why indeed, gotta feeling he's going to mess with individual journalists accounts again.
General Elon Musk Fukkery Thread
- Thread starter Armchair Militant
- Start date
why indeed, gotta feeling he's going to mess with individual journalists accounts again.
Swedish public radio is 4th news organization to leave Twitter
Swedish public radio has decided to leave Twitter after more than 14 years, saying the social media network has become less relevant in recent years. It makes it the fourth news organization to leave Twitter in less than a week. Sveriges Radio (SR), which joined Twitter in 2009, was already...
bnonews.com
Swedish public radio is 4th news organization to leave Twitter
Published on
April 18, 2023
By
BNO News
Swedish public radio has decided to leave Twitter after more than 14 years, saying the social media network has become less relevant in recent years. It makes it the fourth news organization to leave Twitter in less than a week.
Sveriges Radio (SR), which joined Twitter in 2009, was already reducing its presence on the platform. Some accounts were deleted or became inactive in late 2022, but some accounts – like SR Ekot – remained active until Tuesday morning.
Statistics show that only 10 percent of Swedes use Twitter at least once a week and only 7 percent use it on a daily basis, making Twitter a relatively small player compared to apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
“We have noticed this reduction over the years, in the form of less dialogue and fewer interactions with our tweets,” said Christian Gillinger, the company’s social media manager. “The audience has simply chosen other places to be.”
“We think it’s important that when Sveriges Radio is on a platform, our presence should be good, with dialogue with the audience and well-thought-out publications,” he said. “It takes time and costs money, and therefore we need to prioritize.”
The decision makes SR the fourth major news organization to leave Twitter in less than a week. American broadcasters NPR and PBS, as well as the Canadian broadcaster CBC, have all left Twitter after being labeled “government-funded media.”
SR was recently labeled as “publicly-funded media,” but Gillinger said this is not the reason for the company’s decision because the label is an accurate description.
“We have of course noticed the recent turbulence around the platform and for us it is, for example, worrying that Twitter has dramatically reduced its workforce,” Gillinger said, adding that this played a role in its decision to leave Twitter. “We believe that in the long run it may affect the company’s ability to handle, for example, fake accounts, bots and disinformation, but also hate and threats.”
Gillinger said all remaining SR accounts will be shut down and the ones which remain will be marked as inactive.
“We think it’s important to continue to have ownership over the accounts with Sveriges Radio and Ekot’s names on the platform to make sure they can’t be used by others,” he said. “It also leaves the possibility to reactive them in the future in case we see a need for it.”
News organizations leaving Twitter
- April 12: NPR (U.S.)
- April 12: PBS (U.S.)
- April 17: CBC/Radio-Canada
- April 18: Sveriges Radio (Sweden)
Yet, here you are.
I’ll play along.
“Real nikkas” and memes don’t drive engagement to the platform as much as news does. Twitter was thought of as a current events source now it’s just turning into low level discourse.
Soon enough that AWS and other managed services bill is gonna have to be foot and real nikkas ain’t contributing to that
CEO of Morgan Industries
Superstar
I used Twitter as an RSS feed for awhile. What is the point of Twitter if it can't even do that reliably?
CEO of Morgan Industries
Superstar
Good point. I need to look in the mirror and admit that I'm one of those book-reading fake nikkas who need to go outside.Well maybe it's a real nikka platform
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Bluesky’s CEO wants to build a Musk-proof, decentralized version of Twitter
Elon Musk banning links to Twitter competitors is “exactly why what we’re building is important.”
www.theverge.com
Bluesky’s CEO wants to build a Musk-proof, decentralized version of Twitter
In an interview, CEO Jay Graber talks about the vision behind Bluesky, the decentralized social media service incubated by Twitter that is gearing up for a wider release.
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The logo for the AT Protocol that powers the Bluesky app. Image: Bluesky
By ALEX HEATH / @alexeheath
Apr 17, 2023, 8:18 PM EDT|
This interview was first published in April 13th’s edition of Command Line, my weekly newsletter about the tech industry’s inside conversation. You can subscribe here to get future editions delivered to your inbox.
As Elon Musk continues wielding Twitter like a blunt weapon against competitors like Substack, the downsides of centralized social media platforms are becoming more apparent every day. For those like me who have built a valuable audience on Twitter over the years, it’s unnerving to consider that those relationships could be broken or taken away completely in the blink of an eye.
