Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Celery Man 21001]

7 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

This seems……pointless and dumb.

I know the whole “Blue Check Mark” as a status symbol is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things but it started as - and still is - a useful way to keep bad actors from impersonating experts/celebrities/journalists/politicians/companies/news outlets or stopping domain squatters from claiming names to ransom them.

 

 

Way to “fix” something that wasn’t a problem and seems rife for abuse to deny verification or eliminate users that Musk and his minions don’t like.

 

My favorite abuse of the blue check was (trans) alt comedian Patti Harrison getting banned for a fake media takeover immediately after getting her check

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

11 hours ago, immamac said:

it's only fun for people as long as you interact...it isn't fun if they don't piss anyone off. use the ignore feature. 

Which unironically, is one of the main reasons the man with the money bought Twitter. It didn't work so well for the other socials that formed after they found servers that would host them because the nucleus of those users were no longer allowed on Twitter and thus had no field on which to fight. Advertising $$ notwithstanding, it both monetizes the outrage (to get in on the same grift  pie that pols and hangers on were eating) and it perpetuates the simultaneous dopamine hit of the cult alongside the poor victim status. Just in time for certain events that are for another and more appropriate forum so I'll stop there.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

Not that it matters to me if Twitter fails, further becomes a cesspool, or doubles Elon's net worth, it's dangerous that Twitter's owner cannot criticize 2 powerful authoritarian governments: China and Saudi Arabia.

For China, Elon cannot say anything that pisses of the CCP as they will just kick him (Tesla) out of the country. Elon can openly criticize the US govt with effetively no reprisal but he can't do the same against China. I would bet that he would agree but try to mask that the relationship with China is just different. For SA, they basically own a part of Twitter. 

[Brisketexan 105364]

16 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

For China, Elon cannot say anything that pisses of the CCP as they will just kick him (Tesla) out of the country. Elon can openly criticize the US govt with effetively no reprisal but he can't do the same against China. I would bet that he would agree but try to mask that the relationship with China is just different. For SA, they basically own a part of Twitter. 

You must have that wrong.  Elon is a free speech absolutist.  He told us himself.  And he would never lie.

[NoName 16407]

On 10/29/2022 at 3:35 PM, Humble Beast said:

This is a pretty tinfoil hatish assessment which may be why I thought it was interesting even though I dont buy it. 

 

 

 

 

to be fair, this picture of Jack Dorsey absolutely looks like someone who believes in every conspiracy theory out there lol

[Brisketexan 105364]

2 minutes ago, NoName said:

to be fair, this picture of Jack Dorsey absolutely looks like someone who believes in every conspiracy theory out there lol

Believes in?  Shit, I'm thinking "participates in."

Nutbars on Twitter keep telling us the super-wealthy murder children to drink their blood.  We tell them that's insane, it makes no sense, etc.  Then, one of them says "well, we're talking about THIS guy."  You look at that photo and think "ok, that checks out."

[Humble Beast 258]

 

[Royalfan5 2355]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Believes in?  Shit, I'm thinking "participates in."

Nutbars on Twitter keep telling us the super-wealthy murder children to drink their blood.  We tell them that's insane, it makes no sense, etc.  Then, one of them says "well, we're talking about THIS guy."  You look at that photo and think "ok, that checks out."

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cosplay is certainly a choice that can be made, it's just one you don't see for plenty of good reason. 

[Brisketexan 105364]

1 minute ago, Humble Beast said:

 

Congratulations for reposting one of the dumbest things I have ever read.  100% whining tittybaby shit, 0% logic or reason.  Chef's kiss.

[Poe It Up 126]

I truly can’t wait for Trump’s nutty tweets. 

[wildcat09 29401]

The carrot loser apparently thinks ISIS beheading videos should be allowed on Twitter.

[Fastbreak 3992]

my actual account
one for rehosting videos from imgur or wherever for surly (i know surly can host them but it also scales them bigly which is annoying)
one for following various camwhores
not sure why you'd need a 4th. 

I have my own and multiple company accounts.

Not even a burner…

[Celery Man 21001]

1 hour ago, Poe It Up said:

I truly can’t wait for Trump’s nutty tweets. 

so nutty

[Bateshorn 9942]

7 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

so nutty

"hahahaha, he advocated shooting X.  He's so crazy!!  What will he say next?!!!"

Edited October 31, 2022 by Bateshorn
edited to make it slightly less CR.

