Max KennerlyJul 7, 2023

Threads is looking better and better. What I wanted from social media was:

* self-promotion from celebrities and rich people

* no control over my timeline

* strict prohibition of any sexual content

* nothing from europe

* no alt-text

* data harvesting to empower genocides

Show threadKevin Patrick Doyle 🍅🥫Jul 7, 2023

@maxkennerly got into a back and forth with a guy over there who insists Elon and his antics are way worse than Facebook being used to great effect in the Rhohynga genocide.

Needless to say I’m not itching to use the product

Show threadAndrew CallanJul 7, 2023
@Kevin @maxkennerly multiple things can be true. FB's lack of effective response was deplorable & will forever be a black eye. And it also would’ve & possibly will be much worse w/ lEon in charge of a major social platform given his open disdain for trust & safety efforts. By your logic we should blame most war crimes on the phone companies used to organize them which is stupidly reductionist
Show threadKevin Patrick Doyle 🍅🥫Jul 7, 2023

@acallan1 @maxkennerly i fully agree both can be true, and said as much to this individual.

The phone companies argument doesn't really work for me as in the Rohynga genocide it wasn't the communication itself so much as it was the manipulation of a proprietary communication medium which is nominally self policed. Phone based communication isn’t new, novel, or proprietary.

Also probably not great to reply to people you don't know and imply they are stupid if you want to engage with them

Show threadAndrew CallanJul 7, 2023
@Kevin @maxkennerly every communications platform has enabled innovative forms of humans being awful as we learned what the exploit vectors are, if you have substantive criticism of Meta not learning from their mistakes by all means let’s hear them but prob not great to post false equivalencies just for fake internet pts
Show threadKevin Patrick Doyle 🍅🥫Jul 7, 2023

@acallan1 @maxkennerly if i wanted internet points I'd probably be on a service where they are actually quantifiable. I don't know if you have tried to run your own instance but clout isn't really a thing you can measure.

Frankly, I don't see a false equivalence here. If people are fleeing Twitter for Threads (which I fully support them doing) they should do so with their eyes wide open when it comes to Meta’s history of moving fast and breaking things that also break people.

Show threadAndrew Callan
@Kevin @maxkennerly it's good & fair to remind folks that Meta isn’t some white knight just bc lEon's made everyone else look better in comparison, which I think we agree on. I obv don't know the content of the threads back & forth you originally referenced but it sounded like you saw them as different in degree rather than in kind, which I do not. I see Meta as having been negligent at times vs lEon seems openly hostile to trust & safety efforts, but that's just my opinion to date
Jul 7, 2023 at 2:44pmWeb
Show threaddrabJul 7, 2023
@acallan1 @Kevin @maxkennerly I don’t know if I think Meta isn’t hostile to trust and safety efforts. I think they’re essentially concerned with trust only insofar as it enables them to maintain/expand their data harvesting operations. In both cases, each entity only wants to maintain public goodwill in order to profit off of its respective users.