It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.
Is this migration already called xit? Because it should…
Xodus
tweXit
tweXit does have a nice ring to it. Made me laugh 😂
Not sure which I like more. I think I’ll use both.
Xitting the Xitter (shit-ter)
Xatter (shat-ter)
It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.
I wonder if previous twitter execs are feeling a bit bad to have sold him twitter to see it destroyed like that.
I mean it certainly proves Elon is an idiot as he used fraud to manipulate the price and got played instead.
But was it worth it to let him destroy Twitter just because he tried to defraud it?
They got $44 billion, double what sane people thought the company was worth. It would be irresponsible not to take Elon for a ride.
Responsible financially, as agents of the corporation, sure. And I understand why they did it. Morally though (and I would argue civilly) it was wildly irresponsible. Thousands of people lost their jobs, hundreds of people are now forced to work at Elons insane business under threat of deportation if their visa is invalidated, and hundreds of millions lost a trusted, dependable direct link to governments, public figures, and other notable people. The world is a worse place for having let this deal happen. What is responsible financially is often irresponsible in pretty much every other way, and I wish this perspective was represented more.
As a shareholder in a number of other large corporations, I would actively like for buy-outs like this one to fail, even if it would make me a quick buck now, even if that quick buck is a lot. I much prefer stability to major erratic changes, even when they benefit me.
hundreds of millions lost a trusted, dependable direct link to governments, public figures, and other notable people.
It should not have been trusted and pervasive to such an extent. If anything, better to cut the dependency now than later.
That’s a fair argument, and to an extent I agree. That said, I don’t think firebombing something hundreds of millions depend on is not the ideal solution, and it could have been handled differently, like by adding contingencies, for example. Or working in some form of transition period.
In an ideal world, yes. But face it, you, I, and my aunt’s puppy knows that’d never happen. Get every govt agency in the world to cooperate? Yeah right. This might have been one of the best ways we could realistically have ended it.
An easy counterpoint to what you just said: mahney. Nobody cares about doing the responsible thing when billions are on the line. Also, a lot of people say they wouldn’t do something for a billion dollars which just boils down to “you didn’t get a chance like that and you never will”. Hypotheticals are easy till it actually happens to you.
I have morals that I will not violate. Money does not matter to me beyond enough to comfortably live on my own (and I have reached that point already). I give the rest away to people in need, because that’s how my moral system works. You’re welcome to think whatever you want about hypotheticals, but in this case it doesn’t matter if they sold or not. The people making this deal would have been obscenely rich either way. At a certain point, money is nothing more than bragging about a big number, your life doesn’t get materially different. If your moral system allows for that kind of action, good for you I suppose, but I can assure you its far from a universal perspective.
Also illegal, since Twitter was a public company- they can’t discriminate on bona fide offers or they risk being sued.
As someone who doesnt use twitter… yes this was totally worth it!
I’d be bummed out but happy I have an unlimited supply of hundred dollar bills to wipe away the tears.
I wonder how long twitter would able to run at a loss if elon didn’t take it over as a slapstick joke went wrong.
I’m sure the previous execs are crying into their wads of cash. So much sympathy for them.
Lol. Like if they gave a shit they would have forced that buyout to go through.
Yeah. I left with the bluetlicker shitstain bump up in every reply. The dumbest people to ever buy a device and learn English that somehow didn’t choke on rocks as a kid…
Just had enough and had to leave
To be honest, for me it absolutely was the rebranding that made me delete the app.
Why? I’m really curious what difference the rebranding made to users
Imagine your favourite fancy restaurant suddenly adopts an extreme “Batman” theme. Same food, but just hardcore decorated a la the Dark Knight. You’d probably still go there, but you’d have a different time. And you’d reconsider the types of people you’d bring there, etc.
Brand is far more than the logo in the top corner, and I think marketing textbooks are going to use Twitter -> X as an example of how not to do things.
Now I’m imagining meeting a professional contact at a classy Italian sit down place, but the waitress greats us with a deep gravely “I’m Batman.”
Thank you for building that moment for me. And yeah, I see exactly your point now. If I hadn’t already left X, I would be concerned about sharing a personal and professional brand with it.
