Bye, Twitter
tbray.org
tbray.org
And the feeling is... very different. There was lots about Twitter that subtly enraged me, like pop-sci Covid takes showing up in my algorithmic feed after I had extremely carefully curated my followers to only include actual scientists who knew what they were talking about. And it's also refreshing not to have all those ads. In general, I feel like you've got a lot of control of your Mastodon experience, if you curate your followers well, it can be quite good. I have rules of immediately "unfollow boosts of" anybody who posts viral "boost this if..." or bullshit polls, and that's cleaning up my feed as well.
I've also been followed by my first crypto account (so I might go to followers-need-approval), and have seen glimmers of the same kind of dumb drama you see on Twitter, but overall feel like I generally have the tools I need to keep all that in check. I was finding that Twitter was bad for my mental health, and took a bunch of breaks from it even when I was having generally positive interactions and finding good info. We'll see how this goes, especially as things scale.
Same here. It's all that rage-boosting the algorithms do to increase engagement. I deleted my twitter account back in May and went to mastodon. It's been so much more pleasant and non-addictive.
Honestly, I don't think services need to be dumbed down so much, people can figure it out. And having a little friction might be a good thing, unless the goal is just to rack up engagement numbers as high as they can be optimized - and arguably that incentive is one of the things that was really wrong with Twitter.
If main server mastodon.social could handle masses it would be much simpler experience.
Tech people are patient and adopt it first. Mastodon needs a new way to join, a main server that can handle huge masses.
I'm on med-mastodon (healthcare workers and researchers) and the server has several thousand people.
But it is wonderful to be part of a niche community that hasn't yet been noticed by astroturfers, advertisers, politicians, and self-promoters (just like HN).
- Small instances can still participate and engage. "Personal Mastodon server" might very much go the way of "personal email server", in a world of majors (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, etc.)
- Instances aren't acquired. One of the insidious aspects of capitalism is that firms can buy other firms. Yes, it's possible for a competitor to emerge, but a large established giant can buy out that competitor. Or take other actions, e.g., lock out any entity which supplies or interacts with that competitor. See former "Facebook killer" Ello.co (post-acquisition its new owners are exceedingly opaque and all the B Corp language has disappeared), or Mastodon instance Mastodon.cloud, acquired from its original owner by a Japanese concern.
- Management doesn't otherwise change.
- The operators don't simply diasappear (Joindiaspora.com, mastodon.cafe), or die (pluspora.com).
I AM a fan of Diaspora* and Mastodon. But I'm not blind to their actual and theoretical failings.
- I always found the big problem with small email servers was the setup (ask your friends how easy it is to spin one up), not the rest. I run my own mail server and haven't had problems in years, plus Mastodon and Pleroma are much much easier to run.
- I've experienced the "instance is dead, pls migrate" pain, but thankfully it's been getting wayyy better, some of my follows have migrated and I just got a nice notification going "hey X migrated to Y" with the follow updated to the new address. This makes the platform much less of a walled garden than your Twitter/Facebook of today.
I understand the downsides of the platform, but I genuinely think they are a bit overblown. Meanwhile everyone keeps thinking of AP as a strict Twitter replacement without understanding all the possibilities that federation unlocks (esp. with the integration with different but compatible services like Peertube/Writefreely) and how those extra integrations would push everyone to keep their doors open.
This has led to a lot of progressive twitter either exiting the site or switching to full-time culture war stuff, while the identity-conservatives are basically doing donuts in celebration.
In free platform you read crap from all sides, not just the one you like.
But enjoy your new echo chamber outside Twitter.
edit: for downvoters, yes, I'm aware this describes also majority of HN users and you just can't stand different opinion and try to silence it, thanks for proving me right
Nope nothing like that. There are promoted tweets (that adblockers can actually block) but that's all. The whole thing is just one chronological timeline for me only showing people I folliow
Their enemies list: https://twitter.com/elmforkJBGC/status/1596041824573198336
Python script to mass report: https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/status/1596236817858056192
These people aren't operating in good faith.
Next please.
You're focusing on the absolute worst of the worst, ignoring the millions of people who genuinely support free speech. We're very happy with what has taken place at Twitter.
As someone who genuinely supports free speech, you should have a real problem with the troll army. Instead you immediately leapt to "well they weren't successful this time, so all is well". Harassment doesn't always have to result in an outright ban to still have a chilling effect.
Furthermore, coordinated censorship by the platform itself is now over. Even if Ben Collins were accidentally, temporarily banned over mass reporting, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. The status quo is better than the status quo ante.
