Journalist says he finds it ‘surreal’ to have account on X suspended after writing critique of platform

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 738 points – Journalist says he finds it ‘surreal’ to have account on X suspended after writing critique of platform
irishtimes.com

Journalist says he finds it ‘surreal’ to have account on X suspended after writing critique of platform::The author’s account had over 100,000 followers and was around 14 years old, he said

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I wouldn't call it "surreal" at all, I'd call it "completely expected" given who runs that platform

Depressing how quickly this kind of stuff went from outrageous to completely normal.

Quit. Using. Twitter.

Person eating shit: THIS TASTES BAD, SOMEBODY SHOULD CHANGE THE TASTE

Quit eating shit.

But all my friends are in the shit restaurant!

I stopped using it before muskrat bought it.

I stop caring after i reported so many bots and a farm started harassing me.

I was on the fence about leaving...I didn't use it very much to begin with, but it was useful for checking in on bands for whom Twitter was their preferred social media.

But the day that I read that Twitter was considering accepting Lone Skum''s offer to buy it, I immediately deleted my account. Whether he ended up buying it or not, the fact that they'd even consider his offer told me all I needed to know. Twitter had become such an essential tool for so many oppressed people across the globe that for them to even entertain the idea of selling it to that pompous, no-talent cunt in order to enrich their shareholders was enough to hasten my exit.

That being said, once that sale was made...while I'd have preferred to see $44 billion go to the working class instead of a bunch of wealthy shareholders, I am much happier seeing it split up instead of remaining in the coffers of a bigoted fuck billionaire whose own kid disowned him. Fuck him.

It was enough of a dumpster fire before it got all musky. After it got the preputial gland the edgelords became MOR and there was no arguing past their mechanical circle jerk of atavism.

As if anyone reading this thread uses Twitter.

You'd be surprised. There's a ton of people who came to Lemmy due to the Reddit API fiasco and still visit there daily, Twitter addiction is no different.

O’Reilly said if he did not get his account back it would be “personally, quite annoying but professionally quite depressing” as Twitter was his route into his current profession as a journalist and author. He used it as a “shop front” in ways, he said.

“I was very, very reluctant to be a Twitter doomer because it had done so much for me... But it’s really at the point where it doesn’t really work in practical terms. It is not as useful as an object as it used to be. It incentivises lots of extremely negative and hateful speech and has really made that a big kind of calling card of its business for the last year or two... that you can go on there and say anything.”

Fediverse is waiting.

Social networks that do this should lose any safe harbor provisions. Government are so fucking far behind with basic common sense.

Absolutely. You cannot claim safe harbor while banning stuff like this.

i hate banning anyone as much as the next anarcho-dingus but afaik there's no law against banning whoever you want and i'm not sure there should be one. i don't know what the answer is, if it isn't public control of all social media.

maybe some public funded internet services such as defederated twitter and reddit alternatives? completely open and paid for with taxes, in direct competition with their for-profit contemporaries.

Séamas gave us of the funniest story threads I've ever read on that cursed site: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/992006545473966082.html

Yup - this is one that stayed with me. This has earned a place in internet history.

I wanna know the timeframe here. Ket doesn't last very long.

Towards the end he says that it was about 35 minutes. Plus maybe green ket is like blue meth.

First off, just call it Twitter.

Second, get off Twitter!

The suspension cited platform manipulation and spam as its reasoning, which he wrote in his appeal that he had nothing to do with.

So the only conclusion we can draw here is that writing an article critical of Twitter because it's overrun with (paid) spambots now constitutes "platform manipulation."

Elon in 2022: I wanna get rid of all the spambots!

Elon in 2024: You're banned for being mean to the spambots!

It's time for news orgs and journalists to say a) "we're hosting our content on our own Mastodon server and that will be the source of truth for federated platforms (eventually including Threads and Bluesky)", b) "we will mirror the content across non-federated social media platforms that support free and fair reporting".

In other words give Twitter the middle finger and make the content available everywhere.

I just wish that a free-speech-absolutist-billionaire would buy the platform so things like this wouldn’t happen anymore. He could even rename it something cool (like ‘Y’ or ‘Z’) to get some street-cred with edgy middleschoolers..

What pains me the most is that idiots still simp for Elon after all of this.

They simp because of this. He is "owning the libs" by being a fragile thin-skinned clown while unbanning actual Nazis.

Clearly Seamas has not spent much time on message boards.

All sad jokes aside: This really is a problem. Ignoring the evangelizing for a moment, we have been watching someone who owes his entire life to apartheid destroying the most democratized "free speech" platform for over a year now. And, with the increasing wariness of venture capital to burn money for a decade at a time, we are unlikely to see anything like it ever agian. Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

This has very much been a "something has died forever" kind of experience.

Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

Don't Bluesky and Threads have similar serious privacy concerns? Those running them would, I think, have similar if not even more access to people's information, depending on how much their respective apps request. Mastodon and its apps on the other hand, generally don't request as much access to one's information, meaning instance owners arguably have much less to snoop through.