[Willfully Horn 8049]

I am fairly limited in Twitter experience, so, this might not be a new thing. Just saw it tor the first time, just below a tweet critical of Musk. Can anyone explain what  it means? To my limited understanding, it reads like business folk have become a protected class.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Willfully Horn

[Celery Man 21001]

I don't actively tweet/use twitter so I'm not sure if that's new or not. It suggests that they're categorizing tweets by "domain" or however you want to describe it and are improving their model by having users confirm how it has classified a tweet. It seems like a reasonable thing to be doing as a twitter.

[956 Worldwide 34780]

13 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

This seems……pointless and dumb.

I know the whole “Blue Check Mark” as a status symbol is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things but it started as - and still is - a useful way to keep bad actors from impersonating experts/celebrities/journalists/politicians/companies/news outlets or stopping domain squatters from claiming names to ransom them.

 

 

Way to “fix” something that wasn’t a problem and seems rife for abuse to deny verification or eliminate users that Musk and his minions don’t like.

 

As someone with experience managing teams that have institutional accounts, I don’t think the blue checkmark is dumb and I can see this to making Twitter less attractive and useful. 
 

First, the check isn’t just a vanity thing, it was implemented at least as much to make the USER experience— the eyeballs you want to sell ads to— better.  Granted, it was an earlier time and not as great with detection and moderation but the check gave people assurances that “yes, this is the person I want to hear from and not a scammer or a parodist or something else. It eased friction and taking it away introduced friction, a small extra hassle to logging on and doom scrolling— no one wants to double check that the outrageous thing that got tweeted is real.

And it introduces some real negative consequences as I’ll be interested to see if important institutions, like governments, can or will pay for verification. Twitter is by FAR the most efficient means to stay on top of fast developing situations. And when you’re trying to find out whats happening in say— a local natural disaster— people want to know that the feed they’re scrolling really is the local government, or PD, or weather service.  And it’s even more important because they’re likely not following those accounts, they’re looking them up just for the reason of important news.  I can easily see those institutions telling people “fuck it, find us on Facebook, we’re out” which would be delicious if not for Zuck).  And you can say fake account detection is bettering but is it really good enough to capture the armies of trolls and assholes that wait for things like natural disasters to play havoc?

Finally— the check mark armies are the content creators that people come to Twitter to see. It’s not just Kanye or DJT or Elon. It’s people following their favorite author or journalist or comedian or hobbyist or whatever.  Just like how TV pays people for good shows to sell ads— it’s a weird model to introduce frictions on the people that are driving eyeballs to you, that you WANT on your site.  And there are alternatives, you can easily see people bailing back to FB or upping their TikTok game. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

I can't wait for Trump to switch over to Twitter and screw over his business partners on truth social, or whatever it's called.

[Francisco 2.0 32430]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/musk-jokes-about-his-deleted-tweet-sharing-misinformation-on-pelosi-attack/

 

Quote

It took Musk a few hours before he deleted the controversial tweet. He has since mocked The New York Times for its report on the deleted tweet but has seemingly offered no other explanation for tweeting out the link.

Musk wasn’t the only influential person tweeting the conspiracy about Paul Pelosi’s attack. The Washington Post reported that many right-wing personalities spread misinformation about the attack, seeming to indicate an ongoing willingness to sow distrust over violent events, which is what spurned Clinton's original tweet.

It’s this kind of disinformation cycle that the European Union is attempting to break through its Digital Services Act, a landmark law that could impose heavy fines on Twitter if the platform under Musk doesn’t maintain compliance with the industry standards the law sets for content moderation.

 

Quote

Due to Musk's views on free speech, EU regulators have already begun pressing Musk on this point, even before he tweeted the misinformation about the Pelosi attack. Reuters reported that last week, Musk promised the European Commission that Twitter would comply with the DSA. In the coming weeks, Musk will meet with EU industry chief Thierry Breton, seemingly to address Breton’s concerns over how Musk might be planning to change Twitter content moderation.

No one is sure how Musk's vision of Twitter will play out, but he'll likely continue to face pressure from advertisers, regulators, and Twitter users. At a time when Musk needs to squeeze profits from his Twitter acquisition—after already taking on $13 billion in debt—it seems less than ideal to also risk millions in DSA fines. But Musk also faces pressure from popular accounts that expect him to follow through on his promise to prioritize free speech on Twitter.

