Why is everything to do with this story completely unsurprising.
Because we’ve all come to accept that Elon Musk doesn’t know how to run a social media site?
He knows how to run a social media site into the ground…
Which is probably the whole point. Make it seem like the site is failing because of mismanagement, and not that its failure was intended right from the start with a leveraged buyout saddling the business with an untenable $13bn of debt.
No, he’s just dumb!
Yup, it’s easy to forget that an important use of Twitter used to be finding out what was happening when propaganda was covering it up. It’s how we learned about Arab spring.
If my life were at risk from my government, I certainly wouldn’t trust Elon to keep me safe from them.
The Arab Spring is exactly one if the reasons Musk took over the site. That, and Peter Thiel’s (Musk’s old partner from PayPal) failed attempts at setting up a rival service.
They couldn’t rope Twitter into line, they couldn’t make a competing service, so instead they saddled Twitter with $13bn of debt so that it would die (or step into line if they felt like paying off the debt).
It’s the same way Toys R Us went under.
Musk’s antics over the last few months have been nothing but a distraction. The very purchase itself was a death sentence.
I don’t know that he does.
We’re still hearing about twitter and people are still using it.
I think what we’re learning is that social media has more inertia than we might have thought, and it’s actually incredibly difficult to kill it. This is a very bad thing as it allows someone like Musk to deeply alt-rightify what is fundamentally a public resource in private hands, but people will keep using it because…? I couldn’t tell you why really, and I think most of us that have adopted lemmy are by nature not likely to really understand it.
The best anyone can do right now is to migrate off of Twitter entirely. As long as Musk is in charge (or in charge through his puppet CEOs) the site will be a cesspool of toxicity and hate. I’m honestly not sure why reputable people are still using the site… guess the view and media exposure are better than doing the right thing and leaving?
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Why would anyone want to move to another functionally similar microblogging site if Twitter still has more users?
Perhaps because the quality of the experience is better, even if the number of users is lower. As Twitter appeals more and more to the far right, those might not be the users people want to be hanging around with.
or specific forums like HardOCP/Forum screwing the pooch
ah genmay, that takes me way back
Anyone who is still on Twitter has, in my opinion, fewer issues with being a corporate puppet and being associated with all the hatred there than they have with losing views.
I have (had?) plenty of friends on Twitter who loudly proudly boycotted the Harry Potter game due to JKR’s comments about trans people.
But they’ve stayed on Twitter despite its horrible owner and how he runs things.
I’m willing to give a pass to creators who make a living off their online audience. If the audience went off Twitter, so would they.
Everyone else, though? I don’t ever care to hear about what they’re boycotting again if they can’t pull themselves off Twitter.
I don’t agree with that logic because that means whenever horrible people buy off a platform, even if you do not pay for it, you are obligated to leave rather than push back. There are people who spent decades cultivating their community before Elon Musk had any interest in it. There are people who are right now pushing back against the rise of hate in it. It seems like a Catch-22 where the person either gives up their platform or they are discredited. The end result either way is that Musk’s crowd wins.
rather than push back.
Elon Musk owns Twitter. Every single time a person tweets some kind of “push back,” it’s just more activity on the platform that Elon Musk owns.
Question for you: Would you say all the pushback has been working? Because it seems like every comment out of Elon Musk’s mouth is worse.
Well, given how saddled with debt the place was it wouldn’t be hard to argue that more activity in fact only burdens him more. It’s not a sustainable or profitable place. I also don’t think advertisers will be to thrilled by the activity of shit constantly being flung everywhere.
But more than that, it is a social media platform, not a shop. I think there is inherent value in the people who stay there and highlight the issues going on regarding hate speech and political manipulation, rather than they all leave. That would allow hateful people to mold the platform around a whole lot of clueless people who don’t realize what is going on, and might just go along with it because they are immersed in this environment. Twitter is not made exclusively of bigots, but it could become more like that over time.
