Wow…
Is there some kind of tech CEO competition running or something?
“Who can alienate their user base the fastest”
There’s a saying, " never attribute to malice what is easily explained by incompetence".
But we’re quickly reaching the point where it’s no longer easily explained incompetence. Elon is either the most incompetent person in the known universe, which is saying a lot, or he’s doing this on purpose for some reason.
I’m not into conspiracies, but it’s starting to make more sense if he’s actively trying to tank the stock.
He just wants everyone to be exposed to his right-wing buddies toxic posts.
Yup, he gets a hard-on by exposing people to the “fash n friends” crap.
Once upon a time, long ago, in the very beginning, I liked Twitter as a stream of instant information from all POV. Then Twitter became a haven for bots and a propaganda tool. Is it possible that Musk bought Twitter so that he could take it to the point of absurdity and destroy it?
I mean, 2024 isn’t that far away. It’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to in the name of “free speech” or “townsquare of the internet” or whatever shitty rationalization he uses to explains his nutty behavior.
There’s no stock to tank. You could argue that he’s trying to tank the company, but there are easier ways to do that.
You could argue that he’s trying to tank the company
I’m kinda lost here. What’s his end goal with it?
Depriving the libs of a favored platform via making it conservative and unruly, and weakening its democratic potential against authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, is the theory.
Yes there are, but he’s already with the SEC breathing on his neck for other scams so I guess he wants plausible deniability.
There’s no stock or similar security, so the SEC doesn’t care at all. Could be a plausible deniability thing, I just think it’s more likely that he really is that dumb, given the stories about Tesla/SpaceX having teams that basically existed just to control him.
it’s unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it’s an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it’s a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new “block”, what’s even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).
Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.
Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people’s content.
Elon Musk really fucking hates his trans daughter. Dad of the century, right here.
Seriously good on his daughter for dropping his scumbag ass. She deserves far better from a parent.
I wasn’t aware he had more children than the one with the weird-ass name. The private life section on wikipedia is a ride…
He ascribes to Longtermism and like his associate Jeffery Epstein, he thinks his genes are magically special, and so he wants as many offspring as humanly possible: while not actually giving one shit about the quality of life for any of them.
It’s really interesting, because he fucking hates his own father (Errol is also a creep who fathered a child with his step-daughter, who he raised from childhood), but can’t put together that he is exactly the fuck the same as his creep ass father.
Lemmy’s “block” is essentially a “mute” function, too. It makes it so that you don’t see any more content from a user, but they can still make comments on your stuff.
Elon Musk is a gaping, farting anus. I pay as much attention to the sounds from a gaping, farting anus, as I do from him.
Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don’t deserve to be disparaged like this.
Pre Twitter takeover this would have been surprising. Now seems par for the course.
I am very glad I left Twitter at the beginning of Musk’s rein. This is just dangerous.
I made my first ever Twitter account a month or two before Musk bought it, for purely NSFW reasons. I’d log in every couple weeks or whatever, handle my business, and move along. After he bought it, I said whatever I’m not doing anything useful data wise so I’ll continue my few times a month visits.
First post-Musk visit, it’s fine. Business handled, close my incog window, move on.
Second post-Musk visit, I log in, and it’s CP as far as the eye can see. I immediately deleted my account.
Holy hell, on a serious country the government would go scorched earth on Twitter’s servers and sue tf outta Musk
I quit Twitter after the infantile incident with Elon Musk carrying a sink around his own office. From all that we’ve seen in recent years it’s pretty clear he’s lucky to have been born rich, because he definitely isn’t the visionary we thought he was.
I missed this incident, I quit years before…
Yup. Every once in a blue moon I wish I still had my Twitter. But not enough to make a new one.
Time to promote the hell out of Mastodon
@Hypersapien This could make his decision a wonderful backfire
Imagine posting something like:
You can’t block this post, can you? You could if you’d joined [mastodon instance]. [then continue with a few words about the instance in question]. It is part of the decentralized platform called Mastodon, where you can reach millions of other real people both on this and other similar servers of the network. Sign up by [provides steps to sign up]
Edit: same can be done with Calckey for example, but with no need to promote a special server, since Calckey doesn’t force you to sign to it’s main server through any of the apps iirc
I won’t lie. As much as i hate Elon. Him buying (and destroying Twitter) is the single greatest thing that has happened for the fediverse and its growth.
I am 100% on board with this.
I think we need something like that for twitter and for Reddit. Having something quick and concise with some links where to go is bound to get more bound headed our way
@lohrun sadly I don’t think spez is that stupid to fuck every little thing up from a social network, all at once almost. Sure, I think you can buy some ad space on Reddit, but imo there’s nothing too evident for this to be easy peasy.
