• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    In a statement, the Harris campaign said, “The American people want the real freedom, opportunity and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”

    Perfect.

  • ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The video mimics Ms. Harris’s voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”

    Here you go.

  • sundray@lemmus.org
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    5 months ago

    in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies

    But of course. That is why he bought the company – to become un-bannable.

  • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    I just can’t believe anyone still uses Twitter for any purpose.

    At this point remaining active on the platform is more or less unethical.

    • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      5 months ago

      A lot of sites have weight. Twitter sheds users every day but the large user count makes it attractive to public figures and if you want to follow that public figure you need to have twitter.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That’s why the more prominent the public figure is, the bigger ethical obligation they have to switch to Mastodon and force their followers to follow.

      • SpaceCowboy
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        5 months ago

        Yeah but to me it’s insane that public people that have publicists or companies that have communications staff simply don’t cross post to multiple sites.

        Sure for a regular person that’s a lot of work to do when just posting a random thought. But for someone who’s job involves posting things to social media? Most of the work is coming up with the copy. Once that’s done it’s just copying and pasting to different sites.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      more or less unethical.

      Even before that, it just funnels value from users to a monopoly that does not innovate or improve user experience. It’s like the freemium model without much benefit in exchange for your data.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      3 Qs:

      1. Musk sux

      2. If you advised Kamala and she created a Mastodon account and tried to funnel people there, but not everyone left, would you advise her to at least post screenshots of her Mastodon posts or “see my post about $subject on Masto here: $url” whenever she had something to say?

      3. If you’re Kamala and your crystal ball proved posting on the dumpster fire site would bring you the one extra voter who will sway the election - would you take a utilitarian approach and keep dumpsterposting?

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        if Kampala staying on Twitter meant winning the election then sure.

        It’s my strongly held opinion that it won’t significantly effect the outcome. A savvy media team could play it to her advantage.

        Honestly how many swing voters are going to follow Kamala.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      “Less unethical” if you’re a journalist. Investigative reporters can visit nazi bars with 335m people if they bring us the goods about what the nazis are saying!

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Sure I guess.

        I have the luxury of not having to decide.

        I’m not going to judge someone who feels they absolutely need to participate on twitter in order to avoid poverty.

        I certainly wouldn’t like to do that myself.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Dirty and sometimes dangerous job indeed!

          There’s also the public service side too, even if the journalist is independently wealthy (set for life).

          Like how the US sends the FBI to white supremacist meetups so we can gather intel, journalists gather intel so we know what poobrains are spreading around - then we can defend ourselves, be prepared for those who fall for the disinfo, etc. You’re not proud for attending the meetup or logging into the website, but you know you’re doing good by tipping off good people about bad things. Good citizens can do that stuff w/o financial incentives.

          I salute ‘em!

    • KroninJ@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I use it to keep up with Street Fighter pros.

      And watch a little of the dumpster fire burn. I report all of Musks posts that break policy and kinda surprised my account isn’t suspended yet.

    • Maxnmy's@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Twitter just has too much momentum. It’s unshakable from its cultural position as it is now. It will take more than the alt-right openly congregating in their own circles to scare ordinary people away.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        I disagree.

        If anything the momentum is moving against it. The only question is how long it will take for alternatives to become viable and / or for twitter to lose its network effect.

        Presently its only the inertia of users maintaining the network effect.

        When the owner starts publishing misinformation I’m order to manipulate an election, that’s something more than merely a consideration of features, users, and UX. Users really ought to emphatically withdraw their support, even in cases where it may be inconvenient.

  • hushable@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    everyday I’m thankful that Musk is not an US born citizen and cannot run for office. It’s the only thing stopping him

  • mPony@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Next thing you know, Musky will order staff to create entirely false tweets on official accounts and lock the accounts so the false tweets can’t be deleted. He will burn that entire company to the ground to get TFG back in.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    i love how irrelevant elon made twitter. like the big companies may not be on alternative networks but you also dont see hashtags and advertisements to discuss something on twitter anymore like you used to in the 10s

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Unfortunately that was his task. Twitter was a pivotal tool in the Arab spring, second largest investor in Twitter after musk were the Saudis. Musk is such a try hard wannabe goon that when the “real” money told him they’d think he was cool if he bought and fucked up Twitter (and they would totally let him ride dirtbikes with them when he was done!) he jumped at the chance.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I honestly believe that he was backed into a corner and this was his out. His mouth wrote checks he literally couldn’t cash, and when he was forced to fork over the money, the spiteful little shit was like “Ok, well these oligarchs would like to see Twitter festroyed anyway, so let’s do that.”

