3 ms·

I'm glad that Evans has a "final straw", but I find it strange that the last week, which he mentions a couple times in the article, was the final straw for him:

by lapcat 3y ago

I'm glad that Evans has a "final straw", but I find it strange that the last week, which he mentions a couple times in the article, was the final straw for him: > We saw this at its logical conclusion in the last week, with deliberate misinformation promoted > It wasn’t, as this week, telling us all to read a very obvious misinformation account This kind of thing has been happening ever since Musk took over Twitter. For example, a year ago: "Elon Musk, new owner of Twitter, tweets unfounded, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitter-tweets-unfounded-anti-lgbtq-conspiracy-theory-about-paul-pelosi-attack.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-new-owner-of-twitt... And while Musk did eventually delete the tweet, he was still unrepentent: "This is fake – I did not tweet out a link to The New York Times!" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586871691686223872 So there's nothing new happening now that wasn't happening all along, the past year, except perhaps that Musk has started tweeting about something that Evans personally cares about.

shadowgovt 3y ago
And sometimes that's all it takes: tripping over that topic you know a lot about and realizing that if they're that wrong about this, maybe they're that wrong period. Call it "reverse Gell-Mann amnesia effect."
nonameking2026 3y ago
Elon is not twitter, he is sometimes a troll. Have you removed the troll from your own eye?
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  Elon gets his posts artificially boosted by The Algorithm, and he plans to remove the block feature, because "It doesn't make sense". Also, Xitter apparently puts more hateful shit onto people's "For You" feeds now.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I'm not a Twitter user so if this is a dumb question I apologize. This sounds like a pretty serious allegation. How do you know this is true? Is it in the source code?[1] [1]: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      This was well reported on in February. https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/elon-musk-tweets-boost-joe-biden-super-bowl/amp/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/elon-musk-tweets-boost-joe-bi...
      - freedomben 3y ago
        Thanks, the article is paywalled so I can't read it, but from what I can see it does say "reportedly." How credible is the report? Like is it from anonymous disgruntled employees or is there some independent data the journalists were able to collect? Also was this like a one time stupid thing Elon did and then reversed (which seems like something he tends to do from time to time), or is it a permanent/semi-permanent ongoing thing? GP's claim is that it's ongoing part of the algorithm. A one-time thing is definitely bad and gross, but is a much lesser allegation than an ongoing thing, especially if it's part of the Algorithm but isn't part of the open source part that they claim.
        freedomben 3y ago
        This article went into a bit more detail: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk-changes-twitter-algorithm-super-bowl-slump-report https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk... And this seems to be the original report: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets... It does sound like anonymous "sources" which could be disgruntled employees or former employees, but overall I get the feeling it's legitimate and GP's assertion is correct to what degree, hard to say, but it does seem true
rsynnott 3y ago
It’s been kind of fascinating to me what peoples’ last straw is. For me, it was the purging of the journalists back in November, and if it hadn’t been that, I’d certainly have been out the door when third-party clients died. But it is somewhat amazing to me that Musk is _still_ finding new cohorts of people to piss off (the promotion of that account was pretty egregious, but I’d have expected the people it would annoy had mostly left about 20 egregious incidents ago…)

by lapcat 3y ago

shadowgovt 3y ago

And sometimes that's all it takes: tripping over that topic you know a lot about and realizing that if they're that wrong about this, maybe they're that wrong period. Call it "reverse Gell-Mann amnesia effect."

nonameking2026 3y ago

Elon is not twitter, he is sometimes a troll. Have you removed the troll from your own eye?

kagakuninja 3y ago
Elon gets his posts artificially boosted by The Algorithm, and he plans to remove the block feature, because "It doesn't make sense". Also, Xitter apparently puts more hateful shit onto people's "For You" feeds now.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm not a Twitter user so if this is a dumb question I apologize. This sounds like a pretty serious allegation. How do you know this is true? Is it in the source code?[1] [1]: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    This was well reported on in February. https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/elon-musk-tweets-boost-joe-biden-super-bowl/amp/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/elon-musk-tweets-boost-joe-bi...
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Thanks, the article is paywalled so I can't read it, but from what I can see it does say "reportedly." How credible is the report? Like is it from anonymous disgruntled employees or is there some independent data the journalists were able to collect? Also was this like a one time stupid thing Elon did and then reversed (which seems like something he tends to do from time to time), or is it a permanent/semi-permanent ongoing thing? GP's claim is that it's ongoing part of the algorithm. A one-time thing is definitely bad and gross, but is a much lesser allegation than an ongoing thing, especially if it's part of the Algorithm but isn't part of the open source part that they claim.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        This article went into a bit more detail: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk-changes-twitter-algorithm-super-bowl-slump-report https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk... And this seems to be the original report: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets... It does sound like anonymous "sources" which could be disgruntled employees or former employees, but overall I get the feeling it's legitimate and GP's assertion is correct to what degree, hard to say, but it does seem true

rsynnott 3y ago

It’s been kind of fascinating to me what peoples’ last straw is. For me, it was the purging of the journalists back in November, and if it hadn’t been that, I’d certainly have been out the door when third-party clients died. But it is somewhat amazing to me that Musk is _still_ finding new cohorts of people to piss off (the promotion of that account was pretty egregious, but I’d have expected the people it would annoy had mostly left about 20 egregious incidents ago…)