[HN Gopher] Twitter suspends pg's account
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter suspends pg's account
Author : operatingthetan
Score : 720 points
Date : 2022-12-18 22:01 UTC (58 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ericmay wrote:
| Hilarious. Sorry this is low effort but you can't make this stuff
| up.
| rcarr wrote:
| Musk has completely lost the plot.
| elevenoh wrote:
| ulkesh wrote:
| And his mind. Or perhaps that ship sailed long ago.
| legi0nary wrote:
| he hasn't gotten dril yet
| https://twitter.com/dril/status/1604547162708185088
| areoform wrote:
| I posted this in another thread, but this is the worst possible
| decision Musk could have made.
|
| Here's my explanation as to why,
|
| So far no one seems to have discussed that this choice is the
| worst possible decision Musk could have made, which is
| impressive, because it's not often that you can credibly state
| that. His actions have compelled everyone to ask the question
| that shouldn't have to be asked. Is this the
| man whom you'd like to hand the keys to a global communications
| network to?
|
| SpaceX's real customer, the one who signs most of the cheques, is
| the US Government. And right now, after ambitiously building out
| a cutting-edge satellite communications network, SpaceX is trying
| to sell them a battlefield communications network,
| https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ Their customer isn't dumb. The
| customer has been aggressively going back to their old friends
| and are getting them to create a parallel version of this
| network, > The new birds will host sensors that
| comprise seven capability layers, to seamlessly perform data
| communications, track hypersonic and cruise missiles, and provide
| enhanced battle management, navigation, ground support, and
| deterrence from space. Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems are
| each building 10 satellites for the initial data communications
| transport layer, while L3Harris Technologies and SpaceX will
| develop four satellites each for an advanced missile tracking
| layer. The average cost of these satellites is about $14.1
| million, per Tournear.
|
| https://www.sda.mil/us-military-places-a-bet-on-leo-for-spac...
|
| More recently, > SDA recently awarded nearly
| $1.8 billion in contracts for 126 satellites for the Transport
| Layer. By some estimates, about $500 million of that total would
| be for optical terminals, said Michael Abad-Santos, senior vice
| president of business development and strategy at BridgeComm, a
| Denver-based optical communications startup.
|
| https://spacenews.com/dod-space-agency-funds-development-of-...
|
| SpaceX's cut has been a tiny sliver so far. And so they're
| seeking to upsell their central customer and they're doing this
| by playing as nice as possible. SpaceX is packaging
| interoperability into StarLink and is offering the customer the
| ability to integrate additional payloads. >
| Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which
| is the only communications laser operating at scale in orbit
| today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable
| incorporation into the Starshield network.
|
| But what they're really doing is that they're telling the DoD to
| entrust their battlefield comms and some portion of their launch
| detection capabilities to them. To let a private company develop
| and help operate their very shiny new toy. A toy that's likely to
| become the future of warfare. And in the middle of all of these
| talks. A certain someone announced that he'd be cutting off
| Ukraine -- a place where the customer is fighting an active proxy
| war & has a substantial geopolitical + practical vested interest
| - from a version of the fancy constellation they want to upsell
| the customer on.
|
| Not only that, the CEO of SpaceX then more or less steps back
| from his active role, doesn't relinquish his title and starts
| spending his time launching attacks on some of the customer's
| sub-departments. Accuses the customer's sub-departments of
| (relatively unfounded) corruption and creates a political
| headache for senior leaders at the customer.
|
| The SpaceX CEO's replacement, the SpaceX COO, is very levelheaded
| and competent. Someone the customer can do business with, but the
| CEO hasn't given this person any true power or control. The CEO
| is unwilling to let go.
|
| And even more recently, the bizarre attacks have transformed into
| erratic behavior and a very public (and embarrassing) meltdown of
| the CEO.
|
| The customer is watching this and asking themselves the deca-
| billion dollar question, Is this the man whom
| you'd like to hand the keys to a global communications network
| to?
|
| Now, the customer has been nervous about the CEO for some time.
| Things have been building up to this for some time now. And some
| sub-departments of the customer have been using their deep
| pockets to prop up potential competitors and force existing
| laggards to achieve parity. But it'll take time for results to
| materialize.
|
| https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2021/04/06/lockheed-...
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/rocket-lab-carves-off-defe...
|
| https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/27...
|
| https://spacenews.com/spinlaunch-joins-cadre-of-small-launch...
|
| https://spacenews.com/dod-wants-to-change-how-it-buys-space-...
|
| So most of their eggs are already in this basket, and they're
| stuck. For now.
|
| Should the customer commit even more resources & critical
| functionality to this basket?
|
| What if the CEO has an episode and decides to shut off the
| network impromptu? Who would stop him in the short term? Who has
| the power to stop him inside the company? No one.
|
| Of course, if the CEO did that, the customer would step in with
| guns and politely force the CEO to divest from the company and
| resign. It's not like they haven't done this before,
|
| https://spacenews.com/russian-co-founders-out-of-momentus/
|
| But if it comes to that, it's going to become a political
| headache. And some damage would have already been done. Maybe
| even gotten people killed.
|
| The customer doesn't really like unnecessary embarrassments.
| Their plate is, after all, already full of the many, many things
| their many, many, many sub-departments do (and screw up).
|
| ---
|
| Making predictions is difficult. Especially if they're about the
| future. But right now, it seems that SpaceX will either undergo a
| leadership shakeup, or they'll come to an agreement of some sort
| with the Pentagon. Stasis seems to be unsustainable.
| seydor wrote:
| Didn't he supposedly want to make twitter make money? For most of
| its highly followed people, twitter is basically that, a feed to
| lure users to other venues where they sell their stuff. He could
| have requested a fee for promoting those sites. This makes zero
| sense, twitter will never be a facebook replacement, not even
| instagram replacement.
|
| looking forward to more craziness as the week unfolds
| barathr wrote:
| The mastodon server he's on is getting overwhelmed; here are a
| few decent options I shared elsewhere for HN folks:
|
| https://techhub.social
|
| https://infosec.exchange
|
| https://ioc.exchange
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| What do you all think would happen if you walked into Safeway
| parading around with a sign saying "Shop at Ralph's"?
| asadotzler wrote:
| So you walk into Walmart with a Target shirt on and get banned
| from Walmart for life? Yeah. That's surely gonna happen. Not.
| d23 wrote:
| This comment is so depressing. Is there no limit to what he can
| do? Is there no point at which you'll stop defending him?
| Chinjut wrote:
| What do you all think would happen if you mentioned Verizon
| while on an AT&T phone?
| mtmail wrote:
| It's an town square where everybody can parade around with
| signs (tweets) for the public to read, that's the whole purpose
| of the online platform. And where the owner claimed it'll be a
| bastion of freedom of speech.
| mysecretaccount wrote:
| n=1 but I previously thought the reports of Twitter dying were
| overblown and I just signed up for Mastodon.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Possibly malicious enforcement by Twitter staff in light of
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288
|
| "Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more
| relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd
| in the extreme"
| soneca wrote:
| The written policy contradicts his statement.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| It's just "enforcement", there's nothing malicious about it.
| Elon Musk is the CEO and policymaker of Twitter now, he's
| responsible for the actions his company takes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Staff?
| lapcat wrote:
| How many malicious employees do you think would be left at this
| point? There have been massive layoffs, and anyone who didn't
| like Musk or the "extreme hardcore" could have taken the
| severance.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Content moderators can't switch jobs so easily.
| lapcat wrote:
| Which is why they won't go rogue:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044705
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Content moderators aren't on H1-B's.
| lapcat wrote:
| Sigh. Just completely missing the point.
|
| If an employee couldn't afford to leave before -- for
| whatever reason! -- then they can't magically afford to
| leave today either.
| jaidhyani wrote:
| The content moderators were fired some time ago.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > anyone who didn't like Musk or the "extreme hardcore" could
| have taken the severance
|
| If they aren't held hostage by a H-1B visa.
| lapcat wrote:
| Right, but if you're still there because you can't leave,
| then you're not going to do something stupid to get
| yourself immediately fired, like going rogue and suspending
| Paul Graham's account.
| sytelus wrote:
| Where interpretation of "casually" and "occasional" is left to
| the Emperor.
| seydor wrote:
| there was always an emperor
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, in the past there was a committee. There is zero
| evidence that the previous CEO of Twitter personally judged
| who was and who was not to be banned.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| We know that was Vijaya and Roth. Bringing up Dorsey is
| transparent sleight of hand.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| The first word that came to mind when I read the new rule was
| "arbitrariness". I did not expect to be proven right _this_
| fast, honestly.
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the employee who did this gets fired
| as a result of this. In fact, I'd be shocked if @paulg isn't
| reinstated within 48 hours (as they did with Taylor Lorenz a
| few hours ago.) All of Musk's previous interactions with Graham
| suggests that their relationship is friendly. And if there's
| one thing we've seen from Elon Musk's Twitter, it's that he's
| not hesitant to fire Twitter employees.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > All of Musk's previous interactions with Graham suggests
| that their relationship is friendly.
|
| Mohammed bin Salman invited 30 of his closest friends to
| discuss public projects before arresting them and torturing
| them in the Ritz Carlton
|
| Don't ever fall into the trap of anthropomorphism of
| autocrats
| forgetfulness wrote:
| That'd be extremely unfair. It was extremely dangerous to Mr.
| Musk's estate that Paul Graham used his clout to entice
| people to switch to Mastodon. This was nothing but a display
| of unswerving loyalty and adherence to Mr. Musk's vision.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Malicious? Elon Musk wants employees to have utmost loyalty to
| him, what's malicious to risk taking the fall by clicking the
| ban button on the rich, famous and powerful to safeguard the
| vision of the visionary CEO? This was fulfillment of orders
| beyond the call of duty.
|
| Graham was a threat to the Master, what's a loyal servant to
| do?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "competitors" ? I thought that Lonnie was bringing us Twitter:
| The True Public Square? How can there be any competitors for a
| public square?
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm a Musk fan in general but this is hard to defend
| the_duke wrote:
| No one seems to have mentioned the really interesting aspect
| here:
|
| Twitter must be bleeding DAUs.
|
| There are other indicators too.
|
| After the takeover they dropped the login wall, but it is back,
| and way more aggressive than before. You can't even scroll down
| to see more tweets now, or view replies.
|
| The ads are also really weird and odd. Either their ad targeting
| system is broken, or they just lost so many advertisers that they
| have nothing good to show.
|
| I bet the initial influx of previously turned away users is over,
| as well as the returning users just there for the show, and now
| the effects are compounding.
| timdaub wrote:
| this isn't totally true. Today I also noticed that we login
| wall takes more screen space - but you can click it away and it
| didn't return for me anymore on iOS
| d23 wrote:
| Musk is a tin pot tyrant and wannabe fascist requiring complete
| fealty from all his loyalists -- nothing else will suffice. How
| many more straws must break before his supporters will see this
| blindingly obvious truth?
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| This is insane. Elon Musk himself [replied to
| @paulg](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604258004706201602)
| not even 24 hours ago. I bet this will be reversed (quite
| possibly along with the new anti-competitive, anti-free speech
| policy) but if not, this feels like an unprecedented death knell.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| I wonder if pg still thinks Elon is "a smart guy"[1]?