 

 

[aggie08 21532]

Man, how fucking hilarious is an old dude getting struck over the head with a hammer. Just a riot.

What a cool country we live in when one's ability to troll and spread straight up lies is the most valuable currency in the land.

Fuck it, let's see what he does with it. If he can migrate the Facebook olds over to Twitter, I'm sure that it will be wildly successful. He'll moderate the most extreme shit from that crowd, but the rest will get a pass. People with broken brains will gladly pay a subscription to be a part of the "free speech revolution." 

[Bateshorn 9942]

3 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

Man, how fucking hilarious is an old dude getting struck over the head with a hammer. Just a riot.

What a cool country we live in when one's ability to troll and spread straight up lies is the most valuable currency in the land.

Fuck it, let's see what he does with it. If he can migrate the Facebook olds over to Twitter, I'm sure that it will be wildly successful. He'll moderate the most extreme shit from that crowd, but the rest will get a pass. People with broken brains will gladly pay a subscription to be a part of the "free speech revolution." 

Imagine the Younger Boomers and Older Gen X who will excitedly tell their kids their "On the Twitter now that Elon made it good!!!"

[Samson's Wig 3194]

Wait, so now we're lumping old Gen-X in with Boomers?  Have you censorship loving children not done enough??‽‽‽‽‽‽‽?‽!‽‽‽

[Captainant 27786]

3 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Wait, so now we're lumping old Gen-X in with Boomers?  Have you censorship loving children not done enough??‽‽‽‽‽‽‽?‽!‽‽‽

my in-laws were both born in the mid-sixties and they are boomer as fuck - deadheads that watch fox news and complain about pollution while building a 30yr O&G career lol

[Bateshorn 9942]

Gen X is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

[Francisco 2.0 32430]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/elon-musk-twitter-disastrous-weekend/671942/

 

Quote

On Sunday morning, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter, replied to a tweet from Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s tweet was a link to an L.A. Times report detailing the troubled, conspiracy-theory-laden online past of the man who invaded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home early Friday morning and attacked her husband. Musk suggested that “there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” and shared an outrageous link from a website known to traffic in fabrications. Musk, who at the time had owned Twitter for less than 72 hours, eventually deleted the tweet after a backlash. In response, some Twitter users got angry. Catturd2, a popular MAGA account reportedly enjoyed by at least one U.S. president, suggested that Musk had “cave[d]” to the liberal mob.

 

Quote

That is but a glimpse into the Twitter dealings of Elon Musk, the volatile posting billionaire. This weekend, Musk was also busy acting in his capacity as the chief executive of Twitter, where, according to Platformer, he has installed an advisory team that includes several Silicon Valley personalities and is mulling over how to execute an impending series of layoffs. Musk and his team have also reportedly floated various trial-balloon ideas, including asking Twitter’s power users and big accounts to pay for their blue-checkmark badges—a provocative move for a company that, just last week, was said to be hemorrhaging its most devoted posters.

 

Quote

This is all a disaster, and things will only get worse from here. According to conversations we’ve had with Twitter employees from different divisions of the company, staffers are packing their bags. They say the user experience may plunge into all-out bedlam over the coming days. Never an especially well-balanced environment to begin with, Twitter now faces a series of nightmare scenarios under Musk’s leadership that could further destabilize the platform, subjecting a greater number of people to more offensive content as fewer employees operate the safety valves. We’re about to see how bad things can really get.

 

Spoiler

“Even if you ideologically agree with him, unless you love being a replaceable cog who has to dance on command, this is not a workplace to be in,” a Twitter employee, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions, told us yesterday. “As for users, you should already be seeing the influx of hate speech. Porn was already taking over, and it will get worse.”

This person also told us that “most of the company” expects to be fired this week without severance. “Everyone’s just internally panicking and lawyering up as best as possible,” they said. A second employee agreed: People are certain that they’re about to lose their jobs, and that extreme content will continue to grow on the platform.

These sources aren’t going out on a limb, exactly. Widespread layoffs, at least, are expected: The Washington Post reported today that 25 percent of the company will be terminated this week—though previous reports indicated that 50 to 75 percent might eventually be cut. Hate speech has swelled on the platform in recent days, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. (Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, said on Saturday that much of this hate speech was coming from “inauthentic” accounts, which is cold comfort.) And internal documents obtained by Reuters a few days before Musk’s purchase show that pornography is one of the “highest-growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users” on Twitter—a major issue for advertisers. These are not the signs of a healthy platform.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on the troubles facing its employees. Musk, for his part, has given little indication that things will get better anytime soon. He has been unequivocal on just one point: that, as Twitter’s figurehead, he is committed to preserving broad speech protections for even the platform’s most odious users.

