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
.
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
The CCP van also get that information a lot of other ways legally such as paying data brokers.
Team Rocket Boss.
Data selling as a business in Social Media sounds both fascinating and terrifying.
It's times like this I'm glad I don't use stuff like Twitter or Tik Tok.
I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.
It's also important to remember that china is state capatalisim.
The government and companies are the same entities.
There is an article coming out in the Atlantic magazine that claims China and Russia are both conducting a massive propaganda campaign against the idea of democracy, so maybe it isn't all political bull$(!#.
Twitter finally changed its url to x.com
Still a terrible name that sounds like it belongs to a porn site, of course.
The People's Champion
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Also very likely to get Saint Elmo sued for trademark infringement/disruption/whatever the legal word is because there are a lot of businesses with "X" in them. (About 600, if I remember correctly.)
I'm still amazed that he took what was a very well-known brand and just... flushed it down the toilet like that.
Some people would kill for the level of brand recognition Twitter had.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 17th 2024 at 12:40:37 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
It's all because he wanted to turn Pay Pal into a online credit card called X and got rejected hard and held a grudge about it for 20 years.
Edited by Shaoken on May 17th 2024 at 4:15:26 AM
Redmess
Well, he's one of those engineering types with very little sense of business or marketing, and disdainful of the sort of jobs that deal with those parts of business that don't directly bring in revenue, so being dismissive of something like brand recognition checks out for him.
Oh, bother.
Let's not make this about Musk as a person again. It's against the thread's rules.
Disgusted, but not surprised
To be fair, it is difficult when Twitter's run in such a personalist fashion.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Oh, bother.
TBH, if all that was changed was just the name to X and the url to x.com...well, it would still have been awful. Because Twitter was always pretty awful.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Redmess
I was answering a question about Musk the CEO of Twitter, just to be clear.
Optimism is a duty.
🍊orange fursona🧡
To paraphrase a Beatles song,
"X (The Blue Bird Has Flown)"
This new update has apparently also broken twitter usage at all in certain browsers, because trying to go to any Twitter link just redirects to the sign-in page.
The Unknown
It's also broken embed fixers on Discord and people's browser plugins.
Edited by Karxrida on May 17th 2024 at 11:19:03 AM
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
fixupx is the current embed fixer for x urls.
The Unknown
Bless you.🙏
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Redmess
It seems that Reddit, when faced with a choice between seeing its content scraped by Open AI for free, and selling that content for profit and with some restrictions, has chosen the latter option.
Optimism is a duty.
Disasturbator
That's...old news to me for some reason.
New theme music also a box
Yeah, Reddit is for once not being unreasonable because restricting AI training data isn't currently in the cardsnote .
🍊orange fursona🧡
The last thing we want is ChatGPT spewing terminally online, holier-than-thou, "sky daddy" atheist spats while wearing a fedora.
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔
If you think atheists are the most annoying thing on the internet, much less Reddit, that Chatgpt can emulate than you haven't been on the internet long enough.
Hey, I like fedora's.
Pattern recognition? It sure sounds like something the CCP would do.