Sure there is no amount of tweets that will stop Elon Musk’s mad spiral. But his reputation definitely took some hits.
As far as it compares with JK Rowling, I also think it’s not the same. Say, if we were to compare, as far as engagement and community goes, I wouldn’t expect anyone to drop all their friends and groups they make through their shared love of Harry Potter just because the author is awful.
If anything I’m a bit suspicious from where first came this call for complete disengagement. Because if there are no voices calling for inclusivity and respect in social media platforms and fandoms, they just become breeding grounds for hate.
If anything I’m a bit suspicious from where first came this call for complete disengagement.
lol, seriously? Musk wants to disable blocking on Twitter, while continuing to ratchet up the transphobia.
You’re truly suspicious about people not wanting to wallow in a cesspool of hate?
I’m also on Kbin so you can guess what’s my stance on remaining in bad platforms.
But these are two different arguments: Whether it’s sensible for people to leave, or whether they are obligated out of moral consistency to leave.
Absolutely people have plenty of reasons not want to wallow there and I wouldn’t in a million years say anything bad to anyone who wants to leave. But I also wouldn’t shame those who want to push back against hate, who want to protect the following they gathered, or who want to support the creators who didn’t find an adequate place to rebuild their online presence yet.
What I am suspicious of is from whoever came up with this argument “if you are so opposed to bigots, how about you leave this platform” when the end result is that many of these same marginalized people targeted by hate speech might have less reach because of it.
I think you’re overthinking this. Twitter used to be a place where I could keep up with my friends. Now, it’s a place filled with many forms of hate. Because of this, I no longer wish to use it, so I left.
I personally have no care in the world for what happens with Twitter. Why should I? It becomes overrun with bigots? So what?
Remaining on a platform filled with hate is an indicator that you’re ok with that. I am not, so I left. end of story.
This is not someone randomly joining Parler. Not only minorities don’t always have the luxury to only exist where they are welcomed, they had been accepted and that was taken away from them. They already had built their following and that’s being ruined. To say that trying to hold onto what they’ve built and resist is “being okay with hate” doesn’t sound right to me.
Twitter as a place does not matter to me, but I still have friends and creators that I like that use it, and especially for artists, they need a platform with wide reach for their careers. I can preach the Fediverse and Mastodon as much as I want, but until it’s widely adopted, it’s not going to help them.
There are people who are right now pushing back against the rise of hate in it.
To what end? What do they really hope to accomplish?
It’s owned by a bigot who is making both social and corporate changes to explicitly signal to and allow other bigots to take over the platform. They’re pulling back on moderation and firing all of the people who prevented it from becoming even more of a cesspool. What chance to a bunch of people tweeting about how things should change have against the person who literally runs the platform and his toxic fanatic horde?
I understand that a lot of people have spent a lot of time on there and so it may feel hard to let go, but at this point it’s it’s beyond a lost cause and any further effort is just a sunk cost fallacy. You have to know when to realize that everything around you is on fire and that bucket of water you’re holding isn’t going to be enough.
This is why decentralized and federated platforms like Mastodon and Lemmy are the only real answer. Otherwise you’re just swimming in someone else’s pool and hoping they don’t shit in it.
