People are having trouble following Harris’s campaign Twitter account

morrowind@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.world – 810 points –
Trump-Lover Elon Musk Is Already Causing Kamala Harris Problems
newrepublic.com
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Twitter is not a utility. We really need to stop treating techbro services like utilities. If we feel they actually are utilities, the government can step in and make that claim and the appropriate changes.

You would be shocked to know how many people use TikTok as a search engine

I'm not on tiktok, but I'll admit to using YouTube as a search engine a lot. Also googling something and immediately hitting the video tab before reading any of the results.

You video guys work different.

I must be a dinosaur because for most things I am looking up I want concise textual information. I'll look for videos to explain larger complicated concepts

If it's something like taking apart hardware, videos are great because there are a lot of little details that it's hard to capture in even a picture.

Sure, video has it's place. I was just wondering that some people get their info primarily from video. Guess it's something with abstraction vs. imagination.

I only find videos useful if I’m trying to figure out something that’s procedural. Seeing the procedures and steps done in front of me helps me grasp the concept much faster than text.

For just information though, text is golden and video is a waste of time.

i hate it, but i just cant find decent written resulta anymore outside of reddit and such

Depends on field. Some meth math and programming stuff exists only in PDF. Try find videos on Bounding Interval Hierarchy. At least there are decent videos on BSP trees

PDFs break my brain. It's 2024. Unless you truly intend for something to be primarily and only read in print why use PDF? And I know everybody is able to host HTML because usually everyone is grabbing these PDFs from a webpage.

Edit: down voters, convince me on valid uses of PDFs for things that aren't meant to be printed. At least list some. I'm aware this is an extreme opinion. It's one I've thought about a lot, but I just can't think of any. For things that are meant to be printed then I agree they're the best. Everything else I think HTML is better for because it can be resized arbitrarily and isn't bound to a specific layout. Also copying text from PDFs is bonkers.

Unless you want to force readers into reading in browser, you should use PDF.

If it's not something I expect people to read in a print format I'm absolutely willing to do that.

I liken using groogle for finding factual information to using the yellowpages for doing the same. YT isn't much better but it suffers many of the conflicts of interest traditional media outlets also had, depending on the corporation. In this case the almighty algorithm is the conflict of interest, though there are clever content creators out there making some good stuff, they’ll always be beholden to the owners of the platform and the true customers - the advertisers. As an advertising platform which can direct punters to actual long form content directly supported by watchers via patreon or similar, I understand why it is used : the sheer numbers using it.

I just ask chatGPT…

Why? All it's going to do is output some words that have a statistical correlation to your input words

Well, that is mostly what I need and it summarises the search results as well.

Of course, you have to apply your critical thinking skills, but you gotta do that always everywhere. Normal humans talk as much trash as LLMs do, in my experience.

If it's a private company that con do what it wants, like blocking political opponents, it should not be under safe harbor protections.

That's the point in yelling about this. If Elon wants a private forum for him and his mates, he should also be fully responsible when his mates posts child porn on his servers.

The EU has declared Twitter and a few others to be gate-keepers and they will now be held to a higher standard. But I don't think the EU is going to use this power to save US democracy.

Imagine trying winning chess when the board itself plays against you. Twitter/X must be dropped immediately, it's a censorship-propaganda machine which is now only works for those who control it.

Wasn't that the case when progressives controlled it? Either way, fk X and all other social media services.

Jack Dorsey was a progressive?

Anything left of "pretend minorities don't exist" is progressive to certain people.

Dunno, but echoes of it were sounding like Tumblr 2.0

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I ‘fully admit’ our bias is ‘more left-leaning’

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Saturday that he “fully admit[s]” Twitter employees share a largely left-leaning bias after facing accusations that conservatives are discriminated against on the social media platform.

In an interview that aired Saturday on CNN, Dorsey said his company has a responsibility to be open about its political viewpoints, but to operate without bias when applying content policies to users.

”We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is … is more left-leaning,” Dorsey says.

Ah.

So you're a "Libs of TikTok" guy. Conservatives call themselves Liberal and you believe them.

Jack Dorsey is Libertarian, which is Republican-leaning.

lol.. Libertarians are classical liberals. They don't align to a specific side.

Libertarians nominated a degenerate Democrat.

And why the FK are we talking about Jack anyway? I said Twitter was controlled by progressives... as in the majority of the org were leftists operating biasedly against their opposition.

Defending the Libs of TikTok isn't the flex you think it is.

I'm only responding in the hopes you recognize this eventually and grow a bit of self-reflection over this situation. Good luck man.

I support anyone and everyone that exposes any and all facets of evil. So should you and any other sane human being.

