Twitter agrees to Elon Musk buyout, a reminder we're on Mastodon

Quoting: The fine articleBret Taylor, Twitter's Independent Board Chair, said, "The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."

Remember kids, corporations are not your friends. Unless you are a shareholder, then they begrudgingly care about you until you own a significant chunk of shares and then they will pretend to actually be a friend.

I love it, all the right people are screeeeching

Twitter is a leftwing echo chamber. Trump gets banned while (true!) Information about Hunter Biden supressed.

And the "covid-disinformation"-hammer is also great: Lableak-Theory was once a bannable offence, now it's credible. What changed? The President. When Trump said it -> Disinformation. Now Biden said it -> credible.

Sure, we should not tolerate calls for violence against others. But then why are there terror groups still on Twitter?

As many said before: Musk cannot make it worse, let's hope we get a fair and open town square with no or at least less bias.

Quoting: LanzMusk's buyout of Twitter might just be enough to convince me to use it. It was nothing but an echo chamber for the left prior to the buyout, and frankly, that's boring to read and really nauseating. Neutrality is very much welcomed.

Hahaha sorry but that's hilarious. Both sides always think it's against them. I'm on the "Left" and see absolutely masses of right wing bull. It's very easy to find too.

I find some of the comments about the current political situation of Twitter, with talk of "both sides" and "the left" rather amusing. And very, very American.
That is, they indulge the tendency to see mainstream United States politics as representing all possible political division, with Republicans representing "the right" and Democrats somehow representing "the left", and that "one side" and "other side" being all the sides that can exist. Speaking as an actual leftist, I think it's important to point out that by historical and international standards, the US Democrats are not a left political formation, or a centrist one, or a centre-right one. They are an economically hard right wing party with some progressive-identity-politics window dressing (and a small, ineffectual centrist wing). Modern US mainstream politics takes up a very tiny slice even of what's been considered possible in the US in the past, let alone everywhere else.

Twitter is probably one of the contributing factors to this extreme impoverishment of the modern US political landscape.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: dibzFixing freedom of speech on Twitter? How so?

About the only things that come to mind are Trump and COVID misinformation type stuff being blocked/censored.

I am familiar with a person who grumbles often that they were banned from Twitter for life for calling some senator a "twatwaffle".

Everyone should be free to call senators twatwaffles.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIndependent of all of that, I do hope this makes Twitter a better and more open place.
I tried Gabber, I tried Minds, I tried Odysee (as a YT alternative), I tried lots of different ones, but they all suffer from most of their userbase being people who were either banned from other places for having an unpopular opinion or from people who were looking for echo chambers. And as such, they (mostly) became echo chambers of their own, even if they were not originally meant to be that way.

It would be extremely hypocritical of me to pass judgment upon other people for wanting an echo chamber when I'm literally saying I wish for a website that bans a particular kind of discussion, I just simply personally believe that when it comes to software projects that are unrelated to politics, politics should be quarantined as far away from it as possible unless the project is specifically and explicitly made to cover a political topic, since trouble brews in politics' wake that can damage or outright kill an otherwise perfectly functional thing that didn't need to die or become a source of stress due to unrelated IRL stuff.

Like, for example, Elon making twitter open source is a great thing for everyone regardless of ideology, but instead of celebrating, I see people diluting how good of a thing that could potentially be because of what people think of Elon. That kind of stuff drives me insane, from my perspective their political ideologies are suffocating them from realizing instantly that if he keeps his word, they can fork twitter and potentially make a "I hate Elon, I hate modern twitter" version of twitter, much like what Mastodon is doing, kinda.

A little bit of pragmatism goes a long way when it comes to software, and it's like pragmatism is the first thing to get chucked out the window when people feel strongly about a political topic. I've seen it in a not insignificant amount of situations and it bothers me immensely that when someone says "Hey let's laser focus on making something better and duke this out elsewhere" people take that as like, me trying to be centrist or something, when it's really me just going "Please cut that out, get your grievances out somewhere that isn't this project/game. I'm not saying to not have political opinions, I'm trying to say trim the fat around this thing that causes ire among people that could otherwise be working together or having fun together, it'd be nicer to follow a project that just is helpful to everyone or enjoyable to use without the added stresses of unrelated things."

I guess what I mean to say is, I'd like a place that enforces that people get rid of the "bloat" to put it in coding terms. I'm not asking for the support or condemnation of any ideology. I can do that elsewhere whenever I want to. I'm asking for a place that gives me a break, for the sake of the projects I enjoy, and my mental health.

... I just want to see "The Berlin Wall" come down that separates the [ Social Hubs ]:

Twitter, Facebook, Gab, TruthSocial, Mastodon and all the [ Social Hubs ] need to interface like Email so people can be "Cosmopolitans" (Citizens Of The World) not some damn captive in some damn walled garden.

Quoting: WMan22I wish there was a website like twitter, where you have the freedom to say anything you want, EXCEPT political discussion was just straight banned, cold turkey, left and right wing, so people can focus on collaboration/promotion of neat projects first and foremost without being at each other's throats for 5 seconds,

The problem is that just about anything can be declared "political speech" these days.

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: LanzMusk's buyout of Twitter might just be enough to convince me to use it. It was nothing but an echo chamber for the left prior to the buyout, and frankly, that's boring to read and really nauseating. Neutrality is very much welcomed.

Hahaha sorry but that's hilarious. Both sides always think it's against them. I'm on the "Left" and see absolutely masses of right wing bull. It's very easy to find too.

I am not on Twitter. But I think one problem already is, to divide the people in "left" and "right". Even more senseless here in Germany, where "right" and "right extreme" is often used as it would be the same.

The thing I miss is, that people listen to each other and then discuss things. But today it mostly is like identifiying the other as right or left.
If you are left, you must hate the right wing person or at least prove they are wrong.
If you are right, you must hate the left wing person or at least prove they are wrong.

And even a lot of people today seem to be not able to respect a person who is "on the other side". I personally wouldn't even identify in one of these left/right side.
I look what argument is sensefull to me, and oh wonder, sometimes I do more agree with the left side and sometimes with the right side.
That makes me perhaps absolutely incompatible with Twitter. Both sides there would hate me, as you must agree or you get the hate.


Last edited by einherjar on 26 April 2022 at 12:30 pm UTC

(I didn't read all postings, just chiming in.)

Quoting: WMan22I just simply personally believe that when it comes to software projects that are unrelated to politics, politics should be quarantined as far away from it as possible unless the project is specifically and explicitly made to cover a political topic, since trouble brews in politics' wake that can damage or outright kill an otherwise perfectly functional thing that didn't need to die or become a source of stress due to unrelated IRL stuff.

This sounds good, but I deem it impossible. Inside Debian, there's been discussions if the Taiwanese flag should be part of the some country choosing dialogue. You can have trans or non-binary persons anywhere, and then people who like to use personal pronouns that those spoken to deem wrong. Have a weather forecast with coloured countries, what colour to give Crimea. The list goes on. There's no big space without politics.


Last edited by Eike on 26 April 2022 at 1:21 pm UTC