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221218210821/https://twitter.c...
| xupybd wrote:
| That is insane. They have jumped the shark on this one.
|
| My prediction is that they will reverse many of these policies
| but the damage is done.
|
| Banning controversial figures will always stir people in
| different directions. Banning PG when he has clearly done nothing
| violating the TOS will cause a storm.
|
| I had to quit Twitter as it was far too addictive for me. If I'd
| not already done that this would have caused me to bail out.
| sytelus wrote:
| pg's twitter was amazing archive of insightful content. How do I
| get the backup of his tweets? I always thought it will be there
| all the time. Does he has backup that he can share? I am all but
| stunned right now. Need time to process this.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > How do I get the backup of his tweets?
|
| When the account appears again you run one of the many
| archiving tools that downloads tweets to a json file.
|
| Preferably a tool that doesn't require an API key.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > How do I get the backup of his tweets?
|
| You don't.
|
| > I always thought it will be there all the time.
|
| Welcome to the fun times of walled gardens owned by capricious
| wankers!
|
| > Does he has back that he can share?
|
| Maybe!
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I suspect the account will be restored eventually but the
| wayback machine looks like it has a full snapshot:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20221218215229/https://twitter.co...
| wittingtons wrote:
| Do not stand By my page, and weep. I am not
| there, I do not tweet-- I am the thousand winds
| that blow I am the diamond glints in snow I am
| the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle, autumn
| rain. As you awake with morning's hush, I am
| the swift, up-flinging rush Of quiet birds in circling
| flight, I am the day transcending night. Do not
| stand By my page, and cry-- I am not there,
| I did not die.
| breck wrote:
| PG/YC: banned me from Bookface, kicked me out of the email groups
| from the 2 YC classes I was a part of (which happened to be their
| #1 and #2 most valuable classes - _coincidentally_ ), and Reddit
| is one of the most censored places on the net (easy to get
| something to go viral, but then it's flagged by anon mods unless
| you participate in payola).
|
| I still give out "Hackers and Painters" to high school kids, but
| the recent reputation of YC toward free speech is laughable.
| [deleted]
| theSoenke wrote:
| This is beyond ridiculous. Twitter has given me so much over the
| years and it's dismantled in days
| eclipxe wrote:
| Same. It's sad how quickly this is getting absurd.
| bell-cot wrote:
| This is capitalism. He'd be completely within his rights to buy
| Twitter for cash...then completely shut it down, pay off A/P &
| such, and liquidate all assets.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's allowed to be annoyed about it.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Twitter is great, but its the users that provide the value, not
| Twitter itself. If all the interesting people are moving to
| Mastodon, guess I'll need to move as well.
| britneybitch wrote:
| Wow. PG did not even post any links, he pretty much just said "I
| have a Mastodon account." And just like that, banned.
|
| Looks like now you're not allowed to so much as mention that you
| use other websites on the internet besides Twitter.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I use TinyURL. I'm sure other link shorteners work. When a
| snitch reports the tweet I add random query variables to the
| url and generate another short link.
| threatofrain wrote:
| From official Twitter support:
|
| > We recognize that many of our users are active on other
| social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free
| promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.
|
| > Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the
| purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that
| contains links or usernames for the following platforms:
| Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and
| Post.
|
| And from Elon Musk:
|
| > Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more
| relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd
| in the extreme.
| louloulou wrote:
| lol, nostr? There are like 20 people on that, it's still just
| an experiment.
| dawnbreez wrote:
| This is actually how I found out about several of these
| services. Elon's finding out the hard way that the
| Streisand Effect continues to work no matter how hard you
| swing the banhammer.
| slg wrote:
| Notice that TikTok isn't on the list. Seems like Musk crafted
| the rules in a way to ensure that one of his favorite Twitter
| accounts is safe from this rule about posting links to other
| social media.
| andirk wrote:
| I sure hope not. I'm an adult. I don't watch TikTok until
| it lands on Instagram or Twitter.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| freedom. of. speech. absolutist.
| sapporo_197 wrote:
| Like SBF, Elon failed to consult lawyers before getting on
| Twitter and it's ducking hilarious.
|
| This is probably illegal (anticompetitive) and even if not it
| will destroy faith in corporate social media and I can't
| wait. Good to flush the system so the flood of LLM bits
| doesn't do too much damage.
| easygenes wrote:
| Free speech!
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| This is not exactly free speech issue, because Twitter does
| not ban based on political preferences/opinions.
|
| This is dishonest competition (all other major companies do
| the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for
| example). Twitter could be an exception. But it won't.
| mind-blight wrote:
| It's very likely an antitrust issue. This is a significant
| policy shift meant to stifle a competitor through market
| dominance rather than competition. I'd be surprised if the
| consumer protection bureau doesn't start an investigation
| dawnbreez wrote:
| > because Twitter does not ban based on political
| preferences/opinions.
|
| Because the journalists Musk banned were definitely not
| banned for their opinions on Musk?
|
| I'm going to preempt the 'harassment' argument--the photo
| Musk posted, when he was claiming that the journalists
| caused him to be stalked, was found to have been taken an
| hour after Musk's jet took off and nowhere near any
| airport.
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| > were definitely not banned for their opinions on Musk?
|
| They banned because they shared his jet location.
|
| > he was claiming that the journalists caused him to be
| stalked
|
| Did he claim that specifically? I'm not sure. But if he
| did, these claims are probably incorrect.
|
| But that does not cancel the fact that journalists were
| posting jet location after he asked (via twitter
| policies) not to.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > They banned because they shared his jet location.
|
| This is false in some cases.
| joshfraser wrote:
| It's both.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| No, it literally said in the rules that he posted that any
| attempt to get around it would also be a violation. He told
| people where to find it. He attempted to get around it. So it's
| a violation.
|
| A stupid rule, but technically someone at Twitter has to
| enforce it. Since the people suspending accounts aren't in
| charge of what rules they enforce and which they don't.
|
| How much you want to bet this ends up with the EU threatening
| Musk again?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is
| which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping?_
| -- ERM
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that was a Tweet by Musk at some point. Well, we know
| now how that test played out.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The order Proboscidea encompasses elephants, stegodonts, and
| [redacted, praise Elon].
| memish wrote:
| This is fucking sad. This is just as bad as the old Twitter
| that banned people for saying things like "learn to code".
|
| Any hope for an improved Twitter is getting tossed out the
| window.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I note a change of tone. Even if there is no hope for Twitter
| at least there is hope for you, it seems. Have an upvote.
| malermeister wrote:
| Free Speech is back, baby!
| tedunangst wrote:
| Yeah, well, he also said "I'm not leaving Twitter." and nobody
| tells Elon whether they're leaving or not. That's Elon's call
| to make and his alone.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| I would be willing to bet that Elon follows pg... and he
| probably took personal offense to him leaving.
| garbagetime wrote:
| You are wrong about what PG said. In fact, his Tweet included
| an explanation of where to find a link to his Mastodon account.
|
| Elon has made it clear that these blatant attempts at ban
| evasion are not allowed.
| meshugga wrote:
| It's not what the TOS say though.
| garbagetime wrote:
| Note that Twitter's TOS are only one of the three
| components of the Twitter User Agreement. There are also
| the Twitter Rules and Policies. This is what Twitter's
| Rules and Policies page says:
|
| > At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will
| remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social
| media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to
| any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your
| handle without a URL:
| meshugga wrote:
| Both of which paulg didn't do.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| .... Read it again dude. That's a non exhaustive list he
| clearly violated it. Kind of a bullshit policy but he
| clearly violated it.
| zakki wrote:
| PG didn't do any of that, did he?
| Terretta wrote:
| The more detail you provide, the clearer it is PG didn't
| take the prohibited action.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't think it's worth getting hung up on what the TOS
| say.
|
| Twitter is Musk's fiefdom now and the rules are what he
| decides they are. Letter of the law is worthless here; it's
| will-of-the-baron rules.
| tibbon wrote:
| Is using Mastadon (a competing service) an attempt at ban
| evasion?
| signal11 wrote:
| PG's tweet said, iirc, go to my website, it has my Mastodon
| link. He didn't even mention his website, it's on his bio.
|
| If that's not okay to Twitter, that's extremely interesting.
| Brings Apple's App Store rules to mind.
| modeless wrote:
| My thoughts too. If Twitter is going to start behaving like
| the App Store I want no part of it.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| This isn't as much behaving like the App Store as it is
| telling the App Store "hold my beer".
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea but doesn't bring Apple App Store rules to mind that's
| nonsense.
| paulgb wrote:
| I think the Apple rule they're referring to is that if
| you have an in-app transaction, you're not allowed to
| reference the fact that the transaction can be made off-
| app (which would avoid Apple's 30% cut). It's not quite
| the same, but similarly draconian in that it restricts
| what you're allowed to say (as opposed to what you're
| allowed to link to).
| signal11 wrote:
| That's one part of it, also if you sell say ebooks or
| MP3s, you can't sell them in-app, but also you can't even
| provide a link in-app to buy them using the mobile
| browser.
|
| I don't want to derail this conversation with App Store
| policies, but the notion of policing links isn't great,
| especially for a social network.
| modeless wrote:
| Not only that. There are a lot of things you can't say on
| the App Store. Pretty much anything critical of App Store
| policies as text in your app (rather than user generated
| content) is likely to get you the boot.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| no because you can't also say that your free app ios is
| on android too
| thebradbain wrote:
| The TOS says any accounts that primarily focus on promotion
| of competitors will be banned, which, hm, but anyways. I
| think it's obvious PG's account was not primarily focused on
| links to other socials, so on to the next condition.
|
| The TOS also says any accounts which post a direct link to
| such sites will be found in violation.
|
| It does not say anything about purely mentioning the fact you
| have another social media (especially without saying the
| username), nor linking to a personal website, nor does it say
| anything about referring to where to find such a thing
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Calling this a "blatant attempt at ban evasion" is
| uncharitable. What he wrote was, at most, _arguably_ against
| the _spirit_ of the rule. This is not even to speak of
| whether the rule is reasonable, or even just consistent with
| Elon 's stated values.
| ekidd wrote:
| > _blatant attempts at ban evasion_
|
| This is a very strange way to describe what's going on at
| Twitter.
|
| Musk has loudly announced that you're not allowed to even
| _link_ to your other profiles on any other social media
| sites, or even describe indirectly how to find them. No major
| social media site has ever done something quite this
| anticompetitive, and certainly not all this scale. I 've been
| using the Internet since the Eternal September, and this is a
| ludicrous policy.
| garbagetime wrote:
| You have misunderstood what Elon and I are referring to by
| 'ban evasion'.
|
| You may disagree with the policy of banning the promotion
| of alternative social platforms, but that _is_ the rule.
| Trying to break that rule while not getting banned is
| blatantly ban evasion.
| commoner wrote:
| That's not what ban evasion means. Ban evasion is the
| attempt to circumvent an existing ban or suspension.
| Posting content that does not benefit Twitter, without
| violating Twitter's rules, is not ban evasion.
|
| Here is Twitter's policy on ban evasion:
| https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/ban-
| evasion
|
| In case Twitter changes this policy, here's an archived
| copy of the current version (October 2020): https://web.a
| rchive.org/web/20221218225353/https://help.twit...
| drakmo wrote:
| Elon and garbagetime pretty much go together hand in hand
| jacquesm wrote:
| Peas in a pod, those two. Rarely see them separately any
| more. Just friends?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Elon and you? Really?
| dm319 wrote:
| Ok, what do you think of that rule?
| watwut wrote:
| Maaan, the expression "ban evasion" is becoming as
| meaningless as "free speech" along with "bias" and so on.
|
| People just use them fully randomly.
| leviathant wrote:
| Some people don't seem to understand the inter- part of the
| word internet.
| eclipxe wrote:
| That's not very free speech of twitter, now is it?
| dm319 wrote:
| Even worse, does it apply any ethical principles to the
| decision making around the limits of freedom of speech?
| I.e. when you're weighing up whether, say, incitement of
| violence, or Nazi support are beyond the line of what is
| acceptable, do you also place 'promoting alternative social
| media technology' as somewhere near these limits of freedom
| of speech?
| dm319 wrote:
| I'm curious - I've seen his tweet. Can I ask you:
|
| 1. Are you just an advocate for following a website's terms?
|
| 2. Or do you think there is credibility in these terms?