It’s stupid and unnecessary.
For me personally it was simply a gut feeling of how stupid that name and logo looked on my screen. I was of course annoyed but everything else going on before, but that didn’t yet push me away. This is a minor thing, but it was the tipping point.
If you said it was the final nail in the coffin, sure. But for that to be the only reason?? Why??
Are you one of those “my brand truck is better than yours because … bowtie” types?
You are jumping into conclusions. See my other answer here https://lemmy.world/comment/2511227
Twitter under Elon look similar to the UK under Brexit.
So smooth sailing right? Right??
I find Mastodon very stuffy and boring, is there a way to shake up my feed? I feel like I’m missing something about how the app works.
I’d recommend following the hashtags you want to see. It’s sort of a build-your-own algorithm
This is a huge thing about the fediverse.
Users are used to being told what they want (algorithms) without any choice (centralised and only platform).
Whereas Lemmy and Mastodon require users to curate their stuff.
Perhaps some “meta fedi” sites would be useful. Things that generate lists of hashtags, instances and users “shake up” your experienceI found fishing for (and following) hashtags on Mastodon effective but Mastodon was also in much better shape to receive the waves of Twitter exoduses.
Lemmy lacks effective tools to organize a feed. I think many people recreated their favorite subreddits as communities but the userbase was too small to support them. Being able to create “multi-reddits” to group related micro-communities together to help mitigate the ghost town feeling as you raise the probably of at least one of them having something new to talk about.
I think naturally, Lemmy will gravitate to fewer, more generalized communities instead of many little hyper-specialized ones.
I’d love to see more smaller communities, tho. But, how to group communities?
Geographically is one way, if you want local news and banter.
By interest is another, if you want YouTube news/content but not Twitch news/content. Or just more generally “streaming content”?It is an impossible problem to solve easily.
And the risk of any instance suddenly going offline is very real. Which means, gravitating to a more technically adept or well funded instance makes sense.I feel like the current federation separation system isn’t going to work. Or it’s going to be “good enough” for a good while, but not really click.
Idk if separating “user instances” and “content instances” is better. Then some sort of “meta instances” that everyone actually interacts with.
Content instances can more specialise in the content they provide.
User instances specialise is currating their users.
And meta instances link users to content.
But then, that massively overcomplicates things. And who is going to want to run a user instance? Or a meta instance? Or a content instance? All require investment and work.I think that would have been a healthier start, to focus attention and generate some liveliness, but people’s preconceived notion is “Reddit” so that’s where community creation went.
Re-reading your post before I hit submit… I think I am just repeating what you are saying!
What I was saying:
I think the solution is “meta instances” or “meta communities” or “meta aggregators”.
A community or instance that aggregates the smaller communities.
And some way for smaller communities to submit content to that aggregator.
Like, I’m browsing my instance’s “all”. I find a good meme that suits my “programming memes” interest. So, I submit that post to the aggregator.Essentially like cross posting, but a community of all crossposts and everything is treated like it’s on the original instance.
But as a primary feature. Where it’s easy to “submit to aggregate subscription” or whatever.But then we would get every instance with their own meta-community, and it’s just a complication on top of communities and instances.
But then we would get every instance with their own meta-community, and it’s just a complication on top of communities and instances.
The trick is to have meta-meta-communities to aggregate the aggregators :)
Putting a list of similar instances and communities in the sidebar would help a ton. Yes, there is a list of communities on every instance, but I’m not scrolling through a hundred rows trying to determine which I might like based on the names.
Curation is the term. The question is how our doomscrolling is curated. Go to the big sites, they curate for engagement, and thus ragebait.
Here, maybe we need some communities that have people curating in a more positive direction…
Reddit also used to be that way. FFS I think the best time on the Internet was that when we were all on traditional phpBB-style forums, where there was no “algorithm” at all (though I admit the concept doesn’t scale well and they too have their structural problems).
God i miss traditional forums
Have you seen the maple syrup meme video? (Sorry for the TikTok link.)
https://www.tiktok.com/@reddit/video/7231589390072597806
This was a pretty amazing feature of everyone using Reddit. Lemmy isnt close to that for specific interests yet. League of Legends was one of the biggest subreddits, but any league community here is basically dead.
