Haven’t we seen the same public discourse time and time again? A lot of people left FB half a decade ago, before that it was something else. I suspect we’ll keep seeing the same thing again. People want to be consumed by social network probably to their own detriment
Michael Goldharber said it best - people have limited attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to receive attention. Exploitation of that inequality keeps the Attention Economy afloat.
Its also why HN stays afloat, even though the architecture ensures the amount of content consumed is a small insignificant fraction of the content produced.
Ideally we track content consumed/content produced gives us a ratio of the information waste an architecture is producing. And all these architectures are producing a whole lot of waste.
> people have limited attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to receive attention.
Oh that's a great quote. I'm off to build a 1-900 service that will just say 'yes' and 'wow' and 'sure, but what about you' whenever the speaker pauses long enough.
Wow if I didn’t use the app every day I’d stay totally clear of it after reading these quotes right from the beginning of the article. This really doesn’t represent my experience at all. Am I alone or has the experience actually improved? I don’t follow people who are toxic because I don’t enjoy their content. It’s mostly software engineers and the #buildinpublic community and it’s a beautiful place with them.
What has changed that has made the platform worse? It feels subjectively better in my experience.
> designed to steal market share from Twitter, which continues to struggle under the leadership of Elon Musk
> interested in a less angry place for conversations.”
> interested in having a platform that is sanely run.”
Removing verification was a major decline in usability. Verified accounts were good to know that you'd found the correct account for an organization or person you were looking for, but that's gone now. Verification was also a good first approximation that the account is at least somewhat notable, and not just some random online person, but that's gone now, too. With verification, Twitter used to be a moderately trustworthy source of news, now it's just a big pile of low-trust accounts saying things. You can certainly do the work to build your own trust network, but that's exactly what I mean by "decline in usability."
I agree that 'real' verification was useful, but on the other hand removing it had the nice side-effect of 'breaking the spell' of twitter's imagined importance. People take it way less seriously now which I think is positive.
To provide a concrete example, Twitter was nice for getting bus service updates from whatever transit agency operates in the city I happen to be in. I used to be able to look at a bus sign and see the service agency here is called "Metro Transit", so I could search "Metro Transit" on Twitter and somewhere early in the search results a verified account would pop up with something like "Twin Cities Metro Transit" in the description. I can be almost certain that's the account I want to look at. Now that verification is gone, I have to try way harder to find the right account in the sea of conversations, spam, inactive accounts, etc etc. Or go outside Twitter to find the agency's website and dig around for their social contacts, blah blah. Nothing to do with "importance" here, I just want to know what's going on with the bus service. Twitter used to be good for that, now it's a chore.
Not sure why you're getting downvotes, but it's absolutely getting worse for me. They shut down Tweetdeck to anyone that doesn't pay about $100 a year (until the inevitable increase). The Twitter web client is far worse, infected with an overwhelming number of ads and run by an algorithm that thinks I'm looking for racist content. I had no intention of leaving after Elon took over, but he managed to find a way.
If you like drama that's what you'll get. I actively unfollow people I like if their tweets are too much about politics etc. Wish there was a better way of filtering individual tweets rather than people, but basically Twitter/X is completely what you make of it.
Not sure about the downvotes. I kind of agree that the platform has cleaned up in the past few months. It feels more generic, clean and flat than before but also less trolly. Better and worse depend on your tastes, but I don’t think too much has been lost in the past 6 months.
Twitter is great as long as you aren't following political accounts. I only follow the content creators I enjoy related to my hobbies, and unfollow anyone who tends to get into political slapfights too often.
That's been part of why I've been so surprised by the reactions of people to the changes. Most of the changes have at worst had no impact on my experience.
My opinion on them has largely been "at least they're trying something different", barring some decisions which seemed boneheaded for a platform that relies so heavily on linked traffic (eg when they outright turned off/broke tweet embedding and hiding all replies behind a login).
Some changes, like paid verification, have been a net positive in my opinion. No more of twitter picking favorites, particularly since the checkmark didn't mean much anyway.
