Tag: Twitter

A legacy disinformation social network.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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
Posted on

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!

Posted on

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
Posted on

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/

Posted on

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
Posted on

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.

Posted on

Leave won by breaking the law

Christopher Wylie on Twitter. Why is this fact, that leave cheated during the referendum, not part of the discussion around the British Exit of the European Union? Why is this not put forward as the reason we need another vote by those arguing for a people’s vote?

Twitter
Posted on

Letter of the week on Brexit

Lionel Barber on Twitter. “Letter of the week on Brexit: a City’s veteran’s explosive verdict. Worth reading every word.”

@lionelbarber

Hard core Brexiteers are like addicts hooked on a “narrow shortsighted nationalism” who would have this country “return to an Edwardian age”.

They’re like Robert Downey Jr. in 1999 talking about his addiction. “It’s like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and my finger’s on the trigger and I like the taste of the gunmetal.”

Only the gun isn’t in their mouth it’s in ours.

Posted on

My social media is getting out of hand

I recently joined the AMPt Community. “the premier resource for mobile photography/artistry… period.” Interesting site that I hope to get a lot from. This latest addition makes me wonder if my social media is getting out of hand.


I have two sites, this one and LessBeauty // MoreBrains.

Most of the posts on here are to do with my writing. I use it as a journal, a way of working through ideas about whatever story I am working on.

LessBeauty is home to the constant stream of digigraphs I take. I post these to the site from Flickr, because Flickr let me post directly to WordPress from my mobile. Although the free version of Flickr only displays the most recent two hundred images it still displays all the digigraphs posted to LessBeauty going back to the first post, five hundred images and counting.

Both sites automatically feed LinkedIn and Twitter, which in turn feeds Facebook. I never contribute directly to Facebook, I only have an account because everyone else does.

Daisy-chaining two WordPress sites, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook means I can post to two sites while distributing across six.

As well as the above mentioned platforms, I also have accounts with Instagram, EyeEm, Backspaces, and now AMPt Community.

A big reason for LessBeauty is Instagram. It started the digigraph ball rolling for me. The desire to post digigraphs made me go out and take more digigraphs.

The recent uproar over Instagram’s amended terms of service prompted me to set up an EyeEm account. Same content different place. It involves a fair amount of reposting but not unmanageable. Additionally I have also started posting stories on Backspaces.

Backspaces is new platform that is, from a content point of view, a combination of images and words. This is something completely separate from Instagram and EyeEm. It forces me to think in new ways about what I’m doing. That on it’s own is worth sticking with it for the time being.

On top of all that I recently joined AMPt Community.

Each platform reaches a slightly different audiance but because it reverses the daisy-chaining principle I employed with my main sites it is becoming increasingly time consuming to keep up with.

Not sure what I will do but I’m giving serious consideration to sliming down the portfolio of social media. What I need is a social media hub. A site that distributes my content across all the other platforms.