That underlying unease animates much of the consternation toward Musk these days. Zooming out, it’s also why I’m closely watching the rise of decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon. Ultimately, they promise that a Musk-like figure won’t be able to censor or ban someone from the underlying protocol. I like to use the analogy of email service providers: you can theoretically be kicked off Gmail and still take your contacts and emails with you to another address.
Before Musk reluctantly bought Twitter, former CEO Jack Dorsey funded and spun off Bluesky, a public benefit company tasked with building an open-source, decentralized social media protocol that he wanted Twitter itself to eventually operate on. Bluesky remains invite only to access but is now starting to let in more users. After setting up my account recently, I wanted to talk with CEO Jay Graber. She agreed to answer some of my questions this week for what I believe is her first interview since she joined to lead the project in August 2021.
Right now, Bluesky’s interface is a shameless clone of Twitter. A key difference is that it defaults to a chronological feed of who you follow and lets you choose to toggle between a “What’s Hot” algorithmic feed. The service currently lacks the basic tools it needs to live up to its decentralized mission, including the ability to export account data. Big parts of what the underlying AT Protocol (atproto) promises to deliver, such as a marketplace of feed algorithms to choose from, also don’t exist yet. The company’s approach to content moderation was just outlined. It’s early days.
Still, I’m fascinated by what Bluesky will become. In the near term, it represents direct competition to Mastodon and Nostr, another decentralized social networking protocol that is also funded by Dorsey. In the long term, the ethos behind Bluesky could signal where the rest of social media is headed.
Below is my interview over text with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, lightly edited for clarity:
I saw you posted (what are Bluesky posts called btw?) that the waitlist for the service jumped to over 1.2 million after Elon Musk bought Twitter. How many accounts have you let on so far, and when do you think the full waitlist is allowed on?
I hesitate to give timelines because we’re a small team and are working hard right now to keep up with demand and build out the moderation tooling that we think is essential to broader adoption. We’ve let in about 20,000 people so far.
Officially, we simply call posts on Bluesky “posts” because they are a common component in the underlying protocol (the AT Protocol) and will show up in many different kinds of client apps. It’s a topic of debate for our current users, though.
Mastodon / ActivityPub seem to be where most of the energy in decentralized social media is going. What’s the main thing the AT Protocol offers that’s better, and how do you compete with that head start? I’m also curious if you ever see interoperability between atproto and ActivityPub happening.
We’ve designed a protocol that has three big things we think are missing from the Mastodon ecosystem: account portability, global discoverability, [and] composable, customizable curation and moderation.
We don’t see ourselves as being in competition with Mastodon — we welcome approaches to decentralize social platforms and are simply taking a different, opinionated approach. Our focus right now is on building out our approach and proving it works at scale.
I know Jack Dorsey is on your board and helped dream this all up. These days, he seems much more into Nostr and spending his time there. Has there been a change with his involvement in Bluesky?
Nope, he’s still on our board. He also welcomes multiple approaches to achieving a decentralized social ecosystem, and I believe he ultimately just wants this paradigm of protocols instead of platforms to succeed.
Are you all planning a business model to support all this (both for you, the company, and developers), or is it too early for that? A marketplace of algorithms is compelling to me, but I’m wondering what the incentives will be for those algorithms to be made.
We have some ideas for business models but are currently focused on the near-term challenges of moderation and growth. There’s a lot to tackle here! In an open marketplace, there will very likely be value-added services that people find worth paying for.
Are you ready for Elon to ban your links?
As the owner of a centralized site, he is free to do that if he wants. But this is exactly why what we’re building is important — the AT Protocol gives users freedom, and developers locked-open APIs.
Because even if Bluesky the app decides to block something, I can take my profile and social graph to another client and not rebuild from scratch?
100 percent. That’s the benefit of account portability between services that we’ve designed around. Users can still opt in to the convenience of an easy-to-use service, but the user’s ability to leave when they want constrains the service’s ability to abuse their power.
