Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Topic started by: Polar Bear on 04 November, 2022, 09:55:01 am
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I have never actually been partner the Twatterati but regularly see "news" items where a Twatter comment is cut and pasted and hear as we all do a lot of anecdotal opinion about the platform and it's merits.
I dallied with faceache but escaped before I became even more nauseating (is that possible) and exist on an online diet of YACF and YouTube. I do have a WhatsApp account and a Signal account, both of which are used in limited ways to keep in touch with friends and family.
I'm curious to know why people use Twitter and if it descends into the musky cesspool that some seem to be predicting, what are the alternatives
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It's getting harder not to but i actually wonder how sensible or needing to be seen as sensible organisations will act if Twitter becomes a bit wild west
We did have a grumble to the woodland Trust (this probably should be in first world problems) as they wanted us to send in pictures which was fine but was via twitter which we don't use
I've recently logged out of Facebook and again know I'm missing out on things as publicised on socials only but it too was just crap and adverts
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Critical mass. There's not much point to a social media that consists of you and a weird bloke called Darren who collects novelty underpants. That's mostly luck and timing, and the dark arts of audience building. No one adopted Facebook because it offered an enticing user experience. It looks like it was put together by people who got high snorting entire cans of Lynx Africa.
Twitter is OK for exchanging stupid comments about cats, but it rapidly segues into warring factions with battalions of bots and special sock puppet troopers. The brief format drives divisiveness still if you say you 'like apples and pears,' someone will leap out and declare 'so you hate oranges then' and then suddenly your feed will be full of people angry about the fact you hate oranges. Anti-orange fascist.
Of course, all these systems exist as social amplification, that's what the algorithms do, so small, stupid things get blown-up vastly out-of-proportion. That, and the fact, that a lot of people on these platforms don't appear to realise that it's not real life. Cue all those cheap stories in the media which pretty much consist of here are some things people are saying on Twitter.
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However, what is real life? Or what was it?
Iy almost certainly wasn't the print or broadcast media, which were skewed by owners, editors, sub editors and reporters. And news old happened where there was a reporter, before mobile phones.
Back to Twitter. It really annoys me when companies either require twitter for comms, or respond quicker to twitter than they do to email (is that because it is public...?)
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Am I alone in thinking there's particular irony in Musk offering free speech to those who can pay?
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However, what is real life? Or what was it?
Iy almost certainly wasn't the print or broadcast media, which were skewed by owners, editors, sub editors and reporters. And news old happened where there was a reporter, before mobile phones.
Back to Twitter. It really annoys me when companies either require twitter for comms, or respond quicker to twitter than they do to email (is that because it is public...?)
I suppose it's a measure of some kind of reality, but it's when journalists and the like, make the assumption that Twitter (or any other social media platform) is a representation of actual reality. It's a hugely skewed subset of people with regional, age, socioeconomic and other biases. Plus opinions on their are heavily modified by the algorithms. People are angry about what they're being told to be angry about. The algorithms create large clusters around the issue du jour, which is the main amplifier, you're in a crowd that agrees with you and you agree with them. Rightness breeds rightness. Ironically, it bleeds back into the actual world, I wrote about 'spiking' where nutters were running around jabbing people in nightclubs. It wasn't happening but there huge threads of people on Twitter who knew it was happening. So there were protests, people refusing to go to nightclubs, police action.
But anyway, it's hard to visualise a social media platform that doesn't proceed in this direction. Inventing something that deliberately channels you into ideas and conversation you're not aligned to is a challenge. No one would use it.
Accept it for what it is, but I feel a bit sorry for people who spend their lives battling on there. It's not like they're going to win, whatever winning means.
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Am I alone in thinking there's particular irony in Musk offering free speech to those who can pay?
Nope. :)
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That's because he's a Business Genius.
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As discussed in the other thread (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=124399.0), social media lures you in with technical features (For twitter this was "Oh, a way to send an SMS to all my interested friends at the same time for free"), but you stay because of the network of people who wouldn't communicate with you another way.
Open alternatives that aren't backed by business interests are IMHO unlikely to win at this game, not matter how technically superior their product. And the relative merits of relying on enthusiasts vs capitalism aren't clear-cut.
Musk won't change the realities of business and regulation that dictate how twitter works. He can drive users away by making it unusable and run it down financially, but reality will ensure that it has just enough moderation to attract advertisers and stay on the right side of the law. Anyone predicting that it will turn into a hellsite obviously hasn't been paying attention to what's already happening, probably because they avoid political topics and aren't guilty of being visibly female, LGBT+ or a person of colour. That said, it's entirely possible for twitter to be a positive experience if you use it carefully. I have a gender-neutral profile, and choose who to follow so that my feed is mostly friends talking about what they're doing, people making art, cat pictures, and SCIENCE. Political issues get retweeted from time to time, but you don't have to engage in a pile-on.
There will, of course, be a Next Big Thing. We can't predict what, but I'm reasonably confident that for most communities[1] it won't be Mastodon.
[1] No doubt some will thrive there, like they have in places like Dreamwidth and YACF.
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That's because he's a Business Genius.
Suppose that's one way of writing it
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Virtually the only time I go on twitter these days is when I follow a link from these hallowed halls.
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Have to try and remember my MySpace login
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Bebo is where it's at.
Sold by its creators for $850 million in 2008. Bought back by its creators for $1 million in 2013.
I'd give it 5 years and Elon will be buying Twitter back from himself for £500 billion. That's because he's a Business Genius. And probably the only person left working there.
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What is, "a twitter"?
Mr. Justice Cocklecarrot
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To answer the OP, Mastodon.
Anyway, my Twitter feed seems to mostly consist of people moaning about Musk, or pointing put the foolishness of his business model.
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To answer the OP, Mastodon.
Don't think so.
I don't /think/ I'm technically illiterate but Mastodon completely confuses me - and if it's going to get widespread acceptance then it needs serious dumbing down or a different interface from those I've seen to date.
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It's not going to get widespread acceptance, because it isn't being pushed by a big business to accumulate as much market share as possible. It may well become a valued tool for specific communities.
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To answer the OP, Mastodon.
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Well, I've joined that, I think, I'm struggling and finding it as user friendly as a cornered rat.
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I don't think it's as different from Twitter as it seems once you've done the wild stab in the dark and selected a server. (I went for .scot on the basis that nothing else was obvious, like cats)
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I have three somewhat active twitter accounts, which I guess makes me a counter to some of the more dismissive points of view here :) …
Work me (data science); cycling / music / art me; and political me.
There’s a bit of overlap, e.g. William Gibson.
The political one started as the social one, but cycling bleeds into road safety and green and around brexit it got a bit full on. I’ve left it political, because it gives me a chance to vent, to grink my MP and Southern Rail in public, and to hear from interesting people (Russ in Cheshire, Ian Dunt etc). I can also ignore it from time to time, which is more healthy.
The other two, as noted above, will have some politics (I find some of the women and queer tech people to give a really helpful counter to the techbro side of work) but that doesn’t mean I have to jump in or seek out more of that.
Mostly it’s a positive in my life.
I’ve yet to get the same from e.g. Instagram. I’ve got a mastodon account, but it is a bit geeky at the front door and I’ve yet to find the people that will make it sticky for me. Maybe that will be easier this week.
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@garius has done a bit of a newbs summary on how to use Mastodon here https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588827775628369920?t=LvU9vpbPd3H_i9jULftcCA&s=19
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I just signed up to Mastodon - had to find some random server to get an acount registered because there's a back-log of twatter users making the jump but once on, seems easy to move around the servers so far.
@jiberjaber (surprisingly! LOL)
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I just signed up to Mastodon - had to find some random server to get an acount registered because there's a back-log of twatter users making the jump but once on, seems easy to move around the servers so far.
@jiberjaber (surprisingly! LOL)
We need to have the server bit too. This is something that confuses new people to mastodon.
Incidentally I'm on mastodon.social, and you can probably work out the username.
J
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I just signed up to Mastodon - had to find some random server to get an acount registered because there's a back-log of twatter users making the jump but once on, seems easy to move around the servers so far.
@jiberjaber (surprisingly! LOL)
We need to have the server bit too. This is something that confuses new people to mastodon.
Incidentally I'm on mastodon.social, and you can probably work out the username.
J
The needing the server is obfuscated by the search facility.
E.g. I search for a name. Search gives results, including ones on some other server. I click the follow button. I look on their profile page, and it shows I’m following. I look on my (somewhat buried) followers list and only see the ones on the local server. I look on my home page and it’s not yet clear who I’m missing, because not everyone is saying lots.
At that point I had other stuff to do, so I’m not quite sure whether I’ve got the intended effect or not.
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I just signed up to Mastodon - had to find some random server to get an acount registered because there's a back-log of twatter users making the jump but once on, seems easy to move around the servers so far.
@jiberjaber (surprisingly! LOL)
We need to have the server bit too. This is something that confuses new people to mastodon.
Incidentally I'm on mastodon.social, and you can probably work out the username.
J
I see - it's just like stepping back in to arpanet of the 80's ;D
@mas.to would appear to be where I registered
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I just signed up to Mastodon - had to find some random server to get an acount registered because there's a back-log of twatter users making the jump but once on, seems easy to move around the servers so far.
@jiberjaber (surprisingly! LOL)
We need to have the server bit too. This is something that confuses new people to mastodon.
Incidentally I'm on mastodon.social, and you can probably work out the username.
J
The needing the server is obfuscated by the search facility.