No.

You, like other conservatives, are hooked on the ravenous red meat of outrage. And instead of trying to move away from outrage politics, you defend it. And more importantly, you do so while claiming to be of a different ideology because you've noticed that the word "conservative" is no longer looked well upon in some social circles.

Oh okay, so we're going to make judgements? Fine fine.

I'm definitely conservative, socially and fiscally, however there's policies from the left that I can get on board with. Because policies are more important than mouth pieces and stupid chit like DEI hires pretending to be actual leaders of anything.

Unlike you and your ilk, I'm willing to go outside the safe zone (fkn lol) and interact with people who have different opinions. Only cowards stay in their little bubbles chit talking day in and day out. And that's a knock at both leftists and rightists.

The fact that you have a problem with Libs of TikTok exposing degenerates says a helluva a lot. But I'm also not surprised in this day and age. Just like the right has crazies defending other crazies, so does the left.

Anyway, enough off topic, I have no care to further entertain you.

Unlike you and your ilk, I’m willing to go outside the safe zone (fkn lol) and interact with people who have different opinions. Only cowards stay in their little bubbles chit talking day in and day out. And that’s a knock at both leftists and rightists.

I'm a Republican. This area is outside my safe zone. But outrage politics affects us all and I judge people who engage in it harshly.

But sure. Judge me harder daddy. I haven't stated my opinion yet, I'm simply pointing out that you're engaging in outrage politics and you probably shouldn't be flexing on that.

Just a bit more cause you're entertaining as hell?

What policies "from the left" could you get on board with?

I mean, when people point out that Joe Biden is a Neocon who supports Israel and USAs rightful dominant place in the world... Erm I agree with that and want to vote for him.

I'm a Neocon. And proud of it and can defend a lot of my positions.


What pisses me off about the new wave of conservatives is that it's all reactionary. There is no guiding philosophy.

With regards to neoconservatives: I know we get a bad rap since Bush. But events like Ukraine show the importance of us being the stalwart defenders and stepping up to challenges around the world.

But thats the thing. I'll tell you that while proudly wearing my colors as a Neocon. This 'Libs of TikTok' bullshit is just fucking awful politics. We can't actually work or talk around our issues when people are pretending to be on the wrong sides of debates

Politics shouldn't be about 'owning' the other side. Politics should be about effectively communicating our beliefs to each other, especially our disagreements. And finding compromises where possible.


Anyway, it's Joever to some extent so I guess all in on Kamala. She's still acceptable to my philosophy if only because Trump + JD Vance is such a bad choice. So y'all got my vote this year, at least temporarily.

If only the federal government could implement some sort of server that would allow them to self-host social media for officials and prominent candidates. I wish there were some well-known and tested service that other governments were using and they could just implement in the USA.

Sounds impossible! Does this technology even exist?????

If they build it, will anyone come? Or does private social media only work because the user base is already scrolling endlessly there?

@XeroxCool welcome to fediverse. I'm replying to you from mastodon.

Posted multiple times because replication was slow. Oops.

Also now I'm posting from lemm.ee

This kind of event is precisely what drives things like social media adoption. If Harris and the DNC organized an actual messaging campaign and took advantage of this energy to promote Twitter alternatives, a lot of people would join.

Newsies will go there for the announcements. That's the wedge that keeps growing.

Not all growth strategies are just having the bandwagon.

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I don't think legally the Federal Government is allowed to do that. Maybe if the service is available to everyone. Now that option would be pretty cool. I'm fine with nationalized federated social media hosts.

That sounds pretty shakey. Federal employees have their own email addresses, but you can't just go ask for a .gov email address, you have to get a job with the government for one. The federal government has plenty of places that only some are allowed to post to. Now, if they were to say, only allow certain people to have accounts with no apperent rhyme or reason that would be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit, but they could simply say "any verified current or former federal elected official, federal department head, or state governor is allowed an account" and expand or shrink the scope as needed. The fediverse honestly makes that so much cleaner than something they host themselves with all of the nuances of what is and isn't federated, the government could simply configure the federation to meet their legal and liability needs while users can stream in from any fediverse instance

If they're using it for campaigning, I think it'd have to be written as "... or any party nominee" or "... or anyone running for elected office."

But yeah, the fediverse would be perfect for it.

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Sigh. Not surprised.. given that Musk is a hypocrite on free speech completely. It's getting wild. I use this place now because after years of no issues.. suddenly I'm shadow banned on Reddit. Instead of getting mad I just left. Screw those who would stifle others but pretend to believe the opposite.

Reddit is far-right garbage run by radicals. Some instances on Lemmy are far-left garbage run by radicals, but you can route around them.

