Twitter Rebrand to 𝕏

[Stive Pesley]

I find Twitter's defence laughable though - they are admitting that their algorithms did serve ads against "the content in the article" (nice euphemism lads) - which is entirely the point. 

The fact that it's focused on the huge corps who doubtless spend the most money on Twitter advertising is because that's what hurts, but it's not the point

It's about the principle of serving ads against hateful content. It doesn't actually matter who the advertisers are, and it's not "gaming the system" to prove that. I do a lot of work with software code bug hunters and vulnerability management / penetration testing - we don't consider them to be "gaming the system" when they force niche scenarios to expose issues. We thank them for it

Which in my opinion is what Twitter should be doing if they want to win back the trust of advertisers. Say "we thank Media Matters for bringing this flaw in our advertising algorithms to our attention and we are taking steps to ensure that NO adverts get served against extremis content, no matter how blue the tick the extremist paid for is...".

Doubling down and saying "well...most of the time we try not to serve ads next to racist posts, but as Media Matters have shown we can't promise it" is not going to help them get advertisers back 😂

 

 

[Comrade 86]

2 hours ago, Stive Pesley said:

I find Twitter's defence laughable though - they are admitting that their algorithms did serve ads against "the content in the article" (nice euphemism lads) - which is entirely the point. 

The fact that it's focused on the huge corps who doubtless spend the most money on Twitter advertising is because that's what hurts, but it's not the point

It's about the principle of serving ads against hateful content. It doesn't actually matter who the advertisers are, and it's not "gaming the system" to prove that. I do a lot of work with software code bug hunters and vulnerability management / penetration testing - we don't consider them to be "gaming the system" when they force niche scenarios to expose issues. We thank them for it

Which in my opinion is what Twitter should be doing if they want to win back the trust of advertisers. Say "we thank Media Matters for bringing this flaw in our advertising algorithms to our attention and we are taking steps to ensure that NO adverts get served against extremis content, no matter how blue the tick the extremist paid for is...".

Doubling down and saying "well...most of the time we try not to serve ads next to racist posts, but as Media Matters have shown we can't promise it" is not going to help them get advertisers back 😂

Put your fingers in your ears, ignore the advertisers deserting the platform in droves and sing out loud....

 

[Carl Sagan]

On 20/11/2023 at 13:14, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Mr Musk knows what’s best for me apparently

 

You're right and I think it shows how hard it is to find "balance" on a global platform. I was surprised when this was posted and I'd be surprised if it's actually enacted. I think the problem came about with a huge pile-on from across the media that Musk was antisemitic, so this might have been a frustrated attempt to counteract that. But you're better off not responding. And absolutely not by censoring.

[DarkFruitsRam7]

37 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

You're right and I think it shows how hard it is to find "balance" on a global platform. I was surprised when this was posted and I'd be surprised if it's actually enacted. I think the problem came about with a huge pile-on from across the media that Musk was antisemitic, so this might have been a frustrated attempt to counteract that. But you're better off not responding. And absolutely not by censoring.

Fair.

Was quite impressed that they’re donating money to the Red Cross in Gaza too.

Have to give credit where it’s due.

Edited November 22, 2023 by DarkFruitsRam7

[Day]

On 20/11/2023 at 09:42, Stive Pesley said:

That's absolute garbage. Musk has explained at great length how people paying for blue ticks now have their content boosted by his algorithm, and those that don't pay for a blue tick have their content suppressed. If that's not "having your feed controlled by others" then I don't know what it is.

Currently away and just catching up, so apologies for replying to a post days old.

I also post this as someone that dislikes what Elon Musk has done to the platform.

What you have said isn't quite true.

You can default your feed to people you follow, if I was to follow 100 circus accounts, I would see every tweet they make regardless of blue tick status.

When Elon talks of blue tick content boosted, that's both the algorithm based For You feed and blue ticks are boosted in all replies.

So my feed of the 100 Circus accounts is not affected, however if I open one of those circus tweets and it has 500 replies, all those with blue ticks will be shown above none blue tick accounts.

What he has done is not ruin your feed, but the discussions they can create as OnlyFans "personalities", parody accounts and such like that will pay for the attention to boost their profiles are seen more.

He's destroyed the platform with the nonsensical changes above, not so much allowing the nutters like Katie Hopkins back on that you can easily avoid with both account blocking and muting keywords.

What I hate the most is, that Derby County, the club I love are paying X over a grand a month for a little gold tick badge.

For what exactly?

Where is the value for money in that, imagine if the club say turned round and refused to pay it, choosing to donate that money monthly to local based charities. 

How many lives could that potentially change, it's just insane to me that the club feel the need to pay that kind of money for zero benefit.

Even BBC East Midlands are paying it then affiliating BBC Radio Derby Sport with a gold badge. A grand a month wouldn't save the job losses, although I'm sure over £12k a year could go someway to improving their broadcasting. 

This is money to a guy that bought Twitter through a court purchase order after making a spontaneous ill thought out offer to buy the company.

