i love how irrelevant elon made twitter. like the big companies may not be on alternative networks but you also dont see hashtags and advertisements to discuss something on twitter anymore like you used to in the 10s
Unfortunately that was his task. Twitter was a pivotal tool in the Arab spring, second largest investor in Twitter after musk were the Saudis. Musk is such a try hard wannabe goon that when the “real” money told him they’d think he was cool if he bought and fucked up Twitter (and they would totally let him ride dirtbikes with them when he was done!) he jumped at the chance.
I don’t buy this conspiracy theory at all, 1) twitter is disinformation heaven, which is very useful to authoritarian regimes and 2) Musky would never intentionally do anything to harm his public image, he’s a textbook narcissist after all.
Don’t agree with your premise, and think maybe you’re conflating Twitter today with Twitter back then for the most part…
Twitter USED to be… a place where you could get a decent idea of the zeitgeist and verification actually meant something. By no means ideal on any count, but it was the closest thing we had to the world’s unified quick communications platform. And yes, some missinfo anywhere, but generally you could get to a lot of usable info and communicate with people more directly.
To your second point, you’re missing SO MUCH OF the nuance of how desperate and out of touch this chud is. Go watch musk on stage with Dave Chapelle and then go see how Peter thiel is the senior class man to elon’s freshman - thiel is always giving him swirleys and calling musk names, but elon follows like a kicked puppy hoping for approval.
Fair point, but I would argue that if you had that kind of experience on twitter, you’re weren’t really the target demographic.
Desperate and out of touch, yes, but deliberately fucking up a platform and ruining his “Iron Man” persona? He’s too stupid and too invested in what people think of him.
There’s a version of this conspiracy I could buy though: the Saudis gave him money and stroked his ego knowing that there was no way he wouldn’t fuck the whole thing up. Everyone except him knew how this was going to end. That conspiracy I could get behind.
“Gave” like Trump and the Russians.
I just honestly don’t believe Musk is competent enough to pull off such a conspiracy. Far more likely that he just fucked up into buying twitter at a massively inflated price then ran it into the ground by being an idiot who thinks he’s a genius.
What do you mean “such a conspiracy”? There’s no grassy knoll? No Zupruder film here?
Fire most of the staff, retain only sycophants and incompetents, remove security and functionality infrastructure so the site is unreliable and insecure, complicate and invalidate verification by giving to all or making “pay to play” until info source verification itself is meaningless, turn off universal access to the platform and openly manipulate the algorithm “news feed” until it’s known that you won’t see actual “trending topics” and there is zero conference that Twitter is a window the the zeitgeist - and we’re there.
We saw it all happen in plain site, no secret meetings. These fucks are always on mega yachts in the Aegean Sea and shit like that, they discussed it one day and that lopsided dipshit essentially said, “I can jump my bike off that high ramp, if I can sit with you guys at lunch” he wasn’t thinking and immediately regretted it. He was going to bail before the actual jump and make that move where you trip and then immediately pretend you were just jogging, but in no time he was already going downhill fast and too committed legally so he just hit the ramp… He fell on his face, but it doesn’t matter because that was the task, to publicly be a tremendous failure. They probably wanted him to do it a little more subtle even, but he is incompetent, so you got this.
musk isn’t a “mastermind” here, he is a useful idiot that was going to fail regardless, the actual money/skill just pointed his failure in their preferred direction that benefited them most. When actual money doesn’t matter, power is the currency. musk doesn’t have real power, people like the Saudis and venture capitalists do. That’s what he’s chasing.
Relying on private corp tools is not sustainable. We can’t expect our oppressors help us break the chains.
Yes AND, until we have a better and wholly adopted FOSS, decentralized alternative, you actually need something more mainstream in these big moments unfortunately.
You can just say the ideal out loud and pat yourself on the back, but it doesn’t actually solve for the problem.
I honestly believe that he was backed into a corner and this was his out. His mouth wrote checks he literally couldn’t cash, and when he was forced to fork over the money, the spiteful little shit was like “Ok, well these oligarchs would like to see Twitter festroyed anyway, so let’s do that.”
