Twitter rebrand to X imminent

July 23, 2023 2:31 PM

Twitter is being rebranded as X - The Verge

X.com is now redirecting to Twitter, and their internal email systems will no longer use the Twitter domain.

posted by buffy12 (538 comments total)

[John Cleese voice] This is an ex-website!
posted by little onion at 2:35 PM on July 23, 2023 [106 favorites]

Wow… How mysterious, X the unknown… Didn’t some marketing person back in early 60’s decide that using X in a brandname denotes the future, science, technology, etc?
posted by njohnson23 at 2:37 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

So active sabotage from Elon is the only explanation for this, right? A first year marketing or business student could tell you why this is a ridiculous thing to do.
posted by Bottlecap at 2:39 PM on July 23, 2023 [46 favorites]

Using Google to find drugs is already hard enough, I do not expect this to help!
posted by aubilenon at 2:40 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Some vulture companies pay pennies to acquire a troubled long-standing brand, then ship subpar products for as long as they can before consumers notice the product is steaming shite.

And then there are other companies take brands with a lot of currency (HBO, and now Twitter) and just rename it to something meaninglessly generic (Max and X).

These people ae not smart -- their wealth simply insulates them from the consequences of their stupid decisions.
posted by tclark at 2:41 PM on July 23, 2023 [87 favorites]

Yeah, this is... an inadequate response to the threat posed by Threads/Meta.
posted by Selena777 at 2:42 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Elon has been obsessed with X as a company name for decades. As the article mentions, although I think goes a bit soft on, X.com was the name Elon wanted for what is now PayPal. Elon has a vision of an X.com that is like one of those websites overseas that is communication, payments, shopping.. X in his mind will grow to be The Everything App.

He seems to ignore Amazon's Elephant standing in the room, but yeah.
posted by hippybear at 2:42 PM on July 23, 2023 [22 favorites]

Y tho
posted by staggernation at 2:43 PM on July 23, 2023 [148 favorites]

Can we still call them "tweets" or
posted by saturday_morning at 2:44 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Y tho

Because Musk is Z idiot.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:45 PM on July 23, 2023 [24 favorites]

I mean, really, he's a Putin supporter, so why not Z?
posted by hippybear at 2:45 PM on July 23, 2023 [16 favorites]

Elon has a vision of an X.com

Suddenly it all makes sense, the rocket company, the subterranean excavations, the corporate branded weapons: Elon is spending his fortune recreating a classic video game.
posted by pwnguin at 2:49 PM on July 23, 2023 [16 favorites]

Elon's chosen CEO/scapegoat had this to say:

X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

You know, Linda, you don't have to wait for the trapdoor to open.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:50 PM on July 23, 2023 [41 favorites]

When I was a kid, X was the state of basically being completely off limits. Decline of Western Civilization indeed.
posted by hippybear at 2:53 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

What will replace 'Tweets'?

'X increments' — Xcrements for short, of course — would seem to be appropriate as long as Musk owns it.
posted by jamjam at 2:53 PM on July 23, 2023 [176 favorites]

Can we still call them "tweets" or

one xweet, two xweetim xweeted by xweeple
one tweex, two tweexes tweexed by tweexers
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:55 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

I pulled my following list down to 34 a short while ago. I'm only following bands and other such entities I haven't found a Mastodon presence for yet. It's been utterly liberating.

If nothing else, with so few accounts I'm following I only get served an ad to click "Not Interested In This Ad" maybe once every couple of days. I often get ZERO new tweets in 24 hours.

It's glorious. It's becoming background for me.

If Paula Abdul would please get a Mastodon account, that would help a lot.
posted by hippybear at 2:56 PM on July 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

“if a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow.”

I thought that was already settled?

💩
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:57 PM on July 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

It’s kind of weird, watching a billionaire self-sabotage so consistently and over such a long time.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:00 PM on July 23, 2023 [33 favorites]

#til the X Games still exist
posted by away for regrooving at 3:01 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I believe you're supposed to say "X, the everything app" like how on the Adam West Batman they always had to preface Wayne Manor with "stately" or refer to DIck Grayson as Bruce Wayne's "youthful ward"
posted by ckape at 3:02 PM on July 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

If Paula Abdul would please get a Mastodon account, that would help a lot.

A brand new sentence!
posted by rhizome at 3:04 PM on July 23, 2023 [42 favorites]

This is all sorts of stupid and I can't even
posted by Catblack at 3:07 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

More like Promise Of A New Account.
posted by hippybear at 3:08 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

On behalf of Gen X (of which Elon and I are both, unfortunately, members), I want to both apologize and express my annoyance.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:09 PM on July 23, 2023 [46 favorites]

Musk continues to be the most divorced man ever.
posted by tula at 3:09 PM on July 23, 2023 [93 favorites]

[John Cleese voice] This is an ex-website

The most successful thing they’ve made this year has been ex-users, so it makes a certain sort of sense.
posted by mhoye at 3:12 PM on July 23, 2023 [36 favorites]

So, instead of Twitter ad revenues being down 80%, x.com ad revenues will be up infinity %?
posted by snofoam at 3:13 PM on July 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

On the up side, my imposter syndrome bothers me a lot less as of late.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:14 PM on July 23, 2023 [81 favorites]

MARTIN
The "X". I know what you're thinking. Um, it's a marketing thing. You see, I wanted to call the show "Going to Other Planets", but Research says that shows with "X" in the name get higher ratings.

Stargate SG-1, "Wormhole X-Treme!"
posted by indexy at 3:16 PM on July 23, 2023 [18 favorites]

It’s kind of weird, watching a billionaire self-sabotage so consistently and over such a long time.

is he going to go full Abigail Disney?
posted by Selena777 at 3:16 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I assume he’s done this as it’s the letter that most closely resembles a swastika.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:19 PM on July 23, 2023 [36 favorites]

Malcom Twiiter is rolling in his grave
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:20 PM on July 23, 2023 [27 favorites]

Given the clientele Musk is most actively courting, the most plausible reason he is changing the company name to X is that it is easier to remember than the html code for a swastika.
posted by JohnFromGR at 3:20 PM on July 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

If you wanted to burn through some tens of billions of dollars, it really seems like you could figure out a method that is more fun that dicking around with a stupid website.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:23 PM on July 23, 2023 [13 favorites]

glass onion.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:26 PM on July 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

Just in time for Futurama's return, "the 'X' makes it sound cool!"
posted by Riki tiki at 3:30 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Has anyone made the "instead of tweeting, we'll call it excreting?" joke yet?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:33 PM on July 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

"X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. "

You can do anything at Xombo.com...
posted by kaibutsu at 3:36 PM on July 23, 2023 [63 favorites]

Perfect opportunity to make the timeline go sideways
posted by Reyturner at 3:36 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm going to buy a site that isn't really noteworthy on a technological or conceptual level and then destroy the one thing the site still had going for it from a business perspective.

Brilliant!
posted by brundlefly at 3:49 PM on July 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

It would be hilarious that after after all Elon has done to drive people off Twitter, the main reason they'll stop using it is because they can't find the app anymore.
posted by meowzilla at 3:51 PM on July 23, 2023 [18 favorites]

As he's also getting rid of the bird logo, someone suggested "a black X in a white circle on a red background" might be an appropriate replacement.
posted by fings at 3:53 PM on July 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

fine
posted by amtho at 3:53 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Still carrying a bit of credence for the theory that the Saudis funded Elon's purchase of Twitter to get him to ruin it as a platform for social activism.
posted by hippybear at 3:54 PM on July 23, 2023 [50 favorites]

Can't wait to see what this does to MAU numbers. I don't think it'll be pretty.

Seems to me quite a few of those who remained on Twitter yet weren't garbage humans did so in part because of nostalgia and affection for the brand. WELP. We can X that out.
posted by humbug at 3:59 PM on July 23, 2023

Elon is secretly a massive ZZ Top fan and wants people to start saying they "Heard it on the X?"
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:02 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

X, the band, should sue.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:05 PM on July 23, 2023 [29 favorites]

X marks the twat.
posted by mochapickle at 4:07 PM on July 23, 2023 [31 favorites]

Can we pronounce it “kiss”? And instead of tweets we could have smooches or something.
posted by tomcooke at 4:08 PM on July 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

In Portuguese the letter X is pronounced "sheesh."

Which seems appropriate here.
posted by chavenet at 4:12 PM on July 23, 2023 [42 favorites]

this is a joke right?
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:17 PM on July 23, 2023

If all of Twitter becomes X then the Japan office, Twitter Japan, will become X Japan and then the hilarity will ensue.

I enjoy that once again even though he says that Japan is important to Twitter, he probably doesn't even know that LINE exists and does a whole bunch of things that he wants X to do. And repeat that for all the other countries and their respective apps.
posted by LostInUbe at 4:18 PM on July 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

I saw the branding. It's X for [cancel].
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:19 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

X is to Twitter as lipstick is to pig.
posted by bryon at 4:20 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

In Portuguese the letter X is pronounced "sheesh."

This is why the "X-burger" is a normal thing on menus in Brazil.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:21 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

> If all of Twitter becomes X

Even better, The Twitter Files become The X Files.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:21 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

Just yesterday I watched footage from international vlunteers in Ukraine talking about when it becomes important to , and I quote, "get off the X."

Looks a little on the nose.
posted by ocschwar at 4:28 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

The running gag is now that all video clips attached to whatever-Tweets-will-be-going-forward will be known as xvideos.

(Do not go to xvideos.com unless you are aware of what NSFW content is hosted there, young'uns.)
posted by delfin at 4:29 PM on July 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

didn't american billionaires used to apologise for what they'd done by buying concert halls and libraries and making them free
posted by ver at 4:29 PM on July 23, 2023 [93 favorites]

Elon Musk Wants to Relive His Start-Up Days. He’s Repeating the Same Mistakes. by Paris Marx from February of this year is uncomfortably prescient through peering into the past. Excerpt:

Turning Twitter Into X.com

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has said a lot about his plans for the platform, even if they aren’t always very coherent. The centerpiece of his tenure so far has been the move to turn verification and blue checks into a paid service, resulting in a string of impersonations and concerns among advertisers. But there’s a bigger strategy attached to the shift to paid verification.

In a Q&A on Twitter Spaces in early November, Musk outlined a longer term plan for Twitter. He saw paid verification as a way to reduce bot and scam accounts because they would not only need to pay, but would need a unique credit card. On top of that, “creators” would be able to make money on the service — something Musk reiterated recently, though with no details — and that would be a way to begin promoting Twitter as a payments service because you could keep that money within Twitter and transfer it to others. Musk said Twitter may even offer $10 incentives for people to sign up for its payments service, then it could add additional financial services like debit cards and money market accounts. And that would be part of a “superapp” with many different services on top of social media and payments.

If that sounds ambitious, it is; it’s also the pitch for X.com. Here are some of the similarities:

• After the merger of Confinity and X.com, David Sacks became the head of the product group, working closely with Elon Musk. • When Musk took over Twitter, Sacks was among the small group of advisers he brought in to reshape it.
• One of the combined team’s actions was to create a “verified” tier for PayPal users that linked their bank accounts to prove they were trustworthy, similar to Twitter’s paid verification.
• Both Confinity and X.com offered a signup bonus of $5 to $20 to attract new users.
• X.com offered a suite of financial services, and after the merger, tried to use the popularity of PayPal to direct its users to sign up for X.com’s financial products. (It didn’t work very well.)

Musk is trying to rerun the playbook for his old finance company by grafting it onto a completely unrelated business. Not to mention that the industry today is very different than in the late 1990s. PayPal and Square are dominant players, there are plenty of other money-transfer apps and online banks, and traditional banks have continually improved their online services. Why would anyone use Twitter — not traditionally the most reliable company — when they can just keep using what works? It’s unlikely, but that doesn’t mean a billionaire who surrounds himself with yes men will believe otherwise.

The whole article is well worth reading.
posted by Kattullus at 4:32 PM on July 23, 2023 [40 favorites]

As he's also getting rid of the bird logo, someone suggested "a black X in a white circle on a red background" might be an appropriate replacement.

Pretty sure plenty of versions like this (not my work) will be showing up soon.
posted by hangashore at 4:33 PM on July 23, 2023

If GasX prevents toots…
posted by doubtfulpalace at 4:37 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Elon, stop trying to make X happen.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:40 PM on July 23, 2023 [15 favorites]

I am sooooo dreadfully tired of potato headed billionaires.
posted by spilon at 4:42 PM on July 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Can we pronounce it “kiss”? And instead of tweets we could have smooches or something.

Tweets were bad enough. I really don't want constant smooches from Elon Musk.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:47 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

That redirect is failing now
posted by awfurby at 4:52 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Out: Twitter Bots
In: Uncanny X Men
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:52 PM on July 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

X marks the pox?
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 4:57 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

That redirect is failing now
Seems to be changing - I got an error, then tried again and it worked, now I see a page saying the domain is parked at GoDaddy. Seems typical.
posted by dg at 5:28 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just got redirected to https://.twitter.com/ - Yes with the . before the Twitter that causes the error. He’s literally doing this himself, isn’t he?
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:33 PM on July 23, 2023 [13 favorites]

Also good thing it’s now parked for free at GoDaddy.com. That extra $3.95 a month for parking could have been the straw on Twitter’s financial back.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:35 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

Cere-BRO

Hopefully, Elmo loses all his capital when his companies all fold and the fraud lawsuits catch up with him. Guy's insufferable.
posted by Chuffy at 5:35 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

i guess he didn't wait for the DNS change to propagate before announcing it?
posted by awfurby at 5:35 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

As he's also getting rid of the bird logo, someone suggested "a black X in a white circle on a red background" might be an appropriate replacement.

In any other timeline, that would be sharp satire. In this timeline, though, it’s more akin to clairvoyance.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:45 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

twitter X whatever we have moved on
posted by robbyrobs at 6:05 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

'X increments' — Xcrements for short, of course —

Jamjam wins today.
posted by Melismata at 6:07 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Maybe now Wayland will see wider adoption.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:12 PM on July 23, 2023 [21 favorites]

Redirects to .twitter.com (with a . at the beginning) for me.
posted by signal at 6:19 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I kinda love this. It'll made it easier for people to cut ties with whatever nostalgic memory of Twitter they have. It'll make it harder to link ancillary services or advertising to the company's brand name. And thanks to porn and a certain game console, there are already competing online interests for "X" in terms of public name recognition. Plus, the logo should obviously be a big ol'🙅‍♀️.
posted by xigxag at 6:22 PM on July 23, 2023 [19 favorites]

May when 'X' doesn't work out they'll try 'Pal.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:24 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s kind of weird, watching a billionaire self-sabotage so consistently and over such a long time.

A year or two ago, we all could have wondered in vain, “What does $44 billion worth of buyer’s regret look like?” but had no way to find an answer.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:34 PM on July 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

Hey, giving my request another shot. Anybody got an invite to BlueSky?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:57 PM on July 23, 2023

in the future musk will be known as the Xbillionaire
posted by logicpunk at 7:01 PM on July 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

This is one of those Christmas in July things? Did he take a look at twitter last week and decide...

...it's beginning to look a lot like X, Musk.

posted by Catblack at 7:04 PM on July 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

Assuming he's actually ponied up the cash for x.com or whatever, I assume we can look forward to existing links ceasing to work unless the poster pays for some premium feature to keep them active. ~1.5 decades of historic record broken to try to squeeze $8/month out of a dwindling user base.
posted by Candleman at 7:05 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Reminder: mefi.social
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:06 PM on July 23, 2023 [35 favorites]

Assuming he's actually ponied up the cash for x.com or whatever,

Pretty sure he kept the domain when he sold his 1999 x.com start up to PayPal
posted by pwnguin at 7:07 PM on July 23, 2023

it remains literally impossible to discern the difference between Musk's choices as owner of Twitter and what someone deliberately trying to tank the company might do
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:10 PM on July 23, 2023 [25 favorites]

He's probably shorted Twitter stock. Might as well try to claw some of it back.
posted by Windopaene at 7:13 PM on July 23, 2023

If he's really going to commit to this, he needs to change his name to Elon Musx.
posted by Catblack at 7:13 PM on July 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

Question: how many aborted space launches would you need to burn $54 billion in hundred dollar bills?
posted by thecaddy at 7:23 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Remember when that one band burned all that money as a stunt?
posted by hippybear at 7:26 PM on July 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

KLF Uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh
posted by awfurby at 7:32 PM on July 23, 2023 [16 favorites]

Shorted twitter stock where? He bought it so he could take it private, it's not publically traded anymore. Which rando billionaire would be stupid enough to take him up on a private bet that twitter is going to go bankrupt?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:36 PM on July 23, 2023 [13 favorites]

Every day, Elon continues to live out the wint corncob tweet. Perhaps there is no one in history who has corncobbed this hard. And the amazing thing is that he appears to be doing this entirely to himself. No one made him do any of these things. No one forced him to make any of his many bad decisions. This is purely self-inflicted. It's as if Sideshow Bob bought Acme Rake Co. just to make he never ran out of rakes to step on.
posted by mhum at 7:42 PM on July 23, 2023 [18 favorites]

Remember when that one band burned all that money as a stunt?

Yeah, IMO the KLF burnt their million quid in what seemed to be an attempt at ego death and to end something that grew outside of their control, while whatever Musk is doing seems to be literally the exact opposite.

(In a 2017 forum, over 20 years after the quid-burning, the former KLF invited a series of historians and journalists to a panel discussion in which those invited panelists provided their own theories about the burning, to be voted on the audience as a whole to settle the motivations for the matter. Annebella Pollen, one of the panelists, was top-voted, having opined that "Rather than being a prank or stunt for public notoriety, the burning was a purging of embarrassment about success in the pop industry and the annihilation of the band’s personal history." I agree that sounds about right.)
posted by eschatfische at 7:45 PM on July 23, 2023 [15 favorites]

Say this for Musk: he has done more to dispel the notion that billionaires are geniuses than anyone alive.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:59 PM on July 23, 2023 [57 favorites]

OK, I thought it was still publicly traded and he was just majority holder. My bad.

