Elon Musk | Doer of things on X and sad little man

gormless said:
90% of the articles I read I have seen in a Tweet.

In regards to your comment on wars, tweets have been used reduce the effect of disinformation from governments.Coincidentally I am halfway through “We Are Bellingcat,” a book by the creator of the OSINT agency regarding how using Tweets from people on the ground was essential in them disproving Russian propaganda both regards the 2014 Ukraine invasion, as well as being able to map the front lines better than actual intelligence agencies could. They did similar regarding the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane, again disproving Russian propaganda. At its best, Twitter can be give you access to videos and news direct from the front line of whatever you want. It’s not a coincidence that governments in the Arab Spring tried to prevent access to it.

I mean Osama’s death was first hinted at on Twitter. Some Pakistani bloke who worked nights tweeted fuming about a helicopter hovering low over his town of Attobad.

It’s honestly just a tool that is whatever you want it to be. Well until today
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It works both ways, but yes it's a good point, hence the first sentence of my post "Even if in some cases it's the only way to hear about something happening".
 
I guess he wants to force people into subscribing to Blue. No one has a god given right to use a platform for free.
 
That_Bloke said:
Even if in some cases it's the only way to hear about something happening, I'll never consider Twitter as a sufficient source of information in and by itself. Especially when it comes to important topics like war, politics, etc. Snippets, selected pics, targeted links and catch phrases will never tell the full story. That's junk food for me. I personally like the good old articles, preferably crossing them from as many sources as possible, in as many languages as possible. Not perfect by any means but still a bit more consistent, detailed and more importantly more credible than whatever Twitter churns out for you.

@Solius I found it incredibly difficult to filter what you're fed and the replies/reactions often reach an appalling level of bias, ignorance, tribalism and bad faith. Maybe it's because I didn't stay long enough on the platform as I shut down my account very quickly, even faster than Facebook. Said Facebook that still has my data stored even though I shut down my account almost ten years ago (I still receive notifications from them to this day).

Being old enough to remember a world without internet, I was very enthusiastic about social networks and their potential at the beginning but developed a visceral mistrust against them over the years, after seeing how easily they can condition their users and the explosion the wildest conspiracy theories, giving any nutjob an easy and very efficient platform to express themselves, interact with their cult and be widely heard (of). We saw it with Trump, Bolsonaro and Covid as some of the most prominent recent examples.

However I'll gladly admit that it could be a great way to stay in contact with friends all over the world, and communities that share the same interests (be it football, photography, anime or whatever) and in this case, "cesspit" wasn't the most appropriate term. It won't change my opinion about Twitter and I personally have other means to communicate, but can respect that.
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Articles are literally posted on twitter For you to peruse at your pleasure, from different view points, cultures, classes etc. twitter isn't a source of information it's media distribution hub. That's it. Its not CNN it's a platform that helps distribute meida across the world, much more important than u may think imo
 
Krakenzero said:
Don't you see this as a potential problem? Sincerely asking.
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Redlambs said:
Sincerely interested in the answer they give...
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Not really, unless I am missing something? Sincerely curious as to whether I am!?

I follow a lot of journalists, over a fairly wide spectrum of interests and opinions.
If I end up reading an article in the Guardian/Telegraph/The Athletic, I’m not sure if it matters how I got there. Only danger would be potentially getting caught up in an echo chamber though that’s easy to do no matter how you consume your media. If you read stuff linked on here in current events it’s largely going to be left leaning for example.
 
I think I'd be sincerely interested in what the folks who think it problematic to mainly read articles that catch your eye from tweets think is the correct way to find them.
 
Oly Francis said:
Guys, you do realize that you can also follow various newspaper feeds on twitter, or journalist you consider reliable etc. right? Right?

You can use Twitter as a hub so you can know what article are released, or get news before journalists write a full article about it. I don't know what accounts you're following but definitely the wrong ones.

@That_Bloke you seem to have a very poor understanding of how it works.
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yeah, that’s literally what I was saying. Most the articles I read have been posted by journalists on twitter whom I follow. Not sure how you have got the impression I don’t understand that. I was saying to the other guy it’s a great source of news and is only a poor site if you follow the wrong people
 
DOTA said:
I think I'd be sincerely interested in what the folks who think it problematic to mainly read articles that catch your eye from tweets think is the correct way to find them.
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What people did before Twitter was a thing
 
Elon Musk hasn’t done his image any favours over the last year or so has he. I didn’t really know a lot about him, and not knowing any better assumed he must be a pretty smart, forward thinking bloke - he makes electric cars, right?

But he’s a lunatic. And if you didn’t know it before, you do now.
 
gormless said:
Not really, unless I am missing something? Sincerely curious as to whether I am!?

I follow a lot of journalists, over a fairly wide spectrum of interests and opinions.
If I end up reading an article in the Guardian/Telegraph/The Athletic, I’m not sure if it matters how I got there. Only danger would be potentially getting caught up in an echo chamber though that’s easy to do no matter how you consume your media. If you read stuff linked on here in current events it’s largely going to be left leaning for example.
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Thanks for your answer. IMO it's a good practice to diversify not only the sources of the news you receive but also the channels in which you get them, as -and particularly in the information business- the way the news are messaged/packaged/channeled usually make up for most of the news you're actually receiving. And of course that's true for Twitter but also for Bellingcat, Newsmax, CNN, newspapers and radio news shows.

