Tag: Twitter

Regarding the Twitter Files

“The Twitter Files” is a series of cherry-picked internal documents that Musk gave to hand-picked sympathetic journalists (including Matt Taibbi) who then portrayed things like an extensive internal debate over whether to ban Trump after his supporters tried to stop the official count of the election he lost as, somehow, evidence of arbitrary liberal censorship, or the Biden campaign (which was not part of the government at the time) asking Twitter to take down posts containing revenge porn as, somehow, an example of government censorship, getting organizations mixed up and at one point even claiming that 22 million tweets were flagged for takedown by one organization, when the real number was only about 3,000 and they weren’t flagged for takedown, only for review, and Twitter left most of them up.

Techdirt has a whole series of posts pointing out the flaws in the claims. This one’s a good place to start.

#

Yeah, it’s sort of a semi-boost. It doesn’t appear on the main tab…

In response to a comment about Twitter “Likes” showing up in followers’ timelines.

@JordiGH @jskellogg Yeah, it’s sort of a semi-boost. It doesn’t appear on the main tab of your profile with your tweets & retweets, but there’s a chance it’ll show up to your followers as they view their timelines as “So-and-so liked ____” if they’re using the website or official clients.

On Wandering.shop

Yes, I suppose data revealed through a system *working as intended* isn’t technically a “breach.”

Yes, I suppose data revealed through a system *working as intended* isn’t technically a “breach.”

Most social media these days is built around selling access to participants’ data, directly or indirectly (through ad placement). It doesn’t have to be, but that’s the business model that’s taken hold.

There are alternatives to the big data-mining social networks, but they have their own drawbacks. Blogs still exist, Mastodon is making great strides, you can self-host if you can afford it & have the know-how (or know someone who does)…

But your friends/family aren’t on [cool social network], they’re still on FB & Twitter, so you need to keep them around to talk to them.

And it takes time, effort & money to maintain your own site.

And a lot of networks aren’t as polished as the ones you’re already on…

Leaving FB/Twitter isn’t easy for everyone, or even rewarding for everyone.

We can make it easier, help people diversify, & grow those alternative networks, but let’s not blame those who accept the trade-off & stay on the major sites.

Still, user data is the product. Breaches need one kind of solution. Business practices need another.

Birdsite administrivia snafu

Twitter locked the two project-specific accounts I use regularly, but not the personal account I use to log into Tweetdeck. Supposedly for behavior violating the Twitter Rules(tm), but all I had to do was verify my phone number on each.

I only tried to log in b/c Tweetdeck wasn’t loading their columns. I suspect that it was Tweetdeck’s error causing the suspicious behavior to begin with.

Or Twitter just really wants a phone number on every account now.

What uses does it have?

* Running commentary on an event.
* Random thoughts.
* Announcements (news sites, software updates, blogs, etc.)
* Sharing interesting links
* Conversations
* Fiction told one line at a time.
* Tips of the Day

I’m sure if you think about it instead of dismiss it you can come up with other uses.

All of it tied into a single feed that can be access via the web, via a multitude of desktop applications, via smartphone apps, or even via SMS on mobile phones, making it ubiquitous.

Sure, many of these things can be done via email, or RSS, or instant messaging, but Twitter — or rather, a system like it — provides a simple way to combine them all into one easily-accessed stream.

On Slashdot