This was especially meaningful for non-English speaking Twitter, as even Japanese Twitter, despite being their second biggest audience, often came off as being treated as a second class community when it came to things like verification.
> That's been part of why I've been so surprised by the reactions of people to the changes. Most of the changes have at worst had no impact on my experience.
There's a big big narrative being pushed by people who, for one reason or another, really can't stand Elon.
You've said it "improved" and "gotten better" without naming a single concrete thing that's better than before?
Here, I'll name three that have gotten noticeably worse:
1. Under any viral tweet I have to scroll through the sea of Twitter Blue subscribers with >1000 followers to reach some sane reply (as in not a one word reply, @reply_to_this_ai_bot, @save_to_this_random_tool, a crylaugh emoji).
2. Monetization depends on impressions, incentivizing ragebait that other people will "dunk on". Correcting someone gives money to the person you're correcting, which is insane to say the least.
3. API is dead, but bots are literally everywhere. And they're the stupidest kind of bots on top of that. "Contact @soandso on Insta and he'll get your account back", there's a shitcoin trending literally every day, and so on.
One important part is missing in this article: RSS Feeds! The missing aggregation of news can be done easily with RSS.
I'm waiting for a online service that adds tue conversation part to the aggregation part that RSS feeds offer for years
It is stupid easy for governments to control centralized private platforms. Just pass a law. The problem is that Twitter has trouble adhering to the most basic requirements while also running cheap, e.g., preventing CSAM content.
As a long-time enjoyer and early promoter of social media, I disagree with your translation.
The real problem is that either due to algorithms or some inherent quirk of human nature, global public social media has become awful. Let me characterize the awfulness with a joke that showcases the vibe shift.
You tweet/post: “I love sandwiches”
2009 twitter: “Omg I too love sandwiches! Let’s be friends, follow me back”
2023 twitter: “How dare you speak against my brethren who cannot eat gluten!?!? You are an awful human being and I hope you rot in hell.”
This is a natural consequence of Twitter's design, which rewards attention and users with high follower counts. "Omg I too love sandwiches" is not going to get a lot of likes, whereas outrage sells. There's no way to punish toxic behavior, so the only direction is up.
Hence my thought that this is a quirk of human nature. We give attention to the wrong things.
All ad-based media suffers from this problem. Twitter’s algorithm is but a reflection of our revealed preferences. It doesn’t care what we say we want, only what we show we want with our actions.
You don't even need ads for it to happen. Take the ads out of Twitter. Drive the algorithm entirely off of what has the most likes and retweets. You're still going to get incredibly toxic behavior, because that's what people are more likely to react to and retweet.
The problem is that with Twitter, everything lives in one huge pool. You can't make a "nice Twitter" section cordoned off from everything else.
That is a wildly lazy "translation" of the subtitle of an article you clearly didn't actually read or engage with. His argument boils down to none of the above, and your final point is such an incredibly ironic statement, that it's hard to believe it wasn't intentional.
Twitter is, to his point, largely a worthless platform for discussion if you don't heavily curate your experience, because it does, by design (unintentionally, possibly), massively elevate bad takes, noise, and quick, pithy attacks, because they're easy to propagate, and it very clearly downgrades any argument that requires more than a few hundred characters to present (especially now, with the changes to how threaded conversations can be linked). Threads idea of moderating that changes the dynamic and value. Neither is actually good, and neither is particularly beneficial compared to other models.
But sure, "governments" and "media companies" and rabble rabble rabble. Next time, RTFA.
If you use a misleading headline, then that is not my problem. I skimmed the article as the New Yorker is an overly verbose rag read by sesquipedalian obsessed pseudo-intellectuals.
Actually, YOU have just made an excellent point unintentionally, not everyone has the time or desire to read a long article. IF you prefer more longform content, then you can go to any number of platforms which specialize in that.
Twitter is what it always was, a quick take or bite-size morsel of information.
"Thousands of scientists are cutting back from Twitter"
Essentially, a survey published in Nature about twitter usage among scientists dropping, in part, because of the phenomena mentioned in this New Yorker article.
