Is there some kind of tech CEO competition running or something?
"Who can alienate their user base the fastest"
There's a saying, " never attribute to malice what is easily explained by incompetence".
But we're quickly reaching the point where it's no longer easily explained incompetence. Elon is either the most incompetent person in the known universe, which is saying a lot, or he's doing this on purpose for some reason.
I'm not into conspiracies, but it's starting to make more sense if he's actively trying to tank the stock.
He just wants everyone to be exposed to his right-wing buddies toxic posts.
Yup, he gets a hard-on by exposing people to the "fash n friends" crap.
I mean, 2024 isn't that far away. It’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to in the name of “free speech” or “townsquare of the internet” or whatever shitty rationalization he uses to explains his nutty behavior.
There's no stock to tank. You could argue that he's trying to tank the company, but there are easier ways to do that.
You could argue that he’s trying to tank the company
I'm kinda lost here. What's his end goal with it?
Depriving the libs of a favored platform via making it conservative and unruly, and weakening its democratic potential against authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, is the theory.
Yes there are, but he's already with the SEC breathing on his neck for other scams so I guess he wants plausible deniability.
There's no stock or similar security, so the SEC doesn't care at all. Could be a plausible deniability thing, I just think it's more likely that he really is that dumb, given the stories about Tesla/SpaceX having teams that basically existed just to control him.
Once upon a time, long ago, in the very beginning, I liked Twitter as a stream of instant information from all POV. Then Twitter became a haven for bots and a propaganda tool. Is it possible that Musk bought Twitter so that he could take it to the point of absurdity and destroy it?
For real! He's trying to tank Twitter.
4channers are gonna abuse the hell out of this for some fun. Can guarantee it.
Perhaps enough to force Twitter to take action and fix it? 4chan could be a force for good…
I mean, maybe? 4channers do some pretty crazy shit when they're raiding, at least from what I've seen. Remember when they raided Microsoft Tay's Twitter and turned it into a white supremacist?
Doesn't he himself use this feature a ton? 😂
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it won’t apply to him.
Or if it does then he’ll just delete accounts he wants to block.
Elon Musk is a gaping, farting anus. I pay as much attention to the sounds from a gaping, farting anus, as I do from him.
Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don't deserve to be disparaged like this.
Very true. I take back the bit about the farting anus.
it's unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it's an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it's a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new "block", what's even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).
Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.
Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people's content.
Elon Musk really fucking hates his trans daughter. Dad of the century, right here.
Seriously good on his daughter for dropping his scumbag ass. She deserves far better from a parent.
I wasn't aware he had more children than the one with the weird-ass name. The private life section on wikipedia is a ride...
He ascribes to Longtermism and like his associate Jeffery Epstein, he thinks his genes are magically special, and so he wants as many offspring as humanly possible: while not actually giving one shit about the quality of life for any of them.
Lemmy's "block" is essentially a "mute" function, too. It makes it so that you don't see any more content from a user, but they can still make comments on your stuff.
It's interesting to me that they made the argument that blocking is increasing server costs.
How is that even possible, on a technical level?
If true, how is changing to a "stronger mute" going to reduce said costs?
I mean, it's plainly clear that Musk has no idea what is going on at any of his companies and the narrative of him being a genius of some kind was simply that: a narrative.
Elon trying not to make the worst decisions possible challenge (Impossible)
I am very glad I left Twitter at the beginning of Musk's rein. This is just dangerous.
I quit Twitter after the infantile incident with Elon Musk carrying a sink around his own office. From all that we've seen in recent years it's pretty clear he's lucky to have been born rich, because he definitely isn't the visionary we thought he was.
Yup. Every once in a blue moon I wish I still had my Twitter. But not enough to make a new one.
I missed this incident, I quit years before...
I made my first ever Twitter account a month or two before Musk bought it, for purely NSFW reasons. I'd log in every couple weeks or whatever, handle my business, and move along. After he bought it, I said whatever I'm not doing anything useful data wise so I'll continue my few times a month visits.
First post-Musk visit, it's fine. Business handled, close my incog window, move on.
Second post-Musk visit, I log in, and it's CP as far as the eye can see. I immediately deleted my account.
Holy hell, on a serious country the government would go scorched earth on Twitter's servers and sue tf outta Musk
Ayyyy Elon, so we're going for full chaos??
Lemme grab my popcorn before the change starts a nuclear reaction.
Surely a sight to behold. Lol
How in the world is that a good idea...
Correction: Twitter is removing the block feature so that tweets can reach the full audience...
how is this a good idea? Even lemmy has a "block" feature on like day 1
Day 1 lol. Lemmy have been in development for more than 3 years. It's just now that reddit got to suck even more lemmy and other alternatives got their opportunity.
Time to promote the hell out of Mastodon
@Hypersapien This could make his decision a wonderful backfire
Imagine posting something like:
You can't block this post, can you? You could if you'd joined [mastodon instance]. [then continue with a few words about the instance in question]. It is part of the decentralized platform called Mastodon, where you can reach millions of other real people both on this and other similar servers of the network. Sign up by [provides steps to sign up]
Edit: same can be done with Calckey for example, but with no need to promote a special server, since Calckey doesn't force you to sign to it's main server through any of the apps iirc
I think we need something like that for twitter and for Reddit. Having something quick and concise with some links where to go is bound to get more bound headed our way
@lohrun sadly I don't think spez is that stupid to fuck every little thing up from a social network, all at once almost. Sure, I think you can buy some ad space on Reddit, but imo there's nothing too evident for this to be easy peasy.
