Other than multiple hour downtimes, you mean? That's not quickly for one of the most-visited websites in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_websites

Also, it seems Ukraine war topics are down-ranked so people don't see as much about it anymore

Reddit is also on that list and has downtimes like that much more frequently than Twitter.

Yes, but Twitter used to be much more solid prior to you know, losing a lot of its work-force. Reddit, on the other hand, has improved since a few years ago

I don't think it's surprising for that to happen on the transition to a smaller workforce.

Rather than that, I am frankly amazed that the site largely works after firing 80% of its workforce. It's staggering.

I've honestly not noticed a worsening of twitter's availability since the previous guys stopped being in charge. Perhaps many of the removed jobs were in non-technical areas of content moderation.

They had a ton of downtime on multiple occasions last few months. This wasn't the case in 2022 when I got on almost every day to check on the Ukraine-Russia war news.

Now I don't spend as much time on it because Twitter actively pushes its politics and hides Ukraine-Russia war content. I often check out stuff on Mastodon since it doesn't have a biased algorithm

Reddit is not public yet.

But in the push to become public the site becomes worse and worse.

First they created the "new" reddit, which is picture and ad driven. This might bring in stupid people, but kills usability and long term harms quality discussion.

Then they started to not so subtly push the new reddit: you need to go there to setup cookies, the site "accidently" turns it on like once per month, things dont work in old reddit (e.g. polls).

Now they killed i.reddit (aka .compact reddit) what kills the smooth phone experience. When I open reddit on phone now, like every page takes 5 seconds to load, then nags me to install their app, then is unreadable mess.

Since Im ranting: oh how much I miss the reddit toolbar (top comments on one part of the screen and website on other). I wish there was an addon that could emulate it - perhaps by opening two separate windows somehow and gluing them.

This is what lack of competition in a given niche makes even possible. They can afford many explicitly anti user patterns because for a bunch of usages, they have no real alternative.

When I can no longer use old.reddit I will stop giving them the little usage time I still spend there.

> When I can no longer use old.reddit I will stop giving them the little usage time I still spend there.

This is definitely just a matter of time, they're slowly moving there by killing off things like `i.`. They'll lose a bunch of "us", but overall it's probably not going to affect their bottom line. Some specific high-quality discussion subreddits dying out means nothing if there are dozens of multi-million user subreddits with generic memes or TikTok-reposts.

yep, I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet

they've been insufferable for a long time, and on mobile I've completely given up on them

Improved is a very relative term, just so you know. Reddit has experienced over 10 hours of downtime just this past month.

And, again, Reddit hasn’t had an 80% workforce cut (though it sorely needs it).

Thanks for sharing. I think of it like a messy divorce or a business deal gone wrong. Sure some issues may be clear cut but most of the time you're never going to get the full story without listening to both sides. And even then you're not guaranteed the truth.

The problem is not that people in the West are not listening to both sides. A lot of people still have a very selective attention to what russia says. Specifically, people choose to ignore Putin's outright hitlerian speech at the start of the war, people choose to ignore prominent russian media personalities calling for ethnic cleansing in Ukraine. Just recently a horrible video of Wagner troops beheading a Ukrainian POW surfaced and Skabeeva in prime time said something to the effect "this is what should happen to all Ukrainians".

Instead, in some Chomskian myopia there is a considerable number of people in Europe and USA spreading FUD and reducing their opinion to "war is bad (sad emoji face) Ukraine shouldn't do war".

You're making the assumption that you need both complete sides of a story before you make a judgement.

Well-adjusted people do, at least.

Why? What's well adjusted mean?

Seen on Techmeme: "Similarweb: in March 2023, Twitter's traffic fell 7.7% YoY, the third straight month of decline, web visitors fell 3.3% YoY, and Android app DAUs fell 9.8% YoY "

* * *

If they removed 99% of their staff I’d expect a relatively small decline in the short term. The question is in 3 years have they grown or are they down 20%?

