30,000 New Users Signed Up For Mastodon After Elon Musk Bought Twitter (vice.com) 217
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Social media platform Mastodon, often seen as an alternative to Twitter, gained nearly 30,000 new users on the day that Elon Musk bought Twitter. On Tuesday a Mastodon domain became unresponsive. Eugen Rochko, Mastodon's CEO, later told Motherboard in an email that there were performance issues. "I'm sorry I couldn't have responded sooner," he wrote. "I was working all day on fixing performance issues on the Mastodon servers I operate due to the influx of new and returning users following Twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk." Rochko added that Mastodon has seen an increase of 41,287 active users, including both returning users and new users. When breaking that figure down by just new users, 28,391 new people have joined Mastodon in the past day, Rochko said.
Mastodon is a piece of open-source software that people can use as a base to create their own social networks. Although its appearance is similar to Twitter, it also differs from Twitter in the sense that Twitter is a single social network people sign up for. When it comes to the social network side of things, Mastodon holds more similarities with Discord, in that users have to find specific Mastodon instances to join. Those looking to create their own Mastodon instance also have to host it themselves, a step that may alienate many non-technical users. Donald Trump's social media site, Truth Social, is based on Mastodon and was recently called out by the company for failing to provide the source code for the site built on top of it. Two weeks later, the social media site quietly acknowledged Mastodon in a dedicated section labeled "open source."
In regard to the matter, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko said: "Compliance with our AGPLv3 license is very important to me as that is the sole basis upon which I and other developers are willing to give away years of work for free."
Twitter did confirm some fluctuations in follower counts after Musk's deal was made official, although they said they were organic in nature.
Mastodon is a piece of open-source software that people can use as a base to create their own social networks. Although its appearance is similar to Twitter, it also differs from Twitter in the sense that Twitter is a single social network people sign up for. When it comes to the social network side of things, Mastodon holds more similarities with Discord, in that users have to find specific Mastodon instances to join. Those looking to create their own Mastodon instance also have to host it themselves, a step that may alienate many non-technical users. Donald Trump's social media site, Truth Social, is based on Mastodon and was recently called out by the company for failing to provide the source code for the site built on top of it. Two weeks later, the social media site quietly acknowledged Mastodon in a dedicated section labeled "open source."
In regard to the matter, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko said: "Compliance with our AGPLv3 license is very important to me as that is the sole basis upon which I and other developers are willing to give away years of work for free."
Twitter did confirm some fluctuations in follower counts after Musk's deal was made official, although they said they were organic in nature.
30,000 fresh bot accounts (Score:2, Flamebait)
Get those bot accounts in early so they have time to network and follow/like/repost each other, because accounts that were made yesterday look too suspicious.
Not that anyone checks how old users are anyway.
=Smidge=
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I too will ignore the AC brain fart even though I think your SP is basically the same theme, but in slight disguise.
I can report that Jimmy Wales himself recently commented on a surge in WTS members also reacting to Musk buying Twitter. Plus I can personally report on an uptick in spambots on WTS. Do you think it's a random coincidence? I sure don't.
Much as I despise Twitter, now I'm wondering if Mastodon is worth a look. It's not like it can be worse than Twitter. At least I can't imagine how it could be w
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Nah, most of those 30k are probably real. Of course, the hundreds of thousands of followers going missing from leftist accounts on Twitter are almost certainly bots. There's a reason that the leftist cause of the day stopped being on most people's trending tabs in Twitter the day after Elon bought it and it isn't because of some exodus of real people. So too were all the sudden unbannings of accounts not a mere coincidence. The people running Twitter are trying to scrub their tracks. That assumes no one who
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>"The people running Twitter are trying to scrub their tracks. "
+1
That is exactly what is happening right now. The partisan and agenda-driven employees are desperately scrambling to cover/hide/sanitize what they have done for years. I am seeing reports all over the place that suddenly things have gotten much better. Strange how even the threat of coming accountability works.