E.g. I search for a name. Search gives results, including ones on some other server.
No it doesn't. When I search using just the username and don't include the server I get no results.
< @MmePingu@mastodon.scot
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The needing the server is obfuscated by the search facility.
E.g. I search for a name. Search gives results, including ones on some other server.
No it doesn't. When I search using just the username and don't include the server I get no results.
< @MmePingu@mastodon.scot
Weird.
When I go to mastodon.social/explore (http://mastodon.social/explore), wait because it’s groaning under the weight of people from twitter, put MmePingu in the explore box and choose people I see you.
All those people from yesterday have found their way into my follow list now. Must just be laggy.
I’m between_beyond@mastodon.social (because finding a more appropriate server hasn’t become important to me yet).
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I'm working on the principle that since I really CBA to run my own instance, an explicitly LGBT-friendly one ought to do a decent job of keeping the worst of the Nazis, feminism-appropriating transphobes and libertarian douchbros out.
I remain sceptical as to how much I'll actually use it, but the web interface itself is pleasingly clean.
@kimble4@mastodon.lol
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The needing the server is obfuscated by the search facility.
E.g. I search for a name. Search gives results, including ones on some other server.
No it doesn't. When I search using just the username and don't include the server I get no results.
< @MmePingu@mastodon.scot
Weird.
When I go to mastodon.social/explore (http://mastodon.social/explore), wait because it’s groaning under the weight of people from twitter, put MmePingu in the explore box and choose people I see you.
All those people from yesterday have found their way into my follow list now. Must just be laggy.
I’m between_beyond@mastodon.social (because finding a more appropriate server hasn’t become important to me yet).
I downloaded the Tusky app last night. When I just put your user name in just now it found you fine. When I was doing the same thing on Chrome at mastodon.scot it generally didn't work for some unknown reason.
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Ah yes. Apps. A project for while tests are running tomorrow.
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Can I be an outlier and suggest Patreon isn't a bad substitute?
It doesn't have the relink-repost viral bits of Twitter.
Honestly, that's not what I go to Twitter for. I go to twitter to read informational posts and comments by people.
Some of those people use Patreon, and I can read their posts on there. Works just fine for that purpose. (Which isn't hugely different from following a blog, tbh, with the difference that Patreon has a nice built-in payment method.)
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I only read Twitter for funny tweets linked from The Poke etc, or to hassle big companies as they use it for customer service contact. Or, occasionally, to tell the PM of the hour what a twat he/she is.
It'll be fun to watch it crash and burn under the Muskrat.
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The problem with something like Mastodon is that if you have to explain to someone how to get it work, you've lost most of them. Of course, you might view that as an intelligence test for new applicants, something Twitter evidently didn't feature.
I'll admit watching Musk flounder and founder has some brief entertainment value, but ultimately, he's not a very entertaining person since he's just yet another technobro who somehow stumbled to bemusing prominence.
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[The problem with something like Mastodon is that if you have to explain to someone how to get it work, you've lost most of them.
Yes and no. Pretty much everything has a learning curve, and I don't think the Fediverse is conceptually any harder than email[1], and I don't think you actually need to understand it to use it. The Mastodon user interface itself is pretty intuitive to anyone used to Twitter.
The problem[2] is there isn't a big company pushing people to use it.
Of course, you might view that as an intelligence test for new applicants, something Twitter evidently didn't feature.
It's traditional to blame AOL for this.
[1] I have a gmail folder full of evidence that people struggle with this.
[2] Arguably, feature.
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I'm an occasional Twitter user, but I don't really know how to use it. Apparently there's a way of sending messages to people/organisations so that those messages aren't seen by the rest of the world. I've tried to use that but so infrequently that I can't remember what to do. And of course there's no way of knowing if you have been successful or not.
Then there's weird things called hashtags. Never got the hang of them either. But I did wind up Virgin Media quite successfully when they were behaving appallingly.
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Hashtags are simply a convention that people will agree to use a specific word in their tweets about a given subject, to tag them so that they can easily be found by interested strangers using the search facility. Also by convention, it's agreed to prefix these tag-words with a '#' (hence 'hashtag') to make it clear that's what you're doing.
So people riding or organising the Fecund Ferret 400 audax might end their posts with #FF400 and #AUK, and you can follow the action with a search for "#FF400". (This has become formalised in the user interface, so that the tags become clickable, and some clients automagically append any hashtags from the original when you compose a reply.)
That's pretty much it. There's no formal way to agree that it's #FF400 and not #FecundFerret, for example. Hopefully the organiser tweets in advance of the event and establishes a precedent for what hastags to use (common for things like conferences), but sometimes these things happen more organically. (While the search algorithm doesn't care, it's considered good practice to use CamelCase in hashtags, for the benefit of people trying to read them, especially blind screenreader users.)
The other thing is the ironic use of hashtags, which is one of those linguistic quirks that people develop in a specific social circle. So you might post something like:
Skoggy Lane riddled with hawthorns, used both my spare tubes. Now walking the rest of the way to the pub. #Fail #ShouldHaveGoneTubeless
Those hashtags aren't really intended to be searched for (although a search for #Fail or #FML is likely to be entertaining), but as a sort of ironic footnote within a standard tweet template.
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I read on the increasingly unreliable BBC that the Twat in Chief plans to ban parody accounts. Apparently hate speech and fake news comes under freedom of speech but parody doesn't.
In other words, parody has been cancelled by one of the biggest self-proclaimed opponents of cancel culture. How unfathomable ...
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I read on the increasingly unreliable BBC that the Twat in Chief plans to ban parody accounts. Apparently hate speech and fake news comes under freedom of speech but parody doesn't.
In other words, parody has been cancelled by one of the biggest self-proclaimed opponents of cancel culture. How unfathomable ...
Not quite. He's going to insist that they clearly state that they are parody accounts.
It is rumoured that this is because a bunch of people changed their name to elon musk (or variants thereof) and started sh!tposting.
Just heard on the news that Twitter is desperately trying to get some of the sacked employees to come back. Seems they didn't check who they were sacking and got rid of some who have the keys to the vault.
My ribs are hurting from laughing too much.
The Chief Twit has almost no social ('soft', or 'people') skills and is having trouble running a social network company. Who would have guessed?
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So he does intend to silence anybody who doesn't follow his free speech "dictat" then?
"I believe in free speech except when I don't." Kinda thing.
I am tempted to join calling myself Stinky Nole and spend my time being extremely rude to him. Oh scratch that: I have a life ...
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Lone Skum would be a suitable Twatter handle
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Me Sulk On.
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Just heard on the news that Twitter is desperately trying to get some of the sacked employees to come back. Seems they didn't check who they were sacking and got rid of some who have the keys to the vault.
"Goodbye, former team,
Though I never knew you at all .."
Elton Musk, recently ...
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B3ta is now offering ticks for users who give them any money at all, although you can still have the traditional polar bear or knob.
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Me Sulk On.
The best that I can manage is Omen Sulk or Sulk Omen.
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AT the risk of sounding like an octogenarian judge what is "Twatter"?
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AT the risk of sounding like an octogenarian judge what is "Twatter"?
It's a supposedly amusing alternative name for the social media platform more commonly known as Twitter.
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AT the risk of sounding like an octogenarian judge what is "Twatter"?
It's a supposedly amusing alternative name for the social media platform more commonly known as Twitter.
Thanks
I suppose that's quite funny if you're an eleven year old.
Or may be not even that old...
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Should be just the thing for the new CEO then...
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Should be just the thing for the new CEO then...
On that theme, here's a screenshot someone took of a post by Musk in which he takes a potshot at Mastodon with a childish riff on its name. ::-)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fg-cM49XwAAq-dv?format=jpg
Oddly enough, said post was deleted shortly afterwards. It might take Musk a little longer to work out that the internet never forgets... ;D
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Someone needs to clue Paul Krugman into what “North London” means when translated from Dogwhistle to English.
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Someone needs to clue Paul Krugman into what “North London” means when translated from Dogwhistle to English.
I was thinking that earlier. Has someone molished a dogwhistle equivalent of knowyourmeme yet?
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(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52499409070_449c3d80d8_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2nZccgm)
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As Kim usually makes sensible choices I'm now on @AndrewClark@mastodon.lol . A lot of the other servers don't seem to be signing people up anyway.
I'm going through my list of Twitter follows & adding the ones I can find on Mastodon. Quite a few people from here, a lot of journalists & political wonks. I note that for some popular Twitter accounts there appear to be multiple Mastodon ones, with nothing posted & a tag saying "bot". Are people cyber squatting well known names in the hope of ransoming them ?
Lots of organisations don't have a presence yet. I suppose if Twitter goes titzup they will have to have meetings & get approvals. I'm sad to see that the Art Bots haven't been ported over yet as I really enjoy having random works of art turn up in my Twitter feed. https://twitter.com/i/lists/976556889981906945 (https://twitter.com/i/lists/976556889981906945)
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I'm going through my list of Twitter follows & adding the ones I can find on Mastodon.
Debirdify helps automate this: https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/
Quite a few people from here, a lot of journalists & political wonks. I note that for some popular Twitter accounts there appear to be multiple Mastodon ones, with nothing posted & a tag saying "bot". Are people cyber squatting well known names in the hope of ransoming them ?
It helps if people put their mastodon address in their twitter profile (see above).
Also note that verification on Mastodon works differently from twitter (formerly some opaque process involving documnetation, now an 8$ payment or something). If you have control of a website and put the relevant piece of code on it to point to your Mastodon account, Mastodon will give you a tick to confirm that's you. Simples.