Staff has nothing to do with it, really. What's a problem for a social network is when its users are leaving.

A per pro of nothing, I believe strongly that all online identities created towards the end of 2022 should be subject to a 'human verification test'. Just in case. Not sure how it would work, but just suggesting it might be useful/valuable.

Just FYI, it's "apropos" :)

Awesome, thanks for the correction. At least I've proved my personal humanness. :)

That's what a robot would say...

Tsk... busted. :) How about this...Arsenal 2, Hammers 2 yesterday? Wot a travesty. :)

Why end of 2022? It's kind of an ongoing problem. And one that Musk has very much failed to deal with; someone I follow has a different crypto-spam bot reply to every single post they make!

The end of 2022 is when the tools gained enough mass exposure, and more critically ease of use, that anyone anywhere could set up an account, and start creating 'humans' for future use. Before then, it was a specialist task, so much less common I think.

From now on (Day G1?), we're going to be awash with AI written stuff. Literally drowned in it. The first AI drafted marketing emails have already started hitting my inbox, and that's just the start I guess.

Time for a new certificate based web of trust?

Definitely something like that. Before it's too late?

That's interesting. "Support for the war" is not an expression that makes a lot of sense to me. Nobody in their right mind wakes up in the morning and tells themselves "yes, I am going to fight in the war just for the sake of it, I love wars", those who fight usually believe that although war is gruesome (which it is), they will be in a better shape if they continue fighting than if they just surrender to the mercy of conqueror.

Do you maybe want your country to abstain from the conflict, save money/resources and let the survival of the fittest take place? What side do you believe it will benefit?

Continuing weapon deliveries into a conflict zone is very unambiguously support for war, and that's still the leading line of thought in the West.

Support for the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine to wipe it out as a nation would consist of any actions that help Russia win the war they started.

So for example anyone who is keen for Ukraine to be defeated more quickly, by opposing military assistance, are the "war supporters".

Anyone who wants to prevent the warmongers from winning and thus profiting from the war they started - those people are against the war.

No, support for a war is anything that prolongs the war, no matter which side you're arming.

You're essentially saying "it's not support for the war if I'm (perceiving I am) making sure my team wins". I'm not faulting you for that, it's the most common position, but it is support for war.

If you want to define exercise of the right of collective self-defense against aggression as “support for war”, fine, you can have your own private language.

But now explain why that, in the face of actual aggression and genocide, is a bad thing compared to the alternative?

He's not talking about the right of the "infringed" collective to self-defense. He's saying, I think, that when you as a 3rd party enter the conflict you are adding flame to the fire. edit: noting that I'm not trying to be pro/con a third party entering the conflict. I'm just trying to be guiltless action.

I think you're waving at a sign saying "some things are worth war" and maybe that's true but for most things that's "support for war".

In this case there's a more important point, though, that a broad understanding that war will not be allowed to change the status quo will decrease the number of wars. Building and maintaining that understanding has the expense (sometimes) of making individual wars longer, but when it is (at worst) unclear which of those effects dominates it is unreasonable to label picking one side of that trade as unequivocal "support for war".

Um, no. This is Russia's war. Supporting the war would mean arming Russia.

The west has two options: 1) support genocide by letting Russia systematically invade its neighbors (we've seen this story before and the outcome is not good), or 2) support Ukraine to such a degree that ongoing war is not sustainable and Russia calls off their expansionist plans.

Those who fight wars, and those who support (getting into) those wars, are often not the same people. And this is mostly true in Ukraine as well IMHO.

In this context "support for the war" means, in a world where there are several awful conflicts going on at any given time, supporting active intervention in a particular conflict by giving support to one side.

For example, I support the west providing weapons to Ukraine - but I would not support a US return to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, or an intervention in Mexico to wipe out drug cartels, or an invasion of China because of the internment of Uyghurs - even though those are all awful.

