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X's controversial changes to blocking and AI training saw half a million users leave for rival Bluesky in just a single day (www.techradar.com)

submitted 1 day ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).

It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.

Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.

In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.

There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

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[-] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 110 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Dude, that’s gonna be one hell of a racist AI just based on the dataset it’s gonna receive

[-] jayrodtheoldbod@midwest.social 13 points 19 hours ago

It's gonna train the little robot dog, which they're gonna put a gun on. And drones. It's gonna train drones, he'll sell it to anyone who'll buy the data.

[-] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 6 points 19 hours ago

he'll sell it to anyone who'll buy the data.

And if they will not buy it musk will sue them until they buy it.

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

This is why when we give vacuum robots AI powers, they run around your house shouting racist pejoratives

Welcome to the future

[-] deathbird@mander.xyz 6 points 13 hours ago

I hate Twitter, but I'm getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we're just gonna have Twitter again.

One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.

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[-] Lon3star@lemmy.world 131 points 23 hours ago

Come on over to Mastodon, the water's nice

[-] ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 79 points 22 hours ago

I've stopped recommending it. The discovery and trending post mechanisms are either garbage or non-existent, and it's really hard to get a feed that's remotely entertaining. Devs also seem ideologically opposed to adding any features like that. It'll just give normal people who aren't willing to deal with all this crap a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to the fediverse. I do recommend lemmy to people tho.

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 0 points 7 hours ago

I know what you mean. I'm self-hosting and use https://relay.fedi.buzz/ to subscribe to hashtags from all over the fedimicroblogosphere. It's literally too much interesting content, I kept scrolling new stuff for hours and had to cut down on what tags I subscribed to. It's like that Lemmy explorer but for microblogging.

I think a reasonable admin should be open to using the service to populate the federated timeline with niché content users ask for.

The only downside is "catch all"-tags and people abusing tags. "Hey #fediverse, check out my XYZ!". No, I want fediverse news dang it!

But the dev stuff? Yeah.

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 33 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I feel like its the opposite.

Mastodon's hashtag following is by far the best discovery method out there.

I've stopped using Bluesky because I can't find any content and there's just too much "screaming into the void" making it impossible to find anything of substance.
I've stopped using Threads because it's just engagement bait.

[-] anoncity@lemmy.world 13 points 19 hours ago

Yeah Threads has nothing of substance, just engagement bait as you said. X is similar now that users can make ad revenue

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[-] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 14 points 21 hours ago

While I agree that it makes Mastodon less entertaining I also think that it makes it a lot more fair, representative and trustworthy as a lens through which to observe & participate in social discourse and share information and opinions. That in itself will probably mean that it remains less popular but I think it's also what makes it more valuable IMO. We need to calm down from the urgency of the digital dopamine cycle, for many reasons. If social media is a truly human media then it should be boring at times because that is a human reality that we are adapted to.

[-] moormaan@lemmy.ca 11 points 20 hours ago

I agree. I love Mastodon's calm columnar UI with lists and hashtags where I feel I'm in control of my experience, and that I can just stop whenever and come back in three days.

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[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 153 points 1 day ago

What a garbage dataset to train off. The majority of everything there is all bots and AI anyway lol

[-] ohellidk@sh.itjust.works 73 points 23 hours ago

bots training bots. maybe this will (hopefully) corrupt the AI's data. its kind of like copying off a copy again and again.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 44 points 23 hours ago

This is in fact precisely what happens. LLM output becomes increasingly incoherent with each subsequent generation trained off of previously AI generated data.

[-] TriPolarBearz@lemmy.world 31 points 23 hours ago

Sound like human

50und 11k3 hum4n

50()|V[) 11X3 |-|()|/|4|V

$[]|||||) |!|<[- #|_|///-||

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 16 points 22 hours ago

Don't forget to yell into the data PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS!!!!

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[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

ive been enjoying bluesky more than twitter. i just wish more bug accounts would migrate. i post on both platforms with a script that i wrote and my engagement/followers ratio is far higher

[-] dan@upvote.au 9 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I tried Bluesky but just couldn't get into it. Same with Mastodon. I like Lemmy because long-form posts/comments are more interesting to me. I'm liking Threads a bit, too.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago

What would you say makes threads better than the other mikroblogging services?

[-] dan@upvote.au 2 points 12 hours ago

I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of tech people on Twitter ended up on there. Mastodon originally filled that spot for me, but I found that a bunch of people that moved from Twitter to Mastodon ended up abandoning their accounts (or very rarely posting) a few months later.

It's also probably the largest Fediverse instance, as users can opt in to sharing their posts to the Fediverse.

I still don't use it often, though. I don't spend a lot of time on any social networks (or similar services) any more.

[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Mastodon has shitty clients, the servers are slow and the communication across them is buggy. some things are still just broken.

typically I'll open the android client and stare for 15 seconds at a spinning "wait" symbol, and then I'll close it and not look at it for the rest of the day.

maybe it's the instance that I'm on? or maybe it's something else.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 hours ago

Yes, that might be your instance? I never had that problem. And I also think there are now some very good clients

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[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

Bug accounts, or big? Bug as in programming?

[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago

no like giant bugs

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[-] Jordan117@lemmy.world 30 points 20 hours ago

While anything that gets people off Twitter is good, I'm sorely unimpressed by those artists who "had to" to patronize the racist transphobic neo-Nazi hellhole "because my audience is there"... until Musk's policies happened to offend their own personal interests, by requiring training for their AI. Countless models trained on all public images already exist, jumping ship won't prevent their work from being scraped elsewhere, and frankly, any one image or even portfolio will contribute virtually nothing to the result, so quitting in protest is largely symbolic. But so many peoples drew the line at that, and not at Musk making "cis" a slur, or protecting child pornographers, or boosting white supremacist supremacy theories. It's really disappointing to see.

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 7 points 15 hours ago

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel.

I loathe musk, and despise twitter, and I'm happy about anything they will be unhappy about.

That said, I don't have a lot of respect for anyone who is still there. Journalists, politicians, anyone who has to be there for their job... I still just don't have a lot of respect for them.

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[-] Euphorazine@lemmy.world 32 points 21 hours ago

So let's say on Twitter, someone blocks me and I can't read their post. Can't I just log out and read their post that way? I don't have a Twitter account, so I've never seen a blocked link before.

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 27 points 19 hours ago

X is authwalled

[-] Euphorazine@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I can see this random tweet from Taylor Swift just fine in incognito mode. I can't look at replies but I can see her posts.

https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1781171613058097619

People on Lemmy link to tweets all the time and I can navigate and read them. Not sure what you mean then that it's authwalled. It's an annoying experience and it bugs me every time I visit to make an account or log in, but I can see them.

[-] red@sopuli.xyz 8 points 14 hours ago

You can see a tweet, but not list of her tweets, iirc.

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[-] Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 14 hours ago

Someone could just open another account with a new mail address. Blocking doesn't help much against stalkers as long as your posts are public.

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[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 28 points 23 hours ago

And that’s on top of all the Brazil users who fled to BlueSky when he refused to comply with a court order (and pay a fine) so they blocked Twitter for a few days. I’m not sure how many went back after he paid the fine but BlueSky was fairly popular in Brazil even during the closed beta so I’m sure a ton stuck around.

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[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Lol, that's probably 30% of real people still using it

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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024

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