Today, one of the biggest things on the social internet happened, with Elon Musk buying Twitter. So here's a little reminder of Mastodon. Not our usual news, but it's too big to be ignored. Twitter is a massive and important platform and now it's going to be wholly owned by Elon Musk. Regardless of your thoughts on Musk, it's still a little alarming.
Good news for those who do dislike Musk, as there is a great alternative available with Mastodon. Not perfect, nothing is, but it is a good option to try. It's very much like Twitter except it's free, open source, has no adverts and anyone can host their own instance. Thanks to how it's designed, people can follow and talk to each other across these instances too.
GamingOnLinux is on Mastodon, so feel free to give us a follow. If you don't care about this whole thing, you can also follow us on Twitter.
From the Press Release:
Bret Taylor, Twitter's Independent Board Chair, said, "The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."
Parag Agrawal, Twitter's CEO, said, "Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important."
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
It will be interesting to see if Musk does open up more of Twitter.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Musk buying Twitter gives me hope. Twitter was a social media platform that turned partisan. Musk is the biggest chance for it to go back to being a neutral platform. If it doesn't, it likely won't be worse than it is now. If he turns it into a partisan platform for the other party, then at least there will be one platform that's for a different party, a different ideology, compared to all the other big platforms that are all partisan for the same side.
14 Likes, Who?
Quoting: LestibournesMusk buying Twitter gives me hope. Twitter was a social media platform that turned partisan. Musk is the biggest chance for it to go back to being a neutral platform. If it doesn't, it likely won't be worse than it is now. If he turns it into a partisan platform for the other party, then at least there will be one platform that's for a different party, a different ideology, compared to all the other big platforms that are all partisan for the same side.
Hopefuly it goes back to being neutral as twitter is a big reason there is so much hatred for one side over the other as partisan folks took over and started censoring everyone else under the guise of Misinformation, hatred , racism, bigotry ETC ETC
Last edited by tohur on 26 April 2022 at 2:02 am UTC
8 Likes, Who?
Musk's buyout of Twitter might just be enough to convince me to use it. It was nothing but an echo chamber for the left prior to the buyout, and frankly, that's boring to read and really nauseating. Neutrality is very much welcomed.
11 Likes, Who?
RandomizedKirbyTree47 Apr 26, 2022
Quoting: natis1Twitter is one of the worst platforms on the internet. Its algorithms and formatting are intentionally designed to destroy any nuance and promote the most disagreed with positions at the top of every reply. Yet ironically it's still an echo chamber because of the lack of dislikes and the moderation tools each user has for replies. It's basically Reddit if Reddit only sorted by controversial. Plus it runs absolutely terribly on mobile unless you use their app.Also, 280 characters is inadequate for in-depth discussion or analysis, but more than enough for trolling and racial slurs.
While it's not impossible, I find it hard to imagine Elon making it any worse of a platform.
3 Likes, Who?
PublicNuisance Apr 26, 2022
I don't have a Twitter account and I never will. Elon or no Elon. The three biggest shareholders of Twitter before were Blackrock; Vanguard; and Morgan Stanley. Two shady companies and a big bank. Really one shady company as the biggest shareholder of Blackrock is Vanguard. Who are the next biggest ? State Street Corporation; Aristotle Capital Management, LLC; Geode Capital Management, LLC and Barclays. More banks and hedgefunds. Where was the outrage when this was the status quo ? Where was the outrage when speech was being censored before Elon. That's right there was next to none. Those who cared about free speech were on platforms that did as well. All of this outrage is either manufactured or people are even more dense and uninformed than I gave them credit for and in that case I don't care about their opinion anyway. Between the companies I listed I have found dozens of lawsuits and trials that did not end in their favor. These are not saints or good companies but Twitter users kept using their product without any complaints. Elon may be just as bad but at this point he sure isn't that much worse. Keep using Twitter; Reddit; Instagram; Youtube and Facebook but spare the moral outrage because nobody who uses these platforms has a moral leg to stand on.