Eg:
"Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had started seeing a lot of “strange” political far-right accounts espousing science denialism and racism in his feed. He has to block them constantly. “Twitter has always been not so nice let’s say, but it is a mess right now,” he said."
Scientists are on average a little left-leaning but science denialism, somehow, is something that crops up in both far-left and far-right spaces (just not equally). If you were in a leftist bubble, you’d have been seeing science denialism for a while now. Far-left science denialism starts with the “only use natural products, chemicals are bad for you, vaccines are bad for you” crunchy lifestyle accounts.
Sometimes I think the political spectrum is more of an S1 topology.
Science is funded by government, so researchers come to conclusions that support them. I'm not suggesting any conspiracy, just incentives. Researchers just see which proposals get funded, and it happens those are the ones that support the mainstream narrative that the government would like to push.
So it makes sense that if you are against the mainstream narrative, this would also pit you against some mainstream science.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to lend support to science denialism (I'm somewhat centrist). Just trying to explain why hard liners would tend to engage in it.
I don’t think “mainstream narrative that the government would like to push” is in any way explicatory. The idea that there is some kind of mainstream narrative doesn’t seem to hold up to me. If you are doing food science you can conceivably get your funding from the FDA, USDA, NIH, or even DOD. Those agencies have their own objectives and are filled with people that have varying viewpoints about what kind of research is important or unimportant, and varying viewpoints about what the mission of their agency is.
I’m not saying that this is an apolitical process. I don’t believe that an apolitical process is possible here, even in theory, and if we imagine a world where an apolitical process were possible, I don’t think such a process would be desirable. I’m also not saying that the process isn’t flawed. I’m just saying that there is not a coherent, unified political force here, and in this environment, there is plenty of room for good research, good science to be done.
I would like to hear if you are basing this opinion on any of your personal experience applying for research grants, or on any informed analysis of how this works, or whether you are just making conjectures about incentives based on the same facts everyone else has.
>If you were in a leftist bubble, you’d have been seeing science denialism for a while now.
That's interesting, if you ask me: "are you in a leftist bubble" - I would answer "probably a little." But I've NEVER seen any science denialism, so I guess I'm not?
What kind of denialism are you talking about wrt leftists?
Antivax views have long been present on the left. Quack medicine (like Homeopathy) has a big market on the left. There’s also no shortage of self-diagnoses especially regarding mental illnesses there, which some have taken to adoptint extreme covid paranoia, contrary to actual scientific guidelines.
> If you lurk on the firehose you get it all. Including all the parts you may disagree with or find despicable or... Perhaps also something nice?
I mean that wasn't the case historically.
Like if your favorite spot in town was a roller rink and it got bought out by a movie theatre. You'll lamente your loss but sure nothing illegal happened there but obviously you might rethink spending your time at the specific location.
The default feed is "For You" which absolutely includes people/posts you never followed. Users have to explicitly choose the "Following" feed to only see those posts. And, the setting resets itself constantly. If you aren't diligent, you get the firehose whether you wanted it or not.
While I realize this does nothing for mobile (RIP third-party clients), Control Panel for Twitter [1] has been nice for me to use as a browserscript. Defaults/hides "For You" and tweaks a bunch of other stuff (hideable trends, etc).
What you're actually describing there is how Mastodon works. Twitter has been "algorithmic" for the longest time now and will show you whatever it thinks you should see.
Discovery is a feature we look for in social media platforms. Twitter offers discovery in the form of an optional more open feed. Twitters discovery feature is worse for these users now than it was before. They now feel less compelled to use the product.
Twitter hasn't change for me in years, I just follow some accounts and read their posts. I'm not interested in what any social media app thinks I will like, I don't have time to waste on that, so I don't use their "discovery" algorithms, it would be like random blogs showing up in my RSS feeds.
People needed a new twitter because they hate Elon, which is just another fad. They eventually learn to ignore his antics and just enjoy everyone else’s tweets. They always come back. Just check out Threads timing, it coincides with max Elon hate, can’t be more clear.
The Two Minutes Hate against Elon Musk has elements of Trump Derangement Syndrome, where commentators on the Left seem to compete amongst each other to hate the man hardest. Or to be seen to hate him, at least.
