The decentralized social network is having a moment — again:
We may not yet know exactly what Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter means for the platform, but one Twitter alternative is already booming as a result of the news. Mastodon, the open-source social media service which bills itself as the "largest decentralized social network on the internet," has been "exploding" since Musk's acquisition, according to its founder.
"Funnily enough one of the reasons I started looking into the decentralized social media space in 2016, which ultimately led me to go on to create Mastodon, were rumours that Twitter, the platform I'd been a daily user of for years at that point, might get sold to another controversial billionaire," he wrote. "Among, of course, other reasons such as all the terrible product decisions Twitter had been making at that time. And now, it has finally come to pass, and for the same reasons masses of people are coming to Mastodon."
[...] While Mastodon has been in the spotlight as a potentially viable Twitter alternative in the past, it has yet to reach the mainstream. But its current popularity comes at a moment when Twitter is also exploring how it could become an open-sourced protocol — much like Mastodon.
Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not a single, centralized service. Though the interface looks similar to Twitter — it has a 500-character limit but otherwise will be mostly recognizable to Twitter users — it runs on an open-source protocol. Groups of users are free to create and maintain their own "instances" with their own rules around membership, moderation and other key policies. Users are also able to take their followers with them between instances.
[...] But all that also comes with extra complexity for new users who may not easily understand Mastodon's unique structure or how it works. But those who stick around long enough may see some significant new features. Rochko said that end-to-end encrypted messaging is in the works, as well as "an exciting groups functionality."
Anyone in the community have experience using or recommending it?
Related Stories
The pressure on Twitter to talk publicly about how it monitors and removes spam accounts continues to mount.
Reports from CNN and The Washington Post reveal an 84-page whistleblower complaint alleging that Twitter isn't motivated to track the true number of spam accounts and hid security vulnerabilities from federal regulators.
The complaint comes from Twitter's former security chief, Peiter Zatko. Zatko is a well-known ethical hacker with the alias "Mudge." He told the Post that he "felt ethically bound" to report his serious concerns to government agencies. He alleges that he was fired for pushing disinclined Twitter executives to address major security problems—which his complaint suggests "pose a threat" to Twitter "users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy."
Zatko alleges that Twitter execs were more invested in covering up those vulnerabilities, including cherry-picking and misrepresenting data on spam accounts and security threats to regulators and Twitter's board members.
Previously:
Judge Orders Twitter to Give Elon Musk Former Executive's Documents
Elon Musk Pulls Deal to Buy Twitter
Twitter Reportedly Will Give Musk the Full "Firehose" of User Data
Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Thwarting His Due Diligence, Threatens to Walk Out of Deal
Twitter Users React to Elon Musk Putting Buyout Deal 'on Hold'
Musk Buying Twitter Is Not About Freedom of Speech
After Musk's Twitter Takeover, an Open-Source Alternative is 'Exploding'
Elon Musk has just bought Twitter
Elon Musk Isn't Joining Twitter's Board of Directors After All
Elon Musk Will Join Twitter's Board of Directors
Over at ACM.org, Samuel Greengard speculates Elon Musk buying Twitter is more about freedom to control speech:
The press has mostly accepted Musk's statement that the $44-billion acquisition is a "free speech" crusade that will create wonderful online town squares brimming with democratic ideas! It's 1998 naivete revisited. The Internet will bridge the digital divide! It will end oppression and censorship! It's the dawn of a new era for world freedom!
This isn't 1776, or even 1976. No one assembles at a town square to politely share ideas and debate philosophies. The Federal Communications Commission's imperfect but beneficial Fairness Doctrine is now buried deep in history. Today's online world, while delivering an appearance of democratization, has introduced hidden traps and limitations that we can't see.
It's no secret that algorithmic engines run (and rule) the Internet—and Twitter. They amplify, magnify, and even distort ideas. They introduce biases and, too often, they discriminate. They also manipulate our minds—and our thinking.
[...] Make no mistake, there will be a line; actually, lots of lines. What's more, even if Musk somehow accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of ensuring that everyone on the platform is verified, there's no way to guarantee that this will stop abuse—or that there will be any real penalty for the offenders.
