prozacchiwawa (@prozacchiwawa@functional.cafe)
@mmasnick@mastodon.social just a few months ago twitter's code was a piece of crap in need of a complete rewrite by his hardcore guys.
functional.cafe
General Elon Musk Fukkery Thread
- Thread starter Armchair Militant
- Start date
functional.cafe
Looks like nitter will be working again soon.
github.com
R.I.P. Nitter 🪦😭 (...unless?) · Issue #919 · zedeus/nitter
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/30/twitter-now-requires-an-account-to-view-tweets/ the nitter crawler will need to be recreated...
github.com
Man, Elon is not being his happy/jovial/trolling self. Zuck is worth less, but he is making Elon's soul burn slowly.
Spidey Man
Superstar
Not that zuck is better, but at least zuck put in work to get Facebook started, instead of just investing in it.
We can argue about how much credit zuck deserves, but he was putting in work before it got big. Musk was just born on 3rd and acts like he hit a triple
Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine War misinformation
False and misleading claims about the war in Ukraine are being widely shared.
www.bbc.com
Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine War misinformation
- Published
21 hours ago
- Published
By Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify
False and misleading posts about the Ukraine conflict continue to go viral on major social media platforms, as Russia's invasion of the country extends beyond 500 days.
Some of the most widely shared examples can be found on Twitter, posted by subscribers with a blue tick, who pay for their content to be promoted to other users.
Weapons for Ukraine not used in French riots
Many misleading posts have been shared online about the recent riots in France, but one viral post last week focused on US military aid to Ukraine.It featured a screenshot of what appeared to be a headline from a news website, along with an image of two rifles.
"French police are fired upon with American rifles that may have come from Ukraine," reads the headline.
Several Twitter accounts with Blue subscriptions have shared the post, which has been viewed more than a million times.
BBC Verify has traced it back to pro-Kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app. The image used in the post appears in a Russian military blog from 2012 about a shooting competition held on a firing range near Moscow.
We have also been unable to find any online articles with the headline and picture as above, and there is no evidence any weapons provided to Ukraine by the US have been used during the recent unrest in France.
No evidence of 'baby factories' in Ukraine
Several Twitter accounts with a blue tick have recently promoted a claim that Russia has discovered "baby factories" in Ukraine.Children between the ages of two and seven are said to be "factory farmed", and either sent to "child sex brothels" or to have their organs harvested and sold in the West.
SOURCE,TWITTER
BBC Verify has traced the origin of the claim to an article published in March by The People's Voice, an alternative name for YourNewsWire, which has been described by fact-checking organisations as one of the biggest producers of fake news on the internet.
has previously promoted a wide range of false and misleading stories, including anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and false claims about the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The Russian government and Kremlin-controlled media have a history of promoting unsubstantiated claims about illegal organ harvesting in Ukraine.
Kramatorsk missile not Ukrainian
A Russian missile attack killed eight people in the centre of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, at the end of June.In the immediate aftermath of the attack, a post by an account with a Twitter Blue subscription, which positions itself as a legitimate news source, claimed the strike was mistakenly launched by Ukraine and hit a military barracks housing Nato troops and foreign mercenaries.
SOURCE,TWITTER
"Storm Shadow missile suddenly changed trajectory dramatically, hitting Kramatorsk obliterated a Ukrainian military barracks housing foreign soldiers and mercenaries," the tweet claimed.
The post was viewed more than a million times.
There is no evidence that a missile launched by Ukrainian forces was responsible, nor that a military barracks was hit.
Zelensky has not cancelled elections
Posts claiming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has "cancelled" elections in Ukraine have recently gone viral on Twitter.As evidence, users cited remarks made by Mr Zelensky in an interview with the BBC in late June.
Asked whether there will be elections in Ukraine next year, Mr Zelensky responded: "If we win [the war], there will be. It means there will be no martial law, no war. Elections must be held in peacetime, when there is no war, according to the law."
