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Elon Musk announces new daily Twitter limitations as thousands of users report problems accessing site
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- Title
- Thousands of users report problems accessing Twitter; met with a 'Rate limit exceeded' error
- Published
- Jul 1 2023
- Word count
- 184 words
in my opinion, this is the dumbest thing Musk has enacted so far. the vast majority of users are both unverified and mostly-lurkers, so he’s removing basically the one reason they used twitter for? it's genuinely bewildering lol. i bet it’s because he doesn’t want to pay server costs, rather than “extreme levels of data scraping”, too.
the company's probably broke. if this continues for much longer I can't imagine Twitter lasting for long.
This is the exact reason I never use Instagram.
You probably already know this, but anyway. Unless they've changed this, you can still view a profile's content (except stories) on Instagram by using a link with
/feedin the end, without logging in.For example,
https://instagram.com/username/feedIt's even worse in some ways. On Reddit I begrudgingly use a throwaway account because it makes it very painful to view threads without one, but at least it's quick to sign up and doesn't even require email verification. When I caved in and signed up for Instagram to see the links my friends were posting, my account was locked within 24 hours (presumably for setting something like "rstaestanhr ritrnhto" as my name) and the recovery procedure didn't work, at which point I couldn't bring myself to care anymore.
I've heard of Instagram/Facebook asking for an official ID to restore accounts. I don't know if it's part of their policy anymore but I would not want Meta to have a copy of any ID. I don't like how accepted it's become to give your personal information on the internet.
A COVID vaccination card works too ;)
What do you mean? There are no limits on posts on Instagram. Or are you talking about the other thing where you must login to view the website at all?
I believe @Tukajo meant the log in, I'm also in that camp, requirrement of creating account to instagram did not convince me to open account with it. I'm actually glad, that twitter is locking down, because this will stop people from posting links to it.
Yep. I meant the login.
The latter. Login to even view the website. Even if some of the content is good, the mandatory logon is enough to make me not even bother using their site.
Have to imagine it’s the latter.
I can see at least one good coming out of this: It will cure social media addiction for sure! Only hardcore twitter addicts will ever cross 6K post views per day and if they're forced to end addiction at that point, it's a good thing as they'll then probably do something useful with their life?
apparently "post views" counts every reply to a post if you click on the tweet to view replies, though. Very easy to pass the limit that way.
Elon Musk's tweet about rate limits had 195k replies. So users viewing that one post used up their allotment of views with just that post.
I wonder if viewing one's own tweets and replies counts towards the total? ETA: Looks like one's own tweets are affected:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/07/02/no-one-believes-elon-musks-explanation-for-breaking-twitter/
This is us seeing Twitter implode in real time.
It's really insidious. It allows Twitter to provide a reason for conveniently barring users from logging in for, say, updating important events like wars, corporate bad behaviour, and so on. Sure, some will be able to Tweet about these. But the total traffic will be less. What you'll have is just more Twitter shills.
I don't believe for a second that this is because of data scrapers and the like, personally. I think the choices Elon has made, like shutting down a core data center and laying off the vast majority of Twitter's SREs, have caught up with the platform and Twitter no longer has the ability to handle the normal amount of daily traffic it receives.
Also, for all the new CEO is supposed to be attempting to rehab the company's image with advertisers, I can't believe the first move wasn't to remove the poop emoji auto response from the press email.
Well, quite. It’s a very convenient excuse to blame data scrapers/LLMs when the inability to cope with traffic was a predictable outcome from the decisions Musk has made.
Just like when his changes made 2FA stop working, he hasn’t demonstrated an ability to see the unintended consequences of his actions.
This must be the "crazy tech stack" that Elon Musk said warranted a complete rewrite. If an infrastructure can't survive firing /alienating all your good engineers, pulling server cords randomly, and refusing to pay your bills, then it's obviously not worth spitting on.
Sounds like a very fishy explanation of why they are having degraded service.
But wouldn't the entire liabilities of Twitter be a drop in the ocean for Musk?
And I mean, I understand you cannot liquidate your personal worth in a timely manner, but it's also not like he bought Twitter yesterday. Given they have bills to pay, he should easily be able to pay them from his personal fortune, right?