Naturally, some people are reveling in this. Right-wing personalities such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan are celebrating Musk for bringing “free speech” to Twitter. Lavern Spicer, a failed Republican candidate for Florida’s Twenty-Fourth Congressional District, tweeted in response to Musk’s takeover that she’s anticipating the “glorious moment” when “all the silenced and suppressed voices can come back to Twitter.” Later, in response to the author Frederick Joseph, who criticized Musk for spreading disinformation, Spicer wrote: “Have a seat boy. He owns this. You just an observer.” This is a good indication of where we are: The loudest voices in the room will celebrate open expression, only to tell everyone else to shut up and fall in line behind the big, strong man in charge.

It’s useful to keep in mind that Twitter is an amplification machine. It is built to allow people, with astonishingly little effort, to reach many other people. (This is why brands like it.) There are a million other ways to express yourself online: This has nothing to do with free speech, and Twitter is not obligated to protect your First Amendment rights. When Elon Musk and his fans talk about free speech on Twitter, they’re actually talking about loud speech. Who is allowed to use this technology to make their message very loud, to the exclusion of other messages? Musk seems willing to grant this power to racists, conspiracy theorists, and trolls. This isn’t great for reasonable people who want to have nuanced conversations on social media, but the joke has always been on them. Twitter isn’t that place, and it never will be.

Instead, it’s starting to feel more like a circus. No surprise, then, that one of Musk’s first moves after taking over was to fire the company’s head of policy—an individual who had publicly stated a commitment to both free speech and preventing abuse. On Friday, Musk tweeted that Twitter would be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” noting that “no major content decisions [would] happen before that council convenes.” Just three hours later, replying to a question about lifting a suspension on The Daily Wire’s Jordan Peterson, Musk signaled that maybe that wasn’t exactly right; he tweeted: “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” He says he wants a democratic council, yet he’s also setting policy by decree.

In his first hours as Twitter’s imperator, Musk has been like a man who woke up in the middle of the night in a new house, fumbling around in the dark and bumping into walls while grasping for a light switch. Musk—who is already writing letters to advertisers laden with executive-speak about brand safety—has also spent the weekend trying to fend off concerns that his acquisition of the platform has activated and energized trolls and neo-Nazis who are tweeting the N-word in celebration of his purchase. Although Musk wants famous users to think he’s not the problem, he’s also undermining this by posting content dredged from the far-right fever swamps. In the process, he’s finding out that it’s hard to have it both ways as a social-media CEO.

 

Perhaps most depressingly, this behavior is quite familiar. As Techdirt’s Mike Masnick has pointed out, we are all stuck “watching Musk speed run the content moderation learning curve” and making the same mistakes that social-media executives made with their platforms in their first years at the helm. Musk has charged himself with solving the central, seemingly intractable issue at the core of hundreds of years of debate about free speech. In the social-media era, no entity has managed to balance preserving both free speech and genuine open debate across the internet at scale. And those who have tried and failed or equivocated have often appeared more principled and reasoned than Musk. At the very least, most of them were not posting conspiracy theories.

But Musk hasn’t just given himself a nearly impossible task; he’s also created conditions for his new company’s failure. By acting incoherently as a leader and lording the prospect of mass terminations over his employees, he’s created a dysfunctional and chaotic work environment for the people who will ultimately execute his changes to the platform. Racists and trolls are activated and enthusiastic, while Twitter’s employees are terrified for their jobs. Musk started his weekend by saying he didn’t want Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape” and ended it by trolling The New York Times and insinuating that the paper publishes “false news.” Regardless of whether you agree with his shitposts and politics, it seems highly unlikely that this is the way we finally tackle the persistent issues challenging open discourse. And Twitter, even if it is somehow saved in the long run, is going to get worse before it gets better.

 

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

hahahaha, he advocated shooting X. 

Malcom's been dead for years, man.

[aggie08 21532]

Catturd2 is a popular "news" source for many people in our society. And that sentence doesn't cause a single second of reflection among that population.

They don't even have to try anymore.