It’s a lot harder to get critical mass for Lemmy than it is for Mastodon. And Mastodon migration hasn’t been what I think it should be. A good, reliable, large instance on .com or .net domain would probably go a long way for adoption.
Mozilla is supposedly releasing https://mozilla.social Mastodon instance I’m early 2023. Any day now… But it’s understandable if they want to wait for some event to open.
This is a welcome change tbh. All these other platforms push rage bait and crap just to drive engagement numbers.
It’s refreshing to go back a little to how the Internet used to be. You had to go and find what you liked, not have a million things pushed on you.
Subscribe to the hashtags you’re interested in.
Tools help, and because the Fediverse API is completely accessible, folks have already come up with awesome stuff.
- Populate your following list by finding friends, the Fedifinder still appears to work and helps find friends from Twitter on Masto: https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
- Now find friends of friends, the wider social graph. Followgraph works wonders: https://followgraph.vercel.app/
- Now you will likely miss posts, so try following updates of people if you really enjoy their content, plus of course pinning hashtags. PLUS. Up your game with an algorithm, either in the dedicated Mastodon app (trending posts) or with more customisation through the app Fediview: https://fediview.com/ Using Mastodon Digest (GitHub), you could also set up your own automation script.
- Folks have created lists and groups you can mass subscribe. The most successful one I know is from and for academics, perhaps there is a field for you in there. Journalists have similar stuff. See https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
- There are many awesome apps out there to access your content, improving the experience. I recommend Phanpy because of its unique and sleek design, see https://phanpy.social/. If you miss Quote Tweets and other stuff, try an app like Elk.
- Mastodon is only one option, if you want all of Twitter’s tools and more cool stuff, try Firefish. You can migrate followers and posts. This way, you can skip many external tools.
And that’s just the beginning.
This is a brilliantly helpful reply.
I agree… it feels like the Fediverse doesn’t quite have the same algorithms that the single-corporation services have, and I feel it most in the search to broaden the content I see. Hopefully the exploratory element picks up as time goes on!
The Fediverse doesn’t do algorithmic pushing and that’s a feature, not a bug.
The main ways to find new stuff on Mastodon are all actions taken by you, the user:
- Hashtags. Watch and follow hashtags you like. Hashtags are the main way stuff is categorized, and if you use them liberally on your own posts and find others posting to those same tags you can find accounts which align with those interests of yours.
- Home. Check out stuff in the “home” timeline which will be your neighbors on your own Mastodon instance. (In the case of general instances this isn’t so helpful, but in those instances themed around a hobby, subculture, geographical area, etc. you know you have that common ground with your neighbors to start with.)
- Boosts. When you find people and accounts to follow, they boost (reblog/retweet) things they like, you find things to boost, etc. and it all works like a friend introducing you to their other friends, friends of friends, etc. leading to your own circle of friends increasing.
All these are things you do and you have to put a little work in to make them happen, but it’s purely fueled by your own interests and wants instead of the traditional social-media algorithm which does a little aligned-interest stuff but is mostly powered by whoever has money to pay the platform to force them into your timeline. On Twitter or Facebook you get shown what the platform thinks they can get paid by showing you. On the Fediverse the rules of invasive centralized ad-choked personal-data-harvesting social media don’t apply; you get shown what you actually want and request.
It’s different and change can be scary, but when you get used to the idea that things don’t have to work the old way anymore it can end up being a good thing.
If you think about it, this is actually the old way.
The problem is that I as an user don’t necessarily know what I want to see. What if there is some super interesting hashtag out there, but I don’t even know that it exists?
I simply haven’t found as many good engaging posts in Mastodon, though, despite all that. It could be simply the challenge of building an interesting feed when you start from zero, but that’s a challenge nonetheless.
Algorithmic identification of novel content is in my mind neither intrinsically sinister nor beneficial; like all things, it’s a tool and the morality comes out of how it is used.
Things like (optional) recommendation tools could be a useful addition to Mastodon to help users find interesting threads. Could be run on a per instance basis.
Thank God it doesn’t
If you think about it, this is actually the old way.
