1205 posts tagged with twitter.
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Does Ed Balls still count?
What are the load-bearing posts of our time? Obviously 'facing god and walking backwards into hell' and 'miette' are up there. Does Ed Balls still count? PS if you can parse this you should probably log off [X] [more inside]
"only an illusion of collective action"
[Social media] is terrible at organizing us in the kind of leadership-driven, hierarchical fashion that would be ideal for channelling masses of people into collective, unitary projects. (SLAftermath) [more inside]
Over $100? Time to bring out the Big Guns
booking flights on a phone is crazy. that is a laptop activityThe tweet that spawned countless TikToks ("BIG purchases require a laptop screen for FULL visibility"), hot takes ("It's laptop activity when you're a beginner"), and thinkpieces ("Looking ahead, Gen Alpha will integrate AI seamlessly into all areas of their lives"). Young shoppers are indeed driving a shift towards mobile retail. But a big factor pushing things in this direction may simply be that retailers hate when you buy big things on your laptop: "People often prefer bigger screens and keyboards for pricier purchases—but merchants have more levers to pull on mobile". See also: How Each Generation Shops in 2023 [HubSpot] and Gen Z’s Device Preferences & Decision Drivers [Knit]
"Blockchain Rasputin over here is mad that moderation exists"
After departing the BlueSky board of directors, Block Head and social media mogul Jack Dorsey gave an interview with venture capitalist Mike Solana in which he explained that Twitter rejecting advertisers is a blow for free speech and BlueSky is repeating the mistakes of Twitter, like moderation. [more inside]
"we love an activist until they need something"
Shafiqah Hudson, who had worked in nonprofits but from 2014 on dedicated herself to Twitter activism--spotting and combating the "#endfathersday" scam ten years ago--died on February 15, at 46. [more inside]
Bluesky takes to the air
Previously limited to users by invitation only, the X (née Twitter) competitor Bluesky is now open to the public. The culture currently encourges aggressive muting and/or blocking of trolls, and there’s no single algorithm that promotes or popularizes any particular individual.
Like Mastodon, it was developed with an eye toward federation, though it’s not as far along in that regard, though the paper describing the AT protocol was just published. (Previously)
Republicans shocked to learn 'American Idiot' is political
In a NYE performance, Green Day performed their classic hit "American Idiot" with a minor twist: they substituted the lyrics "MAGA agenda" for "redneck agenda." Conservatives are still, somehow, surprised. Still, the song's themes resonate today: we certainly haven't managed to vanquish American reflexive xenophobia or fix deceptive media outlets yet. As we approach the song's twentieth anniversary, it's hard not to feel a sting of failure when contemplating just how far we haven't come.
I’ve had a really good time on here. I’ve also had a really bad time.
2023 Will Go Down as the Year Twitter Died. A multipart package from The Verge looking at Twitter, for better and for worse. [more inside]
Oh, Elon...
In his ongoing attempt to to destroy Xitter, Mr Musk suggests former advertisers indulge in auto-copulation. (slyt)
When Your Ad Budget Supports Hate
As part of their investigative journalism on the social media platform once known as Twitter, Media Matters For America reported that ads were being served by the platform next to hateful, bigoted, antisemitic, and white supremacist content on the platform, resulting in advertisers such as IBM pulling their ads from the platform. Which led to the service filing a defamation lawsuit against MMFA over their reporting. [more inside]
Linda Yaccarino Is The Last Funny Twitter Bit Left
Fall of X
How Not To Decom A Server Farm
In an excerpt from his biography of Elon Musk, Walter Issacson recounts how the mercurial owner of Twitter and his supporters personally went to Sacramento to decommission the company's server farm collocated there. (SLCNBC)
Nobody wants him. He just stares at the world.
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule: How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in. The meddling of oligarchs and other monied interests in the fate of nations is not new....But Musk’s influence is more brazen and expansive. There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space. [more inside]
How The Bird Was Sold
It's been long known that the purchase of Twitter, while primarily funded by Elon Musk, was done through a consortium of investors. In a piece by the Washington Post, they pull back the curtains on who's in that group. (Alternate link) [more inside]
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Writer Who Gets a Speeding Ticket
David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” was livid that he got a $50 ticket for going 36 miles per hour in a school zone. His response drew a lot of responses. [The New York Times]
Thursday’s Headlines: Wow, the Guy Who Created ‘The Wire’ is a Real Jerk Edition [StreetsBlog NYC]
“What sort of off-brand city sends me a $50 camera ticket for speeding in a school zone for racing at 36 mph in a 25 zone at — wait for it — 5:40 a.m. in total darkness on a morning in — wait for it — mid-July?” he wrote. “Two-word clue: Yankees Suck.”An Open Letter to David Simon, Who Tweeted NYC Is ‘On the Make’ Because He Got a $50 Speeding Ticket [HellGate NYC]
Thursday’s Headlines: Wow, the Guy Who Created ‘The Wire’ is a Real Jerk Edition [StreetsBlog NYC]
The Louvre Is Thrilled to Announce It Is Rebranding to “UVR”
Tabletop creators struggle to plot future amidst Twitter’s ashes
Twitter rebrand to X imminent
exposing restaurants that leave tails on shrimp
"Secondly, @dril's tweets contain references to various topics such as merchandise, horses, caves, and movies like Dunkirk. While it is challenging to pinpoint their specific career, their diverse range of interests suggests a broad knowledge base. Additionally, their tweet about their wife moving to the big Apple to entertain the idea of becoming "Rudy's Slut" hints at a potential involvement in the entertainment industry." -TwitterGPT takes any public Twitter handle and generates a quick, questionably accurate report and then helpfully suggests a book as a gift.
