By "social media" we mean any large computer network that allows people to interact in shared communities. The big ones of course are Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, but we can't forget newer platforms like Discord and Slack.
Dedicated video sites are off-topic here and YouTube has its own separate thread
.
What we should discuss in this OTC topic are news items, business operations, and activities by the networks themselves, not specific things posted by users. Those should go into threads appropriate to the subjects of those posts. For example, if an actor tweets about a film, we'd discuss that in the Media forum topic for the film, not here. If Facebook changes its policies, that could be discussed here.
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are also off-topic — except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg would be acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
The thread's also not about "dumb thing [public figure] said on [social media platform]". If there isn't a specific thread related to the subject of the statement (e.g. US Politics), then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
created back in 2020 that we never opened. Unfortunately, it's a little stale, so bumping it isn't going to work very well, but I would like to restart it. The reason I'm doing so is that the Computer Thread seems to have become the de facto place for this sort of talk, and it's a big tonal clash with talking about computer tech.
The hot topic of the day is Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter. We first discussed it in the Computer Thread, starting roughly here, and I am not going to rehash the entire discussion. Instead, I am going to resume from the last post:
CNBC: Twitter is reportedly taking another look at Musk takeover bid
Twitter's board is reportedly meeting with Elon Musk and may seek to negotiate on his buyout offer. Musk claims to have secured $46 billion in funding to buy the company at a valuation of $43 billion and is preparing to make a tender offer to its shareholders.
While the board has passed a poison pill, it could be facing resistance to that from groups of shareholders and will want to talk things out rather than face a hostile takeover. It's also possible that Twitter's stock could crash if the offer fails to go through.
Another possible topic was originally posted here.
Ars Technica: EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content
Following on from the recently passed Digital Markets Act, which requires large tech companies to unbundle first-party software from hardware platforms, the proposed Digital Services Act will require medium and large social media platforms and search engines to police hate speech and disinformation while adding additional protections for children against targeted marketing.
It also bans "dark patterns", which manipulate or trick people into clicking on ads or other content. The article doesn't explicitly say what that means, but I assume it includes things like disguising ads to look like parts of a site's user interface, hiding "close" buttons, and such.
For large companies, the requirements would go into effect immediately. For medium companies, they would have a grace period to implement the changes.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has warned that Big Tech has become “too big to care.”
This phrase, "too big to care", intrigues me. It's an indictment of the idea that these companies have decided that growth and engagement metrics overwhelm any sense of social responsibility.
In my opinion, a law like this would be impossible in the United States, since it would be challenged (likely successfully) on First Amendment grounds.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 11:24:56 AM
Oh, bother.
It really just boils down to the USA government only wanting USA entities to get USA citizens' data.
Which, well, fair.
Here's hoping they ban Telegram too.
Disgusted, but not surprised
IIRC, Tik Tok actually collects a lot more data than is normal, but I'm admittedly not clear on the details.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
It wasn't that long ago TikTok insisted that the app couldn't be used to spy on people like some news sources had reported, only for it to be revealed that TikTok employees were using it to spy on journalists who were reporting on the company.
The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned...
Forbes reported on Thursday that ByteDance had tracked multiple Forbes journalists including some who formerly worked at BuzzFeed “as part of a covert surveillance campaign” aimed at discovering the source of leaks.
Not sure if the people involved were let go for breaking the rules or if they were let go for getting caught by the media.
A procrastination in of itself
You’re comparing it with two platforms who were famously subject to hostile Russian influence campaigns that worked hand in hand with domestic hostile influence groups that shared the same goals as Russia?
I don’t think there’s a major social media platform which hasn’t been found to have been used for negative foreign influence on US politics. Now there’s a question around why Tik Tok is being gone after for this but not Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr or others. That’s why I highlighted in my post about how Tik Tok has a different ownership chain then the other companies.
Edited by Silasw on Mar 29th 2024 at 8:00:36 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Professional Forum Ninja
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Well that was fast.
It would not surprise me if many of the people who bought in didn't really understand what the situation was and thought it was a way to get free money in the future.
Edited by Zendervai on Apr 1st 2024 at 2:10:56 PM
Not Three Laws compliant.
Surrounded by weirdoes
No wonder it is not profitable. Truth Social's base is just the angry racist part of Twitter when Twitter is still right there and welcomes angry racists.
Wake me up at your own risk.
Shadow Bug
Sucks to suck, as is typical with bigots lmao
"That we continue to persist at all is a testament to our faith in one another."
Lost in Space
There are winners from this, of course: whoever sold at those highs. Follow the bag, not the people left holding it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Does put a big dent in Trump's "money" though. It would legit be really funny if it got to the 6 month mark and it's functionally worthless.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Jupiterian Local
More important, Twitter also has people who aren't angry racists, which is important because it gives the angry racists someone to harass. That's what they really want — not just a platform that lets them be racist in front of each other, but a platform that refuses to protect other people on the platform from their attacks.
