It's real. Twitter Shadowbanning is back.
“Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach - our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”
Surprise! Our great 'X' CEO has brought back one more bad thing that we hated about twitter 1.0: Shadowbanning. And they’ve given it a new name: "Freedom of Speech, Not Reach".
Perhaps the new approach by X is an improvement? At least they would “politely” tell you when you’re being shadow banned.
I think freedom of speech implies that people have the autonomy to decide what they want to see, rather than being manipulated by algorithm codes. Now it feels like they’re saying, “you can still have your microphone... We're just gonna cut the power to it if you say something we don't like”.
If you're still on Twitter, you're part of the problem.
People keep repeating this for easy self-righteousness. Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?
Fuck Musk, but for better or worse this isn't just about him.
Artists whose whole career depends on the whims of social media giants have dug their own hole.
Easy for you to say. Are you even an artist?
Small artists need a convenient way to get their work to the eyes of regular people. If their self-hosted gallery is seen by no one, it doesn't facilitate their career. They generally can't afford to buy ads and are not popular enough to get a fan made groups spreading the word everywhere else.
Not to mention that this is such a callous attitude in general. Because you in particular aren't susceptible to this manner in which wealthy assholes are screwing people, then it's their fault for needing it?
It's ouroboros.
People don't leave which means there is an audience so people try to stay and capitalize on the audience that stayed.
Seriously, fuck Twitter. It needs to die. That might mean that a lot of people need to change a lot of things to make their lives work.
If you're successful you can pivot. If you're barely making ends meet and rely on Twitter to keep you afloat, I'm sorry to say this, but you're not successful yet.
It's not ouroboros because it's not artists with 1k followers that are keeping most people on Twitter. They are just the small fishes caught in the turmoil. Rihanna and those at her level can move anywhere, anytime and they won't even notice the difference. They are likely not even handling their accounts personally.
But I don't care to kill Twitter more than I care about smaller artists. What is it really being gained if you sacrifice them just for the satisfaction of killing a platform you don't even use? A lot of artists struggle but that doesn't make their work any less valid.
I'd hope everyone manages to move over, ultimately it's their best hope because that place will only get worse, but even I see that not everyone will make it. The followers lost in the move might be the difference that ends the viability of their career. But it's tragic that this is the situation that they have to deal with. So, why rush them and shame them for it?
The problem is that the artist needs an audience to use arts as a means to survive. If there is no audience to pay or exchange goods for the art provided by the artist, the artist cannot use art as a sole means to survive. Like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. Twitter is just another platform providing a specific type of audience.
Unfortunately, the artist doesn't get to dictate the audience they receive from the platform since they don't control it. In essence, an artist that starts relying on specific platforms for an audience is making a calculated risk that the audience will remain unchanged for the forseeable future.
As for shadowbanning, even if it is a crappy tactic, in the end is just the platform owner(s) shaping their audience to the way they see fit. One can argue that it is just a tactic to go against the artist. The reality is that the owner(s) are looking at how their audience grows and shrinks and are making their own changes to maximise audience growth and, in the case of twitter, advertisement revenue growth.
When someone relies on a service they provide (art) to pay the bills, pay for food, etc. it's devastating when your service loses customers/audience. Life is a constant risk prediction. Attempting to force change on circumstance outside of one's control is high risk of failure and, in my opion, an effort best used in finding better opportunities.
I don't make money as an artist, but I live with two of them. They both migrated to Mastodon, with my technical assistance, and left Twitter before Elmo bought it.
Bear in mind I'm not the previous commenter, but I believe what they were saying is that the writing was on the wall over a year ago, and there are alternatives. Artists and computer geeks tend to get along with each other, and so most artists should have a techy friend that can help them with exposure online. I understand that switching platforms is inconvenient, and tiresome. Looking at it from a tech perspective however, it's a better ROI.
The worst of it is the ≈week of daily posts right before you shut down your Twitter account, linking to your new account. My friends were able to direct link, but I don't know if Elmo is allowing that any more.