I expect people might be hoarding popular addresses, but it's like email. Just because I'm @kimble4@mastodon.lol doesn't mean @kimble4@mastodon.social is me. Like with email, I expect confusion from the sort of people who don't pay sufficient attention.
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I confused myself with mastodon.social and mstdn.social when trying to log in to the app.
I also see that pixelfed is a thing. Something to take a look at on a proper computer maybe.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
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To answer the OP, Mastodon.
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Well, I've joined that, I think, I'm struggling and finding it as user friendly as a cornered rat.
I joined and quickly decided it's a complicated can of worms, the server I've joined is happy with technical subjects but someone has an emotional breakdown every time I post a photo of a duck, and I love ducks a lot more than technology, so I probably need to find a less fussy server, or more likely, simply stop using it and do something else instead.
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I confused myself with mastodon.social and mstdn.social when trying to log in to the app.
They'll be completely different instances. Like gmail.com and hotmail.com are.
One important piece of advice that I've come across (which didn't occur to me, because I have Old Internet Person opinions about sitting down at real computers to get things done rather than twiddling about on mobile devices as is trendy nowadays) is that newbies go to "try out this Mastodon thing", download the official Mastodon app, and conclude that the whole thing is shit. You shouldn't judge Mastodon by the official app, in much the same way that you shouldn't judge Twitter by the website.
If you do want an app, Tusky appears to be reasonably competent. There may be better ones.
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I joined and quickly decided it's a complicated can of worms, the server I've joined is happy with technical subjects but someone has an emotional breakdown every time I post a photo of a duck, and I love ducks a lot more than technology, so I probably need to find a less fussy server, or more likely, simply stop using it and do something else instead.
I don't think anyone on mastodon.lol would object to ducks. There are certainly enough cats (and to a lesser extent, dogs).
You would need to not object to the occasional cock, thobut.
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Space Karen makes another bid to get rid of his remaining employable staffers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63648505
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Space Karen makes another bid to get rid of his remaining employable staffers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63648505
He's certainly helping us out in our current recruitment activities.
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Nice introductory article about Mastodon: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-started-use-mastodon/
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Space Karen makes another bid to get rid of his remaining employable staffers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63648505
Saw that and laughed. What a way to inspire loyalty and dedication, and persuade those most likely to be able to save the company to stay. Truly the man *is* a business genius.
One wonders if he's realised he's shot himself in the foot and the only way to minimise his medium to long term losses is to run the company into the ground in very short order.
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I think one of the rules of Business Genius is that the normal rules somehow don't apply. Sadly, this is a belief only owned by Business Geniuses.
The problem with Mastodon seems to be that it needs a several hundred-word primer to get started.
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I confused myself with mastodon.social and mstdn.social when trying to log in to the app.
They'll be completely different instances. Like gmail.com and hotmail.com are.
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Obviously. Though arguably one looks like a shortened version of the other, and might plausibly resolve to the same place - like gmail and googlemail. Of course the app was offering to help me find a server, but not showing the one I was actually on. And I didn’t have the relevant reminder to hand.
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Not that obvious, judging by the number of people who need it repeatedly explaining to them.
I must say I find the Mastodon convention of @username@mastodon.obscuretld irksome. What's wrong with username@mastodon.somedomain.normaltld? [It looks like an email address - Ed.]
Also why mastodon.tld/@username and not something normal like mastodon.tld/~username or even just mastodon.tld/username (Yeah, I know, apparently usernames start with an '@' now...)
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I'm thinking that the Business Genius's definition of extremely hardcore is different to mine. I mean, I have a liberal workplace, but still.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-636723075
Mysterious. Will it even stay up and running?
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-636723075
Mysterious. Will it even stay up and running?
...or even: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63672307
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-636723075
Mysterious. Will it even stay up and running?
Something wrong with that link.
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'Mr Musk tweeted:
"The best people are staying, so I'm not super worried".'
Now, some very good people may be staying, but my experience of when companies die is that the *good* people go first, because they know they can get a job elsewhere without too much difficulty. Truly he *is* a Business Genius.Gerald Ratner AICMFP.
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Pleased to see jessphillips has finally arrived in the new place.
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Musk really is a dickwad.
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Space Karen tweeted that it's ok, the volume of tweets has increased.
I wonder what people might be tweeting about?!
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https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542
*fnark*
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'Mr Musk tweeted:
"The best people are staying, so I'm not super worried".'
Now, some very good people may be staying, but my experience of when companies die is that the *good* people go first, because they know they can get a job elsewhere without too much difficulty. Truly he *is* a Business Genius.Gerald Ratner AICMFP.
Quite so: the capable and the optimistic head for the exits with their pockets bulging. There are many good people left behind who cannot easily move for many and varied personal reasons but the backwash of a corporate tsunami always leaves those behind cautious and less committed. They too will be looking for a way out.
Musk is just like most stupidly rich narcissistic megalomaniacs in that they think that they live in the real world and are absolute geniuses whereas the reality is that the opposite is largely true. Their status is more by privilege and happy (for them) accident rather than by design.
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Mysterious. Will it even stay up and running?
I’ve seen some credible suggestions that it won’t last much beyond the weekend.
Also mentions that in closing the offices, he dished everyone’s building pass - including his own.
I don’t really understand the technicalities of it. But then neither does the idiot who recently spent $44bn on it.
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Musk really is a dickwad.
Although there's a soupçon of enjoyable schadenfreude in watching a true Business Genius practice his trade, he truly is an abhorrent piece of shit.
I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)
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With working from home out, all the offices bolted and barred and the staff fleeing for the exits this must be a new type of “hardcore” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brandon_Vedas) of which I was only tangentially aware.
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Seems a bit weird to demand everyone comes into the office then lock them all out.
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Apparently it's to prevent sabotage or, presumably, stealing branded office stuff, ready to put it on eBay as a souvenir when Twitter croaks its last tweet.
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Do you think that, if we asked very, very nicely,
Gerald Elon would buy Facebook and apply his Business Genius (TM, R, Pats. Pending, All Rights Reserved) to it? Asking for a friend.
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Apparently it's to prevent sabotage or, presumably, stealing branded office stuff, ready to put it on eBay as a souvenir when Twitter croaks its last tweet.
Yeah, or some internal DNS server has fallen over and the door locks have lost access to the card database. At least when that happened to Facebook, the staff responsible for the server in question were merely locked out of the building, rather than no longer employed.
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I understand that the offices being locked is partly due to the entire team responsible for security took the package.
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Musk really is a dickwad.
Although there's a soupçon of enjoyable schadenfreude in watching a true Business Genius practice his trade, he truly is an abhorrent piece of shit.
I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)
I also read that sort of article, quite disturbing.
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They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia. Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).
On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.
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From t'Internet:
Rather than buying the company and running it into the ground, Elon could have taken the simpler route to kill Twitter by offering each of the 7500 employees $5 million to quit and he would have saved 6.5 billion dollars.
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They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia. Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).
On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.
The story goes that the dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."
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....which is reminiscent of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-PuHFwGZc
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I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)
This one ? https://archive.ph/2022.11.17-150216/https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11
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It's wasn't that one, though if those pro-natalists succeed the population of earth will be both very poor at basic maths and genetics. They will all look like people you want to set fire to though.
I think the story was in Insider, but it's behind a paywall now.
Still, Elon reassures us that if you're born rich enough and have enough luck, not even being as thick as mince will hold you back. I think that's an affirming message.
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Well, we already knew that thanks to four years of TЯump in the Awful Office.
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The entirely sensible poll to reinstate the orange one is 6% ahead in allowing him, with 15 hours to go. https://twitter.com/elonmusk
Of course, if he was and if he did, that would likely mark the end for the Lies Social platform, which is crumbling anyway.
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They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia. Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).
On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.
The story goes that the dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."
😁
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51.8% is now The Magical Percentage Of Shit Things.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63692369
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Desperate roll of the dice to save his sinking ship.
Number One: Captain, there is a hole in the side of the ship perfectly round and exactly the size of the cross section of one of the torpedoes our subs carry.
Captain: Ask TWAT Orangutan to plug the gap with one of their topredoes then.
Number One: Captain, the TWAT Orangutan has launched the torpedo ...
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News on the radio this morning was that agent orange didn’t see the point of going back to twitter.
Meanwhile someone vaguely sensible (Paul Graham) was making the point (yesterday) that the “next twitter” won’t look quite like twitter or consciously try to be the next twitter.
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We should consider Twitter was a success because it's a hell site. Sure, it's the sort of party where people are fucking on the coat pile and some just fell out of the window and yes that is a fireman; but the Mastodon party is a bit like oh thanks for the wine, we'll put it in the fridge, you're just in time to help us with the jigsaw puzzle, it's 5000 pieces so should take us all evening.
I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail, because it's not like they didn't cover that in their first day of induction. It's been pointed out that they're probably visa captives* because everyone else left or isn't sure if they have left yet, but aren't going to chance going to work just in case.
*an H1-B visa only allows you to work on that one job, so if disappears or you choose to leave, you have to leave the US effectively immediately, you can't apply for another job – indeed to even apply for another visa, you have to leave the country to do so.
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Ian>I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am ...
Now that's interesting. Who's really the hostage here? The poor sods on the H1-Bs or the pillock Business Genuis who's in the hole for for 44 beellion US dollars plus interest payments and is utterly dependent on them staying put if he's to stand any chance not losing even more money? I think if I was on an H1-B I'd have trousered the 3 month's severance and pissed off home to look for a job with a less poisonous boss.