As for users leaving in masses to Mastodon- yeah, right. I don't see that as being a thing. It is probably just curiosity being
Re:30,000 fresh bot accounts (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, most of those 30k are probably real. Of course, the hundreds of thousands of followers going missing from leftist accounts on Twitter are almost certainly bots. There's a reason that the leftist cause of the day stopped being on most people's trending tabs in Twitter the day after Elon bought it and it isn't because of some exodus of real people. So too were all the sudden unbannings of accounts not a mere coincidence. The people running Twitter are trying to scrub their tracks. That assumes no one who has access to the logs is pro Musk though, and isn't backing them up. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out in the next year or so.
Nurse, he's out of bed again.
You have to ask yourself why Parler, Gab or any of Trumps 3 abortive attempts at his own social networks didn't become popular.. It's because there is no "leftist" conspiracy and you're just using it to try to hide from the fact that a right wing echo chamber is incredibly unpopular. That's what'll happen to Twitter if it becomes one. You cant just buy users you know.
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I like how musk put it. Paraphased (we want to cater to the middle 80%, meaning 10% on the right extremes and 10% on the left extremes wont like us.)
Taking emotion out of the
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Userbase does matter, but you can't build a large userbase by tolerating toxic behavior.
Toxic social networks tend to be self-concentrating; The toxicity drives away the on-toxic users, and only the trolls and assholes stick around. The higher the concentration gets the faster you lose users. Yes, people are going to go to where they will have more interaction - and nobody wants to interact with toxic users (except other toxic users)
The other side is if you have one platform that has their toxicity under at
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A toxic social media environment is one that promotes negativity, hatred, anger, fear, etc. It also encourages behavior and attitudes that are detrimental to one's self and society in general. This manifests not only through words but also perceived social norms and attitudes, whether explicit through bullying or implied through the language of the community.
This isn't a difficult concept.
=Smidge=
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You have to ask yourself why Parler, Gab or any of Trumps 3 abortive attempts at his own social networks didn't become popular.. It's because there is no "leftist" conspiracy and you're just using it to try to hide from the fact that a right wing echo chamber is incredibly unpopular. That's what'll happen to Twitter if it becomes one. You cant just buy users you know.
One might wonder why Twitter felt the need to lock their codebase to prevent internal saboteurs if there is no "leftist" conspiracy. I'm pretty sure there are no alt-right nutjobs crying on Zoom about Elon buying Twitter.
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I know that im one of the people who tend to hop on every new social media when i hear about it, and 99 times out of 100 forget about it within a few days and i cant be the only one
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The people running Twitter are trying to scrub their tracks.
When you are edgy (read "insane") enough, everything feels like a conspiracy. Put the damned tinfoil down.
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Makes Sense (Score:5, Funny)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6... [twimg.com]
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think the OP is the one fleeing the idea of free speech?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Help, help, I'm being repressed!
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We're freaking out (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like nobody on this entire forum has ever read a fucking cyberpunk novel. The mega corporations want the heroes people. Neither were the dragons in shadowrun. When did we start treating them like it?
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a billionaire who runs a megacorporation taking over one of the most popular forms of media
How many people freaked out when Bezos bought the Washington Post?
Um... lots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Um... lots (Score:4, Interesting)
The left was proven right too. WaPo keeps putting out articles and opinion pieces about how billionaires are good, actually, and we should not try to tax them.
Does Mark Zuckerberg freak you out? (Score:3)
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And getting further away from it every minute, it would seem.
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I long for the days when media empires were run by altruistic individuals with no profit motive and high moral standards. Like William Randolph Hearst.
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You would think of website full of nerds would understand that a billionaire who runs a megacorporation taking over one of the most popular forms of media in the 21st century is not a good thing.
We were too busy freaking out over nVidia trying to buy ARM to notice.
Funny, the offer for ARM was less than the offer for Twitter. How's that for value?
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Cuz it has real-world consequences. You would think of website full of nerds would understand that a billionaire who runs a megacorporation taking over one of the most popular forms of media in the 21st century is not a good thing.
