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Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

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Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#861
post #824
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely feel like someone (ahem) is trying to get us to riot over silly things, as an experiment. It doesn’t make any sense.

Musk's entire Twitter reign makes complete sense if you just view it as one thin-skinned guy arbitrarily lashing out. There's no secret plan, he's just trying to "fix" whatever personally bothers him.

For sure. And I think the lashing out is driven by some things that are legitimately painful. He only briefly wanted to buy Twitter; the courts were going to force him to buy it. And the main source of his wealth, TSLA, has gone from a peak of nearly $400 per share to down around $150.

Unlike Tesla and SpaceX, where his has competent domain experts running things he knows less about, he has already fired everybody at Twitter with a backbone. Because he uses Twitter, he clearly (and wrongly) believes he understands it just fine. Twitter's also all software and mostly consumer-facing, so changes are both immediate and obvious. So I think with Twitter there's very little between his impulses and immediate impact on hundreds of millions of people.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: and now he’s asking if he should step down https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046176439731240 ... If it doesn't go his way how many times will he put up a new poll?

I think he will do it. But he will still own Twitter and he will still take action, whenever he feels like it, so not sure if that would change anything. Either way, the whole drama is both hilarious and sad at the same time.

Dang it, you’re right. Here’s hoping he stays and keeps on digging

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people get duped, it's really hard for them to admit it. Huge blow to the ego. It's surprising to watch people turn on Trump because of this.

I just wish personal integrity mattered at any scale, anymore. I wish that people actually came to their opinions via some sort of logical process that could be easily later self-evaluated and reflected upon. There's this tendency to double-down, when "admitting a mistake" is really as simple as reflecting, realizing what assumptions were made wrong, going back to base principles and re-assessing. If you have integri…

I think it's because it seems to work in the long term as long as there's any kind of success waiting for them down the line. eg. If Trump wins the next election, everything up to that point is totally justified and worth it and part of the plan, etc (no matter how true or false it is, nor how lucky they may have been to have achieved the saving-their-ass success).

The cult of personality makes it so. Humanity's short memory makes it so. The media's short memory makes it so. The media's short memory is driven by the same doubling-down, new outrage distracts from previous outrage upon which it turned out our reporting was highly questionable. Layer upon layer.

The other side of the same coinj is that those who double-down and don't reach any further justifiable success rightly fade from the public consciousness (selection bias?) for the very fact they haven't done anything media-worthy since.

It feels like the double-down-at-all-costs types are increasing and spreading, but is that just because they're the ones stupidly lucky (or rich) enough to maintain a media presence?

Lastly, and related, there's always the "no news is bad news" theory. We're still discussing Elon and Trump, so they're still making the news cycle, so they're still relevant, and irrelevance makes future success (on an Elon and Trump scale) more difficult.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#864
post #678
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Union Digital Markets Act, coming into effect in May 2023, explicitly forbids such behavior. (If twitter is classified as a "gatekeeper".) https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-... Example of the “don'ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer: - treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third p…

The way Elon seems to like to take his chances, Twitter pulling out from the EU/EEA market might be a possibility. Personally I think that would be beneficial, as even more would switch to Mastodon in 2023. Even if I don't use social blogging websites myself, I think that would be a net win.

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#865

Wow. PG did not even post any links, he pretty much just said "I have a Mastodon account." And just like that, banned. Looks like now you're not allowed to so much as mention that you use other websites on the internet besides Twitter.

I'm kind of shocked that Bezos hasn't commissioned an ActivityPub/federated network (mastodon instance) that obfuscates the decentralization (for easier onboarding) and gives you some kind of "deal" for having Amazon Prime. Feels like Amazon could eat Twitter's lunch here (especially since they, allegedly, run Twitter's servers now, meaning that they could handle the traffic).

> Feels like Amazon could eat Twitter's lunch here

Amazon has spent decades building the complete opposite culture of what it takes to successfully run a social network.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#866
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like someone should lean into the fact that twitter is going insane and make a carbon copy of it, instead of trying to innovate on the concept/UX. Maybe even use a similar name, like bitter, xitter, etc. Innovation is usually the way to overthrow incumbents, but in this case a carbon copy might be more effective.

https://nitter.net/about

That's not a separate clone, just a different front end, basically just a proxy for everything on twitter.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#867

Wow. PG did not even post any links, he pretty much just said "I have a Mastodon account." And just like that, banned. Looks like now you're not allowed to so much as mention that you use other websites on the internet besides Twitter.

I'm kind of shocked that Bezos hasn't commissioned an ActivityPub/federated network (mastodon instance) that obfuscates the decentralization (for easier onboarding) and gives you some kind of "deal" for having Amazon Prime. Feels like Amazon could eat Twitter's lunch here (especially since they, allegedly, run Twitter's servers now, meaning that they could handle the traffic).

Mastodon or other implementation isn't scalable like Twitter.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#869
post #824
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely feel like someone (ahem) is trying to get us to riot over silly things, as an experiment. It doesn’t make any sense.

Musk's entire Twitter reign makes complete sense if you just view it as one thin-skinned guy arbitrarily lashing out. There's no secret plan, he's just trying to "fix" whatever personally bothers him.

It's a shame he didn't choose to fix the 160 character limit instead. But that would cost money, I guess.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#870
post #450

If it isn't obvious this is the new norm for Twitter. Elon is making up the rules as he goes and ruling like a pissed off insecure reddit mod. I don't buy into all the freedom of speech rhetoric he has been spewing. This is about control and fueling his ego. It is a real shame because I wanted to continue using Twitter like I always have, but I don't think that will be possible.

> I don't buy into all the freedom of speech rhetoric he has been spewing. I think what you meant was you didn't buy into it, and this is proving your point of view. He's gone from freedom of speech absolutionist to defining the limits of freedom of speech by whether you discuss social interactions on other websites. It isn't as simple as a one-dimensional scale between freedom of speech absolutism and not, and the f…

As I said in another reply, I think a far simpler explanation is that the "freedom of speech absolutist" thing was total BS from the start. Other than describing himself that way, nothing about Elon suggests he's actually a big fan of free speech as a general principle.
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