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.
One exception is Truth Social, due to its connection to Donald Trump. As there is a forum ban on US Politics, all discussion of Truth Social is off-topic and posts about the platform may be thumped.
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, then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
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 Nov 8th 2024 at 5:16:31 PM
Nero Fangirl
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I don't think you can get away with not naming names when the people using it include people who are dead and people who want to not have it.
One of the more famous Twitter shitposters. https://twitter.com/dril
A "professional" Twitter shitposter.
He is responsible for coming up with such phrases as
and
The thing about the false endorsement thing is it doesn't matter unless someone sues twitter. And it's not gonna happen.
The FTC's not gonna care about that. They frankly already have better stuff to investigate twitter over that affect living people like the privacy stuff. They aren't gonna divert more of their limited resources to something so minor especially when the damage is, lets be honest, to people who are dead already.
The estate of the deads? A lawsuit is super expensive, and what are you going to get for damages? Twitter's in the red right now since its saddled with all the debt from having been purchased and the advertisers ran away. What are you gonna seize? The office chairs? Twitter (Now X-Corp) is a corporation, whatever you win won't come out of Elon's pocket. You can try to sue him directly too but good luck proving he asked for dead people to be verified. That's most likely a mistake when they batch gave checkmarks to formerly checkmarked account. You'd literally just be burning cash. No one's gonna sue over this.
Edited by Ghilz on Apr 23rd 2023 at 10:30:18 AM
To be clear there's no real scenario where he faces any major financial consequences whatever happens to twitter. He loses a bunch of Tesla stock at most. But that's about it. Most of twitter's debt was put against itself. He'll remain comfortably one of the world's richest men and the Tesla board will support it coz it's literally his family, friends and sycophants.
It's the beauty of being rich, consequences don't happen to you. The only lasting consequences he'll take from this is that the whole Twitter thing burst the bubble of the "genius entrepreneur" façade the media used to propagate for him.
Edited by Ghilz on Apr 23rd 2023 at 10:34:13 AM
Twitter rules have been updated so that harassing Twitter Blue users counts as “hateful conduct”.
Okay, I’ll take the dunce cap.
Edited by SatoshiBakura on Apr 23rd 2023 at 2:27:47 PM
I do believe that was noted as a hoax, easily verified by checking the Hateful Conduct page directly
rather than citing a post on Twitter as the source.
...as funny as the hoax is, I'll admit.
Edited by NesClassic on Apr 23rd 2023 at 2:25:19 PM
🏳️⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse AlberiaHonestly, the blue checkmarks are annoying as fuck with their artificial boosting.
More often than not, I had Jordan Preston and other chuds being promoted on my timeline and I blocked a shitload of them, on top of Elon Posting constantly popping up despite blocking him repeatedly.
Inter arma enim silent legesThe blue checkmarks make a good case of how they ended up paying for blue checkmarks with each of their post. Like an idiot saying the MIT is against freedom of speech because the MIT is clarifying they didn't pay for twitter blue.
Anyway, wondering with trepidation what comes next. Twitter Blue was gonna be Elon's big money makernote . Now that this has failed, spectacularly if the numbers we heard and Elon's response is any indication, I legit dread (in that way someone watching a train approaching a car on the tracks dreads whats coming but can't look away) what his next plan to milk cash out of his investment is gonna be.
Key thing I said is not he'd have "no" financial consequences. I said no "major" consequences.
From my understanding (and I'll freely admit its not my expertise), he's not paying that much coz through some debt shuffling he's freed a lot of stocks he had stacked.
And he will take a financial hit. but it's a hit that's gonna be intangible to a man of his wealth whose fortune mostly exists in a fluctuating nether. The real damage will remain to the ego.
Edited by Ghilz on Apr 23rd 2023 at 11:41:20 AM
When it doesnt impact your life, it isn't.
Heck case and point Elon already did lose billions this year when Tesla's stock had a meltdown. And it wasn't enough to even draw his attention away from Twitter back to Tesla even as his investors were begging him to stop looking at his toy and do his job.
Edited by Ghilz on Apr 23rd 2023 at 12:22:44 PM