This is to my eyes the core problem with centralized corporate social networks. Ultimately, where you intend it or not, your presence is in support to the core mission of the corporate entity holding the platform. Twitter has 16 years of history at this point, and I think can be viewed in three periods. First was the tech experiment to bring online interactions more into the real world. This was Twitter’s shortest period. It lasted a month or so at most. In this phase, the mission was to create a bridge between online interactions and real world experiences using cell phone technology. Second was the venture capital chasing profits period. This was the longest and least successful period of Twitters history. In this phase, the mission was to make some money. I don’t think Twitter had a mission beyond that, and that ultimately they tried to curate an environment that would appease advertisers and drive engagement (even if it was mostly through outrage). In this phase, I don’t hold all that much against anyone who engaged with the platform. I don’t think Twitter was doing anything egregiously unethical (beyond the usual bullshit every tech company does). I lost interest in Twitter in this timeframe because the outrage engagement model bummed me out. All this brings us to now…
At this point. Twitter is Elon Musk’s personal messaging platform. Its purpose is to inflate and normalize Elon Musk’s world view, and those of his cronies. Anyone who remains on the platform his helping him and his shift right mission, preferring to respect the requests of authoritarian right wing governments vs common sense consumer protections requested by more free governments. There are people on Twitter who disagree with this, but their presence still supports Musk in his mission. Whether you were there before Musk or not is immaterial. Its his personal platform, and it’s for his mission
Yeah, I’m still there. I’m not letting the right-wing trolls win. I’m there until it implodes.
Much like Reddit, if you curate your feed, stay away from the big accounts and avoid the Trending Topics and don’t talk politics then it’s still a decent place to be.
This is to my eyes the core problem with centralized corporate social networks. Ultimately, where you intend it or not, your presence is in support to the core mission of the corporate entity holding the platform. Twitter has 16 years of history at this point, and I think can be viewed in three periods. First was the tech experiment to bring online interactions more into the real world. This was Twitter’s shortest period. It lasted a month or so at most. In this phase, the mission was to create a bridge between online interactions and real world experiences using cell phone technology. Second was the venture capital chasing profits period. This was the longest and least successful period of Twitters history. In this phase, the mission was to make some money. I don’t think Twitter had a mission beyond that, and that ultimately they tried to curate an environment that would appease advertisers and drive engagement (even if it was mostly through outrage). In this phase, I don’t hold all that much against anyone who engaged with the platform. I don’t think Twitter was doing anything egregiously unethical (beyond the usual bullshit every tech company does). I lost interest in Twitter in this timeframe because the outrage engagement model bummed me out. All this brings us to now…
At this point. Twitter is Elon Musk’s personal messaging platform. Its purpose is to inflate and normalize Elon Musk’s world view, and those of his cronies. Anyone who remains on the platform his helping him and his shift right mission, preferring to respect the requests of authoritarian right wing governments vs common sense consumer protections requested by more free governments. There are people on Twitter who disagree with this, but their presence still supports Musk in his mission. Whether you were there before Musk or not is immaterial. Its his personal platform, and it’s for his mission
Yeah, I do still have my twitter account but I try to avoid going on it and only still have it because there are a few niche times where it’s still unfortunately the best place to get current information on local issues (last Sunday for example there was a power outage in my area and the power company’s twitter is a bit better at giving updates than their official site so I was checking both).
I really wish I could just delete my account and maybe I still will (and just create an empty dummy account for those rare cases so twitter doesn’t harass me to log in). But to be honest I’m less stressed about social media in general ever since I left twitter and I suspect over time a similar thing will happen with being off Reddit.
We (most of the people here), already did. Thats how mastadon was born!
Musk is a proponent of near-absolute free speech
Anything goes, so long as it doesn’t hurt his feelings personally
As long as you don’t use the term cisgender :)
Freedom, by Musk… a cologne that’s actually mace with directions to the local old folks home and instructions on how to use InShot.
People are also not allowed to say the word "cisgender” over there
Woah dude, cool it with the c-bombs.
It’s okay, I gave them a c-word pass.
Some of my friends are c-words, so I can use it
Kinda far from absolute imo.
I would claim actual free speech absolutists don’t exist.
You’re probably since those that preach about free speech are politically driven, hence biased to protect their stance. Rest of us have realized speech isn’t free of consequence and the last third just doesn’t give a fuck.
Defamation, fraud, hate speech, harassment, collusion, confidentiality, incitement…
No reasonable person actually thinks that free speech is an unlimited right. Plenty of kinds of speech are viewed as too harmful to be legal. The right is well understood to be about political speech only, and even then the edge cases can be hard to pin.
