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It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

231–240 of 472 posts

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#231

'Twitter’s priorities are no longer even remotely aligned with my own.' Since when were they? The mistake was perhaps to ever think that they were. It was twitters 'priority to sell themselves to Musk, hence why they took him to court to ensure he bought them. This is a somewhat crazy, knee-jerk reaction to some news headlines, the author has no idea of what is really happening, i'm not saying that i do, but for exam…

> basically we don't know

Yes, it has been grossly mismanaged from a PR perspective. Expecting no fallout from that is naive.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#232

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

What would a team of "accessibility engineers" occupy themselves with every day anyway? Did they build features that will fail unless someone is there to handhold? " Day 2: still accessible? check. Day 3: still accessible? check. ".... Accessibility is important, but once you build a wheelchair ramp into a building, the ramp builders have nothing more to do. Likewise, Twitter remains fairly static, with only minor ch…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think twitter still doesn't work at all without JavaScript functioning. That's not an easy fix after the event and sorting that alone could probably keep an accessibility team busy for the foreseeable future.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#233

I find this hilarious. We all understand that the core reason some people might want to hurt twitter is because it is no longer going to follow the moderation policy that they liked (namely, silencing people with different political opinions). Yet, people can't name this reason honestly, and invent some other thin weiled excuses like 'layoffs are baaaad and unethical'. Bold prediction: this influencer with 40k follow…

Yeah, I like living in a democracy, so I appreciated when twitter silenced certain people that tried to use it to violently overthrow my democratically elected government. Donald Trump tweeted all the time, many of his tweets were of a very different political opinion than mine (when they were coherent), yet he was not silenced. Not until he tried to violently overthrow the US government.

This is a brilliant example of a selective memory. What you have forgotten is that long before Jan6, Twitter blocked retweets of Trump's tweets, attached various warnings to his tweets, was selectively 'fact-checking' him, how that notebook story was banned on Twitter right before the elections. If that is not silencing, then what is? Can you name some other person on Twitter that had undergone a similar treatment?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#234
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's exactly elons problem now. every unpopular action will be pinned on him personally. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

I wonder how Steve Jobs avoided this. Perhaps by being less political I guess

Steve was almost universally mocked/hated by anyone that didn't use Apple products. He was also had an ornery personality that didn't mesh well with many.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#235
I find it comedic whenever someone talks about how they're a truly longtime user of Twitter but they can't stomach staying on now that the owner doesn't share their values. Elon's values are extraordinarily similar to Jack's! If you were going to leave when someone's values diverged hard, you'd have left when Parag joined, because his did, and that's the entire reason Elon bought it! In reality it is some combination of personal association and public persona. And these are not the worst reasons to refuse to use a service, most of us have been guilty of the same at one point or another, but at least admit that that's why.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#236
post #217
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's ire seems to always be focused on Zuckerberg. It was always that way, especially after the Social Network movie. And despite about a decade of similar whining on HN about deleting Facebook they are still the most popular social network around.

there might be a difference in public perception: zuckerberg built his platform in the first place, so he's got a legitimate claim to destroy it in whatever way he seems fit (even if that's not really true). musk just walzed in; his aquisition looks like a hostile takeover and now seems a bit clueless about how to proceed ("20$ too much? how about 8?").

All of this seems to assume what people care about right now is what matters. The news cycle will move on in a couple weeks. That's when the real test will be for how much people really give a shit.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#237
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the baffling thing to me. For the better part of a decade people have talked about Twitter being an overstaffed pack of idiots whose day to day largely consists of presiding over the fall of Western civilization. Now that they've been purchased by a jackass, however, they're suddenly a bunch of saints who've only been doing their best to hold back the tides of barbarism. I get the feeling that someone less of…

Hating Elon is in vogue now, anything else is irrelevant.

By your reasoning hating on Kevin Spacey is also in vogue. It's probably not in vogue. It's more likely that his own words and actions are resulting in lots of people not liking him. Imagine that. A world where your own words and actions have consequences.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#238
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's exactly elons problem now. every unpopular action will be pinned on him personally. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

I wonder how Steve Jobs avoided this. Perhaps by being less political I guess

I really don’t think Jobs would have created and maintained a presence through social media - I don’t think he needed or desired the attention like Musk does... But anyway, who can ever know.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#239

I find this hilarious. We all understand that the core reason some people might want to hurt twitter is because it is no longer going to follow the moderation policy that they liked (namely, silencing people with different political opinions). Yet, people can't name this reason honestly, and invent some other thin weiled excuses like 'layoffs are baaaad and unethical'. Bold prediction: this influencer with 40k follow…

No post body was provided.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#240
post #49

> I can’t see myself putting the same work in to help the world’s richest man pay the loans he took out So Twitter was “really good” (while it was helping the many rich shareholders of a random public company) but it’s suddenly “work” a couple of days after the owner changed? Nothing wrong for not using it because of ideological reasons, but the product’s accessibility (or anything else really) hasn’t changed yet.

Twitter also used to be owned by average people. Like most publicly traded companies. So no, it's not from "many rich shareholders" to Elon. It's more nuanced than you're making it out to be.

> Twitter also used to be owned by average people

Then all public companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, & Northrop Grumman are owned with the money of "average people"...largely managed by fund advisors.

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