It makes no sense that an owner or employee of a large company uses their personal funds to pay operational costs though, that should never be expected even if they can afford it.
If you are the owner its your obligation to do the right thing. That includes paying your employees and suppliers. Its clear Elon has broken/never had even the initial basic expectations of an employer so its no surprise hes letting it die like this in a display of giant hubris. But ultimately an owner should do all they can to keep a business afloat in good faith. But in these days of disaster capitalism norms and general decency are lost on many over the pure thrust of making another dollar.
I disagree. The CEO is responsible for the buwiness model bekng profitable, but they should not be personally financially responsible for the business staying afloat. That is a slippery slope that could bankrupt most business owners in times when things aren’t going well. Most business owners don’t have the cash on hand to simply bail out their company.
Its not bailing out your company. Its paying your bills. Right now elon is not even paying the bills. In theory i get where you are coming from but this os a guy who has enriched himself via tax avoidance through off shoring, government subsidy for tesla and space x (so to me double dipped, avoided tax whilst expecting tax payer subsidy). The guy has been bailed out/subsidised himself in the past, so now its time to pay bailout himself and its not even bailouts, its basic day to day operating costs.
Yeah don’t get me wrong, Musk is a scum who has way more money than he should, but it sets a dangerpus precedent if we expect people with the same role in a business to use their personal wealth to pay for company operations. It’s not possible to single people like Musk out and have them do it while not enforcing the same rules of business owners who can’t afford to do so.
I would do it to all mega rich ceos and owners who have enriched themselves the way Musk has. Bezos, the apple corps, All of the Non-Dom uk newspaper owners etc. Wether you do it to the owner of the business you basically create enforcement. You cannot simply stop paying because you think you are too big to pay etc or are in an Elon hissy fit. Money is not a one way street of extraction, if you own a company you are responsible for it and its employees. Its that simple. On musk specifically, What musk is doing is not conducive to the longevity of the company and hes doing it purely so he doesn't put his own money in and can extract anything else. Thats not an owner engaging in normal operation of a business so I don't see why he should be treated as such. What ever happens i hope states and cities go after him for everything at this point. The firing practices, not paying rents, making folks sleep at work in non zones buildings etc. If he wants to behave like this why should the rules not target the guy?
Where exactly do you draw the line on when someone is wealthy enough to be covered by this rule?
I really don’t think you have thought about how complicated what you’re suggesting really is.
I don’t disagree that Musk should face repurcussions for what he is doing, but it’s not so easy as to just have him personally pay the bills.
What if an owner has a legitimate reason for firing people or not paying rent, because the business just isn’t soing great (e.g. during Covid), would the same rules apply to them then? There are thoundands of variations of this to consider, it’s not black and white.
There are variations always. But i'm talking specifically about elon and his behaviour at twitter, that is black and white. Mass firings, not paying rent, using visa traps to keep people at work on site sleeping, ignoring EEC rules on data etc. The guy is on a charge to not follow any established guidelines or rules. So why does everyone want to play soft woth him incase of some weird hypothetical that doesn't exist yet?. Everyone wants to use general rules to say we shouldn't cover specific issues. But i personally draw the line when Elon makes the public statements he does. Refusing to pay rent on buildings/servers he acquired with twitter whilst simultaneously turning off coverage of starlink in ukraine on his own whim saying people owe him money etc.
My point is that you can’t just change the law to only apply to 1 person.
The laws exist. They need enforcing with extreme prejudice. Thats my whole point. But folks want to play nice with him as hes Elon. He deserves being sued for all the firings for service outages by starlink etc. He deserves all twitter offices and assetts be seized and leins placed for unpaid rents etc. He deserves to be ruined by the same practices he thinks will excuse him of the behaviours he is displaying.
Well that’s not what you’ve been saying, this thread started from the argument that he he as an owner should personally pay for the unpaid rents which is completely different.
