Mastodawn

Lauren Weinstein

**** Elon's Soviet style post-event alteration of Twitter policy to attack NPR ****

Let's be clear what just happened. Elon Musk apparently was unhappy about at least one NPR story. So he arbitrarily slapped NPR with the "state affiliated media" label usually reserved for propaganda outlets under government editorial control like Russia's RT and the Chinese Communist Party newspaper. NPR only gets a tiny percentage of its funding from the government, which conservatives have long been trying to zero out completely. Voice of America, BBC, and "Stars and Stripes" are not so designated, despite being under government editorial control.

Worse, Elon *retroactively* moved after the fact to specifically remove NPR from the section of Twitter policy that explained that outlets like BBC and NPR were not considered to be government-affiliated media.

He continues to respond to official queries with a poop emoji.

No media organization or advertiser is safe dealing with him. Nor is the U.S. government. End these relationships as quickly as practicable, before you regret being in bed with his twisted sensibilities.

Weathermonster Apr 5, 2023

@lauren the time to leave Twitter is already overdue.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@funmerlin No. It is crucial to stay, to monitor, and to help people who are being attacked there, especially since there are no practical alternatives at this time for most people over there (Mastodon doesn't qualify.)

Weathermonster Apr 5, 2023

@[email protected] sure, and I agree. But if I ran a business, I'd have to think twice about tying my success to theirs.

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

@lauren @funmerlin the platform belongs to him. It’s his living room. If you use it, you support it. There’s no democracy or helping people there. It’s a corporate dictatorship. You can’t protest against the owner of a privately-owned platform. He can and literally does what he wants.

I don’t criticize people for staying. Or for those who don’t like Mastodon. But I think it’s misguided to think people have power to counter what someone does with their own product when they don’t care about you.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@markwyner @funmerlin Because of his vast entanglements with U.S. government contracts and their ethics clauses, his behavior is not entirely without recourse.

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

@lauren @funmerlin as a preface, I should have been clear that I’m not intending to attack you with this. Just making sure it’s clear that I’m not picking a fight. But I’m yet to see anyone present any evidence that he can be held accountable in any way.

Labeling media as an enemy of the state is a core element of fascism and dictatorships. And the new algorithms that define tweet authors as republicans/democrats exacerbates this.

So how can/is he held accountable? What is the recourse?

Jagat Apr 5, 2023

@markwyner @lauren @funmerlin

Well said. Twitter is a private company implementing one man's (arbitrary) rules.

It is *NOT* a public town square that promotes civil discourse and exchange of ideas. If it were, I would agree with @lauren 's
reasoning for the need to stay and protect the principle of free speech.

In my opinion, to stay on that platform or further engage with Twitter only benefits Musk and furthers mainstreaming his imposed view points. Nothing else.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@jagatshah @markwyner @funmerlin Who is Laura? You referring to this guy?

Jagat Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @markwyner @funmerlin apologies. I meant you 😊
Typo. I've corrected now

Colton Anderholm Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin Hmm. Nope. All you’re doing is helping him keep the damn thing viable.

Havyhh2 Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin Ok, but that seems a self-fulfilling caution. I have thought for a while, though not sure it is feasible, that news sites, reporters, etc should do in reverse what I see many do in linking their twitter posts into Mastodon. Keep their twitter accts which only reposts from Mastodon...but make the real juice & comments & discussion happen in Mastodon. Can't think staying on a scuttled ship makes any sense....imho.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin it's an open sewer there, you can't protect anyone. Some people like it or make money and refuse to leave. Forget them.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn @funmerlin I care enough about ordinary, busy, often (but not always) nontechnical people to refuse your point of view.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin Well, I sure don't see these mythical people any more. I went back and every single account that I followed that wasn't a huge political one is gone. The rest seem to enjoy sparring with the Russians and bots that make up that platform now. I don't think that kind needs your "protection"

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn @funmerlin A lot of individuals have left or dialed back. But a lot of very good organizations (and firms) are royally stuck, as are their members and customers who depend on them.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren so what are you going to do, support all of them? What are you, Super Twitter Man? It sounds like you have a savior complex about people that you think are helpless, and what is left there are not helpless, they like it. Its kind of freaky.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn Well, first off, if you bothered to check my profile before mouthing off, you'd see I'm a guy, not a woman. But obviously that's beyond you.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren sorry, you know you have one of those names that both women and men have, like myself. Don't take it too personal.
I made my account yesterday so I am A) very sure that there's very few people there that don't want to be. And B) Just learning how to use Mastodon

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn Understood. That is indeed one of the other names that fall into that grouping, along with a bunch of others that have waxed and waned in various ways over the years and decades.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren what is your bike, a shovelhead?

