Note that Twitter's TOS are only one of the three components of the Twitter User Agreement. There are also the Twitter Rules and Policies. This is what Twitter's Rules and Policies page says:
> At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:
This is amazing. He basically said, he'd return if elon comes around, and wishes him the best. And just said "my mastodon is on my website". No violation of those new "TOS" of any kind.
Paul was a big cheerleader for Elon. Touted his “skills” at Tesla & SpaceX. Elon kicks him off, because Dear Leader will not be criticized. Meanwhile Tesla is pile driving into the ground. I’m waiting for the FTC & the EU to weigh in on ALL of this puerile behavior by sham Tony Stark.
He was still giving Elon platitudes in his HN comment in the previous thread. For a person with so much wealth and influence, Elon is way too thin-skinned.
The best description I saw of Elon Musk is that he thinks he's Tony Stark, but he's actually Justin Hammer. Which to be fair, is the most Justin Hammer thing ever.
You can watch the account in your own instance (if someone on your instance has already followed him, which is likely for larger instances). Just go to https://example.org/@paulg@mas.to (replace the domain with your favorite instance's domain).
Does it make any sense to spin up your own little Mastodon server just for you and your most trusted friends, so you don't have to spend any time moderating content?
Yes, but the main problem is that Mastodon is very large and fat. Running it for more than a few people is expensive.
There's also Pleroma (the Akkoma fork is recommended) and Misskey.
There are people working on server software to be fully a part of Mastodon without spending $30/month. It should be possible to do this much more efficiently.
As a BEAM fan, Pleroma looks interesting, but "which fork of the Elixir project that is related to Mastodon" is... peak open source isn't it? In all the good ways and bad ways.
If I'm already running a moderately sized $30-or-so-per-month server with its own local database process, that's not very busy. Should it fit on that kind of system just fine, or does it need a lot of CPU, memory, disk space, and/or network bandwidth? Or do you think I'd have to upgrade to a 50-or-so-per-month server?
Again, not planning on having many people use it, but I'm just wondering how much baseline and peak overhead there is to just being on the network, along various dimensions.
I've run GoToSocial as my personal instance for a few weeks and although it is still a very young project, it has worked reliably for me. Since it is a Go project is bare uses any resources, ~100mb RAM and almost zero CPU. I host 3 personal accounts connected to ~1000 accounts (folliwers and followed) in total. Run it on my Proxmox at home.
Yes I wish we could have some sort of rule where you could never have more than 100 or so people per server and the community really really focused on making the deploy instructions as simple as possible for people to use with things like Oracles free tier, or the low cost VPS's out there.
Mastodon instances with 10's of thousands of users is a TERRIBLE idea for the long term viability of the service.
I agree that having enormous general "catch-all" servers will inevitably lead to low-quality cesspits (like Twitter). But topical mastodon instances are approximately federated subreddits, and subreddits can maintain reasonable quality even with 10,000 subscribers (but once you get much larger than that you start having problems).
This isn't a subreddit - I don't care if everyone on the server is into the same "niche" or "hobby". Here are the problems I see:
1. Moderation issues, primarily with regards to federation between instances. As an admin it's much harder to moderate with tons of users in a consistent manner, and as a user it's hard not to get screwed over by overly reactive admins either on your instance or other large instances banning your instance. I've seen tons of "guilt by association" bans on mastodon, hell I've seen people judging and domain blocking people based on the SOFTWARE they use (because they dislike the politics of that developer - not because anything that anyone on the particular instance did).
2. Privacy concerns, especially around how mastodon handles "private messages". When you are on a server that everyone is sharing a niche hobby there is a HIGHER possibility that your admin may snoop on your messages out of curiosity (or whatever justification they can generate).
3. Costs both $ and resources on these larger instances. Eventually someone will need to pay a bill and $$ pressures can lead to bad decisions.
In my opinion people should be:
1. Generally having their own stand alone instance.
2. Sharing an instance with close family / friends
3. Having secondary accounts on company / organizations instances
4. Having a read-only account on one of the larger instances just to assist in searching, discovery, etc.
My main concern isn't CPU performance, but that I don't want to spend any of my own time moderating, and just let on people and robots I trust, if anyone at all.
Sounds like it's easy to install on the cloud. Would it make sense to run it on a home server with a good broadband consumer internet connection like fiber?
