[Technology] Elon Musk and Twitter

[sparkie]

Without doubt this is a Kremlin operation to take down a load of Twitter accounts.



They have included the ones they want taken down in a much wider list of "ordinary Joe" accounts.


If Twitter takes down all these valuable accounts then what is the point of being on Twitter at all ?


"Free Speech" ? Lol

 

[Rookie]

What I’ve noticed is that Musk seems to have a cult following, it’s very strange. His latest rambling about building his own phone has got certain people salivating at the thought.

 

[Triggaaar]

What I’ve noticed is that Musk seems to have a cult following, it’s very strange.

I haven't and won't watch the program about him, but the adverts for it give the feeling that he's trying to be a cult leader who will run for president one day.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I haven't and won't watch the program about him, but the adverts for it give the feeling that he's trying to be a cult leader who will run for president one day.

The first warning about the state of things in America was when they elected a superficially affable, but gormless, B movie actor, the American equivalent of Anthony Newley, as president. The reaction here in England at the time was 'are they completely insane?'.



Now we have the absurd sight of an American billionaire turning the internet equivalent of channel five into a place where Russia can manipulate the mad alt.right into further corrupting American society. Extreme 'freedom' and extreme persecution is a peculiar look.

 

[Weststander]

Well done the EU.

Freedom of speech shouldn’t include publishing misinformation on serious matters, racism/antisemitism, homophobia or any of the other mischievous shit from weirdos.

Elon Musk has been told he faces "huge work ahead" to bring Twitter into compliance with new European rules on disinformation or face a possible ban.​

​

European Union commissioner Thierry Breton made the comments in a meeting with Mr Musk on Wednesday.​

​

He said the social media site would have to address issues such as content moderation, disinformation and targeted adverts.​

​

The back-and-forth comes as the new law is set to go into effect.​

​

Approved by the European Union earlier this year, the Digital Services Act is seen as the biggest overhaul of rules governing online activity in decades, imposing new obligations on companies to prevent abuse of their platforms.​

Musk says Twitter feud with Apple boss 'resolved'

The Twitter boss says he met Apple's chief Tim Cook after he criticised the company.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Driver8]

I haven't and won't watch the program about him, but the adverts for it give the feeling that he's trying to be a cult leader who will run for president one day.

He can’t, he’s South African.

 

[Albion my Albion]

Have you heard about the new platform?

Elusk Mon Fump's Trool

 

[Triggaaar]

He can’t, he’s South African.

That is a fair point

 

[Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ]

That is a fair point

He may do an Arnie and go for Governor of California though

 

[Albion my Albion]

He may do an Arnie and go for Governor of California though

How Elon Musk wields his influence in Sacramento

Behind the Twitter-famous feuds, California's elected officials have shown a lot more love than hate for the billionaire.

www.google.com

 

[chickens]

Musk has begun banning accounts he doesn’t like and banning recognised, accredited journalists he disagrees with from Twitter. He’s also preventing cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter, and the journalistic world is trying to move en-masse to Mastodon. Mastodon is absolutely suffering growing pains today.

I would advise anyone trying to make the switch over the next few days to not judge it on your initial experience, the server admins are all trying to cope with exponential growth on the fly. Have patience, capacity is being added as a priority.

Dave Lee (@daveleeFT@mastodon.social)

Attached: 2 images Twitter is now preventing users from posting links to Mastodon. I tried to share my account and was given this error. (Not clear if this covers all instances -- not sure how that would be possible -- or just the server I'm on, which I believe is the biggest)

mastodon.social

Tim Harford :verified: (@TimHarford@econtwitter.net)

"The accounts of several high-profile US journalists have been suspended by Elon Musk’s Twitter, with the billionaire suggesting they fell foul of a recently created policy on sharing location information... ...Some of the suspended journalists... had made reference to a new ElonJet account set...

econtwitter.net

 

[zeetha]

I joined Mastodon a few weeks back but have struggled to get my head around how you can tell what is a legit account or not across the multiple servers. By my understanding anyone can set up a server say newscentral.social, and then set themselves up with a name that people might trust i.e. bbcnews@newscentral.social.

