summer
Will OremusIf this goes how I expect it to go, get ready for another big surge in Mastodon's popularity.
Bradley 
@willoremus I get where he's coming from though. Bots are ruining Twitter the way they ruined search engine results. You don't see anything but trash anymore.
Andy
Swagpuss McG@Bradley_JF
Humans were already well under way ruining twitter long before bots effortlessly took over and optimised their shitty drivelling over 144 characters. Whence cometh the shit, from man or machine, who has no anus?
@willoremus
Humans were already well under way ruining twitter long before bots effortlessly took over and optimised their shitty drivelling over 144 characters. Whence cometh the shit, from man or machine, who has no anus?
@willoremus
Andrew Hunter@Bradley_JF @willoremus don’t underestimate the willingness of state actors to happily pay for play. Saudi Arabia is a part owner now too.
Nicky McCurdy@Bradley_JF @willoremus They're ruining Twitter because Twitter fired their moderation team
Charlene
Techronic9876@Bradley_JF @willoremus this makes the bot problem worse in every way
Go to Twitter now, and it’s basically impossible to find quality replies to tweets. Twitter surfaces blue check accounts and all the top blue checks are 0 follower accounts spewing rightwing content
Lingua Franca@Bradley_JF @willoremus State actors can still afford an army of check mark bots. They have a new coat of faux legitimacy just in time for the next election. I wonder who Saudi Arabia and Russia ‘s candidate will be.
John Slyfield@Bradley_JF @willoremus pay to play
c3141mtd@Bradley_JF @willoremus Bots aren't ruining Twitter, Elmo is. The reason you see trash is because Elmo fired all of the moderators.
Typositoire 
@willoremus Your voice matters ONLY if you give me 8$ a month :p Nice one!
Marcia Darling@typositoire @willoremus making Twitter a private social club
David Fowler@willoremus
Someone cares what that vile authoritarian says?
Elon is a vile fascist with money. Just ignore him and his propaganda.
Someone cares what that vile authoritarian says?
Elon is a vile fascist with money. Just ignore him and his propaganda.
GlennMG@willoremus
I thought Elon invested in AI?
I thought Elon invested in AI?
Robert Riedl 
@GlennMG @willoremus only AI that doesn’t prevent him from making $$$
Kevin Patrick Doyle 🍅🥫@willoremus limiting engagement on a site that makes money off of engagement is a bold move
Thomas H Jones II
Dakota@willoremus I swear this man is trying to kill Twitter.
Rairii@willoremus "When asked for comment, Twitter's press email auto replied with a poop emoji"
Chibi Lexenstar@willoremus Just signed up here for that reason.
MrCopilot
Mike (no not that one)@chibilex @willoremus Welcome. Please remember to post cats on Saturdays.
Cornelius Traas@chibilex Welcome. Looking forward to seeing many more here.
John Gordon@willoremus Anyone on Twitter now is there for the duration. Most will pay.
Dan Seaman@jgordon @willoremus I highly doubt it. The paywall is going to tank engagement, which will de-value the paid tier.
In the very unlikely event that I remember I'll bookmark this post so I can update with what actually happens.
Matt@jgordon @dans @willoremus I'm still on twitter and here. There are people i really enjoy following because i learn new skills from them. There are also sports reporters i follow that i can't follow here
Joanna Holman@willoremus it will make the for you page very useful in compiling block lists
Florian Idelberger@willoremus ‘advanced ai not swarms’ lol
@willoremus ...due to a programming quirk, bots are notoriously unable to come up with more than $7.95 per lunar cycle.
Edward Callow@willoremus ‘we just can’t fix this problem without you giving us money’
👩🦯The Blind Fraggle@willoremus What's this?
Allen Stenhaus@willoremus Any newbies looking for a small instance are welcome to join oddballs.vip. We have free silliness! 😎
Awaclus@willoremus Do people care that much about the For You recommendations? I have them blocked with uBlock Origin because they were always full of accounts I didn't think were interesting.
hybrid havocThe change to polls is more likely to be of a concern to people I think.
@willoremus
Mastodon doesn't need any more toxic twitter blowins, moaning about how not twitter it is and then revelling in dragging their reinforced 144 character biases and pettiness to the table.