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn Yeah. AMF, unfortunately. But better than nothing.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren I had a shovelhead! I recall that it was a 73, but that was a long time ago! Jeez the autocorrect here is horrific.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn The reality is that I get people all the time asking for help getting off Twitter and (until fairly recently) I routinely suggested Mastodon, but too many kept coming back having problems with onboarding or with being unwelcome once they got onboard. But hope springs eternal.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren I couldn't find one single one of the people that I followed! I would say the whole hashtag of cyanotype disappeared. I also enjoy mushroom picking and that hashtag has been changed to psilocybin sellers.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn Could be worse. Could be cryptocurrency.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren well, that seems to be on everyone's thread, that's for sure. The bots are worse now!
I am lucky here as an older lady explained Mast. a little. I'm 60, she's 65 😆
I had signed up a couple of years ago and it was dead.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 6, 2023

@HiwayRobyn Yeah, Elon buying Twitter gave #Mastodon a big boost, but the overall trajectory now is more difficult to analyze.

GraveRobyn Apr 6, 2023

@lauren I left, felt better, the constant arguing with maga made me sick. Then because of Trump, I went back to swim in maga tears. But after awhile, there were just 2 accounts that I used to follow. I wonder if maga will leave if it becomes another Truth Social or Parler?

Gemma 👽Apr 6, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin

And yet here we are on Mastodon, a practical alternative, talking about this. 😏 curious.

Simon Boyne Apr 6, 2023

@lauren @funmerlin the people you're 'monitoring' and who are being attacked are free to leave. There's plenty of practical alternatives. If you choose to stay because of the exposure then you know that you've made a deal with the devil.

Scott Apr 5, 2023

@funmerlin @lauren that’s why we’re here 🫡

Oakmarie Apr 5, 2023

@lauren Not just boneheaded, this move is evil.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren The amazing thing about #ElonMusk's power over free speech: if you leave his club and go talk in a different one, he cannot stop you.
Musk only has power over free speech insofar as people GRANT it to him, and his is not the only platform. Really, it's trash now. If everyone credible leaves him, he just eats 44 billion dollars he paid for a blog with the biggest comments section, him and his Nazis alone

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@jlroberson Most users there can't leave. There is nowhere with similar reach or as easy to use where they can go. Mastodon isn't it, obviously.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren I disagree, obviously.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@jlroberson I've basically stopped recommending new people sign up here. I'm tired of hearing back about onboarding problems (even from highly technical people) and the HATE spewed on people here who don't fit "the preferred profile". Not to mention the technical problems that there's no interest in actually fixing. Mastodon is a toy. A *fun* toy to be sure. But just a toy.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren Maybe it's because I signed up a few years ago(and then didn't use it till last Oct) but I never saw any of these issues with servers. I only had to sign in. But I don't doubt others have.
It doesn't change that Musk only has power over speech that others grant him, and that if credible people leave the platform its worth is nil.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren PS I miss the internet where people remembered they could build their own shit, too.(like websites, etc) I hate the way social media kneecapped people's sense of agency till everyone's forgotten all that.

GreenDotGuy Apr 5, 2023

@lauren Can I ask what the onboarding problems actually are? I feel like a Google search for "[marginalized community] safe Mastodon" has decent enough results from places like Reddit that would point people in the right direction. Besides some sort of 'front door' to the service, asking users to do that seems like a solve to the biggest onboarding issue I can imagine.

Personally, I followed like-minded people out, so it was 'easy' for me to just... see where they were going, then go check that place out and read the community standards.

GreenDotGuy Apr 5, 2023

@lauren I'm just wondering if things have changed in the last six months, between Twitter being 'less good' and mainstream awareness of Mastodon being 'much better'.

MrShoggoth Apr 5, 2023

@DarcMoughty @lauren - I’d guess it’s having to pick a server with zero information on which to choose and figuring out the difference between Home and the Fediverse streams. Also, some apps are just inferior. It wasn’t that difficult to overcome, but I had the added encouragement of hating Musk’s guts.

Lauren Weinstein Apr 5, 2023

@MrShoggoth @DarcMoughty Most people don't have time to screw around with that stuff. Seriously, it's a tautology supreme to call Mastodon onboarding anything other than a hot mess.