Ideally, both cases are handled properly. I have faith Twitter will be able to achieve this.
Keep in mind "Elon's fans" is not one guy. It's different groups of people with different agenda. Many cheered for free speech when Elon proclaimed it so. Many of those were right-wing due to the perception (and reality) that Twitter's moderators are predominantly left-leaning, and Twitter has left-leaning culture.
Those in a hurry building hitlists are not the moderates cheering for Elon. They're opportunities on far right that are taking advantage of Elon, as he's easy to manipulate right now. He wants to be liked and he wants to "score a win" for Twitter. He falsely believes he's scoring wins for Twitter by appeasing the worst of the worst on right.
Sad to watch.
I've heard about teenagers being prosecuted for taking nude photos of themselves [1] or to share with other teenage friends [2].
If your worst charge against Ian Miles Cheong is that he correctly pointed out draconian enforcement of these laws, then you're on the wrong side of this. The US imprisons too many people in general and this is no exception.
He's also correct that the age of consent in almost all of Europe is 16 or under. The only exceptions I see are Turkey and Vatican City.[3] The same is true in Canada and most of North America. It's even true in 32 US states. I don't see why that Tweet was included in the screenshot, as if we should be offended by the truth.
The other Tweets are offensive, but sound like jokes. Without context it's impossible to tell. MeidasTouch is clearly trying to attack Ian Miles Cheong so there's no reason to assume good faith (like not misrepresenting jokes as serious).
1: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/20/teen-prosecu...
2: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sexting-leads-to-child-porn-cha...
Another example is the insane ways in which "zero-COVID" policies are enforced in China, resulting in probably more deaths than if they were a lot more lenient (at this point).
He is fighting against actual fascism.
It does no good to express personal quitting on platforms like this, as they were never meant to serve unpopular, non-wealthy, and uninfluential people like us. The false narrative that any of these platforms offer us any potential beyond minor success or indentured work is what keeps people grinding at working for free to coddle the egos of those in control of these useless celebrity commercial platforms.
They don't care if you quit and delete your account. It's long overdue to stop caring about apps like Twitter, just abandon your account and move on.
Maybe, but Tim Bray has a lot of followers so explaining to them that he's leaving, why, and where he's going seems to make sense. One person like him leaving is no skin off of Musk's nose, sure. But if a lot of people that follow him think "Yeah, I'm thinking it's time to leave too..." it starts adding up as it cascades to their followers.
> The false narrative that any of these platforms offer us any potential beyond minor success or indentured work...
I think this is basically what Bray was saying. "Speaking as a random was-successful-on-Twitter person, I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream"
He could have just set up a Pleroma instance for this and scaled it to hold all his fans for way less than $44B.
As an adult, why would you never want to be exposed to viewpoints that differ from your own? That's not healthy.
Edit: I'm mostly referring to those that also regularly publish their opinions assuming for others to read them.
It’s either that or leave that platform. I did this with Facebook and never got involved with Twitter. My life is great. I get plenty of opinions I don’t agree with on HN, and it’s great.
Of course, the even healthier thing is probably being more like you and just not getting involved with Twitter at all.
There's dissenting opinions like "I like team A" vs "I like team B" and then there's dissenting opinions like "I think LGBTQ+ people should have rights" vs "I think LGBTQ+ people should be rounded up / banned from public / have no rights".
If you don't know about or consider alternate viewpoints could you really have productive discourse with a person that aligns with those viewpoints?
Most people that you'd meet or talk to that may disagree on LGBTQ aren't extremist, they are more along the lines of "a children's cartoon about dinosaurs shouldn't have multiple lesbian make out scenes" or "Disney is indoctrinating children", or "just because I wouldn't date someone of the opposite sex doesn't make me homophobic".
There is no discourse you can have with a person who believes that LGBTQ+ people have fewer rights than others.
> "a children's cartoon about dinosaurs shouldn't have multiple lesbian make out scenes"
Now that I would like to see. Which one was it?
> "Disney is indoctrinating children"
There's no discourse you can have with someone claiming such a bizarre viewpoint. It's like flat earthers.
Towards the end of the last season of Camp Crustaceous. To be fair, there are intense (for a cartoon aimed at kids) romantic scenes between a straight couple as well.
> There's no discourse you can have with someone claiming such a bizarre viewpoint.
Eh, not that bizarre. It's not hard to image people could make the leap from "Disney has a gay agenda" (some Disney producer did an interview stating that leadership welcomes her gay agenda and that she tries to put queerness wherever she can) to "Disney wants to indoctrinate children".
The extremist are loud and annoying, but they aren't the majority.