No fucking idea of what he is doing other than showing his true self...
posted by Windopaene at 8:00 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I assume we'll now call a tweet a 'twex'?
Because an 'Xweet' is stupid...
posted by drinkmaildave at 8:09 PM on July 23, 2023

I think we should call it "That thing that used to be called a tweet but then Musk ruined it because he has the brain of a 14-year-old wannabe edgelord".
Catchy, really rolls off the tongue.
posted by signal at 8:15 PM on July 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

I think we should all just add x.com to our adblockers and go back to "tweet" only meaning "a short, high-pitched noise made by a bird".
posted by egypturnash at 8:20 PM on July 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

There was some profile from a few years ago, back when he was still with Grimes, where she mentioned enthusiastically how they would lie in bed together talking about thrilling things nobody else talked about, like what if we were all a simulation, what if the entire universe wasn't real?

That was when I realized this guy was still mentally stuck in his college years.
posted by trig at 8:25 PM on July 23, 2023 [30 favorites]

Still carrying a bit of credence for the theory that the Saudis funded Elon's purchase of Twitter to get him to ruin it

My theory all along. Manipulated his narcissism. See also Putin and the Tangerine Traitor.
posted by NorthernLite at 8:38 PM on July 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

He named his kids X AE A-XII Musk and Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
posted by NotLost at 8:58 PM on July 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

X... ombo.com? The only limit... is yourself.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:12 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

although, if he wants it to be "x", then shouldn't he have started hosting the app at x.com and redirected twitter.com there?
posted by awfurby at 9:24 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Which rando billionaire would be stupid enough to take him up on a private bet that twitter is going to go bankrupt?

MBS has entered the chat
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:38 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

In Portuguese the letter X is pronounced "sheesh."
...
This is why the "X-burger" is a normal thing on menus in Brazil.

X-Kebab will have its day on the grill!
posted by Sparx at 10:11 PM on July 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

So naturally, this news has caused X Japan (the band) to trend on Japanese twitter.

Also, everyone forgets that Google X or Google X Lab is now just X.
posted by LostInUbe at 10:19 PM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sometimes when everyone says you are crazy, you are.
posted by interogative mood at 10:44 PM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

So now Musk has X, Putin has Z. Did I miss Kim Jong Un calling dibs on Y or something?
posted by MrVisible at 10:45 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer 'extortion'. The 'X' makes it sound cool." — Bender Bending Rodriguez
posted by Marticus at 10:51 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

$8chan is still an option as a more appropriate name.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:54 PM on July 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

I would also love an invite to BlueSky if anyone has one spare. I've tried Mastodon but it turns out my social media habits are more about reacting than posting.
posted by Merus at 11:01 PM on July 23, 2023

I am pleased that the man is now broadly recognized as being quite stupid.
posted by ryanrs at 11:09 PM on July 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

Pretty sure he kept the domain when he sold his 1999 x.com start up to PayPal

He bought the domain back from PayPal in 2017 for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the 8 figure range. So sock drawer money for him.

I assume we'll now call a tweet a 'twex'?

Call 'em "breakup letters," isn't that what you usually write to your x?
posted by xigxag at 11:22 PM on July 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

I really don't want constant smooches from Elon Musk.

Well, if you reject him, he might offer you a horse.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:48 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just got redirected to https://.twitter.com/ - Yes with the . before the Twitter that causes the error. He’s literally doing this himself, isn’t he?

An incompetent (failed) migration of millions of users to the new domain will be the final blow to this whole drug-fueled rage acquisition.

Competent people will tell him: sure we can do this! Just give our team this, that, and so on.
Incompetent people will tell him: sure it's just a domain name!

He's only got the second group now. Twitter website on mobile hasn't worked for months now.

This is fun to watch.
posted by UN at 12:19 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thinking about the idea (tasty but unlikely) that he bought it/ was manipulated into buying it/ was provoked/ convinced etcetcetc - in order to destroy it with the goal of stifling free speech, which he is, intentionally or not, in the process of doing. What is stepping in to take its place and specifically for the public-serving stuff the site stumbled into? For a Luddite-inclined person such as myself the thing Twitter had was the 'brand recognition.' If nothing else I knew to go there to find current information. When that goes away what will supplant it? There is no thing waiting in the wings - think if McDonalds went away tomorrow you would look for BurgerKing. If there was no more X you would go to Y but with Twitter there is no singular site that provided the same service. It makes the idea that some rich folks wanted it to go away all the more plausible - not smart because a Twitter-substitute could arise any moment, but plausible.
...and to think with that money he could have - (fill in the sad, sad blank). Christ, what an asshole.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:49 AM on July 24, 2023

> For a Luddite-inclined person such as myself the thing Twitter had was the 'brand recognition.'

For the people I know who use it professionally, what it has is network effects. As a communication protocol, the most important feature is the people you want to communicate with. This is also why even people who hate it have not been able to switch to a different service; they're stuck in a catch 22. It's a tough collective action problem.

I don't think brand recognition will affect that, because all the people using it will still be using it. A failed migration that denies service for an extended period of time to everyone all at once might work, though.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 2:47 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that he showed rare restraint in not naming it xXx420BLAZEITxXx.com.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:01 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

So, this app, I can find American History on it, yes? American History... X?
posted by prismatic7 at 3:13 AM on July 24, 2023

So Yoshiki of X Japan is aware of what is going on.

"I think it's already trademarked."
posted by LostInUbe at 3:15 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh heck, the new logo’s been rolled out. It’s actually the thing that I’ve seen bandied about, which I thought was a joke because it’s so half-assed.
posted by Kattullus at 3:25 AM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I’m honestly a bit surprised at my own surprise that they rolled out a half-assed logo, but I guess I’m still operating on the assumption that Musk whole-asses or no-asses things, when really his whole career makes perfect sense if you assume he’s half-assed his way through life.
posted by Kattullus at 3:59 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Twitter website on mobile hasn't worked for months now.


It's been working for me, though with a hand full of pop overs imploring me to join twitter or sign in to twitter on every page load. The transition has eliminated all that cruft except for a top banner.
posted by Mitheral at 4:07 AM on July 24, 2023

Oh heck, the new logo’s been rolled out. It’s actually the thing that I’ve seen bandied about, which I thought was a joke because it’s so half-assed.

It's funny because I can't really see him as an X user, but the logo definitely has the old low-res 1980s aesthetic.
posted by trig at 4:24 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is just so amazingly dumb. Dumber than buying a company and loading it with unserviceable debt. Dumber than setting the price per share at a weed joke. Dumber than removing most of the staff and suing the lawyers. Honestly, I’m so intrigued to find out how business schools deal with this in the future, as this seems like historically bad decision making.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:38 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

The new logo is Unicode Character MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X U+1D54F   𝕏

I think they will struggle to get copyright or trademark rights for something that is already heavily in use. Which is probably why he has been asking his followers to come up with a similar but different design for him.
posted by Lanark at 4:47 AM on July 24, 2023 [18 favorites]

So instead of the bluebird the icon will be Drinky Crow?
posted by rochrobbb at 4:50 AM on July 24, 2023 [13 favorites]

It makes sense. All he wants is out of Twitter is an echo chamber where people fawn over him and so the more inane he makes it the happier he is, because only fans will stick around. He likes being called an asshole because he knows the person insulting him is outgroup; it's important to him that people hate him so he can laugh at them, just as it is important that people fawn on him so he can soak in their love juices. Nothing else matters to him other than that some people love him no matter how boneheaded and inept he is, and some people don't love him so he can laugh at them.

Whatever.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:09 AM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

I enjoy being cringe but the bar is just getting too damn high.
posted by srboisvert at 5:12 AM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's been working for me, though with a hand full of pop overs imploring me to join twitter or sign in to twitter on every page load.

Barely working here on a couple of devices when I log in with an account. The page is about two meters wider than the screen, so basically unusable/unreadable. Sometimes, after waiting about 2-3 minutes, their JavaScript page layouting script finally fires (or whatever it is going on) and things pop back into place.
posted by UN at 5:25 AM on July 24, 2023

People are comparing Elon Musk's rebranding of Twitter to X with a cringe pitch from Kendall Roy in 'Succession'

I guess X x X = C (The Hundred...)
posted by chavenet at 5:27 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"
posted by rozcakj at 5:29 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it's gone from, "Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" to throwing the chairs overboard and saying, "There, see? We're lighter, more efficient, faster, better! The best!"

Kinda has one waiting to hear him spouting Trump-ish inanities.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:52 AM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

tweets are now known as Xhits.
posted by mattgriffin at 6:04 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just logged into Twitter on my desktop, and it still has the little blue bird in the top left corner.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:05 AM on July 24, 2023

It was there in the corner for a second then the screen refreshed and it was gone and hasn't come back.
posted by LostInUbe at 6:09 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorite bit from last night's changeover debacle is this Tweet from a DNS engineer to former half-time Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who noticed the GoDaddy redirect failure.

Sorry about that, DNS can be a bitch!

It manages to be simultaneously funny and pathetic. Funny, because everyone who's worked on domain names has screwed up a DNS changeover at least once in our lives. It's simple enough but if you do it wrong there's no way to recover until caches expire. And pathetic, because a multi-billion dollar company with hundreds tens of millions of users should have better ops and engineering than what we saw last night.

Reminded of DeSantis' campaign launch on Twitter, another catastrophic technical failure. That was just two months ago.
posted by Nelson at 6:09 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

I don't think Musk is very interested in owning a social network but he loves the idea of having lots of customers. Buying Twitter gave him lots of users, which is not the same thing, but also got him an app installed on hundreds of millions of phones.

The only play that makes sense now (and possibly the idea from the start) is to neglect the social aspects while adding direct messaging, video conferencing, contact management, payments, and shop fronts - turning X into an everything app.

With the large install base and user count, Musk has a head start but trying to force your user base to align with your corporate goals seldom works well.
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:13 AM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also there's no actual X.com everything product. None of it exists.
posted by Nelson at 6:14 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

"Manson submitted a statement to the court explaining that the carving symbolized that he had been ‘Xed out of society'".
posted by Nelson at 6:16 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

> Also there's no actual X.com everything product. None of it exists.

True. I expect Musk is trying to build/acquire products right now. I also suspect he neither has the staff nor the money to do so.

The situation is very frustrating. Twitter was (more or less by silicon valley standards) breaking even and could have continued indefinitely. Now it is worthless to me.
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:18 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

It was there in the corner for a second then the screen refreshed and it was gone and hasn't come back.

For me the bird was there through several refreshes a few minutes ago, but re-logging on just now, I've got the ugly X logo.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on July 24, 2023

Checking the site, I see the ugly X logo everywhere, and it says "Twitter is now X," but everything is still called Twitter--all the buttons and site verbiage, etc. This is hysterically unbelievable.

(In other news, Mastodon is having some problems as it grows: study finds Mastodon rife with CSAM.)
posted by LooseFilter at 6:30 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yep. Stuck with the X now. It even appears as you reload the page.

So so stupid.

Someone "designed" the X (bolded an unused font) and gave it to Elon for free.
posted by LostInUbe at 6:36 AM on July 24, 2023

Elon is about to learn how annoying it actually is when people insist on continuing to use your deadname.
posted by mediareport at 6:58 AM on July 24, 2023 [53 favorites]

Surely, after watching his rockets burn up his launchpad, his self-driving cars ignore hazards, his meme-based impulse purchase turn into a $44B boondoggle and his name become synonymous with pointlessly pissing money down a toilet, the world will flock to his doorstep and make his new vision into the center of commerce, discourse and independent thought.

...Just tell me that he's not designing any deep-sea submarines next.
posted by delfin at 6:59 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

KLF Uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh

Doo doo. Doo doo.
Got the doo doo business plan.

Musk's unjustified, and he's vacant
he's a curse upon the land

(stock's rolling from the top, y'all)

Musk's unjustified, and he's vacant
Not a thing he understands
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:03 AM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Here's a tweet from Sawyer Merritt, the guy who is most central to giving the new logo to Musk. When questioned about whether he had the right to the design IP he replied "Ya I’m not a lawyer so idk".

And here's a megatweet from the guy who actually did the logo design work.

We needed an edgy typeface that could be used in Callin and Twitter as text, as well as a large distinctive logo. I chose the Unicode character 𝕏 (U+1D54F) for use in the display name of the show. Based on that character, I made a slightly more refined and pronounced graphic logo for use as the profile photo.

He's careful not to mention the name of the font he used / "was inspired by" or whether he had a license to it.

In the big picture of all the contracts and laws Musk has broken one dodgy logo is not a big deal. But it's just so emblematic of the half-assed way they're doing everything. My guess is Musk literally decided at midnight yesterday "let's change it now!", just like he tweeted. And that explains the lack of a logo, or a brand transition plan, or competent execution of even a simple web redirect.

Imagine if Musk were launching spaceships or programming robot cars this way.
posted by Nelson at 7:07 AM on July 24, 2023 [17 favorites]

oh ffs, it's almost the X11 logo

go ahead, switch the ui to Motif next

he will never switch the UI to Motif because that would indicate an actual sense of humor instead of a tinny, hollow laugh where your heart should be
posted by phooky at 7:10 AM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

Also, who decides they want to be the literal "Brand X?"

2020 Brand X marketing challenge. (Sponsored by Sephora.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:16 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

If Musk really wanted to create an "everything app" he could have just spent that $4bn on Zombo.com.

THE UNATTAINABLE IS UNKNOWN AT ZOMBO COM
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:20 AM on July 24, 2023 [14 favorites]

If you change the color to green its a pretty close match to the Microsoft Excel 97 logo.
posted by Lanark at 7:24 AM on July 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

Dear Mr. Musk,

Attached is a screenshot of your recent UI changes. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is changing your logos to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,
CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP.
posted by delfin at 7:26 AM on July 24, 2023 [25 favorites]

X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

In other words, there is no plan.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:34 AM on July 24, 2023 [12 favorites]

The only play that makes sense now (and possibly the idea from the start) is to neglect the social aspects while adding direct messaging, video conferencing, contact management, payments, and shop fronts - turning X into an everything app.

The weird thing is that we all already have an everything app that does all those things, and its our phones.
posted by dng at 7:38 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

The plan is 'X gon' give it to ya.'

(Which is weird, because I am pretty confident that Elon Musk has seen this.)
posted by box at 7:39 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Given that we're talking about Twitter, surely you mean this.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:42 AM on July 24, 2023

Elon Musk is only 52 years old. Factoring in billionaire life expectancy, we've could have more than 40 more years of this guy's bullshit to endure.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:43 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

I'm trying to imagine an anthill where a handful of the colony's members are permitted to hog most of the resources and occupy the prime quarter section of the nest, leaving the other ants crowded into the remaining areas. These privileged ants proceed to direct all manner of nonsense: "build a column at the top of the mound so I can live high above the rest of you as befits my status.. I don't care if that's not how we build, don't tell me it's risky, etc"

on the one hand humans achieve much to admire, on the other hand we create/allow Musks. it'll be interesting to see what wins out this century.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:47 AM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I hope their HQ gets destroyed by sectoids.
posted by charred husk at 7:49 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Everyday John Ruskin’s 1860 categorization of Musk-type wealth (and Bezos’s and Zuckerberg’s, and the guy who bought the Supreme Court’s and the guy who killed Gawker’s) as ‘illth’ “causing various devastation and trouble around them” seems more and more apt.

I wish Musk would refocus on getting himself to Mars.
posted by notyou at 7:49 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

He can't even get twitter to run properly under load, (happens when you fire all your engineers), but they are going to be able to implement this all-encompassing stuff?

Good luck with that.
posted by Windopaene at 7:50 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's hilarious how badly done this was: just switch one svg for another and redirect the new domain to the old one (instead of the other way around), never mind about the color palette or all the places the word "twitter" is still prominent (like the site's title tag) and call it a good, productive Sunday night?
If I did this with any of my clients (who have slightly less exposure than twitter), they would no longer be my clients.
posted by signal at 7:54 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

> In other words, there is no plan.

The AI assured Musk there was a plan. If only he could figure out the prompt to get the AI to reveal it...
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:02 AM on July 24, 2023

The Twitter bird actually has a name and it is Larry. Seriously.
posted by zerobyproxy at 8:05 AM on July 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

I guess it's always April Fools' Day somewhere!
posted by snofoam at 8:10 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

If Musk really wanted to create an "everything app" he could have just spent that $4bn on Zombo.com.

The CEO's announcements would sound absolutely pitch perfect coming out of Zombo Com. "Zombo Com is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. This is Zombo Com. Powered by AI, Zombo Com will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine. Welcome to Zombo Com. This is Zombo Com. Anything is possible at Zombo Com."
posted by mhoye at 8:24 AM on July 24, 2023 [13 favorites]

rich people are crazy eccentric domain squatters
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:26 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

In my LinkedIn feed today was some yahoo going on about how everybody is wrong about Musk, how he's playing chess when everybody else is stuck on checkers, how every company he has ever even set his eyes upon has been sold for big bucks, and how other tech giants sing Musk's praises. I swear, the man could blow up North America and people would still be proclaiming that he's a genius with an intentional plan. And given the numbers of those people, I'm sure they'll all continue to be very happy Musk customers, making him oodles of money. I just don't get it.
posted by sardonyx at 8:27 AM on July 24, 2023

They could change the Tweet button to Xmit but that would imply the site is trans.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:27 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

My father died thinking Elon was some kind of Tom Swift genius. But he was also a staunch Republican, wanted to kill the person who wrecked his car, and was perpetually rage-addled by lead poisoning. (We weren't close.) There are people out there with authoritarian brain dysfunction who will gravitate towards big talkers with solutions for everything. Folks my dad's dad, who lived in Tulsa, would have said were "all hat and no cattle." The theme music for this decade is Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Two Tribes"
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:33 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

I'm delighted at the synchrony of "you will also do payments now on x.com, a thing nobody asked for and which has nothing to do with twitter's core capabilities" being the same day as the launch of FedNow. FedNow doesn't solve every payment problem, but in a world where paypal, venmo, cashapp, and zelle already exist, it really does complete the picture and provide a solid path for things like rent payments, intra-business invoices, and paychecks to move much faster. There is just no longer a meaningful gap for even a hypothetically exceptionally well-built x.com payment platform to exploit.
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:36 AM on July 24, 2023 [19 favorites]

Elon Musk is only 52 years old. Factoring in billionaire life expectancy, we've could have more than 40 more years of this guy's bullshit to endure.

Elon's history of erratic decision making gives one hope.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:40 AM on July 24, 2023 [14 favorites]

I only he'd done this a year ago, the 'future state' text could have mentioned NFTs and decentralization instead of AI.
posted by signal at 8:40 AM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Twitter bird actually has a name and it is Larry. Seriously.