Is there anything in place to stop this happening? Is there a way to tell if an account is verified or not?

 

[chickens]

I joined Mastodon a few weeks back but have struggled to get my head around how you can tell what is a legit account or not across the multiple servers. By my understanding anyone can set up a server say newscentral.social, and then set themselves up with a name that people might trust i.e. bbcnews@newscentral.social.

Is there anything in place to stop this happening? Is there a way to tell if an account is verified or not?

There is, and there’s a huge backlog on verifications atm due to the user surge, I’ll try to post on the process later when work’s less busy.

 

[FamilyGuy]

Boy oh boy am I glad that I've never subscribed to Twitter.

Is Musk showing his real colours, or is this just a practical example of "power corrupts ..."?

 

[Guinness Boy]

Musk is a typical broflake. Always believes in “free speech” until people use theirs to criticise him.

Sadly it’s only people with a political perspective who’ll leave. Can’t see Premier League club accounts, Romano and all those transfer trolls and young sports fans leaving.

Politically Twitter will become a far right echo chamber and Mastadon a liberal one. But these big sports accounts will legitimise the mad back to front.

 

[beorhthelm]

I joined Mastodon a few weeks back but have struggled to get my head around how you can tell what is a legit account or not across the multiple servers. By my understanding anyone can set up a server say newscentral.social, and then set themselves up with a name that people might trust i.e. bbcnews@newscentral.social.

Is there anything in place to stop this happening? Is there a way to tell if an account is verified or not?

inherent problem of open, decentralised systems. if only there were ways to independently verify an identity... basic signing been around for decades, woefully underused.

 

[chickens]

I joined Mastodon a few weeks back but have struggled to get my head around how you can tell what is a legit account or not across the multiple servers. By my understanding anyone can set up a server say newscentral.social, and then set themselves up with a name that people might trust i.e. bbcnews@newscentral.social.

Is there anything in place to stop this happening? Is there a way to tell if an account is verified or not?

The best short explanation of how self-verification works in Mastodon.

How to get verified on Mastodon? | Cédric Batailler

Mastodon can help people know that your account is linked to other resources on the internet. Learn about how to set that up.

cedricbatailler.me

It basically relies on your online persona also having access to a known web presence, so links can be cross-referenced between the trusted website/blog etc. and the Mastodon account.

There’s also a link to another article on that page that goes through the main differences between Mastodon and Twitter, if that’s of interest. There’s definitely a learning curve before it feels like home.

 

[zeetha]

The best short explanation of how self-verification works in Mastodon.

How to get verified on Mastodon? | Cédric Batailler

Mastodon can help people know that your account is linked to other resources on the internet. Learn about how to set that up.

cedricbatailler.me

It basically relies on your online persona also having access to a known web presence, so links can be cross-referenced between the trusted website/blog etc. and the Mastodon account.

There’s also a link to another article on that page that goes through the main differences between Mastodon and Twitter, if that’s of interest. There’s definitely a learning curve before it feels like home.

Cheers - I see how that works now. I've definitely got a lot to learn about it all!

 

[Acker79]

There appear to be a few new social medias trying to grow as an/the alternative as twitter seems to be crumbling. There seem to be standard 'new system' problems with all them - small workforces dealing with large surge in sign ups, system still being built. Then there's the simple 'I'm so used to twitter, how do I do [x] here?' thing people may need to get over.

I've been trying to track where all the people I follow on twitter are moving to because they all seem to be going to different places. I don't know if anyone is interested, but thought I'd share some comments on the various systems I've looked at.

Mastodon
Was the first destination to gain traction, and feels very much like the front runner alternative.
My experience has been a complicated sign up process, but once over that, it's not too dissimilar to my experience with twitter. It has 'instances' where you base your account, so you need to find an instance to register with. Once you have you can follow anyone on any instance. You can switch between a 'home' feed of the people you follow which is like twitter. You can also switch to a local feed with posts from people in your instance. Or a federated feed with all posts.
Finding an instance is the difficult part - each is run separately with their own local rules (there are some core across all instances). Some allow anyone to register, some require you to request permission to register, some need invites, etc. But once you're in it all gets much simpler.

