Has Twitter Become a Musk Plaything?

[engine]

Has Twitter become an Elon Musk plaything, making things up as he goes along.?

It seems he's suspending accounts having changed the rules on--the-fly.

“You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That's it,” Musk said, explaining his latest policy to the group, before he left minutes after having joined the discussion.

Musk was referring to Twitter's latest rule change about accounts that track private jets, including one owned by Musk himself, which was put in place Wednesday.

The Twitter account for Mastodon, a platform billed as a Twitter alternative, was also suspended early Thursday evening.

[nbcnews.com...]

As of 6:30 PM PT, many links to Mastodon no longer work on Twitter, which flags them as “potentially harmful.”

[techcrunch.com...]

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

^ Yah ... I guess Twitter is everywhere and some places don't have extra playgrounds.

[time.com...]

[blend27]

***Country lifted its ban on Twitter last week after reaching an agreement with the company

Great! Now I need rice, hot water, soap, 2 AK47(maybe 3 +1 for my neighbor, he needs rice & soap too)...forget all that, How can Me and my Neighbor get our kids to School safely Today so we will need Not to have Twitter anymore once and for all. But I wanted it for so long...

Education, Not Twitter.

[ronin]

some places don't have extra playgrounds

Surely now that Mastodon (based on the ActivityPub protocol) has achieved some mainstream traction, everywhere has extra playgrounds?

Protocols, not platforms!

And web3 FTW.

(I'm not going to miss the 2010s web.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

The platform/protocol is not the problem, people are. Especially the ones who would silence others that are breaking no law, just because they don't like what they say.

(I'm not going to miss the 2010s web.)

That's hate, which is perfectly fine. You can miss the 2010s web right now if you hate it so much, don't use it. Yes, Mastodon is another "playground", so you have options. Be thankful you can use them freely.

[tangor]

A bit surprised this thread has such legs!

The T deal is over and done with. The aftermath has hit and fled the media headlines. For the most part biz is back to usual (not normal, just usual) and monies of all kinds and sizes have been made and wasted.

The plaything still works, still has users, many bots have been evicted, advertisers are doing what they do (mostly due to recession but might say otherwise when downsizing investments).

The other playgrounds got a nice little bump in the process, hopefully they can turn that into future success---but t is not going anywhere anytime soon. Kinda like g, it is the elephant in the room.

[ronin]

That's hate

Well, "hate" is a strong word, isn't it?

But, I wouldn't disagree that I dislike surveillance capitalism and algorithms that seek to maximise attention and are entirely disinterested in how they achieve that. These aren't business models that I'm comfortable with.

Be thankful you can use them freely.

That's rather my point regarding "Protocols, not platforms" - anyone would have a tough job trying to restrict use of a freely-available, freely-reproducible protocol. When was the last time anyone successfully stopped someone else from using TOR?

Yes, Mastodon is another "playground"

Mastodon is unlimited playgrounds. That's part of the point.

It's too soon to say, but Musk's takeover of Twitter may turn out to be the equivalent of someone turning the ignition key in the Fediverse (which has been around for nearly a decade and a half, but Rome wasn't built in a day, was it?)

There are parallels with Murdoch's takeover of MySpace and the subsequent stratospheric rise of Facebook - but one platform succeeding at the expense of another is not the same as the second coming of protocols, eclipsing platforms in the process.

who would silence others that are breaking no law, just because they don't like what they say

You can be silenced on centralised platforms. You can't be silenced in an infinitely reproducible environment founded on agnostic protocols.

It must, I'm sure, be a concern to Musk that when he made his initial bid for Twitter, there were, arguably, no viable micro-blogging alternatives and that the unintended consequence of his takeover (the great exodus) means that now there are.