You are definitely not alone. You are in good company here. Welcome aboard!

Oh noooo....

Stop using fucking Twitter

Can't believe Biden let the world know his decision first on Twitter, even before the White house Press office.

Had to let the Republicans know first, so they didn't cry "fake news" for a week.

Yet another reason to ditch that platform.

do the entire world a favor and delete twitter already

What are these fucking people doing on Twitter anyway? Why they hanging out with the Nazis? You're still on Twitter this point I have some healthy suspicions about your character.

People go where they think the people are. X is still the closest thing to Twitter since Elon came along. I deleted my account, but feel like I’m in the minority.

You know I once read this really amazing book called They Thought They Were Free. It was written by a journalist right after World War II who went to Germany and talked to normal Germans just German citizens. About how they allowed Nazis to take over how they lived in a Nazi Society how they were okay with it how they kind of joined in on it. A lot of the things they said being said in this thread. It's all the same fucking logic.

If they choose to support Twitter, they must expect to take the consequences. It's a known cess pit. Being active on a centralised network does harm. You can't grizzle after drawing innocent people in to such a bad place.

They are on Twitter because nothing has displaced Twitter for what it is. That's tricky because people follow the content, so the content generators, the heavy hitters, have to choose en masse to go somewhere else.

I think that's what that Dulles brother said about why he kept doing business with the Nazis even into the 1940s. Even when the rest of the heads of his business said you should stop doing this we don't need to be invested with the Nazis they just invaded Poland he said no money still there I want to hang out with Nazis.

Cuz here's the thing if everyone who wasn't one left that site it wouldn't be a problem anymore, a different site would be used.

I'm on Twitter because all the OSINT people who track the invasion/war in Ukraine basically only use Twitter. I like following OSINT info to get a real perspective on what's going on.

I'd like in on that perspective but I'm not going to twitter for anyone. Shit is toxic and stupid.

On Ukraine, got any non twitter suggestions for perspective? Also, not familiar with OSINT. Care to enlighten me? Open source intel tools?

On Ukraine, got any non twitter suggestions for perspective?

not familiar with OSINT

Exactly what you said! Open Source INTelegence. Basically people taking publicly available data and using it to confirm attacks. Things like NASA FIRMS data can be used to verify where fires are; and when combined with videos of a fire in the direction of an airfield, for example, can be used to confirm that yes, on this specific date, these parts of an airfield are on fire.

Understandable, I don't know of anyone off of Twitter but maybe some of the people I follow are on Mastodon. I'll try and find out sometime and get back if they are.

And yea pretty much, just stands for open source intelligence, people just use publicly available data (mostly drone videos, and paid satellite imagery) to analyze progress from both parties in the conflict giving a real, semi live perspective on advances on the ground, what kind of equipment and quantity of that equipment that have been destroyed.

This site by oryx is the main one I know of that tracks destroyed Russian equipment that's confirmed through imagery, so the numbers are likely fairly lower than reality, and the destruction numbers are still staggering.

Ops I see someone below already linked oryx and some other good sources!

Maybe it would behoove you to remind those people that they're on a website run by someone who has a material and vested interest in the destruction of Ukraine. That they should change to another website.

Unfortunately Twitter is the absolute best source for the most up to date breaking sports news and nothing that I'm aware of comes close.

Not all parts of twitter is chock full of Nazis. The parts I follow probably won't ever move over to Mastodon, so I'm stuck with Twitter. The good thing is that part barely has any Nazis.

Good job on brushing everyone on Twitter with the same broad stroke, though. Really shows how progressive you can be.

The good thing is that part barely has any Nazis.

What was that saying about letting a few nazis into your bar as long as they stay on the side and don't cause trouble?

We don't let them into our bar, that's why the part has so few Nazis. The Nazis are running rampant in other parts of the site, but not on the part that I frequent, from my observation at least. That's why it's stupid to group everyone using Twitter as Nazi adjacent.

Maybe you're just not identifying them as Nazis? What part do you hang out on where there aren't insane propagandists and bots?

Does a Nazi infested group calls out whenever people is being racist or openly makes fun of Elon Musk?

I'm sure you can always just argue that they are being Nazis secretly or something, but to call out a group of people to be suspicious of being a Nazi, I would prefer if you have more proof than just conjecture.

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Good. They should abandon twitter and all other racist, misogynist, transphobic, xenophobic, homophobic bigoted platforms. I hope they have a bad time there.

Political parties should host their own mastodon instances, and give their members accounts. Companies should do the same. It removes all the problems of imitation because the organisation stands as guarantor that the account is the official one.

