“Yeah, they’re gone”: Musk confirms cuts to X’s election integrity team — “‘Election Integrity’ Team… was undermining election integrity,” Musk writes::“‘Election Integrity’ Team… was undermining election integrity,” Musk writes.

  • Doctor xNo
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    392 years ago

    Wait, so the team in charge of misinformation got misinformed about getting fired instead of expanded?

    Guy sure loves his irony…

  • @[email protected]
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    942 years ago

    conservative doesn’t like being treated like an equal, decides to abolish the group that produced evidence suggesting equality

    Sounds about right

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    I have a hunch that in the terrifyingly near future, we’re going to see the internet absolutely dominated by enshitification.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad now …because like the frogs in hot water, we collectively just tolerate changes for the worse. But it used to be small incremental changes over a long period.

    Then this Musk asshole comes along, looks at the frogs ever so slowly cooking… and cranks the stove to max, pisses in the frog-pot, supplements the heating element with a welding torch, and flips the frogs off as he pours gasoline all over the kitchen.

    And the frogs JUST FUCKING TAKE IT.

    What message does that send to the rest of the internet?

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      Let’s hope the FCC and whatever other agencies applicable, get teeth and clamp down hard on how these social media giants. the way they operate its damn near treasonous at this point how open they are with allowing other governments to influence their policies. Especially with advertising and to children.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Most everyone I know doesn’t have a Twitter or Instagram. Obv I deleted my reddit. What are people supposed to do except just not use the platform? Most authors I want to follow are on substack or mastodon.

      I think that as the platforms further enshittify, people will realize there are no intelligent conversations happening on platforms like X, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Ragebait content can only captivate audiences for so long before they either abandon it or are brainwashed by it. If everyone on X is a musk dickrider right wing lunatic then it makes it easier for sane people to stay off of it. Honestly it might be better to give them their safespace echo chamber as long as Democrats, liberals and libertarians mobilize and make their arguments where it matters.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        There never was intelligent conversation. People mostly used Twitter to talk about the news. Twitter has gotten worse, but it’s always been full of L takes.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      What message does that send to the rest of the internet?

      You know… it would be funny but also sad and believable if he’s doing all of this just to spite the internet because we wouldn’t let that one emo leather longcoat pic die.

      Edit: the pic

      • prole
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        92 years ago

        It’s like Trump running for president because Obama and Seth Meyers roasted him in front of the world… So much awful shit in our world is a direct result of rich, whiney narcissists making things worse for everyone as collateral damage in whatever petty feud they’ve mostly invented in their heads.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          But for real, I am actually fully convinced that that was the inception point in Trump’s head for the idea of going for the presidency.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Your point still stands, but as far as I can tell in my city, no one really cared about or used Twitter. Even more so after Elongated Muskrat took over. Twitter was always an echo chamber for the most part when it came to mainstream stuff. Sure, there are a few niche cases, but with those cases there was usually already an alternative. Twitter was never as popular to normal people as it is to influencers, celebs, and for some weird reason government personnel or groups. That’s just my experience with the platform at least. I do not know a single person who even used Twitter once in my entire life.

    • @[email protected]
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      1172 years ago

      Here’s a bit of good news. The idea that frogs just wait to get boiled is proven false. Every animal has a limit to what they will tolerate due to self preservation. The from will jump out when it gets too hot.

      That being said, I just recently watched Idiocracy… I’m a bit worried.

      • Hyggyldy
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        152 years ago

        Just remember that, regardless of the creators’ intents, Idiocracy is essentially pro-eugenics.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          That’s not true at all, genetics only play a part in the mental development of a person, much of it is instead related to the environment where a person has been growing.

          It is as with talent, some people are better than other at certain activities but even the most gifted person cannot compete with a professional who has spent his life training and studying his craft.