Commenting on the statement, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who's been critical of US aid for Ukraine, said in his recently launched Twitter show that Mr Zelensky's comments proved he'd ended democracy in Ukraine.
Twitter Blue accounts on a similar theme have been shared hundreds of thousands of times.
SOURCE,TWITTER
The Ukrainian constitution prohibits the dissolution of parliament and national elections during martial law, meaning the current president and parliament will remain in charge until the period of martial law comes to an end.
Oleksii Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security and defence council, recently confirmed that based on the Ukrainian constitution, "no elections can take place" while martial law is in effect in the country.
Contacted by BBC Verify for a response to the false and misleading Twitter Blue posts highlighted in this article, Twitter's press office acknowledged receipt of our enquiry, but declined to comment.
Taylor Lorenz (@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Things seem to be going just as Musk planned over on Twittermastodon.social
But some of y’all really wanna stay over thereHow Twitter lost its place as the global town square
A series of disastrous missteps over the past year has robbed Twitter of its relevance
By Taylor Lorenz
July 7, 2023 at 12:20 p.m. EDT
[COLOR=var(--wpds-colors-gray80)]Experts say TikTok has replaced Twitter as the go-to forum for much of the world's political discussion. (AP)[/COLOR]
Alex Pearlman, a stand-up comedian in Philadelphia, woke up one morning in June and turned on the local news. A portion of Interstate 95 had collapsed. Pearlman thought it was the type of thing people should know about.
Five years ago, he would have turned to Twitter to spread the news. But on that Sunday morning, he picked up his phone and made a TikTok — which quickly amassed more than 2 million views.
A decade ago, Twitter rose to prominence by casting itself as a “global town square,” a space where anyone could reach millions of people overnight. The platform was pivotal in facilitating large social movements, such as the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East and the Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. In a recent email to staff, Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, repeated this characterization, calling the site “a global town square for communication.”
But Twitter no longer serves this function. Thanks to a string of disastrous missteps over the past year by new owner Elon Musk — punctuated by the decision last week to cap the number of posts users can view — Twitter is hemorrhaging users and relevance. While Meta’s new Threads app is making an impressive debut, most social media experts say TikTok reigns as the new global town square and has held that role for quite a while.
“Twitter is definitely not anyone’s public square. Not anymore,” said Chris Messina, who on Thursday posted the hashtag #DeadTwitter on Threads. Twitter is “Elon Musk’s private playground where he’s about to charge everyone … for entry and access #DeadTwitter.”
Since taking the helm last fall promising to champion “free speech,” Musk has alienated users with a relentless stream of updates that are hostile to the app’s heaviest users. He removed all legacy check marks — Twitter’s years-old way to assure users that posters are really who they say they are — sowing distrust and leading to significant financial consequences for major brands that were easily impersonated under the new system. He then sold blue check marks, which ensured amplification to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, allowing scammers and grifters to crowd out the replies to popular tweets. Interesting content has been down-ranked in favor of pay-to-play blue check mark replies, some of which push crypto scams and pornography.
Musk also flooded the “for you” timeline with his own tweets, driving away users who came to the service to follow friends and interests outside of the platform’s billionaire owner.
“Before, if I saw someone was verified, they’d have to have done something of note to get it,” said Ryan Fay, a theater director in Atlanta. “Now, I can’t trust anyone who claims to be a journalist and has a check mark because they paid for it, and I don’t know if they have any credentials or knowledge. Seeing a blue check now means this person is using Twitter to try to sell me something or some sort of scamming.”
Musk also fired Twitter’s trust and safety team, allowing harassment and abuse to explode across the platform unchecked. He’s banned prominent journalists and liberal activists. He’s railed against LGTBQ people and declared the word “cisgender” a slur. If that wasn’t enough to drive the most dedicated Twitter users to greener pastures, last week he began limiting the number of tweets users could read, blocking nonpaying users from being served more than 600 tweets per day.