Moving over is definitely the right call, I know. But many people are still struggling with trying to find alternatives only to have few followers coming along, so they can't just cut it off and hope for it to work. The technical part is frankly the easiest part of it.
they made a home on a platform once, they should be able to do it again. Staying on xitter or whatever is just kind of nonsense at this point.
audiences will rarely move from platform to platform. For content creators, we have to go to where our audience is, or provide an incentive to move elsewhere. That's the main reason why there hasn't been a decent competitor to YouTube, Twitter, nor Twitch. The audiences there are entrenched.
Yes, and generally how that goes is from a point where they are just making art as a hobby to one where they rely on their audience to pay the bills. It's not such a trivial thing to start over.
I'm sure if there was a platform they could jump to that would sustain their career, they would
do you take pride in being the final stragglers left at the bar that's now a nazi bar? That's twitter now.
Fuck right off with that self righteous bulshit. A lot of people there are doing more to push back against Nazi propaganda than your sorry ass does here.
Fuck yourself right off with that self serving garbage mcfuckwit. A lot of people are doing more to push back against Nazis, but if you keep going to the platform that defends them and provides them avenues to attack the rest, they should get fucked sideways.
cute conversation, gonna block you now.
Self-serving to whom? I am not one of those artists, I am just supportive of them. You know, those people who even you are aware that are the targets of the nazis, the people who are trying to push back. So they should get fucked? Did you spend one second trying to consider what's like being in their position?
Did you not actually block me or does blocking do nothing here? I'm still seeing your self-righteous nonsense.
As they say on the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast, don't build your house in someone else's backyard.
*had limited choices as to which hole to dig
I'm not an artist but I know a lot of them and basically only use twitter to follow them. And honestly, the ball is in their court. I see a lot of them complaining about shadowbans and it being impossible to grow a following. But nobody wants to jump ship to a place without an audience.
The problem being there will be no audience sitting around a new platform waiting for a show to start. They need to start double posting, IMO. Being the change they want in the world. They don't have to quit twitter, but posting content to twitter and mastodon (for example) would give their audience a reason to move, would give them a chance to grow, etc.
There's even apps like PostyBirb that can do the multiposting for you.
Yes, and many of them do that, but for most the audience on other platforms isn't enough to drop Twitter yet. They can join every single alternative but they can't make others do the same.
All the more reason to give their following a chance to find them elsewhere, and to follow them there when they do. There are other options; ideally standards-based federated options not susceptible to hostile takeovers by unstable billionaires
Of course, but there is a whole transition period. They can change platforms but getting their followers to join along with them takes a lot more effort. Especially given that Twitter is suppressing any links for alternative platforms.
It doesn't work like this and you know it. If you're selling something you have to take it to the markets where people are. They don't come to you if they don't know who you are. You'd have to be Taylor swift levels to not give a fuck about the major socials.
Yeah I disagree with OP that people still using X to make a living are a part of the problem. But I do think that if they’re not diversifying the platforms they use to make it easier for people to move then they are.
It might seem like X is where everyone is but it’s relatively niche as social networks go. You can’t trust the metrics that they put on posts. When they rolled out view counts, people with newly created private accounts with zero followers were somehow getting dozens of views on their posts.
I always viewed Twitter and Facebook as analogous to AOL - walled gardens. Eventually people ditched AOL for the web, and I hope that eventually they’ll do the same for those dinosaurs.
I have already had a lot of trouble to change family for signal. I can't even imagine forcing your audience (people you don't know) to find you on a niche platform
hope the artists like playing the Nazi bar, because that's twitter now.
What a cool comparison to make towards all the minority artists who might be left without a living.
But I guess you just want to moralize rather than have actual empathy.
artists that think playing a nazi bar are fine aren't artists I want to succeed.
If you don't love fascism you'd be in the same situation.
Cool thought-terminating cliche. So you really don't give a single shit for minorities in a hard situation if they don't sacrifice their livelihood out of your weird sense of moral purity. I hope you pay Fediverse artists pretty well at the very least.