It's always weird to me when a social media app tries to brag about "privacy". You know once you post something publicly, it's out there forever, right? And if you want private, direct messaging, there are apps for that. (And they integrate with Lemmy/Mastodon a hell of a lot better than proprietary apps.)

ActivityPub in particular is radically public. It broadcasts what you post to a bunch of other servers run by anyone from IT professionals to kids, which could be anything from vanilla Mastodon running in a datacenter to an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden slow implementation of half of ActivityPub running on a hacked smart toaster. It's for things you want to show to the world.

We have several good options for end-to-end encrypted communication, such as Matrix, which is open source and federated, or Signal, which several of my elderly relatives managed to figure out without coaching.

Even my comment here is being broadcast to every computer used by any person reading this comment.

If you're posting on public social media, your shit is public. It was not very different on Reddit.

Right now, I can say "elon musk is a racist piece of shit who owes his entire life to his daddy's emerald mine that ran on apartheid". There is a slight chance that the dipshit cares enough to track me down and call me a pedophile but it is nigh zero.

I can also say how I feel about the CCP and Xinnie the Poo and putin and so forth with pretty minimal risk (my social credit score is already shit).

But what if I am actually a threat to a corporation because I am reporting on information that affects their bottom line? To the point that it is cheaper to pay some muscle to come rough me up. Suddenly, I am dependent on the platform caring more about their "image" than to cooperate.

Similarly, what if I am in a war torn country where roving bands of thugs are murdering anyone who gets in their way (... so possibly early 2025 US...)? Suddenly, that footage of a civilian being beheaded getting traced back to me is my life and the life of everyone I care about.

That is the scale we are talking about. Twitter was not a great company but they were, at least historically, good about not making it easy for those brutal regimes to get that information. That had already started to shift by the time musk took over but it is gone now.

And that, combined with active misinformation campaigns, is already defining the brutal conflict in Gaza.

I'd argue, oddly, that it's easier to hold a single corporate entity accountable for data breaches than mastodon instance owners.

It's likely the case that both of are bad from a data security point of view, but at least with the corporations you know who to shout at.

** edit just realised that mastodon may not work in the exact same way as Lemmy when it comes to instance owners, I'd have to look that up.

First, I agree with what you're saying here about the privacy issue.

The other side of that is that companies or even individual journalists could just spin up their own instance and not allow outsiders to sign up.

However, there needs to be a critical mass of engaged people. I don't know what Mastodon's engagement looks like but I can't imagine it's very high. With even the slightest barrier to entry beyond "sign up with your email address on our main site" there will never be as much engagement as a simpler platform. On top of that, a lot of news outlets consider hot takes on the social media site formerly known as Twitter to be news. So they embed dumb opinions from there in loads of "articles".

It's going to be a long road for them to leave and when they do it likely won't be to join the Fediverse.

Edit: except possibly the BBC. Maybe if their trial pans out others would follow. We'll see.

The other side of that is that companies or even individual journalists could just spin up their own instance and not allow outsiders to sign up.

I know there are a lot of people in the various privacy and piracy boards who act like the world is against them and brag about how they only log in to social media through tor and blah blah blah.

They... are basically larping. Nobody actually cares about them.

Whereas, a journalist who investigates labor issues or something that is ACTUALLY illegal? There are plenty of stories about what happens when the companies that actually "own" the data suddenly want to use it to find you. This is when your life becomes having a dedicated laptop that is never on in the same physical location as any of your other devices, needing to change cars, and literally going into hiding.

Also... maybe look up Jordan "friendlyjordies" Shanks-Markovina. His story is not at all unique. He just happens to be brave/dumb enough to talk about it online (and have collaborators who use it for Content)

The worst the various pro-piracy instances will face is a few sacrificial lambs getting put into indentured servitude by a company. The "pro-journalism" instances will get abducted and/or firebombed.

This is why one of the first things musk did was talk about how he wants to work with China (I think?). He instantly made it clear that twitter would no longer even pretend to give a shit about the privacy of its users. Because you should never have sent anything sensitive over a DM. But coordinating a more secure form of communication was very much a thing. Same with "having time" to... flee a country before the dictator you exposed comes for you.

I’d argue, oddly, that it’s easier to hold a single corporate entity accountable for data breaches than mastodon instance owners.

It’s likely the case that both of are bad from a data security point of view, but at least with the corporations you know who to shout at.

I'm inclined to agree, albeit I'm of two minds about it. On one hand, singular entity is technically easier, but being corporate means it's likely to have more wealth/resources to make it untenable for people to hold accountable. Whereas on the other hand, if you put in the effort to pin down a Mastodon instance admin or even a few admins, chances are they won't have those kinds of resources to really defend themselves, so you may be more likely to hold them accountable.

That is, compared to a corporate entity which may drag things out for a slap on the wrist settlement/fine or the like. I can see the different angles to where you're coming from though.

Wtf did they expect from 2024 Twitter?