It's not about the platform, but the people. Mastodon is nice for some of the techy stuff I'm interested in. But it's useless for other things I used to follow on Twitter: hyper-local news and weather, sports banter, and other researchers in my field.
Yes, and it's restricted in the case of providers of infrastructure deemed essential to the operation of a civil society. Electricity and landline providers can't decline to serve either the KKK or the Black Panthers.
Twitter, being the de facto modern public square, should soon be covered by this type of legislation.
Lots of pictures of France burning on their site, intriguing.
I guess when it comes down to it I do believe that the platform should be open to all, but there may well be specific times (such as during active and extensive rioting) that strategic delays and slowdowns may need to be inserted to prevent bad actors from using it as a coordinating tool.
I find this regretful, but necessary.
Condemn me. It is of no importance. History will absolve me.
So I guess removing legal content you don't agree with is okay. Which, I mean, it is, but I just want people to understand the 'new Twitter' isn't as high on 'free speech' as they sell themselves. They banned an account just because they disagreed on their politics (and the motivation was a deleted tweet from 2013 apparently).
The ban wasn't regretful nor necessary, and why should I condemn anyone? I understand why Elon don't like anti-corporate discourse and why it bans it from his platform. I have trouble understanding that he apparently rescinded a ban of someone who posted CP, but at least he's coherent.
> When Musk says he’s building Twitter 2.0, he is referencing the transition from the original iteration of the internet—message boards, indymedia, a more or less open and participatory model—to Web 2.0, in which all interactions are shaped by the algorithms of a few tech overlords. They aim to determine what we are able to imagine as well as what we are able to say and do. What has already happened on Facebook and Instagram and is now occurring on Twitter is the inevitable consequence of increasingly widespread dependence on corporate media platforms.
This has happened to Twitter already in 2013 (the "APIpocalypse", which notably, what started Mastodon), why did they keep using it for 9 years after that ?
Twitter is very much the de facto modern public square. I wouldn't call it 'infrastructure' but it's definitely a utility, which is probably why a person who specialises in utilities bought it.
the only thing I concede is that there is a gray area, the in between, as you put it... but aside from that gray area in between, large corporations do not have rights. the end.
I understand that libertarian logic uses gray areas as a means to an end of furthering their ideology, but that is not an issue for me.
I'm not asserting a gray area. People have rights.
Governments, as a condition of granting the privileges asscoiated with the corporate form, could specifically apply limits to its use (and should do so much more than they do, generally), but to the extent they haven't, people who control corporations don’t lose rights merely because they are acting through them.
Corporations don't have rights, because corporations don't actually exist. Corporations are treated as having rights, because they are simply vehicles for actions by natural persons, who have rights.
The article presents small discussion forums as safe and cosy, which they can be, but their insular nature also makes them a perfect breeding ground for extremist views. We shouldn’t ignore that most of the radical politics and conspiracy theories swirling Twitter are born in such small forums.
I purposefully expose myself to alternate viewpoints from my own. It’s how to prevent the frog from boiling into an extremist (L or R) without noticing. I have enough conviction in my beliefs that I can read contradictory views without getting emotional. I don’t understand the desire to surround yourself with clones of yourself.
It's good to do that when you're prepared for it, but it's exhausting having political screeds permeate every discussion. I miss when it was a faux-pas to bring up matters of religion and politics.
I mean are we really comparing the niche impact of 00s 4Chan w/ modern Twitter? 00s 4Chan didn't radically alter political discourse in America, and as far as conspiracies go, I mean its not even comparable.
Leave the eternal September on Twitter and Threads. Let early adopters enjoy Mastodon/Lemmy for a long while before the followers very predictably ruin the things that leaders like about small/medium communities.
Soon as the takeover happened, my account got hacked, used for crypto spam, and banned. I can't use X. Had that account ever since the early days of Twitter. Tried putting in an appeal but its automated. Am I really missing out on anything?
No. A few months after the takeover I blocked Twitter at the DNS level for my house. I went back into the office for work one day and in some down time, I went to Twitter while it wasn't DNS blocked. It's a ghost town. I miss the old Twitter, but that's clearly never coming back.
