Live data from Hacker News

Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

twitter.com

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#901
post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

   "She packed my bags last night pre-flight
   Zero hour 9:00 a.m.
   And I'm gonna be high
   As a kite by then
   ...
   I'm not the man they think I am at home
   Oh, no, no, no
   I'm a rocket man

   Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone
   Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
   In fact it's cold as hell
   And there's no one there to raise them
   If you did"

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#902
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The message over the past week has been pretty clear -- the rules change without notice and will be changed based on what pisses elon off. That make Twitter now a niche message board. All of the elaborate justifications and explanations for buying Twitter and what was going on wrong over there while it was public have been thrown out the window, no matter what your point of view was. The fact that this most recent on…

> Elon might be getting margin called on Tesla right now, which could wipe him out financially. I don't think this is how margin calls work. Presuming your broker is properly managing risk, then a margin call is explicitly designed to not wipe you out financially. You have to put up more capital or sell positions in order to maintain a certain amount of equity in your account, and that required amount is never zero (…

Elon has personal loans made using Tesla stock as collateral.

If he is asked to post more collateral on those loans, and the only way he can meet those calls is to sell even more huge amounts of Tesla stock (which is a significant “if”), then he’s going to drive the price of TSLA down non-trivially. (This, by the way, already happened once earlier this week.)

Which could spur more margin calls on other loans, as his collateral (more Tesla stock) has devalued.

It could spiral in a very nasty way, depending on how his personal finances and loans are structured, and how harshly the market views his fire-sale of TSLA.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#903
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.

That's what it always was. Just instead of what's bothering Musk, it was what's bothering Yoel, Vijaya and San Francisco Liberals

This is the problem of having core global communications infrastructure be centralized

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#904

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.

>Wow. PG did not even post any links, he pretty much just said "I have a Mastodon account." And just like that, banned.

Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over : https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/03/1062752/twitter-...

[1 hour ago - 4 comments] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34046074

This does Not bode well;

links to Mastodon, including your Mastodon account in your profile or even the mere mention of Mastodon.

Is this action for the actual bleed? - Or paranoia at the current projected losses? - Competition?

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's like saying "Postfix isn't scalable like Gmail", comparing two completely different things. and in fact the fediverse is far more scalable than any single service like Twitter can be.

The fediverse is based on a protocol called ActivityPub, just like email is a based on SMTP. ActivityPub is designed from the ground up to allow any number of federated servers to share posts. Email servers can run Postfix or Exim (or others), and the fediverse servers can run Mastodon or Pleroma (or others).

One of the joys of the fediverse is that it's possible (and easy) to move your account (posts, followers etc) to another server. So when a particular server gets too busy, people simply migrate to another server, or even set one up themselves. Universities are already setting up their own fediverse servers for their staff and students, and I think we'll see companies following suit soon - again echoing the growth of email.

So that's the theory - what about real world? Thanks to Elon's unique management style, Mastodon active users (a good proxy for load) have gone from 370K to 2,500K in two months. I use it daily, and it's no slower with all those extra users.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#907
post #609

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.

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…

So, platforms can't delete spam as long as the spam is a competitor? That's... interesting.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#908
post #726

Musk just tweeted that @paulg will be restored shortly: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046164261149327... And “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.” https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046168636732088... Edit: and now he’s asking if he should step down https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046176439731240...

I honestly want him to stay because I enjoy the absolute shit show, I'm gonna be honest. It is interesting to see how the world would react if Twitter went in flames over a couple weeks. The news and corporate PR world are scared out of their mind, and I want to see the whole thing implode, even if for a little while. Same with the Musk cult of personality.

I can appreciate the entertainment factor, but I don't think the news/PR world is in any way scared. For news, it's more clicks on articles talking about this. Look at how popular these stories are on HN. The news industry loves anything that creates more news.

And Twitter is small enough that I'd be surprised if it's a factor for PR companies in any serious way. I looked at one of the biggest PR companies in my city and they've tweeted twice in six months. PR companies make money from retainers and the bulk of the work is pushing stories out to traditional news, new media (large blogs, etc) and then managing social media accounts. On the last point, they can make more money producing videos for YouTube and videos/photos for Instagram/Facebook than posting largely textual content on Twitter to a tiny audience.

My wife worked in PR for years and is now in comms with a company. That company posts consistently on Instagram/Facebook, as one example, but has only posted on Twitter 2-3 times in 12 months.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#909
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk seems to be indicating that banning it was a mistake: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616426114932737

Elon has been so hands-on and vindictive that it's hard to rule out him personally deciding to ban pg and then going back on it, but that's not the only possibility. If you looked at the replies to pg's initial "I'm leaving" post, there were hundreds or thousands of Elon's reply guys mocking him or deriding the decision. Twitter has become much more of a toxic hellhole than it was before. What I've noticed is that ac…

I think what's highly likely is that the "hundreds or thousands of Elon's guys" (or 4chan trolls) reported the account/tweet.

Most platforms use some sort of automatic algorithm coupled with an army of people in "third world" countries doing actual first-level reviews and a smaller group people at HQ supervising/monitoring/working on the algorithms.

Well, except...he fired all those people. So now it's probably just "autoban and if there's enough noise, someone comes back and unbans."

When the elon jet reddit user got banned, it was probably the same thing - trolls/bots/muskies mass-reporting after a post hit the front page.

Re: Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

#910

Musk just tweeted that @paulg will be restored shortly: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046164261149327... And “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.” https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046168636732088... Edit: and now he’s asking if he should step down https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046176439731240...

> 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?

What % of Twitter users are voting in these polls?

If you’re serious about democratizing big decisions, maybe have a set day for polls, like Tuesday, so people who want to engage can plan ahead.

Post reply on HN