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| So... clearly PG posted working instructions for how to find
| his Mastodon account, with the intent that people would execute
| those instructions to find him on Mastodon[1]. And... yeah,
| that's illegal[3] per the rather vague policy posted this
| morning.
|
| All that said, in context this was a truly ridiculous ban from
| a PR perspective, and it's hard to believe that Musk personally
| approved it unless there's some hidden drama we can't see. I
| think we need to be at least open to the possibility[2] that
| this was a "rogue" employee fed up with the nonsense and
| banning a famous account in rigid adherence to the dumb rule of
| the day.
|
| [1] Existence proof: I followed those instructions the second I
| saw the Tweet, and followed him on Mastodon.
|
| [2] And yes, logically this is nothing more than a conspiracy
| theory. But... come on, at this point, why the hell not?
|
| [3] _(edit because someone decided to pick on this word) in the
| colloquial sense of "against the rules" of course, not about
| actual law. c.f. "illegal forward pass"._
| DiNovi wrote:
| krferriter wrote:
| I think we need to be at least open to the possibility that
| the current owner of privately held Twitter is an
| extraordinarily thin-skinned douchebag with the conflict
| management skills of a spoiled toddler, and a lengthy track
| record of petty ridiculous retaliation against people who
| suggest he is wrong about something or otherwise not the
| biggest genius in the world.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| Musk shouldn't be involved personally in any suspension
| decisions. That's a huge part of the problem
| jurassic wrote:
| You can't blame the enforcement of a new policy on a "rogue
| employee". The buck stops with Elon and he needs to own the
| consequences of whatever policy changes he decides to enact.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| > illegal
| [deleted]
| sapporo_197 wrote:
| 98codes wrote:
| So far links to legit-elephant.lol/@username@instance.name seem
| to work.
|
| So far.
| echelon wrote:
| I was a pretty big Elon fan a year ago. SpaceX is/was a
| monumental achievement.
|
| He's gone insane.
|
| Suggesting Taiwan and Ukraine surrender, all this Twitter
| nonsense...
|
| I'm shorting TSLA to $50 on Monday.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Careful. Tesla may rally once BizarroElon is stood down
| napier wrote:
| Entirely anecdotal but I did notice a marked shift towards
| even more erratic behaviour and dissonant, often
| contradictory utterances after his second disclosed Covid
| bout back in March this year and since then.
| sytelus wrote:
| Hack, I bought SpaceX t-shirts with my own money. Now I can't
| wear them without people raising their eyebrows at me. I
| think this entire billionaire circle is on drugs like EMSAM,
| methamphetamine, microdosing and what not. This strange
| erratic behavior is not otherwise explainable.
| computerex wrote:
| Meanwhile others have been warning about his lunacy for years
| and up till recently have faced nothing but backlash from his
| internet armies. It just feels so good to see comments like
| yours. It's out in the open now, everyone now knows he is a
| greedy charlatan.
| tim333 wrote:
| >everyone now knows he is a greedy charlatan.
|
| I think he's good at the engineering stuff. It's just
| social media is not really his forte.
|
| I wouldn't go for the TSLA short myself.
| chasil wrote:
| I really don't know who he is.
|
| I see him make "pedo" commentary and I cringe, but reusable
| rockets are an enormous achievement. I don't see any
| compelling reason to buy an electric car, but his execution
| of the Twitter buyout has revealed biased regulation in the
| extreme, perhaps by illegal proxy from the FBI.
|
| These are important questions, and he has admitted that he
| is under stress and not completely stable.
|
| I'm not sure what to think.
| echelon wrote:
| > he has admitted that he is under stress and not
| completely stable.
|
| He owes allegiance to the Chinese for Gigafactory
| Shanghai, the Saudis for Twitter, the US DoD for SpaceX,
| the Russians for industrial inputs. And they all want
| very different things.
|
| Then he gets goaded into buying Twitter in a botched
| attempt to manipulate its stock price, can't back out,
| and ultimately ties up a large percentage of his wealth
| in it.
|
| Now he's having to play private equity turnaround while
| all of the metrics are going down and to the right.
|
| I feel kind of sorry for him, but he brought it on
| himself.
| meshugga wrote:
| This is amazing. He basically said, he'd return if elon comes
| around, and wishes him the best. And just said "my mastodon is
| on my website". No violation of those new "TOS" of any kind.
|
| https://mas.to/@paulg seems to have been hugged to death
| already :)
| cesarb wrote:
| > https://mas.to/@paulg seems to have been hugged to death
| already :)
|
| You can watch the account in your own instance (if someone on
| your instance has already followed him, which is likely for
| larger instances). Just go to
| https://example.org/@paulg@mas.to (replace the domain with
| your favorite instance's domain).
|
| (Edit: fixed typo)
| barathr wrote:
| Try https://techhub.social and then follow from there
| BryantD wrote:
| Nah, it's clearly a violation:
|
| "Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on
| external links to the above prohibited social media platforms
| through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking,
| plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy."
|
| Musk doesn't want people talking about other social media
| sites. Telling people where they can find you at one remove
| counts.
| threatofrain wrote:
| No, it's not clearly a violation. From Elon Musk:
|
| > Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more
| relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is
| absurd in the extreme.
|
| That was very casual and not at all an example of
| relentless advertising for competitors. It's also extremely
| dubious that PG was trying to evade Twitter enforcement.
| andirk wrote:
| Let me get this straight. Troll buys Twitter, says
| Twitter will promote "free speech". Re-instates scumbag
| accounts because people have the right to be scumbags.
| BUT you can't talk about 1) his jet, 2) other websites
| that are you know kind of similar to Twitter, 3) coke
| fiend laptops.
| cdash wrote:
| This absolutely was not casually sharing a link that
| happened to be on another platform. It was an
| announcement about quitting twitter and an advertisement
| on where he could be found on a competing platform.
|
| It is straight up the EXACT scenario that the policy was
| put in place for.
| antiframe wrote:
| Do you know what the word relentless means? A single
| mention cannot be relentless.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What really puzzles me is why after all this there are
| _still_ people carrying water for this prick.
| hackernewds wrote:
| It's a ridiculous policy.
| hackernewds wrote:
| So you can incite and insurrection or be antisemitic and
| be reinstated, but you can't post a link to a competitor.
| These rules are arbitrary - Twitter is an absolute clown
| show now
| Beltalowda wrote:
| He didn't just casually share a link to his site though;
| he said "you can find my Mastodon account on my site".
| That's basically just posting a link to your Mastodon
| account, but with an extra step.
|
| Is the new policy bullshit? Sure. But clearly this is
| against the spirit of it.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| What happened to absolute freeze peach?
| sytelus wrote:
| Only Emperor is permitted to interpret his words.
| croon wrote:
| Reconcile this with what you wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288
| BryantD wrote:
| That's not really my job. If you want him to resolve the
| discrepancy between what he Tweeted and what's on the
| policy page, you should ask him.
|
| Given that PG got suspended, the weight of evidence seems
| to be that my interpretation is correct. If Elon
| clarifies, I'll certainly edit!
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| "Sorry to be a free speech absolutist." - das Muskrat
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
| meshugga wrote:
| Having a personal website with contact information is not
| URL cloaking or plaintext onfuscation. Those TOS are
| ludicrous to begin with, but are not by any reasonable
| understanding written to say that you can not have a
| personal website with other social media.
| catach wrote:
| > not URL cloaking or plaintext onfuscation.
|
| Those methods are presented as _non-exhaustive_ examples.
| "Technical or non-technical means" resolves to every
| possible method.
| BryantD wrote:
| Sure, you can have a personal website with links to other
| social media. You just can't advertise that fact on
| Twitter.
|
| "We will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-
| party social media platforms."
|
| I don't see how "I have an account on Mastodon and here's
| how you can find it" doesn't violate that. The policy
| doesn't require the promotion to be direct. If there was
| any doubt, the policy explicitly includes linktr.ee.
|
| It's a ludicrous policy for sure!
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Their argument isn't that you can't _have_ that website,
| but that you can 't promote your other socials, on
| twitter, via it. Ridiculous, of course.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| It's not like he said he'll just write on his site from
| now on, and got banned because his site also has links to
| his other social media.
|
| He expressly said you can find his mastodon, a prohibited
| social media site as outlined by Twitter, on his website.
|
| So he was promoting his mastodon with non-technical means
| and circumvented the new policy. While linking to the new
| policy... showing moderators he was well aware of it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Banned for being too high profile and mentioning Mastodon,
| essentially.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| You don't understand! Elon just wanted to lighten the load on
| Mastodon's servers! He saw that PG's instance was slow to load
| from all the traffic and he felt really bad that Twitter was
| enabling this DDOS!
| mmaunder wrote:
| So leave. Not sarcasm - I'm hoping to provoke self analysis. How
| much of a hold does Twitter have on us? On me? On my company?
| These are things I'm thinking about.
|
| Let's assume Musk is a rational market participant making
| rational choices based on what he thinks is reliable data and
| accurate assumptions. He would be assuming Twitter's network
| effect is strong enough to allow authoritarian leadership and
| decisions that are counter to the majority will. If most of us
| are still on Twitter, Musk is right and is exercising the control
| he has of the platform knowing there will be little cost. So is
| he?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The situation with Twitter has gotten so ridiculous that it's
| pretty much impossible to comment substantively on this topic at
| this point.
|
| So: lol
| Gigachad wrote:
| I was holding the "wait and see" stance on the whole saga. I've
| now seen. lol
| yibg wrote:
| The one potential silver lining is maybe now more people
| realize the ridiculousness of this all and the pendulum swings
| back the other way some how.
| d23 wrote:
| It's possible, it's just that Musk's behavior is so abhorrent
| there's essentially no remaining reasonable defense of any of
| his naked hypocrisy and childishness.