Anyone who claims to be an absolutist on free speech is insane or absolutely full of shit.
you forgot the most important one: being negative against musk/spez/freeSpeechAdmin123/insert any other free speech absolutist authority figure here
Didn’t he also give in to block a few accounts of political opponents in Turkey instead of risking being banned there completely, because he said it would be better to lose a few accounts instead of losing the whole country?
Or when an authoritarian government asks him to block literally anything
“TikTok copycat”
You know, way way back in the pre-Elon days, they had another one. I think it was called Vine?
I still don’t understand why they killed it. Must’ve been a real money sink.
high costs server side, poor quality of the videos, poor-ish internet connections, not enough powerful cell phones, etc. They were ahead of time. They achieved a decent success in the US but not much outside of it because of much of the reasons listed above.
I know peertube already exists, but I wonder if a federated app specifically for short videos (to reduce data storage costs) could find some success?
would probably also need to use some intense video compression technology before upload to further reduce file sizes
There actually is one in development right now! It’s called Goldfish. It’s in pre-alpha right now, but it’s getting somewhere
Yeah, and it closed because they weren’t making money on it. Turns out all you needed was a few years for server costs to go down.
Elon wanted a worse version of 4chan, Elon gets a worse version of 4chan…
Does he? Is that even possible?
4chan doesn’t fuck with animal abusers. They fuck their lives up and doxx them.
4chan posts plenty of animal abuse videos because they think it’s funny to make people watch them accidentally
The fediverse is looking like the objective best alternative, more so day by day.
One day the far right has to realize we’re here, and they’ll pile in to hurl abuse etc. When that happens I’ll be looking for instances that moderate and defederate them away. I didn’t realize how much that stuff got me down until I came here from reddit and found people having reasonable conversations, just like in the old days. It’s a rare thing to find on today’s internet. Let the commercial sites go after absolute numbers of users while we pursue a better experience.
All social media is filled with animal cruelty.
There’s so many pictures and videos of cut up animal corpses with people going “yum” in the comments…I don’t get how I never see that on regular Twitter.
You’ve never seen any posts containing meat?
You know, I really wish you were clearer in your OP so I wasn’t dragged in to a vegans discussion
Oh no you had to think about what happens to the animals you eat for a few seconds!
I didn’t say I eat animals, chief.
Oh no you had to think about what happens to the animals
youother people eat for a few seconds!
Eating animals isn’t the problem, necessarily. It’s how the animals are grown and raised like crops is the problem. I have a weird stance on this that looks very contradicting. Humans are animals, and we are engineered to include meat in our diets. However, I don’t agree with how the majority of us access that meat.
I’m a strong believer in hunting for food, not sport. If you’re going to eat an animal, you should work for it. And be thankful. Doesn’t matter what beliefs you hold, you owe thanks to what the animal has provided you.
Meat farms are disgusting. But there’s no way they will ever go away. They’re much too profitable for companies to give up.
How do you humanely kill an animal who doesn’t need or want to die?
How does thanking someone after you needlessly kill them help anything?
Why not just eat plants when we can easily thrive on a plant based diet?
We aren’t “engineered” at all, we’re omnivores which means we can do just fine both with and without meat.You hunt it. Not as a sport. Give the animal a fair chance, and even then it’s not a fair fight, so be thankful for what’s been provided
It’s a too bad that you weren’t more clear than your first post, people almost took you serious
The “people going “yum” in the comments” made it so extremely obvious its about OP not wanting to see pieces of cooked meat in beef ramen videos
Why wouldn’t it be serious?
Meat is cut up animal corpses.
Humans can easily thrive without meat so it’s clearly abusive to kill for profit/taste.Could you reactionary fucks think about the subject for more than 2 seconds before you get angry and downvote?