It's like nobody on this entire forum has ever read a fucking cyberpunk novel. The mega corporations want the heroes people. Neither were the dragons in shadowrun. When did we start treating them like it?
The issue isn't that he's a billionaire, the issue is that he's a complete hypocrite.
Musk has managed to create a cult of personality around him, so the weak willed who are drawn to such things have trouble seeing his hypocrisy. Musk is not a "free speech absolutist", he's quite the opposite where he uses his wealth and influence to attack anyone who he think has slighted him. His suit with Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear and Grand Tour fame) for being critical of a Tesla is a prime example, yet he expects
Nobody said that (Score:3, Interesting)
We found this out when "fake news" became a thing and there were interviews with one of the major purveyors of the stuff. He was very frank about it being a business, and he was asked "why no left wing fake news" and his answer was equally frank: "It gets debunked before it can go viral and make us any money".
T
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Why no left wing fake news
CNN says hello.
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Why no left wing fake news
CNN says hello.
Wait, CNN has news now?
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Took your advice and used a nice little litmus test. Kyle Rittenhouse. He's a complete fuckwit and his habit of tiptoeing around a topic is pathetic at best.
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It makes absolutely NO sense to discuss the world's view of left/right outside of the US, when discussing the left/right INside the US.
And by US standards, CNN is quite a bit towards the left. Not nearly as bad as MSNBC or TYT, but it is left.
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To be blunt, the right wing is gullible. And as a result you can get them to share absolute nonsense. This is a fact.
You will have a very hard time showing that it is different on the Left. Special counsel John Durham in his ongoing criminal probe showed shocking level of disinformation related to Russiagate hoax and I don't need to remind you how much that story was promoted by mainstream media. Then you have the Convington Kids (settlements). Then you have Jussie Smollett (guilty conviction). Then you have Kyle Rittenhouse (innocent jury verdict). So to be blunt - you have no leg to stand on here.
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Re: Nobody said that (Score:2)
Not the US as a whole, just various small areas, such as the do-called 'CHAZ'.
The left's attempt at overthrowing the government was largely without force, four years engaging in conspiracies to undo an election they disliked.
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You are conveniently leaving out the "seditious conspiracy" charges [justice.gov], some of which have already been pled guilty to [politico.com] in exchange for cooperation against others in the conspiracy.
The trespass charges are for useful idiots. They are not the whole story, however, and the DoJ is now getting down to the real work. But good job at attempting to spread misinformation and continue to downplay the seriousness of what happened.
Not shocking that it was posted as an anonymous coward, because you clearly are a fucking
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Bill Ayers anyone?
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The fact you think 1984 was only about the right wing and not totalitarianism in general is really funny. 1984 was about the dangers of the authorities controlling speech and how totalitarianism is closer than most people want to admit. He was no fan of the USSR or CCP, both of which used similar speech controls to the Spanish fascists and Nazis. It was as close a blanket condemnation of authoritarianism as you can get.
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Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four after he experienced fascism first hand in Spain. He went there to fight along side the leftists trying to liberate the country. So the things depicted in Nineteen Eighty Four are very much what he imagined the outcome of fascism taking over would be.
Remember that back then fascism was not associated with WW2 and genocide. In his native Britain the fascists were making some political headway, and had the support of one of the most popular newspapers (the Daily Mail). Fascis
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Actually, it was how the Socialist revolution got co-opted by the Stalinist's as much as the fascists.
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The leftist hysteria over Musk's takeover is revealing.
The only thing which has been revealed is that just like in every other case about anything ever in the world some right wing f-wit thinks this is some major leftist conspiracy, and some left wing f-wit thinks it's to do with the right.
Which is to say nothing has been revealed at all. Your posts are as stupid as ever, the rest of the "right's" posts are as stupid as ever. Matched only in stupidity by the "left's" posts.
The reality is, all you people are just insanely blind, sitting in your echo-chambers looking for biased examples to blame "the other side". Most kindergardens have children more mature than the discourse around "left vs right".
When will you release you're all just a bunch of morons regardless of which political affinity you have?
