Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.

Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people's content.

It's interesting to me that they made the argument that blocking is increasing server costs.

1. How is that even possible, on a technical level?
2. If true, how is changing to a "stronger mute" going to reduce said costs?

I mean, it's plainly clear that Musk has no idea what is going on at any of his companies and the narrative of him being a genius of some kind was simply that: a narrative.

logical

Haha, that's a throwback to the days when I helped to manage a phpBB board and there were a few members that would just continuously get into arguments so I edited the database so both of them had each other on their block list. It was very telling when I discovered they unblocked each other a few weeks later and got back to arguing and derailing thread topics.

Maybe nows the time to advertise Mastodon some more. What's he gonna do, block us?

Concerning

There's a saying, " never attribute to malice what is easily explained by incompetence".

But we're quickly reaching the point where it's no longer easily explained incompetence. Elon is either the most incompetent person in the known universe, which is saying a lot, or he's doing this on purpose for some reason.

I'm not into conspiracies, but it's starting to make more sense if he's actively trying to tank the stock.

For real! He's trying to tank Twitter.

Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to bock other users. So I wouldn't be too optimistic about Apple's response....

Apple's review process is inconsistent at best. I used to work for an iOS app and it took several years before they blocked our release for not having a report feature on products. Never had the ability to block users, despite the ability to DM people.

Plus, for an app the size of Twitter, Apple will likely ignore most rules that doesn't lose them money.

Alternatively, Elon just found out how many people are blocking him.

I’m extremely doubtful that there is any truth to that.

Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they're not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that's been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷

Conservative money thinks that they can keep there opposition off balance by smashing social networks . Musk did not launch desatitis campaign out of nowhere.

At the top levels, they are rich and well-connected enough that they don't have to worry about failing like regular people.

They can burn millions, billions of dollars and still get out with a fat paycheck, a pat on the back, and another CEO/exec job lined up by one of their many wealthy friends. Either that, or they are "forced" into retirement where they live large for their remaining lives.

I wish somebody would force me into a wealthy retirement...

it's not about money. it's about power

Elon went early and often. He's a trend setter.

My account isn't blocking him.

At least, not since I deleted it. And stopped visiting Twitter.

Oh no please, not the nicknames. Can we leave them?

I'm skeptical of this, maybe it's because he's worried his fascist followers are slowly falling into an echo chamber cause anyone with more than a few braincells blocks them

QA: "I'm clicking the block button but it isn't doing anything anymore!"

Twitter mgmt: "That's ok, instead of fixing it we'll just remove the button."

It would be hilarious if when he is out at twitter we got a twitter files dump that showed the devs that maintained block really are all gone and he's playing it off like this is some new big idea twitter came up with to make money🤣

I deleted mine the day Elon bought it... Lol. I honestly never cared for Twitter too much but I admit I get a lot of news from it (specifically because I am following the ukrainian situation pretty closely).

I'm not part of any minority, but sympathize and will be deleting my account now. However, I'm wondering if I should block everything I see first the refresh several times. Knowing that 1 cent came out of their wallet because of me sounds pretty enticing nbl

🍿

The even better experience is seeing people try out federated versions of what they love, re-decentralizing the internet 🥰

Elon, for all of his smarts, seems to not understand the game theory behind social networks. I get it, we have had the status quo for over a decade, but the fundamental rules are still the same.

Frankly I'm happy to see them falling apart and a return to how social was meant to be on the internet.

Blocking Twitter Blue users is the only way to make threads make sense again after he decided to weight them higher. Any time you open a tweet there's like 10 Twitter Blue trolls with 3 followers that are sorted above the good comments.

After he got boosted up to a level where anyone was only getting Elon in their feeds despite of the topic, a lot of people blocked his ass. So he is now getting rid of the block feature because everybody should be reading Elon's all bangers, all the time.

There's been a big effort to block anybody with a blue checkmark since any major story or viral post will have them automatically bumped up to the top of the replies. So, when the whiners started complaining, he started openly considering this.

The article is a bit misleading. He wants to get rid of block for stronger mute as you can get around block by logging out.