Ian> so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail...
Not only "Business Genius", but man-splaining at an epic level.
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I saw the photos of the strategy planning meeting and wondered if ian had been there the night before, writing things on the board…
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Ian>I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am ...
Now that's interesting. Who's really the hostage here? The poor sods on the H1-Bs or the pillock Business Genuis who's in the hole for for 44 beellion US dollars plus interest payments and is utterly dependent on them staying put if he's to stand any chance not losing even more money? I think if I was on an H1-B I'd have trousered the 3 month's severance and pissed off home to look for a job with a less poisonous boss.
Ian> so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail...
Not only "Business Genius", but man-splaining at an epic level.
At the end of the day, the Business Genius doesn't have, and never had that $44billion, so he's in hock to a lot of people. It's amazing how people fall for this (see also Elizabeth Holmes and her device that was obviously bullshit and that FTX guy who's well... obvious bullshit, you know how it goes).
As for H1-B visas (these are specialist visas for overseas workers to fill roles that can't be filled by someone in the US), there's no grace period, the day your employment ceases you are liable to immediately leave the US or be subject to deportation proceedings (the only credit you get is that your employer should pay reasonable costs to send you home). If you do overstay, of course, to clear up your affairs (you may have family, partners, you know, a life you can't curtail with a few days' notice, not to mention re-establish your life in another country), then that will probably disqualify you from a future visa (or at least lead to awkward questions). It's a visa status that's easy for unscrupulous employers to take advantage of.
Jaded is right though, I think he might be trying to practice Thought Leadership. I'm sorry, but even a Business Genius should not take on a Thought Leader. I'm pretty sure I once sat in a meeting and someone asked what are calling that bit between the front end serves (Angular, UI) and the back end (the DBs and Elastic) and I gave it some thought and said 'the middle bit.'
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Another one from the Business Genius
During one Sunday meeting, Musk explained the concept of native advertising to the team, according to one person who was there, despite the fact that the employees were already well aware of the format. He said that the company’s ads should “look like tweets,” one employee said, despite the fact that the company’s ads already are tweets
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Twatsplaining.
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I saw the photos of the strategy planning meeting and wondered if ian had been there the night before, writing things on the board…
If it features the five-cornered Hexagon Of Aims and the Seven Journeys to Itselfness, it's probably Ian's work.
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It seems Mastodon has hit some scaling issues, especially around moderation. This has lead a number of instances to choose to deferederate from certain instances. Mastodon.social is the most well known of those who are being dropped by a lot of instances.
Today I've moved to an instance run by a friend I trust. They've promised me a nine fives uptime.
If anyone was looking for details of my dinner, rants about public transport, and general witterings, I'm the same nickname as here, but @v.st.
J
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It's only a matter of time before either:
1) someone shoots him
2) he does something that he can't blag his way out of a jail sentence for
He's managed to avoid #2 a number of times already.
Particularly with the "paedo guy" thing.
Earlier this year I stated that "musk is a fucking idiot", the response i got to that was "but he's made a lot of money", "aye so fuck".
On seeing the diagram my first thought was that I'm curretly writing something more complex in a team of 6 developers, and if we fuck up people might die*.
Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk
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I read a thing that said Musk might be bring very clever and turning Twitter into the future of money, thus doing away with banks and cash and stuff, and making Muskrat loads of dosh.
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Wasn't tesla haemoraging money and begging for investors once described as a new funding model where losing moeny was less important than changing the world.
Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk
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Wasn't tesla haemoraging money and begging for investors once described as a new funding model where losing moeny was less important than changing the world.
Possibly. They've arguably achieved that, if you narrow the scope to 'changing the car industry'.
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To be fair to the Muskrat, which sticks in the craw somewhat, going from a battery-powered Lotus to the thick end of a million sales per year in a decade or so is quite an accomplishment on someone’s part.
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It's only a matter of time before either:
1) someone shoots him
2) he does something that he can't blag his way out of a jail sentence for
He's managed to avoid #2 a number of times already.
Particularly with the "paedo guy" thing.
Earlier this year I stated that "musk is a fucking idiot", the response i got to that was "but he's made a lot of money", "aye so fuck".
On seeing the diagram my first thought was that I'm curretly writing something more complex in a team of 6 developers, and if we fuck up people might die*.
Yes, that diagram was a bit special, basically My Little First Technology Stack (colouring book version). As someone who used to manage a data platform with a substantial technology stack, all I can say is the the man is an true Business Genius for rendering so much complexity in such simple terms. Bejesus, you should see our current data architecture schema, you'd need a ocean-sized white board to write that out, it's the Lucid chart from Hell (actually not quite, you should see the one Finestre, the Demon of Such Things, has), though I credit her for some inspiration in these matters, though I really have to blame the engineering teams who maintain it. I'm going to write recommendations for their damnation.
Anyway, he's explaining this shit to the engineers that build and maintain it. There was some prime chin-stroking in the picture though.
Apparently he's currently asking everyone to send him weekly updates with 'code' etc. because like, yes, he'll understand it, and sure, isolated snippets of code are, erm, really fucking useful and exactly what you'd want a CEO of the large, foundering business to be doing.
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Wasn't tesla haemoraging money and begging for investors once described as a new funding model where losing moeny was less important than changing the world.
Possibly. They've arguably achieved that, if you narrow the scope to 'changing the car industry'.
A fair chunk of the funding model seems to be 'government subsidy' - both SpaceX and Tesla live large on it.
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A fair chunk of the funding model seems to be 'government subsidy' - both SpaceX and Tesla live large on it.
As stated in another thread:
Obligatory reminder that Tesla is not a car manufacturer, but a carbon credit trading company.
If the carbon credits are such that having a skunkworks doing something with hydrogen, then they'll do so.
J
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Wasn't tesla haemoraging money and begging for investors once described as a new funding model where losing moeny was less important than changing the world.
Possibly. They've arguably achieved that, if you narrow the scope to 'changing the car industry'.
A fair chunk of the funding model seems to be 'government subsidy' - both SpaceX and Tesla live large on it.
Isn't that normal for the car industry?
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Indeed, and every existing car manufacturer owes it's current existence to the largesse of taxpayers for bailing them out in addition to the massive ongoing subsidy. Also, they'd have no market if we didn't pay for the infrastructure and roads, not to mentioned the resulting health-care, the costs land for car parking, etc. etc.
Add to that, they don't even sell cars now, they sell financing packages for cars that no one can actually afford (an entry range Tesla, for instance, is £42k). I think there's an aphorism about schemes for triangular buildings with reclining pharaohs in them.
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As for H1-B visas (these are specialist visas for overseas workers to fill roles that can't be filled by someone in the US), there's no grace period, the day your employment ceases you are liable to immediately leave the US or be subject to deportation proceedings (the only credit you get is that your employer should pay reasonable costs to send you home). If you do overstay, of course, to clear up your affairs (you may have family, partners, you know, a life you can't curtail with a few days' notice, not to mention re-establish your life in another country), then that will probably disqualify you from a future visa (or at least lead to awkward questions). It's a visa status that's easy for unscrupulous employers to take advantage of.
When this happens in Qatar or Dubai, we say we shouldn't play football with those nasty people. When it happens here, we call it "gangmaster".
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This has lead a number of instances to choose to deferederate from certain instances.
I hear this in a Star Trek voice.
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As for H1-B visas (these are specialist visas for overseas workers to fill roles that can't be filled by someone in the US), there's no grace period, the day your employment ceases you are liable to immediately leave the US or be subject to deportation proceedings (the only credit you get is that your employer should pay reasonable costs to send you home). If you do overstay, of course, to clear up your affairs (you may have family, partners, you know, a life you can't curtail with a few days' notice, not to mention re-establish your life in another country), then that will probably disqualify you from a future visa (or at least lead to awkward questions). It's a visa status that's easy for unscrupulous employers to take advantage of.
When this happens in Qatar or Dubai, we say we shouldn't play football with those nasty people. When it happens here, we call it "gangmaster".
The original intention of H1-B visas is for occupations that can't be filled domestically, so generally there wasn't scope to consider they'd become redundant as they were so essential. In a time before Business Geniuses roamed, of course. I, for instance, lived and worked in the US under H1-B (there is, or was, a six year maximum, after which you need to be on a green card).
That said, at the of mind, I didn't get a nice note thanking me for helping the US economy and paying all those taxes, but I did get a letter warning me to leave the US by this date or face future repercussions. In a quid pro quo, I never filed my final year's taxes. That was a bit pyrrhic as I usually came out of the annual tax furore in credit. Some years enough to pay my accountant (or the bloke in the tax service office in the mall).
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Add to that, they don't even sell cars now, they sell financing packages for cars that no one can actually afford (an entry range Tesla, for instance, is £42k). I think there's an aphorism about schemes for triangular buildings with reclining pharaohs in them.
Comparable to a Volvo/Polestar
I know which I'd rather have.
Hint: The one that's designed to be as passively safe as possible rather the have eventual user deth build in.
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You can't actually buy a Tesla for that price, my wife tried. Expect to pay about £65k for any model you can get before
the end of the decade the Business Genius tanks them too.
But, regardless of brand, the nation's driveways and pavements are now filled with new cars that retail for a multiple of their annual household income.
