Twitter C/D

Promoted tweets in the replies 🤮

my favourite thing on twitter is when I disagree about someone's annoying opinion about a song, then check their timeline to see the last two things they posted were retweets of oz katerji and jk rowling

I don’t know if anyone linked it previously but oh my god this thread

okay okay OKAY i’ll list Rolling Stone’s 500 Worst Albums

500. Moondance -- Van Morrison
499. Young Sheldon -- Radiohead
498. Turd Smokin’ -- The Turd Smoker Band
497. Well Whaddya Know 99 More Luftballoons How About That -- Nena
496. Songs to Fuck To -- Leonard Cohen

— blaine capatch (@blainecapatch) October 7, 2021

omg

now that is commitment to a bit

Well. This is new. pic.twitter.com/Vd1bvDiGQC

— unfriendly black hottie 🪩✨ (@battymamzelle) October 1, 2022

Shitty pro cop local news affiliate shamed into deleting a tweet by a product tweak that elevated the usual ratio to a more visible “this is a lie”.

My locked account with ~100 followers had been suspended for "hateful conduct" because I called Oz Katerji a cunt. Question is which one of the 100 dobbed me in and was it a relative?

couldve just been detected by their systems

Does that happen? It really seems to hate the word "cunt" and not really care much about the actual content of the tweet.

they def have systems that try to detect abusive speech, idk know really what theyre looking for tho

quite possible that word is tagged as misogynist hate speech (by Americans)

you can def say the bad word cunt on twitter tho it might be flagged when arranged with other words in a shape some computer program finds suspicious, id guess the flagged tweet is then sent to a human for review and they look at it for like 3 seconds before making a decision, and english is prob not their first language, which is all to say this whole set up just doesnt work very well, it would cost too much to actually moderate the site, so instead they pretend

ah ok I have not experimented with saying cunt on twitter lol. Katerji being a blue check might be part of that shape.

But you're otm about pretending: I know (roughly speaking) someone who had an ad for a documentary blocked for violating the political ads ban, and they were sent three entirely different explanations for why

yeah the whole thing is a joke you cant report someone for blatantly violating the rules and nothing happens and then you also see people get bans for doing something totally innocuous

and of course special allowances are made for big accounts

australian twitter is full of cunts, in both senses

Just saw this posted in the Elon thread. Caek if you’re comfortable talking about it, what’s your prognosis? Is it just a lost cause?

I see folks on the app talking how we’ll need to resort to alternatives…what ‘alternatives’? Wait, I’ve got it — Weibo.
(Once I finally manage to sign back into Wechat I’ll let y’all know how it looks from there.)

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek)
Posted: October 5, 2022 at 10:55:15 AM
My last day was Monday. So sad I wasn’t around for the three hour company 2023 strategy meeting yesterday that was interrupted after 15 mins by news the stock had been suspended.

wonder if this is the last stand for social media after twitter facebook and instagram inevitably fade it seems like the next generation of apps have split into two groups neither of which are exactly social media in the sense that the older gen are, theres the video consumption apps and the talking to people apps, theres def overlap between them and each other and them and the old style socials, but as far as primary usage seems like those are the two groups that are happening now

tiktok and youtube are the two big video consumption apps, they do have social features you can follow and comment you can post your own stuff but mainly they rely on algorithmic discovery to feed you video by people who are professional or at least quasi pro video creators, its a lot like tv except with endless niches and lower production values, pretty cool in some ways tbf

then theres the talking to people apps and the shift here is from the social approach of talking to everyone at once to more of a messaging model where youre talking to just one person or a chosen group of people, this could be seen as a retrenchment in the face of the fact that talking to everyone at once ended up being kind of unpleasant and occasionally resulted in not great real life outcomes, being a public figure is not for everyone, the apps in this category are all the chat + other stuff ones, whatsapp telegram snapchat etc there are lots of them, should be noted that all or at least most of these have ways for many people to follow you if you want, but its just not the primary interface

you can see the pattern too in how instagram and facebook are trying to become more consumption based apps, but it prob wont really work its just too messy to turn one app into another app, ive thought for a while theres prob a smaller market for barebones clones of twitter facebook and instagram with just their core functionality and no algorithmic etc bs

kind of funny twitter just goes along being twitter, you cant do anything with twitter, which elon will find out soon

It's really hard to imagine something like Twitter--where media people share links and snark about stuff--not existing at all, even if it's not Twitter anymore.

its true the freaks need somewhere to go, will be interesting to see what happens if elon radically changes the app, kinda think he wont tho

turns out heat death is a media ad sewer with "heart boxes." dystopian fiction always makes the pathway seem so horrifying/interesting.

twitter has tried flexing into being a talking to people app (with communities) and also into a video consumption app (and a bunch of other things) but it does seem like comedy shitposting and news comment are what it wants to be deep down inside and they should embrace it

I'm ok with that.

You may be cool, but you’ll never be as cool as this dog in a sidecar I just met. pic.twitter.com/OJWkgOSiRZ

— Jenny Lawson (@TheBloggess) October 6, 2022

Just saw this posted in the Elon thread. Caek if you’re comfortable talking about it, what’s your prognosis? Is it just a lost cause?

i don't have any more insight into twitter.com the social network than the average user. to me it has seemed like the best of a bad bunch for several years (part of the reason i joined). obviously it's going to become a cesspool now. it is (was?) relatively stable in terms of cultural relevance compared to everyone else. facebook is dying with a speed i don't think anyone expected. tiktok has peaked (good piece on this https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/22/23365781/tiktok-youtube-bootleg-ratio-social-platforms-original-content). what else is there? bereal? reddit?!

as an engineering org, twitter miiiight survive, but they've got a bunch of problems coming their way thanks to losing a large and particularly valuable subset of employees over the past six months (not talking about me here). this thread seems otm to me.

