By "social media" we mean any large computer network that allows people to interact in shared communities. The big ones of course are Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, but we can't forget newer platforms like Discord and Slack.
Dedicated video sites are off-topic here and YouTube has its own separate thread
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What we should discuss in this OTC topic are news items, business operations, and activities by the networks themselves, not specific things posted by users. Those should go into threads appropriate to the subjects of those posts. For example, if an actor tweets about a film, we'd discuss that in the Media forum topic for the film, not here. If Facebook changes its policies, that could be discussed here.
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are also off-topic — except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg would be acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
The thread's also not about "dumb thing [public figure] said on [social media platform]". If there isn't a specific thread related to the subject of the statement (e.g. US Politics), then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
created back in 2020 that we never opened. Unfortunately, it's a little stale, so bumping it isn't going to work very well, but I would like to restart it. The reason I'm doing so is that the Computer Thread seems to have become the de facto place for this sort of talk, and it's a big tonal clash with talking about computer tech.
The hot topic of the day is Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter. We first discussed it in the Computer Thread, starting roughly here, and I am not going to rehash the entire discussion. Instead, I am going to resume from the last post:
CNBC: Twitter is reportedly taking another look at Musk takeover bid
Twitter's board is reportedly meeting with Elon Musk and may seek to negotiate on his buyout offer. Musk claims to have secured $46 billion in funding to buy the company at a valuation of $43 billion and is preparing to make a tender offer to its shareholders.
While the board has passed a poison pill, it could be facing resistance to that from groups of shareholders and will want to talk things out rather than face a hostile takeover. It's also possible that Twitter's stock could crash if the offer fails to go through.
Another possible topic was originally posted here.
Ars Technica: EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content
Following on from the recently passed Digital Markets Act, which requires large tech companies to unbundle first-party software from hardware platforms, the proposed Digital Services Act will require medium and large social media platforms and search engines to police hate speech and disinformation while adding additional protections for children against targeted marketing.
It also bans "dark patterns", which manipulate or trick people into clicking on ads or other content. The article doesn't explicitly say what that means, but I assume it includes things like disguising ads to look like parts of a site's user interface, hiding "close" buttons, and such.
For large companies, the requirements would go into effect immediately. For medium companies, they would have a grace period to implement the changes.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has warned that Big Tech has become “too big to care.”
This phrase, "too big to care", intrigues me. It's an indictment of the idea that these companies have decided that growth and engagement metrics overwhelm any sense of social responsibility.
In my opinion, a law like this would be impossible in the United States, since it would be challenged (likely successfully) on First Amendment grounds.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 11:24:56 AM
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Time to move away from the... two accounts I have involving it as a backup method, I guess?
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A procrastination in of itself
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when a big social media company is owned by someone who looks to be in it for the idea of the platform, rather than using it either to make money (old Twitter plus Reddit) or as a way of harvesting people’s data basically for the sake of it (Facebook).
I do wonder much how much the idea of owning Twitter and the reality of trying to run in accordance with his ideas but also at a profit (or at least a small loss) will hit Musk.
I’m rooting for the entire thing to collapse, but that’s because I have a great deal of contempt for Twitter and the harm it’s done to western society.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
I'm going to be following this thread because, as I said, I have an account and this will be very interesting to watch.
I don't have an aversion to social media but I'm hoping for some good to come out of this and the pessimist in me thinks if we can't get better enforcement of Twitter's standards, then, at the very least, let the next generation take the appropriate lessons from it.
Edited by fredhot16 on Apr 25th 2022 at 12:39:32 PM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
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It's really more of a question of how it's going to be a disaster.
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I am admittedly not sure what Musk's plans are now that he's bought Twitter. He's said some stuff about being a "free speech absolutist" (whatever that means) and not personally moderating tweets, as well as not banning/suspending people. If all that's the case, it'll be at least novel to see just how much and how fast everything goes wrong.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my Tumblr
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
I have a lot of artist friends (some of them NSFW) who rely on Twitter to get their art seen. I hope this will not cause them to lose that very important advertisement method.
Anyways Here's Darude Sandstorm
"Free speech absolutist" means that he believes collective efforts of criticism towards bigoted language should no longer be allowed. It is the censorship of the many in order to give the privileged few special treatment. Ironically it is an anti-free speech notion that believes incorrect or prejudicial remarks need to be protected from criticism in some way.
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He will probably also find that somehow free speech doesn't apply if it's someone/something criticizing him. So, The Onion can probably say goodbye to being on Twitter...
Roll a Constitution saving throw to make it through the year.
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It's hard to think of a way that one of the world's biggest communication mediums being completely controlled by a thin-skinned idealogue and the self-parodying idea of free speech that refuses the notion that saying things has consequences won't fuck up somehow.
