If you don't own the domain your content is served from, you have nothing. With control of the domain there will always be some way to redirect or migrate, but without that, you'll always be at the mercy of the domain owner. I don't know if there were any alternate proposals, but it is a shame of internet history web and email weren't focused on domain ownership first, with different subdomains proxied/routed to other services.
I like Mastodon better too, but non-technical users seem to find it too complicated/nerdy. Threads is easy to use but apparently suppresses posts containing political content and perhaps as a result of inheriting Instagram's userbase, has an issue with users accusing other users of posting engagement bait, which isn’t conducive to building and sustaining a community.
Mastodon and Threads have also been comparatively slow/reluctant to respond to community feedback. With Mastodon this is understandable because it’s open source and resources are limited, but with Threads that’s not a problem which suggests it’s intentional.
Title of this article is total b.s (although so was flagging this on HN).
However, the tool it mentions is pretty cool and frankly I'm surprised it even works considering Twitter shut down APIs a while back. I just tried it out and it helped me connect with over 200 folks on Bluesky that I'd been following on Twitter that I didn't know had migrated. Pretty handy... while it lasts.
This won't solve a dedicated stalker, but it will discourage a troll who scrolls twitter like a normal person.
You're quite right that it's trivially easy to work-around, but if you just use a main account 99% of the time you won't even know that you have something to work around because you're not seeing the posts you want to attack and sick your followers upon.
Twitter is mostly entertainment, so most people will use it in the way that's the most convenient. That means "hide posts from people who blocked me" should make a decent dent in that kind of negative harassment.
Yes it won't stop somebody who treats hating people on Twitter as their job but how many of those are there?
> Musk actually made it harder by turning the entire site into a walled garden
So we're supposed to thank him for selecting the ugliest brute-force solution?
It's not security theater to offer a user settings that help them tailor their experience. People aren't mad about stalkers being clever, they're angry at X for not giving them better options. If your social media doesn't let users voluntarily segregate themselves from antisocial behavior, it shouldn't surprise you when they want to leave your website altogether.
It's hard to take this seriously when it is so laden with name-calling and bitter sarcasm. There is nothing ambiguous or complex about either side of the argument. If you can't defend your side of the argument without falsely accusing the opposing argument as being non-existent or factually incorrect when it's laid out so clearly (see siblings, or any responses any time this comes up), you should stop and come at it from another angle.
And, to be clear, this is not me saying that one side of this argument is correct and the other is wrong. I just think your attitude is non-constructive.
Even if it is, Musk won. He got his $44 billion value back through getting premium position for all his government-contractor companies by becoming the President's right hand man. This is reflected in his share values climbing.
If this kills Twitter, I think Musk will be annoyed but it's still a net success for him.
Given how fickle Trump is, and the fact that he is already talking shit about Elon ... it seems too soon to predict a massive success.
Heck, even the S&P 500 has already taken back all the gains from the post-election spaz. I don't think the economic prospects for Elon or anyone else look assured at this point.
I don't follow Musk's personality foibles closely at all, but from what I have seen, I get the sense that profit is not one of the things he ties closely to his aggrandized self-image. Wealth, yes, but only in the sense that it is for spending to do great things, even if the profit isn't there, like "protecting freedom of speech" (there aren't enough quotation marks in the universe). I.e. Tony Stark, not Gordon Gekko.
It’s apparent that design decisions are made keeping Musk in mind. I won’t be surprised if a lot of people have blocked Musk on X as they don’t want to see propaganda being spewed. And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any?
That's not the way the change to blocking worked right? I haven't used the site since he became owner, but isn't the recent change that if you yourself have been blocked by someone, you will now be able to see their posts if they're public (just as if you were logged out) and you stumble onto them somehow?
So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?
It added friction, and that's often all that's needed to stop low-effort harassers (which are BY FAR the most numerous). Hell-bans work even better, and still do nothing that can't be seen publicly.
I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.
If you know the content existed, which in many cases you didn't. Like, most of the time the only time you saw blocked content was if somebody you followed quote-tweeted it (or they reply-tweeted to it and you investigated). Otherwise? It's like it doesn't exist at all.
It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads.
It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
On the other hand if someone blocks you yet your Twitter circle keeps interacting with that person–maybe because they are a big player in the space–your feed is full of "You cannot read this message" tombstones. It's stupid that you can't just see the tweet/reply at that point. And no less provocative.
I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?)
I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
Blocking from interacting makes sense and from showing up in the feed/search results also makes sense, blocking from viewing at all encourages trolls and deceivers.
E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding.
Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
Lately I've noticed on Reddit people blocking me the second they respond to me so that they have the last word in an e-fight*. Horrible implementation.
*yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
Yeah reddit is full of shady tricks like that, either as design choices, admin policies, or by mod coalitions of major subreddits.
Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of.
So much so that, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.
IMHO, the lesson from the corruption of Twitter should be don't build your social network on a proprietary walled garden.
Mastodon and Threads have also been comparatively slow/reluctant to respond to community feedback. With Mastodon this is understandable because it’s open source and resources are limited, but with Threads that’s not a problem which suggests it’s intentional.
However, the tool it mentions is pretty cool and frankly I'm surprised it even works considering Twitter shut down APIs a while back. I just tried it out and it helped me connect with over 200 folks on Bluesky that I'd been following on Twitter that I didn't know had migrated. Pretty handy... while it lasts.
This won't solve a dedicated stalker, but it will discourage a troll who scrolls twitter like a normal person.
You're quite right that it's trivially easy to work-around, but if you just use a main account 99% of the time you won't even know that you have something to work around because you're not seeing the posts you want to attack and sick your followers upon.
Twitter is mostly entertainment, so most people will use it in the way that's the most convenient. That means "hide posts from people who blocked me" should make a decent dent in that kind of negative harassment.
Yes it won't stop somebody who treats hating people on Twitter as their job but how many of those are there?
So we're supposed to thank him for selecting the ugliest brute-force solution?
It's not security theater to offer a user settings that help them tailor their experience. People aren't mad about stalkers being clever, they're angry at X for not giving them better options. If your social media doesn't let users voluntarily segregate themselves from antisocial behavior, it shouldn't surprise you when they want to leave your website altogether.
And, to be clear, this is not me saying that one side of this argument is correct and the other is wrong. I just think your attitude is non-constructive.
If this kills Twitter, I think Musk will be annoyed but it's still a net success for him.
Heck, even the S&P 500 has already taken back all the gains from the post-election spaz. I don't think the economic prospects for Elon or anyone else look assured at this point.
I sense an ego clash coming regardless.
So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?
"Following" is invariably better anyway, because then you're seeing the things you want to instead of the things that the algorithm suggests.
Yeah, because it didn't make any sense. All you had to do to see blocked content was to log out of Twitter.
I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.
It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads.
It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?)
I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding.
Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
*yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of.
So much so that, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.