Twitter and The Musk

[Mota]

I just come here to see what stupid thing Elon has done today.

[Ksyrup]

Good timing then. It appears some time Thursday evening or early Friday, Twitter deliberately disabled 3rd party access to feeds. I haven't used the Twitter app in a decade but now I'm forced to. No 3rd party app has access to the Twitter API.

[albionmoonlight]

So musk totally lied about Tesla’s ability to create self driving software. Which strikes me as pretty important and fraudulent, because he himself has indicated that self driving was a huge part of Tesla‘s value. I think he was brilliant to make himself a right wing MAGA culture warrior. Because he is soon going to need to rely on the tired old “the deep state is coming after me” defense in all of the inevitable fraud lawsuits coming his way.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

So musk totally lied about Tesla’s ability to create self driving software. Which strikes me as pretty important and fraudulent, because he himself has indicated that self driving was a huge part of Tesla‘s value. I think he was brilliant to make himself a right wing MAGA culture warrior. Because he is soon going to need to rely on the tired old “the deep state is coming after me” defense in all of the inevitable fraud lawsuits coming his way.

He also said his cars would be flying by now. That his new truck would be out and able to be used as a boat. That he would land on Mars a couple years ago.

He's a pathological liar and anyone still falling for his scams sort of deserve what they get at this point.

[Ksyrup]

Twitter is really pissing me off with this For Me tab which they are force-defaulting to when I log in. It takes me a few minutes to realize I'm not seeing the usual feed - tonight, it was seeing 2 Jim Jordan tweets that hadn't been re-tweeted. For Me, my ass.

[Ghost Econ]

If you have the stomach, scroll through responses to people like Jim Jordan or other conservative personalities. It will be an endless line of blue checkmarks from otherwise non-descript people who support them.

Maybe theyre bots where the owners are willing to pay $8 a month or maybe they're actually normal people, but Musk did a great job of swindling conservatives for $100 a year for no tangible benefit.

[cuervo72]

Yeah, I dunno. It seems like I see some of my followed accounts in Following, and some in For You, which almost makes me have to check both.

[whomario]

Either he now managed to break it or the conspiracy nuts are, well, nuts. Or both.

amazing things are happening on twitter dot com pic.twitter.com/VIiwnINUNj

— KnowNothing (@KnowNothingTV) February 1, 2023

(Sth about allegedly locked accounts being displayed more or sth, which Melon started testing by ... doing a study of 1, meaning himself.

[albionmoonlight]

We all thought this guy was the next Edison.

Turns out he's a snake oil salesman who probably couldn't program a VCR if he had to.

[RainMaker]

Those are the dumbest people alive.

[B & B]

12:00 Blinking on and off for years

[RainMaker]

Well turning off API access is going swimmingly today I see.

[Ghost Econ]

Yeah, I got a message yesterday stating I was above my tweet limit and to try again tomorrow. It was the first time I had posted anything in like 3 days.

Almost certainly a test to charging for tweets/tweet packs. It's like every idea is worst than the next.

https://fortune.com/2023/02/08/twitt...r-daily-limit/

[PilotMan]

Deactivated my account a while back. Don't miss it one bit.

[albionmoonlight]

Neuralink transported brain implants covered in pathogens, group alleges | Ars Technica

Neuralink is being investigated for exposing humans to antibiotic resistant bacteria harvested from tortured monkey brains.

Or, as Elon musk likes to call it, Monday.

[Ghost Econ]

I'm too lazy to read the article, were the monkeys subjected to torture, or were the monkeys tortured like a writer following up the great American novel?

[flere-imsaho]

In one instance in 2021, 25 of 60 pigs used in a study had devices that were the wrong size surgically implanted into their heads. It was an accident that internal documents and people familiar with the matter indicated could have been avoided if researchers were given the proper time to prepare for the experiment.

In two other incidents, Neuralink researchers accidentally implanted a device on the wrong vertebrae of two pigs in two separate surgeries, which could have been avoided if the researchers had simply counted the vertebrae before beginning the surgeries. The fact that it happened twice reportedly frustrated fellow researchers.

Reuters also identified four experiments, involving a total of 86 pigs, that were spoiled by human errors. The errors meant that experiments yielded less valuable research results and had to be repeated, requiring the use of yet more animals. Three people who spoke with Reuters attributed the errors to the researchers working in a "pressure-cooker environment."