Politicians will often go as far as explicitly announcing the criteria by which they'll decide which wars to involve their country in - for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberger_Doctrine

I think if you equate "helping Ukraine defend itself against ethnic eradication" with "support an awful war" your judgement on what is a balanced debate is not reliable.

Also, just because you don't see a *technical* issue doesn't mean there are no issues. There is quite an increase of serious litigation and a massive debt bill that Twitter needs to figure out.

> I think if you equate "helping Ukraine defend itself against ethnic eradication" with "support an awful war" your judgement on what is a balanced debate is not reliable.

I said I support the Ukraine, but I don't believe in everything that the mainstream media is telling us. What you said there is quite a jump from what I said and exactly the type of nonsense that people would say in order to silence any meaningful debate.

I think if you believe that the support which the Ukraine gets from NATO countries is only to "help the Ukraine" and that NATO has no underlying geopolitical agenda and you don't wonder why we didn't support other nations at war with similar enthusiasm or why we never held ourselves accountable for the crimes committed in Iraq then I think your judgement on a balanced debate is not reliable. But that's okay, we both should be able to voice our thoughts and opinion and neither of us should get bombarded with replies which make us uncomfortable to debate and effective silence us.

It is not a jump. When it comes to genocide, you are either for it or against. There is no center, no above, no neutral. The only other option is being unaware. What is being done in the west is people continuously being made aware and forced to make a choice. It's not a pleasant choice to make either way, so it's understandable that people are not happy to have to make it. But trying to carve out a neutral position where there is none, is not going to work.

> is not going to work.

What are you going to do about it, tiger?

You can't force anybody to think the way you want them to think. You are only going to frustrate yourself with your power trip fantasy.

Expecting people to adhere to humane values is not a power trip fantasy.

It is true, we can't force people to think the way we want, nor should we want to. What we can do, hopefully, is make them live with the consequences of admitting the way they think, whatever that entails.

There are countries where it is not against the law to be a nazi, but you still get to live as a nazi.

Just let Putin genocide supporters to admit that they support Putin's genocide instead of supporting Ukraine's right to defense is good enough ;)

It's only a jump if you deliberately ignore what russians themselves are saying.

As I've mentioned somewhere else in this thread, russian government and russian mass media outright call for ethnic cleansing. Putin in his speech at the start of the war said "that he has taken steps to finally solve the Ukrainian question". Solovyev and Skabeyeva - very prominent, prime-time media personalities - are actively promoting ideas of ethnic cleansing, like Skabeeva saying that the gruesome beheading of a Ukrainian POW by Wagner is righteous and should happen to all Ukrainians who oppose russia. Prigozhin publicly claimed that they have "killed most of the active Ukrainian male population" (which is BS) and therefore "achieved the goals of Putin's Special Military Operation." (which is an super significant statement about their intent!)

In light of this, your whataboutism is both tiresome and irrelevant, because you are outright ignoring explicit statements by one side. This is per definition unbalanced.

"but I don't believe in everything that the mainstream media is tellin"

What is the mainstream media? Is there a conspiracy between unrelated news organizations around the world to help Ukraine?

> I don't believe in everything that the mainstream media is telling us

You're being super vague. Just say what you don't believe, out loud.

You don't believe that there's people out there calling for eradication of ukrainians? Just go on Twitter, my dude. There's even american personalities calling for it. Do you see this shit? https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/164670071474641305...

You don't believe "what's happening" in Ukraine? I mean, why don't you go there; it's not inaccessible, and you don't have to take up arms to do so. But fine if you don't, just.. look at people who do. There's millions of people there right now, most of them with phones, and plenty of tourists and non-tourist foreigners.

Because he is of the belief that if he doesn't explicitly say something, he can never be called out on it. He wishes to engage in criticism of others while never having to invite criticism to himself. He will sit there and tell you every single problem everything else has and why he is so rational and correct in these opinions, while offering no real solutions. Also, despite being so clear of vision and prescient of problems coming down the pipe, he's only moderately successful in that "is able to keep down a decent job and live an upper-middle-class" is successful. Which, it is, but it's hardly the resume of a world-beater.