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You don't have to be immature or a moron to be able to see that a surprisingly large amount of people, generally on the far left, have come up to have their voices heard enough
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It's a pendulum, oscillating around the moderate center who actually has all the control, but none of the motivation or imagination to use it.
The US tends to shift between progressive and conservative majority. We had the New Deal, then the fairly conservative 1950s. Then we had the Civil Rights / Great Society / anti-war era, followed by neoconservatism Reaganomics and the "Contract with America" of the 80s and 90s. Then we swang back to the left with the "political correctness" precursor to today's "wo
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Over the last several years, there are a surprising amount of people, generally on the far right, have come up to have their voices heard enough to seriously alter the basic fabric of the US society and culture....
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As a libertarian, I have never been censored on Twitter. Of course, I also have never posted lies about science, called for violence, or said racist remarks. If that makes you right-leaning I have to rethink a lot of my votes over the last 25 years.
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't a "lie about science", didn't "call for violence", and had no "racist remarks". It was simply, inconveniently true.
That's the problem.
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Three out of four - not bad. A shame it wasn't true, just another Big Lie promoted by Agent Orange and the MAGAts.
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What was i agreeing to you might ask? a bluecheck made a post saying "more celebrities need to be slapped like will smacked chris"
boom, banned for "targeted harassment"
Oh and the person who i replied to is still there without any issue at all
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Right wing nut jobs don't like Musk as well. Twitter is a key part of the conservative messaging ecosystem, using to push political propaganda. Second, right wing nut jobs do not agree with extending the right to speak to people they disagree with. To them imaginary "harm" of allowing free speech outweighs the value of open exchange of ideas. Third, all concerns about Musk using Twitter to suppress right wing view points is a confession by projection - they fear that Musk will use Twitter in the same wa
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Elon Musk is emulating Donald Trump. I don't think he can do it as well as
I'm not hysterical. You can have Twitter. (Score:2)
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They promote the most pants-on-head retarded right-wing tweets they can find to make all of the right wing look like foolish retards and implant the false narrative that, since it's on the front page, all right wing people must think or believe the stupid thing promoted.
I'm tired of this game of pilpul and I'm overjoyed to see you people freak out at the idea you might have to play on a level field for once.
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"The Guardian media bias rating is Lean Left."
https://www.allsides.com/news-... [allsides.com]
So a left leaning media outlet claims Twitter promotes right-wing tweets.
https://gifimage.net/wp-conten... [gifimage.net]
That study is a meme used to create headlines (Score:5, Informative)
> In other news, the Twitter algorithm promotes right-wing tweets over left-wing tweets [theguardian.com].
I'm convinced that people trotting this out never read the actual damned study [cms-twdigitalassets.com] to understand just how limited and silly the finding in it is and have only read the headlines about it, which are frequently bogus.
The study picked a bunch of politicians, coded them as right/left, then looked at Twitter recommendations vs. a control group with a reverse chronological timeline. They found no amplification of right-wing tweets, only of certain right-wing politicians that they measured and the variance is all over the place. Also, somehow, despite working with Twitter, they just treated Twitter's recommendations as a black box. Why? Doesn't Twitter know why it recommends things? Does it truly have no idea what factors into that? Oh... and there's also the part where Twitter changed the rankings during the study. So the "treatment" wasn't even the same over the whole time... and it also depended on the findings of the study itself, according to this study?
So they have huge variance, find that certain politicians get amplified... but somehow not right-wing tweets themselves... and have to point out that their control group isn't isolated from their treatment group, so they can't actually make any causal inferences, despite most of the headlines about the study doing exactly that.
This study seems to have been written to create headlines. It's a look at some tweets by politicians over a few months while they were busy tweaking the algorithm in ways not disclosed. There's no reason to believe this is representative, or even that it's still true given what they said in the study itself about tweaking the algorithm during the study in response to the study data.
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They did exclude bare retweets from the sample (and I do wonder how that'd have changed things), but this was such a silly observational study that limited itself in the strangest ways that I have no confidence that it was anything other than an attempt to generate headlines and get people to draw inferences that can't possibly be supported by the study.
