• Mazoku@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      For real, shit platform with no real life benefit gets even shittier who would’ve thought

  • vinyl@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    OPs title is misleading, there’s a difference between free speech as in expressing your free speech and the one that OP is referring to is complaining about paying to express your free speech.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    Money is speech? This is clearly in-line with current US legal definitions so what’s the problem?

    \s

  • shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    I’m not a fan of him, nor a twitter user, but as far as free speech is concerned, that should mean your opinion is not censored, but the platform doesn’t have to be free to use, but if it doesn’t discriminate opinions, and everyone is allowed to make an account, and everyone has to pay the same

    That’s equal treatment, and isn’t going against free speech.

    • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      None of that was ever true for Twitter, anyway. It wasn’t true before Musk bought it and it’s only got worse.

  • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Meanwhile, the neuralink patient zero gave a beautiful presentation of what has been happening with that project and it isn’t news because it goes against the Elon Bad narrative

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    3 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Elon Musk confirmed Monday that X (formerly Twitter) plans to start charging new users to post on the platform, TechCrunch reported.

    Back when X launched the “Not-A-Bot” program, Musk claimed that charging a $1 annual fee would make it “1000X harder to manipulate the platform.”

    In a help center post, X said that the “test was developed to bolster our already significant efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot activity.”

    X Support confirmed that follower counts would likely be impacted during that purge, because “we’re casting a wide net to ensure X remains secure and free of bots.”

    Musk’s plan to charge a fee to overcome bots won’t work, experts told WSJ, because anyone determined to spam X can just find credit cards and buy disposable phones on the dark web.

    And any bad actor who can’t find what they need on the dark web could theoretically just wait three months to launch scams or spread harmful content like disinformation or propaganda.


    The original article contains 798 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • IcePee@lemmy.beru.co
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      3 months ago

      I think the real solution is he wants money. If it was solely to reduce spam/bot activities, then there are other ways to do that. Maybe a Bitcoin-style proof of work scheme where evey post needs to show a hash of the message with a nonce. The difficulty needn’t be that hard to make mass posting computaionally unfeasible.

      In fact, Bitcoin appropriated this proposal to reduce email spam. It never took off with email as it was an open system and network effects and a catch 22 meant that it floundered. But X, née twitter is a closed off dictatorship. They could force it through edict.

    • Tonguewaxer@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Isn’t that the started intent? Like adding a small roadblock or captcha.

      I’m not saying I agree but the simple logic should work. It’ll likely reduce the user base and still let bits in with cash to burn.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        This is what Craigslist did and now nobody uses it and we’re forced to use the garbage platform that is Facebook Marketplace.

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        In theory, maybe. In practice, the bots might just pay and post anyway. If they can recoup those costs in the scam, it costs them basically nothing.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          So bots pay to continue what they’re doing, but Musky now gets money for it?

          Ray Charles could see what’s going on here.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This will absolutely stop by far the most bots, because hostile governments like Russia and China use THOUSANDS of bots, having to pay $1 extra to maintain each bot, will be prohibitively expensive for those governments. Remember this can mean THOUSANDS in extra cost for those programs. No way either Russia or China will be able to afford that. So my guess is this will be 99.99% effective at preventing bots. The problem for Musk that he may not have foreseen is, the same will be true for MAGA racist anti LGBT propaganda bots. So now Twitter will go back to be dominated by liberals and socialists. Making it necessary for Musk to pay for another platform all over again, if he wants to have a free space to blurt his idiocy.

      /s

      • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Most people don’t get out of bed for a dollar so no, it won’t outside the usual 10-30% pareto ratio, which is probably already getting impacted by Xitter being run into the ground.

  • Nomecks@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Who would have thought that Twitter would become the new Somethingawful forums, and that Musk would take the role of Lowtax.

    • yumpsuit@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ve seen web writers claim that the original brain trust of Weird Twitter started from a Something Awful clique

          • yumpsuit@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            The blowtax shock-site days are long gone. With occasional exceptions in containment areas like the pink forum and the debate forum, SA’s culture is acceptable-to-laudable these days. Effortposts on the leftist board are a life-changing force for personal betterment, and goons remain some of the most charitable nerds anywhere.

            And despite all of that, it is still funny.

            • Klear@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              I really should join up one of these days. Used to read the front page every day for a looong time, but never joined the forums because I couldn’t pay online (and was broke af).

              I’m guessing it feels a bit like a slice of old internet?

              • yumpsuit@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Depends on the subforum, naturally, but the whole place is unquestionably a big waxy cheese wheel of old internet. The paywall, the heavy moderation, regulars who’ve been posting brainy takes in megathreads for years… it still all works like a charm.

                Find someone who knows their shit on a topic you care about and hit the ¿ to see their posts and jump in to great moments of earlier discussion. Encounter them again being smart about some other awesome thing. Skip pages of fast threads except for posters you want to see. No upvotes, ya use yer words. That’s a tasty slice of a rare flavor.

                Forums are detox for algorithm sickness. Still one of the finest tenbux you can spend.

    • FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Part of me really buys into the idea that Musk is pulling an evil mastermind move with his other billionaire pals, destroying one of the biggest social media sites to keep users fractured. End goal keeping any community small and unable to organize at scale. Then the voice of reason tells me this just another egotistical nepo baby trying to staunch the hemorrhaging of money from his last bad investment.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This is still my opinion. I hated shitter before boy wonder musk took over. It sucked before and it sucks worse now. Just kill it.

  • penquin@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    My tracking app doesn’t let this site load at all, so I didn’t read the article, but fuck musk. Will he remove ads when people pay them? I forgot my password for Twitter since last year and never bothered to log back into that cesspool

  • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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    3 months ago

    It’s completely absurd that he’s saying this as an anti-bot measure. The bots exist because they generate revenue for the scumbags behind them, a small fee is just going to be part of doing business for them. He’s not trying to stop bots, he’s trying to monetize them and use them as an excuse to charge everyone. “The bot problem” will never be fixed and will be used as an excuse for every anti-user measure they put forward.

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    This is just another attempt at establishing a new status quo for other social media before Twitter dies a death due to the insurmountable debt that Musk’s purchase saddled it with. We’ve had a bunch of things tried, so far the only thing that stuck was charging for API access (which reddit soon adopted). Let’s not have this as well, please.

    • xkforce@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Hopefully Twitter dying because of this will give other companies pause (or not, would it really be that bad if facebook kills itself copying him?)