Not to mention, Mastodon was already larger than Lemmy when the crisis point happened (the other two contenders, kbin - which is still in beta - and Lotide, are even smaller!). Maybe convincing the sub admins to try to be admins of communities and see how it goes? (Except that there are multiple communities here on the same topic, but on different instances - again, not sure how this is gonna work out)
Pre Twitter takeover this would have been surprising. Now seems par for the course.
So he's run out of engineers that know how to maintain the block feature?
Elongated Muskrat has discovered just how many accounts are blocking him. His ego can’t take that. His FrEeSpEeCh must be heard
My account isn't blocking him.
At least, not since I deleted it. And stopped visiting Twitter.
Oh no please, not the nicknames. Can we leave them?
Nothing makes me cringe harder than the childish nicknames everybody keeps coming up with. Elongated Muskrat isn't funny or offensive.
Calling his sycophants Muskrats is appropriate though.
I'm skeptical of this, maybe it's because he's worried his fascist followers are slowly falling into an echo chamber cause anyone with more than a few braincells blocks them
Fun fact: a block feature is required to be accepted by the Apple AppStore review process. So Twitter will disappear from Apple devices with this change.
Since this got some votes and became visible, here's the source:
Apps with user-generated content present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying. To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:
- A method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app
- A mechanism to report offensive content and timely responses to concerns
- The ability to block abusive users from the service
- Published contact information so users can easily reach you
Apple's review process is inconsistent at best. I used to work for an iOS app and it took several years before they blocked our release for not having a report feature on products. Never had the ability to block users, despite the ability to DM people.
Plus, for an app the size of Twitter, Apple will likely ignore most rules that doesn't lose them money.
Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to block other users. So I wouldn't be too optimistic about Apple's response....
Battle royale!
This is so dumb it must be out of context.
Elon and Trump are fairly unique in that context usually makes it worse.
I have blocked only one person on Twitter: him.
That's probably why he's doing it, so you and all the others who blocked him are forced to see his posts again.
Whats going on with social media CEOs making dumb decisions these days..
Conservative money thinks that they can keep there opposition off balance by smashing social networks . Musk did not launch desatitis campaign out of nowhere.
This is exactly it. Social media's greatest power is the ability for common folk to organise and rally quickly and easily. That cannot be allowed, so these moves are designed to divide and insulate.
Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they're not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that's been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷
it's not about money. it's about power
So what you're saying is, if I have a Twitter account and I start blocking many MANY people it costs Elon money? Interesting.
Alternatively, Elon just found out how many people are blocking him.
I’m extremely doubtful that there is any truth to that.
Huh why ? This doesn't make sense
There's been a big effort to block anybody with a blue checkmark since any major story or viral post will have them automatically bumped up to the top of the replies. So, when the whiners started complaining, he started openly considering this.
He will end up "compromising".
You can block people, but only people without blue check marks.
Wanna harass someone, wanna be a troll, subscribe to Twitter blue and you can't be blocked...
Aren't there different twitter tiers, too? Like, blue and gold? I wonder if you'll only be allowed to block people in your tier and below, so that unpaid accounts can't block anybody
IIRC the gold checkmarks are reserved for big corporate accounts that want it, and Twitter demands $1000/mo for that. Incredible.
Yeah, imagine how much value he'd be adding to the gold checkmark by restricting who could block them
Honestly, I don't think that's a problem. Twitter always got its money from people paying to show you stuff you didn't want to see. So what if the ads are now tweets?
After he got boosted up to a level where anyone was only getting Elon in their feeds despite of the topic, a lot of people blocked his ass. So he is now getting rid of the block feature because everybody should be reading Elon's all bangers, all the time.
there’s no way he doesn’t retain a true block feature for himself, of course
Surely there'd be a way for him to get someone to manually unblock his account if his ego'sbeen hit that much.
Though that being said that'd require staff to do so...
The article is a bit misleading. He wants to get rid of block for stronger mute as you can get around block by logging out.
The counter argument is that block is still useful because I block someone I want zero interaction with that person and people are too lazy to log out anyway so it kinda works in practice.
I'm not sure why is he stirring shit up. The block feature is on point with free speech philosophy he trying to push. If anything he should be making blocking etc. More powerful.
It's never been really about free speech. It's about elevating his speech. He believes he has a right to be listened to.
The further it goes the more it feels like this. It's almost like conservatives don't have a consistent philosophy about anything.
They do, though. It's called Führerprinzip, or "the leader principle".
The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader (Führer, in German) has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him, and answers only to his superiors.
In this view, absolutely everything in society must be made authoritarian. Cooperative and democratic forms of social organization are considered corrosive to social order, and therefore are not allowed. Disrespecting your Führer — any of your Führers, at any level — must be punished, with penalties up to & including death.
If there is a social organization at any level — a family, a church, a workplace, a school, a local government — it must have a Führer to take responsibility for it, and everyone else involved must obey that Führer unquestioningly. Anything else is social chaos and probably Communism.
Children and wives obey the man of the house, who is wholly responsible for them. If the man of the house fails to enforce order (that is, compliance with his own Führers), then his own Führers must remove him from that responsibility. For instance, if a child deviates from the state governor's dictates on gender, that child must be removed from his father's home and placed into a more obedient home.