As a parallel, if I get 90% of what I eat from the same food retailer and suddenly a new owner arrives, fires a bunch of people and starts changing the procedures over how the products are stored, refrigerated and dispatched, I would be more than a little concerned.
 
Krakenzero said:
Thanks for your answer. IMO it's a good practice to diversify not only the sources of the news you receive but also the channels in which you get them, as -and particularly in the information business- the way the news are messaged/packaged/channeled usually make up for most of the news you're actually receiving. And of course that's true for Twitter but also for Bellingcat, Newsmax, CNN, newspapers and radio news shows.

As a parallel, if I get 90% of what I eat from the same food retailer and suddenly a new owner arrives, fires a bunch of people and starts changing the procedures over how the products are stored, refrigerated and dispatched, I would be more than a little concerned.
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As far as I can tell, the point you're making here rests entirely on this bit being true and I really don't know what you mean by it?
 
I wonder how this far instagram with text actually is. I'm an old man when it comes to social media so someone might need to educate me on this but surely the moment that launches and you can use your instagram account and maybe you can copy over your followers/following too it's game over.
 
DOTA said:
As far as I can tell, the point you're making here rests entirely on this bit being true and I really don't know what you mean by it?
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Take the sale thread for example. There's been no real news in there for months. However, there's been lots of rumours shared by Twitter that seems to point toward any of the 3/4 possible outcomes of the sale process, depending on who is sharing the info and what's his/her agenda. Then it gets expanded and exposed here, usually with several deviations from the actual source reported. As a result we have people in the thread confidently talking about figures they know nothing about, bid offers they don't understand and the motivations from the different actors involved in the process, from which they haven't heard in months. And we have a faction convinced that one outcome is preferable, and another faction disagreeing. All due to a big pile of nothing news, that get messaged, packaged and channeled differently depending on who is the receiver (which is, of course, facilitated by Twitter).

There's probably lots of other examples, but in short, diversification prevents disinformation. And having one only source or one only channel providing all of what someone thinks it's news is potentially dangerous.
 
Krakenzero said:
Take the sale thread for example. There's been no real news in there for months. However, there's been lots of rumours shared by Twitter that seems to point toward any of the 3/4 possible outcomes of the sale process, depending on who is sharing the info and what's his/her agenda. Then it gets expanded and exposed here, usually with several deviations from the actual source reported. As a result we have people in the thread confidently talking about figures they know nothing about, bid offers they don't understand and the motivations from the different actors involved in the process, from which they haven't heard in months. And we have a faction convinced that one outcome is preferable, and another faction disagreeing. All due to a big pile of nothing news, that get messaged, packaged and channeled differently depending on who is the receiver (which is, of course, facilitated by Twitter).

There's probably lots of other examples, but in short, diversification prevents disinformation. And having one only source or one only channel providing all of what someone thinks it's news is potentially dangerous.
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Again, it's this bit that I am not sure what is meant by.
 
DOTA said:
Twitter is behaving completely normally for me now.
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I’ve flicked in and out of Twitter throughout the day like I do nearly every day and I’ve not noticed anything different at all

im actually a little confused as to what is going on
 
Reditus said:
I’ve flicked in and out of Twitter throughout the day like I do nearly every day and I’ve not noticed anything different at all

im actually a little confused as to what is going on
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Part of me thinks that's his whole goal. Make random changes to keep people talking. Its social media using the marketing tactics of a reality TV show.
 
Rate limit exceeded, again. I’ve been browsing for 10 minutes, if that.
 
Semper Fudge said:
Rate limit exceeded, again. I’ve been browsing for 10 minutes, if that.
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It is starting to look like Musk is intent on destroying Twitter (or is just such so incompetent that he is unable to avoid himself destroying it) - either way, this will be his single greatest gift to humanity and his most important legacy - his over-priced golf carts, a distant second.
 
Infra-red said:
It is starting to look like Musk is intent on destroying Twitter (or is just such so incompetent that he is unable to avoid himself destroying it) - either way, this will be his single greatest gift to humanity and his most important legacy - his over-priced golf carts, a distant second.
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I’m weirdly kind of hoping it is deliberate so it gives me the push to finally stop using it. Either way the bloke’s a cretin.
 
Didn’t he do a vote thing asking if he should step down months ago?

Why is he still there and doing weird shit?
 
I don’t see how this is intentional.

Why would advertisers want to touch a social media platform that most users can only browse for a limited time per day. I’d be surprised if existing advertisers weren’t already very unhappy about this. It would make no sense at all.

I suspect that either it’s a bug they are struggling to fix having tried to make big changes…or they really aren’t paying the bills and have been throttled.
 
LawCharltonBest said:
Didn’t he do a vote thing asking if he should step down months ago?

Why is he still there and doing weird shit?
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Because he borrowed about 35 billion dollars to buy it.

Amd its now worth about 15 billion.

He can't get out without, for once, spending his own money, and that means selling tesla stock.

I still think this rate limit is covering for some tech screw up, and will be gone soon enough.
 
Fair play to Musk. He’s managed to identify the issue with Twitter. The constant immersive activity and engagement that keeps you on the site for far longer than you intended.
 
Incredible

They need to study these months Musk has been in charge. What a way to completely blow 44 billion.

Twitter is absolutely done as it stands.
 
The good news : I can see tweets again albeit temporarily.

The bad news : Amplified pay to play users with terrible opinions are still prioritised in replies on my feed. I suspect I’ll hit my 800 whilst reading <100.
 
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