Threatening NPR again, Musk reminds us he owns Twitter and to use it at your own risk

Originally published at: Threatening NPR again, Musk reminds us he owns Twitter and to use it at your own risk | Boing Boing

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Shakedown voice: “It’s a hardcore microblogging service I’ve got here; would be a pity if nothing happened on it…”

Internal self-awareness voice: remains silent, as ever

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Wow, that is weird. But this does make it seem like he’s not purposely trying to sink the company–he’s just really bad at running it. Any retaliatory action taken against NPR will drive away more of the major news orgs, companies, and users the service needs to hold on to.

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Musk reminds us he owns Twitter and to use it at your own risk

Judging by how often people post Twit links, very few people seem to see Twitter as risky at all, let alone something they mind helping Musk out with.

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We are trying only to use Twitter when the thing isn’t elsewhere, and when at all possible, just screenshot the tweet and offer a link back if people want to cut and paste it.

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These kinds of thuggish veiled threats are why we have to move to FOSS, federated de-centralised services instead of signing up for yet another social network run by a greedy edgelord. You know, like the Twitter guy (not the current one)…

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I’ve had a Twitter account from almost day one, I have never posted a Tweet, retweeted, or replied to anyone and I rarely log in. My account is still very much alive.

So it’s not Twitter rules, it’s his personal rule when he gets mad.

@milliefink The only time I post titter links is if there is a video that’s not available elsewhere, otherwise I try to screenshot.

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Well, this and every other action he’s taken regarding Twitter.

The whole “Elon is a secret genius trying to take town Twitter through intentional mismanagement” theory never made any sense. He owns the thing, if he wanted it gone he could just shut it down entirely and sell off the pieces.

He also has far too large an ego to let the world think he’s dumber than he really is, especially when so much of his wealth and power depends on convincing gullible investors that he’s some kind of real-life Tony Stark.

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DisasterElno

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People should just start leaving Twitter, but before doing so see what they can tweet to annoy Elon and possibly get their account banned or blocked.

Imagine millions of workers trying to piss off their boss until he fires them. Millions.

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[Bluesky’s] intention is to eventually become a decentralized protocol for a multiplicity of federated servers with a variety of different moderation practices.

thor-is-it-though-is-it-though

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Well gosh, of course it’s worth Twitter violating its own rules in order to hand “NPR” over to someone else - it’s a generic handle that lots of people want as it’s such a coveted name… oh, right. Sure Elno, deliberately setting up impersonating accounts is going to work really well for you - more chaos, more important users fleeing the site, more lawsuits…

(I’ve noticed more impersonation accounts running scams lately - even when the real account is big enough to retain its blue check mark. Because, of course, the mark no longer means anything either in its presence or absence.)

It’s been this way since he took over, but this is a pretty egregious example - it directly threatens the basic functioning of Twitter and its appeal to the most important users. It’s so weird - he’s saying, “you can’t leave or you’ll be impersonated,” except it’s an issue for those who stay, too.

Even if this was just a “joke” (empty threat), it’s still corrosive to Twitter, as he’s continuing to remind people that there are no rules that users can count on, and no one is safe on Twitter.

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I mean, that already exists…as free and open source software using an open standard protocol … that doesn’t use toxic algorithms to mine user privacy and surface fascist and racist content to enrich an already obscenely wealthy man.

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I tried that on Truth. It was fun for a minute, but they clearly have no mods or ability to restrict posts. Unless I used key words like “insurrection”, in which case the post would never appear, leading me to believe it was automated and no one was actually in the driver’s seat. I got bored after a couple days and deleted my account (which was portrayed as a sentient roll of Trump toilet paper; got in some good zingers).

Edited for clarity.

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God fucking damn delete me from existence. That sounds like a hellhole… And they call their transmissions… “Skeeting?” ffs just make the logo a male bored ape masturbating and call it a day.

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To be fair to the CEO and org, the article says that they were “begging” everyone to stop calling posts “skeets” (haha_nelson dot gif) but BlueSky is a piece of freshly poured concrete, and people are just scratching swears into it with abandon.

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He’ll probably issue that as an NFT sometime soon. Bored Ape Yanking Club.

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At this rate, IRC or Jabber are gonna be super popular ways to communicate again since Melon Musk can’t STFU like a proper adult.

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“Negative posts” is an interesting way to phrase “reporting on what’s happening.”

The fact is that what’s going on with twitter is news. It was for a long time one of the most important social media sites. So anything that happens there is newsworthy. It was bought by one of the richest people in the world, who is by definition newsworthy. Combine the two, and it’s newsworthy. And people hating it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be discussed.

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NPR should just respond with a poop emoji.

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