Mastodawn

I don't understand how the UK government (and indeed many firms) can continue to maintain a presence on Elon Musk's deepfake porn site (formerly known as Twitter), rather than jumping ship to the likes of Mastodon and Bluesky.

Their continued association with X/Twitter isn't just a bad look, it's an endorsement of a site that behaves in a disgusting, degrading way, and has been churning out sexualised images of real-life women and young girls.

Is it just to avoid the wrath of Elon Musk?

Wendy M. Grossman Jan 7

@gcluley They're broadcasters, not participants.ETA that I did not mean this as justification but as an explanation

@wendyg @gcluley What? By broadcasting there (and, in many cases, ONLY there), they are forcing other people to remain there too to stay informed. I’m constantly missing out on news from local authorities et al. cuz I no longer have Twitter. It’s infuriating!!

Wendy M. Grossman Jan 7

@clarissawam @gcluley I am not justifying it!

Juho Mäntysalo Jan 8

@clarissawam @wendyg @gcluley

People who remain at X are eating from the cart, thinking it's ok as long as it's only they and their friends who are doing it.

(Thus also moving the cost of creating a new platform without loliporn for those who refuse categorically to entertain Musk.)

It's a form of privilegism.

Or to be more blunt: it's your basic right-wing hierarchy bullshit, also easily seen in context of CO2-emissions.

Juho Mäntysalo Jan 8

@clarissawam @wendyg @gcluley

This also relates to the two main sub-genres of right-wing politics: doing something because we're¹ always done it, and doing something because it's advantageous in short term.² Or in other words: conservatism and liberalism.

¹ eg. due to something having been done, it should still be done, even if the context (abilibility of computer generated child- and hate-porn) has changed.

² you may think of this as a hierarchy in time, instead of in space.

Graham Cluley Jan 7

@wendyg Grok is generating the sexualised imagery of children.

Wendy M. Grossman Jan 7

@gcluley I am aware. I'm just saying I don't think they think it has anything to do with them. Able to compartmentalize to a very high degree.

@wendyg @gcluley but what they also are is "daily active users", as no doubt used in the slide decks that make Twitter money from advertisers. Money which (in?)directly funds xAI and Grok.

It's the network effect in action - either the users need to leave and the institutions have no audience, or the institutions leave and the users have nothing to read. But at the moment each is sustaining the other seemingly through apathy, and as a terrible side effect Twitter is still operating.

@gcluley never forget that, in order to be able to generate it, it must have been trained on a collection of similar images in the first place. Musk's a CSAM collector.

Sean Lynch Jan 7

@marshalla99 @gcluley

Probably trained on the redacted photos in the Epstein files.

Jason Tubnor 🇦🇺Jan 7

@gcluley Looking forward to the next AI fix, should be a ripper.

@Tubsta @gcluley specifically, Jack the ripper?

Nerdy Echidna Jan 7

@gcluley what I don’t understand is how ANY advertisers are OK with the chance that their product is shown next to CSAM.

Graeme Hilton Jan 7

@gcluley The government running it's own mastodon instance should be a piece of cake. Should be...

@gcluley "Elon Musk's deepfake porn site (formerly known as Twitter)" 😆

🍉🇵🇸Jan 7

@gcluley @shilkytouch At some point, just like their stance on genocide, the only conclusion is that they support it.

@gcluley they think they have to because "that's where the people are". Leaving would be like not having a website or phone number.

@Magess @gcluley
While it may be their reasoning, I hope govs see there is an opportunity for a collective statement/movement (similar to responses re: Venezuela) and help millions of users migrate to Mastodon (or elsewhere), something to the effect of "We know this will be inconvenient, but it is important not to support X, for [various reasons], so we are migrating [elsewhere], here are tips and a FAQ to help."

(Not disagreeing, just hoping for something better.)

@gcluley Totally. Now Musk has more or less broken with the Orange One, I don't see that's the motivation. I think they still believe they can reach people there. Plus inertia.

Sean Lynch Jan 7

@annehargreaves @gcluley

in the Arab spring, me too and other movements Twitter was an important means of communicating to the world.

Buy buying Twitter and transforming it to X Musk has effectively shut down a major meeting place of ideas used by the general population to bypass traditional media.

This new porn generator 'feature' is essentially the nail in the coffin.

Musk didn't act as a front for all the money to buy Twitter so he could get wealthier, he did it to kill Twitter.