He should. However it happens. Twitter/Elon should be paying their bills and fees. End of. Its that simple. Wether its Elons personal account or he transfers it to twitters account, he needs to pay. He wandered in day 1 doing his stupid kitchen sink bit after buying all the shares and saying 'twitter is now mine - shall I stay on as CEO' blah blah blah. He has made it perfectly clear twitter is now his company. His. And I know the argument I make is at odds with current laws. But I don't care because Elon doesn't care. Guys like Elon want to behave how they want using others decency against themselves. I'm just mirroring Elons flippancy towards any rule back at him through this argument. He needs to pay his bills its that basic and simple to me. Not who owns what llc or what entity whatever. Elon has made his ego front and centre and its all about him, so my issues go to him. Not a legal office as he fired them, not a pr office as he fired them etc. If you are owed rent, sue twitter and elon, if you were fired, sue twitter and elon etc. What I don't buy are all the whatabout style arguments "if we do this for elon it will affect everyone" no it won't as no one else is behaving like this, if they are they deserve the same treatment personally and legally.
The solution is to force Twitter to pay, and then Musk can either pony up the money or file chapter 11 and hand the Twitter HQ keys to his debtors.
Elon isn't the CEO, though. He's the owner. There's a HUGE difference in the financial liability there.
More relevantly, he purchased Twitter through a leveraged buyout, where he funded the purchase through using the company itself as collateral (through the promise of future earnings). imo he's not personally liable for Twitters losses but it seems fundamentally unfair to me that he can use Twitter's value as a way to buy Twitter without actually suffering if he bankrupts it.
There has to be a middle way between "executives and owners bear no personal responsibility for the actions of their corporations" and "roll out the guillotines."
As it stands, we expect next-to-no accountability from the wealthy and powerful, and we allow them to use their corporations as shields against the responsibility we do expect.
That I will not argue against, I agree completely that they must be accountable. But expecting them to pay the bills personally is not a middle ground.
600 posts is about 40-90 minutes of modest scrolling. With this, Twitter's ultimate and definitive demise is finally announced, at least by my standards.
I guess it depends how you measure it. Like a couple of screens of tweets could be 20-30 on a desktop device and that's like 2 minutes. Open a tweet and you get 6-7 replies, follow a thread for a bit and repeat the process and it seems very quick to build up.
Perhaps only the 'main' tweet is counter, not replies? Otherwise it's even dumber than I thought lol
It's dumber than you thought. One of my friends was viewing a tweet from Biden when the change went live. That tweet had over 1,000 replies, and he's now unable to view anything else on Twitter.
I guess I should stop giving them the benefit of the doubt huh 🤦♀️
😂
I was thinking the same when I read your previous post: "Oh yeah, 600 sounds more reasonable then, of course it's more about 'how many twitter links can you click on' basically". Then read what /u/CannibalisticApple said and wow, no, it's really as if Musk himself got to add that code and of course has absolutely no clue how the UX would work.
I mean I got to give Twitter credit: For how mis-moderated the platform was at times, and for how bad Twitter as a communication medium is/was, at least the original company understood their own product, whether they should have created it in the first place or not. Musk either fired everyone who did or at least demoted them to positions where they don't have a sway any more.
This is absolutely hilarious, Musk managed to absolutely destroy twitter in less than six months !
Actually, not even that. One of my friends was viewing a tweet from Biden when the change went live. That tweet had over 1,000 replies, and those count as posts. So he's now unable to view anything else on Twitter.
I'm an unverified lurker... have been for years. If this bites me, I'm gone, it's that simple.
I never actually used it - I just clicked links to it whenever people linked to it from other social media. But yeah, oh well. I can only imagine how much traffic they are going to lose over this because I highly doubt even 10% of those like me will ever bother to make an account just to see the newest tweet by Some Guy™
It's even worse, they have to pay for a subscription to watch more than 600 tweets. I believe every comment counts as a tweet.
I was wondering if the ads I was seeing for bullshit products every other tweet would still load, but I haven’t hit the rate limit yet so it’s still undetermined.
This has to be an attempt to intentionally kill the site, nothing else makes any degree of sense in my brain. You are actively hindering people's ability to engage with content on a service that hinges entirely on engagement for both relevance and profit. What's more, you're restricting even the paying users???
