I excitedly thought this was an indictment of the X Window System, which is decidedly not bad in my experience.

What a relief that it's just another pants-shitting opine over the trillionaire.

I think it's worth noting that Elon didn't make Twitter bad.

Twitter was already bad. Jack found himself accidentally in control of the world's message board, one of them at least... And decided his plan to be responsible for that vast power was to have no plan. Selling to Musk should have surprised nobody because Twitter was, in that sense, extremely traditional startup company work... And the goal was always to sell out.

I left Twitter when they responded to the United States electing a Twitter troll President by changing their policy on what trolling looked like instead of enforcing it. Because I suspected that nothing good would come of an organization whose top-level leadership had already shown that much of a lack of integrity.

I am disappointed to have been proven right with depressing consistency.

>Selling to Musk should have surprised nobody because Twitter was, in that sense, extremely traditional startup company work... And the goal was always to sell out.

It's more than that. Musk tried to back out and was forced in court to finish the deal to buy Twitter.

This. Twitter was always a dumpster fire. The people who were part of the old dumpster fire are just mad that it’s someone else’s dumpster fire now.

X is much much better than old Twitter

Edit: I can't reply so, here's why I think so:

Algorithm is much improved. Just way more interesting content reaches me now.

WAY less censorship. Like an unbelievably reduced amount of censorship. That's the biggest thing for me.

Community notes are the best "fact check" type implementation I've yet to see. The fact that they send you a notification on posts you liked that get noted is awesome.

Better bot control (still a problem, though the bigger problem seems to be foreign sockpuppeting by humans, which is about the same as always)

More responsiveness to technical issues.

And some of the most insufferable voices seem to have moved to Bluesky.

I'd prefer my social media without people slinging slurs and braindead conspiracies every other post. The vile shit that gets promoted to the top of the feed is unbelievable. 4chan man-child garbage.

> The vile shit that gets promoted to the top of the feed

Can you share a screenshot so that we can get a taste of what you see?

In what way?

> Algorithm is much improved.

I can't see anything past all the blue checkmarks who pay for visibility. I've had to run the "block the blue" userscripts for hours just to make the site usable.

> WAY less censorship.

You could power a datacenter with how fast Orwell is spinning in his grave, as Elon's Xitter approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments (compared to pre-Elon Twitter's 50%). But I guess letting Grok undress children means "less censorship" for you specifically.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...

> Community notes are the best "fact check" type implementation I've yet to see.

This is the only thing I agree with.

> Better bot control

Elon just crashed out when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center, and right-wing account activity dropped on Xitter.

> More responsiveness to technical issues.

Things breaking and then getting reverted isn't better than things not breaking in the first place

> And some of the most insufferable voices seem to have moved to Bluesky.

It probably would have been better if Twitter itself had moved to AT Protocol, as it's the future. But I'm happy to leave the people using Grok to undress pictures of children on Xitter.

No, I don't mean Grok undressing pictures (which I have honestly never seen on X, but maybe that's just my algorithm), I mean approximately 30% of the world political spectrum that can now voice their opinion without being censored.

Because the censorship on old Twitter was so wildly effective, people can't even fathom it was happening, despite the extensive documentation.

You're confusing moderation with censorship. Censorship is when governments tell Twitter to silence people, this went up by 66% under Musk if you can read the link I posted (try reading something longer than a tweet, you might learn something). Less moderation means people can say slurs, post deepfakes of children, and make the place an extremely hostile environment filled with racists, slanderers, bots, disinformation campaigns, and conspiracy nutjobs, which you seem enthused about.

Maybe you don't know about the Grok deepfake story because you don't see far outside your filter bubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_sexual_deepfake_scandal

Content moderation is censorship (sometimes more egregious than others, but all ultimately censorship).

It's just not government censorship.

I'm sure this would become extremely obvious to you if your political viewpoint suddenly started getting "moderated" off of every major platform.

Some people just enjoy writing and reading racials slurs, I guess. X is a nice home for them.

I guess not being able to yell fire in a movie theater is censorship too. There's good reason most civil people agree that there's a time or place for certain words and actions, and incitement is frowned upon.

It says a lot that the only "free speech" you care about is the hate speech that infringes on others civil rights and creates a chilling action on civil participation for minorities, yet you seem to not care one bit when Erdogan cracks down on opposition to his authoritarianism and Musk helps out, you welcome that government censorship.

Who is this for?