        • Snapz@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yes and no, he didn’t want it as much as he wanted the attention. When he was trapped, they told him they’d be buddies and directly/indirectly support his other projects if he played ball. Plus, they all probably have the true depth on his Epstein stuff and they all wave kompromat over each other’s heads and threaten with a smile.

        • ulkesh@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Make no mistake, Musk is an oligarch wannabe. He is just like all of them — greedy, self-serving, self-righteous cunts. The world will be far better off when they no longer exist.

          • kent_eh
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            5 months ago

            He is just like all of them — greedy, self-serving, self-righteous cunts.

            You don’t become a billionaire without having those personality traits.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I agree completely. I just wonder why anyone argues that he’s not obviously trying to actively destroy Twitter.

            • ulkesh@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Yeah I’m pretty sure that was shown to be the case (people who knew him reporting that he lamented twitter’s “wokeness”, wanted to do something about it, and how he railed against his own trans child).

              He is, in every sense of the word, a douchebag.

              So anyone who argues the opposite is either in on the agenda or sucking his probably-tiny genitalia — or both.

      • kronisk @lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I don’t buy this conspiracy theory at all, 1) twitter is disinformation heaven, which is very useful to authoritarian regimes and 2) Musky would never intentionally do anything to harm his public image, he’s a textbook narcissist after all.

        • Snapz@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Don’t agree with your premise, and think maybe you’re conflating Twitter today with Twitter back then for the most part…

          Twitter USED to be… a place where you could get a decent idea of the zeitgeist and verification actually meant something. By no means ideal on any count, but it was the closest thing we had to the world’s unified quick communications platform. And yes, some missinfo anywhere, but generally you could get to a lot of usable info and communicate with people more directly.

          To your second point, you’re missing SO MUCH OF the nuance of how desperate and out of touch this chud is. Go watch musk on stage with Dave Chapelle and then go see how Peter thiel is the senior class man to elon’s freshman - thiel is always giving him swirleys and calling musk names, but elon follows like a kicked puppy hoping for approval.

          • Womble@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I just honestly don’t believe Musk is competent enough to pull off such a conspiracy. Far more likely that he just fucked up into buying twitter at a massively inflated price then ran it into the ground by being an idiot who thinks he’s a genius.

            • Snapz@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              What do you mean “such a conspiracy”? There’s no grassy knoll? No Zupruder film here?

              Fire most of the staff, retain only sycophants and incompetents, remove security and functionality infrastructure so the site is unreliable and insecure, complicate and invalidate verification by giving to all or making “pay to play” until info source verification itself is meaningless, turn off universal access to the platform and openly manipulate the algorithm “news feed” until it’s known that you won’t see actual “trending topics” and there is zero conference that Twitter is a window the the zeitgeist - and we’re there.

              We saw it all happen in plain site, no secret meetings. These fucks are always on mega yachts in the Aegean Sea and shit like that, they discussed it one day and that lopsided dipshit essentially said, “I can jump my bike off that high ramp, if I can sit with you guys at lunch” he wasn’t thinking and immediately regretted it. He was going to bail before the actual jump and make that move where you trip and then immediately pretend you were just jogging, but in no time he was already going downhill fast and too committed legally so he just hit the ramp… He fell on his face, but it doesn’t matter because that was the task, to publicly be a tremendous failure. They probably wanted him to do it a little more subtle even, but he is incompetent, so you got this.

              musk isn’t a “mastermind” here, he is a useful idiot that was going to fail regardless, the actual money/skill just pointed his failure in their preferred direction that benefited them most. When actual money doesn’t matter, power is the currency. musk doesn’t have real power, people like the Saudis and venture capitalists do. That’s what he’s chasing.