[...] Yes, Twitter will wind up with different rules, results and outcomes—and it may be the better or worse for it. Along the way, some people will cheer, and others will jeer. But framing the discussion as a "free speech" issue is entirely disingenuous. This is simply a billionaire attempting to etch his world view into an algorithm—even if he brands himself a swashbuckling digital freedom fighter.
Previously
After Musk's Twitter Takeover, an Open-Source Alternative is 'Exploding'
Elon Musk has just bought Twitter
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:55AM (23 children)
The less righteous extremists on Twitter, the better. The narrative that the Twitter's microblogging righteous extremists was were it's money came from is of course a flake. Twitter is an surveillance platform for the Advertising industry.
I expect the same law of "if you create an alternative platform because of X-prosecution, only X's will want to use it" that made the "alt-right"-branded sites never reach critical mass will see another proof by example.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:10AM (20 children)
> Anyone in the community have experience using or recommending it?
Mastodon has tiny splintered communities, where 'Federation' of the critical-mass-reaching ones is dominated by Extremists who'll boot you off at the first perceived microagression or a hint of Transpobia which can be not having the correct Code of Conduct, because They Know that Mastodon will fall under Total Control of the Alt-Right if they're not eternally vigilant. And following on from my law in the first post, the traffic you see is mostly political spam, which doesn't attract new users that well; "The BLM spam phase" saw a marked drop in participation in the primary Feds, while the Anime-Manga groups stayed constant.
Trump invested in a Mastodon-based social platform, and look at how they reacted to that. Mastodon is probably the most Partisan net.interaction platform in existence now (..which is why 'normal people' don't stick with it)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:25AM
https://poa.st/ [poa.st]
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:47AM (3 children)
And like many other such sites, it's too small to attract much crap, much attention, or much controversy. Twatter has ~250 million users including everybody who's anybody. Not-Twitter has a few thousand or in some cases tens of thousands of users, including... Bill the Talking Donkey and... uhh... Three-finger Sally.... uhh... must be someone else there that's notable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @03:10PM
Yes, and I'm curious why this particular billionaire owning it is going to be any worse than the previous owners. It definitely could be, but if I had an account, I wouldn't be rushing off to change services until more details were available about what's changing.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:43PM
They're talking about a bump of 30k users in a day. So yeah, good for them, but also, you need a lot of those days to just make a speedbump!
On the other hand it sure sounds like I'd fit right in over there!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:42PM
who cares how big it is, you dumb whore?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 28 2022, @11:30AM (6 children)
To be anywhere near fair and honest, Trump did not exactly invest in Mastodon. Instead, Trump ripped off Mastodon source code, tried to make it his own, then mismanaged the POS he came up with. Trump censorship is no better than Woke censorship, and people weren't having it. Censorship is always bad.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday April 28 2022, @01:41PM
Trump also infringed the AGPL license of Mastodon.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @03:21PM (1 child)
No, Trump didn't steal nor adapt anything.
Some people did it for him. He's probably never heard of Mastodon.
He probably needs staff to tune-in Fox and Friends for him.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:46PM
The Bucks Stops Everywhere but Trump
I'm sure glad skills like 'hiring competent staff' are so unimportant for a job like President!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:05PM (2 children)
Says the RWNJ what got aristarchus censored on this site. Hypocrisy knows no bounds, evidently. May you be fired in a die, Runaway1956!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @10:05PM (1 child)
Didn't happen. Almost certainly couldn't happen. Runaway gots no power, no authority, no privileges on the site beyond the privileges of every registered member. What actually happened is, aristarchus worked hard to get himself banned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @08:00PM
You skipped the part where he's now frantically masturbating about how banned he is and smearing tears and spooge all over AC posts about how banned he is and how everybody else should, like, totally care, you guys!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @01:12PM
Sounds like somewhere way better than soystain news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @02:36PM (1 child)
I agree with your point, even as a militant leftist myself. Twitter, for all its woes, was centralized - go to one place, find all users and all content. Mastodon instances can federate with each other, but in practice the neo-nazis block the socialist instances and the trans block the transphobe instances and some people block instances that show lots of porn and the pro-Israel instances block the instances with people who object to shooting Palestinian toddlers for fun and everybody blocks instances that spammers manage to get accounts on, and if someone screws up, gets bored, or runs out of money then an instance with lots of user content can vanish without hope of recovery.