Best I can find, there's one brief lesbian kiss right at the end of the last season - which also featured a straight relationship with kissing - in a TV-PG rated show that seems to have made everyone lose their damned minds.
It's a really fun show overall, even for adults. Highly recommend, though I now let parents I recommend it to know, that in addition to people getting eaten alive and nightmarish mutant dinosaurs chasing kids, there's some kissing and an out-of-the-blue forced teen lesbian relationship. I have a feeling that won't land well on HN, but in person every parent I explain that to is understanding and thankful for the heads up.
I certainly don't reveal my whole self on social media. I open up a bit more in places with good moderation like this, or places where I control the comments like my blog.
Must be people with a lot of spare time with nothing to do or someone who doesn't know how to disable notifications (I was just yesterday configuring mother's phone disabling notifications after she asked me to disable her lock screen completely since she doesn't use any PIN anyway, she stand no chance with this option buried in hidden Developer options). It's odd to see someone who is neither of these groups keeping them enabled, honestly Notifications should be permission each app should explicitly ask with reason why it needs them during launch and they should be disabled by default.
I honestly only got a couple of those notifications before disabling them.
I was more trying to find an example of how curating a filter bubble can be healthy, but one that wasn't anything to do with Twitter since it's too politically charged for people to think clearly about.
The start of this article is a great example: Elon was always voting democrat, but the left (progressive) side has changed/progressed enought that Elon's viewpoints are considered right right now (it has been the same for me as I got older).
It still doesn't make him an extreme right person, even if people can (and do) find the few moments in his life that can be considered extremist (which everybody has, just most people hide it).
At some point looking at those other viewpoints and finding whether there's a hidden agenda just gets tiring and boring.
in practice, you can absolutely get your daily ration of poop on social media just by showing up.
I stopped listening to these people years ago. Good riddance.
Seems to me that many on the right don’t actually care about freedom… but more about their ability to subject others to their ideas… apparently freedom is the right of republicans to force themselves on others and restrain their critics from leaving.
What other interpretation should I make of someone objecting to an individual exercising their first amendment right to freedom of association?
It's never been a public square, it's just being polarized in the opposite direction.
As for the non-technical aspects: Mastodon is social media, just like any other, with all the associated faults. Don’t expect miracles.
I like tbray, and I don't like Elon, but that is not a fair characterization. It's right this post has been flagged.
When someone behaves like an asshole, and I call them an asshole that is offensive, but may still be fair.
Obviously it’s a subjective opinion so we don’t have to agree, but to me it seems entirely fair and accurate to describe Elon Musk as a troll.
He's contributed to the software industry longer than most people here. That's not to say that anyone is owed anything in deference or respect, but "he's seen some shit." It's hypocritical to applaud what you believe to be pro-free-speech changes at Twitter while criticizing somebody for the manner in which somebody communicates their decision to deprioritize that platform.
If somebody has 50k followers, I imagine they would have reasons to communicate to that audience why they're not going to be as visible on their current platform and how to go about finding their content in the future.
Any time a "free speech " platform like Truth Social emerges, we can be sure that its primary purpose is amplifying Nazis and banning liberals. Sad to see Twitter starting to go in the same direction.
A 2nd order effect is people self censor, since saying something truthful but controversial could get them banned or deboosted or whatever the term is.
Watch as Elon eviscerates the mainstream media. He already calls many legit publications disinformation, saying that twitter will be the best and most truthful source of news itself.
It's straight out of Trump's playbook. These are the the robber barons of the Internet. Hearst has nothing on them.
I see it as the sequel to atlas shrugged.
Some unpopular views are overly represented on any platform. This is the reason why far left/right get amplified to be more mainstream opinions, despite being truly unpopular. Another thing is similar to self-censorship like you mentioned, but self-censorship in the sense that if you feel that the community has shifted towards a certain bent, then one might move on from that community, since it no longer represents what they're looking for/what they feel is right.
Finding legitimate information is also tough: there's been instances of journal-published data that was verifiably false, since the journal that it was published in was founded in order to push specific data/viewpoints. But, the average person doesn't know that, and probably won't be familiar with what journals are popular, legitimate, etc. While some people (you, I, and probably others on this platform) like delving deep into this sort of stuff, most people (I'm venturing a guess here) would stop short at "research shows that..." when fact-checking something.
I wouldn't argue _for_ banning, or at least would argue that there's a better way to do it that doesn't also burn people who are participating in good faith. But, most people won't/can't do the work to fact check everything since there's too much info and truly verifying everything would be a monumental task.
