Tag: Twitter

A legacy disinformation social network.

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The “Exxon knew” story is being ignored?

My previous post was about the recent release of a shocking report by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, confirming Exxon has know for at least fifty years that their products were, are, and will continue causing planet wide warming.

ExxonMobil knew, they knew!

I first saw the Exxon story late last night on Mastodon. This morning I checked Twitter, and was surprised-not-surprised to see no mention of it. It’s there if you search, but on the UK News feed and Trending there’s nothing.

It wasn’t so long ago Twitter was my first port of call for breaking stories. Now, the top thirty stories on the platform, go from Felix to Corbyn, with no mention of Exxon. That’s just wrong, and dangerous, and confirms the kind of dangerous bias, I for one, expected when Elon Musk took over Twitter.

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Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status

As Twitter implodes under the weight of Elon Musk’s ego, Mastodon has grown significantly, making it very attractive to investors, who no doubt would pump tonnes of cash into the fediverse, and seek to centralise the decentralised. We should all tip our hats to Eugen Rochko the German software developer, who is the sole shareholder of Mastodon, for refusing the money, and keeping Mastodon open source.

Ars Technica
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Does Twitter delete?

For the second time since I joined Twitter in 2010, I downloaded my archive. It’s horrible looking through all of those old posts. It’s embarrassing, cringe inducing, the way looking at old photographs makes me want to run away and hide.

The first time I requested my archive was about eighteen months ago, when I downloaded and deleted most of my timeline. To my surprise today’s download contained every post I’d ever made on the platform, again.

I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I casually expected this archive to contain only the post made since the last purge.

I’m sure this breaks laws in the UK relating to GDPR?

This revelation does confirm one thing I’ve always know, but actively ignored, your presence on the internet is like a tattoo, it’s there forever!

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Is Musk’s Twitter part of a “totalitarian information warfare”

David Troy’s analysis of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in BylineTimes is truly scary.

Musk’s takeover might not be the massive financial misstep it seems. Instead it’s the latest salvo of “totalitarian information warfare” that will, if it’s not stopped, lead us into “genocide and bloody kinetic war”.

Considering the players involved this isn’t hyperbole.

Byline Times
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Right-wing extremism and Twitter

Something I wrote on Mastodon.

Twitter is a lesson in the structural imbalances that fuel society. We put our passion into a product that was, at best, compromised from the start. The form created, fed, and thrived on base impulses. The wider the circle we drew, the more adversarial it became, the harder we fought to hold our ground. That’s a way of seeing, of being in the world, that is antithetical to wellbeing. Twitter has always been toxic, abusive. Only now are we seeing its truth.

https://mas.to/@less_beauty/109431629712604226/

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The fediverse could be awesome

Key take-home from Cindy Cohn and Rory Mir’s EFF article “The Fediverse Could Be Awesome”.

“If a federated social media is better than the centralized incumbents, it will be because people made a conscious choice to make it better – not because of any technological determinism.”

I think if Twitter continues along its current trajectory, Mastodon and the wider fediverse will grow. Twitter was flawed from the outset. The wider your circle grew the more antagonistic it became. The harder you fought to hold your ground.

The federated landscape fractures that monopoly, both physically and psychologically.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Boris Johnson taken down by a sixth year medical student

Apparently this video keeps dropping off Twitter. I hope Terry Harris doesn’t mind me posting it here. Everyone should watch a very articulate sixth year medical student unwrap Boris Johnson’s PR stunt, and the Tories attacks on the NHS.

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