I'm not sure on the capabilities of Mastodon. But companies will never go for this if Mastodon doesn't support saml or active directory (or other Auth systems). It needs to integrate with their enterprise tools.

But companies will never go for this if Mastodon doesn't support saml or active directory (or other Auth systems). It needs to integrate with their enterprise tools.

I think you are confusing server-server protocol and client-server protocol.

I'm not sure how that applies here.

I am talking about enterprises being able to leverage their current infrastructure to manage their users in Mastodon from a central location, Like AD. Rather than have to manage local accounts.

I am not talking about activitypub in anyway.

I'm talking about that too. Mastodon should work just fine with SSO.

There are several mastodon servers that have different feature sets. What you're saying is like "email must support AD". Well some email server might do that and another wouldn't.

I tend to feel the same but at the same time, the shadowy figures involved there would love it to see the ratio of extremist increase. An exodus of more sane members might play straight into their hands.

That said, I can’t understand why anyone without an official state role is still on that platform.

This reminds me that someone set up a donation link via actblue where donations via that link come with the message that she and her campaign should set up their own mastodon server.

They are up to $40,000 as I type this.

So if you were thinking of donating anyway, you can go through here to point that money to a “cause” you want her to consider. May not happen, but at least we might get it on their radar.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon-for-harris

The originator of this started with this Masto post:

https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/112831902073897712

Share this on !fediverse, this is a very good idea

This has the opportunity to be a great battle.

Harris, backed by Mastodon users vs Trump, backed by Twitter bots.

Isn't Truth Social essentially just out-of-the-box Mastodon?

Yeah he couldn't come up with his own software so they just spun up a Mastodon instance and passed it off as their own product.

The VP having control over the platform they announce things?

What a novel idea /s

So dumb how much power twitter got for politics. Fediverse for life!

Nice, I did it through this portal. Thanks for sharing.

Why don't they use mastodon also?

:(

(Note, Nov ‘23)

It pisses me off how twitter went to fuck. People cried that we need something not owned by some rich cunt. We told everyone to join mastodon so that wouldn't happen again. What did people do? Wait for another rich cunt (mark suckerberg) to start a clone and the original creator of twitter to make another one and join that...

People are dumb as shit... I'm sick of it.

Yeah, I don't get it.

::: spoiler Kind of unrelated, but a parallel I experienced recently. Yesterday I was annoyed by SplitWise. We had a small trip over the weekend and were adding expenses to it, and it turns out that there's now a limit to how many entries you can put in per day. Even with ads. So we decided to find another platform, and a friend suggested another closed product which is probably gonna get as shitty as SplitWise soon. Anyway, I was able to convince them to use Spliit instead. If the hosted service goes to shit, at least I can self host it and keep all the data.


:::

What I'm saying is that on twitter they could promote the mastodon account

Musk started removing links and even references to Mastodon from Twitter.

If a high profile politician (particularly one Elon disagrees with) promoted Mastodon, they'd have an account ban lickety split.

...but these people just use it as a way of talking to the media. As long as people of power and influence shift, so will the press, and then so will everyone else.

Home many times do you hear "Trump, on his platform truth.social, said...."? They've gone there because he's gone there.

Makes me curious if you get more attention on mastodon though. Like if I pitched something on Lemmy there's a good chance I get the same number of eye balls compared to Reddit, not counting ads. (Although if Kamala posted about Linux and/or Star Trek that's front page, no ad money needed! Lol)

Nice graphic! But this data seems wildly out of date. For example, LinkedIn has over 1 billion users. Unless this is referring to weekly active users or something, but the row just says “users”.

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It's not about the campaigns not using Mastodon, it is about the voters. They are on Twitter still so that is where the campaign wants to meet them.

Mastodon needs to be more widely known for that to be a realistic option.

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Yeah, I have a problem too! No, wait. It's because I don't have an X/Twitter/whatever account.

Who would have guessed that a social media platform owned by an apartheid-loving fascist would trend conservative?

I'm not down with the perpetual victim-blaming against X/Twitter users here on Lemmy.

Sources like campaigns, news outlets, authors, studios, engineers, actors, comedians, etc. post on there because they basically have to -- if they want to get the word out, that is.

Consumers go there to read from the sources because they basically have to. While each source may have their own separate blog or whatever, X/Twitter is pretty much the only place that unifies those feeds. (I know, I miss the heyday of RSS too.)

Expecting people to just "take the hit" and go dark on their communications so we can build up alternatives to X/Twitter is not an acceptable recommendation.