          • kronisk @lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Fair point, but I would argue that if you had that kind of experience on twitter, you’re weren’t really the target demographic.

            Desperate and out of touch, yes, but deliberately fucking up a platform and ruining his “Iron Man” persona? He’s too stupid and too invested in what people think of him.

            There’s a version of this conspiracy I could buy though: the Saudis gave him money and stroked his ego knowing that there was no way he wouldn’t fuck the whole thing up. Everyone except him knew how this was going to end. That conspiracy I could get behind.

            • Snapz@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Yeah, you’re closer on the last part.

              With the “target demographic” comment though, you’re conflating business motivation with political/cultural… You can be concerned with selling the most hammers at your hardware store, or you can be afraid that a smaller percentage of your customers will then use their purchased hammers to come break your windows and your legs.

        • Snapz@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yes AND, until we have a better and wholly adopted FOSS, decentralized alternative, you actually need something more mainstream in these big moments unfortunately.

          You can just say the ideal out loud and pat yourself on the back, but it doesn’t actually solve for the problem.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I thought X got rid of all of the sane policies that twitter had?

    I mean isn’t X officially a white supremacist platform now anyways?

    • xenoclast@lemmy.world
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      And EVERY single news organization in the US uses it both as their primary platform AND source for news.

      Even fucking NPR. What the actual fuck is that about ?

      90% of screenshots on Lemmy are from Twitter ffs. It boggles my mind, and I am not easily boggled.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Musky wanted to do that but Europe threatened to ban Twitter so now he just pretends that there are rules.

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Is anyone the least bit shocked at the “rules for thee” behavior from these subhuman pieces of shit? Why are we allowing them to be in charge of anything again?

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Because people won’t leave Xitter. Mastodon was propped up expressly as a replacement, but the bird yet lives.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        I think this is the reason for all word’s problems, not enough people are willing to give up a tiny luxury (in this case addiction) when that’s what we need to move forward.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Ooh what if Mastodon imitated Threads a little minus the massive budget.

          “Login with Twitter”, but really just copies your @handle over to Mastodon. Autoselects a normie instance for you (bad I know). Asks you to enter email or phone. Login via code (or magic link) each time. Can educate on instances later and try to get you to set a password once you’ve adopted it a bit (or shift you to login via emailed code to save SMS fees). Still expensive, kinda hacky, still no Meta budget.

          Aight probably a pretty bad idea all around heh


          Edit: can copy your Twitter follows too

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Ya it’s too bad.

          Even before that - folks gotta learn about Mastodon, understand its benefits, and then be willing to give up tiny luxuries (convenience of not switching, attraction to following uh pop stars & ppl…). At least we can feel a little better that not everyone staying on Twitter has heard of Mastodon ever before in their lives!

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Inherited wealth centralizes money and power, and egregious hoarding like billionaire level centralized wealth makes people greedy, paranoid, and disconnected from the reality most other people experience.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    I hope Harris wins and I really hope she is a petty and vindictive person that goes out of her way to make Imon Ketamusk’s life a pain in the ass.

    • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 months ago

      You don’t even need to be petty and vindictive to correct the situation where a single unelected person has that much power.

  • SteefLem@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    That name should be some sort of verb or something, “lets not Musk this up” or “are you really that Musk?” I dunno something like that

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    5 months ago

    I hate it when these articles never include the video. How am I supposed to learn about manipulation if I’m “being protected against it”?

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      5 months ago

      You can find it without them boosting it for free. But you don’t have to watch it to understand the story

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    If my younger self from like 3 years ago heard generating videos can be a prompt away and can make gigantic amounts of misinformation, he would shit himself and probably write a manifesto, but fuck me this is still insane today!

    • Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I can’t tell whether 3 years ago you were pre-potty training but fully literate, or whether you’ve simultaneously learned better emotional regulation and sphincter control in the past few years.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        People tend to change more, psychologically speaking, between 18-25. They might have been 17-18 three years ago. Makes sense with the manifesto comment.