But it's OK because move fast/break stuff in the pursuit of scientific progress, right? Well....

In all, Neuralink has killed roughly 1,500 animals since 2018, including pigs, monkeys, and more than 280 sheep, according to Reuters. The outlet noted that a rival, Synchron, has made better progress using far fewer animals—only about 80 sheep. Like Neuralink, Synchron launched in 2016, but it has less lofty goals for its device. Still, the company's device allowed paralyzed people to text and type with their thoughts after the company got approval to run human clinical trials in 2021. Musk recently said he hopes Neuralink will get regulatory approval to start clinical trials in six months.

TL;DR: Musk's company, under direct pressure from Musk himself, killed 19x more animals than a rival company, often after said animals suffered much more than was necessary, and often due to researchers not been given time to prepare for experiments properly, and still is technologically further behind the aforementioned more humane research company.

[Flasch186]

Doesn’t matter

The bad guys win in the long run


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RainMaker]

If anyone else is annoyed with the algorithm that is promoting weird Twitter Blue accounts, you can subscribe to a blocklist that will block them all. The guys server is being hit pretty hard and it does take a few days to fully block all the accounts once you've subscribed. But it has cleaned up my feed a lot.

Block Together

[Lathum]

Elon fired a bunch more people and now Twitter is down. Top notch job

[Edward64]

Yup, Elon. Don't bite the hand that fed, feeds, and you need to continue feeding you in the future (btw, hear that Spare?).

You are definitely not bigger than the Chinese government (see the couple really rich Chinese billionaires that were put in their place).

#China Communist Party paper warns @elonmusk against pushing #COVID19 lab leak theory. @globaltimesnews posts on social media “Elon Musk, are you breaking the pot of China?” (“Breaking the pot after eating” is Chinese “biting the hand that feeds you.”)

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Yup, Elon. Don't bite the hand that fed, feeds, and you need to continue feeding you in the future (btw, hear that Spare?).

You are definitely not bigger than the Chinese government (see the couple really rich Chinese billionaires that were put in their place).

He can win some public good will by defying China, but he could also lose many billions of dollars.

[Atocep]

Elon Musk publicly mocks Twitter worker with disability who is unsure whether he's been laid off | CNN Business

So a guy that works for twitter and has Muscular Dystrophy lost access to his work account 9 days ago when Elon fired 200 people, but he hadn't been contacted by HR to let him know he'd been fired and HR hadn't been able to even confirm for him that he was part of the group fired.

Elon gets on twitter and mocks him, saying the guy didn't actually do any work and used a disability as excuse that he couldn't type. Elon gets roasted, backtracks, and blames others for giving him bad/false information.

Oh, this guy also happened to be Iceland's person of the year in 2022.

The person of the year 2022 - Iceland Monitor

[Mota]

Yes, it's incredible that he's been locked out for 9 days, but Elon has the balls to ask him what work he's done during this time.
If I was 90% sure I was fired but never given confirmation, you can bet that I'd be doing as little as possible.

[Ksyrup]

I would detest being an attorney for a guy like him (or one of his companies). He just publicly disclosed an employee's medical condition to millions of people, mocked him for it, AND suggested he was faking it and was the reason he was fired. That's ... not ideal from an employment law perspective.

Apparently the guy is the founder of a company Twitter bought and would be owed millions if he was let go. I think he's going to be adding to that payoff.

[Toddzilla]

Anyone with a gap in their resume can now claim to be the Lead Engineer of Whatever at Twitter and there's no HR there to refute said claim.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Anyone with a gap in their resume can now claim to be the Lead Engineer of Whatever at Twitter and there's no HR there to refute said claim.

But then you'd have to admit you worked for Musk.

[Toddzilla]

Nope - I was there 2017-2022 as Head of EMEA Software Engineering.

[bronconick]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Elon Musk publicly mocks Twitter worker with disability who is unsure whether he's been laid off | CNN Business

So a guy that works for twitter and has Muscular Dystrophy lost access to his work account 9 days ago when Elon fired 200 people, but he hadn't been contacted by HR to let him know he'd been fired and HR hadn't been able to even confirm for him that he was part of the group fired.

Elon gets on twitter and mocks him, saying the guy didn't actually do any work and used a disability as excuse that he couldn't type. Elon gets roasted, backtracks, and blames others for giving him bad/false information.