1 Likes, Who?
You don't end up being one of the richest people on the planet by being charitable. Elon's not buying Twitter out of some notion of promoting free speech. He's either doing it to stroke his ego and/or he sees a way to make it profitable either directly or indirectly through the manipulation of information. The fact that he wants to add in verification to separate bot accounts from genuine ones sounds like he wants an account to be directly tied to exact details of the person behind the account which would make the data collected about the account holder that much more lucrative. There's no way Twitter will become neutral as the constant conflict is what drives engagement and is what draws people to Twitter. All the "free speech" alternatives just turn into echo chambers that are so toxic as to not be advertise-able. The people who got banned from Twitter were banned because they made the platform look bad and less advertiser friendly. At best Elon is going to bring back some of the popular dissenters to pay lip service to free speech and proceed to use the platform to shape the flow of information to his advantage. I'm sure it'll remain the toxic cesspool it's known for because that's what drives the engagement.
The fact that anyone seriously believes a billionaire has any interest in the welfare of anyone else besides their own is mind boggling. You don't get that rich by giving a damn about other people.
Last edited by Theodis on 26 April 2022 at 4:03 am UTC
The fact that anyone seriously believes a billionaire has any interest in the welfare of anyone else besides their own is mind boggling. You don't get that rich by giving a damn about other people.
Last edited by Theodis on 26 April 2022 at 4:03 am UTC
3 Likes, Who?
Honestly, I've got no strong opinions about Elon, but I don't think this is gonna result in anything but good things, since he apparently wants to open source twitter, and the idea of free speech being enforced equally (assuming he stays true to his word) is nothing but a good thing in my eyes. However, this probably isn't enough to get me to use twitter. It's still a cesspool. This won't make it any worse.
I wish there was a website like twitter, where you have the freedom to say anything you want, EXCEPT political discussion was just straight banned, cold turkey, left and right wing, so people can focus on collaboration/promotion of neat projects first and foremost without being at each other's throats for 5 seconds, like, I enjoy stuff like #ScreenshotSaturday but I don't want to follow a game project for example and have the game developer whining about something happening in the world on main when I've likely already heard about it elsewhere ad nauseum by that point and it gets tiring especially since I'm there just to follow the project not get inundated with more divisive and abrasive BS.
I genuinely believe political discussion and involvement is the most effective way to create problems that would have otherwise not existed in projects that should be otherwise unrelated to it, such as the recent node-ipc disaster, where it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, you know what they say about where that road you're paving is going.
I wish there was a website like twitter, where you have the freedom to say anything you want, EXCEPT political discussion was just straight banned, cold turkey, left and right wing, so people can focus on collaboration/promotion of neat projects first and foremost without being at each other's throats for 5 seconds, like, I enjoy stuff like #ScreenshotSaturday but I don't want to follow a game project for example and have the game developer whining about something happening in the world on main when I've likely already heard about it elsewhere ad nauseum by that point and it gets tiring especially since I'm there just to follow the project not get inundated with more divisive and abrasive BS.
I genuinely believe political discussion and involvement is the most effective way to create problems that would have otherwise not existed in projects that should be otherwise unrelated to it, such as the recent node-ipc disaster, where it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, you know what they say about where that road you're paving is going.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: KoopacabrasI didn't realize that twitter was a cornerstone of democracy until now /s last time I checked Jamiroquai was using it to spread false information./sNot sure if Twitter is a cornerstone of democracy, but to be fair I'm pretty sure all cornerstones of democracy get used to spread false information, starting with print newspapers, moving on to political speeches and leaders' debates . . .
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: KithopReminder that 'Mastodon' is not a single site, it's a software stack using a W3C protocol (ActivityPub, so the flagship/example mastodon.social site isn't any more 'Mastodon' than Yahoo Mail or GMail is all of 'E-mail' (though lots of people don't make that distinction in the latter case either).Not just people. I work for a university, so my email address is for the university's email server (just like the old days). I've been booking some hotel rooms lately; on booking.com when I enter my email address, it turns red and has a warning that my email address is probably wrong, do I want to change it and did I mean @gmail.com not what I actually typed? Luckily it doesn't enforce its ignorance, but it's still annoying.
Incidentally I too stay off social media; the closest I come is, um, conversations on GoL. That's sort of sociable, right?
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Quoting: dibzFixing freedom of speech on Twitter? How so?I am familiar with a person who grumbles often that they were banned from Twitter for life for calling some senator a "twatwaffle".
About the only things that come to mind are Trump and COVID misinformation type stuff being blocked/censored.
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