I mean, they might as well have just put "this study is pure BS" in the limitations section, it wouldn't have changed anything.
Re: Makes Sense (Score:3, Informative)
Watch "Internal Twitter Chats LEAKED Proving More Left Wing Bias, Journalists Try To STOP Elon Musk Buyout" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/3N6ipRO19LA [youtu.be]
Don't take my word for it. Take the word of leaked internal employees.
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I read that post and it's right (Score:5, Insightful)
If that reality makes you uncomfortable, well it should. But pretending it isn't real doesn't help you. For example it doesn't help you overcome the effects of systemic racism on your life. Black or white racism is used as a technique for dividing people who work for a living so that people who own shit for a living can tell us all what to do and we'll all do it because we're too busy fighting among ourselves.
You would think after we got the internet and we could read up about things like the India caste system and the Japanese barakumin and all the other ways global elites trick us into fighting while they take all the good stuff for themselves that we have figured this shit out by now. Instead we still have the 21st century equivalent of that old phrase I used to hear in the 90s before it became a No-No "anyone can be a n-"
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>"A white dude is worrying about how they're going to afford the ticket a black dude is worrying about whether they're going to make it out of this alive. Those are two very different experiences."
Yes. The former is based on reality. The latter is based on myth, fearmongering, insane amplification of rare events, and hype, reinforced by the media, and ignoring all relevant circumstances.
Being struck by lightning is rare, but it does happen. It is not the norm, nor should it ruin your outlook on life.
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You should consider not starting with a lie. It might make you more believable.
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>"So your advice is to run around the golf course waving a two iron over your head every time there's a thunderstorm, because even GOD can't hit a two iron?"
? No, my advice is for people to look at their own BEHAVIORS when assessing risk and before assigning blame to others.
>"You should consider not starting with a lie. It might make you more believable."
Nothing I said was a lie.
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You cannot be racist against white people in the same way as you can against other races
That might be true in the US, but here in the UK we don't have a history of oppressing black people - at least not on the same scale you guys do, it's always been many orders of magnitude better here. A great example of this is that we didn't actually ever abolish slavery in the UK - we simply confirmed that it had always been illegal. In fact there are examples going back hundreds of years of someone bringing over a slave from some backwards land and a British court ruling that they were no longer a slave
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Showing your ass as per normal. It is simple to be racist against white people in the same way as other races. Are you basing your judgement of their speech/actions on the content of their skin color? Congratulations, you're a racist asshole.
Yeah, don't you just hate it . . . (Score:2)
What I can't figure out is, are you really that dull or are you just trying to hide your christian evangelical racism? You seem prepared to ignore the vast majority of US history, could that be because (secretly) you don't like it? Inquiring minds want to know - I want to know.
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No, just common sense when it comes to dealing with cops.
The first rule of thumb is...don't say anything more than you have to.
Be polite.
Comply....if the cop is an ass, and it comes to an arrest, running or resisting doesn't do anything but get you extra charges. You can never win with your mouth or anything else in the field.
If you do go to jail, and it is wrongful, comply, don't answer questions and lawyer up.
But 99% of the time, if you don't have a
What's so crazy about the Burakumin (Score:2)
It really shows how racism is just a scam cooked up to make us fight.
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Not sure if you're referring to the family registries, but if so, they still exist and are still extremely powerful documents for such kinds of research. Even though the "special" categories for Eta were ostensibly eliminated in Meiji times.
Reminds me of my experience with a temp agency I did some work for many decades ago. Because of my special training I was asked to help in the office for a while in placing some technical candidates, but during that period I learned about their use of code words for disc
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If we all grew up in a perfect vacuum with the same starting circumstances you might have a stronger point but fact is we, and all our decisions good and bad, are products of our environment.