Yes and no, he didn’t want it as much as he wanted the attention. When he was trapped, they told him they’d be buddies and directly/indirectly support his other projects if he played ball. Plus, they all probably have the true depth on his Epstein stuff and they all wave kompromat over each other’s heads and threaten with a smile.
Make no mistake, Musk is an oligarch wannabe. He is just like all of them — greedy, self-serving, self-righteous cunts. The world will be far better off when they no longer exist.
He is just like all of them — greedy, self-serving, self-righteous cunts.
You don’t become a billionaire without having those personality traits.
I agree completely. I just wonder why anyone argues that he’s not obviously trying to actively destroy Twitter.
Yeah I’m pretty sure that was shown to be the case (people who knew him reporting that he lamented twitter’s “wokeness”, wanted to do something about it, and how he railed against his own trans child).
He is, in every sense of the word, a douchebag.
So anyone who argues the opposite is either in on the agenda or sucking his probably-tiny genitalia — or both.
Yes, it was an attack on journalism
‘in the 10s’
… man I feel old now lol.
Was wondering when we are gonna use decade names.
Finally!!!
Is anyone the least bit shocked at the “rules for thee” behavior from these subhuman pieces of shit? Why are we allowing them to be in charge of anything again?
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I didn’t vote for Elon.
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The rest of us are.
I wanted to comment “Who watches the watchers” but it’s not even funny
Because people won’t leave Xitter. Mastodon was propped up expressly as a replacement, but the bird yet lives.
I think this is the reason for all word’s problems, not enough people are willing to give up a tiny luxury (in this case addiction) when that’s what we need to move forward.
Ya it’s too bad.
Even before that - folks gotta learn about Mastodon, understand its benefits, and then be willing to give up tiny luxuries (convenience of not switching, attraction to following uh pop stars & ppl…). At least we can feel a little better that not everyone staying on Twitter has heard of Mastodon ever before in their lives!
Inherited wealth centralizes money and power, and egregious hoarding like billionaire level centralized wealth makes people greedy, paranoid, and disconnected from the reality most other people experience.
twitter?
That name should be some sort of verb or something, “lets not Musk this up” or “are you really that Musk?” I dunno something like that
“I hate that site, I hope someone Musks it up soon”
“Oohh you fucking elon…”
“I sure hope he doesn’t get Munson’d”
This is the third post I’m seing about this. But STILL NO VIDEO LINK.
Good, for once people are deciding to limit outrage and not continue to distribute and share things that are false. If we did this with every piece of bullshit outrage bait or weird rumor or conspiracy theory we would reduce some of the worst movements and viral trends we all hate.
it also appeared in some credible news sites wo the link as well. Dont know about the credibility of this one but it has the link
I found one that could be it but I don’t want to bring attention to it if I’m wrong.
Disinformation misinformation - you’re Just Saying No :)
Elon seems to be a deep shit blackhole. The more shit is there the more shit is attracted.
i, for one, am chagrined
I am so shocked!
(Not)
I just can’t believe anyone still uses Twitter for any purpose.
At this point remaining active on the platform is more or less unethical.
“Less unethical” if you’re a journalist. Investigative reporters can visit nazi bars with 335m people if they bring us the goods about what the nazis are saying!
Sure I guess.
I have the luxury of not having to decide.
I’m not going to judge someone who feels they absolutely need to participate on twitter in order to avoid poverty.
I certainly wouldn’t like to do that myself.
A lot of sites have weight. Twitter sheds users every day but the large user count makes it attractive to public figures and if you want to follow that public figure you need to have twitter.
Yeah but to me it’s insane that public people that have publicists or companies that have communications staff simply don’t cross post to multiple sites.
Sure for a regular person that’s a lot of work to do when just posting a random thought. But for someone who’s job involves posting things to social media? Most of the work is coming up with the copy. Once that’s done it’s just copying and pasting to different sites.
My point is, it’s becoming unethical for public figures and their followers to remain on the platform.
That’s why the more prominent the public figure is, the bigger ethical obligation they have to switch to Mastodon and force their followers to follow.
Cue a flood of Swifties when Taylor finds out about Mastodon.
more or less unethical.
