The rejection of breaking news and other journalistic content on Mastodon

Twitter had been the place to go for breaking news and live reports and reactions of events, incidents, accidents, and pretty much anything else of interest. It’s heaven for news junkies, reporters, and anyone interested with finding out what’s happening. Mastodon hasn’t been it, isn’t it, and most people who have been here for a while don’t want it to be it.

On the other hand, it’s a federated network in which anything and everything can be accommodated. Some server admins and members will block other servers that hosts content they find objectionable simply out of preference, others would love to have such content hosted or shared to theirs.

Mastodon may have been around for six years but it hasn’t gone anywhere near the maturity phase involving massive influx of people with varying expectations like what’s happening now, so a lot of the existing members are trying to protect and defend the Mastodon they know.

Twitter’s own transformation may or may not end up depriving the public of that real time news update so it’s only natural it’s what people are looking for when they seek a replacement. The federated nature of Mastodon shouldn’t be a hindrance to that. 

Server admins who share the same views could even advertise that as their primary selling point. Right now it’s already happening with journa.host and newsie.social but some server admins are blocking journa.host for insisting on taking the standard approach they’re used to on Twitter. So anyone who want to connect to anyone on that server must make sure they’re not on a server that blocks it.

This can make things seem more complicated than they ought to be, but also means it can still work for those who want it and not for those who don’t, at the same time.

orgyporgy:

Blocking Spree

My ‘Don server admin has been on a blocking spree and a number of friends and people I follow got caught up. Like a full block, not just limited. This means zero interactions between the servers even if the accounts already follow each other.

Unfortunately this was inevitable with Mastodon growing so rapidly and with so many factors in play. Content moderation is a major thing on the Don and many of the long time admins can be quite strict on it, not to mention personal preferences on certain matters being a factor in deciding reasons for blocking ga limiting access. Unlike blocking, limiting means visibility if the accounts are connected.

I mean, their servers, their rules, no debating that and if it becomes untenable, you have an option to move or start your own.

Having said that, I’m considering running my own server eventually. Haven’t decided if it’s going to be just a personal one or open to registration among friends. Certainly not going to entertain any random person.

Twitter is going really great

As I keep saying, the company is not compatible at all with how Elon Musk thinks how a company should be run. In fact, it’s likely the complete opposite is true, which is why there’s far fewer than 50% of the company’s staff remains. 

Originally Twitter wanted to shave 25% of their headcount even without Elon, because they were painfully aware the company was bloated. Elon boasted about wanting to cut 75% of the staff, but when he came in, he ended up Thanosing the company instead.

What he probably wasn’t counting on (or maybe he did to an extent) were the culture clash and staff solidarity so now Twitter ends up with fewer than 3000 employees and that number is likely going to go down even further by the day. Apparently 75% of the remaining staff opt out of the “extremely hardcore” conditions.

From the looks of it, Twitter could break next week with nobody available to fix things. People are already seeing glitches and things not working on the site.

He boasted about cutting 80% of the micro services that he deemed inessential to running Twitter which ended up disabling two factor authentication via SMS and now it looks like his 75% layoff plan is working, albeit perhaps slightly differently than he intended.

Musk is fucking around and finding out.

I was going to post the article about the latest round of resignations but this Techmeme page is more relevant with all the live tweets included 

Hundreds of Twitter employees post farewell messages and salute emojis in Slack and tweets, announcing their resignations after Elon Musk’s

The Count Stopped Counting

Sesame Street’s Count von Count stopped tweeting in October at 3,763. He may have seen the writing on the wall.

ayeforscotland:

What did they expect?

Here’s a great website to follow closely what’s going on with Twitter if you really want to know

Twitter is Going Great!

😂😂😂😂

Twitter insiders are calling Elon Musk by a new nickname, Elmo. It’s spreading on the platform.

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall is probably responsible for starting the trend earlier this year. As the article noted, the nickname Elmo had been used to refer to the Tesla CEO at least since 2018 but it was never widely picked up until he announced that he was buying Twitter earlier this year.

Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler who goes by the name emptywheel had been previously credited for the nickname’s popularity but she denied it saying she picked it up from others.

Elon Musk can’t take a joke

This is a perfect article that encapsulates pretty much everything that’s happening with Twitter in the last couple of weeks.

The mercurial CEO is under fire from his own staff to the point that he can’t take a joke and can’t deal with employee uprising. He’s also very allergic to criticism and challenges to his statements which makes him very thin skinned. All the talk about being a free speech absolutist and comedy being legal on Twitter had unraveled mere days after he took over the company.

However, Musk has always harbored a vision for a service he calls X which is supposed to be the everything app, so all that he’s done to the Twitter corporation seems to be the steps into creating that company.

He always insisted that PayPal was meant to be X but it turned out differently and gave him the opportunity to create Tesla and SpaceX, along with everything around them like The Boring Company and Starlink. So now with Twitter he thinks he’s bought himself several years into creating this X.

When you see it from this perspective, it’s no wonder it looks like he’s destroying the company because he is treating it as a shortcut to building something else. It’s likely that Twitter may end up as a PayPal competitor or something else with a payment service at its core and the social network as just one of its products.

He’s a billionaire who probably is best at dealing with machines, not people, since clearly he has no regard for people. Meanwhile, Twitter is a company about people, so that’s not going to work. He’s going to have to turn it into a company about products, like his other companies, to be compatible with his vision and management style.