[Technology] Elon Musk and Twitter

[chickens]

I'm still struggling to find who to follow on Mastodon, It's very quiet. Maybe this latest outburst by Musk might see things speed up a little, I see there is a North Stand Chat feed that has zero followers, @Bozza is NSC on Mastodon?

So the way I use it is to start by following topics, rather than individuals, e.g. #Ukraine, that pops everything with a #Ukraine hashtag into my feed, from which I can then happily mute any pro-Russia trolls that aren’t adding anything to the conversation. (There’s surprisingly few) - you can also filter by language, so your feed isn’t full of posts in languages you can’t read.

I do follow individuals as well, but there isn’t an aggressive algorithm behind it pushing certain narratives into your face. You tend to end up with a vibe more like a friendly village pub than a colossal nightclub where everybody’s coked up to the eyeballs and screaming hysterically. It’s probably not for everyone, but as someone who found Twitter injurious to my mental health, Mastodon suits me far better.

It is light on football content, it’s probably no surprise that media organisations who want the most engagement are slowest to want to change platform. If you’ve invested in creating Twitter friendly content based around click bait headlines, Mastodon doesn’t let you boost posts in the same way, you’re fighting it out with everyone else for attention.

I persevered and now have a quiet community giving me information on subjects that interest me (mainly finance, tech, geopolitics) It takes time to get there, and I wish there was more football content, but looking at the bin fire that is Twitter now, organisations may move over, even if all they do is crosspost the same stuff they put on Twitter.

I can’t ever see the Kardashian’s or Paris Hilton joining, but that’s just another plus from my perspective.

 

[pocketseagull]

finding Mastodon a refreshing alternative to Twitter

Mastodon is good and functionally identical to twitter (with some improvements) but simply not enough people made the jump, maybe Elon's latest antics will change that.

 

[Bozza]

I'm still struggling to find who to follow on Mastodon, It's very quiet. Maybe this latest outburst by Musk might see things speed up a little, I see there is a North Stand Chat feed that has zero followers, @Bozza is NSC on Mastodon?

Nope.

 

[chickens]

Mastodon is good and functionally identical to twitter (with some improvements) but simply not enough people made the jump, maybe Elon's latest antics will change that.

Perhaps I’m easily pleased, but I found enough to keep me interested in my preferred topics. I am a bit dull however, I appreciate mileage may vary dependent on interests.

 

[Daddies_Sauce]

@chickens thanks, there a couple of other BHA individuals that I follow, just found the @BHAFC@sportsfeed.me feed, which looks official? more searching required. At least I'm not being bombarded with ads and sh!te! on there

 

[beorhthelm]

How would web3 help poor Elon pay his bills? He’s got the money, he’s just choosing to believe he shouldn’t have to honour commitments made by previous management, despite having every opportunity to study the accounts etc prior to purchase, and going in with his eyes open.

I’m finding Mastodon a refreshing alternative to Twitter that appears to have a minimum of dickheads, and a lot less noise, I’m not convinced there’s anything web3 about it, though it is a distributed platform not under any one person’s control, so can’t be as easily ruined by a billionaire’s ego.

Mastodon takes a bit of working out, but I wouldn’t go back to Twitter under any circumstances now.

there is direct correlation between popularity and dickheads. if Mastodon becomes popular, there will be more people, more views you dont like or attention seeking. web3 doesnt solve many technical issues because its backward technology, distributing the parts which are more efficent when centralised. most projects run on cloud services anyway.

 

[A1X]

Musk is proving not to be the genius people thought he might be, and has paid $44bn to show it. I like Twitter but it failing because of him is quite funny.

 

[chickens]

there is direct correlation between popularity and dickheads. if Mastodon becomes popular, there will be more people, more views you dont like or attention seeking. web3 doesnt solve many technical issues because its backward technology, distributing the parts which are more efficent when centralised. most projects run on cloud services anyway.

Absolutely agree re: the popularity/dickheads dilemma. It’s just part of growing.

I’m a big fan of the decentralised nature of Mastodon because it means that while somebody can sulk and take their instance down, they can’t take down the whole service.

 

[pocketseagull]

Musk is proving not to be the genius people thought he might be

He's a thoroughly unpleasant man and nowhere near being a genius.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

How would web3 help poor Elon pay his bills? He’s got the money, he’s just choosing to believe he shouldn’t have to honour commitments made by previous management, despite having every opportunity to study the accounts etc prior to purchase, and going in with his eyes open.

I’m finding Mastodon a refreshing alternative to Twitter that appears to have a minimum of dickheads, and a lot less noise, I’m not convinced there’s anything web3 about it, though it is a distributed platform not under any one person’s control, so can’t be as easily ruined by a billionaire’s ego.

Mastodon takes a bit of working out, but I wouldn’t go back to Twitter under any circumstances now.

Web3 takes the power from turds like Amazon and Google so they have any influence over anyone elses presence on the web.

That's a huge win.

 

[chickens]

Web3 takes the power from turds like Amazon and Google so they have any influence over anyone elses presence on the web.

That's a huge win.

I don’t want to derail this thread, but how?

At the end of the day, data has to be stored. For example, a database the size of Twitter’s is not going to fit locally on user’s machines, so we’re not going to be effectively having Twitter’s DB “Dropbox”ed onto each user’s machine.

Even if embedded media was stored centrally, that would require hosting of some kind or another.

In the web3 model (decentralised, probably using blockchain to ensure data integrity) what happens when a user embeds an image or a video?

With Mastodon there are hundreds of instances, with the data for those registered on an instance stored on that instance.

Whoever is doing the hosting, as Bozza knows only too well, will need paying. They’ll have electric bills and hardware costs, whether they’re Amazon Web Services or a smaller provider.