Is there a lot of traffic normally, pushing or pulling or polling?
To put this into perspective, here's user growth over the last few days [1]. Before Musk bought Twitter, it was often ~4k a day. Earlier today it was back down to less than 2k an hour, after a peak a bit above 4k an hour after the journalist fiasco.
It's currently at 5,477 in the last hour.
Before the journalist fiasco it had fallen back to ~1k/hour, and I think you need to go back to Nov 19th to find similar peaks.
In other words, things had died down massively, and he's chosen to pointlessly inflame things again rather than letting it calm down further.
I'm on the same instance and holy crap they've gone down with every single major e-long caused migration wave. Poor admin crews of all the instances - can't even enjoy a Sunday off because Musk decides to do something stupid yet again.
I had hoped to have gotten rid of that anxiety the day Trump left office, and now it's back with a vengeance.
Having a personal website with contact information is not URL cloaking or plaintext onfuscation. Those TOS are ludicrous to begin with, but are not by any reasonable understanding written to say that you can not have a personal website with other social media.
Sure, you can have a personal website with links to other social media. You just can’t advertise that fact on Twitter.
“We will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms.”
I don’t see how “I have an account on Mastodon and here’s how you can find it” doesn’t violate that. The policy doesn’t require the promotion to be direct. If there was any doubt, the policy explicitly includes linktr.ee.
>At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, *such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter*, or *providing your handle without a URL*
Notice that *all* definitions and examples of "promotion" specifically involve having your URL or username in a tweet.
The "non-technical means" of bypassing policy are still about communicating the username in a tweet.
It is a ludicrous policy, but alleging that it prohibits even mentioning existence of other accounts is a ludicrous interpretation of the ludicrous policy.
"You can find my contact info on my website" is a violation under this interpretation.
As is stating "Twitter isn't the only way to reach me"... and having any off-twitter links (God forbid your FB account is reachable via some sequence of clicks from there!).
I’d agree with you except that linktr.ee was also referenced as a violation. That’s the part that makes me pretty sure that his original intention was to cover links to links.
Hey, can we have this discussion without referring to disagreements as “ludicrous”? It’s a moot point now, but still.
>I’d agree with you except that linktr.ee was also referenced as a violation.
It was listed as a forbidden platform.
Paul Graham's personal website was not listed as a forbidden platform.
* We can't infer from the policy that Paul Graham's personal website can't be linked to, or mentioned.
* We can't infer from the policy that merely talking about forbidden platforms (including Mastodon and Link Tree) is a violation, unless a link or a username is provided.
* Therefore, Paul G saying that he has a website with a Mastodon link on it isn't a violation of the policy.
Generalizing from LinkTree to any website is unwarranted.
Further, such a generalization effectively prohibits links outside Twitter (since Facebook can be reached from nearly every page out there via some sequence of clicks). But that's beside the point.
It's not like he said he'll just write on his site from now on, and got banned because his site also has links to his other social media.
He expressly said you can find his mastodon, a prohibited social media site as outlined by Twitter, on his website.
So he was promoting his mastodon with non-technical means and circumvented the new policy. While linking to the new policy... showing moderators he was well aware of it.
With Twitter, it's been demonstrated that what Musk does, does not follow what Musk says. There's nothing to reconcile here. The new policy is very clear and leaves no wiggle room for the occasional link.
Much like when Elon said he wouldn't ban Sweeney and that he's a free speech absolutionist, followed by him:
- banning Sweeney without justification
- unbanning some of Sweeney's accounts
- banning linking to Sweeney's other social media
- putting links to any mastodon instances behind a warning
- rolling out new policy to justify banning Sweeney and links to his other social media
- walking back the permabanns after a bunch of journalists get roped up in the Elonjet fallout
- this new policy, presumably to justify the continued banning of Sweeney. You can put other reasoning here, like making it harder to migrate off Twitter. Other commentors mentioned in previous discussions that linking your mastodon in your profile allowed mastodon users to more easily find/recreate their Twitter network automatically.
That’s not really my job. If you want him to resolve the discrepancy between what he Tweeted and what’s on the policy page, you should ask him.
I do agree that there’s a discrepancy there, to be clear, and I think the policy is ridiculous no matter how you read it. I also think it’s bad that Musk is shooting from the hip in confusing ways.