What we need to do is:

  • Make it illegal to block third-party clients from interoperating with services
  • Compel providers of a certain size to expose a first-party API
  • Make it legal to reverse-engineer APIs so they can't just make the first-party API suck and call it a day
  • Then we integrate X/Twitter into the fediverse, so you can start using something else and still keep your X/Twitter stuff

Victim blaming is a little extreme way to describe it, but yeah I don't blame politicians for using it, but I absolutely will blame them for exclusively using it and letting their media be controlled by a private entity, especially one that is no longer publicly accessible.

POSSE (publish [on your] own site, syndicate everywhere) is the way to go. Don't assume everyone is just using a platform, especially if you're providing a public or essential service.

re your points, I think the EU's gatekeeper law was pretty good.

By the way, not calling you out specifically. Just seems to be a common theme in the comments, and a regularly-occurring sentiment.

Twitter isn't a service. It is a useful platform and should not be ignored, but it is a larger, worldwide version of r/conservative at this point. Go in expecting hostility and "untraceable account bugs that tHeY juST cANt seEm tO ResOLve!".

What we need to do is: Make it illegal to run a business

Twitter doesn't owe anyone anything. Kamala could go post anywhere else but she's not even though the left hates Elon.

The idea that we should pass laws to force twitter to show certain info and expose endpoints to support third party apps is ridiculous. It's their data and they aren't putting a gun to anyone's head.

Passing a law forcing the government to use only FLOSS software for day-to-day activities solves this problem, actually makes sense on a principle level and isn't a ridiculous overreach of power.

Well, I gotta ask then... How do you feel about HP's printer business model? The fact that you can only use it with HP-approved ink, in HP-approved ways. Do you think that's a fair business model which will stand or fall on its own merits, or an abusive one that prevents consumers from using their own stuff the way they want to? Should it be legal?

I don't like it and wouldn't buy an HP as my next printer for software reasons alone. I'd suggest supporting another company or getting a used HP for free or next to nothing and buying refilled cartridges from aliexpress or amazon for 30-40% of what HP charges (this is what I do). It's a shitty practice but it doesn't make me want to get daddy government involved.

"Right to Repair" is different. If I buy a printer and the ink chassis breaks and I'm capable of sourcing a part and fixing it myself then I have a right to do that on my own because it's mine.

Edit: As an aside if we explanded my initial proposal to encompass FLOSS hardware as well as software this wouldn't be a problem because companies would be tripping over themselves for the government contracts.

FLOSS software

Lol

'Lol' Three simple characters. "FLOSS software? Ridiculous. So DUMB." He says to himself. Finally a single tap and his snarky comment begins it's instantaneous travail through countless GPL licensed unix systems to reach his victim - an ignorant commenter on an open-source, federated lemmy instance.

Because the butthurt south african shitstain wont let them. Crybaby cannot abide differing ideas

I'm surprised she even has one, given that Musk would shadow ban it anyway. Seems like wasted effort.

Yeah if I were depending on Twitter I would have been informing people of my plans to move for months now.

I can't see her facebook or instagram, either!

Yet somehow I continue on voting straight ticket Democrat without asking or telling those billionaires what I am going to do first.

Unloved, alone, and linkedout. Hardly human. I am become life not worth life.

IG has a default setting to not show you political suggestions from accounts you do not follow. I'm guessing that is the same for Facebook. You can change it in the settings though.

Fuck Twitter for doing this shit. Musk should just jump in a hole with all his money as we bury him with it, Sunset Riders style.

i followed it just fine on threads.

Is it possible to follow the Threads account from the Fediverse?

yes, but it's one-way: your content won't be integrated back in, so you aren't part of the conversation.

Hm I deleted my twitter account last year. Maybe I'll make a new one just to follow her

How much can this be abused before it is overdue to treat X as a common carrier?

Edit: why is this being downvoted? given how critical X is it should be regulated by the government(s). Yes we all moved to the fediverse but we are a minority, millions still rely on X for better or worse.

You had one downvote, presumably from the person who replied to you twice.

Edit what I can’t figure out though is now why they continue to pileup for you given your question isn’t wild.

Idk dude.

I'm childish and downvote anyone who refers to twitter as "x". It's like you're on your knees licking Elons bum, right after he told you to call it x, you did what you were told lol.

Also I never got on the twitter bandwagon as it just didn't appeal to me. My social media addiction was reddit.

Twitter sucks. X is a letter. Or a variable in algebra.

Oh dear. If I were I wouldn’t be advocating for the government to effectively seize Twitter. I hated the nepo apartheid baby before it was cool.

Oh I'll give you that, I'd love the gov to seize it and make it a public utility. First order of business is put the name back to twitter because duh. And bring back the little blue bird cuz it reminds me of birdie sanders.

Ain't gonna happen though lol.