All of this has led users to stop relying on the service. Daniel, 17, a rising senior in a Philadelphia high school who asked to be referred to by only his first name because he’s underage, said Twitter is simply “not the spot” anymore. “People my age are going to Instagram and TikTok before they go to Twitter,” he said.
Some of Twitter’s struggles predate Musk. The company had been hemorrhaging celebrities and high-profile figures in entertainment and media for years as they moved to more visual-focused platforms, and it has long faced difficulties retaining younger users.
Twitter’s biggest struggle is that it’s an arcane follow-based social network, meaning users must manually seek out other users to follow to receive content, and if a user has no followers, it’s very hard to be heard. Contrast that with an app like TikTok, which delivers content through a highly sophisticated algorithmic feed. This means that even a user with zero followers on TikTok can reach millions with their first video.
TikTok also allows users to consume a breathtaking amount of information jammed into each short video. “People on TikTok are absorbing so much more content than on Twitter,” said Daniel, the high school senior. “TikTok is really good at hitting you with multiple things you’re interested in.”
Walid Mohammed, founder of the Bread Winners Club, a marketing agency, said TikTok has replaced Twitter as his go-to source for news and entertainment. “I used to go to Google,” he said, “then I went to Twitter, and now I use TikTok for information and news.”
Popular memes and catchphrases emerge first on TikTok, teenagers say, and don’t make their way onto Twitter until weeks later, making Twitter feel like a less culturally relevant place.
“Twitter is the place where us boomers talk about what the kids are up to on TikTok,” said Neeraj K. Agrawal, 34, director of communications at Coin Center, a cryptocurrency policy think tank, and a heavy Twitter user. “That role as a filter for the strangest and best of the internet has moved [from Twitter] over to TikTok. The mainstream audience and the rest of the world is getting that information from TikTok now.”
Amanda J Feuerman, an adjunct instructor in social media marketing at UCLA, said Twitter has failed to make itself appealing to younger generations, while TikTok has emerged as “a trusted source for information” for them.
“You’ve got a whole new generation of news influencers who are being invited to the White House,” she said. “Biden certainly isn’t inviting Twitter influencers to the White House. I think it lends a degree of credibility to TikTok.”
For a long time, Twitter was the default platform where government and public officials turned to get their message out and reach constituents. But that role too has been subsumed by TikTok. For instance, when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sought to communicate updates on the I-95 bridge collapse, he turned to TikTok, working with a slew of news influencers to get real-time information out about the collapse and the government’s response.
“Where people are finding community and trusted sources of information is changing,” said Annie Newman, Shapiro’s director of digital strategy. “Reaching people where they are requires a proactive, all-of-the-above approach … we’re going to keep engaging directly with Pennsylvanians where they are — whether it’s their local newspaper or their favorite TikTokers.”
Grant Goodman, 23, an actor in Georgia, said that “nowadays, people send me more TikToks than they do tweets.”
“I get geography TikToks, attorneys, tons of political analysis, entertainment coverage,” he said. “There’s a lot of interesting, educated people covering geography, food science, chemistry, election predictions, cutting-edge information, all kinds of stuff that I used to rely on Twitter for.”
Goodman says Musk’s chaotic changes have made Twitter unusable. “Since the Elon Musk takeover, I see all these terrible people in my feed,” he said. “The worst replies are now prioritized to the top.”
Meme accounts are also fleeing Twitter. The owner and administrator of @RightWingCope, a Twitter account that documents right-wing internet ephemera, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his identity, said, “The quality of discussions [on Twitter] has gotten worse, mainly because Twitter blue accounts are pinned to the top and spam is much worse on the site.”
He now receives far more links to political TikToks than tweets, a sign, he says, of a new hub for politics. “People are communicating political stories through TikTok more than ever,” he said. “A TikTok video is much more engaging than reading a Twitter thread; it’s also more digestible.”
