it’s unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it’s an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it’s a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new “block”, what’s even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).
Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.
Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people’s content.
Elon Musk really fucking hates his trans daughter. Dad of the century, right here.
I wasn’t aware he had more children than the one with the weird-ass name. The private life section on wikipedia is a ride…
He ascribes to Longtermism and like his associate Jeffery Epstein, he thinks his genes are magically special, and so he wants as many offspring as humanly possible: while not actually giving one shit about the quality of life for any of them.
It’s really interesting, because he fucking hates his own father (Errol is also a creep who married his step-daughter, who he raised from childhood), but can’t put together that he is exactly the fuck the same as his creep ass father.
Longtermism doesn’t have to do with one’s own personal genetics or lineage, though, and it certainly doesn’t belong to Elon.
Longtermism is a notion coming out of population ethics, that since there will be more people in the future than there are today, that we should take the well-being of all those future people into account when making decisions today.
This can be taken in lots of different directions — ranging from humanist environmentalism, to space migration, to concern about exotic existential risks.
But a fixation on one’s own personal DNA is not really related to it at all. That’s more of a misunderstanding of evolutionary biology.
Lemmy’s “block” is essentially a “mute” function, too. It makes it so that you don’t see any more content from a user, but they can still make comments on your stuff.
lemmy, at least, would have the excuse of being constantly a work in progress and i guess that not having such a large community that hard blocking is necessary. but twitter would be appallingly bad without blocks–it already is with them!
Also, Lemmy has the bonus of federation allowing instances to defederate entirely from abuse and spam-happy instances.
IIRC from reading about Bluesky, its strategy for dealing with spam, trolls, hate speech, etc., was to have various servers in the Federation tag posts, users & servers with a “Spam” tag or “Hate speech” tag, and server admins can set their servers to not display posts so tagged, and to not pass them on to other servers.
I hope it stays this way. It would suck being excluded from unrelated content on Lemmy just because I had a disagreement with someone at some point in the past (depending on how block happy people are of course).
It’s interesting to me that they made the argument that blocking is increasing server costs.
- How is that even possible, on a technical level?
- If true, how is changing to a “stronger mute” going to reduce said costs?
I mean, it’s plainly clear that Musk has no idea what is going on at any of his companies and the narrative of him being a genius of some kind was simply that: a narrative.
In a way, I could imagine it increasing server costs by like 0.001%, if even that, because if the algorithm finds a post to recommend but then realises it’s from a blocked account, it would have to search again (ofc it’s probably optimised so that it realises that at an earlier stage).
But we’re talking about such small details it literally doesn’t matter and is outweighed by the functionality lost one hundredfold.
I expect it’s accurate to say; their architecture is not like a database where you can add an index on a blocked state and then join against it. You have to get a list of potential posts that the user might want to see and then eliminate any in the block list. There will be a few edge case users who have thousands of block entries and a multithreading strategy is likely required to swiftly filter it in a reasonable timeframe.
However, an architecture I’ve seen that works around this is to build this timeline in the background and present it to the user from a cache, I don’t know if this is what Twitter does as I never worked on that. However, if you want to not have a block feature but have some kind of mute feature anyway I don’t see how there is a meaningful difference.
Yeah, sounds like that’s the case. Funny how flaws in system architecture gets exposed to the public through vapid excuses these days.
My guess is muting would likely result in a decrease of overall visibility. Every account gets a mute score.
logical
Stop right there. This is Elon Musk we are talking about
Haha, that’s a throwback to the days when I helped to manage a phpBB board and there were a few members that would just continuously get into arguments so I edited the database so both of them had each other on their block list. It was very telling when I discovered they unblocked each other a few weeks later and got back to arguing and derailing thread topics.
You took away their hobby.
Maybe nows the time to advertise Mastodon some more. What’s he gonna do, block us?
Concerning
A worrying trend in recent social software platforms is that you can’t block people. Slack, Teams, Discord (not really, it still shows you that people you block say things, which defeats the point), so many of these garbage social platforms (… all Electron-based) don’t let you block people. Even Discourse doesn’t have a block feature. They all just assume that everyone gets along.
Fun fact: a block feature is required to be accepted by the Apple AppStore review process. So Twitter will disappear from Apple devices with this change.
Hmm. Hate to be a downer, but that sounds like there needs to be a way for the service itself to block (ban) users and material, not for users to be able to block other users. So I wouldn’t be too optimistic about Apple’s response…
Apple’s review process is inconsistent at best. I used to work for an iOS app and it took several years before they blocked our release for not having a report feature on products. Never had the ability to block users, despite the ability to DM people.
Plus, for an app the size of Twitter, Apple will likely ignore most rules that doesn’t lose them money.
Wow…
Is there some kind of tech CEO competition running or something?
“Who can alienate their user base the fastest”
There’s a saying, " never attribute to malice what is easily explained by incompetence".
But we’re quickly reaching the point where it’s no longer easily explained incompetence. Elon is either the most incompetent person in the known universe, which is saying a lot, or he’s doing this on purpose for some reason.