tl;dr - Mastodon is an interesting idea and can be fun, but it's not an acceptable Twitter alternative.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:00PM
many instances don't block at the instance level. my instance, for instance expects grown ups to block individuals that they don't wish to see posts from. but hey, keep posting FUD.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:29PM (2 children)
The platform you JUST said Trump is on?
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:33PM (1 child)
That's not how mastodon works. i.e. most of mastodon has cloistered themsevles from gab, which is also run on mastodon code
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @08:51PM
Cancel Culture, i.e. boycotting and freedom of association are the pinnacle of Libertarian Freeeedumb until it hits themselves. Then it is partisan tyranny!
You conservatives have become such a joke. If it weren't for your constant hypocrisy at least then you'd have integrity, but you flipflop on ideology when it suits you. Just the worst spineless kind of bullies.
Oh NoEs tHeY WoNt LiNk tO yEr PeDO pLaYgRoUnD!@#!!$@!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:38PM (1 child)
look, you lazy, whiney fuck. wtf does it matter if other instances are small? that is the whole goddamn point of federation. they can all talk to each other. sure, some bolsheviks' useful idiots will block your instance. so fucking what? run your own instance and let all like minded people join and federate with friendly instances. you just want someone else to do everything for you then whine about how they do it.
Freedom aiin't free.
It costs folks like you and me.
If you won't pitch in your buck 05 who will?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @07:25PM
Have you paid no attention? Conservative spaces are the most banhappy spaces around! Whiny gaslighting cunt.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:48AM
> The less righteous extremists on Twitter, the better.
Talking of extremists, Donald Trump should charge Elon $44B to use his branding. He has his own shitty platform to raise out of the dirt remember. Maybe Elron can make a face-saving purchase of the aptly named DWAC... for $44B... to save the pumpkin headed freak show from an embarrassing dilemma. DWAC UP SHEEPLE!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:40PM
Hahaha....advertisers HATE people with nothing better to do that microblog about how extremely righteous they are! Those people totally don't have more money than sense!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:24AM (8 children)
My primary motive for looking in to it had nothing to do with $billionaires, and everything to do with a couple things. First, annoying UI changes which you'll all recognize as Digg and The Green Site syndrome. Buck Feta! The other huge reason (and these may be related) is that I had noticed it was filled with way too much of what I call "rage bait". Usually they want you to get mad about race all the time, but it can be anything designed to elicit a response of anger. Ultimately I decided to limit my active Twitter use to one day a week (Tuesday) and I think it's been good for my mental health. The reason I stay on the platform is because it's got a critical mass of users that can get me things of value. In particular, it's the place to go for news on nearby fires during fire season (I live in NorCal), and until some other site reaches the critical mass of users that makes it "the place you need to be to reach people", it will be tough for something like Mastodon to compete. That's what I noticed about Mastodon--simply not enough going on.
I like the idea though, so if it gets a shot in the arm, more power to them. If the real time fire-reporting and scanner community mass-defects, they'll take me with them.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:24AM (2 children)
For fire info, have you considered https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents [ca.gov] ?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:42AM (1 child)
I'm familiar with that. It's great if you want to track a fire six hours ago. If you need to know whether or not that puff of smoke you just saw on the other side of the lake is going to keep you away from Tractor Supply, Twitter and the scanner community mop the floor with it.
Don't get me wrong. Cal Fire is great--at putting out fires. Detailed real-time communication isn't their job. The local sheriff tells us when evacuation is official, and independent reporters tell us things we want to know that don't fall in to that category. That kind of "street" information helps you stay ahead of the game, giving you a sense for when evacuation might come, how bad it is for your neighbors, etc.
