Basically, #Google partnering with Musk's #Twitter/X to provide ad sales is analogous to signing a deal to provide new services to a criminal organization that you find distasteful, but hey, they're willing to pay you so you're happy to help keep them afloat. That's the sorry reality, no matter how Google tries to spin it.

Note that this is a NEW deal -- Google is now getting into bed with Musk eyes wide open -- unrelated to Twitter's much longer use of GCP (Google Cloud Platform) infrastructure services, which predate Musk's takeover, and so fall into a different category of considerations and possible future actions.

Why isn't #Twitter (X) dead yet? #ElonMusk has done everything he can to bury the #platform, hasn't he?

In my opinion, it's the journalists who are treated like dirt (💩) by #Musk but just can't let go of the platform.

That's partly because they prefer to make headlines with #clickbait and scandals and still link diligently on Twitter. In this way, they give the platform relevance in the media and make Musk's rants seem like important discourse. On the other hand, it is because the average journalist is apparently too incompetent to discover new platforms for himself.

I'm probably doing an injustice to the little journalist who is just trying to make ends meet somehow. But it's amazing that the big publishers are so inflexible or have made themselves so dependent on Twitter that they can't or won't switch.

#media #journalism #press #future #fail #problem #criticism #internet #scandal #publisher #microblogging #news

I think we can officially say Elon Musk is anti-Ukraine.

https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1708629197617336398

#ElonMusk #Musk #Twitter #Zelensky #Ukraine #Russia

Twitter / X is losing daily active users. CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed it

Link: https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-drop-under-elon-musk
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726696

#twitter

Twitter / X is losing daily active users. CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed it.

Since Musk's takeover, X has lost millions of daily active users.

^{Matt Binder (Mashable)}

"Elon Musk Says He Has ‘An Arsenal Of Weapons,’ Shares Video of Himself Firing a Barrett .50-Caliber Sniper Rifle"

https://dailyboulder.com/elon-musk-says-he-has-an-arsenal-of-weapons-shares-video-of-himself-firing-a-barrett-50-caliber-sniper-rifle/

Musk: “I have an arsenal of weapons, most of which I bought in California before they changed the law to make it impossible to do so.”

#Musk #Twitter #guns #Sodom

Elon Musk Says He Has 'An Arsenal Of Weapons,' Shares Video of Himself Firing a Barrett .50-Caliber Sniper Rifle

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, thrust himself into the spotlight yet again with the release of a video of him firing several rounds from an assault rifle and claiming that he has an "arsenal of weapons."

^{Staff Writer (The Daily Boulder)}

Die Zeit, in der wir leben. #FakeNews

#ElonMusk #X #Twitter #Russland

MUSK CRASHES & BURNS

Elon went to the border to do an X livestream - things went even farther south, quickly!

Barely four minutes in, the video aburptly froze and the entire livestream crashed, raining on Musk's parade.

Musk then sent a brief company-wide email:

"Please fix this," he demanded.

I wonder if the last remaining Twitter engineer laughed before replying to his right-wing, radical employer? 🙄🤔
#AureFreePress #Mastodon #Twitter #x #Musk #elon

https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-sends-email-twitter-live-stream

Twitter: X Premium-Nutzer können DMs von anderen Premium-Kunden zulassen

Auf X (vormals Twitter) können Premium-Nutzer Direktnachrichten von Abonnenten aktivieren. Außerdem wurden 20 Millionen Dollar an Tweet-Ersteller ausgezahlt.

https://www.heise.de/news/Twitter-X-Premium-Nutzer-koennen-DMs-von-anderen-Premium-Kunden-zulassen-9321939.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege

#ElonMusk #Twitter #Werbung #X #news

Twitter: X Premium-Nutzer können DMs von anderen Premium-Kunden zulassen

^{Bernd Mewes (heise online)}

I was never a huge twitter user... 4K followers and decent interaction.. I just found it an uninteresting place...