The same bloke that's chucking rockets up in the air and talking about populating Mars, which if he somehow managed to crack in our life time would be some bizarre world that would see kids named like Star Wars characters and one super company that rules the entire planet.

The guys a fruit loop.

[GboroRam]

[Comrade 86]

10 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

Have to say he looks in great condition for the upcoming cage fight, though that's a fair portion of chips and I'd be advising him to cut down on the carbs if he wants to be entering the ring looking as dench as he does now.

Zuckerberg is going to have his hands full, in more ways than one 😱

[Stive Pesley]

2 hours ago, David said:

What you have said isn't quite true.

You can default your feed to people you follow, if I was to follow 100 circus accounts, I would see every tweet they make regardless of blue tick status.

Officially maybe not, but I and every one of my friends who don't have a blue tick have noticed that the view count on anything we tweet has fallen off a cliff compared to a year ago and more. I have just over 1000 followers and the last thing I tweeted (about a month ago) said it had a view count of 5 or something. 

There could be other legit reasons for this I guess. People leaving the platform in droves, or on the flipside maybe people posting more so tweets drop down the feed before anyone sees them. Or people switching to (or being switched to) "for you" feed 

But realistically it feels like there is something more fundamental going on with post manipulation. Not that I'm especially bothered, as I've stopped using it altogether in the last few weeks unless someone sends me a specific link to look at 

Ultimately though, it's still feed manipulation that if you try to reply/engage with another person's tweet, and you are getting ignored if you don't have a blue tick. What's the point. It's now effectively a dead platform as your voice only matters if you have money...

And the whole thing about the ads is crazy.

I just read an article about Laurence Fox's libel case and it had a link to a tweet he just made about the "great replacement". Obviously the replies are a bin fire of emboldened racism, and the first ad amongst the replies is for St Mungo's Homelessness Charity, then one for SSE energy, then one for the KRCS Apple offering trade-in discount to school kids!

But apparently this doesn't happen and I've manipulated the platform 🙄

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Stive Pesley

[ariotofmyown]

1 hour ago, Stive Pesley said:

Officially maybe not, but I and every one of my friends who don't have a blue tick have noticed that the view count on anything we tweet has fallen off a cliff compared to a year ago and more. I have just over 1000 followers and the last thing I tweeted (about a month ago) said it had a view count of 5 or something. 

There could be other legit reasons for this I guess. People leaving the platform in droves, or on the flipside maybe people posting more so tweets drop down the feed before anyone sees them. Or people switching to (or being switched to) "for you" feed 

But realistically it feels like there is something more fundamental going on with post manipulation. Not that I'm especially bothered, as I've stopped using it altogether in the last few weeks unless someone sends me a specific link to look at 

Ultimately though, it's still feed manipulation that if you try to reply/engage with another person's tweet, and you are getting ignored if you don't have a blue tick. What's the point. It's now effectively a dead platform as your voice only matters if you have money...

And the whole thing about the ads is crazy.

I just read an article about Laurence Fox's libel case and it had a link to a tweet he just made about the "great replacement". Obviously the replies are a bin fire of emboldened racism, and the first ad amongst the replies is for St Mungo's Homelessness Charity, then one for SSE energy, then one for the KRCS Apple offering trade-in discount to school kids!

But apparently this doesn't happen and I've manipulated the platform 🙄

 

I've forwarded this to Musk and he will sue you.

[i-Ram]

1 hour ago, Stive Pesley said:

Officially maybe not, but I and every one of my friends who don't have a blue tick have noticed that the view count on anything we tweet has fallen off a cliff compared to a year ago and more. I have just over 1000 followers and the last thing I tweeted (about a month ago) said it had a view count of 5 or something. 

There could be other legit reasons for this I guess. People leaving the platform in droves, or on the flipside maybe people posting more so tweets drop down the feed before anyone sees them. Or people switching to (or being switched to) "for you" feed 

But realistically it feels like there is something more fundamental going on with post manipulation. Not that I'm especially bothered, as I've stopped using it altogether in the last few weeks unless someone sends me a specific link to look at 

Ultimately though, it's still feed manipulation that if you try to reply/engage with another person's tweet, and you are getting ignored if you don't have a blue tick. What's the point. It's now effectively a dead platform as your voice only matters if you have money...

And the whole thing about the ads is crazy.

I just read an article about Laurence Fox's libel case and it had a link to a tweet he just made about the "great replacement". Obviously the replies are a bin fire of emboldened racism, and the first ad amongst the replies is for St Mungo's Homelessness Charity, then one for SSE energy, then one for the KRCS Apple offering trade-in discount to school kids!

But apparently this doesn't happen and I've manipulated the platform 🙄

I suspect your view count on here is about 5/1000 posts too.

Middle-class liberal delusion I think it’s called.

