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submitted 8 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] voracitude@lemmy.world 203 points 8 months ago
[-] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 73 points 8 months ago

If this dude had any experience running an online site he would know how many stolen credit cards are out there.

X is a fly-coated chum bucket.

[-] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 36 points 8 months ago

Hey now....that's really rude! If fly-coated chum buckets could read they would be very very upset!

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[-] nikita@sh.itjust.works 144 points 8 months ago

This seems like further confirmation of that theory that I saw posted on here that the Saudi oil barons funded Elon’s purchase of Twitter for the sole purpose of destroying it. They want to silence online discussions of climate change and other left wing topics.

Combined with Reddit being owned by Tencent, Facebook being eternally evil, and TikTok being unconducive to any form of coherent dialogue, there are not many places for left wing discourse on the internet anymore.

[-] exscape@kbin.social 214 points 8 months ago

"climate change and other left wing topics"... I know that's basically how it works in some countries, but it's insane to consider certain scientific facts left wing, and we really shouldn't support such statements.

[-] nikita@sh.itjust.works 83 points 8 months ago

Thanks for pointing that out. It’s just so normal to think that way here that they’ve even corrupted me into framing climate change that way. It’s not a left wing topic; it’s a reality.

I just hope young people who are thinking of voting conservative here keep in mind that those assholes literally don’t believe in climate change and by extension science and facts. That alone should automatically disqualify conservatives from anyone’s consideration.

[-] reev@sh.itjust.works 35 points 8 months ago

It's not a lack of belief, it's just an abundance of "fuck you, I got mine".

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[-] stellargmite@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago

Politicising climate change was yet another distraction from dealing with it in a cohesive and unified manner. Divide and conquer.

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 33 points 8 months ago

Yes, in Europe, most political parties, both left and right, have their own climate change mitigation policies, because if they don't, they risk just not being elected.

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[-] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Found the round-earther.

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[-] WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I’ve had the same theory for a while. They saw the Arab Spring and other populist movements. With their vast oil wealth, tanking Twitter was a small price to pay to re-fracture descent and silence the left. The concentration of wealth has given insane power to wealthy who skew overwhelmingly on the side of themselves. The rise of the right is a direct result of billionaires funding across numerous avenues. The right aligns best with their self interest. They played the long game because they only have to pay people and let them do it for them. Regular folks have to stay engaged in the battle after working to support themselves. Billionaires are the matastasized cancer of capitalism.

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[-] Heresy_generator@kbin.social 113 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's completely absurd that he's saying this as an anti-bot measure. The bots exist because they generate revenue for the scumbags behind them, a small fee is just going to be part of doing business for them. He's not trying to stop bots, he's trying to monetize them and use them as an excuse to charge everyone. "The bot problem" will never be fixed and will be used as an excuse for every anti-user measure they put forward.

[-] ringwraithfish@startrek.website 38 points 8 months ago

Anti-user measures on a social media platform That's a bold strategy cotton

[-] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 103 points 8 months ago

Meanwhile, everyone will bitch about the absurdity of this and how shitty Musk and his followers are, then continue to use the platform daily as though it's an essential service. Anyone who hasn't jumped ship my now is either complacent or wholly supportive.

[-] BURN@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

What’s the alternative for one-to-many communication? I don’t use the platform anymore, but I miss a massive amount of news related to most of my hobbies due to it, normally relying on Reddit users to repost them. It’s incredibly annoying to have to search through 10+ social media pages to check for updates about a race team during a race or an ongoing gaming event.

Mastodon doesn’t have anywhere near the adoption necessary, bluesky still hasn’t taken off.

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 89 points 8 months ago

No, stop, please, don't kill your platform, no, stop. Eh, nevermind.

[-] FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago

Part of me really buys into the idea that Musk is pulling an evil mastermind move with his other billionaire pals, destroying one of the biggest social media sites to keep users fractured. End goal keeping any community small and unable to organize at scale. Then the voice of reason tells me this just another egotistical nepo baby trying to staunch the hemorrhaging of money from his last bad investment.

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[-] Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 82 points 8 months ago

I genuinely have to wonder if Musk is intentionally trying to kill Xitter, because if he's actually trying to recoup his "investment" he's going about it completely the wrong way

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 51 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

There was a theory that he was paid by a country like Saudi Arabia to take it down, sinces it's a powerful tool for a repressed population. Twitter was very important during the Arab Spring.

I scoffed at it before but it's starting to seem very plausible.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 23 points 8 months ago

It's a numbers and modeling game. If we charge this much, how many users will we lose? If that number is less than what you will make by doing the change, then the change is worth doing.

[-] 2ncs@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago

That works until more of the user base leaves. Whose going to pay to tweet if no one is on the platform. It's "worth" it potentially in the short term, but long term it doesn't seem viable.

