Thousands of Twitter users across several countries were unable to access the social media site or faced difficulty and delays Saturday.

  • BrotherCod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I know it’s getting into conspiracy realms, but there seems to be a large right-wing buyout of social media. Reddit and Twitter two of the best Independent News sources in North America I’ve already been hit and even though people will argue they are not true new sources, they allow smaller groups to be heard globally. Young people don’t realize how limited news broadcast were before the 2000s. Almost all media was owned by about 50 people worldwide and good luck getting something published that wasn’t in their agenda. You could see it throughout the 50s and 60s as people being labeled radical when their views didn’t coincide with the media magnets. I try not to be an alarmist but I think we’re heading for another dark ages.

    • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think it’s planned at that level, it’s just people like Elon think they deserve and earned everything they have; and the alt-right preachers tell them that they have it because god deems you worthy. It becomes a big circlejerk and then hen you have the Elon’s drinking that flavor-aid.

      But, and I mean this, before 2000 you could still get the information; you just had to put more effort into obtaining it. That was obviously a barrier too high for many, but it was not unfindable or inaccessible.

      • chaogomu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Elon buying Twitter was pushed for by Peter Theil, who is a right-wing nut job. He’s the new Koch as far as funding right wing causes goes.

        Musk was played like a patsy, but has accomplished the goal of turning twitter into a right wing hellscape.

        • Kichae@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Thiel also put money into Reddit and Facebook. Influencing big social media spaces seems to be A Thing That He Does.

    • serklarvel@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      He said he was buying Twitter not for the money but “to save civilization”. His ideas about civilization are all all-right batshit.

      • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        There is definitely coordinated shit going on, but Elon is a tool and not a mastermind. The people coordinating this shit think Elon is an idiot. So Elon isn’t part of some vast conspiracy but he is a tool of the vast conspiracy. He just thinks he’s special.

    • LavaJunk@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re bing a bit alarmist. We’re posting here aren’t we? Getting started here wasn’t much more complicated than getting started on reddit and it will hopefully get easier going forward.

      It seems to me that what is being attempted is enclosure of social media; like many enclosures before it. I don’t think this is a coordinated plot but rather wealthy right-wingers making the rational decisions to secure their own interests. Driven in part by rising interests rates. But ultimately the difference today is we have the ability to create alternatives to assert our own interests.

      • ProdSlash@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Considering Meta is actively trying to use old Microsoft tactics on the Fediverse, I wouldn’t count on it as a safe haven for long.

        • shroomaroomboom@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          A long time ago, I created a website; invited friends and family to check it out, leave comments, and whatever. I had to send them the Web address. That’s it.

          During those days, we were all on the deep web. No one could find you unless you gave them your address.

          That was in the old HTML days, before concerning ourselves with how to code so the web crawlers could find us and let the world know about our site. It’s been all downhill since then.

    • sendingmath@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re exaggerating. There have never been so much media in human history. Anyone can make their own blog and publish anything they want. Yeah, the big social media platforms have the issues you mentioned but there are tons of options out there for people to be heard and voices to get representation.

  • Silverseren@kbin.socialOP
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    1 year ago

    And it’s worse than you think. While this is a “bug”, it is based on a feature that Elon is actively rolling out that will be rate limiting how many tweets you’re allowed to view in a day.

    That seems to be where the current issue stems from, likely something where it’s looking at the amount you’ve read in the previous 24 hours.

    • grus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      lmao, this is fucking hilarious
      I can’t believe I’m saying this but… based elon?
      The feddiverse as a whole might be soon flooded with people tho, prepare yourselves, they comin’

      • Silverseren@kbin.socialOP
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        1 year ago

        He’s removed all of the features of Twitter at this point. It no longer is even the site it was created to be.

        • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          And I kinda don’t get it, Twitter is easy to embed and has good SEO, much like Reddit. Walling this up is the opposite of helpful.

          Same with the rate limit. Interaction and posting is the heartblood of the website and what gives it value.

          • jiaerene@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            why care about helpfulness and community interaction and value when you can simply monetize every single aspect and run the community into the ground for the 💰💰💰

      • hovster9@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’m new, still getting the ropes. Honestly I’ve seen more engagin comments in the last hour than I have on either Reddit or Twitter for the last week.

    • Griffith@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      So to combat system manipulation… he’s giving more power to users that can better manipulate the system.

      People think this genius is going to give us colonies on Mars when all he’s successfully done is take credit for other people’s work, buy a platform for hate with investor’s money, and give Twitter investors a deeply painful colonoscopy.

    • flta@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I support Elon’s decision on this and hope it becomes permanent. That way, the exodus from Twitter can continue and reputable organizations will stop considering Twitter a valid platform.

