from the all-the-news-that's-fit-to-tweet dept.
A lot of Twitter-related stories recently submitted, so here's a rollup to put them all in one place for your convenience, or so that you can easily bypass it.
Twitter Will Require Phone Number Verification to Purchase a Twitter Blue Subscription
Twitter will require phone number verification to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription:
After announcing the relaunch of Twitter Blue over the weekend, Twitter updated its terms to require phone number verification for users who want to purchase the subscription. The company said that if you haven't verified your phone number, you will be prompted to do so while buying the subscription plan.
What's more, the company may also prevent users who have changed their handle (username), display name or profile picture within the last seven days from purchasing the Twitter Blue subscription.
[...] Last month, Musk mentioned that all accounts undergoing verification will be manually verified — which was exactly the process Twitter followed with legacy verification.
All these steps are aimed at preventing impersonation and spam. When Elon Musk's version of Twitter Blue with a verification mark first launched in November, a ton of accounts began to ape brands, celebrities and athletes. The mayhem caused by that forced Musk to pause the program until there were steps in place to prevent that from happening again.
Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk's Twitter Bans Tons of High Profile Journalists
Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk's Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists:
Well. Just after finishing that last post about Twitter banning the official Mastodon account on Twitter for tweeting about the ElonJet tracking account existing on Mastodon, it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new "free speech absolutist" Twitter have really come off. In quick succession, a whole bunch of high profile reporter accounts were suspended, including Aaron Rupar (who famously covers and quotes videos of high profile politicians), Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mac from the NY Times, Donie Sullivan from CNN, and Matt Binder from Mashable.
It's not entirely clear what "policy" these accounts violated. For all of Elon's talk about transparency, there doesn't seem to be very much here. A few of the accounts had talked about the ElonJet controversy but it's not clear that they linked to it.
In Donie's case, his last tweet had been posting the police report from the LAPD in response to questions about Elon Musk's claim that a stalker had jumped on a car with one of his children inside.
[...] Binder's final tweet was noting what Donie's final tweet was before getting banned.
[...] Either way, it would be nice if Musk's supporters began to realize that (1) maybe this isn't as easy as "no moderation" and (2) maybe the old Twitter wasn't really evilly censoring their ideological viewpoints after all... but I fear that most are going to instead not care at all and (1) cheer on this removal of "the corporate media fake news elite" and (2) come up with some ridiculous excuse about how it's not really a free speech issue at all.
Twitter Condemned by UN and EU Over Reporters' Ban
Twitter condemned by UN and EU over reporters' ban:
The United Nations has joined the European Union in condemning Twitter's decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.
Reporters for the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were among those locked out of their accounts.
The UN tweeted that media freedom is "not a toy" while the EU has threatened Twitter with sanctions.
Twitter spokesman told a US tech news website the bans were related to the live sharing of location data.
[...] Earlier on Friday, EU commissioner Vera Jourova threatened Twitter with sanctions under Europe's new Digital Services Act which she said requires "the respect of media freedom and fundament rights".
"Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon," she added.
Mr Musk has not commented directly on the suspensions, but said in a tweet that "criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not".
[...] Matt Binder, a journalist for Mashable and one of those suspended, said he didn't know why he had been banned.
"I've been very critical of Musk in my reporting," he told the BBC. But he said that Mr Musk's claim "that everyone that got suspended was doxxing him - due to the jet tracker", was not true.
He said he had never tweeted a hyperlink to the tracker, but had mentioned the account after it had been suspended.
"Clearly the people who were suspended were handpicked, because there are literally hundreds of accounts per minute who tweeted the link."
[...] Fundamentally, Elon Musk has shot down in flames his much-trumpeted commitment to "free speech". Free speech as long as it doesn't upset him personally, appears to be the message.
[...] Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, which has emerged as an alternative to Twitter since Mr Musk's takeover.
Links to individual Mastodon accounts also appeared to be banned. An error message notified users that links to Mastodon had been "identified" as "potentially harmful" by Twitter or its partners.
Before Musk Riled Everyone Up With Misleading Twitter Files About 'Shadowbanning,' Musk Was Shadowbanning Accounts
So, yeah, I wrote a big long thing debunking the first round of the "Twitter Files" but there's no way I'm going to make myself do more of that for every stupid thread of the "Twitter Files" being tweeted out. Just know that, having read all of the released "Twitter Files" threads so far, they are all just as ridiculous as the first one. They are all written by people who appear to have (1) no idea what they're looking at (2) no interest in talking to anyone who does understand it and (3) no concern about presenting them in an extremely misleading light in an effort to push a narrative that is not even remotely supported by what they're sharing.