I'd argue it's really the author just saying out loud for themselves, like they need to cast off this old, and always stupid idea, that interfacing is condoning, that if you don't performative turn your back on "$THING" for "$Reason" that means you are for "$THING", even if not doing so has zero material impact at all. Me shitposting on Twitter (you can still call it that, X is a dumb fucking name and everyone knows what you're talking about, if you want to do the performative thing) is not why Elon Musk holds the shitty views he does nor why he has a trillion dollars in net worth. Me tapping "like" on a picture of an old computer on there does nothing. I own no stock in any of his companies. I buy none of his products. I make basic text API requests to a website he bought and block ads on it. So why would I leave just because he's a twat? Fuck him! I was there first!

Twitter/X never stopped being the place where people who have something interesting to say or show stopped hanging out; conversely, the big Bluesky migration really just meant a lot of annoying people left. I'm glad some of the more interesting ones are figuring out what a lame idea it was to leave in the first place. Come on back! It's worse than it was but it's no worse than anywhere else!

Like, you have to first prove anyone should care if you turn your back on them before you make a big show of turning your back on them. Otherwise it's just cringe. And just like "it's not an airport, you don't need to announce your departures", you don't need to announce your return either. No one who matters will judge you for looking at Twitter.

> Who is this for?

People who want a nice succinct "list of awful things Elon has done". Perfecto!

I guess for some folks yeah having a clean list might be helpful. Frankly though the "cave diver heros are pedos cause they insulted the stupid submarine" should have been the wake up call, a half a fucking DECADE before the outright Nazi shit, for a lot of people that he was a complete stupid cunt, sadly they didn't and kept buying those crappy cars he made. I bet those thousands of dollars enabled far more of wealth he enjoys vs the meager pennies he might earn from a non-ad seeing user lookin at stuff on Twitter. In fact, two of those cars were bought by the author of this article! Wow!

You might not buy any of his products, but by visiting X you are a product he's selling to advertisers. The fact you block ads is not disclosed to the advertisers he sells to, but your regular visits absolutely are.

Ok? How much value does Twitter/X give him, and how much does my occasional visit bring?

Seriously, let's go with the old rules I used to have to follow if I got a gift from a vendor as a public employee: I need to make an equal value donation to a 503c. How much should I make the check out for? Does it matter when every dumb fuck is still throwing money at Tesla and SpaceX? Am I really the one empowering that dumbass? I think not.

imagine some poor guy on twitter who pays for his premium because you happened to like his post... bringing $$ to Elon

a social media platform does need its users

Ironically this type of moralistic rant would have done numbers on old Twitter.

Lex, I don’t know how to put this nicely. But if you are reading this, sell your teslas. Finger wagging about Twitter/X has roughly zero moral weight coming from someone who has bought two Teslas.

The bumper stickers are worse, unfortunately. They read as self awareness without moral conviction.

Thank you. That was far more nicely put than I was inclined.

We'll have to give it at least another decade to assess whether Musk is a hero or villain, but nothing in TFA pushed me toward the latter.

Really? https://emeraldbook.org/news/jun-3026-3/

Just think how miserable it must be to be the author.

Man if you don’t see the issues with what the author enumerated to the point of calling him “miserable”, I’m really sorry for you. I guess you lacked love in your life somehow.

I'll probably be downvoted for admitting this but I do quite enjoy the new X, the suggested tab is certainly full of crazy, unhinged conspiracy theories and obvious rage bait posts, it's like opening the door to an insane asylum, somewhat entertaining for a short time, you'll probably find a few things that challenge your views and there are some genuine gems of a post that come up there from time to time, but then I can always switch over to my following tab for just the more sober and sane accounts I follow and then it's basically back to the more old style Twitter feed of just accounts your interested in following.

Most of the other similar platforms tend to conform to a more politically correct, consensus enforcement style of a certain narrative, which is fine for the more fragile minded who dislike anything that might challenge their world view, but those places just ultimately become boring echo chambers full on a small ingroup that tend to become increasingly weird and unfriendly to outsiders and divorced from reality over time.

You, and many other people in this industry, are cooking your brain on a website owned by a literal white supremacist, and you think you're too smart (or whatever the opposite of "fragile minded" is) for it to happen.

Where you spend time shapes your thoughts, whether you like it or not.

> unhinged conspiracy theories and obvious rage bait posts

is it mostly the rightie conservative stuff or evenly distributed?

to me the problem is not if the algo censors things for craziness of views, it's more if the algo censors things for political direction of views.

> the suggested tab is certainly full of crazy, unhinged conspiracy theories and obvious rage bait posts

The "For you" tab is based on Your interests.

Ah yes, an artisanal menagerie of choice cuts from the most popular brainrot.