    • id_kai@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      From my understanding, the posts/day also includes any comments you load up. So, if you’re not careful with the more popular Tweets, you could be rate limited in a very quick manner.

      • artisanrox@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Which would mean people won’t bother with popular tweets people are paying money for to get more views

        💀 lol

    • Cal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’d say reduce the limit to 600 for verified accounts and unverified to 60 and new accounts to 30.
      The world will be a better place.

    • fsniper@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is a bad corporate speak that says, “Don’t scrape our data, consume through api and pay upto your necks”.

    • xNIBx@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      300 posts, most of which are text are obviously too much traffic for a multi-billion dollar social media site.

    • mehble@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      To be fair, I guess this helps people from doom scrolling. Thanks Elon, for getting people to touch grass instead of being glued to social media!

    • bazpoint@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is so stupid it’s barely believable. Like, he’s made some (many) bad moves, but this is literal platform suicide if it isn’t reversed immidiately.

      • Otome-chan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        this. I simply can’t use twitter right now. and some people were saying you can hit 600 tweets in just 15 mins of scrolling. which would basically kill my twitter use entirely. if it continues good chance I stop using twitter.

    • Pamasich@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      So given Reddit’s CEO idolizes Musk and his ideas for Twitter, I wonder how long it’ll take for Reddit to adopt this.

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      If I thought there was a genius behind his actions and a plan, and given his past warnings and fears about AGI, I would almost think that he figured out Twitter was being mined for training for AI and decided he would do everything in his power to obtain the company and sabotage it so it couldn’t be used anymore. If I thought there was a genius mind there.

      Reality is that this is what happens when software designed to work a certain way is suddenly switched over to doing things never planned , such as what happened with Reddit and all the subs that went private.

  • OneSleepyCat@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    First chasing away most advertisers, then requiring an account to even access this site, and now this… the Muskrat actively hates his userbase, doesn’t he?

  • Pluto_Is_A_Planet@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I just find it interesting how the fixation on API and things of that nature is happening all of a sudden across the different platforms.

    You can say it’s Musk being Musk or Reddit setting up for their IPO, but a similar thing has been going on with instagram as well. They had rate limiting for a long time for those without accounts. Then back in May it started to get worse. At the same time they began banning/suspending accounts for merely just existing. The common theme was those accounts only had email attached to them.

    It just seems there’s a real push to isolate things and Twitter and Instagram really want verification.

    • fsniper@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s not that interesting. There is an on going AI (llm) craze that requires participants to acquire huge amounts of “clean” data. Reddit and Twitter are platforms that can provide this. So why not cash on it? Also free money is no more so they are all looking to find ways to penny pinch.

      • eu8@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        That doesn’t explain it IMO. That data is already freely available and LLMs don’t need the latest data. So data scraping for AI makes up a miniscule amount of API usage.

        I think it has more to do with inflation. Investors aren’t putting their money into risky tech companies as much, and so these companies (twitter, reddit, etc) have to prove they can be profitable for once, and they probably are going to fail to do this. It does mean we can’t have nice things for free anymore like API access.

    • originalucifer@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      its about the big datasets required to train systems to interact with and generate content as human beings… as usual, its a profit motive.

    • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think it has to do with OpenAI. They launched the fastest growing app of all time. ChatGPT wouldn’t have been possible without massive amounts of scraping. Reddit and Twitter sees this, and feel like they’re owed a share of their success.

      If someone can make a successful product by scraping Reddit and Twitter, they better pay for it. Especially considering each request costs money for Reddit and Twitter.

      Just my guess.

  • atlhart@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Just a few years ago…even a year ago…I would have thought that was it, the internet has agglomerated around these few sites: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit.

    And then do to mismanagement, the owners of these sites have created an opening for competition.

    I’d never heard of Mastodon until Elon bought Twitter. I’d never heard I’d Lemmy of kbin until Spez decided to shut down the 3PAs.

    These “innovators” are falling into the same traps of as the ghosts of the past. Napster existed because the record industry tries to stop the future, and stop the consumers from getting what they wanted.

    It’s a new day for the internet.

      • Entropywins@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I don’t understand the use of “to be fair” in this context… I don’t think OP was being unfair… I’m probably being pedantic or maybe not enough coffee yet…

  • Otome-chan@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    twitter saw reddit killing itself and decided to speedrun an attempt lol. I randomly hit the rate limit before going to bed without even realizing it was a thing. Thought it was just some twitter error. Woke up, still can’t use twitter, but I’m getting news elsewhere about it. like damn they fucked up. I just can’t use twitter today.

    • VulcanSphere@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s hilarious and sad to see centralised social media platforms killing themselves in real-time (and unofficially endorsing decentralised social media platforms for those who care)