Come on, guy, are you farming for an argument? You aren’t helping your case by being abrasive
With respect, this approach does nothing to convince people to reduce their meat consumption, and in fact alienates people who might otherwise be on the fence about reducing their meat intake.
We get told this literally no matter how we approach the subject lol.
Which approach is it you think I’m using here and why is it ineffective?
It’s not like I’ve been especially rude or anything?Which approach worked on you?
You’ve been hostile (“reactionary fucks”) and you’ve hijacked the broader discussion referenced in the article (Musk’s Twitter showing terrible videos including human death, animal cruelty, etc) to make a point about meat consumption generally versus videos on Twitter showing the intentional and purposeful infliction of pain on animals for pleasure.
My meat consumption is down quite a bit. Information on substitutes, good recipes, studies on the intelligence of (for example) squid and such have shifted me into eating less meat. While I’m sure you’d prefer people not eat meat at all, convincing 5 people to cut their meat consumption 50% is better than convincing 0 people to cut their meat consumption 100% , no?
This is kind of funny, cause it’s the same approach the toxic right takes against progressives. “Be nice to us cause pointing out the things you do makes us get angry instead and won’t convince us.” It’d be ridiculously hilarious if it weren’t so sad at the same time. This is the most subtly toxic response you could have had.
No, they’re incapable and whingy.
The content moderation is more active I guess. People post stuff like that all the time on Facebook and Instagram too. Not sure if they have an algorithm or whatever to trigger removal but a good amount are still manually removed by workers, some who quit because of the psychological repercussions
Yeah, I did listen to a podcast about content moderators at Facebook having breakdowns from dealing with having to see that kind of shit day in, day out.
Fuck. That. Noise.
Do people post much food content on Twitter? I never really used Twitter other than when news stories included tweets so I have no idea what’s popular out there.
Its become mostly far-right wing spam.
Think if 4chan trolls and stormfront trolls had a bastard child.
This is not the mental image I wanted before I finished my coffee this morning.
A lot of people actually do post a lot of food. At least within the art community on Twitter there are so many food posts on the timelines of artists.
Folks, there is important, valid discussion to be had about meat eating both from ethical an environmental perspectives. I’m not sure that !Technology is the place to have that discussion, however.
More importantly, this thread was not the way to discuss these issues, particularly on Beehaw. The behavior in this thread was not nice, and is not the way that these types (or any type) of discussion should be conducted.
I just made a comment about animal cruelty on social media, in a thread about animal cruelty on social media.
Sadly speaking up for the animals provokes angry responses in many people.
I’m not saying that you are solely at fault for the thread getting out of hand, but I hope we can agree that when things devolve to the point that we’re talking about murdering other users and eating their corpses that the discussion has probably gotten out of hand.
I think there are ways of discussing even controversial topics without the conversation spinning out of control, but I know that this topic in particular touches a nerve with a lot of folks. Just please try to be mindful of whether you’re escalating or deescalating the argument in the future.
It’s of course hypothetical, and I think, totally within reason, it’s a thread about animal abuse.
It’s one of the problems we run into when speaking up against animal abuse, people call us extreme when we are really just being up front about what happens in reality.I try to keep it civil and respond matter of fact and explain but it can be hard when you get so much toxicity thrown back at you, all because you stand up against animal cruelty.
It’s of course hypothetical, and I think, totally within reason, it’s a thread about animal abuse.
Hypothetical or not, I’m telling you that it’s not acceptable for this instance.
I understand you want to keep it civil here and think it’s a great goal but what you’re saying would keep us from discussing serious subjects.
When there’s context which explains why something that sounds extreme is brought up you should look at the context, not just react to what you think is extreme.
I don’t think disallowing thought experiments/hypotheticals is positive.
I don’t want to continue to derail this post with offtopic comments. If you’d like to discuss further, feel free to DM me.
This is definitely a problem that’s going to get worse, fast. Federated communities+feed that draws from a pile of them without particular reference+larger userbase…
This is certainly an issue that we’re aware of and discussing.