[...] I did want to call out, though, that one of the ridiculously laughable "big reveals," this time from Bari Weiss, was the well known fact that Twitter would "deboost" some users from trending and algorithms, and have them appear lower in replies. That wasn't new. The company announced it. It was covered in detail in the media.
[...] But Bari Weiss misleadingly presented these features, which internally Twitter referred to as "visibility filters," as Twitter lying about not shadowbanning. But... that's wrong. And it's obviously wrong to anyone who bothered to read what has already been publicly stated quite clearly.
Elon himself seemed to make a big deal out of this, and even falsely claimed that Weiss showed that this tool was only used against conservatives (it wasn't and she showed nothing at all to support that). But the really bizarre part in all of this is Elon himself has claimed that he wants to do the same thing as his grand solution to content moderation, saying the company's "new" policy "is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach" and that "negative" tweets "will be max deboosted."
Except... as noted, that wasn't a new policy at all. It was the old policy, which Twitter had been very public about. So it seems particularly disingenuous to claim that the old Twitter was doing something nefarious when it's literally (1) the same thing they talked about publicly and (2) the same thing Elon says is his own brilliant solution.
[...] We keep pointing out that Elon seems to be on the path of reinventing every innovation Twitter already had done, but doing it much, much worse, but this one seems particularly nefarious. Because just as he's trying to whip everyone up into a frenzy by (misleadingly) claiming that this evil tool was secret and used to silence people not for rules violations, but personal whims... he was apparently using the very same tool based on his personal whims and feelings.
Mastodon Users Embrace Columnist's Funny Error About a Fictitious "John Mastodon"
Mastodon users embrace columnist's funny error about a fictitious "John Mastodon":
Mastodon users love the platform's founder, John Mastodon. They're writing sea shanties about their hero, generating AI art in his likeness, and creating all manner of memes about the reclusive genius. The only thing is, there is no one named John Mastodon, at least not until Mediaite columnist Isaac Schorr accidentally conjured him out to thin air two days ago in an opinion piece titled, "Hypocrisy and Fear All the Way Down at Twitter." Schorr misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John Mastodon," and when Twitter's Chief Karen Officer Elon Musk suspended the account, Schorr wrote:
Then, the platform removed John Mastodon, the founder of a competing social media company named after himself, for posting a link to the jet tracker's Mastodon account.
Schorr's column has since been corrected, but the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has a copy of the original.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4 Original Submission #5
Related Stories
A major independent flight tracking platform, which has made enemies of the Saudi royal family and Elon Musk, has been sold to a subsidiary of a private equity firm. And its users are furious.
ADS-B Exchange has made headlines in recent months for, as AFP put it, irking "billionaires and baddies." But in a Wednesday morning press release, aviation intelligence firm Jetnet announced it had acquired the scrappy open source operation for an undisclosed sum.
[...]
ADS-B Exchange may have seen its revenue shoot up, but Stanford says recouping a significant investment—he says Jetnet's opening offers was seven figures, but that he estimates the final deal went down for around $20 million—could take a decade. A quicker route to profit would be to raise prices, make some data available only to paying subscribers, and to charge plane owners to hide information about their aircraft. These are all tactics that have made FlightAware and FlightRadar24 successful."FlightRadar, FlightAware win. Elon wins," Stanford says. "All these guys who were out to get us win."
Related:
Big Twitter Roll-up: Blue Checkmarks, Banning Critics, and the Mysterious John Mastodon
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 19 2022, @11:02PM (2 children)
How do I earn such an honor? Surely that isn't an honor that can be bought?
I think the roundup is a good thing. I can't be arsed to keep up with everything happening at Twitter.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:17PM
Cheap and easy. I believe you could buy such an honor if you have a spare $44 Billion. Pocket change, really, for some people. You won't even miss it.
While bumbling around with Twitter or some other property like Meta, people are rationing insulin, food and other medicines.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 20 2022, @04:59PM
$44 billion disagrees with you!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday December 19 2022, @11:25PM (3 children)
Things That Piss Me Off: A lot of fark.com links go to twitter. As I don't have an account I get this bar across the middle telling me to login or create an account. Which usually blocks what I want to see.
