Social Media Discussion

[Alefroth]

Still practically no mention of it on Twitter.

[Blackhawk]

Twitter hacked, 200 million user email addresses leaked, researcher says

Oh nos! My spam email address has been exposed!

[Kraken]

I made a comment on this Facebook meme.



I wrote:

The "air" in potato chip bags is nitrogen gas, used to force out oxygen and keep the chips fresh (as well as to cushion the packages to minimize breakage, as many others have pointed out)

That comment just got its 100th "like", which is far and away the most popular thing I've ever posted. I guess people didn't know that.

[Isgrimnur]

[Rumpy]

That reminds me of our road trip my Dad and I had undertaken in 2013. We were visiting a lot of places in the U.S, and he tends to always like having a pen handy. I think we were in Colorado when we encountered an elevation change that caused his pen to leak profusely. It caught us off guard as while we knew we were heading up one of the highest elevations in the U.S, we just didn't expect it to happen.

Umm... what does this have to do with social media again??

[Sudy]

The whole concept of likes and upvotes is just absurd. If people were reasonable and up/downvoted good/bad content for the sake of visibility it would be great. But instead they downvote things for stupid reasons and reward inane meme jokes the poster didn't even come up with. And then these idiots edit their posts to add, "OMG, 1,000 likes... I can't believe it! Thanks guys!" Dopamine may be a hell of a drug, but these people are nuts. I guess it's this generation's version of "first!", but that was always just as stupid. (Edit: This generation lol... I'm getting old, these systems have been around for ages.)

I wish my rational mind could detach from this, but it just pisses me off so much when I make a genuine post on Reddit and it gets downvoted for no apparent reason. Though I did recently make a somewhat insightful post on a very active subreddit and came away with 100 upvotes in 24 hours. Yay I guess? I mean it got my account karma cred at least. Only it didn't, because I could keep vomiting up trite nonsense on a popular sub until I suddenly struck gold on a hot topic.

Anyway, hackneyed rant over. TLDR: Never read the fucking comments.

[Isgrimnur]

[Kraken]

A few minutes after I posted my story abovee some rando came along and made a snarky comment about Fritos packages having the least "air" and being the best snack, so how do I explain that?

I don't. I could've had a chip war had I wanted one. I would've crushed his Fritos.

Facebook's algorithm feeds me lots of posts about space exploration and astronomy because I like that sort of thing. All of them have a large number of laughing face icons. If you pop open the comments you'll fine a large force of people/alts/bots that troll science posts and spam flat earth and religious crapola. God hates NASA for some reason. These people are passionately, militantly wrong. Of course they get a lot of engagement, which I suppose is why they're there. A couple of weeks ago I started vigorously blocking anti-science commenters, and after wishing maybe 50 of them into the cornfield I'm finally not seeing many anymore.

Or I could stop reading comments and miss out on the many enlightening ones from knowledgeable people.

[pr0ner]

I wish my rational mind could detach from this, but it just pisses me off so much when I make a genuine post on Reddit and it gets downvoted for no apparent reason. Though I did recently make a somewhat insightful post on a very active subreddit and came away with 100 upvotes in 24 hours. Yay I guess? I mean it got my account karma cred at least. Only it didn't, because I could keep vomiting up trite nonsense on a popular sub until I suddenly struck gold on a hot topic.

I mean, karma chasing is the point for a lot of people on Reddit. There are whole subreddits devoted to people getting upvotes for no reason, and entire other subreddits where people post nudes of themselves simply for the upvotes.

[Smoove_B]

I mean, karma chasing is the point for a lot of people on Reddit. There are whole subreddits devoted to people getting upvotes for no reason, and entire other subreddits where people post nudes of themselves simply for the upvotes.

[Isgrimnur]

I mean, karma chasing is the point for a lot of people on Reddit. There are whole subreddits devoted to people getting upvotes for no reason, and entire other subreddits where people post nudes of themselves simply for the upvotes.

Thank you, Smoove.

[pr0ner]

I mean, karma chasing is the point for a lot of people on Reddit. There are whole subreddits devoted to people getting upvotes for no reason, and entire other subreddits where people post nudes of themselves simply for the upvotes.

The fact that gif is from the season where Rob McElhenney looked like Haley Joel Osment makes it even better.

[Max Peck]

Twitter Had to Tell Ex-Employees Their Severance Emails Were 'Not a Phishing Attempt'

Elon Musk is having trouble letting go. Twitter needed to reassure its own laid off employees that an email sent in the early morning on Saturday was “not a phishing attempt” after it went directly to their spam inboxes. The email, sent from twitterseparation@cptgroup.com rather than from an @twitter.com address, contained former Twitter employees’ separation contracts and provided information regarding severance pay.

