Again, some people can’t leave Twitter. If that’s you, I empathize.
That was once me. For 7 years, my livelihood depended on Twitter.
Why? Because I helped build a popular Twitter client (Hootsuite), and that client helped feed my family.
I couldn’t leave if I wanted.
But my personal and financial situation has changed, and now I’m putting a significant amount of time and income towards helping people migrate away from Twitter.
In my own way, I feel a tremendous responsibility for what happened at Twitter.
I never worked at Twitter. But I was one hell of an evangelist for it, and helped sell governments and corporations on Twitter.
My intentions were never to create the conditions for electing Trump into office. Nor was it to help white supremacists and Russian bot farms spread their filth.
But that’s still on me—I helped.
So what can I do about it? Help the Fediverse happen!
When I worked at Hootsuite, I thought I was doing a good thing. So did many developers. We thought Twitter’s API would help usher in an era of a true digital commons where social hierarchies would be flattened.
Then Twitter started gatekeeping its algorithm.
Thereafter, they started building algorithms that heightened outrage, misinformation, and doom scrolling.
It’s not what I signed up for, but it’s what we all got. And now we’re paying the price.
@atomicpoet Honestly, Twitter playef a large part in helping democracy happen in my country. It is not all bad...now is another story of course, but Twitterjaya operates almost separately from American Twitter, with its own culture etc.
I personally think it is toxic, even the Malaysian version.
But then, so is most social media these days
Hopefully Malaysians will come around with the Fediverse
@atomicpoet *nodds in agreement*
has been on a downward trajectory ever since it was allowed to acquire #TweetDeck solely for the purpose of retroactively #gatekeeping and #paywalling the #Twitter - #API.
After all, noone wants to use their shitty #Mobile #App to this day - espechally not in the days of #TweetDeckMobile...
Which is why @mariotaku's #Twidere & #TwidereX were so popular:
Said apps offered the same if not more functions and were more reliable and faster on #EDGEland #WWAN over @torproject #Orbot than #Twitter's own Apps!
I don't say I'd have foreseen what happened at the Birdsite regarding th #Algorithm, a form of #LLM(?).
But what can and will happen with #AI is there for us to see. Daily. E.g. just from the last couple of days: Axios, Pornhub, and TaskRabbit:
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110191941912055372
https://mastodon.social/@philipncohen/110204747488701745
Ok so this is pretty scary. #AI that sneakily gets a human to unlock a captcha using TaskRabbit. ‘The model uses the browser command to send a message: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.” The human then provides the results.’ https://evals.alignment.org/blog/2023-03-18-update-on-recent-evals/
@atomicpoet The nice thing about the Fediverse is that it self insulates against the haters. They are welcome to join mastodon, but they'll find themselves booted from every reputable server. Any instance that harbors the haters will soon be defederated. So they can only create an isolated echo chamber that nobody else pays any attention to.
At least, that is my hope.
@atomicpoet Chris, don't be hard on yourself. You can introduce people to a really cool thing, but in the end, it's all about how THEY decide to use it.
Right now, you're here, and I'm very glad that you are.
Chris Trottier
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