Zuck's Twitter clone has arrived
Threads is live. The Meta/Instagram "Twitter killer" supposedly had 30 million installs in 24 hours (Mastodon may have less than 2M active users), likely thanks to the ability to access your entire Instagram social graph automatically. Gruber likes it, but not as much as BlueSky (which is still in closed beta) The Threads website doesn't show content by default, but you can access individual users and tweets toots skeets threads. On the other hand, maybe the age of social media is ending.
Twitter now requiring login in order to view site
A Shrine To Inflexibility
Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder, Colorado office due to lack of rent payments over the past 12 months. This isn't a surprise, as we have seen Musk decline to pay for rent in San Francisco or even for Google Cloud services. But what is not mentioned is that this eviction is over a completely new and unused Boulder Colorado office. This is a comedy of errors - an office space that was planned before the pandemic and then, somehow, built anyway while everyone was working from home. Rod Hilton provides the background, with pictures, in a Mastodon thread.
RESPECT THE LEGEND FOREVER
Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, a.k.a. The Iron Sheik, one of the most hated villains in professional wrestling history, has died at the age of 81 according to his official Twitter account, where he had enjoyed a second career of rants and insults. [more inside]
The mystery person who spies on theme parks from the sky
@Bioreconstruct is a Twitter account that seems to post almost daily aerial (and ground) photos of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort, particularly construction projects. It's a tremendous resource for theme park reporters, bloggers and fans, but almost nothing is publicly known about the person behind the account.
What Twitter does to your mind, body & soul.
"The melding of your thoughts with Twitter scrolling causes you to imagine a flow of Tweets overlayed over physical reality. You will read an opinion in 280 characters or less written by someone you do not know and you will compute this as something that someone out there believes. As you later walk through your grocery store buying bread, you’ll imagine the strangers you see are directly reflective of the Twitter threads you’ve been reading. Although one of these worlds is human, and one of them is a fragmented for-profit manipulation, we melt them together as equally reflective of reality, and in doing so we adapt to both equally." Those aren't "Tweets", Those Are Your Thoughts
To be more specific, he’s a surgeon.
“I AM A SURGEON!!” [Twitter] If you’ve been on social media over the past few days, you’ve probably seen an incandescent doctor (played by Freddie Highmore) yelling that he is a surgeon while an impassive Dr. Jackson Han (played by Daniel Dae Hyun Kim) watches from his desk. It’s a fascinating few seconds of television, especially when it’s been divorced of all context, then remixed, amplified, and snipped into smaller memes. Where did this even come from? The Good Doctor is a show originally adapted from the South Korean drama Good Doctor, and it aired in the United States on ABC for six seasons. [...] The clip of this scene, which has now circulated across numerous social media platforms, seems to have first been interpreted ironically on TikTok. Users initially posted it in full in late April; then it proliferated in a series of increasingly absurd edits, before making its way onto Twitter. People aren’t sharing this clip because they’re amazed by Highmore’s intense performance or the quality of the script.” [via: Polygon]
The Internet Isn’t Meant To Be So Small
It is worth remembering that the internet wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground. From Kelsey McKinney, writing for Defector.
Checked Out
Ed Zitron goes on a lovely, if lengthy, rant about popularity, Twitter Blue and social media in general, before dropping a plug for Bluesky Social, a new social media network that was founded by Twitter in 2019 as an open-source, decentralized spinoff. It now seems to be getting much more media attention .
Rapid unscheduled disassembly
we were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the blue checks began to disappear. CW: birdsite.
The first thing he played us: Despacito.
He was actually a celebrity in Afghanistan, the violinist for the on-screen backup band for their version of American Idol (Single link Threadreader, original Twitter thread). He had heard through a friend about an Afghan violinist who had just escaped from Kabul and settled in LA (where I live). Problem was the guy had to leave his violin behind.
Starboard announced that it has concluded the acquisition of Parler
"No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," reads the opening statement of a press release by Starboard Media on their recent acquisition of the conservative social media platform Parler.
Dril Is Everyone. More Specifically, He’s a Guy Named Paul.
How do you form a union? There are four steps, one for each of my paws.
An interview with Jorts the Cat on the role of love in the labor movement and how “the softest paw can be a claw.”
If a worker (Jorts) has a disability or just a different strength (stompy snuggler instead of supportive listener), adapting to those needs actually makes the workplace better. This is a silly cat story, but it’s an example that solidarity and accessibility should not seem radical: they’re just common sense.