Slim
Superstar
This doesn't deserve its own thread and it isn't about Elon but it is Twitter + right wing ghoul related 
Casey Newton (@caseynewton@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Twitter is shutting down API access to emergency accounts on a case-by-case basis with no stated rationale or explanation. Another forehead-slapper from @zoeschiffer https://www.platformer.news/p/so-much-for-elon-musks-everything
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Musk’s ‘Anti-Woke’ AI Czar Was Arrested for Domestic Violence Last Month
There are no plans to charge Igor Babuschkin with a crime, a prosecutor said.
www.thedailybeast.com
Microsoft drops Twitter from its advertising platform
Yet another big B2B service passes on paying for Twitter's new high-priced API.
mashable.com
Microsoft drops Twitter from its advertising platform
Yet another big B2B service passes on paying for Twitter's new high-priced API.
By Matt Binder on April 19, 2023
Twitter's recent decisions are causing companies like Microsoft to flock away. Credit: Mashable composite; Microsoft, Twitter
> Tech
Twitter is being removed from yet another big B2B platform. And this time it's one of the biggest companies in the tech industry.
Microsoft is going to drop Twitter from its Microsoft Advertising plan next week, according to the company.
"Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter," Microsoft said(opens in a new tab). A similar email has begun to go out to Microsoft Advertising users stating that "Digital Marketing Center (DMC) will no longer support Twitter starting on April 25, 2023."
From that date, users will no longer be able to access their Twitter account through its Digital Marketing Center's social media management tool, according to Microsoft. Users will also no longer be able to schedule, create, or manage tweets or tweet drafts. In addition, users won't be able to view their past tweets and engagement on the Microsoft Advertising platform.
Microsoft's announcement comes just one day after Twitter owner Elon Musk appeared(opens in a new tab) at a major marketing and advertising conference. At the event, Musk attempted to lure brands back to the platform after Twitter lost half of its biggest advertisers following his takeover of the company.
The Microsoft Advertising feature previously allowed advertisers to manage their social media accounts on various platforms in one place. Users could respond to tweets and DMs along with messages received on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
While Microsoft's social media service was provided for free to advertisers, it was prominently featured in Microsoft Advertising's Digital Marketing Center dashboard. It worked alongside the platform's social and search paid advertising tools, which helped businesses run and manage their paid ad campaigns on platforms like Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram, and Microsoft's search advertising.
Companies that use Microsoft Advertising will still be able to manage and create content for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn through the platform, just as they were able to before.
Microsoft made(opens in a new tab) more than $12 billion in digital advertising revenue last year from ads that would be created, managed, and run through its Advertising platform.
The notice of Twitter removal from Microsoft's website. Credit: Mashable screenshot
The company added the notice(opens in a new tab) on a user support page for its Smart Campaigns multi-platform social media management feature, which is one of two main features in its Digital Marketing Center dashboard. As previously mentioned, emails have also begun to go out informing users of the change.
Mashable reached out to Microsoft for comment. A representative said that the company had nothing further to share at this time.
Twitter's pricey new API plan continues to alienate the company
The removal of Twitter integrations from its Microsoft Advertising platform comes just days before Elon Musk's Twitter plans to shutdown its old API platform. According to Twitter, it is fully transitioning to its new paid Twitter API subscription plans on April 29.Twitter's new Enterprise plans for API access have a starting cost of $42,000 per month.
Since Twitter announced its exorbitantly high API access pricing, many indie developers have had to close down their Twitter-based applications. However, just like Microsoft, other larger companies and organizations have also made the decision to pass on paying Twitter too.
Intercom, a leader in the online customer service space, announced it was dropping Twitter integrations from its platform last week due to the new API pricing. The National Weather Service (NWS), a federal U.S. government agency, told Mashable yesterday that Twitter users should no longer depend on its emergency alert tweets after it loses Twitter API access.
The odd thing about Twitter's stance here is that all of these companies, organizations, and applications created or helped facilitate the creation of content for Twitter's platform. In turn, they all drove more eyeballs and traffic and encouraged more use of Twitter.
However, when forced to make business decisions regarding Twitter, it appears some companies are coming to the same conclusion as Sweden public radio. The country's public broadcaster, Sveriges Radio, announced(opens in a new tab) its decision on Tuesday to "completely stop being active" Twitter, citing continued changes to the platform and Twitter becoming "less important" to the outlet and its audience.