Former Twitter employee Parker Lyons tweeted on Saturday, “If you were wondering about the current state of Twitter, many folks just received their separation agreements in their spam folders, pointing to a URL that was registered this morning from a vendor with a 1 star [Better Business Bureau] rating.” He continued, “If still there, I would have reported this as phishing.”

The email included login information for the CPT Group website where the ex-employees were told they could view the full separation agreement, but many remained unsure if it was legit. Twitter’s Human Resources department sent a follow-up email confirming that the email was intentional.

As always, they tried to get Twitter's side of the story, but...

Twitter, which no longer has a media department, did not respond to a request for comment, as all emails were returned as undeliverable.

[Rumpy]

Man, that's rough. I'm guessing they had to go with an external service due to not having the staff to do it themselves.

[Max Peck]

Apparently many but not all 3rd party Twitter apps have stopped working, and for now nobody knows whether it's a bug or a feature.

Third-party Twitter clients stopped working, and nobody’s sure why

Tweetbot, Twiterrific, Echofon, and other third-party Twitter clients have failed to work for many people since late Thursday night, and the social network has seemingly not notified the apps' developers as to why.

Paul Haddad, a co-creator of Tweetbot, posted on Mastodon at 11:10 pm ET Thursday in reply to a post from tech journalist Casey Newton that multiple third-party clients were failing, with "no communication as to if [it's] a bug or ..." Tweets from the official accounts of the Tweetbot and Twitteriffic clients on Thursday night confirmed their communication issues. The account for Echofon posted shortly after 8:30 am Friday that it was working to resolve its issues and that "Twitter has not yet replied."

Haddad told TechCrunch that the connection issues started at 10:30 pm on Thursday and noted that all API requests from his app were failing. A post on Twitter's developers forum shows numerous Twitter-based app developers noting that their apps have been listed as "suspended" or showing invalid authentication credentials.

We could not reach Twitter for comment, as its public relations department reportedly no longer exists. The company had yet to comment on the API outage or related third-party client issues as of 11 am. Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted at 9:06 am about changes to the bookmark button placement, image cropping, and "other minor bug fixes next week."

At some point, I'd assume that journalists will stop noting that Twitter has nobody handling communications and simply tweet @ Elmo and report whether or not he responds in some manner.

[pr0ner]

At some point, I'd assume that journalists will stop noting that Twitter has nobody handling communications and simply tweet @ Elmo and report whether or not he responds in some manner.

Or they get banned and get to report on that instead!

[Max Peck]

Yeah, I wouldn't bet against something along the line of getting blocked for asking an awkward question.

[Max Peck]

And so the answer seems to be that things are working as intended.

Reports: Twitter’s sudden third-party client lockouts were intentional

Twitter has not yet explained why third-party clients like Twitterific and Tweetbot stopped working late last week. But a new report and testing by one app developer suggest the outages and lack of communication are intentional.

Internal Twitter Slack chat messages viewed by The Information (subscription required) show a senior software engineer writing in a "command center" channel that "third-party app suspensions are intentional." Another employee, asking about talking points to use when addressing the outages with product partners, was told by a product marketing manager that Twitter had "started to work on comms," but there was no delivery date, according to The Information's report.

Some Tweetbot users seemed to briefly regain account access early Sunday, without the ability to post, only to lose access again later. That resulted from Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad swapping out the app's API keys, but all of his keys were later revoked. That result "proves that this was intentional and we and others were specifically targeted," Haddad wrote on Mastodon Sunday evening, as noticed by The Verge.

[Zaxxon]

[Skinypupy]

Shocking.

[Max Peck]

With the Twitter diaspora landing in multiple alternate Twitteresque social media (mastodon, post.news, probably others I haven't heard of), are there any 3rd party social media clients that pull access to multiple platforms together for one-stop reading or posting?

[Jaymann]

With the Twitter diaspora landing in multiple alternate Twitteresque social media (mastodon, post.news, probably others I haven't heard of), are there any 3rd party social media clients that pull access to multiple platforms together for one-stop reading or posting?

I rely on OO for that.

[pitertrstovich]

SEO/Marketing spam

[Max Peck]

LOL...

Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.

“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.

In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.

Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, we already know you think you're hot shit, Elon.

[malchior]

I still can't get over the story (referenced in the above link) that when one of the engineers reported his engagement metric that he summarily fired the guy.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, that's pretty shitty. But on the other hand, he possibly did the guy a favor. If it were me, I wouldn't want to work for Elon and have to deal with his toxicity.

[Jaymann]

Yeah, that's pretty shitty. But on the other hand, he possibly did the guy a favor. If it were me, I wouldn't want to work for Elon and have to deal with his toxicity.