You're killing me Larry
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:41 AM on July 24, 2023

Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

AI means 'Asshole Idiot' in this context doesn't it?
posted by mazola at 9:09 AM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

AIX isn't available.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:13 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't leave Twitter. Twitter left me. :(
posted by mazola at 9:16 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

I think there's an entire generation that lays prior claim to X and we need to stand up and make it clear we will not allow this.
posted by hippybear at 9:29 AM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

Also, wow.

Like an ACTUAL rebranding campaign means you put in the work so when things change over, people feel like they're someplace new. Maybe familiar but definitely new in look and feel at least.

Just swapping out one graphic file that gets used on your site over and over is not how this is done in the real world.
posted by hippybear at 9:33 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

After a year of Musk mangling things, it looks new alright. Not in a good way, but new for sure. Like interior decorating with a flame thrower.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:36 AM on July 24, 2023

> after watching his rockets burn up his launchpad, his self-driving cars ignore hazards, his meme-based impulse purchase turn into a $44B boondoggle and his name become synonymous with pointlessly pissing money down a toilet,

the standard plea for better-focused elon musk hate: everything the man touches turns to shit, but right now at least it seems like the rocket biz is safely insulated from his glass onionhole behaviour. this is either because gwynne shotwell's team of highly trained key-janglers have successfully kept musk distracted or because of the united states department of defense is almost but not quite a monopsony-tier customer and doesn't like to put up with any bullshit that's not their own personal bullshit.

but anyway: starship blowing up on the launchpad (and also digging a big ol' hole in the launchpad itself) isn't an indication that spacex has been infected by musk's reverse midas touch, since the strategy of "build a bunch of cheaper rockets with the expectation that they'll blow up, in order to figure out exactly how they blow up" is in fact a totally sound strategy for launch system development, and has historically outcompeted "build one expensive rocket and make damned sure it doesn't blow up" strategy that nasa is using.

that, said, though: musk delenda est. musk delenda est like a motherfuck.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:36 AM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

Any of you aspiring phishers out there want to buy xn--vm8a.com? It's only $91,000,000.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:44 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Imagine if Musk were launching spaceships or programming robot cars this way.

I guarantee you there are people at US government agencies imagining this exact thing right now and wondering how they can mitigate potential disaster.
posted by srboisvert at 9:46 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm a little uncomfortable ascribing medical diagnoses to shitty behaviour without a really good reason to do so.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:58 AM on July 24, 2023 [19 favorites]

:point_up:
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:59 AM on July 24, 2023

Can someone explain to me what’s going on with the xn--vm8a domain? How does that relate to x.com?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:17 AM on July 24, 2023

ICANN now allows you to use Unicode in domain names. xn--vm8a will translate to ꓫ.com in most browsers and email clients.

TLDR you could potentially phish a very large number of people with this domain if X.com actually takes off. Because ꓫ.com is not the same as X.com and in either case most people won't even bother to check if it actually matches 𝕏.com!
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:22 AM on July 24, 2023 [16 favorites]

so, when people type out domains it's usually in the rather limited ascii character set: a-z, 0-9.

however, it's possible to have other scripts used for domain names--for instance, you could use cyrillic in your domain name, or hangul, or hiragana, or other characters in unicode--but for it to work with the existing legacy systems, a translation has to take place, and it's known as "punycode"

xn--vm8a, without looking into it, might be the ascii-translated version of the unicode double-stroke x?

you can read more about it here and play around with it here
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:24 AM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

"build a bunch of cheaper rockets with the expectation that they'll blow up, in order to figure out exactly how they blow up" is in fact a totally sound strategy for launch system development, and has historically outcompeted "build one expensive rocket and make damned sure it doesn't blow up" strategy that nasa is using.

The point about the launch pad that everyone defending SpaceX's move-fast-and-break-things style seems to miss is....it's not like no one's ever launched a rocket before. We know from experience that you've got to do something with all that fiery exhaust that's aimed right at the launch pad. They didn't need to learn anything from destroying a pad, blowing a crater in the ground, and spewing chunks of concrete for miles in every direction because everyone already knows that's what happens when the thrust from a rocket collides with the ground.

Blowing up full-scale models of rockets to see why they blow up may be sound, but only fools need to blow up the pad before they decide to do what NASA's done for decades. It's not-invented-here syndrome at best and criminal negligence at worst.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:24 AM on July 24, 2023 [29 favorites]

oh, even more amusing. it's just "X".
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:25 AM on July 24, 2023

I believe they will not be allowed to launch from that location again given the amount of environmental damage and physical danger they did to the place. The debris field from the exploded rocket extended for miles across other people's land.
posted by hippybear at 10:28 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tesla cars are full of the same arrogant, dumb, let's-disregard-decades-of-lessons-learned-in-automotive-design-because-we're-special. Anyone else remember the time Musk insisted on replacing the steering wheel with a yoke?

SpaceX may be better at keeping Musk at bay, but they're still his company. No amount of actual innovation can ever make up for that.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:33 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Funny, because everyone who's worked on domain names has screwed up a DNS changeover at least once in our lives. It's simple enough but if you do it wrong there's no way to recover until caches expire.

This is why it's always a good idea to set nice low TTLs well in advance of making any major changes. Guessing it was a last-minute instruction from Musk, presumably with his go-daddy account details in order to move the domain.

x.com was also bringing up errors via https (ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH) during the changeover period as well.
posted by Buntix at 10:39 AM on July 24, 2023

An HTTP redirect has to be the wrongest way to do that. Well... maybe a javascript redirect would be stupider, but not by a very wide margin.

Why use a redirect at all? Why did they not just add x.com to their own nameservers? Why did it end up PARKED at Go Daddy!? Did they just add the redirect and then announce it w/ out upgrading their free-teir Go Daddy account? That's what they did, isn't it?

The amount of foolishness that you have to accumulate to even attempt to make a mistake like this...
posted by Horkus at 10:55 AM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Wait, if he's been trying to create a do-everything thingamabob called X since the PayPal days does that mean SpaceX was named that to eventually slot into it?
posted by ckape at 11:01 AM on July 24, 2023

x.com was also bringing up errors via https

X don't give it to ya
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:06 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Graphic design is my passion.
posted by misterpatrick at 11:16 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wonder how low the next estimated value of Twitter X Holdings will be - sub $10 billion? In June, it was estimated at only $15 billion. Since then, Threads has been rolled out with much buzz, Musk has hired a new CEO / scapegoat who has done little to stop the insanity, and Musk is getting rid of the entire Twitter brand (poorly).
posted by meowzilla at 11:25 AM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is so dumb I can't even believe this is real. When I first saw this pop up in my news feed I thought an Onion article slipped in there.
posted by loquacious at 11:26 AM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. Let's avoid speculating about other people's mental health. Ableism is against our content policy.
posted by loup (staff) at 11:44 AM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

NYTimes: From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand. Not much new information but useful contextualization. Well there is this one dumb bit

Inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, X logos were projected in the cafeteria, while conference rooms were renamed to words with X in them, including “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” according to photos seen by The New York Times.

I'm hoping some hostage employee whose weekend was ruined by Musk's latest snap decision leaks all the messy details to Platformer.
posted by Nelson at 11:51 AM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Wait, if he's been trying to create a do-everything thingamabob called X since the PayPal days does that mean SpaceX was named that to eventually slot into it?

Teslax has a nice ring to it.
posted by slogger at 12:03 PM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Elon's history of erratic decision making gives one hope.

I'll tactfully not say what came to mind when I saw that.

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that he showed rare restraint in not naming it xXx420BLAZEITxXx.com.

That's the name of his next kid.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:05 PM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

XRichestMan once this move catches up with him.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:06 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's really cute that he thinks anyone would trust using Twitter as a payment app. Even before the name change, it isn't the kind of company you'd really trust with financial information, let alone letting it be the go-between in such exchanges.
posted by hippybear at 12:08 PM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

MetaFilter's Own™ jscalzi made the WaPo!

“I’ve been reluctant to leave Twitter entirely, but I have to tell you I won’t have a problem leaving X,” tweeted Hugo Award-winning science fiction author John Scalzi, a power user who has tweeted more than 170,000 times.
posted by slogger at 12:09 PM on July 24, 2023 [39 favorites]

It's really cute that he thinks anyone would trust using Twitter as a payment app.

I'm surprised Jack Dorsey didn't try to embed Square somehow when he was CEO of both, but maybe that would have raised FTC issues since Twitter was a public company then.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:17 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I can only imagine he thinks becoming a payment app would somehow keep his company from losing money hand over fist. Which is sort of a Bankman-Fried kind of attitude, really.
posted by hippybear at 12:21 PM on July 24, 2023

One can only hope he sees a similar level of success.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:35 PM on July 24, 2023

If this is indeed a deliberate act of destruction, then the wealthy and powerful people who own Twitter wanted to destroy it because it was becoming too effective a medium with which people could organize. People were using it to start promoting unions as a concept and a movement, as exemplified by the fact that we now had actual superstar-level Twitterers who were very vocal organizers. If that was a bit too much of a threat, and certain wealthy and powerful interests decided to get Musk to kill it off, then that would mean...

Jorts the cat killed Twitter.
posted by MrVisible at 1:08 PM on July 24, 2023 [13 favorites]

It is worth remembering that Tesla is currently facing a class action lawsuit over the culture of sexual harassment enabled in part by the "S3XY" branding there.

When you think this cannot get dumber, Musk breaks out the pickaxes and blasting caps.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:09 PM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Jorts the cat killed Twitter.

Given that the Elon buyout was funded by Saudis, and the Arab Spring was largely organized on twitter, I'm pretty sure it's well beyond Jorts' influence that is bringing X down.
posted by hippybear at 1:15 PM on July 24, 2023

I guess you're suggesting the Saudis or someone "bought" twitter and gave it to the toddler to play with, knowing he'd eventually break it? I dunno. I think the toddler just bought it for his own amusement. Remember he had to be forced, at judge-point, to actually close the deal. Everything before that was Elon gooning and everything since has been Elon gooning, and there's no need for additional actors to explain what's happened and is happening.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:17 PM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Elon didn't have the liquidity to buy the company. He sought outside funding. There are photos of him at the World Cup flanked by Saudis with a very sour expression on his face. These photos coincide with the end of his time of truly running free rein on twitter and him posting a poll about him stepping down. I don't know what else to say about those things other than they were widely commented upon at the time.
posted by hippybear at 1:21 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Were they really so scared of liberals tweeting they killed Twitter?

Are we really that frightening?
posted by Savannah at 1:29 PM on July 24, 2023

Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down.
posted by Nelson at 1:38 PM on July 24, 2023 [36 favorites]

It's the height of irony that we are here predicting the death of Twitter whilst posting news about it from people using twitter. Does this waynesutton have like a mastodon account or something to link to instead? I refuse to click on links going to twitter anymore.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:44 PM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Tweets went from 140 to 280 characters, and then to lengthy screeds for those who paid up. You didn't think that characters are free to produce, did you? The rebranding saves a massive six characters per message AND saves money by reducing the number of costlier curved lines that need stockpiling each day.
posted by delfin at 1:47 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Teslax has a nice ring to it

As in "smooth move, Teslax"?
posted by flabdablet at 1:48 PM on July 24, 2023 [15 favorites]

Are we really that frightening?

From the perspective of someone who unironically says "woke mind virus", everything is frightening.

Elon didn't have the liquidity to buy the company. He sought outside funding. There are photos of him at the World Cup flanked by Saudis with a very sour expression on his face.

The Saudis just rolled over what they already had in it, so they weren't outside funding, per se, and they weren't needed. They had $1.2B off the top of my head. Elon could cover their entire share by selling 1% of his TSLA stock at current market rate. Yes, it's more complicated than that, but it's not like the Saudis extracted some amazing concession from him by dangling $1B in funding.

And they didn't need to. They're ideologically aligned, and any economic relationships they have are probably secondary (other than the obvious economic alignment that all members of the billionaire class have).
posted by Room 101 at 1:50 PM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

Anytime he does something hasty and buck-nutty, look for what he's trying to bury in the news. In today's case it's Tesla's failure to respond to NHTSA about their cars that just can't stop murdering people. The half-assed name change successfully focused media attention on Twitter again and not his death machines. This probably would have happened anyway but it definitely moved the time table up.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/07/tesla-misses-deadline-to-inform-nhtsa-about-autopilot-problems/
posted by mikesch at 1:58 PM on July 24, 2023 [20 favorites]

And it looks like the "X" trademark for online services is owned...by Facebook.

Reality is written by hacks.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:14 PM on July 24, 2023 [23 favorites]

I think Elon is a time traveler who got off at the wrong stop.

"Go back and kill Hitler, Elon, that's what we said! HITLER!"
posted by chavenet at 2:18 PM on July 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

"Shots from the failed sign change at twitter today. Building management called police and had them stop halfway through. The crane was blocking traffic and there were few safety precautions being taken"
posted by joeyh at 2:19 PM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

IANAL, but I believe the trademark abandonment clock starts today for the name Twitter and its blue bird. The said clock is three years long.
posted by humbug at 2:26 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Bluesky eventually rebranding as Twitter would be *chef's kiss*.
posted by mazola at 2:39 PM on July 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

I think MBS (ruler of Saudi Arabia) and Elon Musk probably believe in the X vision for Twitter. These are the people who are building the new cities of Neom and The Line.

I don’t think what he is doing will work. That being said I also continue to think Crypto is stupid and yet in the time I’ve said that it has gone from less than a penny per coin to thousands of dollars. Sometimes even the worst ideas end up sort of kind of working out.

Suggesting this is some kind of conspiracy to destroy Twitter seems to buy into some kind of idea that Elon is so smart he must have an alternate plan. This isn’t to suggest he is stupid; but even very smart people have terrible ideas.
posted by interogative mood at 2:43 PM on July 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down.

It’s kind of baffling that the crane/lift operators even came out without seeing proof of a permit. They (supposedly) know what they’re doing, and don’t just roll-out on the say-so of anyone, especially when blocking a city street is involved. Weird.

It’s also baffling how the building management haven’t tossed MuskCo out of the place by now. Or is there some sort of legalistics at play there. I’m pretty certain he hasn’t started paying rent again, let along paying backrent.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:26 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

You know, aside from how ugly the new logo is, and how unlikely it is that whatever replaces it will be particularly good looking, I'll miss the old logo. It was nice! I never liked twitter, have never used twitter, think on balance twitter's probably done much more harm than good, but that was a good logo. It was unique, it was immediately recognizable, it was sort of hopeful and light and cheerful. It tied in to the classic peace dove but also to the early web 2.0 optimism and emphasis on nice design. Even the particular shade of blue was great.

Thinking about it, maybe it kind of birdwashed the darker aspects of twitter.

Not edgy or macho enough though, I guess.
posted by trig at 3:49 PM on July 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

> Or is there some sort of legalistics at play there.

There is politics at work here for sure. Musk isn't just refusing to pay rent. Musk is refusing to pay rent during a historic crash in office space values as remote knowledge work has finally taken root in our mainstream culture.

There's no point kicking Musk out. Not only would it be expensive, but there's no one lining up to take the spot. Downtown SF is in crisis as office use empties out. The people who own that building probably also own the buildings for the local businesses that serve downtown like restaurants. Removing yet more traffic from downtown would increase the risk of killing those businesse/rents as well.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 3:53 PM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

If Elon fucks around with Twitter like this, and nobody actually leaves, could that actually make it more valuable in the long term, as a business that has been demonstrated to be almost unbreakable due to how hooked the users are?
posted by tomcooke at 3:54 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

That's why I'm quickly losing patience and sympathy for people who hate what's happening but continue to use Twitter. I can empathize with the collective action problem, but enough is enough. It's time to leave twitter, or admit you're part of the problem.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:00 PM on July 24, 2023 [23 favorites]

If other media companies thought about brand equity the way Elon Musk thinks about Twitter’s (er, X’s)

In the spirit of Tronc, Elon Musk has decided to throw away more than a decade of brand equity by changing the name of Twitter to…the letter X. Imagine if more media executives followed his lead.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:14 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Bluesky eventually rebranding as Twitter would be *chef's kiss*.

If Elon needs some fast cash he could license the brand to BlueSky, lmao
posted by BungaDunga at 4:31 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

People laughed at Mastodon when they had "Toots", on Bluesky they're called "Skeets" and now Twitter has "Xeets"

In the future people will look back at these terms and wonder how they orig... wait a sec, what am I thinking, none of this has any future.
posted by Lanark at 4:37 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Big lols, Microsoft already owns the trademark for 'X'.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:46 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Some of those "will print anything on a shirt" on-line shops are already selling X logo shirts.
posted by LostInUbe at 4:47 PM on July 24, 2023

> ... I'm quickly losing patience and sympathy for people who hate what's happening but continue to use Twitter.

I used to think there was nothing more pointless than whining about an issue on a social media site but I was wrong.

Whining about Twitter on Twitter literally has negative point - these people are supporting the very thing they claim to hate. I am very quickly losing respect for some people I previously followed and admired.

I jumped ship (see my profile), deleted the app, and lost nothing.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:56 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

That was fast. Wayland.social
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:01 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Based on the photos of the sign debacle it looks like someone went to a rental yard and rented a crane/ picker truck and tried to DIY it. This wasn’t any kind of licensed professional because they carry insurance and their insurance wouldn’t cover the job.
posted by interogative mood at 5:02 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

If Elon fucks around with Twitter like this, and nobody actually leaves, could that actually make it more valuable in the long term, as a business that has been demonstrated to be almost unbreakable due to how hooked the users are?

Except they are leaving. 18% decline in users in this year alone. And users were stable in the prior two years.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:05 PM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

Big lols, Microsoft already owns the trademark for 'X'.

So this mark held by Microsoft probably relates to the Xbox and Xbox live and chat functions. Here's the filing.

However, another trademark for X held by Meta relates specifically to social media.

Either way, Space Karen is fucked.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:17 PM on July 24, 2023 [12 favorites]

Casey Newton over at Platformer has an explicitly social / political analysis. It's a paywalled article but you can get the gist of it from the free excerpt.

this framing misses the true shape of Musk’s project, which is best understood not as a money-making endeavor, but as an extended act of cultural vandalism. Just as he graffitis his 420s and 69s all over corporate filings; and just as he paints over corporate signage and office rooms with his little sex puns; so does he delight in erasing the Twitter that was.

posted by Nelson at 5:45 PM on July 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

This is just to say
that I have hollowed out
the carcass
of the social media platform

which
you had probably convinced yourself
had done a revival
of public discourse

Forgive me
it was an attractive nuisance
so vulnerable
and juicily human
posted by gusandrews at 6:24 PM on July 24, 2023 [17 favorites]

> Casey Newton over at Platformer has an explicitly social / political analysis.

