Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[Time_Traveller]

Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors

Updated Dec 18, 2022, 7:40 PM GMT

Twitter will no longer allow users to promote their presence on certain social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. In a post outlining these changes, Twitter says it will take action against users that violate this policy “at both the Tweet level and the account level.”

Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors
Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors
© Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
This means users can no longer include links to their profiles on other social networks (or even include their handle without a URL) in their Twitter bio, nor can they link to their posts on banned platforms unless it’s a cross-post. Twitter also says it may suspend accounts “used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform,” and will no longer allow users to link to third-party link aggregators, like Linktree or Lnk.bio. Despite this, Twitter is still fine with the paid promotion of these banned platforms:

We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above. Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.

Twitter says it will remove any tweets that contain violations of the policy, and could temporarily suspend users with links to banned social platforms in their profiles. It will also take action against users who try to get around this policy by cloaking URLs to other platforms or “spelling out “dot” for social media platforms that use ‘.’ in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.”

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/235 ... ompetitors

[weatheriscool]

I don't think wjfox would allow me to post links to any place I liked either...So I don't think it is unfair.

[caltrek]

I don't think wjfox would allow me to post links to any place I liked either...So I don't think it is unfair.

WJ Fox runs a small well moderated site. So, that is false equivalence.

...and yes, there is a subjective element to what is "well moderated." The difference between well moderated and not, used to be called "common sense." Apparently, not so common anymore.

[raklian]

Guys, vote if you have a Twitter account.

[spryfusion]

Guys, vote if you have a Twitter account.

[ººº]

Guys, vote if you have a Twitter account.

There must be a catch:
He said "as head of Twitter", not "from Twitter"

[wjfox]

Elon Musk is a Jekyll and Hyde character. And as head of Twitter, Hyde is winning

Sun 18 Dec 2022 09.00 GMT

Watching what’s going on at Twitter is like watching a guy losing his mind in slow motion. The guy in question is Elon Musk, who once upon a time was the world’s richest man and now isn’t. (That slot is apparently occupied by Bernard Arnault, the luxury goods mogul.)

Musk is in a hole but apparently doesn’t know Denis Healey’s First Law of Holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. The funny thing is that he dug the hole himself. First, he paid way over the odds for Twitter. Then, when Tesla shares (the main source of his wealth) tanked, and Twitter’s share price dropped, he tried to get out of the deal. That failed, so he was forced to borrow a lot of money – incurring interest payments of around a billion dollars a year – thereby becoming the reluctant owner of a loss-making company. And he hasn’t the faintest idea of how to make it work.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... is-winning

[Vector]

[Time_Traveller]

I don't think wjfox would allow me to post links to any place I liked either...So I don't think it is unfair.

He doesn't want any right-wing bias links which you post.

[wjfox]

To be clear, I don't block "any" right-wing links. There are plenty of conservative-leaning sources that are perfectly acceptable here.

But if something is obviously very biased and misleading, then I consider it harmful, not just to public discourse, but the way search engines are likely to view this forum and rank us in terms of quality. So I'll block those more extreme links. This includes left-wing sources, btw.

This article has a great "bell curve" of media bias, which illustrates the point.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-b ... 2018-02-28

Edit: Unpaywalled version:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... 2018-02-28

[caltrek]

Guys, vote if you have a Twitter account.

There must be a catch:
He said "as head of Twitter", not "from Twitter"

Could be he will retain ownership but appoint somebody else as CEO while he tends to other matters, such as SpaceX and Tesla.
At any rate, an interesting comment from from Common Dreams

As of this writing (on December 19, 2022) the results were approximately 58% in favor of him stepping down and 42% saying he should stay on...

If Musk steps down as CEO there's no telling who he would choose to replace him.

As he ominously tweeted subsequent to posting the user survey, "As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it."

A possibility is that he will reverse course and turn Twitter into a publicly held corporation. This could involve issuing stock in order to pay off some of the debt incurred in buying the company. As I understand it, currently massive payments are coming due periodically to pay off the debt and or interest payments on loans taken out as part of his purchase of Twitter. He could be trying to cut his losses and either unburden himself of Twitter completely or surrendering some control in exchange for a sharing of the benefits of Twitter ownership. He could also sell off the corporation as a privately held to some other entity.

He has also floated the possibility of a declaration of bankruptcy. Such a move would unburden him from payback of debt or at least restructuring his debt to make it more manageable. Whether Twitter would keep operating under this option is in question. I would think a complete shut-down would represent a tremendous loss to him and his backers given how much was paid for the purchase of Twitter, so I don't think the actual shutting down of Twitter is highly likely. Still, this all has the marks of being such a fiasco...

[weatheriscool]

U.S. lawmakers to include ban on TikTok on government devices
Source: Reuters

U.S. lawmakers will include a proposal to bar federal government employees from using Chinese app TikTok on government-owned devices in a key spending bill, sources told Reuters on Monday.

The Senate last week voted on a bill sponsored by Republican Senator Josh Hawley to bar federal employees from using the ByteDance-owned short video app on government-owned devices. It was the latest action by U.S. lawmakers to crack down on Chinese companies amid national security fears.

The ban is set to be included in a massive omnibus measure to fund U.S. government operations that is expected to be voted on this week, the sources said.