- keeping his account active, poised to return immediately (but still, definitely leaving)
- maybe posting on Twitter occasionally to point people to ongoing resources (but still, definitely leaving)
- highlighting how moderation on Mastodon varies by instance, which pressures certain groups to return to Twitter (the place he's definitely left, remember?)
If Elon's alt-right, you're alt-left, and I don't believe either is true. Your posts are also not unpaid contributions (or if they are, then they were back when Twitter was public, too, but somehow that was okay). It takes some serious arrogance and mental gymnastics to even arrive at such a conclusion. I'd pay you to NOT post.
Shut up already, you're several weeks late to this particular bandwagon anyway.
If Elon is alt-right then 85% of the US population is "alt-right"
How is that not alt-right?
Yet, I fear you may be correct about that 85% statistic, nevertheless.
This is the think impossible standard to have, and one of the reason many people like Elon is the fact he has no filter, and gives no fucks. Elon streams his thoughts in real time almost to twitter. That to many is refreshing to have a Billionaire engage engage on that level, not filtered through PR and Lawyers like the Gates and Bezo's of the world..
Elon will post a poll then act on the poll. I know many hate that, but many many many LOVE that.
In short, it is a type of Populism.
I've been thinking for hours about red-state vs blue-state coding and platform tastes. I bet that in the future, the platform wars and the culture wars will merge, and there will be a stack that is more likely to be used by a startup in (say) Florida, vs a stack that screams left-coast. Like how much do you want to bet that the new Twitter walks back from Scala, embracing straight-up Java? ...And all you have to do is go to a Rust meetup to see how that language has strong roots in specific communities, but not in others. (Specifically, I can report that it's the language of choice for me and my LGBTQ friends)
Imagine a future where there are several competing ideologically- (or even theologically-) fused stacks, promoted by companies that sotto-voce act as intellectual caretakers of the political ideology in question, funding friendly politicians and even nation-states, connected directly to banks and payment modalities, structuring towering billions in investment, all of it carefully calibrated to promote not just an API, or a language, but a whole worldview.
I mean, having typed that, it basically just sounds like the present moment, but as described by some prescient eighties cyberpunk novel.
Anyone that does not have the term "CIS" in their vocabulary is called "alt-right" online
If you're saying that other, non-traditional family structures are something degenerate, yes, you're alt-right, but I think if you're doing that you already embrace that label.
Infact more than one story has been posted on Twitter calling the "'traditional' family with a single wage earner and a full-time homemaker mother" actively dangerous to women in general and something that should not only be advocated against but actively resisted.
E.g.: I don't like Elon Musk. According to Fox News, I'm a pinko commie that hates America.
Nothing you have said is anything other than 1980's conservatism.
What I find sad is that back in the 1980's conservatives still tried to ground their beliefs with intellectual arguments.
It wasn’t that long ago that being against illegal immigration, against late term elective abortions, and in favor of an individual to bear arms was acceptable to proclaim public. But now those are all “alt-right”.
That's pretty disgusting.
We have no clue about Musk's intention here.
It's not whataboutism rather I know for a fact how certain people respond to left-wing violence and it's always either ignorance or very charitable interpretations.
I guess I (a left libertarian) that put facts over narrative is now "alt-right" then because having actually read all of the Investigative reports from the DOJ, and state agencies one has to conclude if not a "lie" a HUGE distortion from the actual truth of the events.
Telling him to “shut up” and that he is “late to this particular bandwagon” seems mildly abusive.
Considering how easy it is to impersonate people on twitter, this makes sense.
> If Elon's alt-right, you're alt-left
This is a hilariously nonsensical sentence.
“If you don’t like my hero’s politics, there is only one set of politics that you could have! There are only people that love his posts and antifa super soldiers high on estrogen blockers plotting to take down capitalism with their polycule!”
Buddy do you remember the other day when he posted a baseless alt-right conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being in a sexual relationship with the guy that attacked him?
It was almost like… alt-right… trolling
"This guy" is Tim Bray, who quit as a VP of AWS over its treatment of employees:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-bray-quit-amazon-web-se...
* https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A...
> Bray, who was born in Alberta, went to University of Guelph and who worked in Vancouver, was a distinguished engineer, a coveted title large tech companies award to senior technologists. The decision will likely cost him more than $1 million in loss of salary and unvested Amazon stock, “not to mention the best job I ever had,” he said.
* https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/amazon-engin...
Dude co-authored both the XML spec and the JSON spec (RFC 7159/8259):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray
He has principles and he's willing to put himself out there for them.