But, as always, we tell on ourselves even with how we use language.

He always refers to Ukraine as "the" Ukraine. That itself speaks to someone who is considerably older than the Russian Federation or someone who likes to parrot the opinions of that Federation. Because Russia sees Ukraine as its territory. It is a region of Russia. But it is not. It is its own sovereign country. We don't say "the" Japan or "the" Germany or "the" Ireland.

The guy is the quintessential "enlightened centrist", finding the prevailing opinion of a place and then putting himself squarely on the opposite side "to provide balance".

Russia doesn't believe a country called Ukraine exists. Instead they believe a region called 'the Ukraine' does. Funny your choice of words.

There is no 'ethnic eradication'. Russian ultranationalists, who are a minority, chestbeat about it, but in reality view Ukrainians as culturally indistinct from Russians. People are making up quotes from Putin to argue for a genocide that is not happening.

The "final solution to the Ukraine question" that people are bringing up is being atrociously and dishonestly taken out of context, since those words were never uttered, and the "Ukrainian question" being solved is that they believe a nation that was "always part of Russia" will return to Russia as a semi-autonomous state. (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMoRfFtWYAA9qJ5?format=png one such article for reference)

The Russian war is unjustifiable. You do not need to lie to make it unjustifiable.

Bucha is ethnic eradication. Irpen is ethnic eradication. Prigozhin saying that they have "eradicated most of the active male population of Ukraine and therefore achieved the goals of the war" is a straight up confession.

Just because russia's strategy is ethnic eradication through assimilation does not make it less ethnic eradication.

Pretending that it's not is lying.

Considering that Russia has invaded Ukraine why would you think comments about erradication are just "chest beating"

I guess what I'm saying is why are you interpreting their words that way when they started a war?

I think US Aid should exclusively come via NATO, and in proportion to what the other NATO nations are willing to contribute., hell I would even accept a 2:1 contribution (meaning for every $1 or every Missile other NATO members contribute the US gives 2... )

The world complains about the US being the "world police" until they want us to spend all of our resources to defend them...

Many nato members are already providing much more than the US per capita.

First I disagree with using per capita numbers, that is in improper way to judge this type of thing.

However even if we look at the percapita number, the US out spend all other nato nations. Between January 24 and November 20, 2022, NATO members committed at least 75.2 billion euros of that 47.8 came from the US.

Per Capita for that period breaks down as

US: 142 Euros / citizen

UK: 117 Euros / Citizen

Canada: 96 Euros / Citizen

Germany: 70 Euros / Citizen

France: 21 Euros / Citizen

Germany would have to 2 double their per capita contributions just to match the US.

Where do they commit this money? As in: what does it pay for exactly?

Great you omitted the big spenders, and picked France and Germany who have been stepping on the break from the beginning. If you don't like per capita we can do % of GPD where the US doesn't even break in to the top ten. Unsurprisingly the biggest member of nato (by far) has given the biggest bag of money. But US is nowhere near being the most committed nations.

I picked the top spenders of NATO.

Who in NATO has given more than US, UK and Canada?

Show your sources

Estonia is 300 EUR per capita.

https://vm.ee/en/estonias-aid-ukraine

US Aid to Nato is an investment in global economic stability that is repaid via increased commerce. It is a long term investment and it has paid off time after time.

I would disagree on both assertions.

Pretty sure Musk doing right-wing grifter Andy Ngo's bidding and kicking off Ngo's targets counts as "suppressing balanced debate", only it's happening for real: https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...

One of the best decisions he made. Antifa accounts calling for violence and terrorism should never have been tolerated on Twitter.

Andy Ngo is a neo-nazi-friendly liar that claims everyone who criticizes him is antifa, and selectively edits his videos to distort the truth.

Twitter threads of Ngo using selective video editing to make it seems like up is down: https://twitter.com/RespectableLaw/status/116496174509978828...

General summary: https://www.salon.com/2019/08/28/right-wing-journalist-andy-...

Ngo lying about leftist critics being violent, and Musk taking him at his word and banning them: https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...

I get that there’s strong vested interests trying to discredit him. But “selective editing” doesn’t describe the dozens (hundreds?) of videos he filmed when the Federal courthouse in Portland was under siege and he was routinely attacked by the masked terrorists trying to burn down the building.

Does it surprise me that his detractors would claim he is “neo-nazi-friendly”? Not in the slightest. The “anti-fascists” routinely claim the people they brutalize are fascist nazis - it’s a form of projection / deflection.

Your argument is to gloss over his doctored videos in favor of the ones you think aren't?

Oh well, if being neo-nazi-friendly is OK, will you still defend him hanging out with pedophiles?

Here's pics of Ngo hanging out with Amos Yew, a year after Yew's tweets (also in pic) that children should be able to have sex, and that child porn should be legal: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FidcvHsX0AI1ncI?format=jpg&name=...

Feel free to admit that Ngo is a colossal liar and a horrible person any time now.

> remains a far left echo chamber

This is an incredible characterisation of a site that was full of right-wingers before the sale.

Perhaps it's just a case of maximum engagement generation instead...

I agree, I find twitter to be a better experience and something I actually use now. I do not before

> I'm not a right wing American. I'm a European who...

Did Twitter even care about your local politics before Musk? They banned Trump, while the ayatollah, CCP etc. retrained their accounts.

Facebook was also actively censoring discussion related to American politics, while hardly noticing that a literal genocide was being coordinated on their platform in southeast Asia.

"while hardly noticing that a literal genocide was being coordinated on their platform in southeast Asia."

Was this a decision or simply a lack of resources for that area.

Is there a meaningful difference? Having a lack of resources is a decision.

It's a huge difference. It's the difference between negligent homicide and murder. Both legal and moral thinking distinguishes between these two concepts.

It's fine to note that they are both bad and both mean culpability and liability, but pretending they are literally the same thing is the worst kind of rhetorical device.

They had been warned by locals in both Burma and Sri Lanka for many months that violent rhetoric was spreading like wildfire through users in those countries, and did nothing about it -- seldom even responding to the people pleading for them to do something.

When Sri Lanka pulled the plug on Facebook as violence was starting to erupt, Facebook did then reach out...to ask why their Sri Lankan traffic had dropped off.

This is documented in a variety of places, but for an excellent write-up of these tragedies I'd recommend The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher.

Well here's a easier way to think about it. Lacking additional evidence of their decision making process either:

1. Facebook wanted or didn't care at all that a genocide was going to happen and happened

2. Facebook cared to a reasonable extent but due to an american centric setup isn't prepared to censor posts in certain areas of the world

Bad? Yes, evil? No big difference

Matt Taibbi is hardly “far left,” and Twitter has implemented arbitrary suppression on his content because Twitter’s owner didn’t like something he said.

Twitter went from a business that moderated content based on policies, to a business that moderates content based on the day-to-day whims of an easily distracted Elon Musk. The idea that it’s somehow more open for balanced conversations now is directly contradicted by how it is actually operating.

Capricious, malicious, and selfish moderation is poisonous to a business that depends on free user-generated content.

I don't know how it's possible to read Musk's twitter feed and conclude that Twitter is balanced now. The CEO exclusively interacts with and caters to right-wing accounts.

Just don't read his Twitter feed. I never followed the previous owners of Twitter either.

That's kinda impossible considering he always show up in the recommended section, even if you block him.

> it's been quite remarkable how Twitter has had relatively little issues

I didn't expect there to be technical issues. A lot of people cried wolf.

The fact that you refer to twitter's issues in the past tense suggests that you don't use it very much. The site's bot problem is worse than ever, and I can barely view a handful of tweets on mobile before some javascript exception forces a full reload and trashes my entire state.