Workers obey bosses and business owners. Worker-owned enterprises are not allowed as they are obviously Communism. Unions are wrong, as they exist to second-guess the will of the business's Führer for his workers. Moreover, it is the job of each business leader to bring his business into line with the dictates of higher Führers. Businesses that fail to obey the economic and cultural dictates of the Führer must be punished; see e.g. Disney.
Students obey teachers, who obey principals, who obey the state governor. If a teacher fails to demand that children fall in line with the directives passed down from the state governor, it is the duty of the principal to not only fire that teacher, but report them for prosecution.
Actually he wants to get rid of "blocking public posts"
The source showed the tweet as an image, so I went into the sewer waters from Fritter. And, yep, it's genuinely there.
It's not even that I believe him unable to have such bad takes: it's not the first time. I have just seen a few fake ones. But the fake ones aren't even needed!
With Mastodon as a strong alternative I really don't understand why people use twitter at all anymore. There have been so many negative changes that have happened to twitter over the past 2 years.
95% of the people or groups I would want to follow are not on Mastodon.
And frankly, the Fediverse isn't as user-friendly. It is a but tougher when you have to choose an instance, as well as learn how to follow from other instances.
And frankly, the Fediverse isn’t as user-friendly
One component of a system being "user-friendly" is that it must not sabotage or undermine the user on behalf of the system's proprietor.
Unfortunately, this means that proprietary systems rarely remain user-friendly forever, as most proprietors eventually want to sabotage the user in some way or another, and can rarely resist the temptation forever.
On one hand, Twitter lost 5% of its user base. It's not a ton. On the other, it's 15 million people give or take. That 5% is probably the sort I want to hang out with the most. Likewise for Reddit. 5% of Redditors are awesome and likely now Lemmy/KBin users. Those are the people I care about. It also allows for more quality connections when you have fewer people in your circle. Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
undefined> Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
It depends. Close connections of subject matter experts when discussing technical topics? Sure. When doing general research or looking for alternate solutions for something, you need mass. The difficulty of onboarding users into a federated environment hinders this.
I meant from social connections not technical experts. Frankly social media isn't the place to get technical answers. It's typically not great and most of the time is a hive mind mentality. Even on Reddit or stack exchange. I've seen decades of questions in my field and the answers with the most points are the ones that match the general hive mind not actual facts. It's typically not worth it to get answers from social media.
Mastodon has a long way to go in the onboarding experience. Most non-technical Twitter users simply will not engage with Mastodon in its current form.
Mastodon right now reminds me of email before web-based services. It's not friendly enough to pull in the "normies". It needs a Gmail.
Pick an instance and sign up. I don't understand this take. Its literally the same as email and we all managed to figure that out when we were 9-11 years old.
Tell me you've never worked in tech support without telling me you've never worked in tech support.
@legion@TendieMaster69 Are you onboarding using the browser or using the official #Mastodon app? Onboarding online is a lot more understandable than onboarding in the app IIRC
In the browser. It's not confusing to me, but I'm a software developer. Millions of Twitter users aren't going to make it past the server selection step. And many that do are going to be confused when they click to Follow someone and get a weird popup (because that someone is on a different Mastodon instance) instead of instantly following the person.
It's nowhere close to a smooth enough experience for the lion's share of Twitter users to transition over. I think people that are used to even slightly technical things vastly overestimate what the average end user is capable of handling. These are the people that ask for help to plug in an HDMI cable.
It was simple for me personally, but I guess I'm a more advanced internet enjoyer?
I think people are intimidated by step 3. Don't ask me why, but for a certain type of web user, it's an absolute deal breaker for some reason.
Tbh it's capitalism. It teaches people to be afraid of choices, and to just take what the corporation is handing them. It's... disconcerting how pervasive this kind of convenience culture has become and what kind of effect it's having on people's lives
Fedi doesn't have an onboarding problem, people have a capitalism problem
I assume he will still have the block button though.
I really hope platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon take off. Just the idea of no single person with control over how we all communicate and share ideas gives me hope for the future.
sadly, Mastodon currently still is pretty centralised around a few very big instances. I hope the Fediverse gets more decentralised…
I think if one of them goes sour it'll be easier for people migrate to another mastodon instance, and for that instance to grow. When Twitter goes bad, there's not just a convenient alternative exactly-Twitter-but-run-by-different-people around the corner. But those small Mastodon instances could grow if they had an influx (to a point, and probably better so if the influx was gradual).
Edit: especially because federation means that the people who move to the new instance can still see and interact with everyone on the old instance, so they can't be held to the old instance merely by the presence of their friends on that instance. Unless the old instance blocks federation with wherever people start moving to, but still.
What does it take to facilitate this? Do individuals have the ability to help it along, or does it take more resources? I'm new to this but would like to learn.
You just have to (encourage others to) register on an instance with less than, say, 1000 active users. I think that's already taking care of most of the issue.
I only see this as going well for him/Twitter.
Not really, it’s definitely going to be interesting to watch it go up in flames 🍿
Another great ideea from greatest Genius of our age! Of God how could we live without him until now! /s
It's insane how ludicrous his ideas in particular seem to be, especially with Twitter. This has to be trolling, surely? Or does he not want to allow people to block him?
He's already overridden people blocking him. You still see his posts.
He's just trying to make sure it stays useful as a weapon for fascists like himself is all.
He's mask off now and he wants his very own version of free speech in your face. That means him and his nazi friends will abuse you to no end and if you reply he'll ban you like the thin skinned bitch he is.