People in fire zones know what I mean. During the dangerous early part of a fire, you're not hitting Cal Fire's site. Old people are calling their friends, people are texting, etc. It's combat. It doesn't move at the speed of agencies. It moves fast.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday April 28 2022, @07:11AM
I think the jets were running a bit behind their official schedule so Twitter was more accurate in this case as well. We also weren't an official waypoint, so we would have to extrapolate too.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:49AM (4 children)
That's what the big social media platforms call 'engagement'. The idea is to get you psychologically addicted to your feed, and the single easiest and most effective way to do that is to foster hate. It doesn't matter what you hate as long as you get your anger fix from them. They put a lot of research and development into perfecting the process, trying to find what each user responds best to, and the natural outcome is radicalization which is what makes 'engagement' dangerous, both to the user and to society as a whole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @02:14PM
Exactly true. AI tailors your "feed" to maximize engagement and this translates into clickbaits, or rage topics that shock people.
It's not just Facebook or other "social" networks doing this -- I was actually shocked at the lack of quality of shit presented by msn (Microsoft) in their so called "news" page when you open IE (or Edge these days). Seem they follow same BS about "engagement" like the rest.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:33PM
Well I'm glad the Open Source community is now leveraging that addiction and abuse research!
My understanding of Mastodon is that anyone can run their own hub so it entirely depends on the community you select.
We could run SoylentNews on Mastadon basically and so long as it was just us weirdos the discussion would remain.....whatever this is....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @06:37PM (1 child)
Yet I'm some sort of a monster when I propose people behind this shit are drawn and quartered, and the seed of their enterprise be disposed as well. I know what evil is when I see it, and I do not compromise with evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @08:41PM
Capital punishment is looked down on by civilized societies. I'm sure your emotional stability issues make it seem like a valid thing to say but it is not. Less violence please babe.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by buzzy on Thursday April 28 2022, @07:44AM (3 children)
I'm on one of the larger instances (https://mastodon.social) and it's quite nice. Mostly discussing Linux, Music and privacy. Compared to other platforms conversation are actually pretty civilised...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:49AM (2 children)
I went to that link, and found that I cannot see anything that happens on that server without first signing up. Which means I'm certain to not sign up, because I don't know what I'd sign up to.
I can understand wanting people to sign up in order to post. I don't at all understand the need to sign up just to read.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by buzzy on Thursday April 28 2022, @01:25PM (1 child)
It seems indeed that this instance doesn't show the public feed to unauthenticated users anymore (supposably due to load reasons), but as the network is decentralized you can choose one that does publish it, eg:
https://drake.network/public/ [drake.network]
You can choose an instance that suits your needs from:
https://instances.social/ [instances.social]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:44PM
Thank you for that information.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:34AM (4 children)
It's a lot more like Discord. And it's a pain to set up. People expect to be able to go to a site, click a signup button, and use it. No faffing about.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:51AM (2 children)
I don't think you have to set up your own server in order to participate. Only if you want to control the rules of what happens on that server.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @11:50AM (1 child)
> Only if you want $HOSTINGPROVIDER to control the rules of what happens on that server.
Which is an issue if you're a sociopolitical freak... or someone who hates the exponential Big Money Webhosting Industry who can have infinite monies will just a clench of their fist around the gonads of helpless hackers who've been raised to only know Docker & etc.
I've love to host Mastodon and other such 'Collaborative Media' services on my hidden Onion webserver that's just a Raspberry Pi running off a residential broadband connection. It's not a Nasty Site-- it just webhosting 1995 style, where anyone who escapes The Matrix can visit it with Tor Browser. There just no way in hell I'll been able to get a path to the non-darkwebs Feds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @02:33PM
do you happen to know the magn3t:hash (*) to the latest version of (insert-adfree-latest-opensource-bittorrent-client-here)?