Oh, this guy also happened to be Iceland's person of the year in 2022.

The person of the year 2022 - Iceland Monitor

Musk's now begging him to come back because the guy sold his company to Twitter and took the payout in wages to put the money back into the Icelandic social system and was structured in a way which requires payment for the entire deal upon his termination.

[Mota]

I find it insane that he fired the lady who slept on her office floor in a sleeping bag and went viral for it.
First of all, I'd never sleep in any office that I worked in. The employer doesn't own the employee, they are paying them for services. If there was some sort of shift work that required weird hours, that's fine, but just to expect someone to work 24/7 as a test of loyalty is wrong. And the loyalty apparently only goes in one direction, as she was sacrificed just months later.

[albionmoonlight]

I read something today that seems like a pretty likely endgame. Since firing all of their compliance people, Twitter has been in open defiance of an FTC consent decree and about eleventy-billion EU privacy regulations. So within a year or so, Twitter is going to be hit with a metric ass-ton of fines.

At which point, Musk (who tried to get out of this deal as soon as he made it and who has not been enjoying himself because buying twitter did not make normal people stop making fun of him like he thought it would) will declare bankruptcy and declare that he was thisclose to turning twitter around, but the deep state bureaucrats took him down.

The MAGAverse and Elon fanboys will eat it up.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I read something today that seems like a pretty likely endgame. Since firing all of their compliance people, Twitter has been in open defiance of an FTC consent decree and about eleventy-billion EU privacy regulations. So within a year or so, Twitter is going to be hit with a metric ass-ton of fines.

At which point, Musk (who tried to get out of this deal as soon as he made it and who has not been enjoying himself because buying twitter did not make normal people stop making fun of him like he thought it would) will declare bankruptcy and declare that he was thisclose to turning twitter around, but the deep state bureaucrats took him down.

The MAGAverse and Elon fanboys will eat it up.

That, and the idea the Saudi's and/or Russians are financing his destruction of the platform, seems less like a conspiracy theory and more like reality.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Mota

I find it insane that he fired the lady who slept on her office floor in a sleeping bag and went viral for it.
First of all, I'd never sleep in any office that I worked in. The employer doesn't own the employee, they are paying them for services. If there was some sort of shift work that required weird hours, that's fine, but just to expect someone to work 24/7 as a test of loyalty is wrong. And the loyalty apparently only goes in one direction, as she was sacrificed just months later.

I don't think much thought is going into the layoffs to be honest. They probably didn't even know she was let go. They are broke and just laying people off so they can try and make payroll.

Bankruptcy is inevitable. They've been stiffing their landlord and tons of vendors for months now. Only a matter of time before they have to do something.

[flere-imsaho]

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, albion.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, albion.

There's no way I could come up with something that insightful on my own.

Here's the link (it was posting weird, so I xx'd it): hXXps://davekarpf.substack.com/p/how-long-does-twitter-have-left

[Edward64]

Not alot of faith in Meta able to execute on a Twitter alternative.

But competition is good. So hope they can come up with a viable alternative. Or maybe, just offer to by Twitter at a steep discount from a year ago.

Twitter could have a new rival — a platform created by Meta | CNN Business

Facebook-parent Meta is exploring building a new, standalone platform for sharing text updates, the company confirmed to CNN on Friday, in what could mark the most high-profile new contender to take on Twitter as it falters under Elon Musk.

“We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, which essentially described Twitter’s mission statement without naming the platform.

The platform, plans for which were earlier reported by Platformer and MoneyControl, would be decentralized, meaning users could ostensibly create different servers or communities, each with their own rules rather than one central platform controlled by Meta.

[flere-imsaho]

Why not? There's nothing about twitter that strikes me as technologically complex, except possibly scaling, but you'd figure there are plenty of engineers and architects at Meta who know how to scale technology (and they already have the infrastructure anyway).

[sterlingice]

Isn't that one of the common criticisms of Musk's acquisition (if you assume he was doing it in "good faith")? That he thought he was acquiring a tech company and not an advertising community. It wasn't Twitter's technology that made it valuable or difficult, but cultivating the community and maintaining sponsors.

SI

[albionmoonlight]

Totally.