That's weird, because I'm seeing as much activity, engagement and interaction as I've always seen.
There are a lot fewer insane takes being posted by accounts that may or may not be bots, but I'm not really missing that as they just derailed the conversation.
I get the impression that more 'normal' people are now using the platform; the quality and ... coherence ... of replies has gone way up.
Also happy to see a lot less engagement from 'people' that post insane takes then meme out and block when questioned.
I agree. Twitter/X seems more “alive” now than it was before. I’m really enjoying being on the platform now.
I’m glad that scientists such as Dr Robert Malone have been unbanned. I’m not an expert in his field so I cannot tell if he is a crazed paranoid lunatic, or if he is the most important whistleblower of the 21st century.
Either way, I want to hear him out and see his arguments judged by the wisdom of the crowds. While science converges on the truth, it SHOULD be messy and there should be disagreement with consensus views occasionally. When disagreement is silently removed, we’re not doing science anymore.
oh whatever, says "The New Yorker" that would like to keep making $12 a print issue and whatever crazy amount they charge for online. Come to us! not them. you need us to feel connected.
> Threads is related to and interoperates with Mastodon
Threads has far more integration with Instagram than with Mastodon, despite repeated promises to the contrary. If you want Mastodon, you should just do that and not Threads.
I'm a little surprised the article didn't mention Mastodon. It has its warts and issues (i mean, ahem, features) like no full-text search and no quote-posting, but Mastodon does generate the small discussion forum feel, but with the ability to link out to other communities.
Social media is a fundamentally flawed model that you have can have human communication on a global scale with a “The Algorithm” used to cleanly order high quality capital-C “Content” into numeric categories that can be parceled out to drive capital-E “Engagement”.
If you told people about this 30 years ago, they would have laughed at you, and not because of some garbage about people expecting horses instead of cars (Christ how I’ve come to hate this quote, it needs to die a painful death) but because it is a fundamentally stupid idea that only an autist that doesn’t actually communicate with people could have come up with. This is not how people communicate, this is how computers operate, and we’ve been shoving humans pegs into computer-sized boxes using addiction to dopamine hits to keep them firmly wedged in there, and now we’re wondering why everything’s going to shit as a result.
The old ways were best. An ecosystem of small forum communities where the only ordering is time (the ordering none of us can escape) and the subject of the conversation, and the community itself evolves its rules organically through migration, not what a committee of managers in Silicon Valley thinks its CoC’s should look like this month.
You are participating in a social media site, with "Show HN", "Ask HN", upvotes, downvotes, with appearance controlled by "The Algorithm", all of the hallmark of social media.
Your comment is typical social media, with language that provokes extreme emotion ("period", "hate", "stupid", "going to shit").
You fit right in with what you feel outraged about.
101 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadIts also why HN stays afloat, even though the architecture ensures the amount of content consumed is a small insignificant fraction of the content produced.
Ideally we track content consumed/content produced gives us a ratio of the information waste an architecture is producing. And all these architectures are producing a whole lot of waste.
Oh that's a great quote. I'm off to build a 1-900 service that will just say 'yes' and 'wow' and 'sure, but what about you' whenever the speaker pauses long enough.
What has changed that has made the platform worse? It feels subjectively better in my experience.
> designed to steal market share from Twitter, which continues to struggle under the leadership of Elon Musk
> interested in a less angry place for conversations.”
> interested in having a platform that is sanely run.”
That's been part of why I've been so surprised by the reactions of people to the changes. Most of the changes have at worst had no impact on my experience.
My opinion on them has largely been "at least they're trying something different", barring some decisions which seemed boneheaded for a platform that relies so heavily on linked traffic (eg when they outright turned off/broke tweet embedding and hiding all replies behind a login).
Some changes, like paid verification, have been a net positive in my opinion. No more of twitter picking favorites, particularly since the checkmark didn't mean much anyway.
This was especially meaningful for non-English speaking Twitter, as even Japanese Twitter, despite being their second biggest audience, often came off as being treated as a second class community when it came to things like verification.