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Neighbours at Fort Larrington are swanning around in a Model X. Prices start at £73k :jurek:
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Anyone hoping for an affordable Tesla would do well to wait until the Twitter implosion drags the company down to the point where they stop issuing firmware updates... :demon:
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Anyone hoping for an affordable Tesla would do well to wait until the Twitter implosion drags the company down to the point where they stop issuing firmware updates... :demon:
Followed shortly there after by them stopping working... and then everyone sueing... then everyone finding a EULA says they don't own the software on the car...
Popcorn anyone?
J
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To be fair, at that price, I doubt many of them own the car either.
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Dunno what Nick the Neighbour does for a living but he does it from home and has been since long before Teh Plague. There's a BMW in their front yard as well, or at least there was the last time I looked.
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You can't actually buy a Tesla for that price, my wife tried. Expect to pay about £65k for any model you can get before the end of the decade the Business Genius tanks them too.
But, regardless of brand, the nation's driveways and pavements are now filled with new cars that retail for a multiple of their annual household income.
You buy a house on tick.
Second biggest purchase is a voiture, why not spread the (financial) cost over decades…?
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Or just pay a monthly usage fee for everything.
Why would anyone want to own things and be unhappy 🙁
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Neighbours at Fort Larrington are swanning around in a Model X. Prices start at £73k :jurek:
The one that looks like a dog trying to squeeze one out.
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I googled "Tesla Model X" to see which one it was and the second thing that came up was a McLaren on Ebay for £50k!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295105237633
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Neighbours at Fort Larrington are swanning around in a Model X. Prices start at £73k :jurek:
The one that looks like a dog trying to squeeze one out.
A comparison I remember Flatus using many years about Specialized bikes with the curved top tube. Oh, innocent days.
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Or just pay a monthly usage fee for everything.
Why would anyone want to own things and be unhappy 🙁
Because in the unhappy event that you lose your job or your income is otherwise drastically reduced you can keep the things that you own. And, as we're considering cars, if you live in an area with no public transport, having a car is a necessity.
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Neighbours at Fort Larrington are swanning around in a Model X. Prices start at £73k :jurek:
The one that looks like a dog trying to squeeze one out.
A comparison I remember Flatus using many years about Specialized bikes with the curved top tube. Oh, innocent days.
J*r*my Cl*rks*n used it about the coupé version of the Chrysler Crossfire.
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You can't actually buy a Tesla for that price, my wife tried. Expect to pay about £65k for any model you can get before the end of the decade the Business Genius tanks them too.
But, regardless of brand, the nation's driveways and pavements are now filled with new cars that retail for a multiple of their annual household income.
You buy a house on tick.
Second biggest purchase is a voiture, why not spread the (financial) cost over decades…?
To be fair, even the modest lifetime of a modern car is probably longer than that of the average Taylor-Wimpy or Bellway new build.
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Neighbours at Fort Larrington are swanning around in a Model X. Prices start at £73k :jurek:
The one that looks like a dog trying to squeeze one out.
A comparison I remember Flatus using many years about Specialized bikes with the curved top tube. Oh, innocent days.
J*r*my Cl*rks*n used it about the coupé version of the Chrysler Crossfire.
Flatus steals all his best lines from T*p G**r.
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And back to Elon Musk for a moment... He's gone and pulled another Pontius Pilate move by running a poll WRT a general amnesty for banned accounts, showing that 1) he still won't own his decisions and 2) he still hasn't got a clue what his current favourite Latin phrase means.
The people have spoken.
Amnesty begins next week.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
7:58 pm · 24 Nov 2022
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595869526469533701
When you read the original quote* from which "Vox populi, vox dei" has been plucked, it's actually warning about people like Musk:
"Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." translates as:
"And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. "
Given the likelihood of bot accounts being used to get the "right" result, the more appropriate Latin should be (with a nod to William T. Sherman) "Vox falsorum hominum, vox humbug." :demon:
* From a letter the scholar Alcuin of York wrote to Charlemagne in 798.
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Is Kanye West an alternative to Twitter?
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Don't worry if some of you notice that I have un-followed you on twitter. I haven't fallen out with you. This is because I also follow you on the heffalump site and I'm trying to tidy up a bit.
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Kanye West really needs sectioning. He's very unwell.
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#DuvetKnowItsChristmas (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23duvetknowitschristmas&src=typed_query&f=live)[1] is disappointing this year. Can't work out if that's because nobody's posting anything, or if it's being buried by the algorithm. The results seem to be full of old posts and adverts.
There's a bit of effort to get the hashtag going on Mastodon, but little in the way of photos so far.
It'll be a shame if this internet tradition dies out...
[1] People posting photos of their sleeping arrangements while visiting their parents' homes. Staples include children's duvets, their old childhood toys, indoor camping, and having to share a room with siblings/pets/sinister doll collections/exercise equipment.
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Maybe nobody's getting home for xmas cos trains?
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So having already killed off most of the third-party clients, the latest stroke of business genius is charging for API access. Effectively killing off all those useful/fun bots that aren't run by a well-funded organisation.
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
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As Kim usually makes sensible choices I'm now on @AndrewClark@mastodon.lol . A lot of the other servers don't seem to be signing people up anyway.
And mastodon.lol is now closing down in May, so I'll have to find another server & migrate to that one.
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Yes, I'm a bit miffed about that. But as there's a migration option, not as miffed as I am about Musk's destruction of the birdsite.
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So having already killed off most of the third-party clients, the latest stroke of business genius is charging for API access. Effectively killing off all those useful/fun bots that aren't run by a well-funded organisation.
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Rumour has it that the recent outages were caused by failing to account for the fact that the API is used by Twitter itself when they attempted to switch it off. :facepalm:
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Oh bugger. @toot.wales @tŵt.cymru appears to have disappeared up its own fundament. ???
It was fine this morning.
Suppose l'd better go watch Scotland v Wales and see if someone has switched it back on later.
Oh. It's back. How odd.
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i've just attempted to write a post - the first for a couple of weeks - and the app is bunging me out when I try to open the editor. This happens on my iphone and the ipad.
I'm @wowbagger@c.im .
Anyone know wossgoinon?
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Does the website work?
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I've had to create an account at mastodon.social, it seems. Couldn't work out how to log on to my original account. It seems others have been having similar problems at mastodon.c.im, but a while back. I've not been able to find that server with my desktop's browser, only from the phone app.
Wondering if I can be arsed.
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Oh bugger. @toot.wales @tŵt.cymru appears to have disappeared up its own fundament. ???
It was fine this morning.
Suppose l'd better go watch Scotland v Wales and see if someone has switched it back on later.
Oh. It's back. How odd.
No. Its gone again. :-\
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Twitter doesn't seem to have much 'new' on it these days. I used to be able to scroll and see new content all the time but now it seems to be the same old stuff so either the people I used to get a lot of content from have stopped posting or Melon has buggered it.
Mastodon isn't doing much better for me either, I clearly haven't found enough people to follow on there. Or maybe everyone else is full of ennui at the state of the world.
<Goes off to eat worms>
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My problem with Mastodon is that you follow someone because their toots are interesting, only to find that they are an industrial booster, causing my timeline to completely fill with re-toots that don't interest me and just endless tedious virtue signalling.
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My problem with Mastodon is that you follow someone because their toots are interesting, only to find that they are an industrial booster, causing my timeline to completely fill with re-toots that don't interest me and just endless tedious virtue signalling.
For that scenario, you can hide boosts on a per-user basis.
I think it's still badly in need of some sort of option for only showing you the same boosted toot once. And keeping track of where you last got to in the timeline.
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Musk's shithousery... (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64989720)
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Musk's shithousery... (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64989720)
"the email account for the Twitter press office now automatically sends out poo emojis in response to requests"
Wtf.
In other news, mastodon has passed 10000000 users...
J
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One thing that you can say for Musk and that is that he appears to have no sense of shame, morality, decency or integrity when it comes to social media super twattery.
Just my opinion though. I am sure that many love him or at least they do until Musk's mutants turn their gaze their way ...
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In other news, mastodon has passed 10000000 users...
J
couldyoupleaseputsomepunctuationinthatsowecantellataglancewhetheritsahundredthousandamilliontenmillionorwhateverokaythanks
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In other news, mastodon has passed 10000000 users...
J
couldyoupleaseputsomepunctuationinthatsowecantellataglancewhetheritsahundredthousandamilliontenmillionorwhateverokaythanks
There's 7 zeros.
J
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This is what metric prefixes are for. 10M. Easily understood without any of those ambiguous dots and commas.
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It's 100 lakhs (my Indian colleagues have been training me!)
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As Mastodon.lol is closing down, doe anyone have recommendations for another server ? Leftish, with a decent userbase. Ideally something that's not reliant upon a single person who's likely to shut it down when they get peeved.
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YACF :demon: ;)
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It's 100 lakhs (my Indian colleagues have been training me!)
Thank you! So it's 1 crore.
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In other news, mastodon has passed 10000000 users...
J
couldyoupleaseputsomepunctuationinthatsowecantellataglancewhetheritsahundredthousandamilliontenmillionorwhateverokaythanks
There's 7 zeros.
J
1,00,00,000
or maybe
100,00,000
(not vitally important IMO where you put the commas, or whether you use commas or dots, just as long as there's something to break up the row)
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Vitally Important!
If you must use a physical delimiter use a comma. Otherwise things get messy once you have a decimal point in there.
When I did big engineering sums back in the day (limited time on the company's IBM main-frame and Dog forbid you sought permission to apply for authority to book time on the UMIST brain...) and had to write it all down manually, a space every three was the norm (so that even the French could understand it, since they insist on using a comma as a decimal point).