The free excerpt doesn't get into his known plans and actions to replatform the neonazis previously banned from Twitter. And then slip them cash.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:27 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

>> mefi.social

I already toot on sfba.social & me.dm with mastodon.social as a mostly unused backup. Should I join yet another instance?
posted by mike3k at 6:33 PM on July 24, 2023

> Except they are leaving.

One holdout:

Sesame Street@sesamestreet.

The letter X will be holding a press conference later today. #TwitterX

Last edited 11:03 AM Jul 24, 2023

posted by sebastienbailard at 6:36 PM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

OMG those sign change photos. The guys are using a AWP/boom lift over a public sidewalk and haven't put up so much as some caution tape. Their tools aren't tied off and they don't seem to be securing the letters before removal .
posted by Mitheral at 6:41 PM on July 24, 2023 [15 favorites]

Imagine getting owned by Sesame Street.
posted by ryanrs at 6:44 PM on July 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

Imagine getting owned by Sesame Street.

Come at the birds, and the Big Bird is going to come for you.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:49 PM on July 24, 2023 [21 favorites]

From Matt Levine’s Money Stuff newsletter:
I guess my question is, what was he paying for? Musk didn’t want Twitter for its employees (whom he fired) or its code (which he trashes regularly) or its brand (which he abandoned) or its most dedicated users (whom he is working to drive away); he just wanted an entirely different Twitter-like service. Surely he could have built that for less than $44 billion?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:56 PM on July 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

> Surely he could have built that for less than $44 billion?

we are ants in the billionaire's ant farm. one place this man is truly a global leader is in publically exhibiting childlike cruelty to those below him on the socioeconomic ladder.
posted by glonous keming at 7:31 PM on July 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Maybe it’s all some galaxy-brained ploy Musk came up with and no one has the guts to tell him it won’t work: “see, guys, if we change the name, all the debts and contracts are with Twitter, not with the new company, so we can just say, oh, that’s not us, we’re X!”
posted by Ghidorah at 7:41 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

he just wanted an entirely different Twitter-like service. Surely he could have built that for less than $44 billion?

Could he have built a platform as significant as twitter is today (obviously way diminished from before he bought it) for $44 billion, never even minding how long it would take?

Also let's remember, whatever he wanted from Twitter, he didn't actually want it $44B worth. He just ran his fool mouth too much and got himself stuck having to do it.
posted by aubilenon at 7:48 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I just randomly reloaded twitter and got
"Before you scroll …
We’ve got an updated Terms of Service and new Privacy Policy — rewritten to help you understand how we collect, use, and share your information — both going into effect on June 10, 2022."

For fuck's sake I'm not going to agree to who knows what. I never used the site anyway, so no big loss.
posted by Catblack at 8:05 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

2022? LOL.

They are so good at this stuff
posted by Windopaene at 8:08 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think the only thing that’s real in the CEO’s statement is that they’re just beginning to imagine the possibilities, presumably because Elon told them about the change last night
posted by TwoWordReview at 8:14 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

What happened during his childhood that he's so obsessed with the letter X?

I mean, he had a fucked up childhood, seriously fucked up, but this thing with X for decade after decade... It's really weird.
posted by hippybear at 8:16 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Now they’ve put the letters back and painted over the w so it say titter. Elon is apparently very proud of this.
posted by interogative mood at 8:21 PM on July 24, 2023

Also in order to make his X distinct enough for trademark usage he has decided based on a poll of his followers to change the X from the mathematical symbol to some kind of runic serif font.
posted by interogative mood at 8:30 PM on July 24, 2023

Let me guess, it's going to be a fash X.
posted by away for regrooving at 8:35 PM on July 24, 2023

Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down.

CHA
posted by jedicus at 8:40 PM on July 24, 2023 [14 favorites]

what did humanity do before x
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:07 PM on July 24, 2023

The reportage about Meta owning the X trademark looks fishy to me. Business Insider, linked above:

Meta's "X" logo in its trademark filings looks different from the one Musk has put up on Twitter's website. Meta's "X" looks like two arrows with rounded ends pointing inwards — one white and one blue — while Twitter's "X" is a black and white angular rendition.

But that's a description of this Microsoft logo [PDF], the listed uses of which include a broad range of IT-related purposes including social media. Which I got to by following NoxAeturnum's "by Facebook" link above.

It makes sense to me that MS would update their trademark filing to include social media, which wasn't a thing when the X that His thoughts were red thoughts linked above was registered in 2003 (the Xbox was released in late 2001).

On the upside for Elon, he probably could take Bill Gates in a cage match.
posted by flabdablet at 9:13 PM on July 24, 2023

Apple fought another company's use of a pear-shaped logo. I imagine Facebook could have its day in court, if its owner wished it.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:21 PM on July 24, 2023

I don't think I'll ever be able to call it anything other than Xitter going forward. Sounds great when spoken aloud. Some people call it a porcelain throne, a toilet, or even a commode, but I'm too vulgar for such terms.

💩er for the win!
posted by wierdo at 9:33 PM on July 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

The reportage about Meta owning the X trademark looks fishy to me.

As I understand it: Meta/Facebook has a trademark on a particular X. MS' trademark is broader, and is the one to watch.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:34 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Meta/Facebook has a trademark on a particular X

I have yet to see that particular X definitively identified. All the Zuck Owns It reportage I've seen so far points back to Microsoft's blue and white >< thing.
posted by flabdablet at 9:44 PM on July 24, 2023

💩er for the win!

So instead of tweets there's 💩s now?

It's kind of cool that Unicode has emojis, so we can actually write "💩" instead of "the website formerly known as Twitter".
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 PM on July 24, 2023

Why hasn't MSM looked into the destruction of Twitter? and what new alternatives exist for people like dissidents in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere?
posted by specialk420 at 9:53 PM on July 24, 2023

So instead of tweets there's 💩s now?

No, they're Xeets, as in the thing you wear to show the world that you are a member of the Ku Klux Klan. 💩s are what I get after reading Xeets on Xitter.
posted by wierdo at 9:58 PM on July 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

There is a long history that predates Musk of Saudi Arabia and Twitter. Including early investment. And planting spies inside the company.
posted by Nelson at 9:59 PM on July 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

So this is how he plans to defeat the UFOs.
posted by Ana Kolou, Squirrel at 10:05 PM on July 24, 2023

@nelson - The question is: was twitter intentionally destroyed under cloak of ensuring free speech for everyone?

Ockham's razor says x.com or whatever the F Musk is up to will be tightly regulated in "the kingdom" and deal was agreed to well before the purchase happened. As a golfer and Twitter users going way back - I'm dismayed by the aquiescence of our government in both deals.
posted by specialk420 at 10:09 PM on July 24, 2023

No. The simplest explanation is that Musk's an egomaniacal idiot. The various theories that he's deliberately destroying Twitter feel like unnecessary multiplication of entities.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:35 PM on July 24, 2023 [18 favorites]

He may well have been financed by people who figured that either he'd destroy Twitter or bend it to their ends, but I think it's easier to believe that Musk never psychologically moved past college, and he still thinks it's awesome to put up rude signs on buildings you own and buy things priced at the weed number. I'm starting a countdown to X Corp celebrating pride by putting up that one photo of two women in underwear making out that was somewhere in every frat house in the 2000s.
posted by Merus at 1:06 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Mod note: One comment quoting an AI-generated Musk/MLB conspiracy theory deleted, per site guidelines.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:10 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't really subscribe to the planned destruction theories but if they are real then Musk is in the useful idiot role.
posted by donio at 4:25 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

...on Bluesky they're called "Skeets"...

Wait. Whaaaaa...??? Seriously? Oh, cummon.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:48 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I also suspect that the theories that the Saudis want to kill Twitter because they're afraid of a second Arab Spring are following a popular myth that shouldn't be taken at face value. For example, in Egypt all that worked out because the army was in favor of deposing Mubarak, but you don't often hear that part of the story.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:09 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't really subscribe to the planned destruction theories but if they are real then Musk is in the useful idiot role.

Calling anything he's done "useful" seems overly generous.
More like a useless idiot, amirite?
posted by cheshyre at 5:22 AM on July 25, 2023

That's why I'm quickly losing patience and sympathy for people who hate what's happening but continue to use Twitter. I can empathize with the collective action problem, but enough is enough. It's time to leave twitter, or admit you're part of the problem.

No.
posted by srboisvert at 7:24 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

The whole Saudi theory suggests that, had Elon gotten funding to buy Twitter from anybody else, he would have handled owning it in even slightly different a manner.

It also suggests that Elon is disciplined enough to commit to praxis, rather than simply being a thin-skinned twelve-year-old in a hideous older man's body.

Casey Newton and Matt Levine are both smarties, but Elon is reactionary in the literal sense that he just... reacts. He reacts to people who mock him and he reacts to people who flatter him. He tries to do things that'll make his stans love him more, and the things he does are dumb as shit. He adopts whatever ideology his detractors most seem to hate. He has no deeper strategy and he has no deeper politics—and to suggest that reactionary forces in ages past had "deep" politics of their own wildly overestimates how much thought they put into their atrocities, anyway.

He is dangerous because he is powerful, erratic, and thoughtless, and imo that's the point: that, given this much power and this little foresight, anybody would turn into a horrific force for destruction and incidental evil. He is a blight on this world, and an embodiment of everything wrong with our modern era, and attempting to develop elaborate conspiracy theories explaining why he does bad things is just a way of denying the true dumb awful evil at the core of our society. He's a jellyfish who doesn't deserve to be dignified with the suggestion that he's actually got a big ole villain brain.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 7:29 AM on July 25, 2023 [31 favorites]

He did more than just make an off-the-cuff remark, though. After the off-the-cuff remark, he followed up with a formal offer, and then attempted a hostile takeover, before the backing down and getting called on it happened.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:54 AM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

A fascinating thread [Mastodon] from @Garius

To understand Musk's renewed obsession with X and focus on financial services, you REALLY need to understand the X/Confinity merger that became PayPal.

And, particularly, the Peter Thiel-led coup that kicked Musk out as CEO/Chief Strategist.

Here's how that happened. 1/🧵 #history #technology

...

Mostly it seems that Musk is trying to do with Twitter what got him booted when he tried it at PayPal.

Also the prequel thread from yesterday, possibly not really relevant to the goings on at Twitter per se, but...

I'll do a thread tomorrow on the X dot com/Paypal merger because I think it's really important to understand how that went down to know why Musk is STILL salty about how X died (and about Peter Thiel) now.

But in the meantime, here is a quick, but telling, story called:

That Time Elon Totalled his McLaren F1 While Trying to Show Off in Front of Peter Thiel /1 🧵 #history #technology

posted by Buntix at 8:04 AM on July 25, 2023 [13 favorites]

Oh that @Garis thread documents the history of x.com, something I've been wondering about. I had it in my memory that domain was originally acquired under weird circumstances. Network Solutions wasn't supposed to be allowing single letter domain names, nor letting them be transferred. Somehow Musk got around that. Anyway, more details:

In the early 1990s, a pair of engineers, Marcel DePaolis and Dave Weinstein, had bought www.x.com for their company Pittsburgh Powercomputer. They sold the company—but held onto the X.com URL, using it for their personal email addresses. Over the years, DePaolis and Weinstein turned down bids to sell the URL, underwhelmed by the various offer terms. In early 1999, they received fresh interest. “Under the looming shadow of Y2K, we were approached by Elon Musk,” they said. This time, the deal terms proved more interesting. They sold X.com to Musk in exchange for cash and 1.5 million shares of the company’s Series A stock. The negotiation drew the interest of the Wall Street Journal, which included it in a story about start-up equity—a story that, as chance had it, included another young entrepreneur, Max Levchin, explaining how he used stock to secure office space.

That quote comes from The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni and there's the WSJ reference to follow up for more. I wonder how much that 1.5M share stake ended up being worth.
posted by Nelson at 8:21 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

No.

Then what's the threshold? Elon Musk 100% owns Twitter, is responsible to no one, and has demonstrated repeatedly that the entire company, it's policies, and it's operations are subject to his personal whims. There are no more professional grownups in the room who just want to run a social media company. Everything at Twitter is run by a whiny narcissist who goes out of his way to court the most deplorable people on the internet when he isn't palling around with his fascist friends.

If now isn't the time to abandon Twitter, then when is the right time?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:22 AM on July 25, 2023 [9 favorites]

YMMV but I asked myself "Given the choice, would I join a Musk owned social network named 'X'?" and, of course, the answer was 'Nope'.

Yet somehow I was now on a Musk owned social network named 'X'…

[update: now switching to Mastodon]
posted by mazola at 8:27 AM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

Tacit support is still support, and we don't tolerate people who platform bigots and other abusive personalities. What do you do when the bigot buys the platform? Do you stick to your principles, or do you surrender to platform lock-in? That's the problem facing every liberal-minded person who's still using twitter for work or anything.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:31 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

If now isn't the time to abandon Twitter, then when is the right time?

Whenever I finally get an invite to BlueSky, I think. Because that and Threads seem to be where everyone I follow on Twitter are going, and I'm not going to do Threads.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:44 AM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

If now isn't the time to abandon Twitter, then when is the right time?

It would be easier when there is a legit alternative that isn't Facebook-owned, and which isn't restricted to friends of friends of Jack.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:48 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Bluesky has officially become as deranged and unpleasant as Twitter was ten years ago. I'm saying this as a compliment. Just this morning, I got brigaded by an angry horde of people for an extremely stupid reason, and it felt like taking a long warm shower.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:51 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

dril responds to the change:

They changed the logo to a damn X so the trolls will finally have something to nail me to .

posted by NoxAeternum at 9:39 AM on July 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

I do wonder how much actual planning went into this "rebranding" or whether Space Karen just up and decided to Xeet out whatever was on his mind. The Yak Lady's Xeet makes me think she didn't even know beforehand. I hope we get a Vice oral history of this Xeetshow.
posted by slogger at 9:40 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

If now isn't the time to abandon Twitter, then when is the right time?

Based on what I've seen, Black folks are waiting for a platform where they can have space to build a community similar to Black Twitter without being targeted and harassed from day one. Most other folks, particularly white people of a less early adopters ilk than Fediverse people, are holding out for a platform that is instantly as content rich as peak Twitter and already has everyone they would want to follow as active users immediately.

Which... The former I get and wish we had an answer for. The latter... less so. I don't want to say "Grow up" so how about "modulate your expectations."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:53 AM on July 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

I do wonder how much actual planning went into this "rebranding" or whether Space Karen just up and decided to Xeet out whatever was on his mind.

Owner of @x Twitter handle says no one reached out ahead of Twitter’s rebranding to ‘X’ [techcrunch]

Spectacularly not thought out I suspect. Guessing there's thousands of places where 'twitter' is hardcoded, potentially also as keys rather than just display values meaning things will start breaking if they do any sort of automated or bulk renaming.

Not to mention all the third-party references, all those twitter badges, and things like Open Graph where the site identifier is the root of a hierarchy.

It's not just dumb, it's dumb in an infinitely fractal way. Dumbs all the way down.
posted by Buntix at 9:56 AM on July 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

yeah, it makes me giddy thinking of what he'll do next to top this
posted by ryanrs at 10:00 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

(Your reminder that Mastodon has 25x as many active users as BlueSky and MeFi has a thriving little instance.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:01 AM on July 25, 2023 [16 favorites]

Oh the owner of @x is so sweetly naive

Hwang says he doesn’t really have a solid figure in mind in terms of what the right price should be for parting with the account’s name.

Perhaps Elon Musk will treat him fairly. There's always a first time for everything!
posted by Nelson at 10:16 AM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

Musk could trade him the @twitter account.
posted by ryanrs at 10:24 AM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

Beyond everything else, who looks at the direction of regulation across the world and goes "yes, a tightly integrated everything platform is what I should try to set up right now"?
posted by MattWPBS at 10:26 AM on July 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Is there any kind of organized grass roots movement or organization working to get journalists, celebrities, companies, organizations, websites and others to get off of twitter in recognition of their pro-hate polities?
posted by interogative mood at 10:56 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's time to leave twitter, or admit you're part of the problem.

What a disgustingly privileged, judgemental and ignorant take. So many of us have lived our lives carving out places to share support and information in overtly hostile spaces; Musk's racism and fascism is nothing new. Twitter remains a useful space for many folks who do amazing anti-fascist and anti-racist work, like Talia Lavin, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Mariame Kaba, and many more. I trust them to know what they're doing, and trust myself to do the same.

I'm utterly exhausted by the stupidly judgemental takes like the quote above. We all make compromises - if you have an active Amazon Prime account from the billionaire who abuses his workers horribly on a daily basis, don't talk to me about when I should or should not leave Twitter. And good lord, everyone who says, favorites or otherwise amplifies this kind of garbage who has an Insta or FB or (god forbid) Threads account needs to drop off the internet for a few days and look in the mirror. Cat Valente had some great thoughts on Zuckerberg & Co a couple of weeks ago - if you're on any of his platforms, you're "tactily" supporting a bunch of horrific shit, including selling your private messages to Cambridge Analytica to help get Trump elected, doing the same to help Brexit happen, taking money by running ads specifically calling for rape, torture and beheading of minority groups in Kenya and Myanmar, failing to stop ignorant COVID, anti-mask and anti-vaccine denialism, lying about video counts to newspapers who were convinced to pivot to FB video...I mean do I have to go on?

I don't like watching Musk destroy Twitter, or the horrid boosting of racist, trans- and homophobic accounts, but I still find it useful for great links, I'm sure much more so than Threads, which has stated it's not for politics, really, or Jack and his vulture capitalist pals at BlueSky (good lord the gullibility there, to think that will be so much different, with its "how much racism do you want in your feed, exactly? setting).

Just fucking stop with the judgemental stupidity. We're all compromised, and all making choices about what racist and/or fascist-adjacent companies we'll make devil's bargains with. Sneering at other folks choices in stupidly simplistic ways? *That's* definitely part of the problem.
posted by mediareport at 11:15 AM on July 25, 2023 [36 favorites]

No.