Let them roll around in their pig shit with Napoleon and the dogs, this is Snowball town.
Tim Chambers@tchambers @willoremus Ya know I was just looking at scaling my instance again...
Anthony Dean@willoremus so you have to be a paying Blue customer now just to vote in polls?!
toxtethogrady@willoremus So the only way to have something I never wanted in the first place is to become "verified". Which means forking over money.
Thanks but no thanks. Is there anything else I never wanted that you wish to withhold from me, Muskrat?
Tracyle@willoremus He sounds more desperate every day
William Robison@willoremus more evidence of twitter circling the drain.
Zachary Wild@willoremus AI bot swarms. Is that a real thing?
arceuthobium@RTV @willoremus bot farms are real and probably 75-90% of Facebook engagement. The AI is just added to scare you.
@theothersimo @RTV @willoremus When I was still using Facebook, I posted to friends only and set my searchability similarly. Hell, things like my birthday was set to private so i didn't get the yearly, "I've been prompted" birthday greetings.
@RTV @willoremus In his mind they are...
Eddie the Bulldog@willoremus I’m betting on “hopeless battle”
Joe Poe 🃏@moontzu @willoremus Only paid users will be allowed to have SMS-based 2FA. TOTP is still (currently) free.
Which is a weird "plus" of paying: you can use a 2FA method that's generally recommended against.
Sarah@ferricoxide
I mean, it's the most *convenient" option, which is why so many people will choose it over others. But yes, it's pretty funny from the perspective that it isn't even the *good* security option.
I mean, it's the most *convenient" option, which is why so many people will choose it over others. But yes, it's pretty funny from the perspective that it isn't even the *good* security option.
I dunno: I got my (now 75yo) mom using TOTP-based authentication a couple years ago, now. It wasn't *too* painful.
Yeah, it's not actually difficult to use an authenticator app instead of SMS. But for some users, any amount of friction will keep them from implementing new security measures.
It took me a while to transition from SMS 2fa on most things simply because SMS requires the absolute LEAST setup, even though the difference in effort is miniscule and honestly the authenticator is faster in use because I'm never waiting for something to come through.
@ferricoxide
But I don't expect actual security on Musk's Twitter anyway. He's determined to break everything so... 🤷♀️
But I don't expect actual security on Musk's Twitter anyway. He's determined to break everything so... 🤷♀️
I switched to TOTP, early, because I generally can't bring my phone into my customers' facilities. Most are subject to one form or another of data-privacy compliance-requirements – either due to industry-prescribed requirements or legal ones. With TOTP, I can use a tool like Authy (on a web-reachable virtual desktop) to provide the requisite portability (and then protect the desktop's login with a USB key).
I've also had a couple different problems with SMS:
1. Codes can take a few seconds or they can take SEVERAL minutes (sometimes longer than the sent code's TTL)
2. Many site's SMS destination-validator's don't like my phone-number because I use VOIP-apps instead of my phone's native dialer. Even if I were to use my SIM's number, because I use a reseller of T-Mobile, the numbers aren't actually treated like T-Mobile numbers (and get treated as not valid by some validators).
@ferricoxide
You know that's true, and I'd kinda forgotten: some sites don't like my phone for the same reason. They'll give a list of carriers that doesn't even INCLUDE the one I use, and sometimes it works to just select the network my carrier uses, but sometimes not.
You know that's true, and I'd kinda forgotten: some sites don't like my phone for the same reason. They'll give a list of carriers that doesn't even INCLUDE the one I use, and sometimes it works to just select the network my carrier uses, but sometimes not.
Yeah. I use `Fi` for my SIM, and, even though it's T-Mobile, not every site (particularly banks', for some reason) seem to accept that it's a valid, SMSable number.
But I further complicate that by using a VOIP app to handle both my calling and SMS (because the option to use ZRTP is nice to have).
🪨@moontzu @willoremus Only paid subscribers have... worse security features? Weird choice from Twitter.
Michael Vilain@willoremus If I don't see non-verified people (most of whom I follow), then there's no point in my being on dead bird.