 

[Comrade 86]

38 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

Officially maybe not, but I and every one of my friends who don't have a blue tick have noticed that the view count on anything we tweet has fallen off a cliff compared to a year ago and more. I have just over 1000 followers and the last thing I tweeted (about a month ago) said it had a view count of 5 or something. 

There could be other legit reasons for this I guess. People leaving the platform in droves, or on the flipside maybe people posting more so tweets drop down the feed before anyone sees them. Or people switching to (or being switched to) "for you" feed 

But realistically it feels like there is something more fundamental going on with post manipulation. Not that I'm especially bothered, as I've stopped using it altogether in the last few weeks unless someone sends me a specific link to look at 

Ultimately though, it's still feed manipulation that if you try to reply/engage with another person's tweet, and you are getting ignored if you don't have a blue tick. What's the point. It's now effectively a dead platform as your voice only matters if you have money...

And the whole thing about the ads is crazy.

I just read an article about Laurence Fox's libel case and it had a link to a tweet he just made about the "great replacement". Obviously the replies are a bin fire of emboldened racism, and the first ad amongst the replies is for St Mungo's Homelessness Charity, then one for SSE energy, then one for the KRCS Apple offering trade-in discount to school kids!

But apparently this doesn't happen and I've manipulated the platform 🙄

 

I binned off Twitter when Musk used the platform to try and humiliate Haraldur Thorleifsson over his disabilities. That was probably, above all the other stuff, the bit that persuaded me irrevocably, that Musk is a colossal ***t. The mealy-mouthed excuses did little to appease me. It's fair to say that at that point, the functionality and general environment of the platform became irrelevant midst the sheer deluge of Musk bile emitted via his feed, all hours of the day and night.

In the last two years he's managed to wipe out 45% of the value of Tesla and over 80% of the value of Twitter. His growing dependency on ketamine is also fairly evident, as are the associated side effects we see him exhibiting. He's going to need to kick that habit, as shareholders are getting increasingly twitchy and are again considering moves to have Musk removed from the Tesla board of directors. For the first time, I feel like it's more likely than not.

[Comrade 86]

7 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

I suspect your view count on here is about 5/1000 posts too.

Middle-class liberal delusion I think it’s called.

 

And you call other people bitchy 🤣

In any case, I'm sure Stive sleeps far better for knowing that at very least, he retains you as an avid reader.

[i-Ram]

12 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

And you call other people bitchy 🤣

In any case, I'm sure Stive sleeps far better for knowing that at very least, he retains you as an avid reader.

I’m one of his 1000 followers on Twitter too. He’s comedy gold. 

[Stive Pesley]

35 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

And you call other people bitchy 🤣

In any case, I'm sure Stive sleeps far better for knowing that at very least, he retains you as an avid reader.

It's knowing  I-Ram  is always there for me that keeps me going!

[Comrade 86]

16 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

I’m one of his 1000 followers on Twitter too. He’s comedy gold. 

In fairness, he'd probably have a few choice observations to share with you too. 

[cstand]

Just checked my Twitter account I now have 10 followers 😀 so I decided to take a look at who was following me.

OMG this woman is following me.

Natalie Brunell Bitcoin podcaster.

Got the difficult decision now to follow her back or not. 

 

 

[AndyinLiverpool]

2 hours ago, cstand said:

Just checked my Twitter account I now have 10 followers 😀 so I decided to take a look at who was following me.

OMG this woman is following me.

Natalie Brunell Bitcoin podcaster.

Got the difficult decision now to follow her back or not. 

 

 

This reminds me of those cards you used to find in telephone kiosks claiming 'Genuine Photo' and offering things like 'French Polishers' or 'Large chest for sale' etc.

[PistoldPete]

2 hours ago, cstand said:

Just checked my Twitter account I now have 10 followers 😀 so I decided to take a look at who was following me.

OMG this woman is following me.

Natalie Brunell Bitcoin podcaster.

Got the difficult decision now to follow her back or not. 

 

 

Might be worth enquiring about non fungible assets. 

[Day]

14 hours ago, Stive Pesley said:

I have just over 1000 followers and the last thing I tweeted (about a month ago) said it had a view count of 5 or something. 

I'm finding it hard to believe a tweet from a 1000 following account has single digit views.

Assuming you wouldn't want to share the tweet, any chance of a censored blurred screenshot showing the tweet and your follower account?

It just makes no sense, unless you have been shadow banned to extreme levels.

It's not like search is even an endless stream of verified users, picked a random trend and as you can see, 3 in a row with no verification

[cstand]

1 hour ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

This reminds me of those cards you used to find in telephone kiosks claiming 'Genuine Photo' and offering things like 'French Polishers' or 'Large chest for sale' etc.

She is that nice looking.
Totally gobsmacked she decided to follow me must have been the comments about inflation Bitcoin and gold on Peter Schiff and Pomp’s X feeds.

Pomp loves Bitcoin Schiff loves gold I love the banter between them constantly ribbing each other who is right and who is wrong but they have mutually respect for each other as well. 
 

Edited November 24, 2023 by cstand