Blended just for you to normalize the worst parts of the internet. Add a drop of fascism into every feed and soon enough you don’t notice how down the rabbit hole you are.

But, no, you are too smart to get addicted to it. Not you. Everyone else, sure, but not you.

This is a tired gotcha trope people repeat but it's not really true. The purpose of these algorithms is not to give you content that fits you the best. It's to give you content that encourages the most engagement.

You know what causes a lot of engagement? Unhinged conspiracy theories and obvious rage bait posts.

Me too

I guess I should say I shared this here to see how people would react, as it is pretty much the converse of the Daring Fireball piece.

I want my work to be seen as much as anyone; I currently post to bsky and mastodon, and I've stayed off threads and twitter. I often wonder how much I'm sacrificing by not doing everything possible to maximize my social media footprint in the name of sleeping at night.

Agree, I'd also like to live on a different social network, but it is what it is

I really miss the Elon Musk from before 2018, he was completely different :(

what happened in 2018/19?

In 2014, he fired his PR person when she asked for a raise (she was very good at her job).

In Spring of 2018, investigative reporters at the LA Times found that Elon acted like a tyrant removing yellow hi-vis safety tape at Tesla factories because he didn't like the aesthetic, which lead to more workplace accidents. This was when Elon started getting extremely adversarial with the press.

https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-factor...

A few months later, during the Thai cave rescue, he flaunted some kind of coffin made from spare rocket parts as his plan to save children who were trapped in a Thai cave, and when one of the actual rescuers Vernon Unsworth told him the cave was too narrow for that to be of use, Elon called him a "pedo" (note, Elon also begged to go to Jeffrey Epstein's parties).

It all went downhill from there.

> one of the actual rescuers

There was about 10,000 people involved in that rescue. There was no single "rescuer" or authority.

Which is why I said "one of". And by "one of" I mean one of the leaders of the whole operation, someone who lives in Chiang Rai and has extensive knowledge of the cave complex, who coordinated Thai government working with the British Cave Rescue Council.

You posit as if Vernon was some sort of official, he wasn’t. It was collective effort by many many people.

The reason Musk got upset was the interview with Vernon where he got mean about Musk’s efforts. And since freedom of speech, Musk got mean in return.

Vernon tried to sue to no avail which all you need to know a out him.

Painting Musk a villain here is insane. He tried to help, instead he got slandered and sued.

Vernon wasn't an official, but he's the first guy the officials called to help and come up with a plan. Elon Musk wasn't trying to help, he was trying to get publicity. Had anyone listened to Musk, the children would have died. I think someone who doesn't know what they are doing wedging themselves in a life or death situation while arguing with the experts with the knowledge and experience wasting their time with cockamamie plans is a villain in my eyes. Elon Musk is basically Syndrome in the Incredibles movie: angry and jealous that he isn't the center of attention.

And if it isn't clear today, Musk is clearly a villain. The Thai cave rescue was when he showed his real face to the world by being a total and utter jerk to the real heroes.

> he's the first guy the officials called to help and come up with a plan

Not true, but that doesn't matter. Tons of people offered help, were invited, had plans, etc. Why Vernon was such an asshole to Musk tho?

Elon was not invited, and he still insisted on showing up. That makes Elon the asshole.

Except public Twitter exchange with PM or something like that

People started realizing that it was all an illusion and that, surprise, surprise, yet another billionaire egomaniac actually has the moral fortitude of a maggot.

Not really. He was trying very hard to get onto Epstein island.

“What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk wrote in an email to Epstein in November 2012. In another in December 2013, he asked, “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit?”

[1]: https://time.com/7362868/elon-musk-epstein-emails/

There are a lot of ways to scrape the content you want into a different interface, or filter ads and the content you don't want to see.

I mostly scrape and use a different interface, but when I view the actual site, I use https://imbue.com/blog/bouncer (I work at the company that makes this, on other projects).

Regarding Twitter, the larger issue isn't your own filter; it's that social media trades on popularity, and merely interacting with it is boosting its popularity.

This is a problem because as we've just seen as a result of the drone strikes on the data center in Russia... A huge chunk of Twitter is anti-western Russian propaganda. Well crafted anti-western Russian propaganda. Several noteworthy influencer accounts with significant following of Americans appear to have gone completely silent in the wake of the attack.

Twitter has the resources to know those accounts are fake. They make the business decision not to pull that thread. And there are consequences to pumping oxygen into the propaganda machine.

Food for thought for folks who are in favor of Western style democracy, essentially.

Good post, and I agree with it.