As part of its role as the internet’s “global town square,” Twitter also served up pop culture and comedy. But the boom in hate speech and harassment since Musk took over has permanently altered the tone of Twitter, many users say. “Twitter does not have that sense of community and playfulness,” said Alex Falcone, a comedian in Los Angeles.
Falcone, like many comedians, now uses TikTok to reach audiences and workshop jokes. “There was a time where Twitter was good for posting a thought and the responses would help me tease out a thought,” he said. “At some point it turned into just people saying, ‘You’re stupid,’ and the actual interactions with people dried up. Whereas on TikTok, the comments are super insightful, and there’s a playfulness. It reminds me of an improv game.”
TikTok’s position as the internet’s new town square could face some competition from Threads, Meta’s latest app, which is essentially a Twitter clone. The app launched Wednesday evening, immediately attracting high-profile celebrities and content creators. Its sign-ups after less than 48 hours of existence totaled 70 million, making it the fastest-growing new site ever.
Some are not ready to make the switch from Twitter to Threads. “Engagement on Twitter has been lower,” said Tiffany Fong, a content creator who grew a large audience on Twitter by covering the FTX meltdown this year. “If I got more engagement on Threads, I’d switch over to Threads.”
However, she added, “if I got footage of something notable I wouldn’t think to post it on Twitter,” she said. “I’d think I’d post it on TikTok.”
Elon will find a dirty way to save his ass. Dude been a snake since his paypal days.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23382328/VRG_Illo_STK022_K_Radtke_Musk_Twitter_Shrug.jpg)
The good version of TweetDeck is back, but for how long?
Social media power users mostly refer the older version.
www.theverge.com
The good version of TweetDeck is back, but for how long?
The TweetDeck app is beloved by social media power users over a newer version that has fewer features.
By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.Jul 8, 2023, 10:03 AM EDT
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23382328/VRG_Illo_STK022_K_Radtke_Musk_Twitter_Shrug.jpg "Elon Musk shrugging on a background with the Twitter logo")
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
Overnight, users across Twitter began reporting that the older, and much better, version of TweetDeck has returned along with the free API access that made third party Twitter clients possible. TweetDeck was disabled last week when Twitter abruptly threw up a rate-limiting paywall and killed the legacy APIs that allowed the old version of the feature to function, while third-party apps were banned in January.
An update this morning from Harpy developer Roberto Doering says they switched to the “old v1 API” to get it working again, but they also noted “this doesn’t mean that harpy will be maintained again, seeing as Twitter will most likely shut down access to their legacy api (again) soon and third party apps are still against their TOS.”
To revert to the old version, go into your TweetDeck Account settings, select TweetDeck version, and switch back.
A scan of Twitter’s official accounts, as well as those of Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino didn't show anyone saying anything about the old TweetDeck’s return — the Twitter Support account’s most recent tweet is the one from several days ago announcing the launch of the new TweetDeck.
Afterwards, Twitter foisted its “new, improved” TweetDeck, which has been in preview for over two years, on the world. It announced via the Twitter support account that the feature would go behind the Twitter Verified paywall for Twitter Blue subscribers and those the company deems worthy of a free blue check.
Twitter claimed its decision to limit the number of tweets its users could see in a day was a necessary, and temporary, decision caused by companies scraping its site to feed AI models.
The company is also facing its most formidable copycat with the launch of Instagram's Threads app, which Meta rushed out the door ahead of schedule this week in a bid to take advantage of Twitter at its most vulnerable and quickly registered over 70 million accounts in less than two days. However, TweetDeck might be a feature that Threads won't copy, as Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told Alex Heath that "Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads — they have on Instagram as well to some extent - but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals."
Update July 8th, 2023, 12:50PM ET: Updated to say that some third party apps may also now be working again.
Update July 10th, 3:10AM ET: Added instructions to switch versions.