Some people are born lucky enough that they can make a few bad decisions in life and suffer few if any long term consequences. Some people are one decision away from suffering years of problems from it, all due to circumstances out of our control. Even with genetics, gene don't express anything without environment, y
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This isn't an all emcompassing thing here but chances are if you are born into a doctors family on the upper west side of manhattan you have a better chance of succeeding than being born in a low income household in Detroit. Same country, yes that poor family has the inherent benefits of America but to think they have the same chances in life, to even learn the skills and experience to make those good decisions is impacted. Theres untold numbers of variables and you have to throw history and generational
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Based statements made in the past, Mastodon may well be the place to go if you rely on partisan political censorship, and fear there's going to be less of it on Twitter:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6... [twimg.com]
You know why you're suddenly hearing so much about BLM, #metoo, transgender people, and other civil rights issues that were barely on the map 20 years ago?
Because, despite centuries of "free speech" large swathes of humanity didn't actually feel free to speak due to the fear of harassment and other forms of community oppression.
That's the whole concept about 'safe spaces', because it's a place where people feel safe to actually enjoy this right of free speech.
Twitter has actually been trying to create a space of maximum free speech, open exchange with enough moderation that people feel free to speak. They haven't done a perfect job, but the fact that so many of these movements were fuelled by Twitter suggests they were doing a fairly decent job.
Elon, like you, unfortunately seems to currently have a fairly binary view of free speech. By shutting down the mods he's effectively turning the people most willing and able to engage in trolling and harassment into the new moderators.
Quite possibly he'll send Twitter the way of Altavista as someone else comes along to find the proper balance.
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Musks recent statement that he sees free speech as anything that isn't actually illegal is worrying.
Spam isn't illegal.
Russian misinformation isn't illegal.
Extreme bigotry isn't illegal in most cases.
Fake news isn't illegal in most cases, even when it kills people.
The operators of 4chan and Gab and all the rest soon discovered this. Like Musk, they set out to allow anything that isn't actually illegal, but it didn't work. The fact that he doesn't seem to know this suggests he just spent over $40bn without doing his homework.
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When it was Twitter, Trump knew that he couldn't be held accountable for anything he said. He could always do a finger-point, and Twitter would be right there to take the fall.
Trump (indirectly, I'm sure) owns Truth Social. If he does that finger-point trick with them, he knows he'll be pointing at himself. All of the sudden, the advice of family and friends telling him "No, Donald, I really don't think you should po
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... in which case he'll be lampooned for being the richest guy in the world who made the world's most expensive business mistake. Free speech will live on, just as it did before Twitter existed.
Every word in the Steele Dossier was accurate. (Score:2)
Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Informative)
We're certainly hearing a lot about BLM these days. Mainly about how they are corrupt as fuck. There was also a time when their website started gaining interest because it mentioned things like destruction of the nuclear family. Which was quickly suppressed by the authorities controlling speech while BLM scrubbed their website.
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I have a friend who literally thought that all of the damage done during the BLM riots was from right-wingers who came and destroyed stuff to make BLM look bad. (Yes, I know of a single case where a right-winger was causing problems at a left-wing riot)
Kind of like how the extreme right tried to portray January 6 as an Antifa thing, when it was clearly a right-wing insurrection complete with chants advocating for the assassination of the sitting Vice President, red MAGA hats, Trump / Stars-and-Bars confederate battle flags, pre-planned seditious conspiracy with staged weapons caches, and the whole purpose was to block the certification of the election results?
There is no partisan monopoly on bullshit and misdirection.
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The laptop story was recently confirmed by the NYT and WaPo, who did the exact same thing that the NYP did to verify it. It's true. It's strange. And clearly Hunter Biden is cashing in his father's position.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't let the door hit ya... (Score:5, Funny)
For a product I don't even use, Twitter has sure provided me with plenty of entertainment lately!
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The best post I have seen on all of this is as follows:
"The world's biggest clown just bought the world's largest circus."
Comedy for days.
Twitter finally did something useful (Score:5, Interesting)
It introduced me to Mastodon, which a quick google say can be run as an isolated private server and I think might be a fun way to publish selected log items from my home security system.
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The fact that humanity at large
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Oh, it's a gold plated toilet. Now it makes so much sense as to why Trump loves it so much that he has repeatedly attempted to duplicate it.