I've been preferring Bluesky lately. It's much more open so you can write your own feeds to consume it however you like. I currently have one that runs every post in my following feed through a cheap LLM filter to throw out ragebait and topics I don't care about. It requires some initial work to curate your experience (including blocking some annoying people) but after that it's good.

Nobody cares. The left overs have no moral high ground to stand on and judge anyone. If you demand stability( by conservating social order or nostalgia for the past) in unstable times by your own making you are disqualified. Somebody disqualified does not get to choose the people, the platform or the social order. Or which ideas are discussed and which are not.

So... Yuu don't like the guy who bought Twitter and renamed it to X? Thats fine. You dislike him so much that you want to boycott the platform he bought? Fine! Go ahead, show how prinicpled you are, and actually don't use the platform for anything. Neither post to it, nor read anything from it. Thats all fine. But... I am soooo done with this "I want to get clean, so everyone else has to stop, so that I dont feel alone." attitude. I don't care that you don't like X. I haven't used it since almost 10 years. Deleted my account back then, and NEVER looked back. I haven't read a single tweet since, because the web interface is basically unuseable with a simple browser. Thats fine, I am used to being excluded from most of the modern internet. Do I write blog posts asking people to stop using Firefox and go back to lynx? Maybe I should, but nah, its too hilarious. I like it when people have prinicples and stick to it. I learnt to absolutely hate activists, those people that seem more concerned to influence the people around themselves, then their own actions.

>His point, as I see it, is that yes, Elon Musk is awful, but the X algorithm no longer shoves his posts into John’s feed, and new Apple CEO John Ternus is posting there (along with other Apple executives), and that there are interesting people who post on X and not elsewhere.

>That all may be true. But it’s not the point.

They are talking past each other.

"I like this technology because it's good" vs "I hate this technology because I hate the people behind it"

It really comes down to how much conscious decision do you do every single time you buy a product. Or as the meme says we live in a society.

Putting the “bought b4 Elon was crazy” bumper stickers on the tesla but not selling it, puts a price range on how terrible one thinks Elon really is.

How does it hurt Elon if you sell a car you already paid for?

If enough people did it would crash the value of second hand teslas, which would eventually affect how much they can ask for new teslas.

Collective action problems are humanity's greatest weakness.

Having the used market get flooded with perfectly serviceable vehicles is bad for a brand for a number of reasons

Why would I buy a new one when used prices are rock bottom due to inventory?

Word of mouth is bad when you have owners abandoning their cars.

Just in general the prestige of teslas as a luxury EV is totally shot but that’s not a new thing. It’s just irrecoverable at this point when they’re so common and plain, and anyone can pick one up for next to nothing

I’m more interested in the folks continuing to use and benefit from the products of Elon’s companies while simultaneously condemning other folks for using products from Elon’s companies.

Their defense would presumably be something along the lines of it being too expensive at that moment to sell the car and get something else. That is the price they are willing or unwilling to pay for their moral position.

He makes an entire list of how horrible Elon is as an indictment of Gruber for using X, and then explains that he is still driving his test as he had for the last nine years without even a shred of irony.

Yes, it reads as self aware without moral conviction.

If you use the "for you" tab you have no right to complain, you did it to yourself. If you use the "following" tab, X is a very useful app.

> My kids loved Harry Potter, but we don’t give any more money to trans-hater JK Rowling, either.

Yeah. OK.

such a weird position. recognizing something is not the same and lieing about the sameness to try to help one group of people can and is harming another group of people is not hate. its being a reasonable and intelligent person.

My reaction reading that is I'm glad I use X/twitter.

I don't use it for more selfish reasons: I simply don't want my name associated with that guy.

Why? Everything except his political views (to some people) is awesome. Bringing launch costs down by a factor of 100 is awesome, bringing electric cars forward several decades in adoption is awesome,paypal was awesome for the time, even the boring company and neuralink are starting to show promise. Have to give him credit for taking business ideas thatlooked really stupid at the time and making them work well to our great benefit. To me he has earned benefit of the doubt the size of the ocean whenever he is doing somethibg thatlooks stupid

I'll admit he looks a lot better if one ignores the fact that he's a horrible human being who's said and done some horrible things.

He's done lots of amazing things, too, and yet I'd still get my name soiled by association. Because he's a horrible human being.

what horrible things? Said some uncomfo4table but t4ue things about the current trans phenomenon?

I see what you did there. It's no fair trolling the regular folk on HN. They are easy pickins. It's unladylike.

Did i get past the censors with my horrible android virtual keyboard typing by accident or are you referring to something else?