Ironically, every time I notice a platform I use doing this, it immediate reduces my engagement for it.
I can’t be the only one, can I?
No, but as long as more people go the opposite direction it is a net positive. Considering it's seemingly the natural progression of timelines I am guessing the numbers show that this is the case.
Mastodon is always chronological.
Actually does it even prevent someone from seeing it in the first place, or does it just hide the blocked person from the blocker?
At the same time, people need to understand that there’s a limit to how much (and how precisely) you can communicate in 140 characters, and that means Twitter can alert you to the headline. It’s beholden upon users to take the time to ask questions and fill in the details.
As far as certain user accounts being blocked - the SEC requires announcements are distributed publically, not universally. Anyone can watch Elon’s twitter feed in incognito mode.
The SEC doesn’t require that breaking news show up in every single Twitter feed universally. They simply require that anyone can make the effort to be able to receive the news. If that means following Elon on a separate account where you don’t harass him to the point of blocking you, that’s not exactly a major impediment.
Verified accounts are those likely victim of abuse, and I believe that is it likely that if you suffer from impersonation, you also suffer from trolls. Verified accounts are the most likely candidate for the need for more protection.
Something else that is at stake, and something that you are explicitly asking for – but I think it‘s a serious mistake: the dichotomy between celebrities and commoners. There never were a clear gap, there, but the idea that being on TV, in the press, or owning land made you special has proven dangerous. Having a gradient from moderately interesting anyones, to popular people within their social context, to relevant expert, opinion leader, up to professionally famous people, that “smoothness” of fame is a great, empowering change that the Internet has brought and made visible.
I think we need to understand that, and adapt (currently blunt) disclosure rules to that smoothness: you can make something a little bit more famous than they are, but you can’t shift them by several orders of magnitude because the attention, grief, consequence of that is something that needs to be learnt, understood, accepted.
This whole incident sort of blows my mind. It seems like this should be Operating a Public Company 101 level knowledge, and the fact that he failed so spectacularly leads me to believe either someone at Tesla or the exchanges screwed up royally with the timing of some preliminary work and Musk didn't make sure it was done ahead of time, or he was drugged out of his mind on Sudafed or something (either because he thought it was okay or thought he could get away with it). I'm honestly not sure what's more likely given how stupidly obvious the error is.
How does that work when the account is public and can be read by anyone (presumably including any blocked users) by just not signing in?
Even for a reply, can't you still read it without signing in starting from the tweet it's a reply to?
I thought blocking just prevented you from seeing their replies.
Per this article, but it's super old:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/twitt...
Did they change how blocking works after this?
Trump by blocking users doesn't prevent the users from seeing the content (i.e. they can log out and see the content). What it does do is prevent the user from easily engaging with the president (i.e. why its a free speech issue). It's basically saying that users A, B, and C can easily engage, but by blocking D, we are going to put a road block that makes it difficult for D.
In the case of Musk, if one is claiming that blocking is discriminating who can see the content, one can make the claim that this really isn't true, all blocking does is make it more difficult to interface with musk, not to see the content.
They can’t just make another account with which to tell Trump “you suck”? Ah but how will everyone else know _I_ tweeted something at Trump if _my_ handle isn’t attached to it? That’s what these people are mad about. Not that they can’t reply to Trump (they can), but that other people won’t know about that sick burn they once made that was drowned out by 30000 others.
Petitioning the government, regardless of how effective a petition it is, shouldn't require violating a contract.
On the topic of Musk, the SEC has protocols that need to be followed. Even if Musk blocked 0 people, I'm sure he'd be under investigation.
Well Tesla has gone on record with an 8-k form that indicates that Elon's personal twitter account is able to speak for Tesla officially.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312513...
Sorry, I should have put this in my original comment so you didn't have to make your comment:(
The link to the 8-K provided very clearly states:
> For additional information, please follow Elon Musk’s and Tesla’s Twitter accounts: twitter.com/elonmusk and twitter.com/TeslaMotors
Which is in line with what the GP is stating. Various other financial reporting outfits have reported on this same document referencing the same line, and indicated that it may be considered justification as an official channel of distribution.
Whether or not it actually is concluded that way remains to be seen, but I'm not sure what's wrong with @chollida1's comment
has blocked people on twitter
information must not be disseminated
in a way that isn't available to
everyone at the same time
If a twitter account posts public tweets, access to view and read is effectively unrestricted. There is no practical reason a person would be unable to view them, blocked or not, other than their choice to authenticate with twitter.
Being "blocked" just means you can't reply, while logged in as an identifiable twitter user id.
A flow chart of choices available, for how to look at a twitter feed would likely resolve this conundrum.
To argue about this is to say something like: "I could not read the disclosure, because it was on page 39 of the Wall Street Journal and page 27 of the New York Times. It needs to be on the front page, because that's the only page my clipping service sends me."
If you couldn't find a way to view a public twitter feed, how is that different from failing to take the initiative to turn to page 27 of the news paper, that can be perused for free at a news stand?
Where do you draw the line? Does not having internet access count as a restriction? What about not having a twitter account? What about not owning a computer? What about not owning a smart phone? Is making an announcement on a website not a technical restriction by default? Why or why not?
1) Release material information without alerting the exchange to stop trading
and
2) and this is the tie in, releasing said information on his personal twitter account. Now this is normally fine based on RegFD but he has blocked people on twitter and RegFD is very clear that information can't not be disseminated in a way that isn't available to everyone at the same time.
being the two major ones pertinent to twitter.
Other things like claiming "funding secured" when your board, bankers and supposed funders all claim otherwise are also bad and likely to get him in more trouble, but are not important to the twitter disclosure.
The solution to this is to use the newswire like everyone else in the US stock market but if he wants to use twitter, and it looks like he may no longer be able to after the SEC is done, then he'll most likely not be able to block anyone from seeing his tweets.
I'm not sure how else you can fulfill the very reasonable requirement of equal disclosure to everyone otherwise.