If you have your personal "ban from plattform entirely" button, why would you need a block button? Jeez you guys it's so obvious.
"Hang on, Steve. Reddit can not and will not beat Twitter." -Elon
"Hold my beer, Elon! I'm probably going to shutdown the mobile reddit website." -Steve
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you dropped an arm: ¯\(ツ)/¯
Wow. He really is a tool.
Bro it's like he WANTS us to only see t shirt ads
Watching major social media websites actively kill themselves has been nothing if not an experience
The even better experience is seeing people try out federated versions of what they love, re-decentralizing the internet 🥰
🍿
This level of nob gobbling takes focus.
Let's be real, he's doing this because he's upset about people blocking Twitter blue accounts, this in no way increases server costs or any bull shit like that
Blocking Twitter Blue users is the only way to make threads make sense again after he decided to weight them higher. Any time you open a tweet there's like 10 Twitter Blue trolls with 3 followers that are sorted above the good comments.
Elon, for all of his smarts, seems to not understand the game theory behind social networks. I get it, we have had the status quo for over a decade, but the fundamental rules are still the same.
Frankly I'm happy to see them falling apart and a return to how social was meant to be on the internet.
That doesn't make sense. Social media rules aren't written in stone.
All forms of communication/media/technology evolve over time. Going backwards is regressive.
Depends on what going backwards means, from a technical perspective this is fine and more forward than the centralized providers would have you believe. The only step back im seeing is mainly UI and tooling. The bones here are fine and the UX im seeing on Lemmy and Kbin are inline with reddit just a few years ago.
If having to deal with UX issues is a huge problem the just wait and come back when its more developed, most of what you use in your day-to-day computing is OSS code, if its good enough for your daily work, its good enough for socials.
You know, maybe I didn't understand the full meaning of your comment - I assumed you were referring to not having the ability to block a user as a "return to how social was meant to be on the internet"
why would I not be able to block a user on the internet? I was able to block them on every system from the beginning. Centralized services will have you think you need thier magic code to do that but we used to do it with clients all the time.
I still run IMAP email clients with a boat load of personal rules, though I did move the blocks to my server for efficiency. Still its MY server, like im posting to you now from my fediverse instance. If i wanted to block someone here they can be annoying sure but at the end of the day I have many of the same tools i had before, though there might be more cat and mouse. That said nothing stops you from having entirely private instances and since we technically can completely control our servers and clients its entirely possible to have things like one-way servers and nodes that are more picky about what they forward. If the network grows you will see an increased sophistication in management tools.
But we were talking about Twitter specifically, not any sort of self-hosted platform or personal site.
I don't disagree with you, I'm just confused when the discussion moved from Twitter to an anecdote about one's IMAP email client
my bad, im in "fuck these guys lets all setup nodes" mode atm and still getting used to the UI
I can’t wait for other social media platforms to do the same thing. Social media companies are so stagnant they just copy what other companies do without thinking if it’s a good idea or not.
So how will they comply with court orders requiring that function? /smh
Except for his account, I'd bet.
Why would he need to block when he can ban? 🤷♀️
I reckon he's just really really fucking short-sited tbh. He seems to forget that there are people on twitter, or were tbh.
Makes me think he’s actively destroying it purposefully
You'd have a hard time convincing me he's not. Twitter was an absolutely fantastic way to organize politically. Imagine if you had enough money to casually drop out of your nation's treasury to end it and could squash a lot of political dissidents by doing so. I'm sure he's got a slush fund to end it from some not so great despots.
Good for twitter. What is called "harassement" is usually not. Time for people to grow up . Moderation is fascism . Everybody went to federated service to be free only to jump right into big police moderation.
I'd wager this is in response to the campaign going around to block every blue checkmark. Elon can't let his crowd of sycophants feel like they're being ignored.
Awww Musky’s feelings got hurt that so many people have blocked him on twitter lol
He's the only person I've blocked. I went on the other day and saw a tweet was hidden, clicked to view it, and when I saw it was him, I immediately closed the tab. Twitter is really good at providing me content that makes me want to leave 😆
I smile every time when I see that Musky did some more stupid shit, because I know that every time he does shit like that, Mastodon grows more. And with that, the entire Fediverse gets stronger.
Go on Elon! Don't Stop please! Kill Twitter!
Is advertising revenue so important to them they're willing to sacrifice literally everything else for it?
If it's not easy to use reddit, who will use reddit?
If it’s not easy to use reddit, who will use reddit?
The same people who hooted and hollered about Netflix ending password sharing and then went ahead and made their own account anyway because they can't be arsed to read a book or find something else to do to fill their sad little lives.
Serious question: is musk actively trying to run twitter into the ground for some kind of financial benefit, or is he just an arrogant asinine asshole who has no idea what he's doing?
My tinfoil hat theory is this: Musk has ties with dictators who would really, really like to see Twitter die as it’s been used in the past to organize resistance and broadcast embarrassing information. Musk is used to do the dirty job of running it into the ground. He may or he may not be actually aware of this, as your characterization of Musk is on point. Just speculation of course.
@dirtmayor Now that's just stupid. And I generally like the guy.
Why do you like “the guy”?
As a member of a rather vulnerable minority, I had made pretty liberal use of the block feature on Twitter. Of course, I left when Musk took over and switched to Mastodon, but my account's still there. I didn't delete it or anything. Might have to now.
I deleted mine the day Elon bought it... Lol. I honestly never cared for Twitter too much but I admit I get a lot of news from it (specifically because I am following the ukrainian situation pretty closely).