Anyway I used to check in cause I'd have a bunch of notifications a day. But now I dont get notifications for week (despite cross posting there still).

I got the first notification in a while and bothered to log in again and check it.... LOL "Today is your X anniversary"... hell it is, I never signed up to X... not a notification in sight...

X is dead.

#X #Twitter #Xitter

It totally looks and sounds like Linda Yaccarino has a #Neuralink implant and Elno is in control.

https://variety.com/2023/digital/columns/linda-yaccarino-x-twitter-ceo-elon-musk-1235740454/

#twitter

Linda Yaccarino, X /Twitter CEO, Awkwardly Talks Elon Musk's Twitter Plans

Linda Yaccarino rambled through an interview with Julia Boorstin at Code 2023, raising questions about whether she's up for the job of running X (formerly Twitter).

^{Daniel D'Addario (Variety)}

The same day that Elon Musk fired the entire Twitter team concerned with fighting election disinformation, he also endorses a post where people are being encouraged to vote for the far-right German AFD party. The AFD thanked him for his endorsement and for disbanding the team that was fighting election disinformation.

#News #EuropeanNews #Europe #Germany #FarRight #AFD #ElonMusk #Musk #Twitter #X

#Mastodon has the same #yin/yang #imbalance that #Twitter did.

But hey, just ignore this.

Elon Musk has fired the entire Election Integrity Team at #X, the unit created to identify threats from foreign and domestic sources manipulating our elections.

https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422

#Ukraine #Russia #US #Twitter #ElonMusk #Musk

Never forget the feedback effect of negative things filling a vacuum when positive things are removed.

Whether that’s in politics or business or information platforms.

So many good people left #Twitter and demanded that other good people also leave the platform, so there should be no surprise that the platform shows more bad actors now.

But it’s a case of complaining how the game is going after deciding not to play anymore.

#Germany has with https://social.bund.de/about not only an #instance on #Mastodon for federal entities. Several states have their own. I've found:

https://bawü.social/about

https://social.hessen.de/about

https://freistaat-thueringen.social/about

https://social.sachsen.de/about

https://social.sachsen-anhalt.de/about

https://social.schleswig-holstein.de/about

That's 6 out of 16.

The list shows, why the official domain is the best choice.

#SocialMedia #TwitterTakeover #Fediverse #MastodonMigration #X #Twitter

social.bund.de

Dies ist der Mastodon-Server des Bundesbeauftragten für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit (BfDI).

^{Mastodon hosted on social.bund.de}

Mit
https://social.sachsen.de/about
hat jetzt das sechste Bundesland eine offizielle Instanz auf #Mastodon. Die kommen zur Instanz des Bundes https://social.bund.de/about hinzu.

Es gibt auch:

https://bawü.social/about

https://social.hessen.de/about

https://freistaat-thueringen.social/about

https://social.sachsen-anhalt.de/about

https://social.schleswig-holstein.de/about

Die Liste macht deutlich, warum die offizielle Domain die beste Wahl ist.

Und wann kommt #Niedersachsen, @achim?

#SocialMedia #TwitterÜbernahme #Fediverse #MastodonMigration #Twitter

social.sachsen.de

Dies ist die Mastodon-Instanz der Sächsischen Datenschutz- und Transparenzbeauftragten (SDTB).

^{Mastodon, gehostet auf social.sachsen.de}

#ElonMusk's #X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

"Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk's #followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account." 🤡

#Twitter #TwitterTakeover #SocialMedia

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-follower-data

Elon Musk's X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

We took a close look at Elon Musk's more than 150 million followers on X aka Twitter. What we found is…concerning.

^{Matt Binder (Mashable)}

The social platform #X, formerly known as #Twitter, is the largest source of #misinformation and #disinformation among the major online platforms, the #EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said on Sept. 26.