Though I much prefer standard mathmatical notation (10^7). You don't even have to count the number of zeros or give it a name.
I have often wondered why we have to work numbers arse about face?
Reading from the right:
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands, Hundred Thousands, Millions (modern uasage), Ten Millions, Hundred Millions, etc.
I can only surmise that since our numbers are derived from Arabic numerals - and they read from right to left.
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Shirley big-endian makes sense as we read the most significant digits first?
"Two hundred and thirty four" makes more sense than "four, thirty and two hundred" in most contexts, as it naturally emphasises the hundreds.
The exception if of course dates, where BRITONS are traditionally little-endian and USAnians are middle-endian, presumably because the written form is derived from the spoken form. ISO dates spare us from this nonsense by making dates work like other big-endian numbers.
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Yeah, presumably numbers are written big-endian because that reflects the way we say them.
As for commas and dots, it doesn't matter does it? Because it's customary in traditions that use dots, to use a decimal comma (and vice versa). Thought there might be some that dots and decimal points.
Or
Not sure about British dates being little-endian though. Historically they were also often middle-endian, in writing as in speech. With the month written as a word, it doesn't matter. Today is Friday, March 24th, 2023. Or 24th March 2023. Or even 24 Mar. 2023 or 24-III-2023. III-24-2023 would work but I've never seen it.
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Yeah, presumably numbers are written big-endian because that reflects the way we say them.
As for commas and dots, it doesn't matter does it? Because it's customary in traditions that use dots, to use a decimal comma (and vice versa). Thought there might be some that dots and decimal points.
Or
Not sure about British dates being little-endian though. Historically they were also often middle-endian, in writing as in speech. With the month written as a word, it doesn't matter. Today is Friday, March 24th, 2023. Or 24th March 2023. Or even 24 Mar. 2023 or 24-III-2023. III-24-2023 would work but I've never seen it.
1,000.001
1.000,001
One of these is written in the continental style, one of them is written correctly.
Which is which ?
The , Vs . Thing can trip a lot up. A friend put in a meter reading do 50,25 of gas on their Belgian supplier's website. Which filtered out the , And billed the for 5025. A 100x greater than used bill...
The time sheet system at work requires house logged in the form 4,25 for a four hour and 15 mins worked. Not awake one day I typed in 4.00. the system ignored the . And decided I'd worked a 400 hour shift in a single 24 HR period... Which was fun to explain to the boss...
I wish this was standardised.
J
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I have problems the whole time with spreadsheets at work which I then work on at home. Presumably to do with language/regional settings, but some tabs can have a decimal point and others a decimal comma. The spreadsheets I submit with my tax return are like this - fortunately the Finanzamt seem to cope with it.
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1,000.001
1.000,001
One of these is written in the continental style, one of them is written correctly.
Which is which ?
!!!!
Let this forever be remembered as the occasion QG said something Continental might not be as good as the British equivalent!!!
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For bonus points, in Tobleronia it’s 1’000’000.
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For bonus points, in Tobleronia it’s 1’000’000.
Some calculators use that too. Maybe they're as supplied to Credit Suisse.
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Well that's a first. Seems that something I said on Mastodon attracted the attention of some fascists, one suggesting killing leftist people. The second sent me a deep fake video of biden with a TERF rant.
Have blocked both instances, and my instance admin has done the same. First time we've had to dk this.
J
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Anyone got a invite code for Bluesky?
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1,000.001
1.000,001
One of these is written in the continental style, one of them is written correctly.
Which is which ?
!!!!
Let this forever be remembered as the occasion QG said something Continental might not be as good as the British equivalent!!!
Working in world shipping when many documents were still hand written it was vital to get numbers right. I soon learnt the what was which and vice versa. Context was crucial. No computers for ages and the first ones worked off floppy discs. Did I tell you about the time I met Charles Dickens?
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Was he in the tavern with Matthew Hopkins, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Thomas Tallis?
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presumably because the written form is derived from the spoken form
As in "Remember, remember, November 5th"?
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Anyway...
Are we all on Threads yet?
I can't decide if I'm giving Zuck enough of my data yet.
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Yeah, presumably numbers are written big-endian because that reflects the way we say them.
As for commas and dots, it doesn't matter does it? Because it's customary in traditions that use dots, to use a decimal comma (and vice versa). Thought there might be some that dots and decimal points.
Or
Not sure about British dates being little-endian though. Historically they were also often middle-endian, in writing as in speech. With the month written as a word, it doesn't matter. Today is Friday, March 24th, 2023. Or 24th March 2023. Or even 24 Mar. 2023 or 24-III-2023. III-24-2023 would work but I've never seen it.
1,000.001
1.000,001
One of these is written in the continental style, one of them is written correctly.
Which is which ?
The , Vs . Thing can trip a lot up. A friend put in a meter reading do 50,25 of gas on their Belgian supplier's website. Which filtered out the , And billed the for 5025. A 100x greater than used bill...
The time sheet system at work requires house logged in the form 4,25 for a four hour and 15 mins worked. Not awake one day I typed in 4.00. the system ignored the . And decided I'd worked a 400 hour shift in a single 24 HR period... Which was fun to explain to the boss...
I wish this was standardised.
J
It is standardised, and neither of those follow the standard.
numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups
Written correctly, your examples should be
1 000.001
1 000,001
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I'm thinking Zuckerberg just KO'd Musk.
I'll still pass though.
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The thing that really puts me off Threads (aside from the data mining) is that it needs to be tied to an existing Instagram account. I use Instagram and Twitter for very different purposes and really don't want one identity linked to the other. So I'd have to set up a separate Instagram account in order to join Threads.
It's bad enough that Instagram nags me to share to Faceache every time I post.
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I agree but there are literally hundreds of millions of people who really don't give a shit and will jump in just because it is there. I am certainly not going to create an Instagram account just to create a Threads account just to be part of the great experiment.
I have the displeasure of existing on a "family" WhatsApp group. There is already excited talk about "us" all joining Threads. I have stayed silent on the subject so far.
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The thing that really puts me off Threads (aside from the data mining) is that it needs to be tied to an existing Instagram account. I use Instagram and Twitter for very different purposes and really don't want one identity linked to the other. So I'd have to set up a separate Instagram account in order to join Threads.
It's bad enough that Instagram nags me to share to Faceache every time I post.
Quite.
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I occasionally read things on twatter. I don't twat.
I will, however, be joining threads, because hopefully success of threads will kill off twatter. Since it descended into an absolute cesspool under the Nole's 'leadership', I'd quite like it to eff off and die.
Meta is at least making some attempt at content moderation on threads.
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I'm continuing to use Mastodon, where the UI isn't terrible and the people are actually nice (in a pre-September usenet kind of way), if a little lacking in diversity (it's mostly LGBT+ people, tech people, writers, academics, and YACFers).
My twitter feed, when it works, is pretty stagnant these days - a few people who crosspost, some who seem to enjoy arguing with taxi drivers and/or transphobes, various organisations' official accounts that rarely post, one prolific local campaigner, and disabled people who are sticking around because all the other disabled people are sticking around.
I continue to use as little Facebook as possible, so won't be going near Threads with a barge pole. I'm also too old for Instagram.
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I used to be active on Twitter but lost interest several years ago (it started becoming a cesspool well before Musk got involved). But I became active again about a year or so ago as it is still the primary online communication platform for a particular interest group. I limit the people I engage with to those who are related to that interest group, and only post on that subject, which makes it reasonably bearable.
I just wish those people wouldn't RT stuff unrelated to that subject that I don't want to see. Sigh. (Keeping the scope of your posts narrow and focused is Social Media 101. I think because I take this approach, I have picked up a lot more followers than I would if I posted any old shit.)
If this interest group migrates to Threads, I will probably follow them, but reluctantly.
I use my Instagram account for personal stuff that's mostly unrelated to that subject.
I still look at Facebook occasionally but only to follow friends/family and very rarely post there.
We also have a family WhatsApp group, which is handy for my siblings to share the latest news about what their brilliant offspring have been up to and is easy to ignore.
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I just wish those people wouldn't RT stuff unrelated to that subject that I don't want to see. Sigh.
One thing I really like about Mastodon is that you can follow people but if necessary you can mute their 'boosts' (RTs). I've done this to a couple of accounts.
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I've not got on board with Mastodon yet. I'm a bear of little brain and it all seems too complicated.
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I just wish those people wouldn't RT stuff unrelated to that subject that I don't want to see. Sigh. (Keeping the scope of your posts narrow and focused is Social Media 101. I think because I take this approach, I have picked up a lot more followers than I would if I posted any old shit.)
I suppose that depends on whether you want to "do well at social media" or just be a person on the internet. It's just a thing I use to chat to my friends. I'm happy for random bike people to follow me, but if they don't care about tech/queer/disability/environmental issues, that's what filters are for[1].
This is how you make friends with people, and learn new stuff. On Twitter it was seeing PoC talking about their lived experience of systemic racism. On Mastodon it seems to be mostly gardening...
[1] Ob-rant: People who make up silly names for things, without considering that this means people need to play wack-a-mole with their filter parameters.
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I've not got on board with Mastodon yet. I'm a bear of little brain and it all seems too complicated.