Wow...
Is there some kind of tech CEO competition running or something?
"Who can alienate their user base the fastest"
There's a saying, " never attribute to malice what is easily explained by incompetence".
But we're quickly reaching the point where it's no longer easily explained incompetence. Elon is either the most incompetent person in the known universe, which is saying a lot, or he's doing this on purpose for some reason.
I'm not into conspiracies, but it's starting to make more sense if he's actively trying to tank the stock.
He just wants everyone to be exposed to his right-wing buddies toxic posts.
Yup, he gets a hard-on by exposing people to the "fash n friends" crap.
I mean, 2024 isn't that far away. It’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to in the name of “free speech” or “townsquare of the internet” or whatever shitty rationalization he uses to explains his nutty behavior.
There's no stock to tank. You could argue that he's trying to tank the company, but there are easier ways to do that.
I'm kinda lost here. What's his end goal with it?
Depriving the libs of a favored platform via making it conservative and unruly, and weakening its democratic potential against authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, is the theory.
Yes there are, but he's already with the SEC breathing on his neck for other scams so I guess he wants plausible deniability.
There's no stock or similar security, so the SEC doesn't care at all. Could be a plausible deniability thing, I just think it's more likely that he really is that dumb, given the stories about Tesla/SpaceX having teams that basically existed just to control him.
Once upon a time, long ago, in the very beginning, I liked Twitter as a stream of instant information from all POV. Then Twitter became a haven for bots and a propaganda tool. Is it possible that Musk bought Twitter so that he could take it to the point of absurdity and destroy it?
For real! He's trying to tank Twitter.
4channers are gonna abuse the hell out of this for some fun. Can guarantee it.
Perhaps enough to force Twitter to take action and fix it? 4chan could be a force for good…
I mean, maybe? 4channers do some pretty crazy shit when they're raiding, at least from what I've seen. Remember when they raided Microsoft Tay's Twitter and turned it into a white supremacist?
Doesn't he himself use this feature a ton? 😂
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it won’t apply to him.
Or if it does then he’ll just delete accounts he wants to block.
Elon Musk is a gaping, farting anus. I pay as much attention to the sounds from a gaping, farting anus, as I do from him.
Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don't deserve to be disparaged like this.
Very true. I take back the bit about the farting anus.
it's unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it's an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it's a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new "block", what's even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).
Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.
Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people's content.
Elon Musk really fucking hates his trans daughter. Dad of the century, right here.
Seriously good on his daughter for dropping his scumbag ass. She deserves far better from a parent.
I wasn't aware he had more children than the one with the weird-ass name. The private life section on wikipedia is a ride...
He ascribes to Longtermism and like his associate Jeffery Epstein, he thinks his genes are magically special, and so he wants as many offspring as humanly possible: while not actually giving one shit about the quality of life for any of them.
It's really interesting, because he fucking hates his own father (Errol is also a creep who fathered a child with his step-daughter, who he raised from childhood), but can't put together that he is exactly the fuck the same as his creep ass father.
Lemmy's "block" is essentially a "mute" function, too. It makes it so that you don't see any more content from a user, but they can still make comments on your stuff.
It's interesting to me that they made the argument that blocking is increasing server costs.
I mean, it's plainly clear that Musk has no idea what is going on at any of his companies and the narrative of him being a genius of some kind was simply that: a narrative.
Elon trying not to make the worst decisions possible challenge (Impossible)
I am very glad I left Twitter at the beginning of Musk's rein. This is just dangerous.
I quit Twitter after the infantile incident with Elon Musk carrying a sink around his own office. From all that we've seen in recent years it's pretty clear he's lucky to have been born rich, because he definitely isn't the visionary we thought he was.
Yup. Every once in a blue moon I wish I still had my Twitter. But not enough to make a new one.
I missed this incident, I quit years before...
I made my first ever Twitter account a month or two before Musk bought it, for purely NSFW reasons. I'd log in every couple weeks or whatever, handle my business, and move along. After he bought it, I said whatever I'm not doing anything useful data wise so I'll continue my few times a month visits.
First post-Musk visit, it's fine. Business handled, close my incog window, move on.
Second post-Musk visit, I log in, and it's CP as far as the eye can see. I immediately deleted my account.
Holy hell, on a serious country the government would go scorched earth on Twitter's servers and sue tf outta Musk
Ayyyy Elon, so we're going for full chaos??
Lemme grab my popcorn before the change starts a nuclear reaction.
Surely a sight to behold. Lol
How in the world is that a good idea...
Correction: Twitter is removing the block feature so that tweets can reach the full audience...
how is this a good idea? Even lemmy has a "block" feature on like day 1
Day 1 lol. Lemmy have been in development for more than 3 years. It's just now that reddit got to suck even more lemmy and other alternatives got their opportunity.
Time to promote the hell out of Mastodon
@Hypersapien This could make his decision a wonderful backfire
Imagine posting something like:
Edit: same can be done with Calckey for example, but with no need to promote a special server, since Calckey doesn't force you to sign to it's main server through any of the apps iirc
@dirtmayor
I think we need something like that for twitter and for Reddit. Having something quick and concise with some links where to go is bound to get more bound headed our way
@lohrun sadly I don't think spez is that stupid to fuck every little thing up from a social network, all at once almost. Sure, I think you can buy some ad space on Reddit, but imo there's nothing too evident for this to be easy peasy.