Calling a platform of hundred millions of users a "nazi bar" as if they could pick a different venue the next street is a massive understatement. You also don't seem to realize that even if all these small artists move, those nazis can still have a lot of influence over clueless people who remain there because they haven't realized what's happening. But rather than seeing the risks of widespread radicalization and the value of challenging it, you'd rather call everyone a nazi and not think about it.
If you want to blame anyone, you should point your outrage towards large media organizations and celebrities who keep posting there business as usual as if nothing changed. They are the ones keeping that place alive and giving it legitimacy. Not small artists and those denouncing the nazi shit.
I apply to a lot of online contests and most have me 'retweet' the contest submission link or follow people on the platform. That is literally all I use it for.
Ever win anything?
More ads!
Not OP but my mom enters literally every contest she sees and has won a surprising amount.
Is it stuff she actually wants or needs, or is the garage full of junk she won from defunct companies and a years supply of RC Cola?
Off the top of my head, not counting the plethora of gift cards:
A first edition Kindle Fire a month after it released. For being tech-illiterate, she ended up loving it and upgraded a few times through the years.
Several Roku boxes and Fire TV sticks, which are just now getting used because my parents are finally cutting the cord.
Lots of concert tickets for various bands, including Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Kiss.
1-week all expenses paid trip to Nashville for some big New Year's party that some celebs showed up to.
$600 cowboy boots.
$300 KitchenAid mixer.
A full set of Paula Dean cookware, and she LOVES Paula Dean.
That’s the good stuff. How much bad stuff? Like, sounds awesome, but if she also got 10,000 beer coozies and bad water bottles and whatever other tchotchke nonsense….
Sorry just noticed this notification. Yes actually! A $500 shopping spree on a gaming website.
So originally, it was that he was a "free speech absolutist," then it was that he was in favor of free speech "within the bounds of the law," and now he's not even in favor of that.
He never was, that was just an excuse to amplify the voice of his far-right buddies.
I know. It was more about what he said.
Freedom of (my) speech.
I wish I was free from his speech, specifically.
I don't believe this because it gives Elon Musk too much credit and honestly I think he's just a big loser who will latch on to whoever likes him at the time.
A series of stupid events led to Twitter being full of stupid far right nutjobs and stupid Elon decided they're his people now because they use his stupid platform.
I'm not so sure about that. The big tell is that whenever a far-right user complained to him about getting a tweet removed or the account getting banned or something like that, he'd respond that he'll personally take care of it. Just imagine, a billionare running a platform with millions of users personally taking care of a single one. This never happened with other people.
I personally haven't heard of this, but if it's true it's probably just because he's latched on to them like I was saying. He didn't buy Twitter with some nefarious conservative intent to unblock far right accounts, he bought it because he's an idiot who got into a pissing match on social media. He even tried to get out of the sale claiming "bots" and the owners threatened to sue the shit out of him.
Edit: Lol people downvoting because I haven't heard of this? Never said it's not true, I just haven't heard of it.
Example: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgKSQUrXoAABPWi.jpg
I agree with your assessment. I'm not claiming that he has a plan of any sorts, things just happen in a spur of the moment. However, that's also the appeal of the far-right. It doesn't need research or having a solid base of knowledge to base their opinions on, it's just random stuff these people read on the Internet that feels good to them.
Yet less than a month after he finished the acquisition he unblocked the orange excrescence. That's the fastest he could get to it, because the first week he was firing execs, the second week he was laying off half the workforce, and the third week he was already dicking around with Twitter Blue and charging for the checkmark.
Admittedly, the sink in the lobby was a higher priority timewise, but he got around to unblocking Donald Trump as quickly as he could, AND while janitorial staff were still available to clean the Twitter HQ bathrooms.
Coincidence? I think not.
This seems more accurate somehow
By free speech absolutist he really meant he thinks fascists should be able to say whatever they want.
"Down with fascism! No more free political speech!"
Non sequitur
No, he's a free speech absolutist!
Aka
A fuckin liar who would piss himself to death if people actually told him what they think about him.
Freedom for me but not for thee
I guess it's all about his political ambition.