Good point. "Fired by Musk" is a feature not a bug/badge of honor.

[Pyperkub]

Yeah, that's pretty shitty. But on the other hand, he possibly did the guy a favor. If it were me, I wouldn't want to work for Elon and have to deal with his toxicity.

Good point. "Fired by Musk" is a feature not a bug/badge of honor.

That all depends on if you can find something quick if you need to and support yourself and/or your family.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[Max Peck]

Yeah, that's pretty shitty. But on the other hand, he possibly did the guy a favor. If it were me, I wouldn't want to work for Elon and have to deal with his toxicity.

Good point. "Fired by Musk" is a feature not a bug/badge of honor.

That all depends on if you can find something quick if you need to and support yourself and/or your family.

Or if you're there on a work visa.

[Rumpy]

In which case, maybe wrongful dismissal could be argued.

[Max Peck]

I have no idea how that works, especially given that all states (IIRC) allow employers to fire an employee for no reason at all. I do know that I've seen a lot of speculation that many of the "hard core" engineers that stayed on did so because if they quit or get fired, they're liable to be deported.

[Max Peck]

A friend (a religous Catholic who skews very conservative on abortion but quite progressive on other social justice issues) confirmed that Musk was suddenly all up in their Twitter this week. They've been determinedly unengaged with anything that he's been doing since buying the company, reasoning that it hasn't affected the specific communities that they're involved with, so it didn't affect them one way or the other. Now that he's shoving himself right in their face, he lasted a day before being blocked. I wonder if that's going to be common reaction among the masses of normal people that just haven't been paying attention, and if so, if it has any lasting effect in how they view the platform. I'm guessing not, and as long as they can go back to hear no Elon, see no Elon, speak no Elon then they'll carry on carrying on.

[Alefroth]

It's sounding like your account will get closed if you block the Musk.

[malchior]

He's acting like a petty tin pot dictator and then kvetching when people don't want to hear what he says. I've muted him personally.

I'm unfortunately still using it because many of the essential voices I like haven't moved to Post or Mastodon. The funny thing is that Twitter is truly slowly rotting away. For instance, I've seen the "phenomena" that some people describe where they lose Followers. I don't have many but one of my real-life friends messaged to me to say he didn't unfollow me intentionally. I hadn't noticed but I'm not trying to grow an audience. That's weird though, right? I've also notice on a regular basis that there are people have been removed from my Followers list. The worst part is I usually become aware because they are recommended to me. Sometimes I find out because it was a steady voice that's suddenly not there.

In the end I have to conclude that something is happening here. Maybe it's a now due to low staff unmonitored error, or they have a process doing this, or they have data integrity issues, or many things. Ultimately it is breaking and worse I don't trust the owner or the leadership to address or fix these issues. Especially when they are focused on maintaining the Gorilla channel for their malignant narcissist. So while it is remains useful for the moment I'll reluctantly use it and hope people move to a better platform.

[LordMortis]

I don't trust the owner or the leadership to address or fix these issues. is not implementing this as intended or with some other antithetical end in mind.

But then, I'm from the peanut gallery. I only go to twitter when sent there and would never put it on my phone.

[GreenGoo]

I have no idea how that works, especially given that all states (IIRC) allow employers to fire an employee for no reason at all.

I thought the "right to work" laws (28 states) covered this, but reading up on it, most of it pertains to the ability to work without being a member or paying membership dues of a union.

I hear "right to work" all the time when it comes to firing employees for any and all (or no) reasons.

So I'm at a bit of a loss to understand how the US works now.

[Max Peck]

At-will employment

In United States labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability status). When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will", courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave their job without reason or warning. The practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.

At-will employment gradually became the default rule under the common law of the employment contract in most U.S. states during the late 19th century, and was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court during the Lochner era, when members of the U.S. judiciary consciously sought to prevent government regulation of labor markets. Over the 20th century, many states modified the rule by adding an increasing number of exceptions, or by changing the default expectations in the employment contract altogether. In workplaces with a trade union recognized for purposes of collective bargaining, and in many public sector jobs, the normal standard for dismissal is that the employer must have a "just cause". Otherwise, subject to statutory rights (particularly the discrimination prohibitions under the Civil Rights Act), most states adhere to the general principle that employer and employee may contract for the dismissal protection they choose. At-will employment remains controversial, and remains a central topic of debate in the study of law and economics, especially with regard to the macroeconomic efficiency of allowing employers to summarily and arbitrarily terminate employees.

[GreenGoo]

At-will!

Thank you.

(some) People (me included) are absolutely using Right to Work wrong then. Not surprised, I suppose.

[Carpet_pissr]

I always equated the phrase ‘right to work’ with ‘non-union’ but that’s probably not quite right.