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You know, something just hit me: what is this is really just a whim of his? Like a child wanting to own an exotic pet? Like, sure, he'll say he'll take care of it, feed it, bathe it, and so on, but then he realizes it's harder than he thought it'd be, and shortly after either the pet dies or the parents get rid of it somehow.
I'm wondering if this Twitter buyout will end up the same way.
Isn't Elon Musk a Republican and Trump supporter? I'll likely delete my account just for those reasons alone. I'm also on Tik Tok. Anyone recommend Instagram?
With all the memes about women choosing a bear over a man, Hollywood might wanna get on an 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon' adaptation
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
I only just joined to follow a few people, so depending on how things shake out I might just search for alternatives for the ones I’m really interested in.
Oh God! Natural light!
A procrastination in of itself
Considering that Instagram is owned by the much more hardcore pro-Trump Zuckerberg I’m not seeing the logic in fleeing to Instagram. Hell, Musk isn’t so much a Republican as he is someone who thinks he is smarter than any politician party or leader.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
X4 It’s until now been run by data harvesters so profit driven they allowed it to be used for election interference and to try and state a coup. We shouldn’t pretend that Twitter wasn’t already a massive fuck up. The idea that actions should be consequence free was already baked into Twitter, all Musk is liable to do is make it formal (no banning) instead of informal (bans mean nothing).
Edited by Silasw on Apr 25th 2022 at 9:08:25 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Anyways Here's Darude Sandstorm
Musk should just stick to what he's good at; Space travel.
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Paying people who are good at space travel, rather. He, himself, would be best served by shutting up and not constantly risking fraud cases.
Ah, but this is a new way to be a fuckup! It's a commitment to a specific brand of fuckup-pery! ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
And unlike the data harvesting one, not even likely to be slightly influenced by such mundane concerns as "trying to overthrow an election through violent insurrection".
Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 25th 2022 at 9:08:23 AM
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A procrastination in of itself
Musk is in the weird space where he’s liable to be more open about what he’s doing with Twitter, the man doesn’t really do subtle. That could be a good thing, as it will reveal to more people the toxic inner workings of Twitter.
Which is liable to finally push regulators to step in. Which they should have done years ago.
Yes, I’m basically arguing accelerationism for the decline of social media, I realise that.
Edited by Silasw on Apr 25th 2022 at 9:11:50 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Anyways Here's Darude Sandstorm
Sorry, let me correct myself; subsidizing space travel.
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A procrastination in of itself
Random complaining about Musk’s activities outside of Social media really aren’t relevant to this thread. Especially when they’re done in a lazy way designed to invite challenge.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Anyways Here's Darude Sandstorm
I will complain about everything that Musk does if the topic of him is brought up, actually.
Now what I wanna know is what does he plan to actually do with the platform? Considering the price he paid he won't see a return on investment for a while (if he even cares about that). But he might succumb to sunk cost fallacy and try to make something of it. A mass exodus is assured so he needs something to rebuild the userbase. Like it or not he will have to implement community guidelines of some kind to maintain users.
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I think something about stopping bots, getting people to pay money to prove they're a real person (see the first page; I still regard this as a terrible move for what little plausible deniability in the name of user privacy can ever be mustered against governments†), and something about open-sourcing the algorithms. Which I'm sure won't backfire to even more algorithm manipulation; there's a reason search engines keep it under wraps.
† that and it feels shockingly paternalistic to say "but the theoretical better moderation will be better for you than your actual concerns".
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Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
I think the other reason these companies don't want to release the algorithms is because they lie like hell about what they're capable of.
Twitter spent ages wittering on about how impossible it was to block or mute all the Nazis, while they were doing exactly that in Germany. Open-sourcing the algorithm is likely to lead to one of two revelations. Either, 1) they've been fully capable of less braindead moderation this whole time and have been constrained or 2) they're really fucking badly designed and borderline non-functional and have a lot of racist, transphobic and otherwise bigoted data they're "learning" from and no one's bothered to prune it.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Lost in Space
Musk is neither a Republican nor a Trump supporter. I don't know where that gets into people's minds. He says he has voted Democrat in the past, and he supported Andrew Yang in 2020.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Anyways Here's Darude Sandstorm
He's a "big brain" Centrist.
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Given that the only “free speech restrictions” Twitter has actually made are banning a few prominent far-right people and doing some minimal restrictions on posting lies about elections that are targeted at undermining democracy…
…this means it’s now open season for the far-right again. Putin will be so happy.
Literally, that is the only thing Musk’s “free speech” statements can mean, because Twitter has not restricted speech in any other way.
Edited by Galadriel on Apr 25th 2022 at 1:35:45 AM
I was already counting down on when it would be announced.
I'll just wait and see how it will turn out.
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