I really don't understand this argument. You go to the website, create an account and start posting/reading/following. Why is this a barrier on Mastodon but not on YACF or Twitter? It's basically the same process. Sure, there's a new UI to learn, but Mastodon's is at least designed for the user's convenience rather than to manipulate their behaviours to make them see more shitverts, and is accordingly less bloaty and frustrating.
I can understand "The official client is terrible" or "All the $interest community are on TikTok", but really, the bar's set pretty low. Have you *seen* Facebook?
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I just wish those people wouldn't RT stuff unrelated to that subject that I don't want to see. Sigh.
One thing I really like about Mastodon is that you can follow people but if necessary you can mute their 'boosts' (RTs). I've done this to a couple of accounts.
Yes, this is excellent. All we need now is for the timeline to suppress repeat boosts of the same post.
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When Space Karen stopped folks sans Twitter accounts from even viewing his poxy operation I actually created an account*, mostly to follow The Week In Tory. Which that RussInCheshire immediately said is moving to Mastodon until Muskrat stops being a tit. If Muskrat is now letting people view it again I might just log out and leave it to fester until he deletes it in a fit of pique.
I have no idea what Instagram is supposed to do.
* which in and of itself made filling in a tax return the very model of a modern Simple Thing.
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I have a Twitter account or two from when it was first created, although I don’t think I’ve tweeted in 10 years or so. I have a Facebook account that I occasionally follow email prompts to, but I don’t post anymore. I did set up a Masterdon account, but I’ve not used it. I think I have an instagram account, but I don’t remember the log in details if I do. I won’t be setting up a Threads account unless someone sets up a group I need to be a member, and given my social habits, that’s rather unlikely.
I post on here and we have a close family What’s app group which just about meets my online interaction needs.
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I suppose that depends on whether you want to "do well at social media" or just be a person on the internet.
It's only about doing well at social media in the sense of trying to ensure my feed is only populated with the stuff I want to see.
This is how you make friends with people, and learn new stuff.
Yes, back in the golden age of Twitter I became friendly with lots of interesting people this way. I even met some of them IRL. But I don't think Twitter works like that any more, alas. The interesting people have been swamped by the bots and ads. My "For you" feed is a bin fire.
Re Mastodon, the initial hurdle of having to choose a server is a significant difference to other social media platforms. And I've not yet seen enough of an incentive in being part of Mastodon to consider it worth bothering. YMMV.
Critical mass. There's not much point to a social media that consists of you and a weird bloke called Darren who collects novelty underpants.
I don't /think/ I'm technically illiterate but Mastodon completely confuses me - and if it's going to get widespread acceptance then it needs serious dumbing down or a different interface from those I've seen to date.
Well, I've joined that, I think, I'm struggling and finding it as user friendly as a cornered rat.
We need to have the server bit too. This is something that confuses new people to mastodon.
^ It was posts like these that put me off making the switch when everyone first started jumping ship from Twitter.
Last word goes to ian:
The problem with something like Mastodon is that if you have to explain to someone how to get it work, you've lost most of them.
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Re Mastodon, the initial hurdle of having to choose a server is a significant difference to other social media platforms.
Perhaps, but it's no different from email in that respect, except vastly easier to migrate later.
Seriously, if you're not inclined to skim TEH RULEZ of a few instances to see if their character limits, moderation policy, etc. suits you, you can just sign up for one of the big instances like mastodon.social and move to something better if/when it catches your eye. It's no more of a hurdle than creating a gmail account.
If you're reading this, you've probably already internalised concepts like reading, writing, cursors, double-clicking, usernames, domain names, that weird https:// thing, passwords, etc. There's nothing magically difficult about 'instances' as a concept (which is the only really 'new' thing about Mastodon, if you're young enough not to remember the pre-2000s internet) compared to the stuff we all had to learn to get here. Otherwise it's just the usual learning what the names for things are.
And I've not yet seen enough of an incentive in being part of Mastodon to consider it worth bothering. YMMV.
That bin fire of bots and ads you mentioned? It isn't one. By design. YMMV.
Critical mass. There's not much point to a social media that consists of you and a weird bloke called Darren who collects novelty underpants.
Again it's one of those YMMV things. There's not much point to a social media that has less than 1000 active users, who ostensibly spend their time discussing a niche mode of transport...
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Anyway, learning curve of Mastodon aside, I'm not sure how Bluesky or this Threads thing count as an alternative to Twitter. Ultimately, they're still the same harvesting-users'-data-and-attention-for-profit business model, and will have the same life-cycle and the same fundamental problems, until they implode in a puff of finance. The only reason to tolerate any of them is because that's where a community you're interested in has decided to make its home, or because it's a decent way to find a lot of eyeballs to market your whatever to, which means there's no point in choosing them based on political or technical merit. You just go where the novelty underpants enthusiasts are; where your family have decided to do Forward Planning; or where your videos will reach the most eyeballs.
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it's no different from email in that respect
An interesting parallel. I've been knocking around long enough to remember when email discussion groups (powered by listserv etc) were a thing. In fact, I met my wife through an email group, which I joined in ~1995. The group only exists as a Facebook page these days but I am still in touch with lots of good friends I made through that group.
When I first joined it, I didn't have to go through the process of setting up an account because I used my work email address, which was the only email address I had at the time.
That bin fire of bots and ads you mentioned? It isn't one. By design. YMMV.
Indeed. Which is why it's no good pretending that you can still use Twitter like it used to be in the good old days.
Still, at least it isn't TikTok.
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The only reason to tolerate any of them is because that's where a community you're interested in has decided to make its home
This is very much the key point!
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The only reason to tolerate any of them is because that's where a community you're interested in has decided to make its home
This is very much the key point!
This ^^^^ It’s only because the BHPC and WHPSC largely abandoned their respective fora for Farcebok that I actually bother with Mr Zuckerberg's Walled Garden.
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I've not got on board with Mastodon yet. I'm a bear of little brain and it all seems too complicated.
It's easy
I am on on the same "server" as Kim and the people are loverly. it would be nice if there was some more politics news on it
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It's all about critical mass. If everyone you want to follow is on Twitter, Twitter is where you stay. There can be seismic shifts, like MySpace to Faecebook, but they initially had different markets: MySpace was for the hoipolloi but Facebook was for grads and older people. As the more aspirational platform, it picked up MySpace users until it achieved critical mass and MySpace was essentially finished.
I think there's only room in the market for one social media platform of a given genre. Zuckerbot may win against Twitter, given that Twitter is run by an erratic madman, but two out of the big three (Twitter, Threads and Mastodon) will be backwaters. It's not like cycling forums, which have a kind of tribalism and no global pretensions.
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This is my issue with Twitter, mainly I use it to read politics goss and satire with a side order of mad cat people. I have managed to get the mad cat stuff on Mastodon but last time I looked there wasn't the critical mass of politics journalists and other knowledgeable people to fulfill that space for me. (Or at least it's not working in the way I want it to)
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The problem with journalists on Mastodon is they're either the sort of niche journalists who were using it before it was cool, or they fall foul of properly enforced moderation policies.
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All social media is only as good as the people you follow.
Finding Twitter/mastodon/instagram/threads/facebook/bluesky/whatever boring just means you're following boring people.
Personally I follow a load of accounts that post pictures of cute animals every hour, It really brightens up the timeline.
Factor in a variety of geeks, and nerds, and cyclists, and some all of the above, and it's a nice place to be.
J
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I never did entirely figure out Mastodon. Or maybe I did, but it wasn't worth the effort. Like I say, if it requires someone to tell you 'it's easy,' it – by definition – isn't. Despite claims to the contrary, very few people left Twitter, not a surprise since the point of Twitter seems to be for people to promote their own virtue (there's little point putting it to Elon if he's not watching, damn it). I occasionally take a peek (partly for work purposes), but the signal-to-noise ratio doesn't make prolonged contact any more enticing than a tea party with ebola. It mostly seems to be a tidal flow of mobs. I figure if they invented a filter that excluded anyone with a mention of a football club, their pronouns, or anything Brexit related, it would be heaven. But again, defeating the point of Twitter, which is a mob barney.
If Twitter were to evaporate, the world probably would be a better place. Journalists might have to write stories that don't consist of stuff people said on Twitter (they might also realise that opinions on Twitter aren't representative of the real world).
Like all social media, it was a bit random win-out, but there's not a lot of space for other platforms unless they're happy being niche. I still don't want to read about Darren's novelty underpants. I've got a strong feeling he's on Mastadon though.
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If the success of social media relies on following people, then it’s going to create more and more rabbit holes of people following each other's niche interests until everyone just follows themselves.
Oh, and I forgot to agree with Mr L (I’m not following him) in saying what is the point of Instagram?
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Just seen on Farcebok that Space Karen has sicced his lawyers onto the Zuckerbot over Threads because it contains Twitter’s “intellectual property”, taken over the road in the heads of people Musk sacked.
As “Glasgalf” put it “Well Elon, you massive fucknugget, that’s what happens when you treat your staff like utter shite”.
(Roffles)
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A longer version; Mustelid wailes "How dare you employ people that I sacked, and get them to tell you how to design a social messaging app! Those were the best people, full of wisdom from designing and running Twitter, it is unfair that they are designing a better twitter!"
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I'm quoted up there by Cityoen as saying how complicated Mastodon is.
That *was* certainly my initial view when I said that.
I'm now of a different opinion now that there are a variety of apps and we interfaces available.
The only remaining complexity is the choice of instance. Maybe that word itself is a barrier?
I'm now exclusively on Mastodon since Tweetdeck has broken, and I can no longer stalk my children on Facebook. Oh, and WhatsApp, but I refuse to join non-family groups.