Did the original Catturd get too woke?

[mchookem 16386]

28 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

Catturd2 is a popular "news" source for many people in our society. And that sentence doesn't cause a single second of reflection among that population.

i mean don't take this personally but these are the same people that would be completely at home on texags and don't see anything wrong with that, so, you know...

[aggie08 21532]

3 minutes ago, mchookem said:

i mean don't take this personally but these are the same people that would be completely at home on texags and don't see anything wrong with that, so, you know...

I mean, I have eyeballs haha. A group with a persecution complex that thinks that they've been cheated out of every championship since 1939 is ripe for the conspiracy theory picking.

The only slightly positive thing I can say is that the student population, while obviously skewed that way more than most universities, isn't the absolute abomination that is texags is. It takes a few years for the hate machine to really take hold.

[Humble Beast 258]

Interesting idea. 
 

 

[Samson's Wig 3194]

I love love love this insanely heightened rhetoric.  Some are acting like something important is happening, when in reality it's just a shitty place that has largely been an echo chamber for left of center commentary and a slightly different way of consuming pornography and sports info than the rest of the Internet, becoming a slightly different kind of echo chamber that will still have all the porn and sports nonsense (and even the left of center commentary).  Watching the mouth-breathers delight in their favorite dumbasses returning to the platform is almost as delicious as watching the crying from others that their favorite way to completely waste time is changing.  The two main categories of interest for English speaking users on Twitter?  Crypto and porn.  Crypto and porn, and people are acting like the world is ending.  This is not something to take seriously unless you work for Twitter and are about to have to go find a job at another company that provides nothing of value.

When McDonald's stopped using lard to make their shitty fries and started using vegetable oil to make even shittier fries, the world wasn't ending - many of us just stopped eating them.  Those who kept eating them got even fatter.  Twitter is of less significance to the world than McDonald's fries, but here we are acting like the world is ending.  And I enjoy left of center commentary, porn, and sports info as much as anyone, but all of it is still widely available all over the damn place (even right here!).  Twitter's only value to users was making it slightly easier to navigate.  Not much of a loss.  I get why many love the place since the orange one and his ilk were removed, it certainly became more enjoyable, but some of you are acting like humanity is at stake.  

Twitter was in significant decline long before Musk came along, with its true active users (heavy tweeters) basically abandoning their accounts since at least the beginning of the pandemic. Musk's ownership may well be the final nail in the coffin, who knows?  But the one thing we all know is that no one has to use Twitter that doesn't want to.   You will not miss out on a single thing that can't be found elsewhere.  Twitter was, is, and always will be little more than a shiny paper bag to put on your ugly date before you fuck.  It's all still ugly underneath, but some have grown to love the mask as if it has substance of its own.  Now the mask is being ripped off and some are crying about having to fuck an ugly date, as if there are no other alternatives.

[Francisco 2.0 32430]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Samson's Wig 3194]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

my in-laws were both born in the mid-sixties and they are boomer as fuck - deadheads that watch fox news and complain about pollution while building a 30yr O&G career lol

Mid-sixties makes them more boomer than Gen-X, in my opinion.  The line is often drawn at 1965, so at best they're on the cusp I suppose, but certainly not the meat of GenX. But yeah, many folks born in the sixties make for a rich target for Fox News. It's not all 40's and 50's babies.

[aggie08 21532]

3 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I love love love this insanely heightened rhetoric.  Some are acting like something important is happening, when in reality it's just a shitty place that has largely been an echo chamber for left of center commentary and a slightly different way of consuming pornography and sports info than the rest of the Internet, becoming a slightly different kind of echo chamber that will still have all the porn and sports nonsense (and even the left of center commentary).  Watching the mouth-breathers delight in their favorite dumbasses returning to the platform is almost as delicious as watching the crying from others that their favorite way to completely waste time is changing.  The two main categories of interest for English speaking users on Twitter?  Crypto and porn.  Crypto and porn, and people are acting like the world is ending.  This is not something to take seriously unless you work for Twitter and are about to have to go find a job at another company that provides nothing of value.

When McDonald's stopped using lard to make their shitty fries and started using vegetable oil to make even shittier fries, the world wasn't ending - many of us just stopped eating them.  Those who kept eating them got even fatter.  Twitter is of less significance to the world than McDonald's fries, but here we are acting like the world is ending.  And I enjoy left of center commentary, porn, and sports info as much as anyone, but all of it is still widely available all over the damn place (even right here!).  Twitter's only value to users was making it slightly easier to navigate.  Not much of a loss.  I get why many love the place since the orange one and his ilk were removed, it certainly became more enjoyable, but some of you are acting like humanity is at stake.  