It’s a bad feature lol. It should have algo content as an option. I’m tired of getting gaslighted and being told I’m not allowed to think this. We’re on Lemmy because of its algo content with the active/hot feeds. That doesn’t translate to Mastodon boosts.
Exactly, the reality is when I open Twitter I see content that is at least relevant to my interests, where as the sorting on Mastodon are of things that are of absolutely no interest. There’s a lot that you can say about algorithms, but there’s a reason it was the way it was in the first place.
have a look here https://lemmyverse.net/communities
Why isn’t kbin magazines in that list of communities?
Follow hagstags and accounts you like. Also ask for follow recommendations and introduce yourself, some hosts share introductions to people.
Follow a lot of people to fill up your feed. Be generous with it, and if someone you followed continuously posts something you’re not interested in, you can just unfollow, or put up a filter so those posts from that person do not show up.
There’s also a feature to follow hashtags so they appear in your home feed, so just search hashtags of things you find interesting. That’s a good way to find new people to follow as well! Advanced web view also allows you to make feeds for specific hashtags or hashtag combinations for even more control.
And if you happen to find an instance catered to your specific interests, you can make an account there, and you can even migrate an existing account so your followers come with. Chances are the local feed will be filled up with content you enjoy on such an instance.
And if you want to help your followers discover similar people, be sure to boost content you enjoy.
On Mastodon, you are in control of your feeds. Even on the federated timeline, to an extent (as filters work there as well).
Just deleted my Twitter account. Of course, the app gave nothing but errors so I had to do it on desktop, but it’s done!
So now you have an ex-Twitter account. Or an X account for short.
Maybe Elon was truly 200 IQ with his naming
I deleted all of mine and move to mastodon when I heard Elon was possibly going to buy it. I’m glad I did, because who knows what he has all implemented since then.
I am sure my account was never “deleted”, even under Jack, but at least I know I gave the best chance for my data to be deleted.
deleted by creator
The more i see and recognize the use of the term “Federation”, the more my inner geek hopes this is how IRL Star Trek starts.
“The federation started as a group of loosely associated social media and information hubs where people would share ideas, porn and memes. The ideals and social structure would eventually spread to a much larger and more dynamic series of instances that built up to and even greater federation of the human online colonies. As it grew, first contact was made and the inter galactic trade federation was established to trade porn and memes, would eventually go onto to much more larger, important, totally not porn related causes. To explore strange new worlds, and seek out new…”
There is a whole star trek instance conveniently enough: startrek.website
I love the fact that you can now have a website that ends in
.website. It’s like havingusername@email.comas your address.
I can’t wait to charge aliens 5.99 intergalactic glonches to see my butthole every month.
“…to seek out new porn and new positions. To boldly jerk off to something no one has seen before…”
Lemmy would be soaring too if it weren’t for terrible database code allowing for easy ddos.
Try using a smaller instance. I recently switched from lemmy.world to lemmy.zip and it’s lightning fast. While you still get all the content from lemmy.world :)
I find it interesting how many people are looking for the overall lemmy experience. The first thing I did was fine the community niece that interested me and the relevant instance, then when I’ve exhausted that instance I switch to the Everything tab and all find the generic content.
How did you like the community niece?
They fined her, so they obviously thought she did something wrong.
Man, this is what I get for being illiterate.
Oh. I thought they said she was f*i*n*e.
Oops
Yeah that’s what I said after my first community niece too.
I find it interesting how many people are looking for the overall lemmy experience
I’m one of them. I use Sync so the whole caboodle feels like just one site to me, whether it’s the Everything feed or my subscribed.
(I am not a techy person)
I also use sync, although I bought the lifetime ad-free version for Reddit years ago for like $5 and now it’s $100 which I can’t afford here which is a shame. Still, it’s my favourite app and I’m very familiar with it.
A hundred dollarydoos for an app to view a free website!?
It’s the reddit pricing swapped over exactly, I’m not outright against an independent app creator having a paid option, because it’s a very high quality app that deserves support, but I do feel it’s soo steep. There are also subscription options but I never take those, and the ads are reasonably unobtrusive.