Mastodon is friendly, and with a sufficient variety of nutters (nice nutters) to make it worthwhile for me.
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I'm quoted up there by Cityoen as saying how complicated Mastodon is.
That *was* certainly my initial view when I said that.
Of course - I only quoted those earlier posts as examples of what put me off signing up to Mastodon *at the time*. Appreciate it is a very different scenario now, though I'm still yet to be convinced I need to be on Mastodon. I may change my mind in due course.
Still mulling over whether or not to try Threads.
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Nobody *needs* to be on Mastodon. That's what makes it nice.
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Nobody *needs* to be on Mastodon. That's what makes it nice.
That's the best summary I've seen!
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Twitter use isn't what it was. DAMHIKT
Joining Mastodon would be simplified with a "choose me a random big instance" button. Migrating is easy, they say. So make it easy to worry about it later. When i joined it _felt_ like it was going to matter.
My feed there hasn't coalesced into any of my many twitter accounts yet. (I keep it somewhat narrow.) QG's reposts look a bit like my political twitter.
Finding new people that are interesting is the biggest point of friction now. In particular, i can't look at an account that looks interesting and see who they follow, just who they repost. Which makes it hard to get out of a local knot in the network without some external information.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
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How much am I really missing with my "Minimal Facebook Only" socal media exile?
I'm more into the social part than the ranting activism and cat vids.
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How much am I really missing with my "Minimal Facebook Only" socal media exile?
I'm more into the social part than the ranting activism and cat vids.
Not so much, but that's me too. Though I like cat vids. Success of social media seems predefined by its need to create echo chambers for people with, erm, focused ideologies. After all, none of them want to be exposed to other opinions. Imagine that!
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Tbh, the main reason I still bother with Twitter is @buitengebieden
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden?s=21&t=3vDcgMQgCPPNMkiWCcqIUg
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Twitter now appears to be completely invisible to those without an account. Clicking on that link I get a page saying "Happening now, join Twitter today". So I'll just have to ask – what are buiten Gebieden?
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Twitter now appears to be completely invisible to those without an account. Clicking on that link I get a page saying "Happening now, join Twitter today". So I'll just have to ask – what are buiten Gebieden?
When my mum was traing to be a Crool Nurse, along with Florence, she walked past a butcher's shop. In the window were some faggots. She didn't know what faggots were so went in.
"Excuse me, what are faggots?"
"3/6d a pahnd luv"
I suspect a similar non useful answer could apply to the buiten Gebeiden question. (I get the same "Join that Twitter that they have these days" message).
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How much am I really missing with my "Minimal Facebook Only" socal media exile?
I'm more into the social part than the ranting activism and cat vids.
Not so much, but that's me too. Though I like cat vids. Success of social media seems predefined by its need to create echo chambers for people with, erm, focused ideologies. After all, none of them want to be exposed to other opinions. Imagine that!
Quite the opposite, or at least emphasis on the plural. It also needs people with different views, so there's someone to have a mass flamewar with. The attraction of Twitter was that the far right had a steady supply of libs to pwn, or the cyclists have some homophobic taxi drivers to try to reason with or whatever, hence the lack of 'success' of the single-ideology alternatives.
For capitalist values of success, of course. I'm sure the Nazis are having as much fun on Parler as the catgirls are having on Mastodon.
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Threads requires an Instagram login, which in my case I have not got, and can only be accessed via an app. Android or iOS. It can therefore fuck the fuck off until it’s fit for the desktop.
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Threads requires an Instagram login, which in my case I have not got, and can only be accessed via an app. Android or iOS. It can therefore fuck the fuck off until it’s fit for the desktop.
Okay, boomer
;)
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I still don’t know what Instagram is for.
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I still don’t know what Instagram is for.
It's for the generation between Farcebook and TickleTok, m'lud.
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Threads requires an Instagram login, which in my case I have not got, and can only be accessed via an app. Android or iOS. It can therefore fuck the fuck off until it’s fit for the desktop.
At least one reason for my refusing to use it.
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I still don’t know what Instagram is for.
Me neither. Can't work out where posts begin and end and it seems to be BIIIG picture + tiny text + comments without clear enough delineation between them.
Also, not being usable (can only read not post) from a web browser is an unforgiveable accessibility failing.
Threads has no ALT text so another reason to avoid. Not using stuff my blind friends can't access.
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I still don’t know what Instagram is for.
For taking pictures of your lunch. Before you eat it.
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I put pictures of a cycling related nature on it. Also pictures of a Rifle No. 1, Short, Magazine Lee Enfield with a piling swivel and A Rifle No. 4 without a piling swivel, as in its case it had not got.
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I still don’t know what Instagram is for.
Its for joining Threads, innit.
You Silly Billy.
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Dunno how you're all doing since twitter went tits up.
Haven't used twitter much in recent weeks since they stopped 3rd party apps, and then this week they blocked tweetdeck for non paid accounts. I'm probably gonna post about once a month or three to keep the account alive.
I've gone to Mastodon for everything now. I've passed some threshold now, on the weekend I posted a rant about public transport, and it blew up my notifications. Over 800 boosts, and I've got 90 new followers as a result.
The whole place feels a lot like twitter of 15 years ago. It's not perfect, but it's a nice enough place to hang out.
J
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The whole place feels a lot like twitter of 15 years ago. It's not perfect, but it's a nice enough place to hang out.
This, pretty much. It's less diverse than twitter, but it's refreshingly calm. It's amazing how nice genuine technical flaws are when you're used to deliberate enshittification.
I dip my toe into BlueSky occasionally, which seems to be struggling to gain momentum. The UI doesn't help[1].
[1] Seriously, how hard is it to have a Dark theme that isn't as black as Hotblack Desiato's spaceship? I want the floaters to go away, not mega-contrast.
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This, pretty much. It's less diverse than twitter, but it's refreshingly calm. It's amazing how nice genuine technical flaws are when you're used to deliberate enshittification.
I dip my toe into BlueSky occasionally, which seems to be struggling to gain momentum. The UI doesn't help[1].
Cunningham's law still works...
I had a nice response to my public transport rant post the other day:
"Apologies for the awk Q but is this rhetorical or are you genuinely asking? Just checking before replying."
Another person just told me I was wrong. And then another person apologised for the person who told me I was wrong, because it was them boosting my post that had caused the telling me I'm wrong person to see it.
I've never had such politeness before.
We did have a slight issue with some people from a rather extreme right wing instance. But my instance admin blocked them immediately on request.
I'm enjoying mastodon.
J
[1] Seriously, how hard is it to have a Dark theme that isn't as black as Hotblack Desiato's spaceship? I want the floaters to go away, not mega-contrast.
[/quote]
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Dunno how you're all doing since twitter went tits up.
Haven't used twitter much in recent weeks since they stopped 3rd party apps, and then this week they blocked tweetdeck for non paid accounts. I'm probably gonna post about once a month or three to keep the account alive.
I've gone to Mastodon for everything now. I've passed some threshold now, on the weekend I posted a rant about public transport, and it blew up my notifications. Over 800 boosts, and I've got 90 new followers as a result.
The whole place feels a lot like twitter of 15 years ago. It's not perfect, but it's a nice enough place to hang out.
J
Wanders off to follow you on there ;)
I only use twitter to complain to companies and not been there since the change to xXx
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Wanders off to follow you on there ;)
I only use twitter to complain to companies and not been there since the change to xXx
I'm in the social.v.st instance.
J
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I don't actively use Twix any more but dip in occasionally to see if I'm missing anything. Checked in this morning and... well, if you needed any further evidence that it is broken beyond repair, this thread from Dave Gorman should convince you:
https://x.com/DaveGorman/status/1723125626666693081?s=20
To save you actually visiting the cesspit, the story is basically that he came across a crypto spammer in his timeline and thought it was odd that he should have been following such an account. He looked at the other followers and saw several fellow comics listed. On further digging, he discovered that this was the official account of the late Neil Innes which had been taken over by said crypto spammer.
Apparently, Space Karen is now selling off defunct accounts, followers included. :facepalm:
That's it. I'm done. Account deleted.
PS I'm still not on Mastodon but have signed up to Bluesky - @widdersbel.bsky.social if anyone is interested (haven't actually posted anything there yet though)
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Where money and infamy are concerned Space Karen has no boundaries.
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While I don't especially like Musk and he's doing a number on Twitter/X, I couldn't find any evidence that they're selling dead accounts, that's just a single post suggesting that they read it somewhere (which I know is all the evidence we need in these modern times for misfeasance). I mean, I wouldn't put it past him, but there are other ways to get access to unused accounts. I'm probably posting suggestive pictures of myself as a sexy young lady right now.
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Fair point, ian - I repeated that assertion without checking it’s true. Careless (though you have to admit it sounds plausibly like something he would do). As you say, there are other ways to take control of dormant accounts.
Either way, the place is now dead to me - every time I do check in, the stuff I actually want to see is buried under a pile of shite. It’s broken.
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Reminds me a bit of Usenet (young 'uns, it's a bit of the internet that was invented in the beforetimes), over a couple of years became unusable in the sludge of spam and arguments. Musk or not, this might be the fate of all such uncontrolled media, a sort of misinformational entropy.
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Usenet never went away. It's still there.
Sure the September that never ended did have a lasting impact, but it's still in active use.
Everytime I see in the news AFP the news agency referenced, I always think it's referring to alt.fan.pratchet...
J