Whatever Twitter (Score:5, Informative)
However you feel about Twitter, or the Mastodon devs. The actual over arching design of the protocol is similar to e-mail. Sort of. You have a mastodon server who's ToS you agree with. Which as an aside, most are mostly similar, but do actually read them. The server you connect to has allow/bans from other servers, people on your server you can post/see but you can also receive other server's messages that aren't on your server's allow/ban. So long as the Mastodon server you connect to and the other one speak the same protocol, you can see someone you know on a different server's post and they can see yours. Must like how email between different domains exchange.
Now that said. There's Pawoo that's pretty much on every server's ban list for some of the loli shit they've hosted. Which, I'm not even going to touch that topic. You all can feel how you want to feel about that, I just don't want to even know. There's also Gab, that's the big "republican" mastodon. I don't think it's on anyone's ban list, but it's definitely a particular kind of "right" of the political spectrum. I think the Gab admins and the Mastodon devs got into it. Do note that every Mastodon server can speak the core protocol but forks can add stuff that only their "official client" can do, also servers can deny clients that don't implement specific extra stuff. I think Gab and the devs went back and forth about this.
Of course the big one is Truth Social, which is former President Trump's social media network. It's absolutely a fork of the core protocol that pretty much locks the server to their specific client.
So anyway. Mastodon is pretty neat. There's a couple of federated networks out there that are sharing between instances. There's a couple of forked instances that do their own thing. There's a couple of locked down instances that only want their folks on it. And then there's some instances that basically nobody wants on their federation. So there's a wide array of things to pick from to float most people's boat.
The whole Twitter thing is what it is. But the Mastodon stuff is pretty interesting. I won't recommend any specific instances, by all means, find the one that fits you. But I would encourage everyone to give it a try. It might not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a quick spin.
Re: (Score:3)
The server you connect to has allow/bans from other servers, people on your server you can post/see but you can also receive other server's messages that aren't on your server's allow/ban. So long as the Mastodon server you connect to and the other one speak the same protocol, you can see someone you know on a different server's post and they can see yours.
Sounds more like IRC with a little persistence added than like e-mail.
Do not understand the fuss! (Score:2)
Just grab your favourite movie snack then sit back and watch the $hit show that is about to go down.
Billionaires rarely make a decision based on if it is popular or not, but on what is most profitable.
I have already stocked up on microwavable buttered pop-corn.
Pleroma (Score:3)
Truth Social is "based on Mastodon" (Score:2)
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No wonder there were performance issues. Truth Social sucks, ergo Mastodon sucks.
Methinks you got that backwards. Mastodon has performance issues ergo Truth Social has performance issues. Any moral issues Truth Social has do not reflect on Mastodon.
so.. (Score:2)
How many will stick around? (Score:2)
That a large number of people signed up to Mastodon isn't a surprise. 30,000? Well, ok. I don't know how large a number that is compared to the number of Twitter users, but I suspect the word is "small".
OTOH, if they hang around, they might be enough to cause Mastodon to reach a critical mass in at least some social groups. It's my understanding that it hasn't had that so far. OTOH, in this kind of thing there's frequently a quick shift, followed by just about everyone reconsidering.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Neither are you, rslvergun. You're just a worthless liar. Incel to boot, isn't that right? Really, you can't even come up with the money to hire a pro? Do they charge you extra, or do they just refuse to do business with you?
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Accusing others of your crimes? (Score:2)
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Hurts, huh?
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which is why it's so hilarious that "Truth" Social's open-sourced core is Mastodon, and SURPRISE!! they have scaling issues too. The difference is that the Mastodon guys might actually know something about the code, and have a prayer of making it work. Unlike "Truth" Social.
Re: (Score:2)
More than that, Ruby with a SQL backend.
There's basically nothing about Mastodon that is built in a widely scalable manner.
In fact, their main website is fucked [mastodon.social] even as I post this. I'm guessing that they aren't familiar with the last 10 years of autoscaling tech at all.