1y ago

You’re blocked.

The “Readers added context” feature is the only good thing about Twitter.

100 comments

Bro I love that Twitter's fact checker is just so fuckin petty to Elon lmao
- I’m surprised he hasn’t got rid of it yet. Maybe he has to have it in order to keep his few remaining advertisers?
  
  The thing is, it’s usually long enough after his comments have had their impact that these additions are made. It’s really his having/eating cake feature. He can say some out and out false shit, it gets picked up by his base and spread, the community mod a day or two later goes “actually”, and if someone calls him out he can just say “oh but the community mod set things right” if he doesn’t just outright ignore it.

Is this legit? That isn’t just ironic, but that last line is racists as hell. I mean, I’m fairly certain he’s racist if this is real or not but that last part was just so explicit in it
- I think (I hope) the last line is from a completely different post, not a reply to the black woman. Tbh I thought it must have been a reply to someone with an NFT chimp avatar. It’s much nicer here in my naïve/sheltered mind than the real world 😕
  
  It's a different post/thread - you can tell from the time lines with the chimp one being made in 2018. However, no idea what the context of that was, and I'm not going to use Xitter to find out.
  
  it has to be because if he actually blocked her she wouldn't be able to reply to his tweets anymore
- I think she’s attaching his chimp comment in her reply as a way of displaying his hypocrisy.
  But I’m not sure. I’ve never used Twitter and always find the screenshots stupid to read.
  
  I didn’t use twitter before Elon bought it, and have stayed much further away since he has. It’s possible I’m misreading due to something like that, but if I am that’s also poor design. It looks like a legitimate reply to hers. If users can manipulate replies in line with their tweets that just makes the site even worse
- I wrote (and then deleted) a furious comment because I thought he was responding to her directly, too. I think she’s just retweeting an older tweet of his, though… which is why I deleted the furious comment.
  Still, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine him actually, deliberately saying this.
- He's a white South African who's daddy made his money with slave labor. He's definitely a racist.

Can someone ELI5 what is the "Readers added context" feature?
- I haven’t added one myself, but this is my understanding: all Twitter users can opt into the community notes feature but at first you can only rate notes as helpful or unhelpful. Once you’ve rated 5 notes you have the ability to write your own. You can do so on any tweet, but if your note(s) don’t get enough “helpful” ratings, you lose your ability to write them. You have to go back to rating notes - once you’ve rated 5 more you can write again.
  When you add a note you chose a reason why you’re adding it, similar to explaining why you’re reporting a comment on lemmy. If you say that the original tweet is misleading you have to say why and provide a source. It only shows on the tweet to everyone if you get enough “helpful” ratings from the people who have opted into the scheme.
  Not very EILI5 but you get the jist!
  
  Thanks, now I understand this better... And yeah this dude is a real jerk.
- https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/community-notes

Wouldn't be surprised if this is just yet another genius move for introducing blocks as a paid feature.

Blocking on Twitter is not the same thing as blocking on lemmy.
Twitter has a "mute" feature that is equivalent to the feature lemmy has. That mute feature is staying.
Lemmy let's you hide all of a users posts by blocking them, but that block does not prevent them from commenting for others to see. On Twitter, it did.

Why are people arguing about whether blocking on Lemmy is better or hypocritical or whatever? I'm pretty sure this post is just about Elon being a hypocrite, and is saying absolutely nothing about Lemmy
- I really don’t know. But I’ve had to give multiple warnings, a temporary ban and a permanent ban already so I really hope we can just stick to enjoying musk being called out and not argue over irrelevant/nonexistent issues.
  
  I second that.

I'm kinda having hard time understanding this. Bypassing blocks in Twitter was always so trivial, essentially same as mute. Just open the profile on another account or incognito.
Official twitter app even supports multiple accounts by default.
Only way to actually prevent unwanted people from interacting with you was to make your profile private so you can approve every follower individually.
- Exactly. If someone wants to see your public tweets, they will no matter how blocked they are. It’s a mountain out of a mole hill. When account creation is free and without restriction people will abuse it.
  As long as mute exists that’s all that’s needed.
- a big reason to have block is so that you can’t get quote tweeted by a much bigger account. if you block them, they can’t put you on blast. even though they can circumvent the block with a different account, it won’t have as much reach.

Am I following the thread correctly in that he is calling a black girl a chimp?
- No, he’s not quite that horrific (in public). A few of us discussed it in this thread.
  Edit: I think I messed the link up. Try this.
- No the girl is showing a screenshot of his tweet where he blocked someone, nested inside her tweet, in response to him saying that blocking makes no sense. .

The “if blocking is removed the app will be in violation of play store and App Store policies” is 100% wrong though, I’m surprised that note hasn’t been removed.
People incorrectly saw the section saying that the developers of the app have to have a way to block certain users from using the app - like say users that have been account banned by google/apple - as saying that users have to be able to block other users.

How old is this conversation?
I don’t expect Elon to have the various store policies memorized, but shouldn’t an employee be aware of this shit? Why is he being schooled by users?
Maybe he fired the “policy advisor”, too.
- It’s 3 days old. You joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he fired the policy advisors.
  