I know he said it's temporary, but I suspect(/hope) that a lot of social media use is based purely on habit. If people go a week only being able to scroll for 30 minutes a day, I think a lot of them will just be released from that habit, realize it's kind of terrible in a multitude of ways and that they're better off without it, and walk away.
My guess is they simply don't have the money to allow people to view it in the same way as before. Maybe they wouldn't be bankrupt today but I'm sure someone went to Elon, or that new CEO, and said that they would have to completely shut Twitter down in X days for lack of funding if nothing changed.
I'm really just wondering if the website is going to die entirely or if someone will buy it off Elon for pennies and try to recover it
It’s also slightly strange for the messaging to not be coming from the CEO. I know she’s just a sock puppet, but still strange for this sort of thing to roll out on a weekend with Elon being the mouthpiece.
This confirms what everyone had knew and what you also pointed out. She is there to replace his dog that was CEO for some time (yes, really). He hired here to take blame for the misfortunes of Twitter, he is dumb enough though that for this to work he needs to STFU and let her speak for him.
Edit: She is even listed as an example of glass cliff, although maybe she will be lucky, because with how Elon acts the mishaps in Twitter are still attributed to him, not her.
I think after he blocked API with ridiculous fees, the other apps simply started pretending to be real user and he is trying to figure out how to stop that.
He is dumb so started requiring log in, so those apps created twitter users, now he is rate limiting.
He isn't as smart as his PR firm previously made him look like (they literally made him look like real-life Tony Stark) and he is not realizing that now he makes the platform even less viable for advertisers and that majority of its users are there to seek attention, which is hard when the site is locked.
I get the feeling that social media in general has just become too expensive to run, fueled by investor cash. Think about 2012 reddit, just a website that hosted text comments and links. No images, no video, no app, only a handful of employees. Just none of the bloat that costs so much to sustain. The tide is going out on the entire industry and we are going to see sites either implode, or become profitable.
One example of going profitable would be YouTube, their premium service is skyrocketing in subscribers, and they will likely win the battle over ad blockers. Stuff like reddit and twitter are never going to convince users to pay monthly.
Counterpoint (copy/pasted from a Mastodon post):
Possibly there is a plan involved, but this is unlikely to be how it was supposed to go. Plans fail. Sometimes people do dumb things when panicked. Their website is overloaded and the remaining staff is likely panicking.
This has always been my assumption. There must be some way him ruining Twitter can benefit him. Either monetarily, or ego.
He’s either the dumbest person on the planet, or mildly intelligent with how he’s ruining Twitter. It all just depends on if he benefits from Twitter failing.
Apparently after they started requiring login to browse they started inadvertently DDoSing themselves:
https://sfba.social/@sysop408/110639435788921057
I'm not surprised considering Musk fired a big chunk of their engineering and tech team and are now basically left with a bunch of underpaid H1B wageslaves managing the vast codebase.
That's ridiculous.
All of these terrible decisions at Twitter and Reddit sure feel a lot like divide and conquer. I'm sure it's just stupidity...but that's what it feels like.
Huffman is clearly a fan of Musk and Trump. They're likely engaging in a concerted effort to curtail places of mass online discussion that are less, shall we say, Cambridge Analytica-ish. Planned manipulation and/or destruction is being masked with an outward appearance of cartoonish stupidity. The 2024 election is looming.
It's the same reason all of the moral panic about TikTok started pretty much directly after a bunch of Gen Z kids screwed with a Trump rally by sending K-Pop spam: they realized it's where the younger people were congregating, and that the party is deeply unpopular with them.
It's the same reason there are concerted book bans happening in libraries (school and otherwise) across the country, targeting books that deal with LGBT and racial issues (including the Holocaust).
I don't feel like Hanlon's Razor holds up in the face of the rampant spread of fascist ideology and tactics. The parallels to the Weimar Republic era have been disturbing for years now, and they only seem to get worse.
If that's what's happening, it seems rather futile because young people have proven time and time again that they'll change where they gather and communicate on a dime, with the transition happening in the matter of just a few weeks.
right, the roman forum of public discussion happens where there's people, not where there are tiles and awnings to stand under. People will build another if they can't easily use the prior.