Not to mention, Mastodon was already larger than Lemmy when the crisis point happened (the other two contenders, kbin - which is still in beta - and Lotide, are even smaller!). Maybe convincing the sub admins to try to be admins of communities and see how it goes? (Except that there are multiple communities here on the same topic, but on different instances - again, not sure how this is gonna work out)
@dirtmayor @Hypersapien
I am 100% on board with this.
I just can't get over how uncatchy that name is though
It's a good name for a metal band...
Oh wait.. it is!
Pre Twitter takeover this would have been surprising. Now seems par for the course.
So he's run out of engineers that know how to maintain the block feature?
Elongated Muskrat has discovered just how many accounts are blocking him. His ego can’t take that. His FrEeSpEeCh must be heard
My account isn't blocking him.
At least, not since I deleted it. And stopped visiting Twitter.
Oh no please, not the nicknames. Can we leave them?
Nothing makes me cringe harder than the childish nicknames everybody keeps coming up with. Elongated Muskrat isn't funny or offensive.
Calling his sycophants Muskrats is appropriate though.
I'm skeptical of this, maybe it's because he's worried his fascist followers are slowly falling into an echo chamber cause anyone with more than a few braincells blocks them
Fun fact: a block feature is required to be accepted by the Apple AppStore review process. So Twitter will disappear from Apple devices with this change.
Since this got some votes and became visible, here's the source:
Apps with user-generated content present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying. To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:
- A method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app
- A mechanism to report offensive content and timely responses to concerns
- The ability to block abusive users from the service
- Published contact information so users can easily reach you
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#user-generated-content
Apple's review process is inconsistent at best. I used to work for an iOS app and it took several years before they blocked our release for not having a report feature on products. Never had the ability to block users, despite the ability to DM people.
Plus, for an app the size of Twitter, Apple will likely ignore most rules that doesn't lose them money.
Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to block other users. So I wouldn't be too optimistic about Apple's response....
Battle royale!
This is so dumb it must be out of context.
Elon and Trump are fairly unique in that context usually makes it worse.
I have blocked only one person on Twitter: him.
That's probably why he's doing it, so you and all the others who blocked him are forced to see his posts again.
Whats going on with social media CEOs making dumb decisions these days..
Conservative money thinks that they can keep there opposition off balance by smashing social networks . Musk did not launch desatitis campaign out of nowhere.
This is exactly it. Social media's greatest power is the ability for common folk to organise and rally quickly and easily. That cannot be allowed, so these moves are designed to divide and insulate.
Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they're not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that's been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷
it's not about money. it's about power
So what you're saying is, if I have a Twitter account and I start blocking many MANY people it costs Elon money? Interesting.
Alternatively, Elon just found out how many people are blocking him.
I’m extremely doubtful that there is any truth to that.
Huh why ? This doesn't make sense
There's been a big effort to block anybody with a blue checkmark since any major story or viral post will have them automatically bumped up to the top of the replies. So, when the whiners started complaining, he started openly considering this.
He will end up "compromising".
You can block people, but only people without blue check marks.
Wanna harass someone, wanna be a troll, subscribe to Twitter blue and you can't be blocked...
Aren't there different twitter tiers, too? Like, blue and gold? I wonder if you'll only be allowed to block people in your tier and below, so that unpaid accounts can't block anybody
IIRC the gold checkmarks are reserved for big corporate accounts that want it, and Twitter demands $1000/mo for that. Incredible.
Yeah, imagine how much value he'd be adding to the gold checkmark by restricting who could block them
Honestly, I don't think that's a problem. Twitter always got its money from people paying to show you stuff you didn't want to see. So what if the ads are now tweets?
After he got boosted up to a level where anyone was only getting Elon in their feeds despite of the topic, a lot of people blocked his ass. So he is now getting rid of the block feature because everybody should be reading Elon's all bangers, all the time.
there’s no way he doesn’t retain a true block feature for himself, of course
Surely there'd be a way for him to get someone to manually unblock his account if his ego'sbeen hit that much.
Though that being said that'd require staff to do so...
The article is a bit misleading. He wants to get rid of block for stronger mute as you can get around block by logging out.
The counter argument is that block is still useful because I block someone I want zero interaction with that person and people are too lazy to log out anyway so it kinda works in practice.
I'm not sure why is he stirring shit up. The block feature is on point with free speech philosophy he trying to push. If anything he should be making blocking etc. More powerful.
It's never been really about free speech. It's about elevating his speech. He believes he has a right to be listened to.
The further it goes the more it feels like this. It's almost like conservatives don't have a consistent philosophy about anything.
They do, though. It's called Führerprinzip, or "the leader principle".
Wikipedia says:
In this view, absolutely everything in society must be made authoritarian. Cooperative and democratic forms of social organization are considered corrosive to social order, and therefore are not allowed. Disrespecting your Führer — any of your Führers, at any level — must be punished, with penalties up to & including death.
If there is a social organization at any level — a family, a church, a workplace, a school, a local government — it must have a Führer to take responsibility for it, and everyone else involved must obey that Führer unquestioningly. Anything else is social chaos and probably Communism.
Children and wives obey the man of the house, who is wholly responsible for them. If the man of the house fails to enforce order (that is, compliance with his own Führers), then his own Führers must remove him from that responsibility. For instance, if a child deviates from the state governor's dictates on gender, that child must be removed from his father's home and placed into a more obedient home.