Yes there’s no difference between a picture of a steak and fries on a plate, and a kitten being tortured then burned alive. Absolutely the same thing.
Not to vegans, they’re clinically insane.
Why is it better to kill a cow for profit/taste?
Both scenarios are needless killing of animals which is obviously terrible abuse.
Is caring about animal abuse insane?
Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I’m sorry you are encountering this here, but I notice that it’s largely not Beehaw users who are continuing interactions that do not meaningfully engage in this conversation. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself). I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. Although you make awesome points, they aren’t being heard right now, except by folks in Beehaw, since they have community guidelines that promote this type of discussion in a respectful manner. It may be better to call this off and restart the conversation in our instance, or choose to respond only to folks who are practicing respectful debate.
Please don’t take the downvotes seriously, especially in Beehaw. Beehaw has downvotes disabled, so what we’re effectively having here is a kbin conversation following kbin rules in Beehaw. If you want to engage with folks who are downvoting you, I think it’s best to do that in our instance or elsewhere to be respectful of Beehaw’s guidelines.
I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in.
Ah well, I am not big on veganism so I’ve no comment on this topic further.
Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself), but name calling doesn’t move the conversation forward. I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in and their guidelines.
They’re both clearly abuse, the steak used to be a living being who was tortured and killed for profit/taste.
Why are you people downvoting me? Do you think steaks don’t come from cows who are killed?
Don’t play dumb, people are downvoting you because you pretend that seeing a picture of a steak evokes the same feelings as seeing a video of a kitten being tortured to death.
For people who aren’t hypocritical or suffering from cognitive dissonance, it is kind of the same. Sure it’s somewhat different, it’s just the after picture of torture and not active torture. There’s a reason laws prevent videotaping inside slaughterhouses. Cause it would turn off so. many. people. “How the sausage is made” is a phrase for a reason. Having statistically increased suicide rates in the industry speaks volumes.
Sure it’s somewhat different, it’s just the after picture of torture and not active torture
Ok so it’s different, got it. For a second I was concerned that ya’ll were really getting distressed when exposed to a picture of a meal, in the same way a video of an actively tortured animal would distress most people.
So you know they’re different, and yet pretend they’re the same to give yourself a moral high ground. Kinda hypocritical. Or do you suffer from cognitive dissonance?
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Right. And do you have the same emotional response when seeing a picture of a steak and when seeing a video of a kitten being tortured and then burned alive?
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What kinda goofy response was this from Musk? AYO!
Try not to link if you can, just screenshot or copy text. Don’t need to drive any traffic to that pit of despair.
Expected from someone who responds with the 💩 emoji
I actually didn’t find much wrong with that, that was funny. But this here is a completely inappropriate response
It might be a funny way to set up your personal email account you only share with your friends, but it’s a wildly unprofessional thing to do with the PR department’s autoreply
Here’s a non-twitter alternative to see the tweet without interacting with twitter (just replace
twitter.comwithnitter.net) https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1673116176757694465
I don’t use Tiktok but I gather that this is a big problem over there as well, so it sounds like Twitter is working just as well as the site it’s riffing off.
I don’t either but my understanding from other feedback, and from the article linked, is that no, it’s not a problem there. More accurate algorithm and proper moderation.
it’s not a problem there
It is, because my wife is an avid Tok user and complains about it, and reports it, frequently. She also says there are many animal videos that are “unsettling” but not outright abuse.
are there videos of apes with nualink in their brains?
Many reported being alarmed by a stream of graphic videos they encountered while scrolling through the feed, including videos showing gun violence, police brutality, physical altercations and vaccine misinformation.
So it’s working as intended?
Of course Elon would.
Steve “spez” Huffman calls the feature “visionary” and jokes that he wishes some protesting Reddit moderators be featured in the videos.
System is working as intended… I guess then huh Elon?