MrShoggoth Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @DarcMoughty - Shrug. If you have time to sit on Twitter for 6 hours a day, you’ve got time for it. You may not want to expend the time, of course.

GreenDotGuy Apr 6, 2023

@lauren I'm just confused by how it's considered a problem and not just an intrinsic way of the thing working that facilitates its openness.

Like, I had to choose an email provider, and it lets me interact with people on others. That makes sense to me. I had to choose that carefully, why is choosing a social media home base such a stretch. I think a lot of this shows that the concept of a social network as a thing from a single provider is so entrenched that people find federation jarring?

serklarvel Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @jlroberson every week, #mastodon gets 300 thousand users and they are at least smart enough to understand what an instance is. It's a good and sizeable community. Texas Observer was saved by Mastodon users, for example.

MrShoggoth Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @jlroberson - I’ve had none of those problems. I’ve been here for 4 months or so and I enjoy it quite a bit. If yer on the bird platform you’re paying Elmo with yer eyeballs. That’s fine - it’s yer life - but pretending yer doing it out of some kind of altruism is nonsense.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@MrShoggoth @lauren The thing is, I built up my own presence on Twitter from 2009-Oct 2022 and couldn't imagine leaving it till #ElonMusk started dinging my tweets for saying unkind things about Trump.
Then I left and haven't missed it, and without an account and all my careful blocking and muting, it's...a stupid eyesore in which every day, for some reason, SHREK is trending. And hockey.

Pari Moon-Forest Apr 6, 2023

@jlroberson @MrShoggoth
I keep getting "Meghan" and "NotMyKing". It just panders to your clicks (sort of).
I just can't get the rare few people I still want to follow to see reason and get off of it. Two are connected to a network and two are just being stubborn. But now frequently they're arguing with what are clearly bots or trolls...It's not worth my time.

JL Roberson Apr 6, 2023

@PariMoonForest @MrShoggoth Well, this is what you get without any clicks at all in my case except on the tabs.

JL Roberson Apr 6, 2023

@PariMoonForest @MrShoggoth Mostly it's sports(something I would never even look at) and, again, Shrek. Why Shrek? And why is hockey always the most popular of these sports trending.
Oh, and also WWE(also something I would never even look at) but that's not a sport, it's gay porn. ;)

Pari Moon-Forest Apr 6, 2023

@jlroberson @MrShoggoth
Yeah I think it's stuff that plays to who's on the site a lot. Not real high-IQ stuff.

JL Roberson Apr 6, 2023

@PariMoonForest @MrShoggoth It tells you the true nature of Twitter, which may well just be like one of those TV channels that seems to endlessly play in late night diners that is nothing but sports guys in suits talking between ads for gold or whatever.

Pari Moon-Forest Apr 6, 2023

@jlroberson @MrShoggoth
That pretty much sums it up.

JL Roberson Apr 6, 2023

@PariMoonForest @MrShoggoth (PS All those guys usually look like either Joe Tacopina or the Rock)

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren PS Not that I'm blaming the victims. But Elon Musk must be shunned and isolated as much as possible. He does NOT control free speech. No one should let him.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@lauren Let me pose this to you:
Tomorrow Musk implements some new BS so that the marginalized people you speak of aren't seen on anyone's feed anyway. (He's already started doing this to LGBTQ+ stuff after all)
What then?
What if Musk simply closed Twitter down?
I think it's foolish to leave one's fate in his incredibly capricious hands.
Personally, I've dealt with enough bullies in my life that now, I just shut them out whenever I can. So my view I know is just my own.

MerryAnn Apr 5, 2023

@lauren @jlroberson I think there are Mastodon, Spoutible, Post and Tribel that I know about. Probably others. Maybe if everyone left Twitter/Meta for something else, there would be more incentive for these smaller platforms to work together and provide a way to maintain that larger “audience”/provide protections/recreate the virtual community of the big sites.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@MALyons @lauren That's my point. They become the public square if the people are there. Twitter doesn't have to be that square except by passively letting it. "Guess we've got to put up with Elon's whims. Oh well, let's stay here, hopefully he won't mute us in EVERYone's feed"

Dan Wentzel 🏳️‍🌈Apr 5, 2023

@jlroberson @lauren The single best aspect of the #Fediverse is that a billionaire cannot come along and buy it and destroy it on behalf of authoritarians.

JL Roberson Apr 5, 2023

@danwentzel @lauren That's so but Lauren is also right that it needs to be made less a nightmare to start for most. I haven't had this issue but I have NO idea why.