The official said so during the meeting with the Code of Practice on Disinformation signatories, including major players such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Read more here🔗 https://kyivindependent.com/eu-commission-twitter-x-largest-disinformation-source-among-popular-social-platforms/

#Ukraine 🇺🇦 #SlavaUkraine
#СлаваУкраїні! #StandWithUkraine

EU Commission says social platform X leading disinformation source

EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova noted that compared to other major players such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, or LinkedIn, the X platform has the largest ratio of misinformation and disinformation posts.

^{Martin Fornusek (The Kyiv Independent)}

Since I'm seeing new folks arriving, a few thoughts for you:

1. Take a moment to read https://fedi.tips

2. Hashtags are your friend. Follow them. Use them. Capitalize each word in them

3. You will miss things. That is the point

4. For accounts you don't want to miss, click the bell in the profile or make a list

5. Boost the toots!

6. Be here to make connections

7. No algorithm means post what you want

8. Add alt-text to images

#Mastodon #TwitterMigration #Twitter #NewHere

Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

^fedi.tips

Finding your most popular Tweets
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/finding-your-most-popular-tweets/

Twitter's search interface has all sorts of lovely and obscure options.

My three favourites are "min_retweets:", "min_replies:", and "min_faves:"

Using those filters, you can create a search for Tweets which meet a certain threshold. For example, here are my Tweets which have been liked more than 500 times:

twitter.com/search?q=from:edent min_faves:500

Here are the ones which have been retweeted 300 times with at least 100 replies:

twitter.com/search?q=from%:edent min_replies:100 min_retweets:100

Of course, you don't have to do this for your own Tweets. You can perform the search on any term, or any user.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/finding-your-most-popular-tweets/

#HowTo #tip #twitter

Terence Eden’s Blog

2020-05-13 11:02:57

Finding your most popular Tweets
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/finding-your-most-popular-tweets/

Twitter's search interface has all sorts of lovely and obscure options.

My three favourites are "min_retweets:", "min_replies:", and "min_faves:"

Using those filters, you can create a search for Tweets which meet a certain threshold. For example, here are my Tweets which have been liked more than 500 times:

twitter.com/search?q=from:edent min_faves:500

Here are the ones which have been retweeted 300 times with at least 100 replies:

twitter.com/search?q=from%:edent min_replies:100 min_retweets:100

Of course, you don't have to do this for your own Tweets. You can perform the search on any term, or any user.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/finding-your-most-popular-tweets/

#HowTo #tip #twitter

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.privacytools.io)

Accessibility - you can't search Twitter for Alt-Text
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/02/accessibility-you-cant-search-twitter-for-alt-text/

Twitter has recently improved the accessibility of its site. When uploading an image, a user can add alt text - a short description of the image for people with visual impairments.

Here's an example:

This is a test to see if alt-text in images is searchable on Twitter.
alpaca omnithorp pic.twitter.com/JHgCSaXpKd

— Terence Eden (@edent) February 19, 2017

If you take a look at the HTML source, you can see that I've added a unique string as the alt text. That should make it easy to search for.

[Image: An HTML representation of the Tweet. Alt text is present.]

If I search for the text of the Tweet - Twitter finds it without issue.

But if I search for the unique phrase in the alt text?

[Image: The Twitter search page showing no results found.]

Nothing!

Here's my question - should it?

Twitter has an impressive advanced search function - allowing filters by sentiment, date, location, and language. So why not search by image?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/02/accessibility-you-cant-search-twitter-for-alt-text/

#a11y #accessibility #twitter #usability

Terence Eden’s Blog

2017-02-19 15:27:41

Accessibility - you can't search Twitter for Alt-Text
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/02/accessibility-you-cant-search-twitter-for-alt-text/

Twitter has recently improved the accessibility of its site. When uploading an image, a user can add alt text - a short description of the image for people with visual impairments.

Here's an example:

This is a test to see if alt-text in images is searchable on Twitter.
alpaca omnithorp pic.twitter.com/JHgCSaXpKd

— Terence Eden (@edent) February 19, 2017

If you take a look at the HTML source, you can see that I've added a unique string as the alt text. That should make it easy to search for.