Workers obey bosses and business owners. Worker-owned enterprises are not allowed as they are obviously Communism. Unions are wrong, as they exist to second-guess the will of the business's Führer for his workers. Moreover, it is the job of each business leader to bring his business into line with the dictates of higher Führers. Businesses that fail to obey the economic and cultural dictates of the Führer must be punished; see e.g. Disney.
Students obey teachers, who obey principals, who obey the state governor. If a teacher fails to demand that children fall in line with the directives passed down from the state governor, it is the duty of the principal to not only fire that teacher, but report them for prosecution.
Actually he wants to get rid of "blocking public posts"
The source showed the tweet as an image, so I went into the sewer waters from Fritter. And, yep, it's genuinely there.
It's not even that I believe him unable to have such bad takes: it's not the first time. I have just seen a few fake ones. But the fake ones aren't even needed!
With Mastodon as a strong alternative I really don't understand why people use twitter at all anymore. There have been so many negative changes that have happened to twitter over the past 2 years.
95% of the people or groups I would want to follow are not on Mastodon.
And frankly, the Fediverse isn't as user-friendly. It is a but tougher when you have to choose an instance, as well as learn how to follow from other instances.
One component of a system being "user-friendly" is that it must not sabotage or undermine the user on behalf of the system's proprietor.
Unfortunately, this means that proprietary systems rarely remain user-friendly forever, as most proprietors eventually want to sabotage the user in some way or another, and can rarely resist the temptation forever.
On one hand, Twitter lost 5% of its user base. It's not a ton. On the other, it's 15 million people give or take. That 5% is probably the sort I want to hang out with the most. Likewise for Reddit. 5% of Redditors are awesome and likely now Lemmy/KBin users. Those are the people I care about. It also allows for more quality connections when you have fewer people in your circle. Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
undefined> Close connections are more valuable than more connections.
It depends. Close connections of subject matter experts when discussing technical topics? Sure. When doing general research or looking for alternate solutions for something, you need mass. The difficulty of onboarding users into a federated environment hinders this.
I meant from social connections not technical experts. Frankly social media isn't the place to get technical answers. It's typically not great and most of the time is a hive mind mentality. Even on Reddit or stack exchange. I've seen decades of questions in my field and the answers with the most points are the ones that match the general hive mind not actual facts. It's typically not worth it to get answers from social media.
Mastodon has a long way to go in the onboarding experience. Most non-technical Twitter users simply will not engage with Mastodon in its current form.
Mastodon right now reminds me of email before web-based services. It's not friendly enough to pull in the "normies". It needs a Gmail.
Pick an instance and sign up. I don't understand this take. Its literally the same as email and we all managed to figure that out when we were 9-11 years old.
Tell me you've never worked in tech support without telling me you've never worked in tech support.
@legion @TendieMaster69 Are you onboarding using the browser or using the official #Mastodon app? Onboarding online is a lot more understandable than onboarding in the app IIRC
In the browser. It's not confusing to me, but I'm a software developer. Millions of Twitter users aren't going to make it past the server selection step. And many that do are going to be confused when they click to Follow someone and get a weird popup (because that someone is on a different Mastodon instance) instead of instantly following the person.
It's nowhere close to a smooth enough experience for the lion's share of Twitter users to transition over. I think people that are used to even slightly technical things vastly overestimate what the average end user is capable of handling. These are the people that ask for help to plug in an HDMI cable.
It was simple for me personally, but I guess I'm a more advanced internet enjoyer?
I think people are intimidated by step 3. Don't ask me why, but for a certain type of web user, it's an absolute deal breaker for some reason.
Tbh it's capitalism. It teaches people to be afraid of choices, and to just take what the corporation is handing them. It's... disconcerting how pervasive this kind of convenience culture has become and what kind of effect it's having on people's lives
Fedi doesn't have an onboarding problem, people have a capitalism problem
I assume he will still have the block button though.
I really hope platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon take off. Just the idea of no single person with control over how we all communicate and share ideas gives me hope for the future.
sadly, Mastodon currently still is pretty centralised around a few very big instances. I hope the Fediverse gets more decentralised…
I think if one of them goes sour it'll be easier for people migrate to another mastodon instance, and for that instance to grow. When Twitter goes bad, there's not just a convenient alternative exactly-Twitter-but-run-by-different-people around the corner. But those small Mastodon instances could grow if they had an influx (to a point, and probably better so if the influx was gradual).
Edit: especially because federation means that the people who move to the new instance can still see and interact with everyone on the old instance, so they can't be held to the old instance merely by the presence of their friends on that instance. Unless the old instance blocks federation with wherever people start moving to, but still.
What does it take to facilitate this? Do individuals have the ability to help it along, or does it take more resources? I'm new to this but would like to learn.
You just have to (encourage others to) register on an instance with less than, say, 1000 active users. I think that's already taking care of most of the issue.
I only see this as going well for him/Twitter.
Not really, it’s definitely going to be interesting to watch it go up in flames 🍿
Another great ideea from greatest Genius of our age! Of God how could we live without him until now! /s
It's insane how ludicrous his ideas in particular seem to be, especially with Twitter. This has to be trolling, surely? Or does he not want to allow people to block him?
He's already overridden people blocking him. You still see his posts.
He's just trying to make sure it stays useful as a weapon for fascists like himself is all.
He's mask off now and he wants his very own version of free speech in your face. That means him and his nazi friends will abuse you to no end and if you reply he'll ban you like the thin skinned bitch he is.