"Liberal finds it surreal that neoliberalism creates fascism"

Such a weird thing! :D

Anyone surprised by Musky at this point only has themselves to blame.

How is this surreal? Journalists critical of Musk/Twitter have been being banned since he bought it.

Is this journalist really so self involved he thought it was OK they all got nuked as long as he didn't?

Insert "It's a private platform. He can do whatever he wants" comment

Most Reddit or Lemmy mods would ban you for critiquing them too.

Mods and owners can get very emotional

I certainly would not ban anyone critiquing me. I take it as feedback rather than a personal attack like the ones you're referring to.

and that is how it should be and which was also my philosophy when I held positions of authority in online communities (I don't hold any anymore because I no longer have time to spend as much time online as I used to)

That requires quite a bit of idealism and self-reflection which is not a common trait in humans.

There's a chart of things that give people a feeling of power:

Banning someone as a Discord or Reddit mod has to be right up there because nothing else explains their tyrannical fiefdom-like behavior, lmao

(TLDR: A subreddit mod trying to ban a reddit admin):

To provide some relief, the best "no-u" I've ever been personally witness to, was one moderator who went on a power trip and mistakenly tried to mute/ban me from discus for some contrived reason, and when he enacted the policy, the group chat policy bot banned him instead -- he soon afterwards realized that I was the owner of the partnered organization that was hosting the entire service

If only that could happen to Musky Husky, getting slapped in the face by the revolving door while holding his hall monitor pass

He absolutely can. But that doesn’t make him immune to ridicule and judgement for being a cowardly racist piece of shit.

100% agree. I just find it utterly hypocritical that he proclaimed himself at "a free-speech absolutionist" and cries like a little baby the moment someone says something bad about him.

If you ever question whether Eløn is actually a free speech absolutist, we can all point to cases like this.

We need a big exodus of media then the platform would be dead for sure.

Yep, everyone talking shit and they are still there. Leave it to die.

Llama still inhabiting former llama enclosure (recently and very publicly converted to a tiger pen) confused by strange occurrence of tiger bites.

Yeah what did he expect. It's not a people's platform anymore. It's the owner's. Better he be off and do his own thing elsewhere. Find better fields!

An entitled racist piece of shit coward doesn’t like negativity directed toward him, on the platform he bought so he could be an entitled racist piece of shit coward.

Imagine that.

Why anyone still has an account on that embarrassing shithole of a social media platform is beyond me. And why a journalist is dumb enough to to find it “surreal” that this happened in the first place, is equally baffling.

Well, I remember it being absolutely normal to be banned after criticizing some forum on that forum. Or these normies thought that there being millions instead of dozens of users someplace means that they are somehow relieved from using common sense?

Meh, I'm really so disgusted with that part of humanity which, while building this pretense of their favorite social media being some "platforms" and the new future, would ridicule me and people similar to me. I really can't feel anything but relief seeing all this. I really hope they relied on those.

Just a bit of malice, nothing serious.

The first time I was a mod on a forum (2001) I deleted a single post from, and temp banned a known troll harassing another user... I was removed as a mod so fast it made my head spin, and was talked to about it all...

Turns out a small forum ran by a bunch of nerds (I mean that affectionately) in the early 2000's was pretty pro-free speech.

Don't think just because -you- would ban someone for criticism that it's "normal," especially while unironically using the word "normies" in the next sentence.

Turns out a small forum ran by a bunch of nerds (I mean that affectionately) in the early 2000’s was pretty pro-free speech.

That's the only kind of forum to be that then.

Don’t think just because -you- would ban someone for criticism that it’s “normal,” especially while unironically using the word “normies” in the next sentence.

What are you blabbering about, I've never banned anyone at all except for obvious spammers.

The first time I was a mod on a forum (2001) I deleted a single post from, and temp banned a known troll harassing another user… I was removed as a mod so fast it made my head spin, and was talked to about it all…

"Removed as a mod" is something weird really. Apparently you mean that you were a single topic mod or something like that.

At least I don't remember that being a common thing then. Someone would start a forum, attract first friends, then other users, and then some of the friends would become mods.

This is a cultural argument, though, I'm talking about Russian-speaking web, maybe English-speaking parts were nicer, but I'm not sure I'd believe that - I see all the same around, on Reddit and here (it's really much better here, though) and everywhere.

blabbering

Okay, I could and should have just stopped there, bhuuuut...

This is a cultural argument, though, I'm talking about Russian-speaking web

That's pretty telling, regarding the stance you're taking... That being said; everyone else is talking about a site owned and run in the US.

Okay, I could and should have just stopped there, bhuuuut…

You are exactly blabbering when you say things outta your ass about what others do which you can't possibly know. So you should have just stopped earlier.

That being said; everyone else is talking about a site owned and run in the US.

How ignorant one should be to think that.

That’s pretty telling, regarding the stance you’re taking…

FFS, you are behaving in the exact way I described, and you are not even a mod now.

I think you were not very different from what I describe back then, just not being self-conscious now.