Even before that, it just funnels value from users to a monopoly that does not innovate or improve user experience. It’s like the freemium model without much benefit in exchange for your data.
I use twitter to complain about products at brands, it’s more effective than you think.
Twitter just has too much momentum. It’s unshakable from its cultural position as it is now. It will take more than the alt-right openly congregating in their own circles to scare ordinary people away.
I disagree.
If anything the momentum is moving against it. The only question is how long it will take for alternatives to become viable and / or for twitter to lose its network effect.
Presently its only the inertia of users maintaining the network effect.
When the owner starts publishing misinformation I’m order to manipulate an election, that’s something more than merely a consideration of features, users, and UX. Users really ought to emphatically withdraw their support, even in cases where it may be inconvenient.
I use it to keep up with Street Fighter pros.
And watch a little of the dumpster fire burn. I report all of Musks posts that break policy and kinda surprised my account isn’t suspended yet.
3 Qs:
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Musk sux
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If you advised Kamala and she created a Mastodon account and tried to funnel people there, but not everyone left, would you advise her to at least post screenshots of her Mastodon posts or “see my post about $subject on Masto here: $url” whenever she had something to say?
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If you’re Kamala and your crystal ball proved posting on the dumpster fire site would bring you the one extra voter who will sway the election - would you take a utilitarian approach and keep dumpsterposting?
if Kampala staying on Twitter meant winning the election then sure.
It’s my strongly held opinion that it won’t significantly effect the outcome. A savvy media team could play it to her advantage.
Honestly how many swing voters are going to follow Kamala.
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If my younger self from like 3 years ago heard generating videos can be a prompt away and can make gigantic amounts of misinformation, he would shit himself and probably write a manifesto, but fuck me this is still insane today!
I can’t tell whether 3 years ago you were pre-potty training but fully literate, or whether you’ve simultaneously learned better emotional regulation and sphincter control in the past few years.
People tend to change more, psychologically speaking, between 18-25. They might have been 17-18 three years ago. Makes sense with the manifesto comment.
I thought X got rid of all of the sane policies that twitter had?
I mean isn’t X officially a white supremacist platform now anyways?
And EVERY single news organization in the US uses it both as their primary platform AND source for news.
Even fucking NPR. What the actual fuck is that about ?
90% of screenshots on Lemmy are from Twitter ffs. It boggles my mind, and I am not easily boggled.
The problem is consensus. No one can make consensus on abandoning the site happen.
Give me very little hope that the world can resist fascism if they can’t stop using a website.
I thought NPR left Twitter when Musk had them labeled as “state controlled media”
They still… to this day… source Twitter in news articles. They still embed tweets.
Musky wanted to do that but Europe threatened to ban Twitter so now he just pretends that there are rules.
everyday I’m thankful that Musk is not an US born citizen and cannot run for office. It’s the only thing stopping him
It keeps you out of the Pres and VP office, but there are plenty of other offices.
There’s almost a 0% chance musk gets even remotely close to any cali government position with just public voting
Literally a laughingstock
So is Trump, but see how that went.
I live in Devin nunes former district. One just south is kevin McCarthys.
Donald J Trump was the president of the United States of america.America
Idk… I can see him getting support for Texas.
I mean, that’s a state that voted in Ted Cruz after all.
I think he prefers the passenger seat of his jet plane.
In a statement, the Harris campaign said, “The American people want the real freedom, opportunity and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”
Perfect.
That’s why he doesn’t want to debate. All she has to do is say that he doesn’t have the mental fortitude to live in reality.
doesn’t have the mental fortitude to live in reality.
Perfectly said
I love this “Emasculate the fragile strong men snowflakes.” It’s pretty effective.
in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies
But of course. That is why he bought the company – to become un-bannable.
I shall be come ungovernable -A long Must
y“Nobody can hurt my feelings ever again!”
[In nasal robot voice] “I.hate.your.face”
“Hey look! It’s Bono’s little brother!”
How could he see me?
“I’m a robot. I love robots. I have a robot vagina.”
Does that mean Musk is a snowflake?
He’s always been one.