There's a big big narrative being pushed by people who, for one reason or another, really can't stand Elon.
A lot of them are absurdly far left.
Here, I'll name three that have gotten noticeably worse:
1. Under any viral tweet I have to scroll through the sea of Twitter Blue subscribers with >1000 followers to reach some sane reply (as in not a one word reply, @reply_to_this_ai_bot, @save_to_this_random_tool, a crylaugh emoji).
2. Monetization depends on impressions, incentivizing ragebait that other people will "dunk on". Correcting someone gives money to the person you're correcting, which is insane to say the least.
3. API is dead, but bots are literally everywhere. And they're the stupidest kind of bots on top of that. "Contact @soandso on Insta and he'll get your account back", there's a shitcoin trending literally every day, and so on.
I am interested in potential future RSS capabilities. Would you mind a chat about that? If so, please drop me an email, see profile.
How is that? I claim the opposite. It's far easier to control onr entity instead of multiple separated ones.
The real problem is that either due to algorithms or some inherent quirk of human nature, global public social media has become awful. Let me characterize the awfulness with a joke that showcases the vibe shift.
You tweet/post: “I love sandwiches”
2009 twitter: “Omg I too love sandwiches! Let’s be friends, follow me back”
2023 twitter: “How dare you speak against my brethren who cannot eat gluten!?!? You are an awful human being and I hope you rot in hell.”
Hence my thought that this is a quirk of human nature. We give attention to the wrong things.
All ad-based media suffers from this problem. Twitter’s algorithm is but a reflection of our revealed preferences. It doesn’t care what we say we want, only what we show we want with our actions.
The problem is that with Twitter, everything lives in one huge pool. You can't make a "nice Twitter" section cordoned off from everything else.
Twitter is, to his point, largely a worthless platform for discussion if you don't heavily curate your experience, because it does, by design (unintentionally, possibly), massively elevate bad takes, noise, and quick, pithy attacks, because they're easy to propagate, and it very clearly downgrades any argument that requires more than a few hundred characters to present (especially now, with the changes to how threaded conversations can be linked). Threads idea of moderating that changes the dynamic and value. Neither is actually good, and neither is particularly beneficial compared to other models.
But sure, "governments" and "media companies" and rabble rabble rabble. Next time, RTFA.
Actually, YOU have just made an excellent point unintentionally, not everyone has the time or desire to read a long article. IF you prefer more longform content, then you can go to any number of platforms which specialize in that.
Twitter is what it always was, a quick take or bite-size morsel of information.
"Thousands of scientists are cutting back from Twitter"
Essentially, a survey published in Nature about twitter usage among scientists dropping, in part, because of the phenomena mentioned in this New Yorker article.
Eg:
"Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had started seeing a lot of “strange” political far-right accounts espousing science denialism and racism in his feed. He has to block them constantly. “Twitter has always been not so nice let’s say, but it is a mess right now,” he said."
Sometimes I think the political spectrum is more of an S1 topology.
Science is funded by government, so researchers come to conclusions that support them. I'm not suggesting any conspiracy, just incentives. Researchers just see which proposals get funded, and it happens those are the ones that support the mainstream narrative that the government would like to push.
So it makes sense that if you are against the mainstream narrative, this would also pit you against some mainstream science.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to lend support to science denialism (I'm somewhat centrist). Just trying to explain why hard liners would tend to engage in it.
I’m not saying that this is an apolitical process. I don’t believe that an apolitical process is possible here, even in theory, and if we imagine a world where an apolitical process were possible, I don’t think such a process would be desirable. I’m also not saying that the process isn’t flawed. I’m just saying that there is not a coherent, unified political force here, and in this environment, there is plenty of room for good research, good science to be done.
I would like to hear if you are basing this opinion on any of your personal experience applying for research grants, or on any informed analysis of how this works, or whether you are just making conjectures about incentives based on the same facts everyone else has.
That's interesting, if you ask me: "are you in a leftist bubble" - I would answer "probably a little." But I've NEVER seen any science denialism, so I guess I'm not?
What kind of denialism are you talking about wrt leftists?
