Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1)

Huh? They mean the slur for Jews? Do young people even know that one any more? I haven’t heard or seen it in ages, if ever, really. I don’t tread in strange area of the internet, so maybe it’s more popular with degenerates than the general public.

Bigots don’t forget. They treasure their slurs.

I don’t know. I downloaded Mastodon and it took me two days to successfully create an account. And now that I’m on I can’t figure out how to find things I like. All my searches come out blank … or … disturbing.

I saw it just today. On Mastodon. Some racist wishing new posters weren’t noticeably dark skinned or identifiable as jewish, just in a shortened, utterly racist form. Apparently they were posting from a server that most other servers have banned, but not the one this new poster had joined apparently.

A big problem with trying to create Social Media that doesn’t actively try to get you addicted and promote the most popular content is that it gets difficult to find any content. Your best bet is probably to search on hashtags, pick a few accounts the appear to post interesting things on that topic and see if they boost good accounts.

My approach has been to do that, very slowly, but other people recommend following lots of accounts and just prune the ones you don’t enjoy over time.

The “Who To Follow” function is now recommending fake accounts because they paid $8.

Ehhh… the markets would not have reacted as badly to a tyrant in charge if said tyrant, to use the old cliché, made the trains run on time. Which requires keeping around you people who know how to do that, not just imagining that you can command it out of sheer will. And not badly at all to a mere eccentric who just used his privileged position to do his own trolling but otherwise kept the business-facing side of the operation running properly.

Elon should have walked away and bit on the penalty payment when he could have let Twitter go. Meanwhile he could have focused on those lines of activity that were his strengths, and always been able to come back later under more favorable circumstances. Buuuut nooooooo… he had to make a point.

Mastodon, until it evolves a more robust moderation/defederation structure, will have a lot of “disturbing” come up – especially because Mastodon instances are by default in a federated network where some of the instances federated with yours may be far more, …um, anarchic? edgelordy?

I haven’t tried Mastodon, but the feeling I get from the descriptions I’m seeing on the web is that it seems like it would be good for people who think Linux will take over the PC market. Doing stuff like having to pick a home-grown server to join, worrying about which servers have questionable content, having to just know how to search for stuff, and things like that make it seem more geared to the techie who doesn’t mind dealing with all the computing muck. It may scoop up a lot of tech-savvy and hardcore Twitter users, but it doesn’t sound like something that the general public would enjoy using. People who just want to scroll through comments as a way to pass time will probably go to something which is tailored to a more casual experience.

I don’t really use Twitter at all, but I deactivated my account and checked out this Mastodon out of curiosity. My reaction was exactly as you put it. I was completely bewildered at it and had no reason to want to learn it, so in the trash goes that app, too.

I joined the tabletop gaming instance of Mastodon and am enjoying it so far, as many of the designers/companies I follow are already posting there. That said, so far it in no way replaces Twitter.

Yes. I find the whole thing baffling. I don’t know what I’m the world it’s making me choose when I open the app. How am I supposed to know which one to pock? And the terminology is completely opaque to me. I just want to search for a topic or a name and start reading.

I can’t wait for the Netflix film- “No Retweet, No Surrender”.

Subtitle: The thin blue checkmark.

Mastodon is absolutely fucking terrible. And if people’s experience is like yours or mine, they’ll never go back.

That’s no way to talk about Musky McMuskface.

OK, maybe it won’t be Mastodon. It’ll be somewhere else. Some site will start to get momentum and suddenly everyone will be going there. Well, not everyone, but a large fraction of everyone.

i swear, I’m totally as Grab-Asstick and Incompetent as Muskovich. Can I have a Billion Dollars???

Elon: “Trolls won’t be willing to risk $8 to impersonate people on Twitter Blue”

Twitter Blue:

According to this article he had the time to attend the 21st annual Halloween party that Heidi Klum likes to host.

The billionaire’s costume appeared to be the Devil’s Champion-Leather Armor Set, which is marketed as costing $7,500 online.

She was dressed up as a worm.

On another related topic: the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (a respected conservative medium, you used to have those too in the USA, right?) writes today that President Biden thinks that the Twitter deal financing, with money from Saudi Arabia, China and Qatar would be “worth an investigation”. At least that is what he answered to a question that was asked on wednesday. Some worry foreign actors could have access to user lists and user data. That, remember, was the reason to proceed against TikTok and its mother company, Bytedance.
While the NYT (gift link) reports that Elongate Musk would like to turn Twitter into a bank (preferably a central bank, I reckon) and has filed some paperwork to be able to process payments and do someting something blablabla… because TikTok and Facebook so that it can become an “everything app” modelled on WeChat. It is a better article than I make sound.

Elon’s going for the Underpants Gnome Business Model here:

  • PROFIT!!!

Have you seen her? Heidi Klum’s costume game is unparalleled.