Whether it’s one organisation paying to host the whole thing, or hundreds of server owners paying a bit each, or 10 million individuals who all pay for a ‘10 millionth’ of the data the service uses, there’s going to be a hosting cost involved. Web3 doesn’t solve that, there’s never going to be a free lunch.

If (for example) Amazon Web Services have a huge chunk of the market, it’s likely to be because they’re cheap. Most people dislike paying more than they have to, I confidently predict the same players will thrive if we switched to decentralised data stores tomorrow.

At some point, however decentralised the web3 concept is, it comes down to RAM chips and SSDs and the power to run them. That will always have to be paid for.

 

[robinsonsgrin]

I cannot even get mastodon to send me a confirmaton link... did anyone else have this issue?

 

[jackalbion]

This is the problem when you believe that you are god, Elon Musk is a complete and utter moron. All his ideas don’t work, and he’s a thick right wing mouthpiece. Huge amount of weirdos who think he’s god and extremely intelligent, but my god is terrible at everything he does. Builds electric cars that blow up, rockets that blow up, websites that crash, public transport systems that reduce capacity, and have a very night chance of yes, you guessed it, blowing up. Surprised he wasn’t involved with that submarine considering it blew up.

 

[chickens]

I cannot even get mastodon to send me a confirmaton link... did anyone else have this issue?

No, but I suspect what you’re experiencing is the usual delays caused whenever Twitter goes down and servers get swamped with new user requests.

The link will almost certainly turn up late, or you can try a different instance which may have fewer pending requests. Ideally setting up the account when Twitter’s actually working is best, coz there isn’t a mad rush of people trying to get signed up.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I don’t want to derail this thread, but how?

At the end of the day, data has to be stored. For example, a database the size of Twitter’s is not going to fit locally on user’s machines, so we’re not going to be effectively having Twitter’s DB “Dropbox”ed onto each user’s machine.

There are a growing number of decentralised data storage networks available.

Meta is using Arweave a London based DCN for sections of its Instagram data storage.

Even if embedded media was stored centrally, that would require hosting of some kind or another.

In the web3 model (decentralised, probably using blockchain to ensure data integrity) what happens when a user embeds an image or a video?

With Mastodon there are hundreds of instances, with the data for those registered on an instance stored on that instance.

Whoever is doing the hosting, as Bozza knows only too well, will need paying. They’ll have electric bills and hardware costs, whether they’re Amazon Web Services or a smaller provider.

Whether it’s one organisation paying to host the whole thing, or hundreds of server owners paying a bit each, or 10 million individuals who all pay for a ‘10 millionth’ of the data the service uses, there’s going to be a hosting cost involved. Web3 doesn’t solve that, there’s never going to be a free lunch.

If (for example) Amazon Web Services have a huge chunk of the market, it’s likely to be because they’re cheap. Most people dislike paying more than they have to, I confidently predict the same players will thrive if we switched to decentralised data stores tomorrow.

At some point, however decentralised the web3 concept is, it comes down to RAM chips and SSDs and the power to run them. That will always have to be paid for.

Decentralized storage is a lot less expensive than what exists now.

The Amazon's might still do ok but when people are offered and alternative to a company that can rescind their account any time they please with one that nobody can ever shut down on you then many people will move to that system.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

This is the problem when you believe that you are god, Elon Musk is a complete and utter moron. All his ideas don’t work, and he’s a thick right wing mouthpiece. Huge amount of weirdos who think he’s god and extremely intelligent, but my god is terrible at everything he does. Builds electric cars that blow up, rockets that blow up, websites that crash, public transport systems that reduce capacity, and have a very night chance of yes, you guessed it, blowing up. Surprised he wasn’t involved with that submarine considering it blew up.

What a terrible take. You seem to be part of the cult of personality space yourself.

Using your theory some of the greatest inventors ever were complete and utter morons because something they invented didn't work at the beginning.

Those Wright Brothers were complete and utter morons because they invented a bunch of planes that were failures before they got a prototype off the ground.

Henry Ford an utter moron too, went bankrupt before Ford took off.

Sir Richard Dyson, 126 failed vacuum design attempts before he could get one to work.

Tesla is THE largest EV seller in the world. To suggest that someone who was behind that is a moron is well, a moronic comment.

I dunno about you but it seems obvious to me the guy is on the spectrum, apparently has Aspergers, so to expect him to communicate or act in certain ways is not understanding the person.

 

[jackalbion]

What a terrible take. You seem to be part of the cult of personality space yourself.

Using your theory some of the greatest inventors ever were complete and utter morons because something they invented didn't work at the beginning.

Those Wright Brothers were complete and utter morons because they invented a bunch of planes that were failures before they got a prototype off the ground.

Henry Ford an utter moron too, went bankrupt before Ford took off.

Sir Richard Dyson, 126 failed vacuum design attempts before he could get one to work.

Tesla is THE largest EV seller in the world. To suggest that someone who was behind that is a moron is well, a moronic comment.

I dunno about you but it seems obvious to me the guy is on the spectrum, apparently has Aspergers, so to expect him to communicate or act in certain ways is not understanding the person.

His Boring company is the worst public transport system I’ve seen proposed in a very long time, he continues to push it because he doesn’t listen to criticism. Twitter has had more problems in the time he’s owned on than it ever had before. Tesla is a marketing success in terms of the actual car there are far better ones out there.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Bring on Web3

Musk has derided web3 as a marketing buzzword

 

[BrickTamland]

Deleted account today. Been a quite active user for 10 years or so. Unusable for a while now and full of bots.

Will be strange not scrolling through it, especially for sports news.

 

[robinsonsgrin]

Thanks for earlier advice, I am now registered with Mastodon. Can anyone advise the best way to 'find your tribe' ?