| tahoelabs wrote:
| absolutely. colbert-eating-popcorn.gif
| rinze wrote:
| There isn't enough popcorn on the planet for this show. 10/10
| would watch again.
| paganel wrote:
| > to comment substantively on this topic at this point
|
| Why not? "It's a private platform!". If that very substantive
| statement was embraced a couple of years ago by many that have
| now got banned I don't see why they can't follow their own
| (past) advice.
| elevenoh wrote:
| sharkweek wrote:
| I joked with a friend years ago when Elon started this act that
| if the billionaire class is going to have their way with the
| rest of society then they better at least be entertaining.
|
| I can't say I've been much of an Elon fan for a while now but
| he does give me plenty to gawk at, a modern day bread and
| circus.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Just a reminder for turbulent times: send tweets you find
| interesting to archive.ph or archive.is
| neilv wrote:
| This comes across as especially petty of Elon Musk, to do it to
| another prominent dotcom-boom rich-guy. (Even if it was an
| accident of automation this time, it's easy to believe Musk
| personally ordered it.)
| SilverBirch wrote:
| There's kind of three options here:
|
| * Elon is personally policing twitter, and has banned PG in a fit
| of pique, despite literally being at a party in Doha the world
| cup
|
| * Twitter's staff are just being _crazy_ over the top with
| bannings - this might actually be the most likely. It 's kind of
| obvious that Twitter has some automated systems that suspend
| accounts when they get mass reported, and some people with a
| sense of humour may well have taken Elon at his word and msas
| reported PG's account, and Twitter is so understaffed slips like
| this will happen
|
| * With so few staff left, and only the True Believers, twitter's
| remaining staff have adopted a "fuck you, I'm the law" approach
| to moderation.
| dekhn wrote:
| Can I recommend a weighted combination of those three options,
| with a collection of other small-weight contributions?
| nwoli wrote:
| Elon has been posting about soccer for hours I doubt he was
| involved with this
| riffraff wrote:
| I think you miss the option that the moderation staff is a few
| (possibly incompetent) people in a sweat shop who just
| misunderstood what they're supposed to do, as everything is
| being don on a whim.
| notatoad wrote:
| this seems unlikely based on what's been happening over the
| last week or so with elonjet - every time somebody tried to
| give elon the benefit of the doubt and that actions were
| being taken without his direct approval, it quickly came to
| be that he would publicly back those same decisions.
|
| whoever is taking these actions, it's pretty clear that it's
| not being done against elon's will.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| He is pretty clearly personally policing Twitter. The extent is
| unclear, but he is clearly doing at least some of it.
| easygenes wrote:
| I'd bet on a good mix of 2 and 3 here.
| seydor wrote:
| Or maybe said employees are trying to get themselves fired?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Musk literally held a poll over unsuspending the journalists
| that were banned (which failed twice, he had to delete it once
| and retry it and still failed to get what he wanted), so it's
| the first option. He's the head honcho telling people what to
| do.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Haven't we learned anything from the Trump era? People like you
| continue to give people like Musk the benefit of the doubt
| despite massive public evidence that we are long past the
| benefit of doubt stage.
| watwut wrote:
| Musk personally policing twitter is pretty obvious for, like,
| last month or more. He personally picks accounts to restore and
| accounts to close.
|
| And there are very clear patterns in both. Including him
| announcing some of these on Twitter.
| richbell wrote:
| Someone does something Elon doesn't like, magically the next
| day there's a rule against it that's arbitrarily defined and
| enforced, even if it contradicts something Elon has said in
| the past.
|
| Like revealing a "bombshell" that Twitter was shadow banning
| users... only to then shadow ban the @ElonJet account.
|
| https://archive.ph/jhJHd
| yokoprime wrote:
| I say this without any proof, but it will not surprise me the
| least if he has access to unilaterally ban users directly (i.e.
| click of a button) without any sort of approval from other
| staff.
| paxys wrote:
| The silicon valley VC class failed a basic history lesson - never
| prop up a dictator thinking your are his equal and will be spared
| from having to kiss his ring. They are all going to have to fall
| in line or be labeled the enemy.
|
| The All In podcast crew must be sweating right now.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| PG's final tweet before suspension (https://archive.ph/p3ElV):
|
| > This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my
| new Mastodon profile on my site.
|
| > [embedded link to new Twitter policy]
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Trying to come up with a theory that makes sense. This is my best
| effort - Elon Musk as the Beast Rabban. Rule with an iron fist,
| brutal, harsh decisions and insane demands. Then, step out, to be
| replaced by a leader who is demanding but comparatively much more
| reasonable and lenient. Remaining staff and users will appreciate
| the new leader, though they might have resented the change if
| they weren't first shocked by the Beast Musk.
| eclipxe wrote:
| lol. Twitter is a joke now. How sad.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| He mentioned the M word and got suspended for it.
| acaloiar wrote:
| This is getting too comical.
| MiguelX413 wrote:
| Lmao
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Okay. That's weird. I commented on this thread and now I can't
| log into twitter. It doesn't say I'm suspended, it just tells me
| @retrocryptid doesn't exist when I try to log in. Then intarwebs
| are weird, yo.
| jules wrote:
| His mastodon account has also been suspended on the server I'm
| on. Ugh, what is it with person C deciding that person B is not
| allowed to see what person A says. I dislike human nature
| sometimes. Or at least the personality type that is attracted to
| moderator positions.
| ahelwer wrote:
| So go to a different instance or even start up your own! That's
| the beauty of it, now you don't have to care what person C
| thinks - you can just go elsewhere.
| jwmoz wrote:
| tldr; Musk is an idiot.
| rdl wrote:
| I am in shock.
|
| I don't _really_ care that much about anything on Twitter, but
| this implies either 1) we 're not going to get to Mars from
| SpaceX or 2) the level of capriciousness is in excess of my
| tolerance for life support/other critical operations.
|
| I hope someone else steps up, because I'd like to get to Mars.
| fairity wrote:
| Lolllllllllllllll. I'm sorry, but in all seriousness, that really
| is all there is to say about this. I guess he is leaving Twitter
| after all!
| dekhn wrote:
| And so this is how twitter ends. Not with a twang, but a simper.
| nwoli wrote:
| Obviously an automated mistake people, he'll be back in a few
| hours
| willmadden wrote:
| He's on the cap table, right? I bet they got several hundred of
| you to click Twitter links just from hacker news alone.
| hnbad wrote:
| That doesn't sound like a good advertising strategy for a well
| established platform, especially given how likely HN users are
| to block ads.
| appel wrote:
| Wow. This is insanity. I really fail to understand Musk's end
| game here. You'd almost think running Twitter into the ground is
| the goal.
| wereallterrrist wrote:
| I'm going to die from eating popcorn. What an epic battle of
| parasocial allegiance, for some here, this must be.
| kuahyeow wrote:
| Capricious enforcement sucks
|
| See also Andor episode 8 (spoilers so I won't post exact details)
| ;)
| malloc2048 wrote:
| How do we know his account is suspended and not deleted/disabled
| by himself?
| rdxm wrote:
| popilewiz wrote:
| This is just vindictive behavior. Wouldn't be surprised if Musk
| authorized it personally
| weare138 wrote:
| The suspensions will continue until morale improves.
| sytelus wrote:
| Analogy of tyrant in other thread is very apt. Reminds me of
| Caesar who won impossible wars, gained huge respect and then took
| over the senate while still claiming that Rome was a republic.
| Interestingly he became dictator only because all other nobles
| thought he must be doing something right if he won all he
| impossible wars.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think we're speedrunning Soviet history here or something. It
| started with the journalists and the peasants and within weeks
| we're already at infighting among the party leadership. Paul
| actually got the Trotsky treatment lol.
|
| In a week or two we'll be engaging in samizdat and try to climb
| over the Twitter walls to Mastodon while Elon is sniping people
| from his throne
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There are less interesting ways to set $40B on fire I suppose.
| ohhell wrote:
| tambourine_man wrote:
| It's getting really hard for Musk supporters to justify him.
| blitzar wrote:
| They are all still pretty sure he will buy them a horse
| thought.
| LastTrain wrote:
| He had two kinds of supporters. The people like me who
| respected him because of the things he accomplished, and the
| ones that love him because he pisses liberals off. He's lost
| the former but the latter love him even more now.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| That's likely true, but I wonder about the distribution.
| Annecdata, but among my contacts, opinions about Tesla
| follows feelings about Musk, ie. it'll have really economic
| impact.
|
| I was (vaguely) in the former category until I saw his petty
| vengeance on people who he perceived to have wronged him. Eg.
| he had a Tesla event and arrived 2 hours late. Someone
| complained, and Musk had his Tesla order cancelled! However I
| only truly saw him for what he is when COVID hit and he
| laughed it away as a bad cold while people were dying.
| d23 wrote:
| I wish, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Elsewhere in this
| thread:
|
| > What do you all think would happen if you walked into Safeway
| parading around with a sign saying "Shop at Ralph's"?
|
| It's honestly sad. It's like these people have nothing. Musk
| has taken advantage of that and given them meaning, but he is
| debasing and humiliating them in the process. And I assume he
| enjoys watching people still come to his defense despite
| nakedly lying to them and manipulating them.
| skc wrote:
| You'd be surprised how resilient these people are
| halfjoking wrote:
| Musk supporter here, downvoted proof here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33985682
|
| I'm in agreement with all of you.
|
| This is some BS that goes against all the ideals of an open
| internet. He's not just being petty by banning competitors,
| he's banning link aggregators. A lot of them are used for
| organizing political movements or needed for running a
| business.
|
| This move means he doesn't understand social media. Banning
| PG without even a link? That's just icing on an authoritarian
| cake.
|
| Apparently all Elon cares about is usage so hopefully this
| policy causes a huge drop. I have hope that he'll quickly
| reverse course.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Seems like its going to be a bit late - what better way to
| promote your competition than acknowledging it and banning
| it? Just streisanded himself.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Trump supporters haven't slowed down a bit. In fact, they tried
| to overthrow the government under his banner. Why do you think
| it will be any different for Musk supporters?
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| I am of the least charitable echelon of people when it comes
| to Trump supporters, but even I recognize that this is
| untrue. Trump has clearly fallen off, as is evident by the
| remarkable underperformance of his endorsed candidates in the
| midterm elections. I observe that many Redhats are moving on
| to DeSantis as their new GOP "God-Emperor."
|
| That said, this has little to nothing to do with the subject
| at hand.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| > this has little to nothing to do with the subject at hand
|
| I don't think that's accurate, it's another example of
| human behavior and to what lengths zealots will go to
| support their idols in the face of increasing evidence
| their support should probably be withdrawn.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Elon keeping his promise from Nov 9: Please
| note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
| We will keep what works & change what doesn't.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590384919829962752
| [deleted]
| paul7986 wrote:
| Elon Musk is going the way of Will Smith in terms of public
| goodwill and adoration!
|
| There's no turning back!