I’m not into conspiracies, but it’s starting to make more sense if he’s actively trying to tank the stock.
There’s no stock to tank. You could argue that he’s trying to tank the company, but there are easier ways to do that.
You could argue that he’s trying to tank the company
I’m kinda lost here. What’s his end goal with it?
Depriving the libs of a favored platform via making it conservative and unruly, and weakening its democratic potential against authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, is the theory.
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There’s no stock or similar security, so the SEC doesn’t care at all. Could be a plausible deniability thing, I just think it’s more likely that he really is that dumb, given the stories about Tesla/SpaceX having teams that basically existed just to control him.
He just wants everyone to be exposed to his right-wing buddies toxic posts.
Yup, he gets a hard-on by exposing people to the “fash n friends” crap.
I mean, 2024 isn’t that far away. It’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to in the name of “free speech” or “townsquare of the internet” or whatever shitty rationalization he uses to explains his nutty behavior.
Once upon a time, long ago, in the very beginning, I liked Twitter as a stream of instant information from all POV. Then Twitter became a haven for bots and a propaganda tool. Is it possible that Musk bought Twitter so that he could take it to the point of absurdity and destroy it?
For real! He’s trying to tank Twitter.
Elongated Muskrat has discovered just how many accounts are blocking him. His ego can’t take that. His FrEeSpEeCh must be heard
My account isn’t blocking him.
At least, not since I deleted it. And stopped visiting Twitter.
Oh no please, not the nicknames. Can we leave them?
Nothing makes me cringe harder than the childish nicknames everybody keeps coming up with. Elongated Muskrat isn’t funny or offensive.
Calling his sycophants Muskrats is appropriate though.
I’m skeptical of this, maybe it’s because he’s worried his fascist followers are slowly falling into an echo chamber cause anyone with more than a few braincells blocks them
So what you’re saying is, if I have a Twitter account and I start blocking many MANY people it costs Elon money? Interesting.
Alternatively, Elon just found out how many people are blocking him.
I think this is what really happened. Hurt his ego.
I’m extremely doubtful that there is any truth to that.
True, and even if there were it would be a massive pain and probably the best thing to do is not engage with twitter at all.
As a member of a rather vulnerable minority, I had made pretty liberal use of the block feature on Twitter. Of course, I left when Musk took over and switched to Mastodon, but my account’s still there. I didn’t delete it or anything. Might have to now.
I deleted mine the day Elon bought it… Lol. I honestly never cared for Twitter too much but I admit I get a lot of news from it (following the Ukrainian situation pretty closely).
I’m not part of any minority, but sympathize and will be deleting my account now. However, I’m wondering if I should block everything I see first the refresh several times. Knowing that 1 cent came out of their wallet because of me sounds pretty enticing nbl
How do you use Mastodon, if I may ask? I briefly registered and tried using it but it came off as highly populated with conservatives so I promptly left. :/
The mastodon instance hosted by the same people as this lemmy instance is nice.
Whats going on with social media CEOs making dumb decisions these days…
Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they’re not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that’s been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷
At the top levels, they are rich and well-connected enough that they don’t have to worry about failing like regular people.
They can burn millions, billions of dollars and still get out with a fat paycheck, a pat on the back, and another CEO/exec job lined up by one of their many wealthy friends. Either that, or they are “forced” into retirement where they live large for their remaining lives.
I wish somebody would force me into a wealthy retirement…
Conservative money thinks that they can keep there opposition off balance by smashing social networks . Musk did not launch desatitis campaign out of nowhere.
This is exactly it. Social media’s greatest power is the ability for common folk to organise and rally quickly and easily. That cannot be allowed, so these moves are designed to divide and insulate.
Omg this rings so true
it’s not about money. it’s about power
Elon went early and often. He’s a trend setter.
Damnit, I knew I shouldn’t have blocked him. Sorry guys this is my fault, I only had him muted before.
Maybe we can convince him that the chain of events that lead to so many people blocking him is actually what Blockchain means and get him to ban all crypto. This would obviously piss off his cryptobro fans, leading them to mint an NFT of a screenshot of the front page of Twitter and claim that no one else is allowed to use it.
Thus would ignite the Great Flame War of 2023.
I really hope platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon take off. Just the idea of no single person with control over how we all communicate and share ideas gives me hope for the future.
Im honestly surprised twitter is still standing. Like how. How is it still going.
Yeah! I’m a little sad how resilient these toxic media companies are. Meta, twitter, Reddit, etc are really not good for humanity. But I guess humanity has always been toxic to itself.
I think a large part of this is just users being complacent. As long as the platform doesn’t completely change, most users will typically just keep trudging along.
For example if you remember the whole WhatsApp controversy from a little while ago. Pretty much my entire extended family communicated solely through WhatsApp, and they all were promising change, moving to signal, deleting fb and so forth. When the time actually came, everyone made signal accounts, and a few really switched, but to this day everyone still uses WhatsApp.
I’d guess that as long as people’s “interests” are on the platform, they will continue to use it.