Yeah, Reddit ending third party apps and Twitter ending within a day of eachother is a genuinely weird coincidence.
I'm genuinely depressed. I'm a disabled shut-in on a fixed income, I can't be flinging money at social media sites like I'm making it rain, but they're legitimately the majority of contact with the outside world for me.
This comment hits really hard. I rely a lot on social media too. If Youtube also succeeds in their attempts at monetizing/making their service worse by blocking adblockers, then I'm left with Discord as the only truly free service - and old.reddit I guess, but that one is certainly living on borrowed time
Have you looked at Mastodon as a Twitter alternative? There's a learning curve, and it's not as populated as Twitter (but more people and organizations will likely join as Twitter gets crappier).
Policies tend to kick in on significant dates like the first day of the month/quarter. This is the first day of the third quarter of the calendar year, so it shouldn't be a shock for a bunch of policies to change today.
Edit: math
It's the third quarter!
Oops, corrected it.
Not when you know spez apparently admired how musk is running Twitter.
Also, I’m cheering for spez to do this to Reddit if he insists on ruining Reddit.
Google also ends unlimited storage in their services in a week so it might all be tied up to that
2023 is going down in history as the year the internet shit the bed.
Totally agree. Feels bizarre it is all happening around the same time. The quote 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity' comes to mind when thinking about all this. But hopefully these actions shine a light on better alternatives such as tildes and the like.
Why is Musk handling these statements anyway? I thought the idea behind getting a CEO was that they could be the face of the org, and answer for any idiotic decisions made. He's just that desperate for the spotlight that he can't stay away.
Creating a login wall also doesn't make a convincing argument for brands to stay on the site. Come make a tweet that nobody will see except for logged-in Twitter users? I'm sure companies relying on the platform for press releases are thrilled.
Not just that, but I had to find out about the limit from here, because, well, I can't look at tweets. Kind of makes him announcing it via tweet pretty useless...
Is it really that surprising he’s so desperate for the spotlight? This is a guy who ruined his reputation with the left cause he couldn’t even bother to keep his mouth shut for a second and accused a guy that was getting a lot of publicity for heroic actions of being a pedo just cause the guy didn’t want to use his useless sub and wasn’t tactful about refusing. I mean any one with any common sense about pr would know that would get the public against you.
I am absolutely sure musk is a bonafide narcissist and honestly can’t help himself.
I agree with the statements before and after the "because", but that wasn't what wrecked his reputation. A lot of things wrecked his reputation, like his union-busting and his claims that self-driving cars would be " you can take a nap in the driver's seat" ready by 2018.
Ah, yes, a lot of things wrecked it, but that is what opened many people's eyes to be more critical of him. My husband liked him and I was neutral to him (I hadn't been paying that much attention to him other than my husband seemed to like him and my republican dad did not) but when he did that my first thought was, "obvious narciccist" and I told my husband as such. That gave me an opinion of him and I noticed more when he started doing more shenanigans. At first I was like, Narciccist but at least putting his energies towards good things.. but the fact that made me notice him more made me notice when he become more obviously not so good acting.
You really didn't see the left critical of him before that. And you did hear a lot of people start to make fun of him after that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the CEO strongly disagreed with the decision and refused to be the face of it. Musk overruled, but had to announce it himself.
That's literally the job she was hired to do. Any other expectation when accepting that job is just pure fantasy.
I don’t disagree, but this might have been over the line for her. I mean, this is really exceptionally stupid, even for Musk.
This is really boneheaded. Maybe this is an actual issue or maybe it isn't, but if it is, I'm sure there are better ways to resolve it. If anything, with every action Musk hastily takes, he loses what little trust the community has left in the platform.
In my anecdotal experience, this seems to have expedited the number of people fleeing to Mastodon or Bluesky in my timeline. I can't blame them, nor can I complain.
I don't see Mastodon going anywhere. Bluesky is a biiig maybe.
What's most likely to happen is that Meta comes out with its Twitter clone, they cross promote it on FB and Insta, and it destroys Twitter overnight.