He thinks that Twitter is despicable but will still continue to use it to promote his blog. That's not having principles and sticking to them. That's selling out for cheap, and coming up with a lame justification for it.
* https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/199x/
* https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/
He doesn't need (to use) Twitter to promote anything. If he was willing to sell out, cheaply or not, he would have kept his AWS job.
> I’ll still use Twitter to post pointers to ongoing pieces because that benefits me, not Elon.
And that's exactly what makes it selling out for cheap. He doesn't need the traffic; it's not like it's providing his livelihood or anything. But just going by his actions, he still cares more about those hits than about his supposed principles.
Note that when you delete your account, the handle becomes free to be reused 30 days after, at the risk of someone trying to impersonate him. It's better to leave the account stagnant or "protected" than delete it in this case, and simply point to his Mastodon account in a tweet, his display name or his bio.
Therefore Twitter is pro-hate speech.
Kind of frustrating because some of my favorite streamers use Twitter to announce their impromptu streaming.
Anyways, all platforms ban people, even Hacker News. If free speech depends on private money paying for fancy engineers and infrastructure around the world, then there's something strangely expensive about your free speech. Which begs the question of just who is paying for this free speech (advertisers).
How dare this person make an announcement on their own website about their own decision about what websites they like?!
"opening up" like 4chan opened up.
Freedom of speech and of opinions is vital.
You can disagree with Musk (or even Trump) as much as you wish. But when you move to silence them (especially as part of a mob), you become the monster.
"Hello everyone, I have decided to leave Gmail. I'll keep my account active, and still receive email there but I'm definitely leaving. I can't support Google which is a poster child of surveillance capitalism. I’m going to stop emailing pictures and observations and forwarding worthy voices and all that stuff. Remember: using my data without paying me."
It's a statement of principles. To bring attention to, and shine light on, what (he thinks) is a problem.
Just like he did went he quit a lucrative job as VP of AWS when Amazon mistreated employees:
* https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A...
I’ve just seen so many of these “leaving Twitter” posts lately and it’s interesting that Twitter seems to be a really sticky product for people.
Didn't you tell people who had your old gmail address that you'd be moving to another email provider and give them the new email address? This is kind of like that. He's got a lot of followers so explaining the why and where he's going seems like it makes sense.
> I’ll still use Twitter to post pointers to ongoing pieces because that benefits me, not Elon.
So not really leaving.
> Are people really leaving Twitter? · Yes. [..] So, suppose I’m right about Twitter…
The evidence is that Mastodon users are increasing, and therefore leaving Twitter. The assumption is that they are not doing exactly what this author is doing, and signing up to both.
> Why Mastodon will succeed
I was just reading how every time jwz posts, they receive a DDoS from other servers loading the content [1]. The problems scale as the users do.
> General-purpose (non-affinity-group) instances won’t be free; typical charges will be $5-10/month.
I assume that means either using crypto or a central payment system. People were hesitant to pay $8 for Twitter believing it should be free, how will you get them to pay if they can just move to a free instance?
> They will compete on the quality of their moderation and spam/abuse prevention.
None of them have the resources to do this. Twitter had quite a large moderation team being paid a lot of money to work on this problem full time. You'll either end up in an echo chamber (reducing need for moderation) or there will be little to no moderation.
All that said, this person was likely more suited to a platform of shorter writing, rather than these longer form pieces. It contradicts itself in places.
[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/mastodon-stampede/
EDIT: Less inflammatory.
As, of course, is jwz.
Smart people who we admire for their thinking and writing on technology can be embarrassingly shallow when it comes to other domains, and (as I’ve reluctantly learned over the decades) can be safely ignored when they opine obviously way out of their depth.
I have their RSS feed just for the updates to the xscreensaver and the occasional interesting topic, but mostly ignore. I see some drama happening there quite frequently and I really don't want anything to do with it.
> Smart people who we admire for their thinking and writing on technology can be embarrassingly shallow when it comes to other domains [..]
That rings very true. I always got nervous when I saw one of the heavy weights such as Stephen Hawking weighing in on topics such as AI or alien biology. Or Richard Dawkins commenting on politics.
I think people generally are interested in how they may apply their minds in other topics, and when they give the crowd what they want, they fall short.
I give it 1 month.
I don't know, I just think that if you give a public proclamation of "I leaving X!" Then you are giving everyone permanent permission to make fun of you, if you ever come back to that platform.
I don't get it. These articles in search of a moral pat on the back are always very tiresome.
Certain Twitter accounts actually believe that they are providing free content for the platform. People who have grown their networks and reach immensely there. Twitter is so much better off without people who have this attitude.