one to remove someone from your timeline without actually blocking them completely. The “Block” button blocks someone completely and they become aware that they are blocked if they try to reply to you or access your tweets.

Here is my timeline before using the “Mute” button.

Now once I click on the tweet and choose “Mute” either within tweetdeck (left) or twitter proper.

And presto the offending person and/or tweet is removed from the timeline

Now if you decide you change your mind because let’s say someone does a Rick Wilson and decides to join your side for money you can reverse this as well Simply go to the menu the same way

And viola the tweet is back in your timeline

Be aware you will likely have to refresh your browser for the tweets to return.

Note that in the above example the “Block” choice is there on the same menu so I won’t repeat the example as the images would be redundant. To “Block” someone do the same thing as you would with “Mute” and vice versa.

So this means that if a person sees speech that distresses them they are only a few clicks away from making sure they do not see that speech in their timeline and/or the person who generated said speech.

Now I’m slightly surprised that the folks having fits on the left weren’t aware of this feature and must be reassured by this post knowing they don’t have to be exposed to any speech they “hate”.

Why given their reaction you might think their real problem was people being able to see counter arguments to the things they claim, argument that they are unable to refute because their own points can’t stand up under fire instead of just eliminating what they call “hate speech”.

But no it can’t be that, can it?