I’m not sure what happened with WhatsApp, but I think the key is if the platform still mostly works as intended people will stay. I follow some artists on Twitter and my feed is mostly their content. I don’t see the trash from other parts unless I specifically go looking for it or on rare occasions. So for the most part twitter still functions the same for me and the artists I follow. Now, if say my feed was filled with bigots complaining or people harassing the artists I follow cause they draw NSFW lesbian art or the site was SO filled with bigots that it ruined your reputation just by being there then yeah I’d leave. We are approaching this point but I don’t think we are in a Voat or Ruqqus like situation. When I look at instances of games or social media platforms having a mass exodus, that seems to be the common theme, making a change that directly interferes with its core function.
Spot on analysis. The convenience of staying must be beat out by the new tool. I remember when myspace was killed when facebook came. The annoyance of everything being customized was beat by facebooks neatness. Finally all my relatives could find the buttons. Apollo was soooo convenient on reddit. I’m hoping he’ll port it to the fediverse, that would be the killer app for me.
Inertia. Most people won’t up an leave to Mastodon.
With Twitter, situation is different since most celebs are still on it and people generally use it just to see what the popular people are saying. Once (and if) these celebrities join Mastodon, Twitter would start to finall fall.
Or they’re waiting for invites to bluesky.
So he’s run out of engineers that know how to maintain the block feature?
QA: “I’m clicking the block button but it isn’t doing anything anymore!”
Twitter mgmt: “That’s ok, instead of fixing it we’ll just remove the button.”
It would be hilarious if when he is out at twitter we got a twitter files dump that showed the devs that maintained block really are all gone and he’s playing it off like this is some new big idea twitter came up with to make money🤣
Watching major social media websites actively kill themselves has been nothing if not an experience
Let’s be real, he’s doing this because he’s upset about people blocking Twitter blue accounts, this in no way increases server costs or any bull shit like that
Elon, for all of his smarts, seems to not understand the game theory behind social networks. I get it, we have had the status quo for over a decade, but the fundamental rules are still the same.
Frankly I’m happy to see them falling apart and a return to how social was meant to be on the internet.
That doesn’t make sense. Social media rules aren’t written in stone.
All forms of communication/media/technology evolve over time. Going backwards is regressive.
Depends on what going backwards means, from a technical perspective this is fine and more forward than the centralized providers would have you believe. The only step back im seeing is mainly UI and tooling. The bones here are fine and the UX im seeing on Lemmy and Kbin are inline with reddit just a few years ago.
If having to deal with UX issues is a huge problem the just wait and come back when its more developed, most of what you use in your day-to-day computing is OSS code, if its good enough for your daily work, its good enough for socials.
You know, maybe I didn’t understand the full meaning of your comment - I assumed you were referring to not having the ability to block a user as a “return to how social was meant to be on the internet”
why would I not be able to block a user on the internet? I was able to block them on every system from the beginning. Centralized services will have you think you need thier magic code to do that but we used to do it with clients all the time.
I still run IMAP email clients with a boat load of personal rules, though I did move the blocks to my server for efficiency. Still its MY server, like im posting to you now from my fediverse instance. If i wanted to block someone here they can be annoying sure but at the end of the day I have many of the same tools i had before, though there might be more cat and mouse. That said nothing stops you from having entirely private instances and since we technically can completely control our servers and clients its entirely possible to have things like one-way servers and nodes that are more picky about what they forward. If the network grows you will see an increased sophistication in management tools.
But we were talking about Twitter specifically, not any sort of self-hosted platform or personal site.
I don’t disagree with you, I’m just confused when the discussion moved from Twitter to an anecdote about one’s IMAP email client
my bad, im in “fuck these guys lets all setup nodes” mode atm and still getting used to the UI
Recently, here on lemmy, someone explained Usenet in its days, and said that you yourself couldn’t block others, but only ask the ISPs to. Isn’t that “social” without being able to block others?
Besides, I feel like @smokinjoe@lemmy.world didn’t want to suggest that you were not able to block others in the past, just stating what he assumed you meant, without evaluating.
In retrospect, I should probably just learn to read.
Blocking Twitter Blue users is the only way to make threads make sense again after he decided to weight them higher. Any time you open a tweet there’s like 10 Twitter Blue trolls with 3 followers that are sorted above the good comments.
Another great ideea from greatest Genius of our age! Of God how could we live without him until now! /s
It’s insane how ludicrous his ideas in particular seem to be, especially with Twitter. This has to be trolling, surely? Or does he not want to allow people to block him?
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He’s already overridden people blocking him. You still see his posts.
He’s just trying to make sure it stays useful as a weapon for fascists like himself is all.
If you have your personal “ban from plattform entirely” button, why would you need a block button? Jeez you guys it’s so obvious.
Elon Musk is a gaping, farting anus. I pay as much attention to the sounds from a gaping, farting anus, as I do from him.
Kind of rude. Farts can be funny, and they don’t deserve to be disparaged like this.
Very true. I take back the bit about the farting anus.