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i always thought this was obvious about his character, why are
| people just now realizing this?
| masklinn wrote:
| Less Will Smith and more Kanye.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Speaking of which, Kanye, Alex Jones, and Nick Fuentes are
| interestingly still banned. Hard for anyone to believe Musk's
| free speech claim anymore.
| [deleted]
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I was going to disagree, but then I thought about it and gave
| a reluctant upvote.
|
| Maybe it's a bit crass, but I wonder if Elon is on some drugs
| or something. His behavior is bizarre, and I don't buy the
| "he was always like this" line. He didn't seem to be like
| this at all until recently.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| How recently is recently? To me, he showed his true colors
| in 2018 when he accused someone of being a pedophile
| because they had the audacity to disagree with an idea Musk
| had. He punches down, way down.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Could be personal/family issues as well. Perhaps his
| daughter transitioning genders and disavowing him, combined
| with Grimes moving on to date a transgender woman triggered
| something inside of him to go on this crusade against the
| "Woke" who he blames for these things happening.
| djur wrote:
| He's shown occasional impulsive, destructive behavior in
| the past ("pedo guy", getting in trouble with the SEC) but
| he seems to have lost whatever handle he had on it.
| neaden wrote:
| He really has though. I remember in 2013 when NYT gave
| Tesla a somewhat bad review he became extremely combative
| trying to use the cars GPS data to allege that the reviewer
| was intentionally trying to get lower performance, then a
| bit later he sued Top Gear for a bad review. Most famously
| of course is the whole pedo thing but Mjsk has always been
| very combative.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| To which one might, or might not, say "Yay!"
| spritefs wrote:
| Every day I feel like more of an idiot for giving Elon the
| benefit of the doubt with this whole freedom of speech thing
|
| At this point he's so completely tarnished his public image, I
| don't see Tesla surviving this long term unless he sells out and
| rides off into the sunset
| [deleted]
| ZuLuuuuuu wrote:
| I wonder if Jack Dorsey will get suspended as well, because he
| shares his Nostr account on his Twitter profile and Nostr is
| specifically mentioned among the prohibited social media sites.
| Ciantic wrote:
| My only gripe is that Paul Graham chose mas.to, there is famous
| people running instances that know a thing or two.
|
| For instance Alex Stamos is running https://cybervillains.com/
| it's relatively small, and these famous people know how to
| connect each other.
|
| Scaling something run by an anonymous Trumpet (mas.to) is a bit
| harder.
| eigart wrote:
| This is hilarious.
|
| I've been thinking that pg was probably invited to invest
| (earlier in 2022). Would be cool to hear his reasoning for
| turning it down at the time.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Can you imagine how that conversation would go
|
| Elon: Hey I'm buying twitter, you want in?
|
| PG: Look Elon, I'm just trying to run a start up accelerator,
| I've already accidentally ended up in charge of one social
| media site and those nerds are a constant pain in the ass, I
| don't think you know what you're letting yourself in for
|
| Elon: Not even a billy?
|
| PG: No billies Elon.
| kache_ wrote:
| this is so bad. at this rate it's over for twitter - the tech
| liberetraian folks are getting disenfranchised, when usually,
| they're the supporters of Elon antics. Wild
|
| Curious to see how other platforms react. Beginning to see a huge
| opportunity manifest
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Honestly it's hilarious to see the Elon worshippers turn against
| him. Paul Graham and Ryan Jones - check. Tim Urban, Andrej
| Karpathy, Sam Altman - no comment so far, but I suspect they're
| not on Elon team anymore. Lex Fridman - no chance, that guy would
| gladly follow him to grave.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| David Sacks would follow also. Seeing him constantly defend
| Musk on that All In podcast is painful. "he will never do that"
| one week turns into "ok he did that but...". It's like a weekly
| no true scotsman act watching him try and reinvent an argument
| that fits the very short lived situation into some grand
| humanity saving strategy. And you have to seriously question
| his motivation.
| s-xyz wrote:
| This is the post that he was banned for:
| https://mas.to/@google/109537142875594917
| dang wrote:
| Previous thread in this sequence:
|
| _Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985
|
| I've moved that one off the front page, partly because these are
| more or less the same story, but mostly because the traffic on
| this is boiling our poor server and I need to resort to tricks.
| Sorry all!
|
| In case you're not aware: you need to click on the "more
| comments" links at the bottom of the pages to get to the rest of
| the thread; also, you can make HN faster by logging out when it's
| keeling over. (Make sure you know your password and/or have a
| usable email address in your profile before logging out!) Also,
| performance improvements shouldn't be too far off now... but not
| today.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| He tried to rage quit but Twitter did it for him. The amount of
| bs in this thread is amazing. He posted a link to to the status
| with the rule update and wrote that one could find his Mastodon
| account on his site. So not much to fuzz about.
|
| I am more upset that someone like PG don't have working TLS on
| his site.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Well this aged like milk
| https://mastodon.social/@edbott/109536397352268007
| network2592 wrote:
| archive link for the last tweet before suspension
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221218213043/https://twitter.c...
| colinrtwhite wrote:
| Test
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I would love to talk to one of the people that kept saying "you
| all don't understand. Musk runs billion dollar companies, he
| knows what he is doing. He will fix Twitter" now that this is
| happening. What is the grand plan now in their world view?
| dm319 wrote:
| Honestly, I care less about 'fixing' something so it is
| profitable, and more about what ethical compass people are
| using to make their decisions. A couple months ago it was the
| free speech absolutionists versus those who felt some form of
| regulation is needed. Now we seem to be asking "if there are
| limits to free speech, should discussing other media platforms
| be part of that?".
|
| This makes me think that we, as a world, are failing at
| building an ethical framework for people to work by. Why is it
| that so many of us struggle to evaluate what is ethical and
| what isn't? It isn't taught at school, except in the context of
| religion. We all need to understand the principals of autonomy,
| beneficience, nonmaleficence & justice for starters.
| easygenes wrote:
| I mean, PG basically said that a month ago. He's turned tail
| pretty quickly. Blocking him might give other more stalwart
| defenders some pause.
| deanCommie wrote:
| They're still in denial and posting equivalents of "no one
| could have ever predicted this" to all the people who
| absolutely predicted this.
|
| There were many of us that could see through Elon's, and
| Donald's, and SBF's bullshit from day 1.
|
| But for too many people, it's just not possible to admit they
| were wrong, or anyone else might have been right.
| the_snooze wrote:
| What I don't understand is why so many people are so patient to
| give Musk so much benefit of the doubt, when he's shown zero
| capacity for even-keeled self-correction.
| dingosity wrote:
| Careful. Going against the Elon orthodoxy will get you
| substantial negative karma here. OF COURSE Elon is playing 4
| dimensional chess. OF COURSE Elon will fix Twitter. We're all
| just too stupid to understand how smacking PaulG with the ban-
| hammer leads to the the glorious future.
|
| Though... to be fair... maybe this is an accident of some sort?
| bsuvc wrote:
| I haven't seen what you're talking about here on HN.
|
| My impression is that a lot of people here, including myself,
| have been taking sort of a wait-and-see approach to Twitter,
| to avoid overreacting.
|
| Are you misinterpreting that as being "Elon orthodoxy" as you
| called it?
| golemotron wrote:
| > What is the grand plan now in their world view?
|
| He's getting his enemies to call for free speech and giving
| them an object lesson in how capricious moderation can be.
|
| Sometimes the best way to change minds from a position of power
| is to get your adversaries to make your case for you.
| dbreunig wrote:
| Well you could ask paulg, who said that. But use email, not
| twitter.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Or use Mastodon ...
| johnfn wrote:
| Hi, I'm one of those people, I don't have any more grand plans
| and this is absurd.
| bioemerl wrote:
| I had hopes. Twitter was terribly run and there was all sorts
| of examples of them being a typical social media platform
| trying to push various ideas using their control.
|
| Elon could have come in, aligned the website to be a lot more
| neutral, slimmed down the employee count and pushed for more
| features and more payments for features to get away from
| dependence on advertisers.
|
| I saw some headline a few weeks ago about Japanese trending on
| Twitter went from a whole bunch of political stuff to more
| neutral cultural stuff. Stuff like that is what I wanted to
| see.
|
| Instead we're getting this hilarious situation where Elon is
| using his authority to ban everything he doesn't like. It's
| worse than it was.
| themitigating wrote:
| Nepotism? Was that even an accusation against the previous
| Twitter?
| bioemerl wrote:
| I use that word roughly to mean that they had their own
| internal clique, standards that they wanted to apply to the
| rest of the world, and that small group of people was
| trying to govern a very large group of people.
|
| I changed my phrasing to remove that term, because that's
| not quite what it means.
| DiNovi wrote:
| the fact that you thought the site wasn't already neutral but
| just overwhelmed with content reports and that it is simply
| impossible to fairly moderate is a good indication you're
| being duped in other areas, fyi
| [deleted]
| bioemerl wrote:
| I still don't think the site was neutral, I just also think
| the current person is also not neutral and is worse.
| djur wrote:
| The one good thing that's come out of Musk's ownership of
| Twitter is that we now have extensive public evidence that
| Twitter staff bent over backwards to maintain objective
| moderation standards even in the face of unprecedented
| challenges. The "leftist cabal" theories are thoroughly
| disproven now. And we see now the kind of actions that an
| actual ideological cabal would take if they controlled
| Twitter.
| nyolfen wrote:
| this is hallucinatory, twitter had a dozen former fbi
| officials on staff and was literally sent lists of tweets
| to delete by the DNC
| djur wrote:
| Taibbi said both campaigns sent in reports of content on
| Twitter that they claimed violated TOS. The tweets
| reported by the Biden campaign were clearly in violation
| of the TOS (they included leaked nude pictures). I don't
| know what the FBI has to do with any of this, but if
| Twitter has a lot of ex-FBI people on staff that would
| seem to be evidence _against_ the "leftist cabal" theory.
| starkd wrote:
| Matt Taibbi literally said the exact opposite of this.
| djur wrote:
| The evidence he (and Bari Weiss) presented and his
| analysis of that evidence were not consistent with each
| other. Given the choice, I'm going to rely on the primary
| sources, not the guy who was handpicked to promote a
| particular agenda.
| beaned wrote:
| This seems like gaslighting? My interpretation of the
| recent files reports were the opposite.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Wait what? Not my take on this at all.
| paganel wrote:
| > The "leftist cabal" theories are thoroughly disproven
| now.
|
| Just the other day there was a post in here of the FBI
| getting actively involved in censoring Twitter content, if
| it had been only the "leftist cabal" involved (btw, there's
| nothing genuinely "leftist" about those people, but that's
| another story) things would have been way better.
| djur wrote:
| The FBI passed along reports they received of possible
| violations of Twitter TOS (something we already knew they
| did), and the evidence is clear that they did not limit
| these reports to conservative accounts (something that
| has been claimed, but which never made sense, considering
| the FBI's historical Republican lean).
| paganel wrote:
| > The FBI passed along reports they received of possible
| violations of Twitter TOS (something we already knew they
| did),
|
| I.e. censorship. Why the heck does the FBI get involved
| in the TOS enforcement of some website on the Internet?
| (if not for controlling the discourse, that is).
| anxrn wrote:
| > there was all sorts of examples of them being a typical
| social media platform trying to push various ideas using
| their control.
|
| Can you share some of these?