This is the very definition of First World Problems.
/ extra credit for folks who get where TTPMO came from
// Sigh, I'll also allow folks who know what fark is
/// if you guess my handle on those two sites, notsomuch
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Monday December 19 2022, @11:51PM
Same thing here, including FaceBroke, etc. But I take it as them doing me a favor.
Also it's kind of a wake-up call to stop pandering to click-bait, esp. when I have real-life things that need doing.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:12PM
also a farker, here (lurker). I block twitter at my firewall - have for a few years, now. not going to undo it, either.
you dont miss much, believe me. the context is there in the discussion and you really dont need to hit their site. not once, not ever.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:48PM
Presuming you might sometimes want to see the content twitter tries to keep locked away unless you subscribe (forced scarcity) you can often see most twitter items by looking them up through nitter.net (and this also works with Javascript blocked, which gives a 'blank page' on real twitter now).
This little bit of javascript, in the URL box of a bookmark, will give you a bookmark entry to "push" which will transfer a broken twitter link to nitter.net:
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Monday December 19 2022, @11:25PM (3 children)
Until this Twitter debacle, mainstream media have loved Musk for his glitzy stage shows and his appearances in click-baity interviews, even smoking pot for their cameras - what more could they have wanted! Their cheerleading on his behalf is the main reason he has collected his fan base. But now that he has pissed them off in a big way they could turn round and destroy him. There is plenty of material for new shady stories - Bill Gates is so last century now. I've ordered popcorn.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2022, @11:42PM
No, the honeymoon was over by the time Musk mentioned making a site to rate jounralists called Pravduh.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/27/nytimes-coverage-of-elon-musk-twitter-outburst-regurgitates-what-pissed-him-off-in-the-first-place-pravduh/ [cleantechnica.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 20 2022, @05:01AM (1 child)
The only thing mainstream media is destroying is itself. It has nuked public trust down through the mantle and is struggling to remain relevant even as the Washington Post was forced to fire a bunch of staff.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 20 2022, @01:42PM
Agreed. No mod points, of course, but I agree with you.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday December 19 2022, @11:44PM (7 children)
Not included in the list, but also: Musk put out an oh-so-accurate Twitter poll about whether he should step down as owner of Twitter, promising to abide by the results (why he ignored the disclaimer about "if you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane", I'll never know). A solid majority voted that yes, he should.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2022, @02:05PM (6 children)
He now wants to rerun the poll, but only let blue checks vote. There's plenty of jokes in there about parallels to a certain political party and their approach to accepting outcomes and deciding on who gets to vote that I will leave as an exercise for the student to extract.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:20PM (1 child)
If only there were not a supply chain shortage of mod points.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday December 20 2022, @06:32PM
If I had Mod points I'd mod you up. And the parent too.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 20 2022, @04:55PM (3 children)
And meanwhile, Snoop Dogg has run another poll asking if he should take over, with an overwhelmingly positive response. I guess it really is a Doggy Dogg world.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Wednesday December 21 2022, @09:34AM (2 children)
I'm not sure if you are joking or not but...this.would.be.awesome!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 21 2022, @11:35AM (1 child)
It's real [twitter.com]
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday December 22 2022, @03:27AM
I would mod you up but...alas...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrpg on Monday December 19 2022, @11:47PM (4 children)
Twitter Will Require Phone Number Verification to Purchase a Twitter Blue Subscription
Where I live sometimes they give cellphone numbers for free. Or you can buy one, it's like 2 dollars, usually it has 4 free hours or more I don't remember, and 1 or 2 GB.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday December 20 2022, @12:06AM (2 children)
Yup! Maybe called "burner phones"? I use a cheap prepaid plan, and will likely go to a different provider, and number, in the next 2 months.
In no way do I consider a cell phone, the number, text, or anything about it to be secure. Truly mass hysterical insanity that people think they're more secure by using a phone as any kind of security.
All that, and I'm pretty tight with giving out the number.
Another factor- I've had like 4 different numbers in the past 6 or so years, so I don't know why people want to con you into giving out your phone number, claiming it's legit identification.
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday December 20 2022, @04:00PM (1 child)
A lot of this now false belief that phone numbers are somehow "secure" or a reasonable "identification code" of a human goes back to the olden (or golden, depending upon one's viewpoint) days of the telephone system. To the time when the phone system was fully isolated from all other networks (even the beginnings of the internet, which reach farther back in time than most today realize), and to the time when there were only a handful of "phone companies" (often only one for an entire country).