  Lol I wasn’t joking!
- Elmo doesn’t run ideas past people. He’s reached the no-filter point where he just posts whatever he thinks of as the next twitter policy. He’s done that pretty much since Day 1 at twitter, and he was getting close to that at tesla.
  There’s a theory that the drugs he was reportedly doing to stay awake 23 hours a day while the Model 3 was a non-shipping supply chain disaster (which threatened him with the loss of a multi-billion dollar bonus, iirc) gave him a speed induced psychosis. He was always an arrogant prick who used lies to con people, now he’s someone with a decompensated personality disorder on top of that.
  I believe his lack of content moderation has already led to several violations of european laws which are making their way through the courts.
  He will simply walk it back once they’re actually threatened with having their app pulled.
  
  I’m a slow learner. Sometimes, like now, I’m caught expecting Twitter to run like a sane business.
- but shouldn’t an employee be aware of this shit
  
  The fact that this is blank makes it ten times funnier
- The one on store policies is wrong. The section people point to is actually about developers of the app having the ability to block specific users from using the app.

I'm confused. Isn't "block" on the fediverse essentially the same as mute on Twitter? Don't get me wrong, I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person does and I do like the idea of block as it's implemented on Twitter vs fediverse, but I also understand why it's not possible on the fediverse. So I'm kind of just asking, isn't it kind of shooting ourselves in the foot to argue against him on this point? He can easily turn around and just say it's the same way as the fediverse. And I feel like it's even worse when we use the fediverse to make these accusations. It makes us look either stupid or hypocritical. I guess there's a small sliver of hope in the argument "you should implement the best block the technology allows" but that seems a lot more nuanced then many people will listen to.
- As far as I’m aware “mute” means the other person can still see your profile and comments and they can still reply to those comments - they just won’t show on your feed or in your messages. This is absolutely useless if you’ve been threatened or stalked by someone.
  “Block” means the other person can’t see your profile or any of your comments and you can’t see theirs. Lemmy has “block” for users and “ban” for admins and moderators. I wasn’t aware that Lemmy has “mute” but I’m not an expert.
  
  Block on Lemmy doesn't prevent the blocked person from seeing your posts.
  Edit: which is the crux of comparing mute on Twitter to block on Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon etc.
  Even defederating doesn't stop them from seeing your posts. It just means you don't collect theirs.
- Why not just advocate for both services having a block feature.
  We're users, not Lemmy creators. This would be like criticizing Instagram users for using a Facebook service when it's Facebook and Zuckerberg who are the problems.
  
  Because there's no real way to implement blocking on a decentralized platform without severely increasing overhead per post, plus it'd be super easy for any instance to ignore it. I meant what i said when I claimed to understand why it's not on the fediverse. It's a logistical nightmare that would greatly increase the server requirements to host and defeat the intent.
  
  I agree but I think you’ve got confused with your analogy - meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
- Comparing the platforms and making some weird “is it ok to criticize Twitter when Lemi does it the same way” argument is weird.
  Elon can turn around say whatever he wants because he owns the comedy club he paid way too much for, and because it’s a free internet, and because he literally doesn’t care about facts or feelings or anything other than being popular to a weird gaggle of trolls. Believe me, if he points at Lemi to say “see? They don’t have blocking and they’re making fun of me” it’s because it bothers his ego and nothing more.
  And Twitter needs to have blocking. People have to be able to remove harassment from their social existence there. I assume a number of hateful accounts will/have resurfaced on my feeds with the removal of blocking, thankfully I haven’t used Twitter since he took over and I won’t.
  
  I don't understand why different platforms have different needs. Why does Twitter need it, but every application on the fediverse does not?
  Edit: and how is it weird to criticize someone for doing the same thing someone else does when you're ok with that someone else doing it? That's literally defining double standards.
- What are you on about? Who's "arguing against him"?

If you are getting harassed, or just annoyed by another user you can still mute them. That takes their posts off your feed entirely.
The feature they are removing is one that was routinely abused. Someone spreads misinformation, or says something dumb, and gets called out on it. They say "source?" And block the user calling them out, and now that person can't respond and be seen by anyone in that thread. The audience thinks they just abandoned the conversation.
Block was there to help liars and the stubbornly misinformed censor other people, it's good that it's gone. It's worth noting that now X/Twitter works the same way Lemmy does. Lemmy never had a block feature the way X used to.
- I really don’t think stalking victims would agree it’s good “block” has gone. I understand how it was being abused - it’s frustrating and annoying but not being able to completely block someone on social media is more than that, it can be real-world dangerous. Think domestic violence, custody disputes, abusive parents etc. Social media can be invaluable for at-risk people, but not if they can’t block the people putting them at risk.
  
  Stalking victims blocking someone doesn’t make them not able to view their posts though, since they can just log out and view them or create a new free account and see them. They need to set their posts to private and not accept follow requests from people that they haven’t verified are who they say they are, that’s the only way.
  
  If someone's stalking users they need to be banned by the mods.
  Creating a feature that allows anyone to censor anyone else in a conversation ends up ruining the entire conversation.
  Again, lemmy doesn't have this. Are you just as mad at the people developing and operating lemmy servers for this?
- I block shit all the time on Lemmy.
  Wtf are you talking about Jesse
  
  Blocking on Twitter is not the same thing as blocking on lemmy.
  Twitter has a "mute" feature that is equivalent to the feature lemmy has. That mute feature is staying.
  Lemmy let's you hide all of a users posts by blocking them, but that block does not prevent them from commenting for others to see.

100 comments