Oh god, I just had a flash of a near future where he's on the US ballot somehow. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if he found a way. He could change the name of the States to X too!
X party. Yikes.
Please, I beg you, don't scare me.
For any office except president (possibly not VP either, but that would be a technical issue for constitutional scholars to debate). You have to be native-born to be president.
I am better choice would be the poop emoji.
You gotta be really stupid to believe people like him. They are all the same. It's like a mental sickness. You can feel it even just hearing him talk on TV. Sadly he seems to have the type of mental illness that America accepts and it's actually useful for greed and the American dream. Meanwhile good neurodivergent people suffer life long because society doesn't fit them.
I mean freedom of speech, not reach describes one boundary of the law in that nobody is required to give you a platform as far as i know.
However it does absolutely not fit to the free speech absolutism purported last year.
Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.
This community has a weird fetish for anything elon musk. If he scratches his butt, this community will post and comment about how much fingernail he used. And you are correct, everyone claiming to hate twitter/musk do a great job of keeping his company and name recognition relevant.
Yeah I was enjoying a lot of the drama, not so now, sick of seeing his mug plastered all over Lemmy.
Raise your hand if you are convinced this will not impact the people who pay for the blue checkmark. Meaning that a lot of Elon Fanbois / Bots / Fascists will be seen with theit shitty takes (since the checkmark pushes your comments up), while voices of reason will be dragged down further.
Twitter is rapidly becomming the new Truth Social and it's sad to watch.
Well that was the whole point. His old friend Peter Thiel and others failed to set up a competing service against Twitter, so now they're undermining Twitter. Either Twitter steps into line and becomes what they want it to be, or it dies due to the $13bn debt/tax avoidance scam that Musk performed.
Since I don't follow Musk, please elaborate. I hope, you don't mean his buying an unprofitable company for $40B was to avoid taxes...
Overpaying and then destroying the value means that eventually, he will be able to claim losses on his taxes. This will allow him to reduce his tax liability for his profitable businesses.
Sure but it doesn't make sense to destroy more capital than you're liable in taxes.
No. I'm referring to the $13bn out of the $44bn purchase price that Twitter paid itself. As Twitter is now deep in debt, it won't be making a profit any time soon, so there will be no tax paid on that $13bn purchase.
The $44bn purchase is broken down more or less as:
The process is known as a leveraged buyout, and it's what's killed many staple businesses that were otherwise perfectly viable, eg Toys R Us.
Dear Elon,
You say you hate socialism yet you socialized around 40% of the acquisition money.
Curious.
That was always the point of the blue check under Elon. It’s very clear already that blue checks have vastly higher reach and engagement. This all started back in December.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/23/23523845/twitter-blue-paying-priority-replies-conversations
It ruined so much of the appeal. Previously when someone was being a fucking idiot you could see them getting absolutely dragged in the comments, and it was cathartic. Now it's just blue check sycophants going "omg based".
Can we stop posting musk shit? It’s exhausting.
Have you considered joining "Enough Musk Spam", another such community devoted entirely to posting about the thing they dont like seeing posts about?
Lol. I blocked that shit.
You understand that the point of these subs is the exact opposite of that?
Yes I understand that and am criticizing it. Aggregating posts about how a thing is bad is still posting about the thing. Rather than adding anti-XYZ posts to my feed I would rather just filter XYZ from me feed entirely.
You still seen confused, that's the exact opposite purpose of the subs
Hoy shit dude i understand that completely. I am not talking about their purpose. I am talking about their content. their purpose is contradictory. I'm bored with you now, stop replying. it was a one off about how the subs are stupid. either say something substantial or go away
It's doubly exhausting for the hundreds of millions of people who are still there and are affected by this.
Like it or not (I don't), free speech has nothing to do with social media. Platforms are free to do this, it's the government that can't limit your speech like this.
Given those circumstances, I wonder if social media should be treated like infrastructure. That would fuse constitutional rights and the platform itself.
While you're right, I think the issue here is the hypocrisy of Musk claiming to be pro free speech (specifically on his platform) only to then repeatedly limit speech he doesn't personally like.