Hive
This is a more recent starter. Feels like it has a vibe of 'lesser known alternative, but we're the secret cool option'.
A few of the people I follow looked at this one. Mostly comedians/comedy actors that went this way. It's app only (no browser version currently available). It's a small start up, seems to be newer than mastodon so is still in its infancy as an app. But has a similar single feed to twitter. Was recently down for a while as they patched a security issue (preventive in response to a scare at twitter, preferring to go off line and fix rather then stay up and risk exposure), but has now relaunched. New app is a bit faster. Looks snazzy. Easiest way to register for me was with my apple account (I tried to register with my email but it struggled to accept that). New app is still waiting approval on google app store. It lets you add music to your profile (one free song, if you want multiple songs need to link to an apple music account)
EDIT: Update now available on android.
This is probably one of the simplest alternatives. Let's you select topics of interest for the 'explore' section rather than trying to predict using algorithms

Post.
Another one early in it's infancy, has a feel of decorum, knows it isn't cool, or the popular option, but is confident in itself, and it's own selling points (which is to a left leaning, wordy audience.
It's not fully functional, inverted from hive this is only browser based at the moment (you can bookmark a link on your phone if you want to pretend it's an app). This one seems to be popular with the writers I follow (hence the wordy feel). This currently has two feeds - an 'explore' which is a general feed, and 'following' for just the people you are, erm, following. Again, it's currently a small team keeping it running at the moment. When I signed up I had to go on a waiting list, took a week, but when they did let me in, they noted they were letting a lot more people in as a stress test. I think it's still officially in Beta.
EDIT: I've since discovered this site has micro transactions. Every user gets 50c to start with. I assume you can buy more if you want. It can be used to tip people, some accounts put articles behind "pay walls" usually only 1 or 2c is enough to access or tip. It's not an obligation to tip, the word count is unlimited, so some people are producing full on articles, so compensating them with tips or dropping a cent or two to access could be considered reasonable.

James Gunn (writer/director/co-ceo of DC films) seems to be signing up to everything and when he signed up to some of the above, some of his followers suggested others that I've checked out:

Counter Social
Gunn is the only person I follow on twitter who has moved there (or publicised it). This isn't one I've been comfortable with because it has a dashboard presentation. There are lots of various widgets with your following feed in one widget, suggestions in another, notifications in another, etc. It's like staring at nine screens at the same time. I think you can add/remove them, but because I'm only following Gunn and he is posting everywhere else, I've not really lingered on this one. Did have a simple sign up process, though. Currently is proudly ad free.

Vero
This seems popular with artists - explore sections are separated into music, photography, film. A very glossy interface. It is not accessible in a browser, but is available via desktop apps (apparently, I've not checked that out so can't comment on it). Like counter social, I've not spent a lot of time here because not enough of the people I'm interested in following are on here.


They all seem to be selling themselves as nicer places, and generally the users there agree.

Personally, my experience of twitter was like the introvert sat in the corner at the party - I never really engaged with anyone, never really looked at replies, I used it as a source of info following journalists for news/sports etc, comedians for the funny, actors/directors/movies for first official look at trailers etc. So I was never really exposed to the more toxic side of twitter. (and also why I don't publicise my account here or anywhere).

They all allow longer messages (Post. tends to be the biggest, which may be why it's popular with writers).

I imagine a lot of people here will be interested in NSFW policies; A problem with online services is the issue of nudity/sexual content. Apple is quite strict about it with their app store, banks don't like to deal with companies trading porn, which is why tumblr banned it. Twitter has gotten away with it because it was too big to not work with. Most of the above are banning nudity. Mastodon don't, but will ban any that are not appropriately labelled - settings allow you to show or hide sensitive content (I think perhaps the instances allows them to circumvent the rules). Hive allows nudity in art, but not general nudity. Others aren't clear, and I haven't really looked to find out.

 

[Poojah]

I’ve been getting stick all week from different people as I apparently keep dropping subtle references to emerging social media platforms into my sentences.

It’s weird; they’ll point it out and I don’t even realise I’ve done it but I’ve heard it from so many people now that I suppose I mastadon.