          The same can be said for “intelligence”: if you are never taught to think you’ll never think once in your lifetime, even if you are the exact copy of Leonardo da Vinci; on the other hand, even if you are thick as a rock but you’ve been growing in a society focused on your development you’ll be able to become a normal person.

          Eugenetic politics do nothing for humanity betterment, social structure is much more important IMHO

          • Hyggyldy
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            32 years ago

            Okay, I agree with you and I’m not sure why you’re saying I’m wrong. That movie definitely has a eugenics bent and that’s why I’m saying people shouldn’t put too much stock in it.

            • @[email protected]
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              2 years ago

              Because the movie does not hint at eugenetics as solution to the crisis, it’s a hymn against stupidity and a cry to better educate the masses. First of all about sexual education and the danger of unprotected sex and secondly about politics and civic duties. I mean, I really don’t see how one could interpret the message of the movie as “do eugenetics”, that’s all.

              • @[email protected]
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                72 years ago

                I think the people seeing it as pro-eugenics are latching onto the “stupid person makes stupid babies” part as being the reason for the Idiocracy. Basically they think the movie is arguing “IQ is 100% nature and 0% nurture”

                But IMO the intro pretty clearly showed that the main factor in the degradation of society is that the low IQ family were raising too many kids in a chaotic environment with no actual parenting.

            • @[email protected]
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              62 years ago

              Yeah it’s in the opening thesis of the movie:

              uneducated people kept having more kids and learned people kept putting it off

              Not saying I agree with the premise at all, and I’m putting it much more lightly than the movie does.

          • @[email protected]
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            122 years ago

            Eugenics IMO is just another way to blame poor people for the bad luck of their birth. If we truly wanted to “perfect humanity” there are a million better ways, like free education.

            Just piggy backing off of what you’re saying

            • @[email protected]
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              82 years ago

              Absolutely. Poverty comes never alone, it usually brings other friends to the party. Like poor education, lack of security, stress, poor nurishment and poor social environment. All this together can easily bring out the worst of people, while the contrary can improve their conditions.

              If you are focused on surviving you’ll never be able to grow as we are all supposed to

              • @[email protected]
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                22 years ago

                Poverty comes never alone, it usually brings other friends to the party. Like poor education, lack of security, stress, poor nourishment and poor social environment.

                This is so true. Even “breaking out of” poverty is hard, if you’re lucky enough to have managed it, because you can’t ever change where you’ve come from. Just anecdotally, my siblings and I have done very well for ourselves financially, but we’ve had to take on a lot of other family members’ debt just to keep them from going under.

                So not only do poor people lack the safety net of family wealth, but they experience a kind of opposite effect if they even do manage to “make it.”

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          If that’s the outcome of abstaining from eugenics, I’m willing to give it another shot.

        • SatansMaggotyCumFart
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          102 years ago

          Idiocracy is satire.

          Do you think Fight Club was celebrating super cool guy Tyler Durden too?

      • @[email protected]
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        92 years ago

        You should be worried, in the movie they recognized their stupidity and made way for the smarter character to lead.

        our timeline is worse than idiocracy

    • vasametropolis
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      72 years ago

      It has been predicted for years that the Internet would split and I’m all for it at this point.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        That’s an interesting take. I’m kind of curious what you mean by the split. It seems like it’s already split a few times, and I sort of see Lemmy as another split. I think the biggest craziness that will get thrown into the mix is serious amounts of AI content, which I know people are tired of hearing about now, but it’s a huge deal. I think people are underestimating its power.

  • Maxnmy's
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    72 years ago

    I have run out of surprised reactions to his bullshit.

  • @[email protected]
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    262 years ago

    Tbf they’re a social media company. If they shut down completely the world wouldn’t really skip a beat.

  • @[email protected]
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    552 years ago

    Goverments should have their own fediverse instances and delete all their twitter accounts 🤷

    • Queen HawlSera
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      192 years ago

      I think they will and the history books will say “In retrospect, having politicians use a privately owned platform to speak to their constituents was a bad call, as Traitor and Child Murderer Elon Musk demonstrated.”

