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Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

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Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their right but it's still crummy. I want Section 230 to be repealed.

In other words, you want every website to be held liable for all user generated content on their platform, which would benefit every large social media (because smaller ones wouldn't be able to afford to moderate every single post), leading to them becoming even more of a monopoly? Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? Because just repealing it would lead to a much different Internet t…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#122
post #11

I bet it's likely a bug. There were times i wasnt able to post LinkedIn urls in the past. I bet it's their crawler/integrity service having hard time. Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence.

Nowadays, maybe let's assume malice. Maybe its a false positive and a bunch of people stop using twitter, Facebook, google, apple, or Microsoft as a result. That is less harmful (some might say it's good) than the opposite, where big corps use our collective desire to forgive as a tool to exploit us. You can apply that saying to your wife and kids. Or your neighbour. Big corps that make money off exploiting peoples n…

With a dash of expected plausible deniability that it was a bug - unless someone outright whistleblows otherwise.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, maybe let's assume malice. Maybe its a false positive and a bunch of people stop using twitter, Facebook, google, apple, or Microsoft as a result. That is less harmful (some might say it's good) than the opposite, where big corps use our collective desire to forgive as a tool to exploit us. You can apply that saying to your wife and kids. Or your neighbour. Big corps that make money off exploiting peoples n…

Hanlon's Razor is, I believe, a good rule of thumb, but people keep using it in situations such as this one where it's not just potentially malice (wanting to harm someone for little other reason than wanting to see them hurt or wanting to hurt) but also greed/self-interest. Hanlon's Razor as stated makes sense to me. I see a lot more stupidity in the world than I see people wanting to hurt for no other reason. But g…

Yeah, I think Hanlon's Razor was intended to apply to individuals, not organizations. Often the "stupidity" of an organization is a shield for malice or greed.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#124
post #7

Ok? They are a private company and they can block links that they don't like. Facebook has done the exact same thing and nothing happened. You are free to complain, criticise them, scream at these companies or protest, but like I have said many times before they will not change and it is futile to believe that they ever will as long as they 'moderate' or do whatever they want to do on their own platforms. So unsurpri…

>You are free to complain, criticise them

That's exactly what's going on right now

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#125
post #22

A lot of people here are jumping to conclusions based on what could simply be a bug. Why not wait 24hrs and see if this is actually some policy or just a mistake.

Even if it isn't a bug, there's probably enough malicious stuff going on linked to these domains that it's justified. Even if the sites themselves are not producing malicious content, they are targeted by bad actors because the platform lacks the tech to detect and moderate said bad actors. And lets be honest, users of this platform are likely to be very susceptible to misinformation and manipulation.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#126
post #85
post #11

I bet it's likely a bug. There were times i wasnt able to post LinkedIn urls in the past. I bet it's their crawler/integrity service having hard time. Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence.

> Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence. My 100% baseless opinion is that most evil in big orgs comes from emergent behavior. Ant colonies are capable of really complex stuff, even though individual ants are somewhat simple beings. Likewise, a corp can do evil stuff even though all individuals who are part of it aren't actively seeking to do harm. Since we can't ask a corp…

One story that often comes up: automated ML systems will have false positives every once in a while. But when the false positive affects a big customer it is fixed more promptly than when it affects a competitor...

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#127
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, maybe let's assume malice. Maybe its a false positive and a bunch of people stop using twitter, Facebook, google, apple, or Microsoft as a result. That is less harmful (some might say it's good) than the opposite, where big corps use our collective desire to forgive as a tool to exploit us. You can apply that saying to your wife and kids. Or your neighbour. Big corps that make money off exploiting peoples n…

That must be a hard life assuming things are working against you

Big tech has earned the assumption.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#128
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence. I find this to be a stupid way to look at things. Incompetence and malice are not mutually exclusive.

Is it a competitor though? The amount of developer salary it would take to implement such a feature and push it out at Twitter vs. the close to zero threat Mastadon poses to Twitter, seems like a bad tradeoff if we're being conspiratorial.

Twitter has been known to block certains URLs on short notice. Its hardly difficult to do it for one more...

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#129
post #11

I bet it's likely a bug. There were times i wasnt able to post LinkedIn urls in the past. I bet it's their crawler/integrity service having hard time. Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's not a bug to disallow "distribution of hacked material" in your Terms of Service.

If you think it was political, you should certainly inform the FEC! They found that Twitter had acted "for commercial reasons and not for the purpose of influencing an election" so they'd appreciate the heads up.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#130
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence. I find this to be a stupid way to look at things. Incompetence and malice are not mutually exclusive.

But the difference is that incompetence is far more plentiful than malice. It's an odds game. Everyone makes mistakes, few actions people in general take are done in malice.

Odds are not unviversally random. Like what happened at Exxon was more often malice than incompetence.
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