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

disruptionist.com

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

#711

Post by handoflixue »

philipdavis wrote: post #374

Do people in the US still use X? If yes, why? What keeps you on the platform (so the owner is a tiny step closer to destroying your own country)?

> If yes, why?

Some people are smart, insightful, and for some reason insist on only posting on X. I don't see the harm in continuing to follow them, even if I do wish they'd choose a different site to post on

(I expect a lot of people also have less techie friends and family that only post on a single social media site - I've had accounts all over the place trying to keep track of some old friends)

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

#712

Post by drak0n1c »

karparov wrote: post #677
DecoySalamander wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you pause for a moment to consider how a 2004 standard is relevant to a COBOL codebase that is probably more than 50 years old at this point?

I'm not sure everything in there is 50 years old. Not even that everything is actually in COBOL. Those gigantic beasts tend to eventually be quarantined into some VM, never touched again, and then somebody puts some modern-ish wrappers around. For example some HTTP JSON API endpoints to query things. And what do they do when a date is missing? Not returning one would surely make sense. But I'd also expect layers and…

There is no cluster at 150 in the underlying data though, there's even distribution among unrealistically high age ranges. This is yet another case of people taking partisan telephone game conjecture literally.

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

#713

Post by jrs235 »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #498
berkes wrote: 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…

The purpose of a system is what it does.

After a review, the program works as coded.

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

#714

Post by handoflixue »

ruune wrote: post #670
scarab92 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There obviously are problems with freedom of speech in Europe. Everyone knows it.

Tell me more. I live here and have never encountered a situation where I was not allowed to express my opinions in a systematic way. So I don't know but would be delighted to

Are we counting the UK? Because that one's really easy to find examples of - just google "UK arresting protestors", maybe throw in "Queen" or "Royal". They really, really don't like the anti-monarchists.

You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.

There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..

The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.

This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.

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

#715

Post by esoterae »

error_logic wrote: post #694
martin-t wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you point out, "honest mistake" can be used by sophisticated intentional aggressors to get away with their attacks. For a long time, the advice was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." but aggressors evolve to fit their surroundings. When the population largely follows this rule, it becomes a competitive advantage to fake incompetence. Perhaps both malice and incompetence sh…

This ties in with something that took me far too long to recognize: Trust has two pillars. One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence. These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents. Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the roa…

I have realized something quite related in my growing years of experience both interviewing and observing contributors to a technical/engineering organization

Q: Given two engineers, one incompetent and one malicious, how can you tell the difference between the incompetent engineer and the malicious engineer?

A: It doesn't matter.

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

#716

Post by immibis »

alt227 wrote: post #686
aredox wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I pretend to be fine with people criticizing me, that claims fails as soon as I block/ban/throttle one (1) person for doing that.

As long as criticism was 100% the reason for the ban and can be proved it wasnt related to anything else at all.

An impossibly high bar. So we just take people at their word then?

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

#717

Post by alt227 »

intended wrote: post #704
alt227 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure, let me summarize. Your position: >Your position: >… t and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers. Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united. Firms have a right to do what they please, as long as it…

Fair enough.

> You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so.

Im actually not doing that. I dont know where I gave you that impression but I do not believe the government should force any company to allow full free speech on their commercial platform.

> Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united.

We are talking about twitter here in this context, which has been many times quoted as saying they are upholding free speech. The opinions you are referencing here apply to that company because that is what they state. Im not talking about all companies and their right to control what people say on their platforms, I feel this is more of an ideological discussion around Twitter/any social media which claims to uphold free speech in their public forum.

Therefore the contradiction does not really exist IMO, because they are being held to their own values and not mine.

Interesting thought experiment, I enjoyed chewing that over for a bit. Thanks :)

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

#718

Post by torlok »

sltkr wrote: post #698
ruune wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me more. I live here and have never encountered a situation where I was not allowed to express my opinions in a systematic way. So I don't know but would be delighted to

It might simply mean your opinions fall in the narrow band of views that are permitted to be expressed. It proves nothing about freedom of speech in general. Even in North Korea, people are allowed to freely express their love for their Dear Leader. Those who express a different view are swiftly disposed of. If you love Dear Leader you could live your entire life believing that you and everyone else has free speech,…

AfD is a Nazi party, and nobody's silencing them, despite overwhelming opposition in all EU countries. If you listen to EU parliament speeches, there's all kinds of radical political views being shared during debates. Vance came to Europe to peddle US culture wars and got laughed out.

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

#719

Post by concordDance »

alt227 wrote: post #490
intended wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a firm decides to be pro or anti free speech. That is their choice. If their choices were unpopular, people would flock to alternatives. They don't. Which puts a hole into the underlying theory. If people do not naturally gravitate towards alternative ideas, and network effects keep people in one place, then these networks should be made government owned. Firms have a right to their property, and the choices of ho…

> 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…

> This is creating an extremely fragmented society, all creating their own bubble of what they want to see

It has always been thus. E.g. right wingers did not use twitter back in 2021.

I will grant it's getting worse though... for instance, the battle here on hackernews between left and right has strongly intensified and it looks like the left will win the downvote/flagging war and the right will stop posting in (and reading) political threads.

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

#720

Post by philipdavis »

handoflixue wrote: post #711
philipdavis wrote: post #374

Do people in the US still use X? If yes, why? What keeps you on the platform (so the owner is a tiny step closer to destroying your own country)?

> If yes, why? Some people are smart, insightful, and for some reason insist on only posting on X. I don't see the harm in continuing to follow them, even if I do wish they'd choose a different site to post on (I expect a lot of people also have less techie friends and family that only post on a single social media site - I've had accounts all over the place trying to keep track of some old friends)

I guess those smart, insightful people are staying on X because

- their targeting audience are on X

- they are rich and do not really care what the platform owner does

- they will be very happy to join the owner when offered such opportunities

For people who are the target audience of those people, I guess

- they voted for this, and they are happily watching the federal gov falling apart

- they convinced themselves that X is the place to grow / learn from smart and insightful people (I don't think one has to be on it for more than 10 min a day to grow & learn, unless one is a crypto trader)

- they convinced themselves that it is really nothing political about using X

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