Given that PG got suspended, the weight of evidence seems to be that my interpretation is correct. If Elon clarifies, I’ll certainly edit!
You seem to be assuming that it has to be policy, and that it has to have been justified by policy - instead of just a capricious exercise of power by someone with a very thin skin currently losing a ton of money on the social media site the court made him buy because he was trolling.
The weight of evidence is against Elon but this is not a court of law. He can ban everyone and probably will soon. Remember this post.. first person to say he will ban everyone at some point soon.
It seems like only an idiot would bother read Musk's TOS. Twitter will just ban anyone for whatever reason and it's your problem to bother appeal. I honestly don't see why anyone would bother. Musk has turned the entire site into nothing more than a circus. I certainly don't need this bullshit drama in my life and I don't know why anyone would.
Yeah, I can't see how "I can't post my handle here so go to my website to find it" isn't an effort to bypass restrictions. That doesn't mean that what Musk is doing is good, or that trying to bypass restrictions is bad. But there's this strange trend recently where in order to be part of one "side," you have to start uncritically repeating anything that looks good for your side, or else you'll be accused of shilling for the enemy side. It's not impossible to think that these new rules are stupid, attempting to bypass them is fine, but that also "I can't type my handle here so go to this other website and find it" is clearly an attempt to bypass them.
And these beliefs become opportunistic and change as soon as its convenient. Just a few hours ago when the promotion was first announced, most people were claiming that it was extremely expansive and that John Carmack could get banned for crossposting (which the terms say is allowed). People who disagreed were downvoted. Now that someone has been banned, the comments start claiming it's _not_ expansive, and people who disagree are getting downvoted.
That's one thing that makes it hard to follow this saga. It seems like Musk is doing pretty bad things, but there's so much hyperbole and inconsistency coming from his loudest critics that it's hard to have a grounded discussion on the matter.
If musk decided to ban use of the letter A in tweets, whether PG ran afoul of the rule is not an important factor in the story. What actually happened here isn't really much different. Who cares about adjudicating whether he was in line with the rules or not? The rule is insane and the real story is that Elon is banning colleagues with little thought.
Exactly. It's reminiscent of former East Germany which had all kinds of ridiculous laws and people would occasionally get arrested under them and then others would go 'oh, but he broke the law'. It was impossible not to. They could have made a law against breathing on Sundays and there would be people trying to justify it if you were arrested under that law. Best take a deep breath on Saturday evening I guess.
> If musk decided to ban use of the letter A in tweets, whether PG ran afoul of the rule is not an important factor in the story.
You'd certainly be justified in saying that a rule banning the letter A is ridiculous. But you wouldn't be justified in then going on to claim that a Tweet that contains the letter A doesn't contain it, and downvoting anyone who points out it does.
[Edit: Not just downvoting. Now the post that said they thought it went against the new terms of service has been flagged and removed.]
There's this unsettling trend where once someone thinks they're on the right side, the truth no long matters. Or worse, should be considered verboten if it doesn't back up maximalist claims. And when enough people are doing this, measured discussion is no longer possible.
> Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme.
That was very casual and not at all an example of relentless advertising for competitors. It's also extremely dubious that PG was trying to evade Twitter enforcement.
So you can incite and insurrection or be antisemitic and be reinstated, but you can't post a link to a competitor. These rules are arbitrary - Twitter is an absolute clown show now
Let me get this straight. Troll buys Twitter, says Twitter will promote "free speech". Re-instates scumbag accounts because people have the right to be scumbags. BUT you can't talk about 1) his jet, 2) other websites that are you know kind of similar to Twitter, 3) coke fiend laptops.
He didn't just casually share a link to his site though; he said "you can find my Mastodon account on my site". That's basically just posting a link to your Mastodon account, but with an extra step.
Is the new policy bullshit? Sure. But clearly this is against the spirit of it.
What about it? I make no attempt to justify any of Twitter's policies or say they good or even consistent. All I'm saying that any honest good faith interpretation of the stated rules will say that this is clearly against it. Whether these rules are good or bad is an entirely different matter.
This is like the time someone post a link with "here is someone calling you a cunt" (not on HN, another forum) and then try to defend that by claiming "I didn't call them I cunt, I merely linked to someone who did". That didn't fly either.
Whether these rules are good or bad is an entirely different matter.