The counter argument is that block is still useful because I block someone I want zero interaction with that person and people are too lazy to log out anyway so it kinda works in practice.

I'm not sure why is he stirring shit up. The block feature is on point with free speech philosophy he trying to push. If anything he should be making blocking etc. More powerful.

Maybe we can convince him that the chain of events that lead to so many people blocking him is actually what Blockchain means and get him to ban all crypto. This would obviously piss off his cryptobro fans, leading them to mint an NFT of a screenshot of the front page of Twitter and claim that no one else is allowed to use it.

Thus would ignite the Great Flame War of 2023.

Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don't deserve to be disparaged like this.

It's insane how ludicrous his ideas in particular seem to be, especially with Twitter. This has to be trolling, surely? Or does he not want to allow people to block him?

sadly, Mastodon currently still is pretty centralised around a few very big instances. I hope the Fediverse gets more decentralised…

I mean, Mastodon had over 2.1 million monthly active users last time I checked, so does that count as having taken off?

He's the only person I've blocked. I went on the other day and saw a tweet was hidden, clicked to view it, and when I saw it was him, I immediately closed the tab. Twitter is really good at providing me content that makes me want to leave 😆

Yeah! I’m a little sad how resilient these toxic media companies are. Meta, twitter, Reddit, etc are really not good for humanity. But I guess humanity has always been toxic to itself.

Inertia. Most people won't up an leave to Mastodon.

That's probably why he's doing it, so you and all the others who blocked him are forced to see his posts again.

:')

https://lemmy.ml/c/nottheonion

!nottheonion@lemmy.ml

emphasis on "so far"

the checkmarks thing is a lot worse

I quit Twitter after the infantile incident with Elon Musk carrying a sink around his own office. From all that we've seen in recent years it's pretty clear he's lucky to have been born rich, because he definitely isn't the visionary we thought he was.

I made my first ever Twitter account a month or two before Musk bought it, for purely NSFW reasons. I'd log in every couple weeks or whatever, handle my business, and move along. After he bought it, I said whatever I'm not doing anything useful data wise so I'll continue my few times a month visits.

First post-Musk visit, it's fine. Business handled, close my incog window, move on.

Second post-Musk visit, I log in, and it's CP as far as the eye can see. I immediately deleted my account.

I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it won’t apply to him.

Or if it does then he’ll just delete accounts he wants to block.

Let’s not forget it started as a meme and his hand was forced.

Why would he need to block when he can ban? 🤷‍♀️

I block most people with blue checkmarks. Why does Musk want to make twitter even worse than it already is?

I know some people I follow go though their replies hiding all blue ticks which is hilarious. I've started muting anyone with a blue ticks who is also insufferably right leaning or an Elon bro. If enough people are doing it it's definitely having an effect.

Maybe he found out how many people blocked him.

Elon "he gets us" Musk

That seems likely. What I don't understand is why not just make it so no one could block Elon. He could just make up any silly excuse like "he needs to keep channels open in case of an emergency". People would roll their eyes, shrug, groan and move on with their lives and forget all about it.

a stronger form of mute

Yeah, Muskrat. You know what that's called? BLOCKING.

blocking public posts makes no sense

Don’t entirely disagree, the content is still easily visible. But it’s not about blocking content from being seen, Musky baby, it’s about blocking accounts from hurling abuse at the poster.

needs .. a stronger form of mute

For just public posts? Block feels like a fairly comprehensively strong form of mute..?

Idk I think I can be in favor of this if it worked like this. I can block you and I won't see anything you post and you can't DM me, but you can see and reply to my posts (replys that I don't see) so that you aren't excluded from the general discussion that my post brings up.

You can't block Elon Musk on Twitter. Tried it. If you reload the page, he is magically unblocked.

That was my first thought. "Oh, someone bwocked the widdle baby!"

Yes

My tinfoil hat theory is this: Musk has ties with dictators who would really, really like to see Twitter die as it’s been used in the past to organize resistance and broadcast embarrassing information. Musk is used to do the dirty job of running it into the ground. He may or he may not be actually aware of this, as your characterization of Musk is on point. Just speculation of course.