If you lurk on the firehose you get it all. Including all the parts you may disagree with or find despicable or... Perhaps also something nice?
I really don't get this point... What do you expect exactly on a large platform?
I mean that wasn't the case historically.
Like if your favorite spot in town was a roller rink and it got bought out by a movie theatre. You'll lamente your loss but sure nothing illegal happened there but obviously you might rethink spending your time at the specific location.
[1]: https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-twitter
1+1=2.
Discovery best done via the curated list of accounts I follow.
It’s how they signal tribal affiliation.
I hope we can see the expansion of this legislation soon to cover the modern ways in which people communicate and the modern town square.
Twitter, being the de facto modern public square, should soon be covered by this type of legislation.
[0]https://fr.crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethi...
I guess when it comes down to it I do believe that the platform should be open to all, but there may well be specific times (such as during active and extensive rioting) that strategic delays and slowdowns may need to be inserted to prevent bad actors from using it as a coordinating tool.
I find this regretful, but necessary.
Condemn me. It is of no importance. History will absolve me.
The ban wasn't regretful nor necessary, and why should I condemn anyone? I understand why Elon don't like anti-corporate discourse and why it bans it from his platform. I have trouble understanding that he apparently rescinded a ban of someone who posted CP, but at least he's coherent.
This has happened to Twitter already in 2013 (the "APIpocalypse", which notably, what started Mastodon), why did they keep using it for 9 years after that ?
I understand that libertarian logic uses gray areas as a means to an end of furthering their ideology, but that is not an issue for me.
Governments, as a condition of granting the privileges asscoiated with the corporate form, could specifically apply limits to its use (and should do so much more than they do, generally), but to the extent they haven't, people who control corporations don’t lose rights merely because they are acting through them.
Corporations don't have rights, because corporations don't actually exist. Corporations are treated as having rights, because they are simply vehicles for actions by natural persons, who have rights.
> I don’t understand the desire to surround yourself with clones of yourself.
Every society ever follows the formula of being with people who share similar characteristics one way or another. Not that crazy.
There are a lot fewer insane takes being posted by accounts that may or may not be bots, but I'm not really missing that as they just derailed the conversation.
I get the impression that more 'normal' people are now using the platform; the quality and ... coherence ... of replies has gone way up.
Also happy to see a lot less engagement from 'people' that post insane takes then meme out and block when questioned.
I’m glad that scientists such as Dr Robert Malone have been unbanned. I’m not an expert in his field so I cannot tell if he is a crazed paranoid lunatic, or if he is the most important whistleblower of the 21st century.
Either way, I want to hear him out and see his arguments judged by the wisdom of the crowds. While science converges on the truth, it SHOULD be messy and there should be disagreement with consensus views occasionally. When disagreement is silently removed, we’re not doing science anymore.
Threads is related to and interoperates with Mastodon; so Mastodon is relevant to an article in which Threads is the main topic.
Threads has far more integration with Instagram than with Mastodon, despite repeated promises to the contrary. If you want Mastodon, you should just do that and not Threads.
Social media is a fundamentally flawed model that you have can have human communication on a global scale with a “The Algorithm” used to cleanly order high quality capital-C “Content” into numeric categories that can be parceled out to drive capital-E “Engagement”.
If you told people about this 30 years ago, they would have laughed at you, and not because of some garbage about people expecting horses instead of cars (Christ how I’ve come to hate this quote, it needs to die a painful death) but because it is a fundamentally stupid idea that only an autist that doesn’t actually communicate with people could have come up with. This is not how people communicate, this is how computers operate, and we’ve been shoving humans pegs into computer-sized boxes using addiction to dopamine hits to keep them firmly wedged in there, and now we’re wondering why everything’s going to shit as a result.
The old ways were best. An ecosystem of small forum communities where the only ordering is time (the ordering none of us can escape) and the subject of the conversation, and the community itself evolves its rules organically through migration, not what a committee of managers in Silicon Valley thinks its CoC’s should look like this month.
Your comment is typical social media, with language that provokes extreme emotion ("period", "hate", "stupid", "going to shit").
You fit right in with what you feel outraged about.