I feel pretty numb to right wing hypocrisy at this point. Which is probably their exact playbook.
Indeed. Personally my problem isn't with them limiting the "freedom of speech". It's with them claiming they have it or that it's even relevant there, as you've said.
Same page club. I think centralized social media is going to die sooner or later anyway*, so I'm thinking it's only a problem in the short term.
*Making money from social media just sounds like some weird shit in a history book to me, like merkins. We'll see I guess.
This is from April. Did something change with it?
This is the most important comment on this thread. I wish lemmy forced you to post the date of the article
I have to strongly agree here. This needs to be a strongly written and enforced rule for social media. Dates and timestamps need to be extremely clear and a requirement for all sorts of news reporting.
The topic is trending on X today so I didn't noticed the date. But I guess there might have been some updates compared to April?
You are part of the problem.
So much for that free speech he was talking about.
"Free speech absolutist"®©™
(Terms and conditions apply)
Someone predicted that they were going to slowly add back all the stuff they took out and they were right
I think most people could have predicted that. Most of the things Musk removed were there for a reason (Regardless of whether they where popular with Twitter's users or not). Mostly of economical or legal nature. You cannot simply remove them if you want Twitter to someday make a profit.
Right at the beginning I said they would add it all back and/or get a never ending chain of lawsuits thrown at them and right now it's looking a bit like both.
You can say whatever you like... in the privacy of your own cell.
I mean, it was never about free speech. It was always about crippling a powerful communication tool that had been used to undermine Middle Eastern governments. "Free Speech" was just how Musk was able to curry favor with fascists and grift retards into paying for twitter blue.
Why are there people still using that garbage? It’s fucking hilarious watching everyone complain about twitter, YouTube, etc and then continue using it.
I don't give a fuck about Twitter, stop posting this garbage already!
it's not a revolution if you don't wind up where you started
Stop calling it X
But when you're looking for a crap company and platform that's always been bad, but is also, surprisingly, somehow now much worse, X marks the spot.
The only thing absolute about Elmo is being a cuck.
Elmu!
lol such a Loser shitshow.
#BoycottMusk
Everyone complaining or saying leave but nobody talking about alternatives that solve some of the problems. Mastodon exists. Nostr exists. BlueSky kind of exists.
The problem with the alternatives is there's no draw to any of these sites. Like people aren't going to Mastodon because it has some amazing features that everyone wishes Twitter had, they're going because they don't like Musk.
There's so much on Twitter that these other sites don't have that it's hard to justify leaving. There are so many politicians, reporters, athletes and teams, bands, artists, etc all on Twitter. I follow hockey pretty closely and every major trade that happened last season was first reported on Twitter. Will I get that breaking news on Mastodon? No, so what is the draw to Mastodon? What does the average user get out of moving over?
What do content creators get out of moving? An artist can have years of their work on their account as a portfolio to draw new fans and get work, but if they move none of those posts show up on Mastodon. Now they have to post their entire portfolio again, and that doesn't even guarantee that their audience will follow them. Now they're on a much smaller website with a much smaller audience and they're probably not going to get the same exposure or opportunities that they had when on Twitter.
Oh no.... Anyway
What are you even quoting bro
I was onboard until I read your comment. What is he even quoting bro?
It is a for profit place that has always put reach before speech. For-profit places are not bastions of free speech, they are bastions of making decisions that make them more money.
Since when a rule change to (any site whatsoever) related to technology in any way? Yeah, we get it, you HATE "Xtwitter" and want it to burn but please... you are beating a dead horse at this rate. Just let it go.
That, or the mods around here need a reality check and start dropping some chill pills (i.e temp. bans) on users like OP..
It's not, but the top mod also runs a bot that automatically posts content from various news sites, probably based on keywords. And I'd bet that some of those keywords are Twitter and Facebook. So don't expect them to follow their own rules.
Some bozo changing the rules on his social media site is not scientific knowledge.
Breaking News: Elon Musk throws gasoline on dumpster fire
so this is why those shithole accounts have been showing up on my for you page.