          • @[email protected]
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            52 years ago

            It literally has all the federation features removed. By definition it isn’t part of the fediverse, because it’s not federating anything

            If I set up my own mastodon server, but blocked literally all federation, then my server wouldn’t be part of the fediverse. It’s a bit odd that this has to be elaborated on

      • @[email protected]
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        152 years ago

        It’s not…? It’s literally just another social media site, it doesn’t hook into ActivityPub or any cross-broadcast protocol. I don’t know why you’re throwing around the word “fediverse” here.

        • Da Bald Eagul
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          22 years ago

          It is a fork of Mastodon though, iirc. But I don’t think it federates with anything.

      • @[email protected]
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        152 years ago

        This is a very strange comparison, considering Truth Social is not owned by any government.

        • m-p{3}
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          122 years ago

          Same for news organizations. Give the option for reporters that leave or join the organization to migrate their account (aka keep their followers).

          That way they provide a proof of authenticity for their reporters by being hosted on their Mastodon instance. Obviously, the instance shouldn’t let the public create an account there, only follow from another instance.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 years ago

    If 4chan made Trump win in 2016, Twitter might make Trump win in 2024. Which is a scary thought. Just imagine the level of control one rich man can have over the information highway, Twitter, one of the biggest social media sites in the world, used still by many politicians, journalists and reporters on both sides. It’s happening.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      This week’s On with Kara Swisher has back to back interviews with Yoel Roth (the guy in the TAL ep) and the new CEO of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino and it’s worth a listen.

      The juxtaposition of the two interviews is something. Roth comes across as a smart, serious person trying to (and admittedly sometimes failing) be a good steward of the internet and tackles the challenges using facts and data. Yaccarino follows up by literally being the definition of a stooge. Very clearly not attached to reality, doesn’t know things that Musk has tweeted in spite of saying at the top of the interview they’re 100% attached and in the loop with everything Elon’s doing. Absolute clown show.

      So yeah, expect literally everyone to have a hand in the cookie jar come the '24 election. There isn’t enough competence in the company to fill a thimble at this point, and leadership at the company probably is either entirely ignorant of the problem(Yacco), or actively engaging in sabotage in tandem (Musk.)

  • Phoenixz
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    122 years ago

    So Putin told you to do this? I mean, why else would you do something so blatantly stupid?

  • @[email protected]
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    822 years ago

    Aside from conservatives, what fascist dipshits still use Twitter? It’s just a cesspool of disinformation and bigotry, so I just assume anyone who uses it is a lying bigot.

    • kamenLady.
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      Iirc Amber Alerts ( not the ones notifying Amber Heard’s coming to town ) are issued over Twitter. There were cases of people not being able to check, because now a login is required?

      I never used Twitter. Here in Germany it has never gotten so far, that it would be the only place you would get some of the important government announcements that can save lives.

      Edit: no hate for Amber Heard from my side. I liked to play this stupid joke in my head, long before The Shitshow happened.

    • @[email protected]
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      452 years ago

      Most businesses and institutions still use twitter as their primary communication and support channels. My “wokest” friend still uses it every day, while constantly bitching about Elon. Convenience and habit are a hell of a drug…

      • JackbyDev
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        42 years ago

        My wife used it because she has s community of friends she has made there and knows in real life. The same way we both still use Facebook.

        • @[email protected]
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          42 years ago

          Is this the reason people still go to church? What will it take for people to migrate? I personally wouldn’t use a bridge that rots my brain to save 10 min on my commute. I wouldnt regularly going to and supporting a toxic infastructure to see freinds, id be inviting them to better locals. Not judging you, just wondering why be a frog in a boiling pot of water… then again you are here so maybe I just need my bubble or something to feel safe idk…

          • JackbyDev
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            22 years ago

            I totally get what you’re saying and for what it’s worth I don’t feel judged by your statements. For platforms where I didn’t have that sort of personal connection with “real life” people I am more willing to swap. Here I am on Lemmy, after all lol.