| themitigating wrote:
| "Elon could have come in, aligned the website to be a lot
| more neutral"
|
| How?
|
| "slimmed down the employee count"
|
| Why would you care about this? How could he know which half
| of the company should be fired? How does this improve
| Twitter?
|
| " and pushed for more features and more payments for features
| to get away from dependence on advertisers."
|
| Besides paying to be verified, a system which changed rapidly
| over weeks being enabled and disabled, what else did he do?
|
| "I saw some headline a few weeks ago about Japanese trending
| on Twitter went from a whole bunch of political stuff to more
| neutral cultural stuff"
|
| What does this mean? That the Japanese Twitter population all
| shifted to discussing culture over politics? Why would they
| do that? What does it have to do with Elon Musk taking over?
|
| "Stuff like that is what I wanted to see."
|
| Culture is shaped by politics, at least to some degree. Also
| "culture wars"
| bioemerl wrote:
| How?
|
| Look to that example about Japan. The idea is that the
| Japanese Twitter population did not shift over to
| discussing culture over politics. Instead, the tags were
| being pushed towards politics, and once they stopped being
| pushed they returned back to something neutral.
|
| The people who were pushing the tags in that direction were
| removed. I want to see a website like Twitter have
| absolutely no people are ever interested in doing something
| like that.
|
| For the employee account, it's not something I care about
| personally, but from the perspective of Twitter as a
| business, being able to have a smaller number of better
| employees is ultimately a win because the company is able
| to do more with less money, and be more successful as a
| result.
|
| > what else did he do?
|
| Not much, which is part of why I'm disappointed.
| causality0 wrote:
| I miss the Elon Musk of a decade ago.
| falcolas wrote:
| He was totally better at masking a decade ago, I'll agree
| with that.
| capableweb wrote:
| There is also the fact that some people change over time.
| Not saying Musk wasn't always like this, but it's
| possible that he wasn't before, and turned into it over
| time.
|
| Like my mother always used to say: "You're a liberal now,
| but when you get older you'll be more conservative!". Not
| that she was right about me, but in general I think she
| was right that sometimes people change.
| panarky wrote:
| pg said almost exactly those words 30 days ago
|
| https://imgur.com/a/HtOh4yt
| riffraff wrote:
| No worries, you can still contact PG on Mastodon.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So, how long before we finally figure out that this centralized
| web that we've built is fundamentally broken. Time for the
| pendulum to start swinging the other way again.
|
| The whole idea that a single individual can waltz in with his
| money and take over a massively successful platform and wreck it
| within a few weeks should give us all pause with respect to the
| services that we use - even those that are not social media.
| hooande wrote:
| Twitter is not an institution. It is not a utility. People can
| just leave and go to another website. It will take time for a new
| website or websites to figure things out at scale, both
| technologically and socially. But people were patient with
| twitter in the fail whale days and I assume they'll be patient
| with another service in the future.
|
| This guy is running twitter like it's his personal website.
| Which, it is. But people prefer services offered by businesses
| instead of individuals, because businesses have stable incentive
| structures and fiduciary responsibilities. No one likes it when
| the rules change arbitrarily every week, so businesses don't do
| that.
|
| This level of chaos just isn't sustainable. I would never have
| thought that twitter could lose a significant portion of its user
| base in a short period. But that could very well happen now, and
| it's crazy.
| TillE wrote:
| It is kind of an institution, it really has been a de facto
| town square of the internet in a way that no other social media
| platform ever was.
|
| But it could die. The network effect works both ways, and if
| big accounts emigrate it's in real trouble.
| markthethomas wrote:
| Wow. Wrote this in jest but seems like it won't be long before
| it's practically, if not actually, true
| https://unicorn.computer/twitter-suspends-all-users-who-have...
| timgriffin77 wrote:
| So much for free speech, this is the definition of policing
| information - can't believe this is what will actually bring
| Twitter to its knees.
| Dreako wrote:
| Turns out, running a consumer social company is a lot different
| than building rockets.
|
| a part of me still had some hope. "Maybe he has better plans,
| maybe he knows what he's doing"
|
| But nope. I was wrong.
| ngoilapites wrote:
| Elon does not get basic systemic issues in social media: when you
| bark against sth, you just make it big, and it will haunt you.
|
| Good "buy" Elon, and sorry for your German plans, which will be
| severely stressed by lack of water --- major drought in
| Brandenburg.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| At this point, it's worth trying to think if and how Elon Musk
| can benefit by driving down the value of Twitter. It looks like
| he's doing it on purpose.
| d23 wrote:
| Makes me wonder what role the Saudis are playing here. Did they
| pay him to just destroy the place and hand over data on
| dissidents?
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter
|
| * https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-
| twitter-...
| meindnoch wrote:
| Tax writeoff?
| jyu wrote:
| interesting when a public good is privately owned
| intunderflow wrote:
| Paul an hour ago: "I'm not leaving Twitter"
|
| Guess he doesn't have much of a choice now
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993
| kyleyeats wrote:
| If you're on the left, you might not know how Twitter
| suspensions work. There's usually a tweet you need to delete
| and then you're allowed back.
| wilg wrote:
| "if you're on the left" lmao so persecuted
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| That's one type of suspension. There are multiple types. Many
| of the suspended never got an email what's their violation,
| or which tweet to delete. Just "you violated the rules".
|
| More importantly, right now none of this matters, because you
| may get suspended, unsuspended, suspended and again
| unsuspended and then suspended on a whim. Happened to some of
| the journalists.
|
| It's a mess.
|
| This is not a left/right issue. It's shoddy management and
| leadership
| mvkel wrote:
| It's baffling to me that Elon seems to be taking the opposite of
| a first-principles view on Twitter.
|
| He fails to realize _why_ Twitter uniquely has the reach that it
| does. It's because it's platform-agnostic in a lot of ways. It's
| the base-level social protocol that all other platforms are
| adjacent to.
|
| By removing that connection, it completely nerfs that influence
| and Twitter becomes just another social network.
|
| I also fail to see how users could think this is reasonable
| considering Twitter has no way to upload long-form video. So how
| could YouTube be a competitor?
|
| And the policy doesn't talk about Tiktok whatsoever, which is
| arguably an actual threat to Twitter, since it replaced Vine.
|
| Overall, something's fishy.
| rsanheim wrote:
| It isn't baffling at all. It was entirely predictable by
| looking at his past behavior. The thai cave diver incident and
| Elon's slander. The hyperloop failure. The continual empty
| promises of FSD for tesla. His attempts to manipulate the
| market thru his posts, which the SEC slapped his write for.
|
| Why would Elon take a first-principles approach, instead of the
| selfish, short-sighted approach of an insecure, lonely,
| overbearing billionaire with too much money and too many
| adoring fans?
| TOMDM wrote:
| Hyperloop wasn't a failure at all, it did exactly what it was
| meant to; kill off attempts to get more railway projects
| started in California.
| wilg wrote:
| This take on the Hyperloop thing is totally trumped-up.
|
| There is no evidence it was meant to kill off new railway
| projects, nor any evidence that it did.
|
| Elon was just paraphrased in a book about how he thought
| the particular California HSR project was a boondoggle (a
| view shared by many) and he published an idea for how to do
| it better.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Unfortunately there's not some kind of reward for spotting
| Musk for the person he really is at first glance.
| yokoprime wrote:
| With his other failures, he's gotten away with it since he
| always had the "genius at work" aura, and investors (and I
| guess people in general) just subscribed to the idea that
| these endeavors were works in progress. Now the vail has been
| lifted for all to see, and some of what made him attractive
| to investors is fading away
| AJ007 wrote:
| The message over the past week has been pretty clear -- the
| rules change without notice and will be changed based on what
| pisses elon off. That make Twitter now a niche message board.
| All of the elaborate justifications and explanations for buying
| Twitter and what was going on wrong over there while it was
| public have been thrown out the window, no matter what your
| point of view was.
|
| The fact that this most recent one targeted nearly the entire
| user base across nearly every interest group is probably
| Twitter's equivalent event of what happened to Digg and
| Myspace. There may be nothing he can do now to reverse a
| network collapse.
|
| This should be a good thing, if the user base is able to
| migrant to open platforms. If they head back to Facebook and
| Instagram, then its a loss.
|
| Elon might be getting margin called on Tesla right now, which
| could wipe him out financially. That would go a long way to
| explaining the poor decision making.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Twitter's equivalent event of what happened to Digg and
| Myspace.
|
| A closer equivalent might be what happened to Freenode.
| wereallterrrist wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991851
|
| Why is it so plainly obvious to many of us and so god damn
| impossible for others to see it. Elon is not a genius. You got
| duped. Just accept it and realize he's a petty tyrant whose ego
| is exploding. It explains every single thing that has happened,
| and yet people are so desperate not to accept it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Omission of TikTok is because the CCP has Tesla by the short
| and curlies
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's my reading as well.
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| His first principles seem be to get what he wants through brute
| force. He'll realize that he doesn't have the brute force to
| control the online communication of 450 million people.
| userbinator wrote:
| One can only hope this is some sort of publicity stunt, and he
| later unbans everyone and changes course again with a "now that
| you've experienced what real censorship looks like" sort of
| excuse, but I don't have much hope left. Then again, Elon is far
| more unpredictable than I thought.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| So first they blocked links to Libera Chat and OFTC, and now
| accounts that merely talk about them?
|
| Oh wait, wrong take-over. Feels so similar though!
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| This only happened 30min ago, hopefully this was just a rogue
| employee.
| [deleted]
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
| mongol wrote:
| Are these automated decisions?
| runevault wrote:
| I don't see how this one could be, there was no link. Unless
| they auto ban anyone who tweets the word Mastodon.
| wozer wrote:
| This is really embarrasing. If feel so much Fremdschamen when I
| think of Elon Musk.
| version_five wrote:
| Is is possible this is some sort of "lesson" about the dangers of
| platforms being able to arbitrarily ban stuff, that will be
| revealed in a week or two? It almost seems like the exact
| opposite of everything Musk was implying about a low-censorship
| platform. It's almost hard to believe that Musk/Twitter are at
| serious at this point
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Conservatives are never serious about their values, lol. If a
| conservative talks to you about values, you are about to be
| played.
| dang wrote:
| Ideological battle comments like this are off topic,
| regardless of which you're battling, because they have
| nothing to do with the curious conversation we want here and
| indeed are destructive of it.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| legi0nary wrote:
| people have really got to stop pretending like Elon is smart
| lol
| wfaler wrote:
| It'd be great if some sort of self-professed free-speech
| absolutist could just take over Twitter moderation.. Oh, wait.
| wnevets wrote:
| Do you think paulg will admit he was wrong about elon?
| yayr wrote:
| This is an absurd situation. I wonder how many "promises" made by
| Elon have been broken regarding how he wants to manage Twitter
| and make it a better place.
|
| E.g. what about transparency here? Where is the explanation why
| this account was suspended?
|
| I am not sure, that with Elon in the hot seat the trust of the
| public into Twitter may be restored anytime soon... very sad.
| rsanheim wrote:
| hilarious. after PG was bending over backwards to still give oh
| elon the benefit of the doubt, still a smart guy, etc etc.