Then what's the threshold? Elon Musk 100% owns Twitter, is responsible to no one, and has demonstrated repeatedly that the entire company, it's policies, and it's operations are subject to his personal whims. There are no more professional grownups in the room who just want to run a social media company. Everything at Twitter is run by a whiny narcissist who goes out of his way to court the most deplorable people on the internet when he isn't palling around with his fascist friends.

If now isn't the time to abandon Twitter, then when is the right time?

The right time for me to abandon Twitter is when I decide to. Not when someone else makes declaration of my obvious moral turpitude for still hanging on to the bits of joy I find on it. Some rando on the internet telling me they are running out sympathy for me just tells me they don't have much sympathy at all.

People have different reasons for staying or going. I make Elon Musk zero dollars and am net expense for him. I don't use a twitter app and I have adblockers so I have seen maybe 4 or 5 ads in the entire time I have been on twitter. I've curated my follows and block joyously. For me twitter is still pretty delightful on balance. I do miss some of the people who have left and respect their decision to do so but I am not about to order/pressure/or moralize about people who do otherwise. What I will moralize about are people who dictate even if they think they are benevolent.
posted by srboisvert at 11:16 AM on July 25, 2023 [18 favorites]

i guess if you're ok with the growing opinion that you're the people sitting down to dinner with the nazi
posted by glonous keming at 11:43 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

*rolls eyes*

Sorry, but the packets where you clarify if you have an Amazon/FB/Insta/Threads account seem to have been lost in the tubes on the way to my computer. Can you clarify? Thanks so much.
posted by mediareport at 11:53 AM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Twitter's Rebrand To X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks To Microsoft

And Ed Timberlake, a former examining attorney at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and a practicing trademark lawyer, told The Messenger that Microsoft's claim might be the stronger one if both it and Meta separately decided to take Twitter to court.

"The strength of [Meta's] registration is it's primarily strong for just that stylization," said Timberlake, who was among the Twitter users who spotted the Microsoft trademark registration.

"The rights are narrower because it's registered in that stylized form."

"Whereas Microsoft's X is essentially the X registered, without regard to what outfit it shows up in," Timberlake said.

"So it could show up in blue and yellow, it could show up in blue and white, it could show up as just a typed thing, it could show up in a different font — and the registration rights would be just as powerful," he said.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:58 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't jump to nazi comparisons, but I completely agree that all of those platforms you mentioned need to go. I thought we were already years past the point where it even needed to be said that sharing facebook links isn't acceptable. I don't really care if people continue to passively use twitter, because, as I admit, the transition is a really hard collective action problem. What actually bothers me is when people link back to twitter conversation in other forums, particularly ones that require you to be logged into a twitter account to view, because that creates social pressure for others to stay there.

It would probably be more helpful if we pivoted to the question someone asked, how do we help journalists and others move?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:04 PM on July 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Is there any kind of organized grass roots movement or organization working to get journalists, celebrities, companies, organizations, websites and others to get off of twitter in recognition of their pro-hate polities?

I'm doing a privacy talk at the state library association annual conference in a few months. Since I'm looking at website privacy among other things, it gives me an opening to talk at least a little bit about social-media ethics and why libraries should strongly consider dumping their Twitter and Meta presences.

(At LEAST can we get their horrible tracking pixels and embeds off library websites?!?! I found way more embedded Facebook stuff than I wanted to. As for Google... welp, if you're a my-state public-library patron without an adblocker, yeah, your library-website behavior is most likely going to the Goog. I am upset at this and plan to make a pretty loud stink about it.)

We'll see how it goes over, I guess.
posted by humbug at 12:14 PM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

Twitter's Rebrand To X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks To Microsoft

Forget Microsoft, he can't trademark a Unicode character, not the least because...he didn't create it.
posted by rhizome at 12:16 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

tbf 'x' is certainly not a very common letter
posted by ryanrs at 12:20 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

It would probably be more helpful if we pivoted to the question someone asked, how do we help journalists and others move?

The Ida Bae Wells Twitter account would, I'm sure, be interested in your thoughts on that.
posted by mediareport at 12:24 PM on July 25, 2023

Unfortunately, I can't read it. Got a mastodon link instead?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:39 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Twitter links don't load any more for non users like me. That's going to kill it soooooo fast.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:53 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

> I-Write-Essays: "Unfortunately, I can't read it. Got a mastodon link instead?"

I don't think Nikole Hannah-Jones has a Mastodon account. I searched a bunch but wasn't able to find anything.
posted by mhum at 12:58 PM on July 25, 2023

Got a mastodon link instead?

Given the dismissive response many Black folks encountered when they shared their personal experiences of racism on Mastodon last year? Demanding they put those posts behind content warnings? I read that was a major turnoff and really hurt Fediverse adoption (though don't know if that was the case for Jones), so, sorry, no Mastodon link. But if you want to learn more about her. I don't think she'd appreciate someone telling her she's "sitting down to dinner with the nazi" by continuing to keep her Twitter account active, but I suppose you could try to tell her she's "part of the problem" if you want to see her reply.
posted by mediareport at 12:58 PM on July 25, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yeah, linking to twitter these days is like linking to Instagram. If you have to have an account to see it, then it might as well not be linked.
posted by hippybear at 1:07 PM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yes, there are problems with the EFF, but:

FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users [eff.org]

Last May, Mastodon server Kolektiva.social was compromised when one of the server’s admins had their home raided by the FBI for unrelated charges. All of their electronics, including a backup of the instance database, were seized.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:12 PM on July 25, 2023

I don't have a Xitter account but was able to read mediareport's link ^ because I've installed the Nitter Redirect browser extension, which automatically redirected it here: https://nitter.net/nhannahjones
posted by flabdablet at 1:16 PM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. Name calling and offensive language toward other users is not acceptable. Please refer to the Content Policy if you have any questions.
posted by loup (staff) at 1:16 PM on July 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thanks, flabdablet. Super helpful.
posted by heyho at 1:26 PM on July 25, 2023

Nitter has been up and down a bit with the Twitter APIs, it's currently back to working again. It's the only really good way to browse twitter, mostly because it prevents you from ever tweeting (it's read-only).
posted by BungaDunga at 1:30 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I mean, we've talked a lot on the blue about how there is no easy answer to "where should we be posting?" It's extremely hard to create a space that scales and is ethically conscious and makes enough money to keep the lights on. Every alternative has flaws: yes, I understand why Mastodon users are so gung-ho about Mastodon, but Mastodon has a lot of issues itself, ranging from technical to cultural. And people are trying to figure out how best to navigate the collapse of one space and the rise of half a dozen problematic others.

There is no "correct" way to go about doing this. I was on Twitter far past the point where people here started self-righteously proclaiming that there was no ethical excuse for using Twitter anymore. I've since bolted to Bluesky full-time, and don't check Twitter at all anymore, but Bluesky is invite-only, and plenty of folks here will tell me that Bluesky is just as bad as Twitter, or that it's inherently compromised, or or or. Threads is technically part of the Fediverse, and Threads has gotten the closest to acquiring a userbase as large as Twitter's, but Threads is inherently compromised too and Threads additionally sucks ass.

I'm using Bluesky for two reasons: the user experience means I enjoy using it, whereas I didn't at all like using Mastodon; and the kinds of users who've flocked to it are the kind I liked reading Twitter for, i.e. funny shitposters with a modicum of social awareness and chill. Plenty of the people I follow on Bluesky pretty much say the same thing: they personally enjoy using Bluesky, and it's also where all their friends are at. Most of those people have tried both Threads and Mastodon and walked away from both. Some of them still use Twitter, though more and more seem to be giving up on it entirely.

Can we collectively agree that this is a really difficult circumstance to navigate and that the answers aren't as easy as any of us would like to pretend? If you're the kind of person who takes readily to Mastodon, I'm sincerely very happy for you, but can you please acknowledge that the sheer volume of people explaining why Mastodon does not in fact work for them means that there're maybe issues that you yourself struggle to perceive?

And can we all, pretty pretty please, hold off on getting pissed off at one another for something as asinine as which free social media platform we currently do or don't check? Even if you want to make a "you're complicit in the ethics of the platform you use" argument (PROTIP: you don't actually have to make this argument), there are so many awful fucking people on Twitter actually being Nazis that maybe we don't have to spend our shouty energy getting angry at the non-Nazis that happen to be on Twitter, dealing with Nazis. Pick someone who ranks higher than a 0.00001/10 on the "enables Nazis" spectrum to get pissed off at. I understand the temptation to channel anxiety and stress towards rage, or to mask confusion and panic by proclaiming One Simple Pure Way, but it rarely-if-ever actually hits the right targets or solves the real problems, and instead turns you into the person attacking people who already had a lot on their plates before you opened fire.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 1:33 PM on July 25, 2023 [28 favorites]

I suspect the Meta thing isn't going to be an obstacle, more's the pity.

Here's the X trademark's page at the USPTO. If I'm reading those documents right, Microsoft sold it to Facebook on 2020-07-20 (see the "Assignments Documents" section at the bottom), Facebook failed to file a Statement of Use with the USPTO in a timely fashion, and the trademark is now abandoned.
posted by flabdablet at 1:34 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's the only really good way to browse twitter, mostly because it prevents you from ever tweeting

It loads at least ten times as fast as native Xitter for me as well. And the browser extension means I don't have to do anything fiddly to make that happen.
posted by flabdablet at 1:38 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just keep calling it Twitter. It makes Musk furious.
posted by hippybear at 1:42 PM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

tbf 'x' is certainly not a very common letter

I dunno, it's in the top 30.
posted by saturday_morning at 1:43 PM on July 25, 2023 [28 favorites]

So I'm seeing rumors that Lone Skum is months away from defaulting on one or more of his Twitter-I-mean-X loans? Anybody got a halfway-reliable source for that one?
posted by humbug at 1:48 PM on July 25, 2023

Can we collectively agree that this is a really difficult circumstance to navigate and that the answers aren't as easy as any of us would like to pretend?

Just wanted to see that again.
posted by mediareport at 1:51 PM on July 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

It's time to leave twitter, or admit you're part of the problem.

Oh, are we going to do the judgemental circular firing squad purity test thing again?

How about if you've ever even attempted to open or operate a Twitter account you're part of the problem?

Because I've never even been tempted to open one, I called out that site as being bad news for the internet back when it was still new and people were calling it a microblog and I exclaimed "Oh my god, it's full of twits!" because I knew that bringing the issues of soundbite culture to text was going to be a raging shit hurricane and bad for discourse.

So how about it? Did you ever have a Twitter account? How about a Facebook account? I haven't had one of those, either.

God damn it I tried to warn as many people as I could but nah I'm the crazy person, and yet here we are having democracy and human decency attacked with an alarming rise of fascism on the damn march again.
posted by loquacious at 2:26 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

loquacious: I have yet to own or operate a computer, so... I dunno, you're feeling pretty ethically compromised to me over there.

(I have never so much as looked at a screen. I only have a faint idea about what a keyboard is)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:47 PM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'll back up loquacious a bit here: I saw Facebook early on for what it was, and have never had an account there. I did join twitter when I joined the furry fandom because it was a good way to find people and connect with them within that context.

My twitter account now is just band and other corporate accounts I follow for announcements of upcoming projects. If I can find them on Mastodon, I will delete them from Twitter. I hope to stop looking at Twitter entirely at some point, but I do like the pipeline from artist to fan it allows, and so far not all those pipelines are hooked up to other outlets.
posted by hippybear at 2:52 PM on July 25, 2023

I respect that whether or not to remain on Twitter is a personal decision and that there's no ethical consumption under late-stage capitalism.

I do think that the current situation re: Twitter is different than those we've debated before (Amazon, Facebook, etc) because of how it's being run. Normal businesses have many layers of management that include lots of individuals who are responsible for executing corporate policy during the day-to-day operations. While this doesn't provide any protection against a business doing shitty things, it does provide a level of inertia that needs to be overcome in order to do shitty things--changes in policy take time because they need to be reviewed and approved by lots of people (some of whom are lawyers) whose job it is to protect the continued profitability if not existence of the business. And even if that inertia is overcome, there's still enough people around to occasionally produce a whistleblower.

Twitter is a company with no HR department, and a public relations email address that automatically sends poo emojis in response to any media inquiries. They've quietly deleted select language from content policies, invited once permanently banned individuals back onto the platform, and recklessly labeled NPR a "state-sponsored" news source. As awful as other platforms are, I really do think Twitter is on an entirely different level and I'd strongly encourage people to leave the platform.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:56 PM on July 25, 2023 [12 favorites]

Sorry, but the packets where you clarify if you have an Amazon/FB/Insta/Threads account

Not the person you were asking, but I don’t have any of those things, nor do I take Ubers or get delivery through Grubhub, because it’s possible for me not to do so and they don’t comport with my values for a healthy society. I encourage everyone to reflect on whether their use of Twitter does. I am certainly *not* qualified to pass judgment on the experiences of Black users of social media.

(Before you ask, yes, I own several televisions.)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:22 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Twitter engineers take a hard right at Scunthorpe and go through Peniston, mass suspend Japanese users with "shit" in their usernames while ignoring that '-shita' is a common surname component.

This truly is the gang that can't shoot straight.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:29 PM on July 25, 2023 [19 favorites]

It would be easier when there is a legit alternative that isn't Facebook-owned, and which isn't restricted to friends of friends of Jack.

fwiw, "friends of Jack" is a hilariously inaccurate assessment of Bluesky. He hates it there, due to getting thoroughly dogpiled every time he shows his face, and has apparently been complaining about it on his personal site (though I haven't bothered to go look for myself). The lefty and trans communities there are huge, and the furries are arriving in force.
posted by rifflesby at 3:33 PM on July 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Has the EU lawsuit against Twitter for not deleting Nazi content been resolved yet? Because I think that's going to really change things for the company once it is resolved.
posted by hippybear at 3:34 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: and the furries are arriving in force
posted by elkevelvet at 3:37 PM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

and the furries are arriving in force

I can only envision this as Gandalf arriving to assist at Helm's Deep. Maybe in an EntSuit.
posted by hippybear at 3:37 PM on July 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: and the furries are arriving in force

I think it would be a net positive for MetaFilter if the furries arrived in force here, too.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:27 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I understand he's pretty unhappy re. "skeets" becoming a thing, ha ha.
posted by ryanrs at 4:30 PM on July 25, 2023

Somebody release the WWV.net twitter clone. ASCII only. You have to type /es to send your Veet.

No one connected to you by more than one degree of separation sees it until sometime tomorrow.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:16 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lots of people talking past each other, passive aggressive sniping about things that don't really matter, and lots of jokes. I think the real twitter was inside us the whole time.
posted by AndrewStephens at 5:31 PM on July 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

Just keep calling it Twitter. It makes Musk furious.

This is a good rule of thumb. It's like when Blackwater gets called Xe, or Facebook gets called something else for similar reasons (even here, inexplicably and repeatedly). The names get changed for obvious reasons, but the underlying toxicity that drives the name-change will always be there.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:31 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Potential common thread between this and the older attempt to make Paypal X is the desperate attempt to be all-encompassing.

Paypal is a brand that says what it's for. It's for payment. It is a big business in that one field.

"Twitter" does convey the idea of short bursts of communication to anyone listening. It's a good brand for the one thing that Twitter was good at.

But some combination of the corporate need for growth and Elon's ego can't settle for being a big business in the one domain.

So you've got to replace these brands that help convey what it's about with a brand that conveys nothing, so it can now be anything.
posted by RobotHero at 5:32 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think a big fat X conveys something. It conveys cancelling an action you're about to take by mistake. It's the opposite of a checkmark.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:40 PM on July 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

loquacious: I have yet to own or operate a computer, so... I dunno, you're feeling pretty ethically compromised to me over there.

I mean I started with parody and the same joke but then I got cranky.

and the furries are arriving in force

At this point they might be the world's only hope and I'm ok with that.
posted by loquacious at 5:44 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Now back to the @[e-mail]!
posted by Riki tiki at 5:51 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Lots of people talking past each other, passive aggressive sniping about things that don't really matter, and lots of jokes.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:31 PM on July 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I saw a comment elsewhere pointing out the downstream costs this imposes, forcing folks to update marketing materials, advertising, websites, brochures, packaging, etc. with the new logo & name.

Given Musk's volatility, it's probably cheaper to remove those references entirely, rather than have to change them all again when some new design catches his fancy.
posted by cheshyre at 6:50 PM on July 25, 2023 [13 favorites]

Yaccarino must be going insane knowing that they could still walk this back, but won't.

lol
posted by ryanrs at 6:55 PM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think there's an entire generation that lays prior claim to X and we need to stand up and make it clear we will not allow this.


Seriously? I’m not even supposed to be here today!
posted by nickmark at 7:02 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Has the EU lawsuit against Twitter for not deleting Nazi content been resolved yet?

No, not yet. There are a lot of lawsuits related to Musk's changes at Twitter that are working their way through the system. FTC consent decree compliance is another large one: Musk fired everyone who was doing the work. Also thousands of employees trying to get severance. Etc, etc. Unfortunately there's a delay in the legal system between fucking around and finding out.
posted by Nelson at 7:07 PM on July 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

> hippybear: "I think there's an entire generation that lays prior claim to X and we need to stand up and make it clear we will not allow this."

The bad news is that Musk is firmly in Gen X (b. 1971). He may be one of the worst of us, but he is one of us. However, that makes me wonder if he's vulnerable to the classic Gen X kryptonite: being accused of being a sell-out and/or a poser. I'm doubtful if "sell-out" could carry any sting for one of the world's richest men but "poser"? I think "poser" might have just a little bite, especially for someone like him.
posted by mhum at 7:21 PM on July 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

and the furries are arriving in force

At this point they might be the world's only hope and I'm ok with that

Ironically if some of you spent more time on twitter you’d realize that an influx of furries is not exactly a safeguard against a proliferation of Nazis—far from it.
posted by Atom Eyes at 7:23 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Bloomberg: Twitter Turning Into X Set to Kill Billions in Brand Value (archive)
posted by mediareport at 7:32 PM on July 25, 2023

The nazi furs are a known component and are widely shunned by the greater community. Known members by name are banned from furry conventions and there have been safeguards put in place by most groups to keep them from becoming a presence within larger gatherings. It's a group that has responded much more actively against this looming threat than, say, any political party.
posted by hippybear at 7:36 PM on July 25, 2023 [13 favorites]

I’m truly glad to hear that.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:11 PM on July 25, 2023

Cat Valente had some great thoughts on Zuckerberg & Co a couple of weeks ago

I think I experienced a true to life OG authentic ancient Greek tragedy style katharsis reading that article. It's perfect. Thanks for linking!
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:48 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

> Most other folks, particularly white people of a less early adopters ilk than Fediverse people, are holding out for a platform that is instantly as content rich as peak Twitter and already has everyone they would want to follow as active users immediately.

