Musk haggles over price of a checkmark

Just go hard on filters for users feeds. I don’t want to stop peoples expression, even when it’s horrible, but I should get the option of not having to listen to it or worse be attacked by those who want to force it on me.
Also get rid of the bots.

Once again, ignoring violent hate speech is a major part of how we got to where we are. “I think we should cut taxes” is an okay political position (though one I absolutely believe is wrong) and it should not be censored. “I am going to death con 3 on the Jews” is NOT a political position, but is HATE speech that is beyond the pale. People advocating for eliminationist positions and for acts of genocide, to the point where PEOPLE ARE BEING ATTACKED (which is what is happening right now) should not be given a platform for their violent rhetoric.

Also, why should we reward platforms that are a major part of the problem of spreading hatespeech and violence with our attention. How does that help anyone?

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If that horrible ‘expression’ is hate speech or incitement to violence, then I absolutely want to curtail it as much as possible.

Ignoring evil only enables it.

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This tweet and assumption bug the hell out of me. Free speech doesn’t imply cost or lack of one. Publishers have expenses. If they can deal with it without charging, great. if they can’t, I don’t blame them. They may fail in the landscape, but they should be able to try.

Still think he’s being incredibly stupid with the fee, but this isn’t the argument against it.

How much of a security risk is this to people on Twitter? I’ve never had an account, so I don’t really know what information they request, or what information they harvest and retain. But with Saudi Arabia having financed a huge chunk of the acquisition, does that mean they have a legal right to access the metadata of user accounts?

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If Twitter even provides these themselves (as opposed to workarounds and client-side solutions) then they’re doing a crap job. And that’s before Musk arrived to try to strip it all away.

Twitter wasn’t inclined to do this before Musk “discovered” the problem everyone else knew about. Notice how, now that it’s not a way for him to get out of the deal, he’s talking about everything but getting rid of the bots.

The Treasury is asking that question too.

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I really think the success of Twitter was because famous people were on there and you might end up interacting with one of them. Somehow, it slowly became the place to be. Some celebrities used it as a platform to advertise themselves, curate a brand, and others for goofs. King is right, they should be paying him to hang out there, not the other way around.

Twitter was always on shaking ground for being profitable - and Musk’s mismanagement is going to exacerbate its fall.

The internet is full of dead platforms that were once the go to site worth billions, and later sold off for a fraction of that.

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I’m still trying to decide exactly what I’m going to do. I logged out once the acquisition process started, and I logged back in the other day to get the data download.

I’m torn between:

  • Never logging in again
  • Locking the account (in addition to never logging in again)
  • Deleting the account now
  • Holding off on deleting until there’s something stupid like letting TFG back
  • Seeing how much I can insult Musk until it gets banned

The drawback to deleting is that it will free up the username.

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Will it though?

I remember announcements of Spotify’s imminent death when Neil Young got some others to join him in leaving it. That seems like ancient history now, and I’d guess Spotify is now already stronger than ever.

IOW, I can easily imagine that the vast majority of Twitters dont care at all about Musk’s reactionary politics and the masses of fascists he’s replatforming. Mismanagement seems a far bigger threat to Twitter as a company.

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BoingBoing comment section is my twitter. But can i send Master Beschizza $2.75 (current pocket contents) for an oh-fish-al BB mark o’ the devil? (“What’s the difference between a twitter checkmark and an NFT anyway?” …less monkey more shines?)

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I can almost guarantee you that, in the past 48 hrs, Musk has asked the question “what if we sell the blue checkmarks as NFTs?”

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Because they can’t imagine a way that it can be monetized and make a profit?

And as you’ve noted previously, some media people, probably most, simply will not give it up, and will rationalize any excuse to keep using it.

The vast majority of addicts do not want to cure their addiction.

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I think he will get rid of bots. They are such a huge number if the previous team cleaned them out the user base numbers would have dropped significantly causing the share holders to freak out. Now he must gets those numbers regardless and there is no more share holders to worry about.

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Well if he’s done his research,
/me waits for everyone to stop laughing

He already knows you can use (some) NFTs as profile pics, so he does know something like that is possible.

I noticed whenever anyone had those pics. It was an instant block. I didn’t even bother verifying them, if someone was trying to be funny and used transparency to mimic it, they were blocked too.

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When I say that Facebook’s UX was (slightly) better than Twitter’s, I mean it as someone who managed to get their facebook account suspended trying to find the controls to turn down the amount of ads and crap the feed was pushing me. FB also at least still has the “most recent” view, which does what I want from a social media site- I want to see what my friends are talking about, from most recent and then going back in time. Twitter does not have this, so I have to wade through someone’s feed in order to find out what they are up to, and twitter does not make this easy using the stock UI.

Anyone remember MySpace? That’s probably the best example I remember. (Tumblr is also the other really good example, but it’s still shambling along, and under Automattic seems to actually be doing better than when it was under Yahoo/Verizon.)

I’m going that route. Bring popcorn.

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I’m not so sure. Now he has to worry about selling this turkey he never really wanted to some future suckers.

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Yeah they do. They seem to be prone to resetting it for some people, but the setting is there. Moot if you’re going for the ban though :smiley: Discoverability of it has gotten a lot worse, there used to be text near it at least to give the inklings of a clue that was a UX element you could interact with.

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LOL, I didn’t think about selling because who would buy it?

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Someone who might change the twitter blue to twitter orange?

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It’s hard to believe considering who we’re talking about, but there’s always a greater fool in the marketplace.

Ok, maybe not so hard to believe…

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