Bluesky is a bit unstable this afternoon because of so many new users. It's still functioning. The more popular Lemmy imstances keep going down though. Chaotic day.
No idea how they have so many new users, I haven't been able to find an invite anywhere!
I should get a code next week. I'll send it to you of you haven't found one by then. That ok?
I'll try!
Absolutely! I've signed up to join the waitlist but haven't heard anything back yet.
Does anyone know if the waitlist even does anything? I've never heard of anyone getting off the waitlist. I certainly know I haven't and it's been several months. I feel like bluesky has had a number of opportunities where things were bad enough on Twitter and people were upset enough that if they had just had slightly beefier servers at the time and opened the doors they could have sucked up enough users to sustain themselves. I have no idea what they're doing but I worry that by the time anyone besides Twitter microcelebrities is allowed on the site nobody will care about it anymore.
If @marukka gets me in, I'll get you an invite whenever I get one.
Sent!
You're my hero.
They sent out invites from the wait list yesterday, and over 40k people joined on a single day.
June 11: Twitter has reportedly refused to pay its Google Cloud contract
June 21: Twitter Resumes Paying Google Cloud, Patches Up Relationship
suspicious timing that this is rolling out right as the previous contract expired and a possibly new, likely cheaper contract went into effect.
from last year, an NYT article about how Musk approaches budgeting:
my guess would be that they did "zero based" budgeting in the Google Cloud negotiation, which resulted in a big cutback of some service that Twitter actually relied upon.
the most cynical take I've read so far is that they're announcing this new policy as temporary cover to make changes to their infrastructure, which will then be rolled back once they've sufficiently unfucked things.
I don't know what's in it for Google Cloud to give them a new, cheaper contract. From a "actually getting paid" point of view, Twitter is clearly less reliable than previous which should incur some risk premium, and from a scale point of view, Twitter's usage is down so from a economy of scale argument Twitter has less to offer. Given that Twitter's relationship with AWS is publicly not known to be any better (see Amazon refusing to pay twitter ads bill in retaliation for twitter not paying AWS bills), it's not like Twitter has a convincing threat to go elsewhere either.
yeah, to be clear, by "cheaper" I don't mean Google giving them bigger discounts / a lower per-unit price, I mean Twitter scaling back their usage of GCP as a way of cutting costs. in doing so they may actually end up paying a higher per-unit price for some services due to losing out on volume discounts.
Something I'm not seeing mentioned here is that this is also probably bad for advertising on Twitter which is another factor that will feed the doom spiral. Less money -> less servers - > impose view limits -> less ad clicks -> less money.
This is clearly a hard stick based move to try get users to subscribe to new blue to not get hit with the limits. Maybe Nitter etc. is the real target. But I can't see it not backfiring. 600 tweets is not a lot, and hell, even 6000 is a limit I can see real people hitting if they're just skimming and not reading., far more than are willing to pay for it.
kinda turns it into a drug or candy, you cherish each and every shitpost a twitter user shits out of their low hanging ass hole. I'm still triggered that the webster's dictionary declared "tweet" a word all those years back.
Elon probably made it temporary so he could easily backpedal it the moment he sees backlash. This is probably gonna be a thing for like a day, i feel like if he doesn't reverse it, twitter will be fully dead by the end of the month. Like the top comment says, I do believe this is the dumbest change elon has made to the site so far.
He's already claimed he's raising it to 8k, 800 and 400. Then to "10k, 1k and 0.5k". So he's already backpedaling a bit.
That said, his latest tweet was mocking people using up their view limits complaining about view limits. So yeah.
or he just said it's temporary so all of his little minions can have an out while defending him today
Every new capricious decision that manchild makes is another argument against the existence of billionaires - it's an unacceptable risk to humanity that a person like that should be allowed that much power. If the species is destined to ever expand beyond this planet, that needs dealing with.
What does "verified" mean here? Does it mean people who have paid money for Twitter Blue? Or does it mean something else (verified phone number, verified "official" accounts, etc)?
Apologies for the dumb question. I haven't been following the Twitter stuff closely enough to know the terminology.
Pretty sure it means "paid for Twitter Blue" at this point.