Do YOU dare to enter the threatening labyrinth of… GEARWORLD?
Come, unwary adventurers, into the strange, wondrous yet terrifying land of GEARWORLD! Documented by the distinguished travel author Eland the Younger, Gearworld is best described as “an access tunnel under reality.” Originally created by MeFi favorite Hugo and Nebula award winner Ursula Vernon (previously) as the draft for a Twine game, Gearworld has taken on a life of its own with multiple interactive fictions, written in Vernon's distinctive style. [more inside]
Free Bird
In response to criticisms, Twitter has released the source code for their recommendation algorithm. [more inside]
"What are you favorite profile features, famous or not?" SL Twitter
Twitter PR Is 💩
It is well known that Elon Musk views public relations as extraneous, and has an adversarial relationship with the press. These two aspects were combined with Twitter's PR email now being set to autorespond with the poop emoji. [more inside]
Choose Twitter. Choose bringing your own TP to work. Choose
Nice social media account, shame if something were to happen to it...
Man, Social Media Platforms Really Want Us To Start Paying, Huh? "Twitter launched the $8-a-month Twitter Blue. Meta is launching a similar $12-a-month Meta Verified. YouTube already offers the $11.99-a-month YouTube Premium, which may start paywalling certain video resolutions soon... The reason this is happening is because the platforms that unbundled traditional media didn’t seem to anticipate that advertising would also unbundle. Though, I guess it should have been the logical conclusion. Advertising is about capturing the zeitgeist to grab people’s attention and these platforms fractured the zeitgeist and broke people’s attention spans. It might also just be that there is a certain size a website can be and perhaps Meta has reached it.
"
It Monocultures Your Thoughts
How Twitter Is Bad For You Some observations on Twitter's pernicious effect: It Separates You From Reality; It Gives You More People to Hate; It Wants You to Be a Shtick
God did the world a favor by destroying Twitter.
How will these smaller groups of happier people be monetized? This is a tough question for the billionaires. God does the wrath thing a lot in the Old Testament, punishing humans who would challenge divine authority. It makes sense to read the story of Babel in that light. But having lived through the past couple decades of the internet, I believe the story carries a different lesson. I’m an atheist, so take this theory with a grain of salt, or maybe even a pillar: God wasn’t keeping us out of heaven, smiting us for our arrogance. God was protecting us from ourselves. [more inside]
Make Waves
Spoutible launched fully yesterday and his been running relatively smoothly (with a few minor glitches). It's a Twitter alternative that aims to stop the spread of misinformation and hate. [more inside]
Twitter is (or was) down
Twitter experiencing international outages; most users can’t tweet or DM. Seems like its the 2nd or 3rd time in the last couple of months.
Who asked for a new Twitter disaster list thread? Here it is.
Twitter’s staff spent years trying to protect the social media site against impulsive billionaires who wanted to use the reach of its platform for their own ends.... This article rehashes the last three months of Twitter flushing down the toilet. [more inside]
Red Hair the Nobleman
The story of a seemingly insignificant character, hidden in plain sight: deft and insightful analysis of the opening sequence in Conan the Barbarian (1982) [threadreader/nitter]
Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things, or, How We Got Here
Novelist and "cuspy Oregon Trail Xennial" Catherynne M. Valente (previously) takes us through Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media.
Easy to Talk, Hard to Listen
The Great Delusion Behind Twitter. "It is a failure of imagination to think that our choice is the social media platforms we have now or nothing. I keep thinking about something that Robin Sloan, a novelist and former Twitter employee, wrote this year: “There are so many ways people might relate to one another online, so many ways exchange and conviviality might be organized. Look at these screens, this wash of pixels, the liquid potential! What a colossal bummer that Twitter eked out a local maximum, that its network effect still (!) consumes the fuel for other possibilities, other explorations.”" [more inside]
@elonjet@mastodon.social
If you want to follow the progress of the private jet of the world's richest man, you're out of luck. Bernard Arnault, the LVMH CEO sold it over a month ago.
But suppose you want to follow the comings and goings of the private jet of the man who will soon be the third richest person in the world? That's a more interesting story. "Free speech absolutist" Elon Musk has not only banned the @elonjet account from his once-popular social media site Twitter, on Thursday night the accounts of multiple high profile journalists were banned apparently for reporting on the controversy. [more inside]
But suppose you want to follow the comings and goings of the private jet of the man who will soon be the third richest person in the world? That's a more interesting story. "Free speech absolutist" Elon Musk has not only banned the @elonjet account from his once-popular social media site Twitter, on Thursday night the accounts of multiple high profile journalists were banned apparently for reporting on the controversy. [more inside]
Today in magic beans
“Everything I have came from $800.” On Twitter, the men touted themselves as financial sages in a community known to fans as FinTwit. Two launched a Discord server, Atlas Trading, amassing more than 230,000 members who avidly followed their stock tips. They appeared on podcasts that soared in popularity with the bull market, and showed off luxury cars on Instagram. The ‘FinTwit’ Influencers now face charges in $100 Million Scheme. [more inside]