Not to mention, Mastodon was already larger than Lemmy when the crisis point happened (the other two contenders, kbin - which is still in beta - and Lotide, are even smaller!). Maybe convincing the sub admins to try to be admins of communities and see how it goes? (Except that there are multiple communities here on the same topic, but on different instances - again, not sure how this is gonna work out)
I just can’t get over how uncatchy that name is though
4channers are gonna abuse the hell out of this for some fun. Can guarantee it.
Perhaps enough to force Twitter to take action and fix it? 4chan could be a force for good…
I mean, maybe? 4channers do some pretty crazy shit when they’re raiding, at least from what I’ve seen. Remember when they raided Microsoft Tay’s Twitter and turned it into a white supremacist?
Doesn’t he himself use this feature a ton? 😂
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it won’t apply to him.
Or if it does then he’ll just delete accounts he wants to block.
So what you’re saying is, if I have a Twitter account and I start blocking many MANY people it costs Elon money? Interesting.
I’m extremely doubtful that there is any truth to that.
Fun fact: a block feature is required to be accepted by the Apple AppStore review process. So Twitter will disappear from Apple devices with this change.
Since this got some votes and became visible, here’s the source:
Apps with user-generated content present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying. To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:
- A method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app
- A mechanism to report offensive content and timely responses to concerns
- The ability to block abusive users from the service
- Published contact information so users can easily reach you
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#user-generated-content
Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to block other users. So I wouldn’t be too optimistic about Apple’s response…
Apple’s review process is inconsistent at best. I used to work for an iOS app and it took several years before they blocked our release for not having a report feature on products. Never had the ability to block users, despite the ability to DM people.
Plus, for an app the size of Twitter, Apple will likely ignore most rules that doesn’t lose them money.
Elon trying not to make the worst decisions possible challenge (Impossible)
With Mastodon as a strong alternative I really don’t understand why people use twitter at all anymore. There have been so many negative changes that have happened to twitter over the past 2 years.
95% of the people or groups I would want to follow are not on Mastodon.
And frankly, the Fediverse isn’t as user-friendly. It is a but tougher when you have to choose an instance, as well as learn how to follow from other instances.
And frankly, the Fediverse isn’t as user-friendly
One component of a system being “user-friendly” is that it must not sabotage or undermine the user on behalf of the system’s proprietor.
Unfortunately, this means that proprietary systems rarely remain user-friendly forever, as most proprietors eventually want to sabotage the user in some way or another, and can rarely resist the temptation forever.
On one hand, Twitter lost 5% of its user base. It’s not a ton. On the other, it’s 15 million people give or take. That 5% is probably the sort I want to hang out with the most. Likewise for Reddit. 5% of Redditors are awesome and likely now Lemmy/KBin users. Those are the people I care about. It also allows for more quality connections when you have fewer people in your circle. Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
undefined> Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
It depends. Close connections of subject matter experts when discussing technical topics? Sure. When doing general research or looking for alternate solutions for something, you need mass. The difficulty of onboarding users into a federated environment hinders this.
I meant from social connections not technical experts. Frankly social media isn’t the place to get technical answers. It’s typically not great and most of the time is a hive mind mentality. Even on Reddit or stack exchange. I’ve seen decades of questions in my field and the answers with the most points are the ones that match the general hive mind not actual facts. It’s typically not worth it to get answers from social media.
Your experience may vary, but I found Reddit to have extremely helpful advice on a whole host of topics. Investing, home automation, and car repair/restoration just to name a few that I frequent.
It’s the ability to lose a question where thousands or hundreds of thousands of people will see and interact with your post. The answers aren’t always perfect, but you’re likely to get a wide swath of responses to review and glean info from.
I don’t need a doomscroller to keep me occupied. I want communities where people are engaged and connected. For that you need both close and a large “pool” of users.
The source showed the tweet as an image, so I went into the sewer waters from Fritter. And, yep, it’s genuinely there.
It’s not even that I believe him unable to have such bad takes: it’s not the first time. I have just seen a few fake ones. But the fake ones aren’t even needed!
Whats going on with social media CEOs making dumb decisions these days…
Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they’re not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that’s been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷
Conservative money thinks that they can keep there opposition off balance by smashing social networks . Musk did not launch desatitis campaign out of nowhere.
This is exactly it. Social media’s greatest power is the ability for common folk to organise and rally quickly and easily. That cannot be allowed, so these moves are designed to divide and insulate.
it’s not about money. it’s about power