|
| this is a complete and utter clown show. elon has shown his true
| colors, as have the many tech luminaries who still claim the
| twitter titanic can be righted and make it home after its half
| underwater and folks are running for the lifeboats.
| watwut wrote:
| That saying about leopard eating peoples faces comes to mind.
| samstave wrote:
| Don't forget, that during the Twitter FBI Email drops that have
| been happening recently, that in 2010 twitter gave a firehose of
| ALL tweets + Updates to the _LIBRARY OF CONGRESS_ [0]
|
| And if you dont think the FBI/NSA havent had a palantir like view
| into all of those....
|
| https://memex.naughtons.org/library-of-congress-drinks-from-...
| The_Double wrote:
| Twitter gave a firehose access to just about everyone who asked
| in 2010. My university used to do all sorts of data science
| experiments with Twitter data around 2012.
| Tycho wrote:
| This is pretty funny. If you have to spend $44 billion, might as
| well have some fun.
| theSoenke wrote:
| Ridiculous. Now you can't even mention other websites exist?Time
| to post mastodon links on purpose to get it over with
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Elon has lost his mind
| drakmo wrote:
| Twitter is now the mother of all BBS and Elmo is its paranoid
| psychopath only sysop.
| wittingtons wrote:
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Let's just hope this is a moment for people who didn't see this
| dumpster fire coming to re-examine a few other beliefs.
| gkoberger wrote:
| For anyone who missed it, his last tweet (there may have been
| something else in replies) was:
|
| "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new
| Mastodon profile on my site." (Note that he didn't even link to
| it, but he did link to the Twitter privacy policy)
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Man the last two weeks have been wild
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Twitter to me started to feel like you were at a party having a
| good time, but then the host had too many drinks and started
| vomiting on the floor. But because it was his house, anyone who
| tried to help would be yelled at because it was HIS house and HE
| was having a good time.
|
| At what point does every right-minded person just nope the
| situation and leave because they don't want to be that person
| left cleaning up for an asshole.
| jp57 wrote:
| @paulg@mas.to is his mastodon address, FYI. He got banned for
| saying that it was on his website, without any actual links.
| tomalaci wrote:
| pg in the other thread: "I still think Elon is a smart guy."
|
| That didn't age well. Not even a full hour. I can't even think of
| a food item that would age that quickly.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I'll help you. Souffle
| dan_mctree wrote:
| Eh, he still seems pretty smart. The issue is more his
| narcissistic traits, pettiness and emotional weakness
| raverbashing wrote:
| Elon's vision is like Crypto exchange's balances, feeble at
| best when directly audited
| davidw wrote:
| That's part of what's so crazy about it. I've "known" PG from
| afar via his writing since before reddit was a thing, and he
| has always seemed like a pretty decent guy, even when I
| disagree with him about something. "Levelheaded" is a word that
| comes to mind. Seems to have done him good to get out of SV;
| some of the folks there seem lost in their bubbles.
| apmee wrote:
| I don't think this necessarily is evidence of his not being
| smart, as it could just as well be ascribed to malice.
|
| Perhaps this will finally prompt Paul to stop giving him the
| benefit of the doubt though. I've long been flummoxed as to why
| he had continued to, long after it becoming obvious to most
| that it was not deserved.
| apengwin wrote:
| LMAOOOOOOOO
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Space Karen :-(
| jmoak3 wrote:
| He didn't link to his mastodon at all, did he?
|
| Twitter is one of the reasons I became an engineer - I was able
| to follow and see the mutterings of indie game devs in Copenhagen
| (vlambeer, if anyone knows them). 15 year old me responded the
| most inane things to their posts, but it exposed me to work
| ethics, communities, and possibilities in the computing world I
| never would have found growing up in Kentucky. I taught myself
| how to code to make games. I left the state to get a CS degree
| (the state's schools didn't offer a dedicated one at the time),
| made a game, and I now work at a FANG.
|
| Without that online twitter community of people who really _got_
| what I was interested in, it might have been a passing interest.
| Even if I couldn 't participate at the same level, at least I
| could watch them do so!
|
| I'll never forget watching Ferguson happen live, the Arab Spring,
| or even the initial days of Covid in Jan 2020 as I scoured it for
| morsels.
|
| I stopped using it a while ago, but this is so sad, feeling
| eulogistic.
| cesarb wrote:
| > He didn't link to his mastodon at all, did he?
|
| _Very_ indirectly. He mentioned that his mastodon handle was
| at his site, which was linked in his twitter bio, and had said
| handle as the first line (excluding sidebars); only the handle,
| no links at all, but it 's trivial to construct the link given
| that piece of information.
| wilg wrote:
| I like that a "link" is now just information that another
| webpage exists.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| But handles are the thing they are specifically trying to
| stop people from linking. Cross posting content is okay, but
| not profiles
| marcinzm wrote:
| They are specifically trying to block whatever is annoying
| Elon at this particular second. Clearly PG's tweet annoyed
| Elon and that is the only thing that matters.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Someone needs to build a Twitter clone, with the exact same UX
| and features as Twitter, just a different branding and an adult
| CEO.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| LOL, this is /r/agedlikemilk content.
|
| I could swear he posted he wasn't leaving like minutes ago...
| mmastrac wrote:
| The traffic, maybe because of the drama and maybe because of the
| exodus, seems to have swamped his instance.
|
| As an interesting side-effect of federation, you can still browse
| his profile on other instances, however:
| https://hachyderm.io/@paulg@mas.to
| kylecordes wrote:
| Previous, I thought the "he's trying to destroy Twitter along
| with a good chunk of his own fortune" idea was ludicrous. I
| assumed he was trying his best, in his own way, and would take a
| few months to rediscover how to run things. Eventually end up a
| good business, somewhat more Free than before.
|
| Now... not so sure. Anything's possible.
| d23 wrote:
| The links to the Saudis and their previous attempts to
| infiltrate Twitter make me wonder just how much the destruction
| was planned (and what else they're getting out of the deal):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter
|
| * https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-
| twitter-...
| busymom0 wrote:
| What happened to the whole "it's a private company so it can do
| whatever"? Looks like people don't like it when the winds blow
| against them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What happened to the whole "it's a private company so it can
| do whatever"?
|
| Most people with that position take the viewpoint that it is
| consistent with their view of free speech that Musk _can_ do
| this, but it is still undesirable that he _does_ do it,
|
| What happened to the whole "as the modern digital public
| square, it is important to the 'principal of free speech', even
| if not required by the legal doctrine of free speech, that
| Twitter allow all lawful speech" crowd (including Elon
| himself)? What happened to the whole "it's a private company so
| it can do whatever"?
| TOMDM wrote:
| Is there an exception for brands for this lunacy?
|
| If Nestle links to their Instagram is that bannable? What about
| their site which would likely host all their socials?
| Crontab wrote:
| I closed my account earlier this week. Between Musk's erratic
| behavior, the fact that they aren't paying their rent, and are
| trying to get out of contractual software licensing fees, I
| decided that it was time to go.
| mkl95 wrote:
| The current state of Twitter reminds me of the startups I worked
| at in the beginning of my career, where unstable people made
| stupid decisions all the time.
| smashah wrote:
| Confirmed. It's crazy out here in these stweets.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| Paul Graham probably gonna dump a bunch of money into Post now.
| meerab wrote:
| The sad part was Elon's responded @paulg tweet with two ROFL
| emojis.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Elon Musk is quite literally destroying the platform all on his
| own. Utter waste of $44B. Once there's a critical mass of news
| outlets on a competing platform, that will be the end of Twitter
| in my opinion. In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense for news
| outlets to invest in such a platform.
| [deleted]
| salea wrote:
| very emotional response from Musk. Twitter feels more like a
| discord server with some teenage mods.
| catsforai wrote:
| benmorris wrote:
| If it isn't obvious this is the new norm for Twitter. Elon is
| making up the rules as he goes and ruling like a pissed off
| insecure reddit mod. I don't buy into all the freedom of speech
| rhetoric he has been spewing. This is about control and fueling
| his ego.
|
| It is a real shame because I wanted to continue using Twitter
| like I always have, but I don't think that will be possible.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| No mod of any other major social network issues site wide bans
| based on the mere mention of another social network.
| falcolas wrote:
| > ruling like a pissed off insecure reddit mod
|
| Ya know, I've heard a lot worse comparisons. And I've seen this
| kind of thing happen there...
|
| Knowledge and money don't a good moderator make. And Elon Musk
| has clearly taken on the role of moderator, not _just_ CEO.
|
| So, a spot on comparison.
| paxys wrote:
| Elon has been pretty consistent about his rules. You are either
| 100% loyal to him or you will be banned from the platform.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Emperor Elon, First if his Name, Savior of Twitter, Defender of
| Freedom merely desires the respect and adoration he deserves.
| If some ungrateful blue check freeloaders disagree they may
| experience his evenhanded judgment and wrath.
| jamesredd wrote:
| I had Paul Graham muted on Twitter. I can't recall what he said,
| but it was absurd, and he won't be missed.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Out of curiosity I notice a handful of Hn users seem pretty
| frustrated at pg to the point of sticking a jab in whenever his
| name is mentioned. Obviously you can only speak for yourself,
| but I'm curious if there's a common thread I'm not aware of
| leading to this personal bitterness?
| jamesredd wrote:
| I have nothing against pg, except for the fact that when he
| said something I found absurd I had to mute him on Twitter. I
| don't find propagandist compelling at all and have no
| interest in reading the outcome of their thoughts.
| zug_zug wrote:
| So when you say propagandist does that mean he spreads lies
| on behalf of a government? Reading between the lines it
| sounds like you find him to be deliberately dishonest about
| something(s)?
| joshfraser wrote:
| In the words of Elon Musk:
|
| The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is
| which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping?
| That's the bad one!