Yes, he didn't want to buy it in the end so he's making sure he does as much damage as possible

What financial benefit? He owns it, he's footing the bill

It's easy for clueless fucktards to pretend they're something they're not if enough money is involved.

Good. Yall babies need a kick in the ass. It's not someone else's job to protect you

Reminds me of Apple

Perhaps enough to force Twitter to take action and fix it? 4chan could be a force for good…

That's not shortsighted profit driven decision-making at all.

/s

how is this a good idea? Even lemmy has a "block" feature on like day 1

The only reason I have the app installed is to follow artists that only post on twitter and even then this guy shows up on my feed.

I never had a twitter account, and my interaction with it is clicking on links on social media. I remember clicking on something, I don't remember what it was but it was unrelated.

Then in the recommended tweet I saw Elon's tweet stating that twitter doesn't promote his own tweets. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And mass exodus of all trans people from Twitter in 3, 2...

I think Tumblr has been doing really well with Twitter falling apart lately, in general. Including in their mocking it by selling like 20+ different deliberately meaningless check marks.

I think probably more will go to Tumblr than Mastodon, but I think some will use both. I've found I enjoy Tumblr these days, provided I manage my feed curation well and don't allow it to start handing me shit to be mad about and over-engage with. There's a lot of cool science content on there, and such.

Authors and others whose main method of self-promotion has been Twitter have probably been motivated to stick around. While alternatives exist, when your goal is getting your name and work in front of the maximum number of eyes, it really matters that Twitter is still more populated and thus better for discovery than other platforms.

who doesn’t absolutely need to be on Twitter for their job

does this include journalists who would need to actually write articles instead of just embedding 10 tweets and writing a couple linking sentences

@Hypersapien This could make his decision a wonderful backfire

Imagine posting something like:

You can't block this post, can you? You could if you'd joined [mastodon instance]. [then continue with a few words about mastodon and the instance in question and how to sign up - either as a thread or as a picture slideshow]

Edit: same can be done with Calckey for example, but with no need to promote a special server, since Calckey doesn't force you to sign to it's main server through any of the apps iirc

@dirtmayor

I just can't get over how uncatchy that name is though

Completely agreed. I rarely or never use block features on any of my platforms that provide one (please Spotify, give me the ability to block songs already), but it's just obvious that there should be a tool for users to protect themselves from other users abusing the platform. Especially on a platform that responds to user requests with the poop emoji, you can't rely on the platform alone to police such abuses. And even if it isn't for abuses, everyone should be able to create their own bubble over the one that is already enforced by the platform.

I've been growing weary of these centralized platforms selling off my info. It's dangerous to have that much power as we've seen with election interferences. I'm working to switch over to here from reddit and mastodon from Twitter (I didn't really use Twitter anyway, but mastodon does have npr and other news media). Might as well tbh

Lol. I actually got that reference. Well played.

I think you dropped an arm: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Makes me think he’s actively destroying it purposefully

Here ya go!

Nightmare blunt rotation

It probably means you can’t prevent someone with Twitter Blue to show up in your timeline.

E-gun

I think that is just a happy coincidence for Musk. The park of Twitter hosted on Google is the part dealing with harassment and safety. Removing that means more money to piss away but also amplification of hate speech and trolling. I bet the EU will try to smack Twitter with another fine bigger than the bill for Google because of this.

If it’s not easy to use reddit, who will use reddit?

The same people who hooted and hollered about Netflix ending password sharing and then went ahead and made their own account anyway because they can't be arsed to read a book or find something else to do to fill their sad little lives.

Twitter is killing those, too: https://www.theverge.com/...

Probably not. If you mute someone then you can't see what they wrote, and if you don't see something then it's not harassment. It's equivalent to someone constantly telling other people bad things about you behind your back, which isn't harassment either. Might be defamation, though.

Anything shilly got blocked by me. Including any account that advertises there.

Elon and Trump are fairly unique in that context usually makes it worse.

Not sure where yours is, but here, have mine:

🍿🍿🍿

Why do you like “the guy”?