That's a big reason that right-wing social media fails. People are generally happy to let them exist in their own miserable little corner of society where they can be easily ignored. But they can't stand that. They don't want to have their own space where it's safe for them to be themselves — they want to inject themselves in everyone else's space to make it unsafe for anyone not like them. They don't want to build a community, they want to ruin other people's communities.
So right-wing social media withers because it doesn't give them any targets.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Shadow Bug
And here I thought it was just because right wing social media is just laughably bad compared to more mainstream platforms.
"That we continue to persist at all is a testament to our faith in one another."
Lost in Space
Functionality is irrelevant, or at least a distraction, as long as the site is basically competent. (Admittedly, that's a high bar for the right as well, but not the point here.)
The point of social media is to connect with other people. Hence the word "social". If the only people you can connect with are ones who share your own views, then you will inevitably go down a rabbit hole, shedding those of lesser conviction along the way, until all you have left is a crowd of the most obsessive and hardcore repeating grievances to each other.
Then that group will inevitably schism over some doctrinal disagreement and the losing group will make its own club, rinse repeat.
For bonus points, am I describing politics or religion?
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 1st 2024 at 3:28:18 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Industrious Incisors
Face me now, Bitch!
Seeing some people on Twitter say that the there are now reply bots that are posting CP and CSA material. Haven't found a news article although I'm not going to go searching for those keywords, only stories I've seen are Twitter getting caught selling data to governments and use of Twitter has fallen by a quarter since the buyout.
Shadow Bug
Face me now, Bitch!
The NUDES IN BIO shit was bad enough already....
Watch Symphogear
Shadow Bug
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Where did that even come from anyway?
Lost in Space
It's a trick for avoiding AI moderation. Don't say "here's a link to some porn". Instead, use a link farm, stick it in your bio, and ask people to look there. "X in bio" is actually a fairly standard way of getting people to look at things that you don't have room to put in a post.
A lot of this stuff isn't porn anyway, or at least not directly; it goes to various forms of catfishing scam, operated by trafficked workers in countries that the FBI doesn't have good relationships with. Some is probably "legit", of course, and I'd like to remind everyone that CP/CSA/CSE was a problem on Twitter long before Musk took over.
I have to say, I've barely seen any of these without clicking the "show hidden replies" link (or whatever it's called), because the automated moderation usually does a fairly good job of burying them. Sure, they're present, but you have to go looking.
Not trying to make excuses for X here per se; it is their job to address this problem. But dealing with this sort of spam is very difficult because it adapts to whatever filters you put in place and there's too much of it for any human to review. For every smart person playing defense, there is a smart person playing offense (and a lot of dumb people, but that's beside the point), and the smart ones make a lot of money.
Here at TV Tropes, we do a lot of pre-filtering on accounts. One or two moderators can handle fifty accounts a day, but a hundred thousand (or whatever) is beyond any reasonable team of humans without tool assistance. Plus, our site is a much lower profile target.
Unless X becomes extremely rigorous about identity verification, it will never solve this problem. But that would severely reduce its subscriber growth metrics, not to mention getting privacy advocates up in arms.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 1st 2024 at 9:46:37 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
It is notable though that Twitter barely seems to be doing anything about it. Like, yeah, it's like playing whackamole with these accounts a lot of the time, but these bots are running around for weeks or months with no format changes because Twitter isn't doing anything. And, to be blunt, the "nudes in bio" bots have such a bizarre formatting that just automatically blocking every post like that isn't gonna have much impact on everyone else.
Like, you'd think someone who constantly blathered on about bots would put in literally any effort about these incredibly fucking visible bots with a really unique style of formatting that no one else uses unless they're explicitly making fun of the bots.
Edited by Zendervai on Apr 1st 2024 at 10:07:43 AM
Not Three Laws compliant.
Musk did drastically reduce the workforce when he took over including deep cuts to the teams meant to handle stuff like this. That's why bots in general became worse especially ones where someone was willing to spend $8 on Blue for them.
It is a complicated problem for sure and even if Musk hadn't fired most of the people responsible for fighting it they would still have their hands full. He's made the problem worse and none of his proposed solutions haven't made an impact, although if this is true that's going to light a fire under the company to solve it before they start getting fined into oblivion for not dealing with it.
Oh, bother.
The only thing worse than a site with CP and spambots is a site that has CP, spambots, and CP spambots.
And I thought the racist AI chatbot was bad. Shit.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The People's Champion
And isn't Xitter legally mandated to report CSAM when they stumble across it? I stopped browsing it long ago. Last time I checked, my feed is nothing but porn, AI art, AI porn, those really skeevy "deepfake generator" tools (which may or may not be illegal), political advertisements and ads for porn games.
Evidently, slashing the child safety team a month after taking over is the exact opposite of that, and it seems those consequences have only had a knock on effect. Doubly so for entirely demolishing any semblance of quality control over the ads beforehand.
If I wanted to see ads for a porn game on my timeline, I would browse a porn site. Elon's well aware that he's losing users like this, right? He probably banks on the revenue making up for it.
Unless he truly doesn't care either way.
There's beauty in even the smallest moments.
In this case, it's not particularly bad compared to other social media, no.
EXTRA! EXTRA! US government behaving inconsistently! Get your paper here!