In those days, the barrier to entry for "being your own phone company" was so high that scammers and criminals simply didn't try, and a "phone number" was, to some level of reasonableness, a mostly secure identifying number of a person. Because there was only one way to get a phone number (Ma Bell) and that one way did provide some slight bit of authority that the person assigned the number was the person they said they were.
This semblance of security is also why "fax" got enshrined into many laws and regulations as a "secure way to electronically transfer sensitive documents". At the time, because there was only "one phone company" and it was highly regulated, one could reasonably expect a phone call (or a fax) to be secure against eavesdropping (unless your countries legal system issued a warrant that is -- but this angle was always a risk).
But, fast forward to today, and deregulation, and there are seemingly infinite phone numbers to be had for pennies from nearly infinite companies and the phone number no longer reasonably represents "person X" with any sense of security anymore.
But overcoming 50+ years of mind-share of "phone number is a secure identifying number" is tough, esp. when the world of "phone numbers are like snowflakes in Alaska -- they are everywhere" has only existed for 5-10 of those 50+ years. And so we still, in 2022, have companies thinking a phone number infers some semblance of security that you are interacting with not only a real person, but a given particular person who's been 'vetted' by the phone company to be who they say they are.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday December 20 2022, @06:34PM
Yes, absolutely, all of that, and thank you.
Funny story (to me anyway!): in the late 70s as a teenager I had a girlfriend who lived a good hour away (long story). So phone conversation was much of our connection.
My family had one landline, a talkative (in a good way!) mom, and 4 kids, so my phone use was fairly limited. Plus while you were talking, people would pick up one of the other phones to use it, which could be a bit annoying (why didn't they ever put a light or something on phones to let you know it was in use?)
Anyway, the house was fed by 2 buried cables with 2 pair each. Only 1 pair (of the 4) was in use by my family's phone line. Well, clever electronical nerd me tried out the other pairs and found a pair that would give me a "dial tone". Obviously some sort of mis-wiring by "Ma-Bell's" technicians. So I would use that to call my girlfriend. I was savvy enough to know to not make "long distance" calls, as they'd be identified and billed. I don't think she was "long distance" (which required a 1 + area code, which we still use in USA), but some phone plans had very limited "local" calling, so maybe those calls were logged on person's bills?
One day, of course, someone picked up their phone to use it and the person was quite surprised to find people talking on their phone! I don't remember what they said, nor what I said, but girlfriend and I quickly hung up. Very soon after the connection got disconnected. I was pretty afraid I'd get caught and get into very big trouble, so I lived with that fear for many months.
Never heard any more about it, nor had any idea whose line I was borrowing.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2022, @12:34AM
> Twitter Will Require Phone Number Verification to Purchase a Twitter Blue Subscription
Local public broadcasting (radio, tv) is mocking Musk by offering "verified subscriptions" for a USD $8 fee (donation). With each donation comes a window sticker that includes a nice blue check mark!
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:24AM (4 children)
When the history buffs come to decompile the idiocy of this century, they won't need to look far.
To think that a service that had mostly bot traffic, run by governments and corporations, has people yelling about free speech, is quite telling. To think the U.N. and the EU are fighting for this type of "free speech" is something I never would have imagined, but what does one say? Pretty clear who is pulling the strings of those puppets.
If one loses twitter, the majority of the free speech lost will be the money that won't be able to "talk" anymore.
This is another "service" the world would be just fine without.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 20 2022, @03:13PM (2 children)
That's social media in general.
SN seems mostly human.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday December 20 2022, @06:38PM
We used to have a bot [soylentnews.org] here, but he got discovered and had to be recalled for further development on darkweb github.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday December 20 2022, @06:43PM
Negative. I am a meat popsicle.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday December 20 2022, @10:59PM
That reminds me of the time on Get Smart when he infiltrated a Kaos cell that turned out to be just undercover operatives with the original kaos agent dead for years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2022, @02:59PM (1 child)
Let me check. Again. Ok. I can get a new sim for $2 and a one year 'keep it active' cost for $5. I just need to put it into a phone and oh, look there's a heap in the mark down bin for $20. How does this really help?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by owl on Tuesday December 20 2022, @04:52PM
It does not help one bit. It just puts up a $2 barrier to entry on top of the $8 charge. Which if someone is intent on doing so is a meaningless additional barrier on top of the $8 charge.