Twitter was in significant decline long before Musk came along, with its true active users (heavy tweeters) basically abandoning their accounts since at least the beginning of the pandemic. Musk's ownership may well be the final nail in the coffin, who knows?  But the one thing we all know is that no one has to use Twitter that doesn't want to.   You will not miss out on a single thing that can't be found elsewhere.  Twitter was, is, and always will be little more than a shiny paper bag to put on your ugly date before you fuck.  It's all still ugly underneath, but some have grown to love the mask as if it has substance of its own.  Now the mask is being ripped off and some are crying about having to fuck an ugly date, as if there are no other alternatives.

Is there a source attached to this word vomit?

[Samson's Wig 3194]

4 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

Is there a source attached to this word vomit?

That is clearly mostly my opinion, so no.   Much like using Twitter you don't have to read it, and it likely carries little substance.  Your clever retort certainly adds much more substance to the discussion, so thank you.  I'll do my best to keep my thoughts to 144 characters or less for those who have been trained to consumer information in small bites.

Here's a Reuters article from a few days ago that hits on some of the actual facts in my pile of vomit.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Samson's Wig

[SydneyCarton 48188]

7 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

 

Twitter was in significant decline long before Musk came along, with its true active users (heavy tweeters) basically abandoning their accounts since at least the beginning of the pandemic. Musk's ownership may well be the final nail in the coffin, who knows?  But the one thing we all know is that no one has to use Twitter that doesn't want to.   You will not miss out on a single thing that can't be found elsewhere.  Twitter was, is, and always will be little more than a shiny paper bag to put on your ugly date before you fuck.  It's all still ugly underneath, but some have grown to love the mask as if it has substance of its own.  Now the mask is being ripped off and some are crying about having to fuck an ugly date, as if there are no other alternatives.

Counterpoint, most of the people have no other alternative than to fuck ugly dates. Or most likely, not fuck at all. 

[aggie08 21532]

13 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

That is clearly mostly my opinion, so no.   Much like using Twitter you don't have to read it.  Your clever retort certainly adds much more substance to the discussion, so thank you.

Here's a Reuters article from a few days ago that hits on some of the actual facts in my pile of vomit.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/

 

Apologies, your post contained the light grey background that usually accompanies copy/pasted material.

I'd say giving a more mainstream outlet for conspiracy theorists is a little more detrimental to society than McDonald's changing their fry recipe, no?

I don't use Twitter, but places on the internet that promote and amplify conspiracy bullshit has clearly proven to lead to violence and hate and armed citizens "monitoring" ballot boxes. Ideally, those communities should be shrinking in size as the "normals" try to distance themselves from the radicals. But they've been growing, my own non-involvement notwithstanding, because the internet can be so mind-warping. And now the CEO of Twitter is now just another shitty sourcing troll. That's his right and, yes, we'll see how it goes.

I don't care about the politics of it. I hated conspiracy theories back when I voted largely one direction; I still hate them now that I vote largely the other way. They make stupid people feel smart because they know the "real truth" and they make otherwise smart people really, really fucking dumb.

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by aggie08

[Samson's Wig 3194]

4 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

Apologies, your post contained the light grey background that usually accompanies copy/pasted material.

I'd say giving a more mainstream outlet for conspiracy theorists is a little more detrimental to society than McDonald's changing their fry recipe, no?

I don't use Twitter, but places on the internet that promote and amplify conspiracy bullshit has clearly proven to lead to violence and hate and armed citizens "monitoring" ballot boxes. Ideally, those communities should be shrinking in size as the "normals" try to distance themselves from the radicals. But they've been growing, my own non-involvement notwithstanding, because the internet can be so mind-warping. And now the CEO of Twitter is now just another shitty sourcing troll. That's his right and, yes, we'll see how it goes.

I don't care about the politics of it. I hated conspiracy theories back when I voted largely one direction; I still hate them now that I vote largely the other way. They make stupid people feel smart because they know the "real truth" and they make otherwise smart people really, really fucking dumb.