            There’s just no way I can convince the friends I have on Facebook that I still keep up with there to jump ship with me to join a different platform. Sure, I might convince some, and I might even be the seed of doubt that convinces another person to leave months or years later but by then I’d be gone and they couldn’t find me if they even remembered me. Because once you’re gone you’re just gone. There are a handful of people I know that I think deleted their accounts or otherwise just don’t have a presence on social media at all. I have no way to contact them. If they don’t want to be contacted that’s fine, I’m not saying people have some obligation to be found lol. But the idea of old friends reaching out to me is an appealing feeling and also being able to watch them from a distance and be seen from a distance is an appealing one. Facebook has a level of critical mass (at least in my friend group and I guess age group) that other social media platforms don’t have. I think for folks a little younger than me Instagram has that.

            And what if I stay? I know I’m getting data mined. Do I like it? No. But I’m not really getting mined so hard that it’s really a bad thing. Leaving would be more of an idealogical thing to do than a practical one. Short of some massive boycott it wouldn’t change anything.

            In short, the negatives of my specific usage of Facebook is extremely minor and the benefits are too much for me to give up.

      • Cosmic Cleric
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        42 years ago

        Convenience and habit are a hell of a drug…

        Twitter, Reddit, World of Warcraft, etc., etc.

        If people could just put in the minimal amount of effort to affect positive change, the World would be such a different place.

      • @[email protected]
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        192 years ago

        I walked past an ambulance the other day and noticed that my city’s ambulances have the little bird logo along with the local EMS twitter handle (I live somewhere with publicly funded healthcare). I found myself wondering, “are they going to switch their fleet to use the X logo?” It’s funny how much we allowed this private company’s little bird logo to worm its way into every aspect of our world. People took for granted that it would always exist and always be something people had a positive association with.

        • Doctor xNo
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          122 years ago

          The only good thing about it being renamed to X is that at least we can now keep a bit respect for this ‘loved’ little bird and link it to “remember when it was called Twitter and still functional?” 😅

      • @[email protected]
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        182 years ago

        I’ve heard about this bizarre behavior. I have decided to not cut slack to users.

        It is inappropriate to conduct business with bigots and fascists. It is perfectly reasonable for me to label those who use fascist-owned platforms as fascists.

        • Doctor xNo
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          I think it still requires some cross-over time to make that distinction. It’s probably a ‘big decision’ to change social media for businesses and will undoubtedly take time,… And for individuals the Fediverse (however improved it’s gotten already) still is a higher tech-difficulty than twitter. Plus the choice between servers (even though a feature) also discourages many too as they don’t know what to choose or hold off until the right instance comes along. I myself had been planning to transfer to the Fediverse for a few years already, but it eventually took Facebook banning me for a hack on my account, with no supportline or real working contact what-so-ever to eventually get me to do the effort. Lost 14 years of journaling my life there in 4 minutes time… 😕

        • Cosmic Cleric
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          I have decided to not cut slack to users.

          It is inappropriate to conduct business with bigots and fascists.

          Life is analog, not digital.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        And that’s why conservatives are violent, both physically and rhetorically: what are you ever gonna do about it?

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      Unfortunately, there are still functions that Twitter serves that nothing else does. For breaking news, it’s still unmatched. For celebrities, influencers, politicians, journalists, etc there’s no other platform that has the same microblogging function with the user numbers and clout that Twitter does.

      Until that changes, its still useful. It gets less and less useful, but as long as the site is up, allows users to post up to the minute updates and allows users to follow posters, there’s only so far it can fall without real competition.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        For breaking news,

        Which you really don’t actually need. Nobody needs to know whatever bullshit is happening across the planet in .5 nanoseconds.