@SeanPLynch @gcluley Sure. Probably didn't like the idea of discourse not centred on him.

Rob\Viewdata UK Jan 7

@gcluley
I'm just one person, but I've emailed my MP suggesting she withdraw from X, suggesting bluesky and mastodon (and that it'd be beneficial if the Gov set up their own server.)
I doubt anything will come of it, but if enough people write to their MPs, maybe the concept will filter through eventually.

Luis Falcon Jan 7

@robert @gcluley Thank you! Just be wary about bluesky BSKY, which to me is more of the same team of billionaires technocrats.

Sean Lynch Jan 7

@robert @gcluley

Suggest that they set up their own 'British' based instances and it will happen much more quickly!

Be sure to say British based and not UK based, because, well you know.

Use their own weaknesses to manipulate them.

Rob\Viewdata UK Jan 7

@SeanPLynch @gcluley
I did suggest "outside of foreign influence" :)

Sean Lynch Jan 7

@robert @gcluley

Yes, that makes sense!

My idea was to get the little Britain people to support it, rabidly. Bypassing the political fight the Tories would put up just because a labor government is trying to implement it.

Rob\Viewdata UK Jan 8

@SeanPLynch @gcluley
I actually got a reply. Mostly politician boilerplate, but she did actually acknowledge my points about alternate platforms, so I guess that's one small seed planted!

Chris Woods Jan 9

@SeanPLynch @gcluley @robert that’s awesome!

Perhaps this is something to bring up with more MPs?!

How awesome would it be to see MPs, and government departments shifting to platforms like this.

Mind boggling.

Angus McIntyre Jan 7

@gcluley @cstross “But if we make Elon Musk angry, he'll throw all his money behind getting Nigel Farage elected …”

If that's actually their reasoning (and it might well be), I have some interesting news for them.

@gcluley Maybe, but my guess is that they're so use to being complacent or that there is so much crap happening to the point where people (not just in power) just no longer feel anything for it. Adaptation in the worst kind, I guess.

Whatever the reasons, it's a bad way to act by doing nothing about it.

JanKusanagi Jan 7

@gcluley so fucking DISGUSTING

AGF : poemproducer Jan 7

@gcluley hopefully they are going to arrest Elon for producing CSAM when he's back in the UK, and they don't want to tip their hand

Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈Jan 7

@webhat @gcluley more chance of Paddington Bear becoming PM I'm afraid.

🔥 Mireille Sillander 🔥Jan 7

@gcluley Ah yes, the social media site of choice for the public announcements of The Finnish Government! (couldn't even be Facebook. Like I hate Meta/Zuck just as much as Elon, but FB is still for whatever godforsaken reason much more popular among Finns, as are IG and Whatsapp. So to deliberately ignore that and pick Twitter says things about the state that are not great!)

Hans Dampf Jan 7

@gcluley Is it possible to tell GROK to undress Elon or Trump or Bezos or Zuckerberg? Not that I want to see something like that, but maybe they would be embarrassed and Elon do something about it.

Heath Borders Jan 7

@gcluley I've been saying that since Elon gutted trust and safety there, but I imagine the journalism+politics bubble is too strong for even weaponized porn to pop

"Wish the sun to stand still.." 🌞Jan 7

@gcluley Mastodon is a UX nightmare for non-techies. That there are techies who push it as a regular platform is telling: A lot of them don't acknowledge the kind of issues that can completely throw off most people.

"Wish the sun to stand still.." 🌞Jan 7

@gcluley PS, if you're the kind of journalist who doesn't mind clicking on a web link in your M. app that eventually leads you back to fedi content – and you automatically recognize that you'll have to copy the fedi URL and move back into your M. app to properly interact with said content – then you may be a 'techie' and have lost the ability to recognize the kind of UX hurdles that make your platform look unfinished or broken to most users.

Bluesky fake-solved this by making all web links into the platform point to (centralized) bsky.app domain. It seems to keep things usable but its another factor keeping bluesky centralized.

A user-friendly actually decen platform will recognize that they have a "user-facing" protocol – like email – and define a protocol handler for it. ActivityPub did not do this, however. The fedi world keeps operating like ActivityPub is an infrastructure (hidden from users) protocol that piggybacks on https as many infra do. But that makes it user-unfriendly.

@gcluley Isn't the UK government allowing protestors to starve in prison?

They are clearly an evil organisation acting precisely in character.