tw.tter

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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 1:16 am

Everyone is now locked out of Twitter offices until next week, and 90% of the engineering staff have quit or been fired. As have most of the moderation staff.

This is after remote working was banned last week.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 1:18 am

The lettuce is still going, by the way.

http://lettuce.wtf/

Also Elon hasn't reached Liz Truss's milestone yet.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 1:20 am


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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 2:33 am

My entire Twitter timeline now is people saying goodbye to Twitter or making jokes about Twitter's demise.

And Mastodon.social has crawled to a stop.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:03 am

TeslaTrump seems like the kind of guy who always trusts his own farts, and so occasionally shits himself.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:45 am

dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 2:33 am
My entire Twitter timeline now is people saying goodbye to Twitter or making jokes about Twitter's demise.

And Mastodon.social has crawled to a stop.
Interesting, my timeline is has lots of tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... szTOB8S9bQ

I guess our views are influenced by what people on our networks are writing.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Nov 18, 2022 6:23 am

Remaining and departing Twitter employees told The Verge that, given the scale of the resignations this week, they expect the platform to start breaking soon.

[…]

Multiple “critical” teams inside Twitter have now either completely or near-completely resigned, said other employees who requested anonymity to speak without Musk’s permission. That includes Twitter’s traffic and front end teams that route engineering requests to the correct backend services. The team that maintains Twitter’s core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is also gone. “You cannot run Twitter without this team,” a departing employee said.

Several members of Twitter’s “Command Center” team, a group of engineers that is on call 24/7 and acts as the clearing house for problems internally, also tweeted about their departures. “If they go down, there is no one to call when sh.t breaks,” said a person familiar with how the team operates. The team that manages Twitter API for developers has also been severely gutted.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/234 ... e-deadline
Hundreds upon hundreds of Twitter employees have technically resigned but still have access to Twitter’s internal systems, with some speculating it is because the employees tasked with managing that access also resigned.
https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1 ... pLuitTZ24w
Sooo I’m told by two people that the entirety of Twitters payroll department has resigned/not elected to sign up for Elons Twitter 2.0
https://twitter.com/hayskali/status/159 ... pLuitTZ24w

Musk keeps writing that more people are using Twitter than ever. They are probably reading about it’s demise.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by nekomatic » Fri Nov 18, 2022 7:13 am

Wonder if the team that feeds that stupid fail whale has been fired yet.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Nov 18, 2022 8:59 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Nov 17, 2022 11:05 pm

I guess there'd be nothing stopping some servers having some kind of log to enable plain-text search, that could even be federalised amongst consenting servers, even if it needed some kind of upgrade. It's foss so wevs.

Can't say I personally considered text search a key feature of twitter, but can see why it would be useful. Culturomics researchers would miss out too.
As far as I know a FedSearch server was built and set up. But taken down after opposition from the Mastodon community.

It’s a trade-off between openness and privacy of users.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by lpm » Fri Nov 18, 2022 10:25 am

Responses to "we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol"

https://twitter.com/dappergander/status ... 0357129216
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 10:47 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:45 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 2:33 am
My entire Twitter timeline now is people saying goodbye to Twitter or making jokes about Twitter's demise.

And Mastodon.social has crawled to a stop.
Interesting, my timeline is has lots of tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... szTOB8S9bQ

I guess our views are influenced by what people on our networks are writing.
Clearly the social networks that have built up on the Twitter platform over the last decade will be enormously valuable in a lot of cases.

I don't think that necessarily means the underlying software, or the corporation that owns it, is essential to the process.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am

Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by jimbob » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:25 am

dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am
Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.
How does that work for, say Bellingcat, using Syrian civilians tweeting about Assad's crimes against humanity with photographic evidence?
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:29 am

jimbob wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:25 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am
Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.
How does that work for, say Bellingcat, using Syrian civilians tweeting about Assad's crimes against humanity with photographic evidence?
I wasn't referring to that specifically. More the journalists that use "popular on Twitter" as a measure of what the zeitgeist is that they should write stories about. US political takes in particular.

I do wonder how much of Trump's rise was due to too many journalists showing too much time on Twitter, and thinking that what it showed them was what the people thought was important.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:31 am

jimbob wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:25 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am
Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.
How does that work for, say Bellingcat, using Syrian civilians tweeting about Assad's crimes against humanity with photographic evidence?
This. Without functions like that, we'd not have been able to trace the movements of the Buk that shot down MH17.

For which Igor Girkin has just been convicted in absentia, btw.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:32 am

Here's a useful summary of where things are - https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/

Highlight:
The entire US payroll and tax department has quit.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by lpm » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:45 am

EACLucifer wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:31 am
jimbob wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:25 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am
Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.
How does that work for, say Bellingcat, using Syrian civilians tweeting about Assad's crimes against humanity with photographic evidence?
This. Without functions like that, we'd not have been able to trace the movements of the Buk that shot down MH17.

For which Igor Girkin has just been convicted in absentia, btw.
To be fair, it's not the job of a private corporation to help protestors in Iran or assist in bringing war criminals to justice. Those were just fortunate side-effects.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:53 am

I still think there's a bit of conflation of
1. The people present on the Twitter platform, and
2. The Twitter platform itself.

2 is pretty easily replaceable with the important features. People who want their posts to be searchable will have to remember to use the # key if they decamp to Mastodon, or some other replacement will emerge (hopefully not privately owned this time).

1 is trickier and harder to predict. It's also the more important part. But if Twitter really does have to sort severance pay for most of its tens of thousands of employees with no payroll department it's not even a given that the lights will stay on next week. So might need a bit of thought.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:54 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 10:47 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:45 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 2:33 am
My entire Twitter timeline now is people saying goodbye to Twitter or making jokes about Twitter's demise.