In my personal experience: already on mastodon are tech posters, queer people, urbanists, shit posters, a good amount of science fiction authors, and a couple of my friends but not a lot of them. What I'm really missing are the journalists and politics people. The heavy tech/nerd focus is not that different from my twitter following list back when I originally joined in 2007, which isn't really where I want it to be right now, but it's acceptable.

If Threads actually follows through on it's threat to federate, I'm hopeful that might help with the journalists and politics people.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:11 AM on July 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm doubtful if "sell-out" could carry any sting for one of the world's richest men but "poser"?

Is there a bigger example of poserdom than being a Series A investor in Tesla and claiming to be the founder?
posted by cmfletcher at 5:02 AM on July 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

[John Cleese voice] This is an ex-website!

Somewhat ironic, given that Cleese has become an absolute nutter and bigot that depends on Twitter to air his hatred.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:08 AM on July 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

The company took over the @x account.

The user who owned it since 2007 and had close to 30,000 followers "simply received an email on Tuesday saying that it was being taken over by the company."

He was offered some merch, but no money. According to The Telegraph, single letter handles have previously sold for 5-digit figures.

Also,

Twitter users have no legal rights over their usernames but the company's terms of service says it will only remove people's accounts in cases of trademark infringement.
It is unclear what trademarks Mr Musk's X owns, although he does own the x.com domain name

posted by cheshyre at 6:59 AM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm doubtful if "sell-out" could carry any sting for one of the world's richest men but "poser"?

Given the hair extensions, still using his supervillain Halloween costume from a few years back as his avi, the constant blatant theft of other peoples' memes for clout, &c...

I'd suspect he's perfectly comfortable with being one of the most inauthentic posers ever to "How do you do, fellow kids?"

The lefty and trans communities there are huge, and the furries are arriving in force.

Been kicking the tyres on the Kbin / Lemmy region* of the Fediverse and, anecdotally at least, there seems to be quite a high population of Homo Furrious setting up shop there.

* And, TBH finding it more interesting than I ever did Reddit (which mostly just seemed to be the easy-teenage-new-york version of this here place). Apparently, Lemmy has a bit of a tankies problem -- as in some of the devs run an ML instance that had stuff like Uighur genocide denialism running free -- but so far I prefer the Kbin software anyway, so...
posted by Buntix at 7:00 AM on July 26, 2023

The re-branding has prompted a surprising number of friends of mine to finally quit Xitter entirely. Most had sort of wandered away in disgust already. But somehow seeing a new name attached created a decision moment for them.

There's a lot of new bad news today. X.com blocked in Indonesia and Twitter Deletes Fact-Check Of Musk Connecting Bronny James’ Cardiac Arrest To Covid Vaccine. The big one though is Elon Musk’s Rebranded Twitter Cuts Ad Prices. Also includes a new rule that "verified" gold check brand accounts will be taken away if the companies don't buy enough ads.

The company took over the @x account.

So much for my optimism about "Perhaps Elon Musk will treat him fairly." Timely reminder though that you don't own anything on Twitter. Musk can just take whatever he wants, when he wants. That's always been more or less true but Musk is capricious enough to actually be doing it. A malevolent dictator.
posted by Nelson at 7:37 AM on July 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

"What I'm really missing are the journalists and politics people."

ProPublica has a mastodon account and sometimes they boost journalist accounts.
posted by bleary at 7:55 AM on July 26, 2023

Twitter doesn't even rise to the level of the capitalist mode of production. It's still stuck in the (poorly named) asiatic mode of production..

> "societies were held in thrall by a despotic ruling clique, residing in central cities and directly expropriating surplus from largely autarkic and generally undifferentiated village communities"
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:57 AM on July 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

What I'm really missing are the journalists and politics people.

Here's the directory for the instance press.coop. You can find people to follow there to fill in your news fix. It seems to be a mix of organizations and individuals.
posted by hippybear at 8:10 AM on July 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

Oh man I love Mastodon, it's been my Twitter replacement. But following folks is still a technical disaster. You still can't follow something directly on the user's site. But I can't follow the ProPublica account at all; every method of trying to find their account on my instance (tech.lgbt) results in an error. And that press.coop directory links to a third party following app that requires all sorts of ridiculous permissions to work, including "write-only access to posts".

I thought last year when the big fall Mastodon migration happened that they'd soon fix some of the rough edges, like why is it so fucking hard to follow people? (Please do not explain it to me, I understand the technical problem.) But nope, no one has successfully fixed it.
posted by Nelson at 8:17 AM on July 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

If Twitter-I-mean-X wants to do anything in finance, it might want to look to its impersonation and swindling problems. (Wired, possibly paywalled.)
posted by humbug at 8:22 AM on July 26, 2023

Yeah, it's not a great system. I find an address I want to follow and then go to my own account to follow it. I'm following several accounts on press.coop, so it is possible, it's just not quite the smoothness, I think having to do with the instances and you need to interact through your instance.
posted by hippybear at 8:30 AM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I figured out the problem with @[e-mail]: my server (tech.lgbt) refuses to federate with newsie.social. Not entirely sure why but looking online it's probably related to some anti-trans journalists that publish there. Anyway I think that means I just can't follow them on my home instance. Surprisingly this is the first time a federation policy has actually affected me.

I can follow press.coop accounts manually and have done so. It's just a terrible user experience and I thought it was funny they had a fancy system for working around it but that was problematic for other technical reasons.

Note most of the press.coop accounts are mirrors of Twitter accounts, and I'm guessing not explicitly authorized.
posted by Nelson at 8:34 AM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

The big one though is Elon Musk’s Rebranded Twitter Cuts Ad Prices.

It's been curiously fascinating watching my ads on mobile Twitter evolve -- a while ago it was all fly-by-night dropshippers flogging the same tat, recently it's shifted more towards AI newsletters, rise-and-grinder hustlers promoting themselves for follows, hyper-specific and very irrelevant-to-me trade associations, and -- most disturbingly -- a spate of thinly-veiled right-wing orgs.

I habitually do "why did I see this ad" before blocking, and there's very little ad targeting on any of these -- usually just "individuals living in the United States", occasionally with an age-range qualifier. Never any geographic targeting beyond that, which is why I get ads for random car dealerships thousands of miles away.

Also includes a new rule that "verified" gold check brand accounts will be taken away if the companies don't buy enough ads.

Because extorting your advertisers with "nice brand, would be a shame if someone impersonated it" is really endearing.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:36 AM on July 26, 2023 [13 favorites]

I only he'd done this a year ago, the 'future state' text could have mentioned NFTs and decentralization instead of AI

There's a different "Fringe" opening credits sequence for each month of Musk's ownership of... of... that thing.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:16 AM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

But following folks is still a technical disaster.

I found a chrome plugin (guessing similar exist for other browsers) that saves the copy / paste / search bit of the hassle.

Still, a lot to be improved though. Also with things like sharing links to posts, like with the @garius one above the URL is via mastodon.scot which means it's only interactive for people with an account on that instance. In hindsight, I should probably have loaded it up via my mefi.social account and posted that link instead.
posted by Buntix at 9:45 AM on July 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm entirely unsure what you mean by "it's only interactive for people with an account on that instance". I can load it and read it fine on the open web. If I wanted to comment on it, I'd have to look at it through my instance login, but that's true for any website I think.
posted by hippybear at 9:53 AM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Facebook has a very shallow system for personalizing ads.

Every time I click on a YouTube video that is an outlier of my normal recommendations, I have to ask myself if I'm willing to suffer through a week of having videos similar to the one I'm clicking on recommended to me. It isn't always clear what the category "similar" might mean to the algorithm, but it's always overwhelming and is often polluting and crippling until it realizes I only wanted ONE of those.
posted by hippybear at 10:10 AM on July 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

Perhaps Elon Musk will treat him fairly. There's always a first time for everything!

surprising absolutely no one, twitter just stole the guy's handle
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:11 AM on July 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

If I wanted to comment on it, I'd have to look at it through my instance login

Yup, I was meaning that for monolithic social media sites such as Twitter / Facebook / Bluesky / etc. you can be guaranteed that any link is to the instance you have an account on because there is only one. With a federated setup you currently have to go through extra steps. Admittedly this is true of any site, but interacting via comments/likes/saves is a largish part of what puts the social in social media.
posted by Buntix at 10:32 AM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Used to love Twitter, but I'm out.

Meta is the devil.

I can't figure out Mastadon.

Maybe it's for the best?
posted by chaz at 10:56 AM on July 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yaccarino must be going insane knowing that they could still walk this back, but won't.

She knew exactly what she was signing up for. All I can say is, I hope the paycheck is worth it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:58 AM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Instance Changer bookmarklet is useful. It switches between profiles or posts on their home instance, and your home instance. It makes boosting and following much more straightforward.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:37 AM on July 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

Graphic design continues to be Elon's passion.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:18 PM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well I didn't want to give Elon a click. :(
posted by mazola at 3:34 PM on July 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Graphic design continues to be Elon's passion.

It's like if the tiktok logo animation was made by someone who hated photosensitive epileptics.
posted by jedicus at 3:41 PM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thank you to bleary and hippybear for suggesting journalists on mastodon. I should have been more specific: the journalists I miss are the ones covering local politics, not national. I don't think a generic directory of journalists is the best way for me to find that.

Also, it looks like press.coop stopped working about a week ago, and was just a mirror from twitter anyway.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:23 PM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

i guess if you're ok with the growing opinion that you're the people sitting down to dinner with the nazi

I think you may need check yourself here.
posted by srboisvert at 4:40 PM on July 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Every time I click on a YouTube video that is an outlier of my normal recommendations, I have to ask myself if I'm willing to suffer through a week of having videos similar to the one I'm clicking on recommended to me. It isn't always clear what the category "similar" might mean to the algorithm, but it's always overwhelming and is often polluting and crippling until it realizes I only wanted ONE of those.

YouTube is the worst. Every so often I'll watch one of those "arguing about constitutional rights in a traffic stop" videos, but it inevitably leads to weeks of wacky right wing suggestions. Something that I've appreciated about Twitter, despite all the dysfunction, is that it never really seemed to do that.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:41 PM on July 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gruber: Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino’s Company-Wide Memo
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:53 PM on July 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

I don't notice youtube's recommendation algorithm because I don't use the Home page. I mostly stick to my existing subscriptions, and when I use the search to look for specific things, I sort by upload date to get rid of most of the unrelated recommendations they sneak into the default sort.

The poor matches I get from keyword searches work pretty well for discovering related channels I might be interested in, and as far as I can tell they don't have that nasty behavior you get from the normal recommendation algorithm.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:00 PM on July 26, 2023

Elon personally unbans a Qanon influencer who posted infamous CSAM (child sexual abuse material) (nitter link, cw for screenshots of a few horrified tweets reacting to the images)
posted by BungaDunga at 5:13 PM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

YouTube is the worst. Every so often I'll watch one of those "arguing about constitutional rights in a traffic stop" videos, but it inevitably leads to weeks of wacky right wing suggestions.

You have to be SO selective and ride the "do not recommend channel" option for a week if you want to watch any videos on prepper adjacent stuff like camping... the worst thing, though, is that apparently somewhere in the algorithm Google is looking at all videos watched from your IP address, because if I connect my phone to the public wifi at work for a day, oh boy does it screw up my recommendations.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:36 PM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I watch a lot of leftist and trans activist content on Youtube, and Youtube gives me endless recommendations for anti-trans rants and livestreams of conservative church sermons. I hit "do not recommend channel" but that shit always comes back anyway. Also, weirdly, lots of stuff about trains. Youtube really wants to get me into fascism and trains.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:02 PM on July 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Maximus Youtube: "Are You Not Into Trains?"
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:11 PM on July 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

One of my favorite podcast hosts is a leftist trans woman who's extremely into trains so I choose to believe Alice Caldwell-Kelly is just cool enough to warp the algorithm
posted by jason_steakums at 6:12 PM on July 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

> I think you may need check yourself here.

look at what's happening on that website. i stand by what i said.
posted by glonous keming at 6:18 PM on July 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

watching more and more of the birds and ancillary bird stuff gradually 𝕩ed out over the course of the last few days reminds me a little bit of the closing credits of death of stalin

don't watch if you haven't seen the movie, like, it isn't a spoiler unless you count spoilers for the 20^th century as spoilers, it's just that it hits extra hard when watched after the rest of the movie
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:58 PM on July 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Youtube really wants to get me into fascism and trains.

They want you to make the trans run on time.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:14 PM on July 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Stand back from the edge of the platform.
posted by flabdablet at 8:46 PM on July 26, 2023

Bloomber - CityLab - Transportation - The Problem With Mussolini and His Trains -A closer look at the transportation achievements of an infamous authoritarian.

...

As a former journalist, the Italian dictator understood mass media and propaganda, and admiring profiles of the charismatic strongman in the U.S. and U.K. press during the 1920s and early 1930s often dutifully repeated his boasts about Italy’s sweeping modernization. “The story that Mussolini made the trains run on time arose in the late ‘20s and gained credence abroad mainly because of well-heeled British tourists who considered the hopelessly refractory Italians governable only by dictatorial means,” wrote Victoria de Grazia, a Columbia history professor, in The New York Times back in 1994. “His regime built magnificent central stations and upgraded the main lines on which businessmen, politicians and comfort-minded tourists sped between Milan and Rome.”

posted by sebastienbailard at 9:16 PM on July 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it occurred to me that there was a joke to be made with the "Nazis + trains running on time" stuff, but to be honest I'm too fed up with the whole thing to find it funny at all. Like, Youtube just keeps trying to show me transphobes, sermons and freaking trains, it happens every day, and it's creepy as hell. There's no benign explanation for why they keep recommending anti-trans stuff to a trans person. Either some goon at Youtube programmed the bots to show transphobe shit to anybody who searches for trans rights stuff, or so many people watch transphobic shit that when I watch something about trans rights, the bots just see "trans" in the title and conclude I must be a transphobe too.

Oh, fuck. I watched a few episodes of Trainwreckords, that Todd in the Shadows show about albums that ended bands' careers. That's it, that's why Youtube thinks I'm horny for trains. Either that or maybe I misspelled trans rights as "trains rights" once, and the bots have been confused ever since. I'm not a trains rights activist, Youtube.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:32 PM on July 26, 2023 [9 favorites]

Japanese pop star Gackt has thrown down the gauntlet and has said he will fight attempts to rebrand Twitter's Japanese arm as X Japan.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:55 PM on July 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

> Youtube really wants to get me into fascism and trains.
> posted by Ursula Hitler

Hmm. It might be the username, a lot of people named Ursula are really into trains.
posted by UN at 12:21 AM on July 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

[More seriously I often get "recommended videos" which are the complete opposite of my political leanings, to put it mildly. It seems to happen especially if I don't use YouTube in a while, then I have to mark them all as spam or whatever for a while then they usually go away. It's frustrating because just having to see some face of a right wing extremist... Gah get off my phone, I do not want]
posted by UN at 12:35 AM on July 27, 2023

Over at Tumblr, who remember hired a lot of engineers after they were kicked out of Twitter, they are now beta testing a design which is basically a clone of old twitter, it is going down about as well as could be expected.
posted by Lanark at 1:27 AM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Youtube just keeps trying to show me transphobes, sermons and freaking trains.

I would not put it past Google to be using the word 'trans' as a synonym for 'trains'.
posted by Lanark at 1:32 AM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Similarly, TikTok's been experimenting with having users do text bits along with the usual video.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:34 AM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Trains lead to Futurism, and we all know where that leads.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:45 AM on July 27, 2023

That prompted me to do a google image search because I'm fuzzy on futurism as a movement.

http://exhibitions.guggenheim.org/futurism/heroic_futurism/#2. That webpage has a little facebook icon for sharing, along with a (vintage) twitter bird icon.

That made realize, I'm sure webpage designers will not be enthusiastic to drop in an 𝕏 for sharing on 𝕏itter that looks just like the close/cancel button associated with annoying webpage ads. Or close/cancel for UIs almost everywhere.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:12 AM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm wondering - if Musk had been more patient and clever about it, maybe he could have kept twitter going but judiciously tweaked and biased it to muffle left-wing voices and amplify terfs, modern neo-nazis ... conservatives generally - thereby having a much greater negative effect on politics and society.

Maybe we should be thankful he started burning it down to the ground, rather than weaponizing it in a more competent way
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:24 AM on July 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

Protip: Turn off and clear your viewing history in YouTube, and it'll only make recommendations based on what you're subscribed to. I don't get recommended any of this stuff, just endless videos about synthesizers which, yeah, I'm OK with.
posted by parm at 2:35 AM on July 27, 2023 [10 favorites]

Double protip: Use FreeTube to watch YouTube content. That way you can avoid being tracked or advertised at as well as maintaining a subscriptions list without even being logged into a Google account.
posted by flabdablet at 3:35 AM on July 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

In the last few days the trickle of Icelandic tweeters migrating to Bluesky has become a flood. It’s fascinating to watch how communities suddenly move en masse all of a sudden.
posted by Kattullus at 3:36 AM on July 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

they are now beta testing a design which is basically a clone of old twitter, it is going down about as well as could be expected.
posted by Lanark at 9:27 AM on July 27 [+] [!]

Before clicking the link: I'm picturing an almost entirely events hall, in the middle of which sits a child's paddling pool filled with balls. Though, not the regular ball pit balls but ping-pong balls.
posted by Buntix at 6:36 AM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

> Elon personally unbans a Qanon influencer who posted infamous CSAM (child sexual abuse material) (nitter link, cw for screenshots of a few horrified tweets reacting to the images)

Lauren McKenzie @TheMcKenziest

"This account is posting child porn but only some of us saw it so we're reinstating this account"

WHAT

Elon Musk @elonmusk Super Follower

Only people on our CSE team have seen those pictures. For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account.

ALT 5 PM 7/26/23

6:33 PM 7/26/23 from Earth 193K Views

posted by sebastienbailard at 7:25 AM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

the material in question is, apparently, some of the most notorious material on the internet. the case is infamous.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:38 AM on July 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Some of the discussion around the supposed 'twitter economy' has had me wondering—how do the click/ragebait posters and reply farmers actually monetize all their engagement?