The proposal last week won the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA15tf16

[ººº]

Why would you use TikTok at work?

[caltrek]

Wasn’t Elon Musk Supposed to Quit by Now?
by Shirin Ghaffary
December 20, 2022

Introduction:

(Vox) It’s been over 36 hours since people voted overwhelmingly for Elon Musk to step down as CEO of Twitter (out of some 17 million votes, 57.5 percent were in favor of Musk resigning). But instead of immediately and publicly accepting the results, which he said he’d do, Musk is now casting doubt on the validity of his poll after Musk himself launched it on Twitter, a platform that he owns.

It’s not just anonymous Twitter users who may want Musk to step down. Outside investors are also calling for Musk to focus less on Twitter and more on Tesla. They see the Twitter drama as distracting Musk from his more lucrative business at Tesla, which has seen its stock price fall precipitously in recent weeks. Musk has long said he eventually wants to step down as Twitter CEO, so it’s unclear why he seems so unwilling to accept the results of the poll calling for him to end his chaotic reign as head of the company.

The recent poll debacle demonstrates Musk’s self-destructive attachment to running Twitter, despite the fact that it has jeopardized his reputation and business success since he took over in October. It’s also another example of how Musk can’t seem to handle criticism — from debating the percentage of people in the crowd who were booing him at a comedy show to firing employees who criticized him, and now, dismissing the legitimacy of the Twitter users who voted him out of the company he just bought.

Rather than comment on the results of the poll directly, Musk took to Twitter on Monday morning and encouraged questions about whether the results were legitimate. He engaged in a Twitter thread by a user suggesting that a “deep state” bot army was rigging the poll against him. Musk replied to another user in the same thread who suggested that only paid subscribers to Twitter Blue should be able to vote in polls: He said, “Twitter will make that change.”

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/20/ ... it-resign

[weatheriscool]

I'd be fucking floored if he stepped down because of this poll.

[weatheriscool]

Facebook parent Meta to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725 mln

Source: Reuters

Dec 23 (Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) has agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit accusing the social media giant of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users' personal information.

The proposed settlement, which was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday, would resolve a long-running lawsuit prompted by revelations in 2018 that Facebook had allowed the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access data of as many as 87 million users.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the proposed settlement the largest to ever be achieved in a U.S. data privacy class action and the most that Meta has ever paid to resolve a class action lawsuit.

"This historic settlement will provide meaningful relief to the class in this complex and novel privacy case," the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, Derek Loeser and Lesley Weaver, said in a joint statement.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/facebook- ... 022-12-23/

[caltrek]

In The Far Future of Space Travel and Humanity an interesting conversation about bots has come up. We have also recently been discussing the need to keep comments more confined to the most relevant threads. So, I thought I would present a slice of the conversation below in this thread:

erowind wrote: ↑Fri Dec 23, 2022 2:43 am

Cyber_Rebel wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 11:47 am
It still kind of amazes me how we're even at the point to where bots can post on forums with coherent responses, sometimes more so than their human counterparts. @R8Z is correct in saying that at some point, we truly won't be able to tell the difference, or said A.I. would be "conscious" enough to truly add to any discussion, being just as valid as any other person.

As for space, I think the potential promise of unlimited resources and having new frontiers is obviously worth it, whether it be by augmented humanity or full-on AGI.

I hope we figure out a countermeasure for this forum specifically tbh. As much as Yuli predicted future people being able to live out their own personal digital realities as AI gets better I do like talking to real people mostly about the future, specifically all of the lovable and argumentative people on this forum myself much included.

A few bots are more than welcome, I hope they don’t outnumber us at any point though

caltrek wrote: Also, if said bots do "participate" it would be nice to know that they are bots, for reasons articulated by Erowind.

Maybe something for some future version of this forum, or by some other commercial (or nonprofit) social media platform with the human (and computer) resources to pull it off.

[Time_Traveller]

Numerous Strategies Have Failed To Get Advertisers Back On Twitter

Dec 24, 2022,07:15pm EST

With Elon Musk agreeing to resign as CEO after he conducted a Twitter poll asking whether he should step down and 57.5% of the 17 million respondents said yes, the question is who should run the troubled company and how he will entice anyone to do it.

One potential candidate who told Musk in April that being CEO of Twitter was his “dream job” tech investor Jason Calacanis sent out his own Twitter poll—with emojis showing it was in jest—asking whether he, investor and former technology David Sacks, or “Other” should be named CEO. Ironically, the majority of respondents voted for “Other.”

He later tweeted, perhaps in jest, “Who would like the most miserable job in tech AND media?! Who is insane enough to run twitter?!?!” Another user tweeted that technology investor Joe Lonsdale should get the job, he responded, “Lol, no thanks.” There does not appear to be overwhelming interest in the job from people who would have the skill set to run the company.

Shares in Tesla fell 18% this week and are down more than 60% since Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter Inc. Clearly shareholders in Tesla believe he is spending too much time on Twitter, being CEO of multiple companies at the same time nearly always ends badly. Musk now owns shares in Tesla worth $52 billion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/derekbaine ... 0862625ef5

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

Don't think they'll ban it for civvies since that Chinese connection is just too valuable. Hell even Disney has Disneyland in China Not surprised these sorts of changes are gov employee related as usual.

[wjfox]