On a related note, it looks like Twitter's given up on trying to pin a Twitter Blue label on dril. Well, either that or dril is still diligently shedding it any way he can.
He's still changing his name at least daily so I think he's just shedding it faster than they can give it to him. Though we know it had to be manually applied and I've definitely noticed his name changes slow down recently, so I think they might be doing it less often. A partial surrender.
Side issue, but why do journalists even bother requesting comment from Twitter these days when this is the guaranteed response? It's embarrassing for both sides.
I disagree, it’s embarrassing only for twitter in my opinion. It shows the journalistic outlet tried to do due diligence and get a comment from twitter, even if the attempt is likely futile.
It's a function of ethical journalism. You should always give subjects of an article the opportunity to respond, even if you are 99% certain they won't do so. It also avoids accusations that you didn't try to make contact in order to fact-check.
And highlighting it shows the reader that you tried, and they didn't: that's why so many articles have some variant of "so-and-so did not respond to requests for comment". Does it add any actual content? No. But it shows you made the effort.
Source: ex-journalist. 20 years in newsrooms, for my sins.
Due diligence. It's the right thing to do even if you know the outcome.
I actually think that is relevant information so the uninformed reader understand who they're dealing with.
I agree with others saying it's the right thing to do on the journalists' end. I haven't been following the Twitter mess so closely and didn't realize they were doing this so it's new to me.
It's also impossible to use with a VPN on now, was trying to see a baseball tweet, got a blank screen.
They've rolled this back a little. I can follow links to individual tweets in an incognito window. However, this doesn't work for reading an entire thread, and you can't view someone's profile this way.
Here's a story about it:
Twitter silently removes login requirement for viewing tweets (TechCrunch)
I was doing more doom scrolling than I’m comfortable with these last couple of day so for me it may be a good thing Elon decided to destroy Twitter.
There's a great many theories as to why this is playing out this way - that Twitter is actually accidentally self-DDOS'ing, that Musk is trying to drive subscriptions, etc.
I think the simplest answer is the strongest case - he's just dumb as fuck and is throwing shit at the wall.
The timing of all this in relation to the US elections I feel like is not a coincidence. Musk has an obvious political bias and fucking with Twitter hamstrings many peoples platform while giving him the ability to favor others
With Reddit and Twitter gone, it's time for YouTube to blow itself up. PeerTube is the mastodon/kbin/lemmy of video, and it's ready, willing and somewhat able to absorb YT-refugees.
i am very sceptical of any youtube alternative from taking off at the moment. it’s incredibly expensive to host and stream videos, and the big content creators who drive engagement for youtube won't move to an alternative if it doesn't pay
Ah, but that's Elon's plan... to run video on Twitter. Seriously. That's the plan. To run expensive-to-host video on a service that's already shedding his money like a cat sheds fur as summer approaches, and never did video well to begin with.
The Twitter video player was(is?) better than the Reddit one. Both should just get out of the native browser player.
I mean, yes, but Reddit being -1000 level video player trash isn't really a defense of Twitter's -900 level. But yes, both should link to videos and not host them, leave hosting to companies who can host video.
It won't be easy, and it won't be fast. I'm not trying to imply that it will be. I don't see any scenario where it happens overnight. But it could happen over the span of multiple years.
It took a long time to figure out how to monetize YouTube. Those who are already established there will likely not be the first to leave. On the other hand, the biggest names have the best opportunity to build revenue streams that are independent from YouTube. (For example, mentioning your sponsors in the video is possible everywhere and not tied to YT.)
Not antagonizing your audience with increasingly invasive, unblockable ads and having full control over how you monetize your videos could also be considered a plus for the larger content creators.
I'm not even that optimistic. Were talking decades unless Microsoft or Amazon are interested in playing ball. Facebook is a possibility but they have their own video system that isn't trying to compete.
The best ways to compete are unfortunately the very things that took off today: limit your videos to be very short (30 seconds for TikTok IIRC, 6 seconds for Vine) and you limit bandwidth. But short form videos are basically it's own genre at this point, not a YT competitor.
