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The Shit Show

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Re: The Shit Show

#71

Post by ArmandGrillet »

Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the things social networks have been accused of driving for years now in order to make more $.

Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very special place I had crafted over a decade.

Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.

Re: The Shit Show

#72

Post by roarcher »

rdlw wrote: post #9
gnarbarian wrote: post #8

He has every right to be mad but this post comes off as petulant and juvenile.

Well yeah, his life's work was destroyed at someone's whim with the flick of a switch. How many people would be gracious? Why should anyone be?

His "life's work" is a fresh coat of paint on someone else's creation, which is of questionable value to begin with. And using his mother's death as a comedic prop in a public rant doesn't exactly engender sympathy.

Re: The Shit Show

#73

Post by Lammy »

xupybd wrote: post #64
Lammy wrote: post #37

[flagged]

A Karen is a personality type. They are not imputing the gender on Elon but the personality. By applying the insult to men they are de-gendering the insult. Not that I like the term Space Karen.

It became an insult because people hate women who stand up for themselves. It can't be de-gendered.

Re: The Shit Show

#74

Post by Kwpolska »

ygggvbbjiuygvf wrote: post #22

It’s not even clear that they “pulled the plug”, could just be a temporary outage. Wish Musk would announce his thoughts on the future of the API, though.

Can a “temporary outage” be limited only to the most popular apps? Can a “temporary outage” affect Twitterrific for iOS but not Twitterrific for Mac [0]?

[0] https://blog.iconfactory.com/2023/01/state-of-the-twitterver...

Re: The Shit Show

#75

Post by count »

pmarreck wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #12

I think (and have been saying this a bunch lately) that he's right about ActivityPub and Mastodon, and that "a universal timeline" is actually a really good way to put words to it. I was a Mastodon hater for years, but having used it for the past month or so with an actual community of people (really: the whole community I interacted with on Twitter before), I have to admit it: the ActivityPub people were right about…

OK, I have to ask- What exactly was your argument against MP3's? They literally let you transfer music with an order of magnitude less data than it took on the CD! Was it an audiophile argument, or...? I was lucky enough to live in a freshman college dorm (a music-focused dorm, no less!) circa 1997-1998 when Napster was still a thing right after MP3's were a thing, and that shit was amaaaaazing I mean given how much…

Napster didn't start until 1999 :) I remember downloading mp3s on Napster, and then using my parallel port to transfer them to my Diamond Rio MP3 player. All 4 songs at a time!

Re: The Shit Show

#76

Post by harrego »

See also Paul Haddad's situation[1] (creator of TweetBot):

> I really want an official public statement. We have a large number of sub. renewals for year 3 of Tweetbot coming up in a couple of weeks. If we're permanently cut off I need to know so we can remove the app from sale and prevent those. Which obviously I'd rather not do.

[1] https://tapbots.social/@paul/109690528614720936

Re: The Shit Show

#77

Post by neilv »

To the people who were already warning of things like this, in the '80s and '90s, all the cries lately of "I let some rich guy own my social network; how could I have known that would be abused" might seem a bit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace.

Re: The Shit Show

#78

Post by hhh »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #71

Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the things social networks have been accused of driving for years now in order to make more $. Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craz…

The ‘For You’ is the behavior i’ve had for a while. I’m happy to be able to go to the Following tab. I’m tired of seeing ‘X follow’ etc.

Re: The Shit Show

#79

Post by nerdchum »

geerlingguy wrote: post #28

I'm still waiting to hear any kind of official word, but it looks pretty bleak. Without Tweetbot, Twitter is almost impossible to use. Checking in on https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ , the alternate UI, it's almost usable, but still missing like 8 of the most important features that made Twitter useful to me. I have been posting sometimes on Mastodon but still primarily on Twitter, waiting to see how things turned out.…

I remember Voat! It started off with great intentions, just to be a more free speech version of reddit and at the end was just posts about Michelle Obama being a man and Qanon.

It was an interesting case study in how free speech can decline to a lowest common denominator type situation.

Re: The Shit Show

#80

Post by api »

godelski wrote: post #50

I've been thinking about social media a lot lately and how it has changed my life. I'm only in my early 30's, but I think many others my age grew up online and when the internet felt smaller, but in a different way. I made life long friends through these means. But something I've noticed is that as everyone has come online, I have made fewer friends. What I personally miss is the small niche communities. These don't…

The net was a very different place before, say, somewhere between 2010 and 2015. I saw a huge shift then. Everything got monetized, weaponized, optimized for addiction, or drowned in spam. There’s always been bad actors and criminals and trolls online too but in the past decade they have either gotten worse or become more empowered.

The golden age of the open Internet was really between about 1996 when it started to go public and 2010. The net today feels like either a ghost town or a hellhole. The only remaining good places seem to be niche sites or groups and private forums. The fediverse is decent but I am concerned for its long term future if it becomes big enough to be a worthy target for spammers and trolls.

As for the cause of the decline I can think of a few big factors:

1. Engagement maximizing algorithms give weight to the most inflammatory content. These hit the scene big starting around 2008. If you forced me to pick one root culprit I would blame this.

2. Thanks to monetized social media “Internet troll” is now a career option. You can make money. You can maybe even become the President of the United States.

3. Speaking of politics, I think something changed when enough people got online that the net became the major source for political opinion. There is now not just money but power to be gained by manipulating things online. This attracts a whole different level of scum.

4. Trolls have escalated to the point that people have died. Mass shooters post their manifestos on boards now before they go on killing sprees. Running a forum today is just not fun anymore, especially if it’s not narrowly focused and topical. Nobody in their right mind would set up something like Something Awful or 4chan today.

What happened to optimistic online cyber culture reminds me a bit of what happened to the 1960s counterculture. In a few years it went from exploration and optimism and art to Manson and Altamont. There seems to be a pattern where whenever humanity seems to be making a cultural breakthrough we get naive and then things go real bad real fast.

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