And Mastodon.social has crawled to a stop.
Interesting, my timeline is has lots of tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... szTOB8S9bQ

I guess our views are influenced by what people on our networks are writing.
Clearly the social networks that have built up on the Twitter platform over the last decade will be enormously valuable in a lot of cases.

I don't think that necessarily means the underlying software, or the corporation that owns it, is essential to the process.
There are still platform issues though. To take the linked person as an example, as far as I can tell from the academic Mastodon server rules I’ve seen if he had an account there pretty much everything he’d write or read would need to be behind a content warning. (For example scholar.social , expects content warnings around anything about current events, conflict or death and violence.)

Which would make using the platform to share information rather impractical.

That isn’t to criticise Mastodon users. It’s entirely reasonable for people not to want to read about atrocities in Syria or elsewhere. People who do work on that stuff need to see therapists.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:59 am

dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:29 am
jimbob wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:25 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:17 am
Relatedly for journalists: if your primary source of information is stuff you find via an opaque algorithm owned and operated by a corporation built by a rich silicon valley techbro, and then taken over by the world's richest man, you should probably call yourself a PR agent instead.
How does that work for, say Bellingcat, using Syrian civilians tweeting about Assad's crimes against humanity with photographic evidence?
I wasn't referring to that specifically. More the journalists that use "popular on Twitter" as a measure of what the zeitgeist is that they should write stories about. US political takes in particular.

I do wonder how much of Trump's rise was due to too many journalists showing too much time on Twitter, and thinking that what it showed them was what the people thought was important.
That is definitely an issue. A consequent problem is politicians taking up issues because they are discussed on Twitter by journalists.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:06 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 16, 2022 10:39 pm
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed Nov 16, 2022 7:06 pm
Mastodon might work fine for various nerds - no offence to the various nerds here - but it cannot easily substitute for twitter among the established twitter communities.
People keep saying that, but it's where communities that were driven off Twitter by abuse ended up, well before this all started.

If anything, it works better for communities that aren't the mainstream, because it isn't a system designed to maximize advertiser return by boosting the mainstream.
This is as much a comment about the friction of moving an internet community from one platform to another.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:12 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:54 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 10:47 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:45 am


Interesting, my timeline is has lots of tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... szTOB8S9bQ

I guess our views are influenced by what people on our networks are writing.
Clearly the social networks that have built up on the Twitter platform over the last decade will be enormously valuable in a lot of cases.

I don't think that necessarily means the underlying software, or the corporation that owns it, is essential to the process.
There are still platform issues though. To take the linked person as an example, as far as I can tell from the academic Mastodon server rules I’ve seen if he had an account there pretty much everything he’d write or read would need to be behind a content warning. (For example scholar.social , expects content warnings around anything about current events, conflict or death and violence.)

Which would make using the platform to share information rather impractical.

That isn’t to criticise Mastodon users. It’s entirely reasonable for people not to want to read about atrocities in Syria or elsewhere. People who do work on that stuff need to see therapists.
Yeah, scholar.social seems to be mega strict. Plenty of other servers are available, though. Presumably academics from a field studying current events wouldn't use one that bans them from talking about their work. But if they're signed up somewhere else there's nothing stopping them reading posts from scholar.social anyway.

This is a "getting used to how a different platform works" issue, not an inherent issue with the platform itself. Twitter was confusing when it was new too.

In my field there's a few other servers already, such as https://ecoevo.social, which has much less restrictive rules:
No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or casteism
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
No harassment, dogpiling, or doxxing of other users
No intentional sharing of false or misleading information
No posting of sexually explicit or violent media
No content that is considered illegal in France and/or Germany
Fediscience is similar:
You do not have to give your name, but please tell us about your expertise and interests in your bio and introduce yourself using the #introductions hashtag.
Don’t do anything that’s illegal in Germany or were you live.
We want to be inclusive; do not engage in exclusionary behaviour or language. Consider not only the current interaction, but how it would be if your behaviour were common.
Don’t harass people. Respect it if people want to stop an interaction. Sexual attention can constitute harassment, even if it wasn’t intended to cause upset.
Please relax. Don’t assume you know better than the person you’re talking to.
We could well end up with institutions hosting their own instances, the way they do with email, which also automatically takes care of many verification issues.
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Re: tw.tter

Post by dyqik » Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:19 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:54 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 10:47 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:45 am


Interesting, my timeline is has lots of tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/charles_lister/stat ... szTOB8S9bQ

I guess our views are influenced by what people on our networks are writing.
Clearly the social networks that have built up on the Twitter platform over the last decade will be enormously valuable in a lot of cases.

I don't think that necessarily means the underlying software, or the corporation that owns it, is essential to the process.
There are still platform issues though. To take the linked person as an example, as far as I can tell from the academic Mastodon server rules I’ve seen if he had an account there pretty much everything he’d write or read would need to be behind a content warning. (For example scholar.social , expects content warnings around anything about current events, conflict or death and violence.)

Which would make using the platform to share information rather impractical.

That isn’t to criticise Mastodon users. It’s entirely reasonable for people not to want to read about atrocities in Syria or elsewhere. People who do work on that stuff need to see therapists.
Content Warnings are a key feature of Mastodon as a platform, and designed to be used extremely liberally. They get used for basic daily political news as well as things that actually benefit from traditional CWs. In the wider Fediverse they are just subject lines - much like those on this post and thread.

Requiring them is not a significant barrier to anything - anyone can set them to expand automatically, so that they don't exist if you don't want them to.

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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:22 pm

the "forum swear filter" phenomenon ;)
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Re: tw.tter

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:43 pm

Moved a few posts specifically about setting up a Mastodon account to the Mastodon thread: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3639
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