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X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

disruptionist.com

581–590 of 834 posts

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#581
Shoshana Zuboff was so right it is scary. The name ('Surveillance Capitalism') put me on the wrong foot as I already knew about the surveillance part. But what I found most scary was the part where the tech companies turned from surveillance to influence. Once you have these billions of people using only your platform to view the world, it is trivial alter their view of the world. And thereby changing policital currents, policies, opinions.... anything.

It is like the Bible before Martin Luther translated it into German, and all christians just had to accept blindly that whatever the priests said was written in the bible actually was. Most humans now have so little input other than whatever priests they follow we might as well be back in the dark ages.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Apparently the 150 year old Social Security recipients were due to a COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875. Interesting, but not fraud.

Too late to edit, but I've learned this is not necessarily true (but could be a default date used by the SS code in particular). Sorry for spreading rumors.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#584
post #22
post #7

So much for Elons "Free Speech"! This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.

“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.” Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.

I would argue it appeared after the Twitter purchase. Originally Twitter had been dying through excessive bans, now you can find major political influencers on both sides of the spectrum

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#585
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you buried the lede in your footnote here. Even if it is just a mistake, it's a pretty avoidable one by having a human in the loop to review changes to start blocking URLs to such a commonly linked site. If he thinks that it's "efficient" not to retain enough people to be able to notice that URL fragments and hashtags use the same symbol, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an "office of government efficien…

Humans aren’t in the loop for automated bans. That has no relationship to staffing size. This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban. That same logic most definitely exists at well-staffed companies and the internet is full of stories of people getting screwed by these systems. Google sinking legit companies with no recourse, locking out…

> This is likely a problem with the link banning algo not treating signal.me as high volume enough to prevent an automated ban.

And rightfully so. Despite being discussed a lot here, Signal is not very popular or well-known. Even TFA felt the need to start by explaining what Signal is. TFA then adds:

“This request looks like it might be automated” reads another prompt. “To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can’t complete this action right now. Please try again later.”

And if signal.me is being used for automated spam, automated attacks require automated solutions.

> The real problem then is that even if it was deliberate (conspiracy theory: Mark messaged Elon: Pls help me curb the growth of the biggest competitor of Whatsapp?) twitter can easily hide behind "overzealous automation, sorry".

That would indeed be concerning. (And maybe illegal?) But is it anything more than an unfounded accusation?

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#586
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Freedom of speech" on Twitter is nothing more than Newspeak for censorship. In reality, the goal has always been to silence minorities who already struggle to express themselves, while allowing hate, racist, homophobic, and transphobic language to run rampant. It is a form of indirect censorship, through the self-censorship of minorities who fear speaking out. Then comes direct censorship, where certain terms or lin…

Just because some people use "freedom of speech" as a veil, doesn't make it bad.

No it doesn't. It's like libertarianism—it's a concept I find interesting if it helps promote mutual aid, collectivism, etc. Abolishing the state as a vehicle of oppression? Why not.

But if we abolish the state the way libertarians currently define it—meaning abolishing the state but not private property (which paradoxically forces the state to persist in order to determine who owns what, such as businesses, housing, etc.)—then it's an entirely different project. We would be abolishing the so-called oppression of the state only to replace it with an even worse and unchecked oppression by corporations and the billionaires who own them, with no means of voting (since "voting with your wallet" is a myth).

And yet, when you listen to them, it sounds as if they are liberating us from something, when in reality, they are freeing themselves from all control so they can better enslave us.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#588
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't. What you are saying is actively happening right now. Certain people dont like that another certain group of people have been allowed back onto Twitter, and so they are going in droves to Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads/TruthSocial etc. Twitter has received an 87% drop in revenue since reinstating previously blocked accounts. Id say people are…

>>> If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't. >What you are saying is actively happening right now. Oh. I am wrong. SO we don't need to enforce rules on free speech, People are able to choose who to interact with. >This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see So we SHOULD enforce rules of free speech, because people don…

To be honest, I have no idea what opinion you are trying to form here. You are twisting and turning my words all over the place and I am unable to gather your thoughts into a coherent point.

You seem to be trying to pin me down to an opinion, and Im not really sure why. Do I, a random person on the internet, matter to you that much that you need to clarify my exact opinion on stuff?

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are links to mastodon still banned on twitter? Because that was a thing after Musk took over. So much for being a free speech absolutist. You're making the mistake of taking a (communal + antagonistic) narcissist at face value. They are known to lie to suit their current goals and when those goals are achieved, they will lie to suit their new goals, whether the lies are congruent with each other or not. This is a guy…

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> A jury quite quickly ruled against defamation here

Yes, and? That changes nothing about Musk attacking a guy as "pedo" because he wanted to insert himself into the spotlight and went threw a fit when he was told off for that.

Also, as if professionals aren't saying the same thing, or as if he'd voluntarily undergo clinical diagnosis?

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#590
post #48

I'm not defending Twitter or their policy in any way (disclaimer: I left Twitter the moment Elmo took over. I despise his hypocrisy and his fascist ideas) But this could be a "legitimate f-up". Normally, most of these unsafe-url protection and detection is automated in something with the scale of Twitter. Just like URL-shorteners often are (were?) "seemingly randomly" banned, because a portion of the shared urls are…

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