(*) the correct spelling is filtered? ass-hats. if you do this you need to give the WHOLE censorship list on first visit everytime to site users. "welcome to the keyword minefield"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:47PM
Mastadon is a ROR application so yeah, screw that noise. You don't have to use Mastadon to run an activitypub (fediverse protocol) server. i use Pleroma, for instance. There are others too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:46AM (16 children)
Personally I'm waiting to see technews sites claim that oh-wow-who-knew-Musk-was-a-Nazi-all-along crowd have now started selling their Teslas and cancelling their Nazi^h^h^h^hStarlink subscriptions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @11:48AM (9 children)
They're not even quitting Twitter properly. See Talcum X.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @12:17PM (8 children)
Martin Luther Cream - so incensed at the prospect of an African American owning Twitter that he rage quit the platform for all of 12 hours. [newsweek.com]
If any of this were true, Shaun King, would, have, nothing, to fear!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:02PM (3 children)
Wat? Shaun King is white. Any theories into why the biggest advocates for BLM are white?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:11PM (2 children)
Well, because Black Lives Matter, no matter what you happen to be? It's demographics, pale persons are still a majority, and the majority of those are still committed to American principles of equal protection, justice, and the right to not be killed by police officers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by captain normal on Thursday April 28 2022, @10:40PM (1 child)
"...pale persons are still a majority"
Humm...only in a few countries is this true. Most of the world population not so.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @11:29AM
Yeah, I guess when they were a majority they shoulda seen this coming and made their move to wipe out the vrowns and yellows then. What a bunch of fucking retards. They obviously deserve this.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:37PM (3 children)
Yeah.....maybe don't play up that whole 'Dutch family in South Africa' angle....
I understand that apartheid probably didn't happen in the Bizarro World but it definitely did here!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:53PM (2 children)
The only thing wrong with Aparteid was that is was foolish and too nice. They should have never let non-native Negroid tribes into the country to begin with. Native Negroid tribes should have gotten their own states with strictly enforced borders, but with friendly neighbor agreements. Whites need to start defending their lands again. with all necessary force. Stop worrying about what imaginary Jewsus would do. Access to Whites and the civilizations they build is not a human right. We owe deprecated subspecies nothing.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @07:31PM
Interesting.
APK's nonstop racism never gets spam modded, yet anything remotely clise to aristarchus is spam modded quickly. Must be runaway/apk's sick army re-engaging at lower levels to try and remain undetected. Any new readers should be aware of the ideological bias this site has. Basically an alt-right propaganda platform with platitudes of free speech while maintaining olausible deniability by blaming community moderation. Wonder how many real people there actually are, and how many bots/sock puppets.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @09:20PM
Ha! SIlly substandard intelligence whit person!
Go back where you came from, whitey! Oh, there really is no such place? All the "land" whiteys claim was stolen, from the original owners. In fact, there were no "whites" until they needed to distinguish themselves from the people they enslaved. Nasty slaver pervert white people! Give France back to the Gauls!
America, Love it, or give it back!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28 2022, @04:07PM (5 children)
Fairly obvious ideas for a comic book villain narcissist, like
Twitter takeover for "free speech":
Elon Musk keeps tweeting that he loves free speech. So here's a thread with just a few of the countless examples showing he couldn't care about it less (🧵)
Then there's the time Tesla asked China to censor comments that were critical of the company. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-05/tesla-s-fall-from-grace-in-china-shows-perils-of-betting-on-beijing [bloomberg.com]
https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1519040404087320578 [twitter.com]
I’m old enough to remember when Elon Musk ordered his private investigators to make a Tesla employee’s life a living hell—including having the employee SWATTED—for tipping off a reporter to waste at a Tesla factory.
The employee had to move his family to Hungary for safety.
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1518569530217226241 [twitter.com]
cries about twitter censorship on twitter
fires employee for using twitter
Goes on podcast and smokes a joint.
Fires someone for smoking a joint off hours.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/u3kwsx/ualexchii_does_the_math_that_elon_musk_getting_a/i4psz03/ [reddit.com]
so one day in Musk is already cheering on a notorious white nationalist and Pizza Gater as he tries to get a Twitter employee fired over yet another sludge brain conspiracy theory. you can fancy up a frat bro with billions and yet
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1519281896739508230 [twitter.com]
Musk buys shares of Twitter around $35.
Musk series of Tweets critical of Twitter, asking whether they thought Twitter was protecting free speech. “The results of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.” while continuing to buy shares.