 

That's weird, it does have the light gray background.  I didn't paste anything in there so I'm not sure why.  The mainstream outlet for conspiracy theorists would be more detrimental if anyone was actually reading it (which the vast majority of people are not), and if the same bullshit wasn't also plastered all over the place everywhere else.  It just ultimately doesn't matter that much other than as popcorn munching sport.

[aggie08 21532]

1 minute ago, Samson's Wig said:

That's weird, it does have the light gray background.  I didn't paste anything in there so I'm not sure why.  The mainstream outlet for conspiracy theorists would be more detrimental if anyone was actually reading it (which the vast majority of people are not), and if the same bullshit wasn't also plastered all over the place everywhere else.  It just ultimately doesn't matter that much other than as popcorn munching sport.

I obviously really, really hope that you're right. I do think the Facebook crowd migration--who aren't otherwise tech-savvy enough to get their daily updates from Catturd2--will be pretty substantial. Elon, despite his shit-posting, probably realizes that he'll have to play a balancing act with advertisers and users, and keep the truly heinous content to a minimum (as soon as he personally stops sharing it).

Elon is still a huge net positive for this world and the future, so I hope he focuses most of his energy on ordering people to build really cool tech, not be tin foil hat dude in his basement.

[Brisketexan 105364]

45 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Crypto and porn. 

100% chance this will be the new name of my yacht rock/speed metal band.

45 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

When McDonald's stopped using lard to make their shitty fries and started using vegetable oil to make even shittier fries, the world wasn't ending - many of us just stopped eating them. 

Beef fat.  It was beef fat, motherfucker.  And it remains the most excellent, magical way to fry potatoes.  We should have stuck with it, and we could have avoided the whole transfat fiasco.

46 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I get why many love the place since the orange one and his ilk were removed, it certainly became more enjoyable, but some of you are acting like humanity is at stake.  

Because of Twitter?  No.  Because of a social media universe of which Twitter occupies a material amount of space?  YES.  Disinformation/Dezinformatsiya is a real-deal problem.  It has successfully destabilized numerous countries and governments, to the benefit of bad actors.  Social media spaces like Twitter THRIVE on disinformation, often disseminated by bots, and amplified by idiots, grifters, and other bad actors.  We are stupiding ourselves to death, and social media platforms that profit from that are accelerating it.

46 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Now the mask is being ripped off and some are crying about having to fuck an ugly date, as if there are no other alternatives.

Hit's a BIT close to Surly, don't you think?

[Celery Man 21001]

The detwitterization of Trump after his attack on Congress actually was fairly meaningful in turning down the temperature. It’s not unimportant, it’s plainly obvious.

[Hagbard Celine 10923]

first Falcon Heavy in 3+ years tomorrow morning 840am

https://www.space.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-ussf-44-launch-preview

also the chinese successfully launched the last piece of their 2nd space station earlier today

https://www.space.com/china-launches-mengtian-module-tiangong-space-station

[Biff Tannen 45742]

6 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

 

You are absolutely batshit crazy

[Brisketexan 105364]

4 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

You are absolutely batshit crazy

No.  He's a troll.  It's helpful in that it lets us know what the current trollthink is (realizing that's the dominant intellect and ethos of a significant piece of the current political climate), so there's that.  His posts let us peer into the mind of the kind of person who consumes that sort of bullshit and actually believes it.

[Biff Tannen 45742]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

No.  He's a troll.  It's helpful in that it lets us know what the current trollthink is (realizing that's the dominant intellect and ethos of a significant piece of the current political climate), so there's that.  His posts let us peer into the mind of the kind of person who consumes that sort of bullshit and actually believes it.

Why not both?

[Brisketexan 105364]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

Why not both?

He's not crazy.  He knows that what he's posting is bullshit.  He's a disingenuous lying asshole intent on doing harm by disseminating bullshit -- i.e., a troll.

[Humble Beast 258]

48 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

You are absolutely batshit crazy

Of all the things that could elicit this response, I’m a little surprised that column did it. Why the outsized reaction?

[Biff Tannen 45742]

1 hour ago, Humble Beast said:

Of all the things that could elicit this response, I’m a little surprised that column did it. Why the outsized reaction?

Oh it's been building up.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaand ignored.

[Francisco 2.0 32430]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[aggie08 21532]

2 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

Of all the things that could elicit this response, I’m a little surprised that column did it. Why the outsized reaction?

Unintentional self owns are the best. Yes, there is a lot to choose from from your prolific catalog.