Since I'm trying to write down more predictions, here's one: Twitter's increasing institutional knowledge debt accumulation, which was been hugely accelerated by attrition due to uncertainty about the acquisition, will cause reliability to decline to 2020/2021 Reddit levels

— Dan Luu (@altluu) October 5, 2022

It seems clear to me that he will sell Twitter asap

Not before turning into a(nother) nest of racists, Nazis, misogynists, homophobes and other assorted miscreants.

"turning into"?

Turning *it* into

It really isn't hard to find any of that stuff on there

Maybe so, but those voices have never drowned out others, as they do on so many "free speech" platforms.

It's so much better than Reddit or Instagram in that regard. Partly I think it's just cause there's less activity overall but Twitter moderation is more effective as well, for now. I still wonder if Reddit was intentionally designed to platform toxic trolling and disinformation or it's just come to be seen as a feature not a bug.

Caek appreciate your perspective despite your self-deprecating presentation, that's a perspective that I wouldn't just stumble across from an average user. How Platforms Turn Boring certainly seems to nail the core issues with the business model. I again have to take issue over Reddit soz:

Platforms like Twitter and Reddit have maintained a steady user base and a mostly unique culture for more than 15 years

Such a false equivalence. Having a community based mainly on following real personalities vs manufactured subforums each with their own nearly completely arbitrary system of moderation makes a huge difference in mediating bad faith manipulation. When I see a bad actor pop up in my Twitter feed now it's usually completely obvious. On Reddit they are basically running the site at this point. And having been there nearly since the beginning, being targeted for harassment by brigades of racist trolls, and finally the admins turning my subreddit of ten years and 10,000 followers over to the trolls -- it is NOT the same site it was 14 years ago. /rant

tbh I thought most of that shit was gone from Reddit. but its hard for me to tell cuz all I follow are band subs & other niche communities, plus some of the good meme communities. front page stuff doesn't seem too toxic though it's basically impossible to have an actual conversation on there

A lot of the absolute worst I saw was scientific disinformation being passed off as factual, on climate change, covid etc. Like real manufactured bullshit frequently dominating the discussion on supposedly technical subreddits, because that's a lot of what I followed. I haven't been on there in over a year but throughout 2020 and on there was a LOT of smearing of BLM going on even in the "better" subs. In terms of music, the toxicity (particularly racism) is better than it was circa 2019 but the biggest music subreddit are also quite prejudiced really. /r/ElectronicMusic is completely awful, I'm convinced it's run by alt right trolls wearing their little masks of civility. They shadow banned me for one comment I made, when 'Smack My B*tch Up' was the top post in their sub, using quite a reasonable tone to point out the potential issues of gender politics involved. Don't forget this is the site that gave us Gamergate, and porn is apparently the main (only?) draw of new users to the site. I'd suggest taking a peek at the histories of people you engage with sometimes, see what dark corners of that toxic mess might attract them. Of course most actual concern trolls constantly cycle through new accounts to hide their tracks.

And really, my music subreddit was actually targeted by a brigade of very toxic bad faith trolls apparently mainly because of our vocal stance against racism and other forms of bigotry. The admins were no help, the tools they give mods to actually prevent trolls just shitting up a subreddit are pretty weak if they're really determined. And after the trolls made a fake replica of my subreddit and tried to drive users there, they did finally hand my subreddit over to the trolls after I took it private.

The dudes who founded Reddit are quite toxic. Shall I link to the New Yorker article where spez (a white man from Virginia) expressed his prepper view of society, and explained that after the collapse he had no doubt that slavery would return but he was confident he would be one of the slaveowners, so he was cool with it. For real tho.

Sorry should this be taken to another thread?

My last day was Monday. So sad I wasn’t around for the three hour company 2023 strategy meeting yesterday that was interrupted after 15 mins by news the stock had been suspended.

lol, sorry dude. fwiw i am about to put in my two weeks at meta.

you guys should start a new social network (facetweet)

And really, my music subreddit was actually targeted by a brigade of very toxic bad faith trolls apparently mainly because of our vocal stance against racism and other forms of bigotry. The admins were no help, the tools they give mods to actually prevent trolls just shitting up a subreddit are pretty weak if they're really determined. And after the trolls made a fake replica of my subreddit and tried to drive users there, they did finally hand my subreddit over to the trolls after I took it private.

that sucks. I really liked FFA.

I like reddit, I like the weirdness of really niche communities. Like r/pickles

lol, sorry dude. fwiw i am about to put in my two weeks at meta.

― Allen (etaeoe), Thursday, October 6, 2022 1:59 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

oof.

"oof" or "congrats"? generally life has been better for me post bigtech.

Oh cheers lukas! You on the bird app?

Love the way Notifications are increasingly fucked. Great to find out someone replied to you only days later when you're suddenly told someone liked a reply to the reply to your original tweet.

I am on the bird app! my name here plus a b

I wish there was a better sorting mechanism for replies. As far as I can tell, replies are sorted to prioritize points of view that correspond most closely to my own, which is flattering to my ego but also gives me a false sense of how certain posts are actually perceived.

r/pickles - > r/picklemen ?

this does not bode well for twitter

Musk plans to cut Twitter’s staff by nearly 75% — via ⁦@washingtonpost⁩ https://t.co/IYIqKYyoBa

— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) October 20, 2022

my name here plus a b

blukas?

holy shit xp. i had assumed i left to avoid being part of the low morale/badly paid majority who don't get fired and now you have to work on an alt right cesspool. seems like i actually left to avoid getting fired along with almost everyone else.