Musk exceeds the 5% threshold for SEC disclosure but continues buying without disclosing. (late disclosure added ~$150M to his profit)
Musk disclosed his stake, Twitter shares rose 27% to $50/share.
Musk offers buyout, shares soared 18% in pre-market trading.
YOU ARE HERE
All of this while being forbidden by the SEC to make any comment that appears to be market related.
But I don't think he will resell his stocks. He really wants to buy Twitter, because he has recognized that Twitter is an excellent platform to manipulate stocks and cryptos.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/u3kwsx/ualexchii_does_the_math_that_elon_musk_getting_a/i4ptiyx/ [reddit.com]
Musk takes advantage of international crises to raise Tesla's stock price.
As a PR stunt, Musk promised to build a mini-submarine to rescue a boys soccer team that got trapped in a Thai cave in 2018. After receiving vitriol from the Thai and rescue community, Musk called one of the cave rescuers a pedophile
After saying that the coronavirus pandemic wasn't even "in the top 100" health concerns, Musk said that ventilators were not needed and there would not be a shortage. When it became obvious to all of the public that we'd need more ventilators at hospitals, car manufacturers were being asked to shift production and make more ventilators. Under public pressure, and as we starter running out of ventilators (so already too late to help the first wave), he promised to start making some. Then, instead of making ventilators, he went on the open market and outbid someone to buy some machines. By March 24 he told the public and the gov of California he had already delivered 1200 ventilators to the state, prompting the governor to thank him publicly. https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilators-coronavirus-covid19-california-governor-gavin-newsom-1493914 [newsweek.com] Several weeks later, neither the California gov nor the media could find any of these donations. By mid April, as the media tried to track these donations, they only found hospitals that said that the machines they received from Musk were not ventilators useful for the fight against covid19, but instead they received much cheaper and less useful biPAP or CPAC machines that typically cost 20+ times less than a ventilator. https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilators-coronavirus-covid19-california-hospitals-list-gavin-newsom-1498491 [newsweek.com] As far as I can tell, Tesla never made a single ventilator. And Musk never delivered a single actual ventilator (neither bought nor made) to any hospital. https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/hychbc/long_sourced_list_of_elon_musks_criminal_illegal/fzcfvlw/ [reddit.com]
In one case, Musk promised to "fix" Puerto Rico's power grid after it was decimated by Hurricane Maria. http://inthesetimes.com/article/20601/elon-musk-puerto-rico-privatization-utility-climate-solar-rossello [inthesetimes.com]
Friendly reminder that Elon Musk told the UN that if they gave him a budgeted breakdown of how $6Bil could end world hunger, he would do it. They gave him the budget and then he decided not to do it, and instead decided he would buy Twitter for $45Bil. https://twitter.com/CaptAmazo/status/1518588084459384832 [twitter.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 28 2022, @05:44PM (4 children)
The one thing he had going for him in my direct sphere of giving a shit was Tesla making me money!
And now he's even managed to fuck that up! [cnbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @04:02AM (3 children)
late stage capitalism amirite?
you're more than welcome to leave for a glorious communist country given how triggered you are by the system of this one
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday April 29 2022, @05:44AM (1 child)
Did it ever occur to you that there are more than two possible systems? Not even all capitalist systems are the same.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday April 29 2022, @07:07PM
Well that's the first time I've mentioned my ownership of shares in Tesla then got called a Commie for it!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday April 29 2022, @07:05PM
I know I'm such a commie expecting a return on my investment like that!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lester on Friday April 29 2022, @05:41AM
Someone started an instance of mastodon. Everything was fine until the day that someone posted child porn pictures.
He blocked the account as soon as he realized. But a few days later more child photos appeared.
He didn't have the time to control this, or the attitude to waste his time fighting that. Finally he closed the instance.
Facebook, YouTube, etc complain that governments make them responsible for what users publish (porn, copyright issues, hate speech...). They have to devote a lot of resources, manual control and design tools for automatic surveillance. And in addition fight accusations of censorship.
You don't have the resources to do all that stuff. So, you'd better think twice if you intend to set up a node for any federated social network.