If you have your personal "ban from plattform entirely" button, why would you need a block button? Jeez you guys it's so obvious.
"Hang on, Steve. Reddit can not and will not beat Twitter." -Elon
"Hold my beer, Elon! I'm probably going to shutdown the mobile reddit website." -Steve
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you dropped an arm: ¯\(ツ)/¯
Wow. He really is a tool.
Bro it's like he WANTS us to only see t shirt ads
Watching major social media websites actively kill themselves has been nothing if not an experience
The even better experience is seeing people try out federated versions of what they love, re-decentralizing the internet 🥰
🍿
This level of nob gobbling takes focus.
Let's be real, he's doing this because he's upset about people blocking Twitter blue accounts, this in no way increases server costs or any bull shit like that
Blocking Twitter Blue users is the only way to make threads make sense again after he decided to weight them higher. Any time you open a tweet there's like 10 Twitter Blue trolls with 3 followers that are sorted above the good comments.
Elon, for all of his smarts, seems to not understand the game theory behind social networks. I get it, we have had the status quo for over a decade, but the fundamental rules are still the same.
Frankly I'm happy to see them falling apart and a return to how social was meant to be on the internet.
That doesn't make sense. Social media rules aren't written in stone.
All forms of communication/media/technology evolve over time. Going backwards is regressive.
Depends on what going backwards means, from a technical perspective this is fine and more forward than the centralized providers would have you believe. The only step back im seeing is mainly UI and tooling. The bones here are fine and the UX im seeing on Lemmy and Kbin are inline with reddit just a few years ago.
If having to deal with UX issues is a huge problem the just wait and come back when its more developed, most of what you use in your day-to-day computing is OSS code, if its good enough for your daily work, its good enough for socials.
You know, maybe I didn't understand the full meaning of your comment - I assumed you were referring to not having the ability to block a user as a "return to how social was meant to be on the internet"
why would I not be able to block a user on the internet? I was able to block them on every system from the beginning. Centralized services will have you think you need thier magic code to do that but we used to do it with clients all the time.
I still run IMAP email clients with a boat load of personal rules, though I did move the blocks to my server for efficiency. Still its MY server, like im posting to you now from my fediverse instance. If i wanted to block someone here they can be annoying sure but at the end of the day I have many of the same tools i had before, though there might be more cat and mouse. That said nothing stops you from having entirely private instances and since we technically can completely control our servers and clients its entirely possible to have things like one-way servers and nodes that are more picky about what they forward. If the network grows you will see an increased sophistication in management tools.
But we were talking about Twitter specifically, not any sort of self-hosted platform or personal site.
I don't disagree with you, I'm just confused when the discussion moved from Twitter to an anecdote about one's IMAP email client
my bad, im in "fuck these guys lets all setup nodes" mode atm and still getting used to the UI
I can’t wait for other social media platforms to do the same thing. Social media companies are so stagnant they just copy what other companies do without thinking if it’s a good idea or not.
So how will they comply with court orders requiring that function? /smh
Except for his account, I'd bet.
Why would he need to block when he can ban? 🤷♀️
I reckon he's just really really fucking short-sited tbh. He seems to forget that there are people on twitter, or were tbh.
Makes me think he’s actively destroying it purposefully
You'd have a hard time convincing me he's not. Twitter was an absolutely fantastic way to organize politically. Imagine if you had enough money to casually drop out of your nation's treasury to end it and could squash a lot of political dissidents by doing so. I'm sure he's got a slush fund to end it from some not so great despots.
Good for twitter. What is called "harassement" is usually not. Time for people to grow up . Moderation is fascism . Everybody went to federated service to be free only to jump right into big police moderation.
I'd wager this is in response to the campaign going around to block every blue checkmark. Elon can't let his crowd of sycophants feel like they're being ignored.
Awww Musky’s feelings got hurt that so many people have blocked him on twitter lol
He's the only person I've blocked. I went on the other day and saw a tweet was hidden, clicked to view it, and when I saw it was him, I immediately closed the tab. Twitter is really good at providing me content that makes me want to leave 😆
I smile every time when I see that Musky did some more stupid shit, because I know that every time he does shit like that, Mastodon grows more. And with that, the entire Fediverse gets stronger.
Go on Elon! Don't Stop please! Kill Twitter!
Is advertising revenue so important to them they're willing to sacrifice literally everything else for it?
If it's not easy to use reddit, who will use reddit?
The same people who hooted and hollered about Netflix ending password sharing and then went ahead and made their own account anyway because they can't be arsed to read a book or find something else to do to fill their sad little lives.
Serious question: is musk actively trying to run twitter into the ground for some kind of financial benefit, or is he just an arrogant asinine asshole who has no idea what he's doing?
My tinfoil hat theory is this: Musk has ties with dictators who would really, really like to see Twitter die as it’s been used in the past to organize resistance and broadcast embarrassing information. Musk is used to do the dirty job of running it into the ground. He may or he may not be actually aware of this, as your characterization of Musk is on point. Just speculation of course.
@dirtmayor Now that's just stupid. And I generally like the guy.
Why do you like “the guy”?
As a member of a rather vulnerable minority, I had made pretty liberal use of the block feature on Twitter. Of course, I left when Musk took over and switched to Mastodon, but my account's still there. I didn't delete it or anything. Might have to now.
I deleted mine the day Elon bought it... Lol. I honestly never cared for Twitter too much but I admit I get a lot of news from it (specifically because I am following the ukrainian situation pretty closely).