So the developer has no underlying API cost to justify it and is pocketing it all? Obviously they can charge what they want and people can spend their money however they like, but this seems like an absolute con!
switched from LW to discuss online
Hopefully they can fix that issue and the communist communities stop having hissy fits.
they’re prob ddosing themselves for failing the purity tests.
There were stories that Tesla had a team in place to distract Elon any time he showed up to the office, and I absolutely believe that. Now that Elon has Twitter to distract him, I wonder what that team is up to.
I wanted to use mastodon, but I haven’t even used twitter in years, so then I realized I just don’t social media that way anymore (or much at all for that matter).
I got it and I’m trapped in a weird bubble of shit that doesn’t really interest me and I don’t like microblogging I think
Same. @squizzy, I don’t like microblogging in general either. I was raised in the golden era of forums (the days of phpBB and vBulletin). My twitter account hasn’t been touched for years now.
I mostly used twitter for checking trending topics for news
I never used Twitter save for occasionally hearing about tweets, but I have been enjoying using Mastodon because in practice it’s basically just a way for me to have a feed of cool astronomy pictures.
I found cool astronomy pictures on Reddit, and some now on lemmy! Cheers for random cool pictures of space.
Cool, but the article is from July 24th
Apparently, as a competitor of any major platform you just need to get close to the features your adversary has and wait for that site/service to start the process of enshittification, let’s see if reddit makes more blunders
I feel that reddit is already at this stage. It started feeling more like a half-bombed corporate minefield so I decided to flee the site one week ago. This site feels much more like things should be. You can even browse on a decent site on your phone.
Try Voyager/WefWef from a browser, it improves the UX a lot
I am so annoyed that Twitter got ruined.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like Twitter. I don’t follow anyone on Twitter. But if I had no other recourse I could complain about a corporation that wasn’t paying any attention to me and they would do something about it.
By the way fuck FedEX. Is there a place on mastadon I can bitch about FedEx? I have had a mis-delivered package sitting on my porch for over a month. I call about every three or four days and tell them, pick up your package so it can go to the right place. They say they will get it. They never do.
Never use FedEx.
Is there a place on mastadon I can bitch about FedEx?
#fuckfedex #fedex
Fuck spez. Why isn’t he doing more psycho shit like Elon so he can move more people to Lemmy.
Give him some more time. It’s not that simple keeping up with Elon’s adventures
By the way, your username shows as bot to me. I think you need to disable it in your profile.
Thank you
Well, don’t change it if you are a bot.
I like the idea of referring to it only as “The social media site formerly known as Twitter” from here on out.
Also “former bird site” has a nice ring to it
I use the historical name, twitter, because to the extent future historians will have to talk about it, that’s the name they’ll use. I cannot imagine it will do anything of relevance from this point forwards except as a glaring example of the failures of capitalism.
the name “X” is just a bunch of pollution to other topics that happens to have something of the same name. i hate it.
Ex-twitter
I’ve been trying to stick to Mastodon and ditch Twitter, but honestly, even though I’ve gotten into the habit of using Mastodon every day, it’s pretty hard for me to resist accepting information from Twitter.
It’s ok to get information from places like X/Twitter or Reddit. It’s even fine to have an account. But it’s better to post your OWN material to platforms that best align with your sensibilities.
This. I still lurk reddit for information, but I will never contribute. Advertisers these days only care about interaction anyway, so I doubt lurking significantly impacts the profitability one way or the other.
I think you should do you and browse whatever you want. I still use Reddit when looking for opinions on products and services because there’s nothing close to the discussion on there. But visiting the site (without an adblocker) 100% still generates ad revenue and is what matters to ad companies, regardless of actually participating in the discussion.
The clicks, even with an adblocker, are still worth something, right? Especially if they’re tied to an account.
So wait visiting with Firefox+ad block doesn’t make Reddit money?
My issue with Mastodon is that many big companies still use Twitter/X as their main way to publish news outside of of their websites and press releases.
It’s all about what matters most to you.
I’m not usually interested in what big companies have to say, but I follow some journalists who fortunately cross post to Mastodon, but all discussion takes place on elmo’s X site.
What? I’ve been using Squawker and lately it stopped working because monkey boy elon borked something again in the twitter api. No tweets for me.