Do you start getting a check from ads run against your posts once you reach some level of following, that no one talks about? Or is only from driving traffic to outside content farms, etc?
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:58 AM on July 27, 2023

Wow! Just ... WOW. I hope the epilogue of this fuckery isn't just that Elon Musk is broke, but that Elon Musk is in jail.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:12 AM on July 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

snuffleupagus, over the years most of the monetization in the Twitter Economy came off-network. You build your brand on Twitter, then direct folks to other properties (newsletters, podcasts, book sales, etc) that you charge for. Also some influencers were paid directly by Brands to tweet about their products with varying degrees of appropriate disclosure.

All that economy is disrupted now that Twitter is the CSAM and Nazi platform. Musk's Twitter has a new thing where they're supposedly sharing ad revenue from tweets directly with the tweet creator. The payments appear arbitrary and directed at right wing influencers. So far I think they're saying this program will continue but I give it even-odds to last more than a couple of months.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on July 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

Anybody had eyes on Mona Lisa recently?
posted by flabdablet at 8:17 AM on July 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

The payments appear arbitrary and directed at right wing influencers.

One of those influencers that Twitter is paying: The q-anon guy who posted CSAM
posted by BungaDunga at 8:23 AM on July 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

It appears that Ex still has its original identity on its branding website. Download the bird in all its forms!
posted by njohnson23 at 8:50 AM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

most of the monetization in the Twitter Economy came off-network

That's what I had thought, and it makes Musk's forced rebranding all the more unhinged. So far as the right-wing paid posting, it's interesting that catturd refused to answer that question. (Woe to future textbook editors.)

It was already improbable enough for Twitter to have succeeded on that basis. Even Insta is now experimenting with direct monetization for influences. Maybe Musk really is deluded enough to think there's more value in ruining Twitter to force yet another payment company no one asked for onto its userbase. But the obvious move would have been to re-organize with Twitter kept intact under the X banner. Maybe Musk refuses to do anything that resembles something Zuck has already done.

On the CSAM stuff, from NBC News, this January:

Twitter accounts that offer to trade or sell child sexual abuse material under thinly veiled terms and hashtags have remained online for months, even after CEO Elon Musk said he would combat child exploitation on the platform....“Priority #1,” Musk called it in a Nov. 20 tweet. He’s also criticized Twitter’s former leadership, claiming that they did little to address child sexual exploitation, and that he intended to change things.

But since that declaration, at least dozens of accounts have continued to post hundreds of tweets in aggregate using terms, abbreviations and hashtags indicating the sale of what Twitter calls child sexual exploitation material....[done to]offer to sell or trade content that is commonly known as child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
...

It’s unclear just how many people remain at Twitter to address CSAM after Musk enacted several rounds of layoffs and issued an ultimatum that led to a wave of resignations. Musk has engaged some outside help, and the company said in December that its suspension of accounts for child sexual exploitation had risen sharply. A representative for the U.S. child exploitation watchdog the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that the number of reports of CSAM detected and flagged by the company remains unchanged since Musk’s takeover.

Twitter also disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety council, which included nonprofits focused on addressing CSAM......overall headcount had dwindled to around 1,340 active employees as of early January, with around 20 people working in the company’s Trust & Safety organization. That is less than half of the previous Trust and Safety workforce.

There's no doubt that rabid anti-semitism and white supremacism have returned to the platform in force and reporting takes longer to be acted upon than it used to. In the open and plain and as offensive form as possible, not dogwhistles and etc. I also suspect in many of the cases they now just suspend the account until the user cleans up their Xcretions, rather than banning them. Likely by Musk's decree.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:08 AM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Over at Tumblr,

Seems the updates may have broken the SMS 2F authentication, I tried logging in no code was received. Apparently I'm not the only one [reddit].
posted by Buntix at 9:09 AM on July 27, 2023

Meanwhile, Elon Musk plans an appeal to the US Supreme Court over his 2018 SEC settlement which ordered Tesla to impose controls over Musk's social media posts after he falsely tweeted "funding secured."

So, how many lawsuits against Musk & Twitter are currently ongoing? Severance payments (a suit again b/c they're ghosting the arbitrators), non-payment of rents, the lawyers who oversaw the purchase, just saw that music publishers are going after them for copyright infringement...
posted by cheshyre at 9:10 AM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Don't forget the cases in the EU about him not taking down Nazi propaganda. Germany ain't gonna fuck around with that.
posted by hippybear at 9:14 AM on July 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

The problem as I see it is that elmo's response to anyone telling him to do something he doesn't want to do is to simply not do it. He just shrugs and says, "make me." And gallingly, they can't make him. Not without a lot more paperwork and court filings and then getting to bank seizures. I meant that's what civilization is up against. There's years of due process and lawyers fees for each little thing he doesn't want to do, and all he has to do is ignore everything and keep on being a toddler with his fingers in his ears, and nothing will happen to stop it until/unless he is convicted of a felony that will see him actually imprisoned.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:29 AM on July 27, 2023 [12 favorites]

The relatively brief history of his kind of plutocracy also includes examples of it collapsing more rapidly that could have seemed possible; but there's probably more superstructure in place to protect concentrated wealth like this than there has been before. Aside from the actual aristocracy and monarchy, etc, that preceded it.

And if he did start getting spanked hard enough by some kind of immune response to his antics threatening to undermine that function, at that level, and lost all of his fans along the way, then I would expect him to enter some kind of reclusive late-Hughes phase rather than pressing things to the point he's in danger of being arrested.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:11 AM on July 27, 2023

> It appears that Ex still has its original identity on its branding website.

"Our logo is our most recognizable asset. That’s why we’re so protective of it." Ha ha!
posted by Turd Ferguson at 11:57 AM on July 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

That made realize, I'm sure webpage designers will not be enthusiastic to drop in an 𝕏 for sharing on 𝕏itter that looks just like the close/cancel button associated with annoying webpage ads.

Can confirm. Was going through the 2FA to download a Twitter data archive and selected email, but it didn't arrive, decided to go for the SMS option instead, clicked the big X at the top of the modal window to close it.

Took me a few moments, admittedly I do have ADHD brain/unfocus, but also been doing web dev for a living for 26 years, so it's not like it's the first time I've used a web UI...
posted by Buntix at 12:35 PM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Xcretions

This is good.

It follows logically that signal-boosting on 𝕏 would then become "re-𝕏creting", which nicely fits its remaining userbase's rather Human Centipede captive vibe.
posted by flabdablet at 12:45 PM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

> It appears that Ex still has its original identity on its branding website.

... aaaaand it's gone. Or at least behind a login gate (functionally equivalent, as far as I'm concerned).

But the PDF is still there for now.
posted by Turd Ferguson at 2:04 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m sure people have noticed that a lot of romanization uses “X” to indicate the “SH” sound…..
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:42 PM on July 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

> a third party following app that requires all sorts of ridiculous permissions to work, including "write-only access to posts".

Tee hee. Hellō's founder is called Dick Hardt.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:12 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

he's such a self-parody:
Elon Musk says Twitter will soon only offer dark mode because it’s ‘better in every way’
posted by cheshyre at 5:21 PM on July 27, 2023

Okay, fine, just deleted Twitter from my phone. Will delete my account tomorrow.
posted by mollweide at 6:14 PM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

> open nazi xeet*
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:16 PM on July 27, 2023

Good glob, how do you actually delete your account?
posted by mollweide at 6:17 PM on July 27, 2023

It's probably against the terms of service to delete your account now.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:18 PM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't doubt it. There's no obvious way to do it on the website, and I really did delete the app from my phone.
posted by mollweide at 6:23 PM on July 27, 2023

It was buried under Settings and Support. You can at least deactivate your account, which I did. I wish there was a big button with an X on it to complete delete your entire Twitter history, not that I actually did that much there.
posted by mollweide at 6:26 PM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed for linking to an anti-semitic meme on Twitter. Mentioning that its occurring is fine, but there's zero need to link to it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:26 PM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I greatly appreciate the work that our mods do here, and I understand the reason for the removal. I will say that tweet was the final straw for me and Twitter, so at least it served some purpose while it was visible. If you're on the fence about leaving Twitter, this was a good reason to do it. I never saw the worst of Twitter before given who I followed and how I used it, but that was enough to make me quit entirely.
posted by mollweide at 6:32 PM on July 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

I wish there was a big button with an X on it to complete delete your entire Twitter history, not that I actually did that much there.

He's been removing dormant accounts so if you just ignore it long enough it will disappear. The accounts of two dead friends of mine have been erased in the past few months. That's a bit of a thing.
posted by hippybear at 6:38 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Without the link (which was to the trending page, not any specific post), 'He's Jewish' is the phrase trending, originally in the context of tweets about SBF and 'white privilege,' now rolling along on its own. There is some counter-posting going on.

Only a couple of the reports I've submitted recently been acted on, and they indicate the action I expected:

They can’t Tweet, Retweet, or Like content, and we’ll ask them to remove the reported content if they want to regain full access to their account. Your safety is important to us. If they break our rules again, we’ll respond with a more severe action, like suspension.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:03 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Good glob, how do you actually delete your account?

As well as deactivating it on twitter itself you can use a service like https://tweetdeleter.com/ to delete all your tweets and likes. Admittedly it is $12 if you have over 3000 tweets (for one month, which is fine for doing a full nuke). I'm running it to slightly reduce the chances of my stuff being used to feed his x.ai project (note to self: remember to post a load of tweets with random, non-dictionary words). Not sure it will really make much difference, but deactivated presumably keep the content, at least for a while, so they can be reactivated.

Speaking of x.ai Not just @x: Elon Musk also took @xAI from its original user for his AI company [mashable]. Apparently done without so much as a how-do-you-do, and X and X.ai aren't even officially businesseswise.
posted by Buntix at 7:17 AM on July 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just started the deleter running on 23,356 of my tweets.

Estimated completion Wed, Aug 2, 2023, 11:40 AM

It's like being back doing warez over dial up.
posted by Buntix at 7:28 AM on July 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

It didn't take that long some while ago. I suspect the limiter is Twitter-I-mean-X's increasingly janky API.
posted by humbug at 7:58 AM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Admittedly it is $12 if you have over 3000 tweets

This is a scam. They have no access to twitter to actually delete anything. And no company actually deletes anything.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:00 AM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

update row, set DELETED=1
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:12 AM on July 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

And no company actually deletes anything.

For me, it makes sense as I do want to keep my account and @ for now on the (slim) off chance the place does end up getting sold off to someone less of a big dumb megalomaniacal Nazi.

Also, while they may not be reliably deleting the data (Mudge has said as much from when he was head of security there) they are legally required to do so, so they (or whatever shady cabal or AI startup [but I repeat myself]) buys up the corpus if the place does go twits-up would be risking legal jeopardy if they use it. Hence the plan to salt it with tweets containing unique made-up words and check to see if they show up anywhere later. There are also potential GDPR ramifications in Europe as I've certainly posted things in the past such as pics of my house/garden that would definitely come under the rubric of personal information. And some of those GDPR boyos don't play.

Also, Musk is such a massive skinflint I wouldn't put it past him to be deleting data just to save on server/cloud costs. Wouldn't surprise me if the place crashes at some point and it turns out he's reformatted the backups.
posted by Buntix at 8:31 AM on July 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Just do not pay for anything related to twitter. These are scams. This is unrelated to twitter or their legal issues or obligations or whatever. Just, as a basic thing: do not give money to an unrelated service, whatever its claims.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:37 AM on July 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

It’s not a scam, it’s a service that iterates over the API and removes your tweets from the timeline. I did this process myself for free because I happen to have some experience with their service, but $12 is a perfectly reasonable amount to have someone else do it for you.
posted by migurski at 2:08 PM on July 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess one question is whether it's still working or has the API broken recently? Or will you be rate limited on how many posts you can delete in a day?
posted by RobotHero at 2:17 PM on July 28, 2023

Probably faster to just @ elon and tell him he's an impotent baby man who couldn't delete your tweets if he tried, he'd probably divert people and funding from more important things just to show some internet rando he's a big boy and they'd be gone within the hour
posted by jason_steakums at 2:31 PM on July 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

I did this process myself for free

I did start rolling my own way back when but discovered my Twitter dev account only had access to the v1 API endpoints and no longer allowed deletion, I then managed to procrastinate applying to get it upgraded long enough for them to bring in their gazillion dollars a month subscriptions do be able to do anything meaningful with it.

Did consider writing a JS bookmarklet or Chrome plugin to do it via the web, but that was just going to be a load of faff and time I could be spending doing stuff I actually get paid for :D
posted by Buntix at 3:18 PM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Migrationwiz is a similar kludge for transferring the contents of email accounts. No doubt you could kludge your own, but sometimes it's better to open a can of someone else's dog food and get on with the rest of everything.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:35 PM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

NPR: 'X' logo installed atop Twitter building, spurring San Francisco to investigate

Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure "consistency with the historic nature of the building" and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:58 PM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned here before, but the MetaFilter profile Twitter widget seems to be broken. But I don’t know if it’s a Twitter problem or a MeFi problem because the profile Flickr widget seems also to be broken.
posted by Kattullus at 3:32 AM on July 29, 2023

I used a chrome plugin to delete everything. It has a cap of 100, so I just kept running it until I was done. Did the same for all my likes and follows. My account is currently just a list of followers.
Then I set my bio to an explanation of why I left and a link to my mastodon account and locked the account.
It doesn't amount to much in the larger scheme, but it felt like the right thing to do.
posted by signal at 5:43 AM on July 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

MetaFilter profile Twitter widget seems to be broken

Elon broke those. I had an embedded widget on my blog too that broke recently. I removed it rather than look for a fix.
posted by Servo5678 at 11:26 AM on July 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

If it involves an API, chances are you'd have to pay to get it to work again.
posted by hippybear at 12:01 PM on July 29, 2023

They can’t rename the Apple IPhone App to X because Apple doesn’t let apps have a single letter for a name. You must use at least 2 characters.
posted by interogative mood at 1:27 PM on July 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

They can’t rename the Apple IPhone App to X because Apple doesn’t let apps have a single letter for a name.

I certainly hope that Alphabet allows the Android store to have single letter names, and that it has 26 of them.
posted by hippybear at 1:34 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Imagine no more. This is my life now. — @realchrisjbeale. Two videos of the new unpermitted X sign in Musk's squat in San Francisco. It's incredibly bright, like blindingly so, and apparently is shining right into the poster's window.
posted by Nelson at 2:04 PM on July 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

I went on the App Store to see it and one of the example tweets was really hinky, so I checked the original and sure enough, they’d just changed the word “Twitter” to “X” [image link if you don’t want to go to Twitter]
posted by Kattullus at 2:08 PM on July 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Musk now seems to be trolling the building landlord for reporting the sign to the police. The record of the complaint has a Tweeter representative claiming the sign is temporary for an event. Regardless, it seems to be clearly illegal.

Honestly don't understand why the building owners aren't just changing the locks at this point, Musk must sure be in breach of contract, even without the non-payment of rent.

Above links are images from the twitter thread: https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1685341765086142464
posted by Buntix at 3:02 PM on July 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Great, another tantrum. This fucker is 51 going on 15. Let's just cut to the screaming-of-"YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM!!" and slamming-of-bedroom-doors stages of the performance and move on
posted by hangashore at 4:11 PM on July 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

That sign does *not* look safe. (Twitter link)
posted by cheshyre at 5:50 PM on July 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

FFS, it looks a giant Erector set.
posted by mollweide at 6:01 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wonder how they got the larger scissor lift up there. And as seems to be usual no harnesses (despite leading edge to several story fall), and no tool lanyards.

No, wait, the guy climbing the steel has a harness/lanyard. Hope it's a double and the second is tied off.
posted by Mitheral at 6:05 PM on July 29, 2023

This video showing how the sign does a photo strobe effect is nothing something anyone with sensitively to that should watch or be near. Can you imagine if you lived across the street and had epilepsy? This is why we need fines to scale with assets so that clowns like Elon get hit with billion dollar a day fines for this kind of shit.
posted by interogative mood at 6:12 PM on July 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

If that sign is where I think it is it's on Twitter's rooftop deck. You can just walk out from the cafe, people have lunch out there. Easy enough to do a temporary install. Doesn't explain the giant flashing light though.
posted by Nelson at 10:25 PM on July 29, 2023

San Francisco Inspectors Still Can’t Get On Roof To Inspect Elon Musk’s New ‘X’ Sign [Deadline.com]

On Saturday, the same inspector reported a “2nd attempt to gain access was performed on 7/29/23 after conversations with property manager on 7/28/23. However, upon arrival access was denied again by tenant. The original [Notice Of Violation] document issued on 7/28/23 was redrafted and issued on 7/29/23.”

can no one get an interview with the building owner?
posted by glonous keming at 10:39 PM on July 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Honestly don't understand why the building owners aren't just changing the locks at this point, Musk must sure be in breach of contract, even without the non-payment of rent.

This isn't how eviction works, and you wouldn't want it to be.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:49 AM on July 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

This isn't how eviction works, and you wouldn't want it to be.

Well yeah, that was really just daydreaming that he should face some consequences or checks on his terminal wankery. Still a firm believer that landlords shouldn't be a thing that exists.
posted by Buntix at 4:16 AM on July 30, 2023

This isn't how eviction works, and you wouldn't want it to be.

May not be how eviction works if you're a multibillion dollar company, but if you're a poor family struggling to meet your monthly rent, you BET you could show up and find the locks changed. If you're lucky your possessions won't be in the house you're now locked out of.
posted by hippybear at 6:49 AM on July 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

That (being a lockout without a judgment) rarely happens. Source: I defend evictions. Including of low-income tenants.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:03 AM on July 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

If that sign is where I think it is it's on Twitter's rooftop deck. You can just walk out from the cafe, people have lunch out there.

Yeah that photo confirms what I thought; this is Twitter's rooftop deck. It'd have been easy to haul out some rebar, overbright LEDs, and sandbags (!) to set up this little bit of light pollution. I misspoke though, people used to have lunch out there, back when Twitter served lunch to employees. Perhaps now it's a tent city for people who need to sleep at the office.
posted by Nelson at 7:12 AM on July 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Musk's updated Twitter's tagline to (the presumably incoherent 420 reference rather than self-aware) "Blaze Your Glory!!" from the previous, continuously relevant question, “What’s happening?!”