TikTok defaults to a minute, but 3 to 10 minute vids are an option now. At least for most creators, access to them rolled out and seems to go wonky occasionally.
I think its already slowly happenning. Oddysee is now in the realm of possibility for youtubers, ever since youtube got rid of dislikes. I think Wendigoon already made an account on oddysee where he uploads videos youtube would censor.
Personally, I have more faith in Floatplane taking off, streaming video is really expensive.
Do you have a link about peertube? Does it just show YouTube content or is it its own thing with unique content creators? I tried looking into it yesterday and it was pretty confusing. I use Firefox on mobile browser with Adblock to watch YouTube on mobile, and I think I have my mind wrapped around the fedverse in regards to kbin and Lemmy, but haven't heard anyone expand on peertube.
It's hard for the fediverse to blow up right now, the current problem all these companies are having is keeping costs under how much they're earning, which is why they're tightening down to force people to either pay a subscription or see a lot of ads. The fediverse's way of solving this is to be developed by unpaid hobbyists and ran by hobbyists on their own dime, which might be ok for a while but I really don't think it scales, especially in terms of the overhead in terms of both development time (devs go into fucking with the protocol stuff and trying to not have their network attacked) and extra bandwidth storage (because federation in the way that the fediverse does it is incredibly expensive).
How does moderation work?
https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin/moderation
I don't see youtube blowing up, they are very profitable right now. Looks like they will just squeeze ad blockers out and get the average person to pay for premium, which seems to be somewhat working.
I’m guessing mastodon servers and bluesky are getting another surge of signups. I’m on mastodon but also curious about bsky, anyone have invites to spare?
I have a few bluesky invites if anyone wants them.
That was fast!
I sent all that I had to a couple of the folks that replied here and PM'd me directly. They roll out in a slow cadence (one every two weeks) but I'll try to send them out to more folks here as I get them!
I will get in the queue if you are making one.
I'd also love to get in the queue, and will pay invites forward!
Yes, please. I’d be interested to try it out.
Sent via PM!
Thanks!
Yes please I would love one. Been trying to get one for a while!
Sent via PM!
I'v been looking for one for awhile, would very much apreciate one
I’d love an invite!
Sure, I’d be curious to see what it’s like if you have an extra. Thank you!
Would love to try it if you can spare one!
Yes please I would love one too!
Count me in, please!
I’d also like an invite, thanks!
I'd love to try it please, if you still have one.
If you still have any, I would appreciate one.
I would be interested, if you got any left. Thank you!
yes please if you still have any
Yes, please! If you can share one I'd really appreciate it!
I'm very likely too late, but I'd live a life raft... I mean, invite.
Can I get one please?
I would love one as well, thanks.
That's very nice of you! If you happen to get a few more in the next week or two, I would love one.
Habit. But Elon's doing his best to not just break, but shatter that habit.
I constantly say that the best thing Elon Musk has ever done is make me quit Twitter. It was a hugely negative impact on my mental health and a huge timesink as well, and his taking over gave me the impetus to lock my account and delete the app from my phone. The positive impact on my mental health has been VERY tangible.
I agree 100%. I had exactly the same experience as you and I wasn’t even a heavy user, just a casual lurker here and there. But I swear, every single time I closed my browser I was angry and nervous, and deleting my account, after a few of Elon’s shenanigans, has been truly liberating. I don’t know what it is but that website brings out the worst in anyone, even people that I followed and respected.
For me it was that, because I followed a lot of trans folks, my timeline was just always filled with bad shit happening to trans people and all the ways the US and UK governments are fucking us over and tons of people quote-tweeting transphobic shit to dunk on it and that's just SO draining. The doom in doomscrolling was really there when I was on Twitter.
It holds a monopoly on certain content currently.
What kind of content is that? I've never used Twitter
Non commercial adult content. Especially since the major platforms mostly deleted non verified user content, peoples twitter AD accounts is usually the only source.
Soviet communism vibe.
billionaires doing capitalism is communism apparently...
Seems, you don't understand, in Soviet communism there were:
So in this case we have a comic situation where billionaire doing communism. If you want an example where billionaires doing capitalism then Youtube situation is closer here: