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Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by choeger on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:35AM (#36596295)
Twitter is the first social Network to publicly commit ritual suicide. It's somewhat fascinating to watch. Would be very interesting to see how much the login wall affected their traffic and thus ad revenues. But the real damage will be visible in Q4 when ads campaigns simply won't be booked anymore for Twitter because everyone begins to write it off.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by tropicalbeach on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:45AM (#36596376)
Why Twitter is better now than before. I used to never use it and now i use it more than any other platform.

Don't really get why people are hating so much. Finally there is somewhere where people can post without being banned or having posts removed. Why do you want filtered social media it's fake.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by dale_glass on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:49AM (#36596417)
People still get banned and get posts removed from the new Twitter all the time. Musk took no time at all to go back on his promises.

> Why do you want filtered social media it's fake.

There's no such thing as unfiltered social media. Every website is subject to laws, demands from the hosts, and business constraints. If you want ads, the advertisers want a say in what content you have.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by threatofrain on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:30AM (#36596892)
Someone like PG gets his account disabled just for mentioning another social network. That's how far Twitter is going against the direction of free speech. This is coming from the guy who thinks it's fair play to accuse a rescue worker of pedophilia as retaliation for being insulted.

Musk wanted to destroy that guy. He repeatedly accused him of pedophilia and clarified that he specifically meant sex with young Thai boys. He then paid for an investigation to dig up dirt.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by drcongo on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:13AM (#36597283)
Correction: "the guy who thinks it's fair play to accuse a rescue worker of pedophilia as retaliation for feeling insulted"
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by hagbarth on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:57AM (#36596509)
> Finally there is somewhere where people can post without being banned or having posts removed

What you didn't know 4chan, 8chan/8kun, paler, truth social and a myriad of other "free speech fundamentalist" sites before?

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by OscarTheGrinch on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:47AM (#36596389)
Nice try Elon.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by tropicalbeach on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:50AM (#36596427)
Genuine question you like your social media filtered by someone who says what you're allowed to see?
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by dale_glass on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:54AM (#36596479)
Genuine answer: Yes.

If I wanted an unfiltered experience, there's 4chan and the like. Notice that I'm not there, but somewhere I don't have to wade through mountains of crap. HN is very much moderated, that's what keeps it useful.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by threeseed on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:07AM (#36596633)
There have been a large number of accounts that have been censored by Twitter.

Musk even admitted doing so at the behest of foreign governments something Twitter 1.0 used to aggressively fight and prevent from happening.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by spiderfarmer on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:09AM (#36596650)
Do you want to live in todays world but without laws and regulations?
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Joeri on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:53AM (#36597118)
Taking your question seriously, I would say mike masnick has the definitive answer: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...

By the way, Twitter under Elon supposedly obeys more government censorship demands than before: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2023-04/twitter-complying-mo...

So if you believe twitter is now a free speech platform, it just means that you’re no longer the one being censored. That doesn’t mean no one is.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by svet_0 on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:22AM (#36597840)
People are hating because Elon == Bad. Twitter is pretty good these days, I see almost no spam and content quality has improved.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by flir on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:53AM (#36598100)
@elonjet

But I'm sure you've got a post hoc justification for that.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by FrozenSynapse on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:47AM (#36596390)
Reddit committed suicide, Twitter is actually not that bad.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by immibis on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:58AM (#36596527)
Twitter literally banned all of its users from using it.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by rvz on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:12AM (#36596697)
"banned all of its users from using it."

And I still see Twitter users on the platform still using it?

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by immibis on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @01:29PM (#36603760)
I don't. Used to get 30 notifications a day. Now I have 1, and it's a spambot.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by NovaDudely on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:04AM (#36596594)
Reddit didn't committed suicide but completely gave up on its core focus. Like an Athlete that decided "Screw it, I want KFC for every meal!" and then dies from morbid obesity related stuff a decade later.

Same thing but on a different time scale.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by leshokunin on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:47AM (#36596397)
Arguably, Tumblr did this by removing NSFW, and Onlyfans did this by pivoting to mainstream content
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by bpye on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:00AM (#36596553)
Tumblr maybe though they did it to support advertisers, Twitter is doing it seemingly at odds with them.

Is OnlyFans really social media?

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by spondylosaurus on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:11AM (#36596683)
Tumblr was forced to remove NSFW content or risk getting kicked out of the iOS app store, iirc. Twitter's putting the gun to their own head for no damn reason at all.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by raverbashing on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:45AM (#36597043)
Which, apart from legal requirements, was frankly stupid on the part of Tumblr

Maybe they should have kept the puritan version US-only (don't worry, glorifying violence is still PG only)

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by leshokunin on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:31AM (#36597915)
You can follow creators, they post content. It's a social creator platform. Is it the NSFW or the paywall aspect that's making you feel like it's not?
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by samwillis on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:50AM (#36596430)
As with almost any time "RIP [someone/something]" trends in Twitter, the death of Twitter is greatly exaggerated.

(That's not to say I like the decisions that are being made)

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by rvz on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:30AM (#36596885)
Well it's clear that after more than 6 months since the layoffs, those 6,500 employees at the company last year weren't needed and was just a giant cost of wasting billions of dollars a year to Twitter anyway.

But even after that, according to the Twitter doomsters, Twitter should have been "dead" already last year December. Its predicted collapse and death did not happen back then.

So we have given them enough time that Twitter's death has indeed been greatly exaggerated, by those all being hysterical and highly emotional at reacting to the news.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Joeri on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:57AM (#36596507)
I still don’t understand what Elon is trying to do. If you had asked me before he bought it what twitter’s core problems were I would have said “poorly moderated toxicity”, “lack of conversational depth”, “high friction onboarding”, and “excessive operating cost”. Apparently Elon only agrees about the cost part, because on all those other dimensions twitter is now worse?

In all his other businesses Elon started by offering a grand vision of where they were going: “electric cars for everyone”, “humans on mars”, “tunnels everywhere”, “direct mind machine interface”. It was often ridiculed, but the goal made sense. What is the vision for twitter? I still don’t know. Nothing he says makes any sense.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by jahnu on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:05AM (#36596607)
An absolute mess is what it is. The most consistent he’s been has been his claim he wants to make the “everything app” “X”. But that’s all it has been so far. A claim. He seems to think he can do it backwards. Charge for it first and later add the value that people would want.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by zmk_ on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:20AM (#36596784)
People do pay for Tesla Autopilot though.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by zirgs on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:07AM (#36596627)
Also - "dumb automated moderation that matches keywords and ignores context" and "non-existent appeal process".
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by spiderfarmer on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:04AM (#36596598)
He now (not at first) wants to turn it into and 'everything app', like Wechat.

Impossible, I know.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by nightfly on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:15AM (#36596729)
Might have been possible before he sabotaged it
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by olliej on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:10AM (#36596663)
"electric cars for everyone" was the vision of the founders of Tesla, prior to Musk functionally stealing the company from them.

"humans on mars" is just repeating standard sci-fi tropes that have been around for 50+ years, while not actually solving any problem.

"tunnels everywhere" makes sense for public transit, and literally any other case it's just extremely expensive roads - making it a vacuum just makes it expensive and also impractical.

"direct mind machine interface" I dunno, it's just another sci-fi trope since basically the moment electrical computers, it has actual value for many injuries, _maybe_ it has value beyond that, but again he's not coming up with anything novel or new.

Musk isn't some amazing genius, or revelatory thinker. His "let's populate mars" to solve "over population" surely indicates the opposite.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by rakoo on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:38AM (#36596970)
> "tunnels everywhere" makes sense for public transit, and literally any other case it's just extremely expensive roads - making it a vacuum just makes it expensive and also impractical.

"tunnels everywhere" was, by his own admission, a ploy to destroy the public will to build public transit because it would have been a problem for selling cars. He never wanted to actually build tunnels, he just wanted to lure people into not supporting public transit.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Nextgrid on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:50AM (#36597087)
> by his own admission

Do you have a source? Not that I don't believe it, but I'd like to see for myself where he was stupid/brazen enough to outright admit this.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by rakoo on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:36AM (#36597504)
It comes from a book, as is stated in this article (https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...) :

> As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by jahnu on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:13AM (#36596705)
I will say he’s a genius at one thing; raising funds. How on earth he convinced people to invest in this I’ll never know.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by olliej on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:28AM (#36596865)
He convinced the Saudi government - who have been aggressively endeavoring to control content of Twitter, Facebook, and media in general for years - to get a controlling interest in Twitter. I assume they would have given money to literally anyone who could provide a plausible path to that.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by renegade-otter on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:12PM (#36604600)
We already have tunnels under bodies of water! And usually it results in massive bottlenecks at the entrance. Entering NYC from New Jersey, for example, is a nightmare and can result in hours of stop and go before you actually cross the tunnel.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by 3cats-in-a-coat on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:51AM (#36597105)
Elon is trying to lose less money. It's very simple. Unfortunately due to his big mouth and impulsive, terrible management decisions, he's losing more money every time he moves.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by BackBlast on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @07:53AM (#36599060)
> It was often ridiculed, but the goal made sense. What is the vision for twitter? I still don’t know. Nothing he says makes any sense.

You're missing the core. He wants Twitter to be a functional and inclusive town square for public, and world wide, discussion.

There is the bot and manipulation problem. Which is deeper and more extensive than anyone seems to really believe. Frankly, I'm not sure how anyone solves this without pretty stiff vetting during on boarding. Any community that provides free signups is going to have bot problems. Period. Facebook is losing this war. So is Google.

I think he should punt the prevention of AI data scraping as not worth the cost. But it's value he is leaving on the table if he doesn't, though I think this one is detrimental to the users. Put it in the EULA or content licensing or where ever and be satisfied. Don't throw it in front of your legit users.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Timon3 on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @11:49AM (#36602134)
> You're missing the core. He wants Twitter to be a functional and inclusive town square for public, and world wide, discussion.

Well, aside from people he doesn't like, and content he doesn't like. Let's face it: he wants Twitter to be a town square with topics he likes and with people who support him.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by jsbisviewtiful on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @12:12PM (#36602508)
> Well, aside from people he doesn't like, and content he doesn't like. Let's face it: he wants Twitter to be a town square with topics he likes and with people who support him.

Thank you for the realistic correction.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Timon3 on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @12:42PM (#36602982)
You're welcome! The gaslighting attempts by his fans are getting more and more ridiculous. Musk's censoring and flipflopping are by now well-documented enough that nobody can honestly deny his MO.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by Joeri on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @12:29PM (#36602777)
It is hard to take those town square remarks seriously when his actions have pushed so many people off of the platform. Twitter was always a harsh place for moderate voices, and the lack of moderation has made it even less hospitable. Killing off third party apps only made that worse, because it took away tools people were using to filter out unwanted hate speech. Ultimately I can only judge Elon’s twitter by the outcome, and that means looking at my feed. It’s a ghost town now, mostly only the angry shouters are left.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by renegade-otter on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:09PM (#36604546)
I don't think even Elon knows what he wants to do. He bought Twitter out of spite - as he was active there and did not like all the things that were said about him on the platform.

This was not a "we are going to Mars" moment - it was more of a "I am a petulant child, why does no one like me when I am acting horribly" moment.

Needless to say, there will be fewer takers for a one-way ticket to Mars with this sort of management.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by immibis on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:58AM (#36596520)
Actually, it's the second. Elon is not following far from Andrew Lee's playbook with freenode.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by WJW on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:13AM (#36596699)
And of course Digg, Tumblr and onlyfans. That's just from the last few years, and just from the USA batch. I can think of several more local ones that you've never heard of. The graveyard of social networks that went under due to poor product decisions is huuuuuuge.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by swyx on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:59AM (#36596541)
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by taurath on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:02AM (#36596569)
Maybe we could say that advertising revenue is toxic to community spaces? If they really want to be the town square, well nobody wants a town square that’s primarily billboards and advertising. People who actually live in New York don’t go to Times Square, and there is functionally no actual community there.

As an counterexample, Discord specifically is trying a subscription “free-to-play” model. I think this could work pretty well for future sites - a little more expression or some cosmetics to make you stand out, but still a very usable and unobtrusive service.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by x3sphere on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:07AM (#36596625)
Too many people worth following still are using Twitter. Until they leave and there isn’t a reason to go on the site then there won’t be any mass exodus. I doubt the forced login is having a huge impact so far. Maybe Meta’s alternative will have a bigger impact.

It’s interesting, I’ve seen ton of my people I follow complain about Twitter yet they still keep posting. The site is only going to go under if people start if actually leaving.

Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by spiderfarmer on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:12AM (#36596685)
A lot of people I followed moved to Mastodon. It will be the death of a thousand cuts.
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by NovaDudely on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:14AM (#36596720)
Like people posting on Reddit right up til the end and beyond. If you want to make a real statement, delete your account before it is forced. Rip the band aid off in one go!
Re:Update on Twitter's Rate Limits by benjaminwootton on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @03:11AM (#36596682)
I was a supporter of what Elon was trying to do. I am against big tech censorship and felt that moving to a subscription model where they didn’t need to appease advertisers was a good step. I subscribed to support the model even though I barely use Twitter.

I also think the staff cuts were the right call in principle. I believe that tech products are better when you have a small team of really good people and get out of their way.

This paywall could be the thing that brings them down though. There must be millions of people per day being trained not to click on Twitter links. I myself have done this a few times on different devices and incognito windows and I’m a paying subscriber. They will also slowly be evicted from Google SERPs.

Engagement on the platform for creators was already terrible, and this must accelerate people looking at other platforms.

To do a paywall or forced login to reduce spam/bots/scraping is throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless it’s an existential risk.