Also Twitter Threatens Legal Action Against Nonprofit That Tracks Hate Speech [NY Times]
posted by Buntix at 6:08 AM on July 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

The city should suspend the building’s occupancy permit pending the completion of the inspection and block access to the building.
posted by interogative mood at 7:10 AM on July 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wish some court could tell Musk that he can't file any new suits until he finishes some of the ones he currently has...

Meanwhile, city inspectors have come by multiple times to try to inspect the new sign, and "tenant" has refused access.

(as long as I'm daydreaming of consequences, poetic justice would be for him to be underneath when that blatantly unsafe sign topples over)
posted by cheshyre at 7:22 AM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

And in the face of what should have been an epic shitstorm of biblical proportions over his welcoming a fascist sexual predator back onto the platform thus encouraging the sharing and trading of CSAM... uh, what were we talking about again? **stares at bright blinking lights**
posted by hangashore at 7:28 AM on July 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Twitter brought Kanye back on Saturday.

Groypers and etc. are enthusiastically and openly shit-posting on any topics relating to antisemitism, white supremacy etc. in a volume I haven't seen since the first wave of alt-right online convulsion, directly dogpiling the tweet author, and seem to be facing little to no action by the platform. The "JQ" (as code for the 'Jewish Question') is increasingly being openly referenced in online and social media as a homing signal for these people.

The widely viewed 'alpha male' Fresh & Fit show, which has Black hosts, has been platforming Nick Fuentes (including getting him to say the N-word for laughs, and hosting "debates" on his politics with dubious 'progressive' interlocutors like the edgelord streamer Destiny); let's see how long it takes Elon to restore Fuentes' account too.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:49 AM on July 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

Also, We write in response to the ridiculous letter you sent on behalf of @X...
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:04 AM on July 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Tellingly they posted the letter on Twitter/X and the twitter link is the one that gets shared here and elsewhere. We have to break this habit.
posted by interogative mood at 8:27 AM on July 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

Does that Twitter user even work for/with them? Here it is on their own website: Letters from the lawyers: Musk threatens CCDH with brazen attempt to silence honest criticism.
posted by nobody at 8:36 AM on July 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

(Oh, but yeah, either way: agreed that we should be breaking the habit of sharing links to Twitter here, especially when those tweets are just copying/linking to the real sources...)
posted by nobody at 8:39 AM on July 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yeah I'm done with sharing their links or even clicking on them, I don't want their shit on my computer. With their tilt towards bigotry, fascism and CSAM they should have just rebranded as Forefront, or more to the point, 4Front (4chan + Stormfront)
posted by hangashore at 8:44 AM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

For the past few weeks, I’ve been mulling over the right contextual hook to describe why it matters that Elon Musk, the world’s most visibly divorced man, simply cannot be bothered to comply with the law. And then, as luck would have it, this week the heavens opened up and dropped a giant steel “X” sign on the roof of Twitter/X Corp’s San Francisco headquarters. Search promptly over. ... You may have heard that San Francisco sits right on top of the San Andreas fault line, is sandwiched between two others (Hayward and San Gergorio), and has something of a reputation as being prone to regular shaking and rumbling from the underlying seismic activity. A forty-foot tall structure, constructed of steel, weighing thousands of pounds, with dimensions that are far taller than wide, being hastily erected on top of a building, with strapped-on sandbags as the primary counterweight does not exactly inspire confidence on the public safety front.
ESG Hound writes about the ridiculous stupidity of Musk and also SpaceX in their most recent newsletter.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:49 AM on July 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

Tellingly they posted the letter on Twitter/X

Yes, the conversation about Twitter is happening on Twitter. As someone who makes a special effort to share primary sources here on Metafilter, I find all the scolding about posting Twitter links frustrating. Sometimes I find primary sources on Twitter. Finding some other source is often a fair amount of work. And no, Nitter is not reliable enough to substitute.

Please consider that when you complain about Twitter links you're asking folks to do the labor for you to find another source. Maybe instead of scolding, you could find another source yourself? I want Twitter to go away entirely too. But it's still a place where relevant conversation is happening, particularly about Twitter. And, at the moment at least, you can read a single tweet without a login.

I suggest any further conversation about "should Twitter links be posted to Metafilter" happen on Metatalk.

Anyway, this time I did the work for anyone who doesn't want to visit a Twitter link. Here's CCDH's blog post about the threatening letter from Twitter and their lawyer's detailed, footnoted response.
posted by Nelson at 8:57 AM on July 31, 2023 [14 favorites]

On Saturday, the same inspector reported a “2nd attempt to gain access was performed on 7/29/23 after conversations with property manager on 7/28/23. However, upon arrival access was denied again by tenant. The original [Notice Of Violation] document issued on 7/28/23 was redrafted and issued on 7/29/23.”

I don't deal with building inspectors much, but in my experience with other public agencies doing enforcement, they tend to move very, very slowly... until all of a sudden a line is crossed and they escalate quickly. Basically, they prioritize getting people back in compliance over immediate penalties. So you can go through a long process of inspections and warning letters and all kinds of opportunities for second and third chances, and then it is determined that you are non-compliant and all of a sudden you are facing back-dated fines and shutdowns and legal filings.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:34 AM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Is the "X" for "extreme right wing?"
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:31 AM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yes, the conversation about Twitter is happening on Twitter. As someone who makes a special effort to share primary sources here on Metafilter, I find all the scolding about posting Twitter links frustrating.

I don't think the issue is posting Twitter/X links, but rather not identifying those links as such in the comment.

Some users (ok me but likely many who are in this post) are trying to break free of that site and would like to choose to avoid it entirely.
posted by mazola at 10:45 AM on July 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is a thread about Twitter that has a link to X.com in the FPP. I second the suggestion to make a MeTa about this if you feel a new sitewide policy is appropriate.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:00 AM on July 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

Is the "X" for "extreme right wing?"

I've heard it described as a sans-serif swastika.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:14 AM on July 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

Nitter is not reliable enough to substitute.

Personally I've only ever seen Nitter fail when Twitter has as well, and since Nitter fails fast instead of half-loading a page that then sits there and grinds for approximately forever before refusing to grind any further, I'm completely satisfied with the automatic redirect.
posted by flabdablet at 11:43 AM on July 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Regarding the X sign: That's totally rental stage/concert lighting equipment. The trusses, black sandbags and LED light bars are totally the kind of gear you rent for concert/stage lighting and rigging.

This means it was probably fairly well rigged to deal with wind and overengineered a little, and it wasn't ever meant to be permanent.

Not defending that fucking guy because it's totally a shitty rebranding stunt and likely done specifically to annoy enough people to make the news, but from all the pics I've seen the rigging is well done and has what looks like about a non-figurative ton of sandbags on a cantilever truss that's designed for exactly this kind of temporary installation at things like concerts and festivals where they have to plan for high winds or even random guests climbing on things they shouldn't be climbing on.
posted by loquacious at 1:12 PM on July 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Some users (ok me but likely many who are in this post) are trying to break free of that site and would like to choose to avoid it entirely.

It won't work for mobile devices unfortunately, but on desktop you can always edit your hosts file. I pointed both twitter.com and x.com at 0.0.0.0 so my browser now goes to an 'unable to connect' page. Elon begone!
posted by hangashore at 1:15 PM on July 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

https://twitter.com/CultureCrave/status/1686096951719387140: "The X sign has been taken down from Twitter's HQ"

The tweet has a pic of the two uprights sans the X with a lifting platform next to them. Currently, no other info in the thread if you want to save a click.
posted by Buntix at 1:44 PM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

So a stupid, childish, probably expensive bit of grandstanding is gone. Couldn’t happen to a better stupid, childish, rich, grandstander.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:52 PM on July 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Elon is acting like that kid at the back of Eighth grade math class who just keeps acting out until he gets in trouble and then he backs off until he figures out new boundaries to test, rinse repeat.

It's a really peculiar level of "man baby" being played out on a world stage with all the cameras on him all the time. Does he have zero self-awareness, or is he rich enough that he doesn't give a fuck? Every story I've been told across my life has been "you can be rich as fuck but if you don't have people who value you it doesn't matter". Maybe he's got people who matter to him? I hear his exes and children aren't too fond of him, and Thiel used to be a friend, but buying yourself into an Iron Man movie doesn't buy you actual friends.
posted by hippybear at 1:53 PM on July 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does he have zero self-awareness, or is he rich enough that he doesn't give a fuck?

Figure it's sort of the combo platter: zero self-awareness + nepobaby + lucking out enough to mostly never face any real consequence or rejection.

Hence the anti-trans tantrum from no longer being Grimes' centre of attention (possibly also his daughter, but never seen any evidence he cares the slightest whit about his kids other than spreading his genetic legacy) and the current make-everything X tantrum from when his initial Very Clever Idea for the X-everything app was rightfully kicked to the kerb.

Not sure if they were friends (Peter Thiel thinks Elon Musk is a ‘fraud,’ and 6 other unexpected details about the billionaires' love-hate relationship), but in the good timeline 90's both of they would have been cowering, mewling, and rapidly decapitated by Wesley Snipes. Honestly, it's hard to imagine how any two people could both look like vampires, without it making them even the slightest bit cooler.
posted by Buntix at 2:27 PM on July 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

Honestly, it's hard to imagine how any two people could both look like vampires

Maybe they both are using the same plastic surgeon.
posted by hippybear at 2:39 PM on July 31, 2023

Thiel used to be a friend

Elon just today made a thunderingly adolescent and apparently homophobic joke about anal sex and Prime Minister Trudeau (via an 'I ❤️ Canada' shirt under a jacket), right next to the Blaze Your Glory motto change announcement. And then re-posted* it, just to make sure no one missed it.


*the 'Tweet' button has changed to 'post,' which is some genericide I'm happy to adopt.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:52 PM on July 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's astonishing that the verb "tweet" an an internet term is listed in dictionaries but now doesn't exist as a thing any longer.
posted by hippybear at 3:13 PM on July 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's astonishing that the verb "tweet" an an internet term is listed in dictionaries but now doesn't exist as a thing any longer.

Which is the answer to the question: "What would Musk be doing differently if he was deliberately setting out to destroy Twitter".

Which is not being quite so spectacularly and obviously dumb about doing so.

Like there are bulls accidentally charging into china shops and catching the latest Twitter news on the shop TV and being like "steady on, bloke".

It's hard to think of anyone in history with such a record of unforced errors: he's like a modern-day Thomas Midgley Jr. but sans intelligence and doing all the bad stuff deliberately because he can't comprehend the context that makes it harmful.
posted by Buntix at 7:09 PM on July 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thomas Midgley Jr also spent his days inventing things that (a) worked really well and (b) there was a demand for. But when Miles Bron poisons the whole world for multiple generations, he's doing it for shits and giggles.
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 PM on July 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Who here had emotionally stunted middle-age billionaire edge-lord wannabes on their how-the-world-ends bingo card?
posted by Pouteria at 9:56 PM on July 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

> emotionally stunted middle-age billionaire edge-lord wannabes

That was the free space in the center.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:42 AM on August 1, 2023 [19 favorites]

Meet les nouveuax riches, same as l'ancien regime.

Shall we get on our knees and pray that we won't be retooled again?
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:34 AM on August 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I thought Elon was taking his excess to Texas (with apologies to George Strait X ) after hating on California generally. Isn't that still in the works?
posted by effluvia at 12:36 PM on August 1, 2023

Me with mrs. mmascolino who is very much not an online person.

her: what's with the x?
me: it's the app now.
her: but it is still twitter everywhere.
me: not any more.
her: well, that's dumb.
posted by mmascolino at 7:53 PM on August 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

16-year @music account siezed and merged with @TwitterMusic

Occasionally, buyers would approach Vaught, trying to tempt him to sell the @music handle, but the biggest offer was only around $5,000. Vaught said he was never interested because he knew that selling his handle violated Twitter's terms of service [...]

"it's highly annoying, but Twitter is still my preferred social media," Vaught said. "That's how I communicate and learn my news about what's going on. Nothing else compares." [...]

Vaught is mostly a Musk fan, as he's interested in Musk's electric cars and space developments. He said that this experience with X hasn't tainted his opinion of Musk or his relationship too much with X as a platform. He's holding out hope that Musk has a long-term plan for where Musk is taking X, but like many users, he's struggling to adjust to the rebranding. Vaught still refers to the platform by its original name.

posted by glonous keming at 6:20 PM on August 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

It seems like many of my fellow gen-x men are turning to supervillany as our midlife crisis. Musk is just the most notorious. I thought things would get better as the Boomers faded, sigh.
posted by interogative mood at 10:25 AM on August 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Rich people of every generation face the temptation, once they have the ability, to systematically remove every single person from their lives who is capable of telling them "No" or "That's a shitty idea."
posted by delfin at 11:48 AM on August 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Musk vows to fund legal bill of X users who face employer discrimination due to ‘posting or liking something on this platform’ [fortune.com]

The proposal comes with “no limit” on costs and X Corp. will “go after the boards of directors of the companies too,” he said in messages posted to the site Saturday night.

posted by glonous keming at 2:00 PM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know Disney has bigger legal fish to fry with Desantis but I hope they smack Musk's nose with a rolled up newspaper of litigation over the use of X Corp seeing as it's the title of a Marvel publication and fictional team
posted by jason_steakums at 2:11 PM on August 6, 2023

Will Musk fund the legal bills of former twitter employees fired for criticizing him?
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:03 PM on August 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Musk has done this kind of thing in the past and he never pays up iirc.
posted by interogative mood at 4:21 PM on August 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Did he watch Trump promise to pay the legal fees of people who assaulted progressives at his rallies, and think "that was so cool, i should do that, i'll be cool just like him"?
posted by tigrrrlily at 6:02 PM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

users will lose ability to block unwanted followers [CNBC.com]

“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk wrote Friday.

posted by glonous keming at 1:52 PM on August 18, 2023

I think the basic plan and why Jack is on Elon's side, beside the villainous stuff, is because it's a rich-guy challenge: can this guy make it a profitable company? Jack couldn't, and the, say, industrialists aren't going to let a consumer base like that go without a fight (manipulation and coercion and exploitation).
posted by rhizome at 1:57 PM on August 18, 2023

Business Insider India: An NYU professor with 560,000 followers says he's been locked out of his X account for over 2 weeks after declining to meet with Elon Musk
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:33 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gruber: Changing Its Name Tanked X’s Downloads in App Store and Play Store

At this moment, Threads is #2 on the App Store’s top free downloads list, and X is #51. On the Play Store, Threads is #6 and X is (scroll, scroll, scroll...) #66. (So much for Threads being the one that’s supposedly gasping for air.)

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:45 PM on August 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think the basic plan and why Jack is on Elon's side

I really don't think thats what's going on really. Twitters "consumer base" is not the golden goose you think it is, and every CEO that steps in looks at the numbers and goes "well, we can't afford to keep doing this" and fires a bunch of people. In a way, its really a kindness when the person doing the layoffs is unhinged: the person losing their job has no illusion that they had any control over it or that it was somehow their fault. The downside of course is that it exonerates the inept leadership class that keeps burning piles of money and torching the careers of engineers associated with it.

A recent episode of the (recently rebranded) Search Engine podcast covers some theories about Elon's state of mind and also touches upon Jack's endorsement of Elon. For example I learned through this episode that Jack apparently invited Musk to attend Twitter allhands to tell product and engineering teams what he thought of their product, as he had extremely high engagement status on the platform and a cult following among a certain kind of engineer.

One crucial fact the podcast guest covers that bears repeating: Twitter has always succeeded in spite of itself. At no point did anyone who founded Twitter know what they were building -- Odeo was launched as a podcasting company. Virtually every twitter feature you know about twitter came from users: hashtags, retweets, threads, etc. "At any point someone at the company could have had an idea; they never did!"
posted by pwnguin at 6:40 PM on August 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

As obnoxious as Jack is, it should not be forgotten that Twitter was profitable when Elon bought the thing. The continuing losses were due to regulatory issues many years in the past, that presumably were not ongoing. One of the first things Elon did after buying the place was get rid of all the people who were keeping the company from paying out billions of dollars going forward.
posted by wierdo at 7:17 PM on August 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

In a way, its really a kindness when the person doing the layoffs is unhinged: the person losing their job has no illusion that they had any control over it or that it was somehow their fault.

Last I heard, Elon has not paid the severance pay that was promised to laid off workers. Very likely he never intended to, and made that promise only to prevent workers from leaving things in a complete shambles as they walked out the door.

Though I suppose that would count as a 'kindness' compared to many of his other actions.
posted by jamjam at 7:48 PM on August 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

There are many lawsuits from the people Musk fired. The biggest most recent one is this one, seeking class action status for ex-employees. Which will be a challenge because of Twitter's mandatory binding arbitration for employees (a pre-Musk policy, I think). IIRC the very earliest case of Musk not paying severance are the company's executives who were all fired 5 minutes after Musk took the company over and didn't receive contractually guaranteed payments. All of these cases will take years to resolve and get a lot more complicated if Musk drives the company into bankruptcy.

every CEO that steps in ... fires a bunch of people.

This is not true and obviously implausible if you know the history of Twitter's CEOs.

At any point someone at the company could have had an idea; they never did

This is insultingly simplified and wrong.
posted by Nelson at 6:26 AM on August 20, 2023

Quick note: Jack is 100% behind the removal of the block button. "Jack understands," replies Elon.
posted by mediareport at 9:19 AM on August 20, 2023

X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014 - The Verge

Ellen’s famous ‘most retweeted’ selfie from the 2014 Oscars has had its image restored, but most old tweets have broken short links instead of the media or links that should be there.

posted by achrise at 11:09 AM on August 20, 2023

Arbitration is not going to be good for Twitter because the law and the contracts are pretty clear about severance, options payouts, etc. My understanding is that these clauses are helpful when the damages are small for each individual plaintiff — who is going to go through arbitration over $10; but at $10 each for a million people in a class action lawsuit adds up. It also tends to simplify litigation when you have an individual employee of small number of them involved in a dispute. Twitter let go thousands of people and tried to screw them in a fairly brazen way. I think the pain of defending thousands of individual arbitration cases is going to be much more expensive than a class action lawsuit.
posted by interogative mood at 3:38 PM on August 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

As obnoxious as Jack is, it should not be forgotten that Twitter was profitable when Elon bought the thing.

And it got there with Dorsey dragged, kicking and screaming. His failure with Vine illustrates how bad he was as a part time CEO.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:19 PM on August 20, 2023 [2 favorites]