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176
|
| The importance of decentralized social media has never been more
| obvious.
| PestoDiRucola wrote:
| I think Twitter is about to jump the shark. This is insane.
| eclipxe wrote:
| Already did.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It's been off the shark for two months. We're already to the
| point we've been judging people still there for having not seen
| it yet. o.o
|
| Unbanning the alt-right wasn't jumping the shark? Firing over
| half the employees wasn't jumping the shark? Promoting COVID
| misinformation wasn't jumping the shark? Yeah, he finally
| started banning journalists, but he's been making the place
| unwelcome for anyone who isn't a Trump supporter for a long as
| heck time.
|
| If you are just now asking if it's going to jump the shark, and
| I mean this not to be sarcastic or mean, but in genuine hope
| for the future: Please spend some time asking yourself why
| banning PG was the last straw for you, and not any of the crazy
| stuff prior.
|
| Let's make this the last time we let hero worship blind us to
| the realities on the ground.
| rinze wrote:
| Apparently people are trying to save so many tweets right now
| that the Internet Archive is having a delay:
| https://paquita.masto.host/@SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange...
|
| When all this started I thought that Twitter wouldn't make it
| to Christmas. Sometimes I think that was too much, that it'd
| take longer to collapse. This past week makes me think I might
| be right.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I hope his Tweets are archived by someone.
| teddyh wrote:
| For those who missed it, his Mastodon is: https://mas.to/@paulg
| [deleted]
| sytelus wrote:
| It's amazing Mastodon is still so utterly disaster. Where are
| all the startups? Why is making Twitter clone so hard?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Making a Twitter clone is probably moderately hard. Doing so
| in a decentralized way is very hard.
| jug wrote:
| Post.news and t2.social are two startups under way
| macintux wrote:
| Why would anyone fund a startup to reproduce something that's
| already wildly popular and successful and still not producing
| a great ROI?
|
| Twitter is hard enough technically, but the global
| compliance/regulatory challenges must be daunting.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Would be pretty amusing if Paul Graham decided to invest in the
| Mastodon ecosystem. That said, I think Elon is a pretty public
| cautionary tale of why emotionally driven financial decisions
| are a bad idea.
| fathyb wrote:
| Not an investment, but a donation to a server is a good
| start: https://mas.to/@paulg/109536767974913388
| openair18 wrote:
| I'm guessing he got banned for posting this?
| legi0nary wrote:
| Banned for posting a link to his personal website (which has
| links to his other social media profiles)
|
| Ridiculous.
| greggarious wrote:
| > Banned for posting a link to his personal website (which
| has links to his other social media profiles)
|
| How many levels deep does their new policy go? It sounds
| like they violated it not Paul...
|
| Paul and I disagree on a lot (I've struggled to remember to
| not post like a Redditor here) but dear lord -- last I
| looked at HN, it said the guy was leaving Twitter, and Paul
| doesn't seem like the type to troll on his way out like I
| am.
|
| This is absurd.
|
| For context: I'm an amateur comedian in addition to being a
| hacker. Every set I've done IRL I've asked folks not to
| record or quote, and had that honored. I specialize in
| observational comedy -- often rude, insulting observations
| that approach the limits of American style free expression
| that I won't repeat here. I've encountered folks who can't
| take a joke before, but dear lord, the levels of petty
| coming from Elon Musk are off the charts.
|
| Or as I'd say if it was open mic night in an undisclosed
| location in Appalachia:
|
| "Big 'You're not breaking up with me I'm breaking up with
| you' energy on the bird site tonight ladies and gentlemen."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How many levels deep does their new policy go? It
| sounds like they violated it
|
| They can't violate it, because it doesn't restrict them
| in any way.
| jaf656s wrote:
| I don't think he posted a link to his personal site, just
| said the link was there.
| cesarb wrote:
| He didn't need to post a link to his personal site; it
| was already there in his twitter bio.
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| This is untrue. The link he posted in the tweet was this: h
| ttps://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/160453126179152281
| ...
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| He didn't even post the link directly, just said that it was
| on his site.
| monksy wrote:
| You mean this is a quick way to get rid of mostly unused
| Twitter accounts? I'm in.. I've got a few to knock their
| total account #s down.. After that make a gdpr request and
| have fun.
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| Not quite. This was his ultimate tweet:
|
| >This is my last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my
| new Mastodon profile on my site.
|
| The tweet itself did not contain a link to
| http://www.paulgraham.com/, which contains a link to his
| Mastodon profile. Apparently that was enough to be suspended.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Paul Graham's mistake was he should have made an NFT of the
| link and posted that.
|
| /s ...maybe? I honestly can't tell anymore
| cesarb wrote:
| > http://www.paulgraham.com/, which contains a link to his
| Mastodon profile
|
| It doesn't even contain a _link_. It contains the mastodon
| handle (username and instance), but you can 't click on it
| because it's not a link; you can paste it on the search bar
| of your own instance to follow him (and see some of his
| posts, if someone on the same instance has already followed
| him).
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| No, he merely mentioned his website.
| dbish wrote:
| Mastadon UX is really frustrating. Hoping there's a better
| option for following him in the near future
| boyter wrote:
| Create your own? There are many implementations over
| ActivityPub, but you can create your own if you like.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| It's so painful to use. It's such a waste they're winning the
| network effect battle off of Twitter's collapse. Not that I
| have a better alternative (open to suggestions).
| dragontamer wrote:
| Mastodon is the protocol. You can't really quit "Twitter"
| by joining "email", for example. It doesn't make sense.
|
| Now maybe you can "quit Twitter" to join "Gmail", which is
| an email service. Similarly, people are going to have to
| pick Mastodon servers that work with them the best.
|
| Tumblr seems to be the weird one (promising ActivityPub,
| aka Mastodon, support soon). Tumblr seems to be my personal
| best bet, but I'm also open to suggestions.
| teddyh wrote:
| Twitter gave some suggestions:
|
| https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/16045312654195916
| 8...
| AJ007 wrote:
| Finally signed up, seems fine. I think the big problem is if
| the servers will be able to handle the volume.
| sytelus wrote:
| The whole server concept is a disaster, IMO. There is no
| search box for server. There is no information on how to
| create a server (at least on landing page). A lot of
| servers require "manual review". Many are "full". I don't
| know which one of these servers will even survive over
| time. I use Twitter as my "log" of interesting content and
| ideas. I rather not put content on server managed by a dude
| who can be run over by bus tomorrow and then I lose
| everything in an instant.
| dym_sh wrote:
| tbf same bus-factor applies to everything you collect
|
| but have you tried simply using bookmarks in your browser
| -- full control, full responsibility
|
| also if you on the level of creating and maintaining your
| own server -- its all open source
| [deleted]
| dym_sh wrote:
| which exact part is frustrating?
|
| there are some additional twitter-like mobile clients, i.e.
|
| - https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/29/tapbots-ivory-
| mastodon-...
|
| which supposedly fix the difference
| lvl102 wrote:
| I agree. Mastadon in concept is OK but execution is quite
| poor.
| fathyb wrote:
| It feels like Mastodon is limited by the limitations the web
| (rightfully) added to improve security/restrict third party
| tracking. A lot of these UX issues could be fixed by having
| native client apps, where you add servers and the client
| takes care of mixing feeds and searches.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I think there's a decent chance this was a bit of "malicious
| compliance" by someone inside Twitter, rather than a personal
| decision by Musk himself.
|
| And lest you think this sounds like I'm defending him, I think
| that explanation actually makes it funnier: give a brutally
| honest demonstration of the absurdity and hypocrisy of this
| policy by banning someone Musk probably wouldn't actually enforce
| the policy on, and then say you were just following orders.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Relevant context:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 : Promotion of
| alternative social platforms policy (help.twitter.com)
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985 : Paul Graham is
| leaving Twitter (twitter.com/paulg)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| He said in that second thread that he is not actually leaving
| Twitter.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it, but it appears that he was
| after all.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| well, guess again!
| dekhn wrote:
| No, Twitter left him.
| croon wrote:
| Well, seems that choice was taken out of his hands by an
| insecure billionaire.
| Hamuko wrote:
| To be fair, that's most likely just a temporary ban.
| croon wrote:
| That's not fair.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Boy the bar for the "to be fair" crowd sure has slipped.
| To be fair, pg was only _temporarily_ banned for
| acknowledging the existence of competing social networks!
| Hamuko wrote:
| Well, he most likely will still get an opportunity to use
| Twitter if he so chooses.
|
| No one said anything about it being a good version of
| Twitter.
| eternalban wrote:
| Yeah, it's like those WW2 movies in Japanese POW camps in
| the jungle. One of the allied officers yanks their chain,
| they send him to cooler, and the soldiers cheer the
| officer.
|
| Except PG made kissy noises with the POW guards and said
| to the soldiers "I still think they are very civilized"
| as he went on to the cooler. That bit wasn't in the
| original script.
| ColinWright wrote:
| I'm explicitly quoting the thread title, not the thread
| content, which is too extensive to do justice to in a line or
| two. Reading much of the threads there and elsewhere, and
| skimming most of the rest, I believe his intent was to create
| a bolt-hole, but had hopes that Twitter would recover.
| tempsy wrote:
| The only accounts that I've felt really abuse "using Twitter to
| promote another site" are OnlyFans creators.
| runevault wrote:
| I don't think OF is even banned, though a lot of them use
| Linktree which is.
| nosianu wrote:
| Elon Musk:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288
|
| > _Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more
| relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd
| in the extreme_
|
| PG did not even post a link, just mentioned the name.
| monksy wrote:
| This is the greatest internet drama I've seen in a while.
|
| Billionaire cosplays as a knowledge leader.
|
| Does things that hurts him self and new company.
|
| People leave
|
| Billionaire can't figure out why and tried to stop the bleed.
|
| I can't wait for eu
|
| Burn baby burn
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Someone tweeted that it's not possible to screenshot the new
| terms on mobile.
|
| This makes me wonder if preventing tweet exports and DRM are next
| on the list. Can widevine be applied here even if in a somewhat
| hacky way?
| hadrien01 wrote:
| That would be contrary to the GDPR export rules in the EU.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Also, preventing links to competitors is probably going to
| cost Twitter in the EU.
|
| https://twitter.com/juddlegum/status/1604564509884030977?s=4.
| ..
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the DMA and DSA are more than a year away
| from enforcement.
| [deleted]
| robbie-c wrote:
| A week ago ago it seemed like a reasonable person could thing
| there was a chance (however small) that Musk would turn things
| around for twitter. Banning paulg though... surely he has no idea
| wtf he is doing
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Paul sure spent a lot of energy support Elon up until the very
| last minute.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That never happened.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Paul Graham said he wasn't leaving Twitter
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993), but apparently
| Twitter has left him.
|
| Graham excused Musk as being "eccentric".
|
| It's foolish to make excuses for authoritarian, attention seeking
| narcissists like Musk. They will always let you down in the end.
|
| When they show you who and what they are you ought to believe
| them.
| easygenes wrote:
| Slight tangent: What is going on with the HN post ranking system?
| This post is showing in rank 2 with over 400 points while being
| submitted under an hour ago, while the IRS post at number one
| right now has barely over 100 points and was submitted over an
| hour ago.
|
| This post is both fresher and with more overall points, shouldn't
| it outrank?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think flags adjust the ranking. The moderators can adjust the
| weighting on a story.
|
| If a story has a lot of people starting flame wars, it often
| gets knocked off the front page. Duplicate or similar posts
| with a lot of traffic, will get merged or one will be picked
| and the others pushed off the front page.
| d23 wrote:
| I think it tries to downrank "controversial" posts. I assume
| this thread has a lot of downvotes from people who support him.
| I do wish that wasn't the case. This stuff is directly related
| to the industry.
| Fede_V wrote:
| I distinctly remember a prescient thread from Yishan Wong (former
| Reddit CEO) about how trying to run Twitter would break Musk -
| and - it looks like it was spot on.
|
| He paid 44 billion dollars to be a mod - I hope he is getting his
| money's worth.
| sc68cal wrote:
| https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440?s=20&t...
|
| For those curious
| minimaxir wrote:
| Alright, I legit can't think of a reason why he would ban Paul
| Graham before everyone else who has promoted Mastodon since the
| rule change.
|
| That's the literal opposite of low hanging fruit!
| booleandilemma wrote:
| You will enjoy Twitter or else you will be banned from Twitter.
| carabiner wrote:
| Musk is doing the things that he would have made fun of other
| CEO's doing two years ago.
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