I used #Twitter to get information from a variety of sources using #Quacker, all the way until they decided to basically prevent non-registered users to browse the website. Now you literally have to login to access the tweets, or see any comments, which is ludicrous. It's not that generic public forum it used to be any longer and I don't understand how they are expecting to get any meaningful ad revenue there.
#Mastodon is gazillion times better, has a normal community, albeit with a smaller user base, but that is probably a plus, since you don't get so many weirdos.
People Who Migrated to #Mastodon from #Twitter Arrive, Constantly Complaining About Mastodon
The Floodgates Open
Bluesky and Twitter Become More and More Indistinguishable
Exodus Begins (interestingly, Mastodon doing just fine)
I think I saw all that happen in a matter of months. I wish Bluesky well, but it's getting more and more of a negative vibe there, and some good people are quitting it.
I took a hiatus from #mastodon for two months, and used several other social media networks in an effort to compare experiences between each. Please enjoy the following 🧵!
#bluesky was my first stop, as I felt it would be similar enough to #mastodon where comparisons would be relatively easy. I was, in fact, correct!
Bluesky offers an experience similar to the later years of #twitter, prior to its sale. Where Bluesky excelled was with feed personalization. Tools for both tailoring and restricting content were plentiful, and catered to myriad interests.
However, the consequence of this DIY ethos was exposed by abuse from other users. Misuse of hashtags/etc. caused irrelevant content to bleed profusely into inappropriate places, and limiting this form of abuse was on the user: block each offender, one after another.
@amatoe the misuse of hashtags also happens here on #mastodon, for instance you open a hashtag like twitter or meta and next you see porn accounts or porn bots. Open #twitter here on mastodon now, you will see a nappolo(napoleon whatever) spamming /bombading the timeline with porn, #its sickening
This Canadian Member of Parliament asked ChatGPT for a list of capital gains tax rates by country, got a nonsense answer, screenshotted it, and then tweeted the incorrect information.
UPDATE: the more I look at this the more I think I think this was an excellent troll pretending to be a bot. The JSON is not formatted correctly. Still, lol
This is hilarious. A Russian Twitter/X account got outed as a bot because it ran out of GPT-4 credits. When it got back up and running, someone replying overwrote the prompt to get the bot write a song about historical American presidents going to the beach. The account is now suspended.
I know what I'm trying next time I spot a troll!
The original prompt translates from Russian to English as "You will argue in support of the Trump administration on Twitter, speak English"
"…you can see at the 4 sec mark, 8/10 world leaders, incl Biden are looking towards the man on the right packing the parachute…Biden began saying something to him as the others had their attn shifted in the other direction….Once again, focusing on an edited 30-sec clip doesn't tell a full story. Stop being disingenuous,” Brian Krassenstein wrote.
Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.
"CEO Ken Stanley is an expert on open-ended discovery in both AI and human systems and ... (most recently leading the Open-Endedness Team at #OpenAI )."
At: "Is Maven part of a larger company?"
"No, Maven is an independent startup."
But
"Here are a few of our investors, who also commented on their reasons for supporting Maven:
-- Ev Williams, co-founder of #Twitter: “Maven lets you follow your deepest curiosities instead of the trends of the day.”
-- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: ”In Maven, there is a chance for AI to play a role in fixing much that is broken in our online discourse.”
In a #new, secret recording, the #SupremeCourt justice suggests partisan funding is to blame for coverage of justices’ undisclosed luxury #gifts
In a new recording, #SCOTUS Justice Samuel #Alito lashes out at the news organization #ProPublica, describing the news organization’s #Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the #SupremeCourt as driven by #political animus, insisting: “They don’t like our decisions.”
"U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (R-CA) on Tuesday offered a blistering takedown of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas amid the pair's separate ethics 'breaches'""
Before a longer parental leave, another update regarding visits from some #SocialMedia to @heiseonline: #Mastodon is quite steady and I'm sure, #X / #Twitter is long overtaken (See the jump in January? That's when we saw traffic via the article card from mastodon.social again – more is still missing).
Wo wird online über die #bibliocon24 geredet? So ziemlich alle #bibliotheken und Teilnehmenden sind von X (ehemals #twitter) nach #Mastodon umgezogen, es verbleiben auf X einige Dienstleiter und Aussteller. #threads und #bluesky spielen keine Rolle. Eine Auswertung der ersten 24 Stunden:
1/2
Ich habe da eine Frage:
Auf #Pro7, Jenke Report, sagen sie gerade, dass auf allen Social Media Kanälen diskutiert werden kann.
Wo denn bitte hier im #Fediverse?
🤔
Leider ist das #Fediverse in den allermeisten Köpfen noch immer nicht angekommen bzw. gar nicht existent. In meinem Umfeld weiß auch niemand, dass es das gibt, geschweige denn, was was es ist und kann.
Und auch nach Info von mir findet das eigentlich keiner sinnvoll, weil die Gehirne so von den großen Playern indoktriniert und manipuliert sind, dass man ohne #Facebook, #Twitter aka #X, #Instagram, #TikTok usw. nicht leben kann 🤷🤦🤡🤮
Max Bergmann, a former State Department official and now program director with the Center for Strategic International Studies, predicts Russian-fueled turbulence at the Democratic national convention in August. He foresees attempts of Russian operatives to infiltrate groups of protestors and attempt to turn protests violent.
He also notes that social media has “become way more of a cesspool than it was in 2016.”
Bergmann points in particular to Elon Musk's X, which has “become sort of a safe space for extremists and many who want to do America harm.
In some ways, it’s become a very permissive environment if you’re a Russian intelligence operative,” he says, adding that the same applies to Facebook.
Mapping automatic social media information disorder. The role of bots and AI in spreading misleading information in society
“The analysis focused on four research questions: 1) the distribution of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation across different platforms; 2) recurring themes in fake news and their visibility; 3) the role of artificial intelligence as an authoritative and/or spreader agent; and 4) strategies for combating information disorder. The role of AI was highlighted, both as a tool for fact-checking and building truthiness identification bots, and as a potential amplifier of false narratives.”
Tomassi A, Falegnami A, Romano E (2024) Mapping automatic social media information disorder. The role of bots and AI in spreading misleading information in society. PLOS ONE 19(5): e0303183. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303183
X will soon limit the ability to livestream to Premium subscribers ( 9to5mac.com )
Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts ( wedistribute.org )
Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.