I suspect that Meta had some R&D engineers code a twitter clone years ago and just kept it around for a day like today

Twitter was valuable because it--for whatever reason--was a community unlike other places on the internet. Not because coding a microblog is some impossible feat of software engineering.

Coming in and immediately-first-thing-before-you-even-unpack destroying that community was a choice. Either a choice based in incompetence or corruption. They look the same from the outside.

[GrantDawg]

I really don't trust Meta. The engineering isn't the issue.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[albionmoonlight]

I spent a little more time on Twitter last week to check in. A lot of the people I remember are there. But the vibe was off. Much less dynamic than I remember. And just not pleasant.

And a decent number of ElonBlue folks there posting about how AI is even more amazing than we realize and how Biden can't be trusted on Ukraine.

It's like a favorite old bar that got new ownership and pissed off a lot of the regulars so they left. Superficially, it does not look that different, but in all the ways that matter, it is nothing like the place you remember.

I am now of the opinion that his plan from the beginning was to turn Twitter into a right-wing pro-Russia techbro haven or kill it in the process of turning it into that and he does not really care which one it ends up being.

[sterlingice]

If the goal is to kill it, it doesn't matter if it still exists or not. If it's just a husk of its former self but with the veneer of what used to be, that's even better for that purpose. It's that much harder to explain in a few words how or why it's different.

SI

[Hammer]

Twitter was extremely wing biased. If you are orientated to the left the echo chamber you may fondly remember isn't what it used to be. It seems pretty neutral to me now. Surely that's a good thing. Probably more disagreements as the general public are now more evenly represented.

I believe Elon did sway towards the left. But I think Biden's favouritism of GM got up his nose. Plus the out of control wokeism seems an issue with him.

As an outsider it seems the need to be on team red or team blue has really got in to the head of some of my American friends. The division seems at an all time high. I think they would he a lot happier if they pulled out of that mindset. Disengage from that battle and got on with their own lives.

[cuervo72]

How would you like LGBTQ+, minority, or even women to "disengage" from these battles, as you say?

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Hammer

Disengage from that battle and got on with their own lives.

How do I disengage from that battle when I have a gay son and a daughter and one side is literally trying to take both of their rights away?

Thankfully I live in a blue state and have the money to make sure my daughter could get the healthcare she needs regardless, but not everyone is so fortunate, and if the GOP regains power the status quo could shift.

They literally want a nation where a woman with a non viable pregnancy has to be on the cusp of death before giving her life saving care, let alone banning things like morning after pills, etc...

And this is just two issues, never mind their election nonsense, etc...This isn't the time to disengage. Democracy dies in darkness.

[RainMaker]

Part of it is Musk but I also think Twitter is just a social media platform that is on a downward trend. New platforms come out and the old ones get pushed asiide.

If you've been on TikTok, you know their technology and platform is blowing Twitter and everyone else out of the water.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Part of it is Musk but I also think Twitter is just a social media platform that is on a downward trend. New platforms come out and the old ones get pushed asiide.

If you've been on TikTok, you know their technology and platform is blowing Twitter and everyone else out of the water.

...which is why Facebook is trying to get it banned.

[GrantDawg]

I'm going to say I haven't really noticed a major change in Twitter. There are a few people who have left, but for the most part I still have most of my sports people, my news people, my Twitter of Time friends, law gurus and a few political accounts I follow. Less celebrity interaction than there used to be, but that's about it. I only look at the "following" tab, because the algorithm for the "for you" feed is a hot mess. I feel like that will probably change soon. It is just a matter of time before he does away with the ability to just see post from people you want, and stop allowing chronological browsing. That is what killed Facebook for me.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

If you've been on TikTok, you know their technology and platform is blowing Twitter and everyone else out of the water.

Despite having virtually no content that isn't so-so comedy, cat videos, and pron teasers.

edit to add: Oh wait, that's Instagram

[Ksyrup]

TikTok and Instagram make no sense to me. I hate photos, so an entire app devoted to influencers and narcissism sounds awful. My kids continually send me TikToks and I think I've laughed at like a half-dozen total.

Although worse was (is? Does it still exist?) Snapchat - like 6-8 years ago, my kids would take pics making stupid faces or of literally nothing, and while driving at night, it was repeated flashes in the dark. About all I got out of that was gossip from my kids telling me about X or Z person who Snapped getting drunk, doing drugs, or having sex.