[Image: An HTML representation of the Tweet. Alt text is present.]

If I search for the text of the Tweet - Twitter finds it without issue.

But if I search for the unique phrase in the alt text?

[Image: The Twitter search page showing no results found.]

Nothing!

Here's my question - should it?

Twitter has an impressive advanced search function - allowing filters by sentiment, date, location, and language. So why not search by image?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/02/accessibility-you-cant-search-twitter-for-alt-text/

#a11y #accessibility #twitter #usability

How to use advanced search – find posts, hashtags, and more

Use X's advanced search to find exactly what you are looking for with our advanced search options on X.com.

^{support.twitter.com}

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.privacytools.io)

Elon Musk Begs Taylor Swift to Post Her Music on Zombie Twitter

Between her astronomical album and concert sales, streaming dominance, and general icon status, Swift has no need for further promotion, least of all on a website that sent advertisers fleeing when the billionaire who impulsively bought it became obsessed with defeating the “woke mind virus.”

#TaylorSwift #TaylorsVersion #music #twitter #socialmedia #wokemindvirus #elon #musk #elno #spacekaren

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/elon-musk-begs-taylor-swift-post-music-twitter-1234828833/

Because I was only able to delete a few thousand Tweets from my profile, I had to write a new script to delete all Tweets.

1. Log into Twitter
2. Paste code from link below to browser console (F12)
3. Choose tweet-headers.js file from your data archive (https://nitter.privacytools.io/settings/download_your_data)
4. Wait for Tweets to vanish
[5. Let me know if it worked]

Script (click button "raw" for easier copying): https://gist.github.com/lucahammer/a4d1e957ec9e061e3cccafcbed599e16

Video tutorial in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB1-z6LbX5w
Video tutorial in German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmQ7_ZgVNxg

I have tested it with Firefox. Edge and Chrome were reported as working as well. The script can delete around five Tweets per second. If you don't want to mess with the browser console, it's available as a userscript: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/476062-tweetxer

#XCorp #twitter

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.privacytools.io)

I heard that the tools to delete all your Tweets don't work anymore. This script allows you to delete them anyways: https://gist.github.com/lucahammer/1aa16b4d3c1fb04035839da5ef699d65

- #Xcorp may view it as a violation of their terms (automation) and ban your account. Use at your own risk.
- At least in the EU you have a right to delete your own data which overrules any company terms.
- This only removes them from your profile, Tweets may still exist in backups and other places.

I wasn't able to get the script to run unsupervised. After some time the timeline stays empty and you have to manually reload the page and run the script again. Currently, I am testing it with a 15 year old account with 19 k Tweets. I had to reload every 500 Tweets on average. After adjusting the script to not hit the rate-limit (50 requests per minute), it should run with less interruptions. But the Xcorp infrastructure is unreliable. #twitter

2023-09-19 Initial release
2023-09-19 Replies get deleted as well. Script switches between Tweets and Replies until neither returns new results.

Another excellent talk by Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) on why #Facebook, #Twitter / X and similar for-profit #internet platforms suck so much and are getting even worse. And what to do about it.

DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow

The enshittification of the internet follows a predictable trajectory: first, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things b...

^YouTube

Offenbar konnte von der Ankündigung Elon Musks, eine Bezahlschranke für alle einführen zu wollen, dieses Mal vor allem #Bluesky profitieren. Trotz "Invite Only" vergrößerte sich die User*innenschaft um etwa 5 Prozent.
#Twitter #X #Mastodon #Bluesky

https://futurezone.at/apps/bluesky-elon-musk-twitter-x-alternative-social-media-nutzungszahlen/402605873

Elon Musk ist schuld: Bluesky hat jetzt 1 Million aktive Nutzer

Das soziale Netzwerk Bluesky profitierte am meisten von der Ankündigung, dass X kostenpflichtig werden könnte.

^{futurezone.at}