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[-] set_secret@lemmy.world 81 points 8 months ago

WHY THE FUCK IS ANYONE ON TWITTER ANYMORE.

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[-] RagingRobot@lemmy.world 67 points 8 months ago

You have to pay him so that you can do the work of creating content for his platform? No thanks

[-] 3volver@lemmy.world 65 points 8 months ago

Anyone who still uses Twitter/X is an actual fucking moron.

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[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 64 points 8 months ago

Musky: Hmm, how else can i drive away actual human users?

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[-] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 61 points 8 months ago

Who is going to pay to post on twitter? Not only has he destroyed what was there but he's stopping any route for growth with new users. Most people won't bother.

He really has managed to destroy that company with his knee jerk decisions.

People with "hot link in bio" and all that jazz

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[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 57 points 8 months ago

Who would have thought that Twitter would become the new Somethingawful forums, and that Musk would take the role of Lowtax.

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[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 45 points 8 months ago

That’s not what free speech is, and there never has been free speech on Twitter, and that’s mostly a good thing. Jesus.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago

That’s not what free speech is

Well yeah, obviously. It's just wordplay based on the two common definitions of free.

Everybody knows what free speech means. It's just a bit of wordplay that you've taken very literally.

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[-] randomthin2332@lemmy.world 40 points 8 months ago

Free speech, now only $9.99 per month

[-] RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com 22 points 8 months ago

Upgrade your free speech to premium speech now for only $17.99

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[-] dragontamer@lemmy.world 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I stole this line from someone else, but its great.

Elon Musk has invented fee speech, not free speech.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 55 points 8 months ago

It's a clever line, but Musk hasn't invented a single goddamn thing in his life.

[-] solomon42069@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago

Hey that's not fair - he invents his own narrative about reality all the time.

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[-] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 37 points 8 months ago

I hate that twitter has the seo that it does. I always accidentally click on a link to see the "log in or get fucked" screen.

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[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 37 points 8 months ago

This is not going to stop bots.

[-] anarchaos@lemmy.ml 39 points 8 months ago

here's hoping it stops site growth

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[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I work in bot protection and it's a sound idea but doesn't really work in practice. As long as there's more than 1$ of value to be gained it's worth it for the bot makers.

This also makes it so that botting is only accesible to select few actors that have the required resources i.e. russian troll farms or large bot networks from china, in turn this increases their value. This is very good for them.

Reality is that the only way to stop bots is to constantly change up the detection system. This is called a "cat and mouse" sort of problem and it really is the only way to do it. The attacker always has to catch up and it can be trivial that takes them couple of hours to do but it also reveals behavior patterns for marking bot accounts. This actually works really well in practice but requires a lot of dev resources and many companies low-key like bots which is another thread entirely.

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[-] circuitfarmer@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago

When will people stop supporting this clown?

Remember when some people were like "well, I don't support him, but I've had this Twitter account forever, so I'm not leaving." This is what happens. Things just get worse until you gain plausible deniability for continuing to support the bullshit.

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[-] p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago

Lol I'm not paying shit, have fun everybody else. X is garbage

[-] maxenmajs@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago

Please. I truly want to see my favorite people on Twitter get driven to a better platform.

[-] simplejack@lemmy.world 22 points 8 months ago

Unfortunately, they’re going to Threads. Although I guess that’s technically better. But better in the sense that drinking piss is better than eating shit.

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[-] sagrotan@lemmy.world 28 points 8 months ago

I never got the appeal of twitter/x, and I never will. I get other social networks, some more, some less, but Twitter's just stupid IMO. I hope that shit'll die sooner than later.

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Hopefully more people change to mastodon now

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[-] Mango@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago

K bye.

Not that I literally ever said hi.

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[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 19 points 8 months ago
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[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago

For the love of god Elon, stay out of my news feed.

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 18 points 8 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Elon Musk confirmed Monday that X (formerly Twitter) plans to start charging new users to post on the platform, TechCrunch reported.

Back when X launched the "Not-A-Bot" program, Musk claimed that charging a $1 annual fee would make it "1000X harder to manipulate the platform."

In a help center post, X said that the "test was developed to bolster our already significant efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot activity."

X Support confirmed that follower counts would likely be impacted during that purge, because "we're casting a wide net to ensure X remains secure and free of bots."

Musk's plan to charge a fee to overcome bots won't work, experts told WSJ, because anyone determined to spam X can just find credit cards and buy disposable phones on the dark web.

And any bad actor who can't find what they need on the dark web could theoretically just wait three months to launch scams or spread harmful content like disinformation or propaganda.


The original article contains 798 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
928 points (96.0% liked)

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