The issue isn't whether the rules are good or bad, the issue is that El No decreed that he was a freeze peach absolutist. If something is absolute there's no room for exceptions.
I didn't call them I cunt, I merely linked to someone who did
No. It's like El No saying that you can absolutely call him naughty names, someone calls him a cunt, and El No throws a tantrum.
Actually this is even more ridiculous since El No decreed that accounts dedicated to promoting competitors would be banned. Honestly, I don't even know who "pg" is at this point and I couldn't possibly care less (presumably he's one of those Joe Rogaine types). However it's pretty clear that this twitter account was used to post all sorts of content. Even with a tweet about Mastodon, or two, or like twenty that means there are multiple reasons for that twitter account to exist. It is not dedicated to promoting Mastodon. This is just El No throwing a very expensive tantrum because his massive ego is bruised.
This is the issue you're trying to forcibly inject.
Well, no. Nobody forced El No, the current emperor of Twitter, to declare himself under no uncertain circumstances to be a "freeze peach absolutist". As the current grand poobah of tweeting his very public decrees are entirely relevant.
You are clearly uninterested in having any sort of conversation and merely wish to ram though your own conversation to score "zingers", never mind the pathetic childish namecalling, so good day to you.
You know why these threads tend to derail? Stuff like this. I don't even care all that much about the entire thing, but you know, it's kind of interesting. "Replies" such as yours make it impossible to have an interesting conversation.
You are clearly uninterested in having any sort of conversation
What is debatable about the following quote from the chief executive of Twitter? "Sorry to be a free speech absolutist."
You're making excuses for a guy who tweets Nazi images and quotes while slamming the ban hammer down on professional journalists merely trying to interview him. Rationalize your cognitive dissonance all you want, but that doesn't change that this has nothing to do with whatever the rules are at Twitter. The rules don't matter because the rules change at El No's every whim. Therefor what matters is El No's whim, and El No's whim claimed (unironically) to be a "freeze peach absolutist".
It's pretty telling that "zingers" offend you while El No's penchant for tweeting Nazis and vilifying journalists doesn't. If anything you're attempting to derail meaningful discourse by falling back on the so-called rules… rules written in quicksand.
If your argument is so weak that the "wrong" nouns derail it, you didn't have much of an argument in the first place.
> You're making excuses for a guy who tweets Nazi images
All I said was that Graham's actions were against the spirit of a rule on Twitter. Nothing more, nothing less. You've managed to escalate this beyond any reasonable proportion.
This absolutely was not casually sharing a link that happened to be on another platform. It was an announcement about quitting twitter and an advertisement on where he could be found on a competing platform.
It is straight up the EXACT scenario that the policy was put in place for.
Mr Dumpty had something of Mr Musk's way with words in "Through the Looking Glass":
`And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't-- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'
There are no rewards to be reaped here by defending him. There is nothing beneficial being achieved by Musks actions on Twitter as of late who is banning whoever is clearly against him personally. Not you, not me or anyone else is gaining anything. Love Tesla, love SpaceX but understand when something else is clearly wrong.
To anyone who missed it, this is in reference to Elon Musk slandering a rescue diver, who called BS on Musk's grand idea du jour, by saying the diver is a "pedo guy".
PSA: By the precedent set in the argument of his defense in the defamation case[1], a "pedo guy" just means a "creepy old man" to Elon Musk and the court — especially so if such a man is into younger women[2].
Therefore, by his own admission,...
> Elon Musk is a pedo guy. <
Feel free to copypaste/cite/link this comment, or simply refer to the Twitter CEO as "The famous pedo guy Elon Musk" from now on.
Thanks in advance for respecting me for stating the facts.
Elon Musk went on to elaborate that the rescue worker specifically has sex with underaged Thai boys. Elon wanted to completely destroy the rescue worker.
Imagine if somebody said this about a high school teacher.
Sorry for all those downvotes. I get people dislike Elon right now, and dislike the ban, but you are correct. I wish we would seek understanding instead of trying to… promote misunderstanding and silence people who point it out?
It’s kind of a philosophical discussion and there’s no clear line, but I do think it’s good to take responsibly for clarity of one’s writing. At some point you can assume the audience (or individuals) are being willfully obtuse, but we’re a long way away from that.
It's not a coincidence, no, because Oracle can provide support guarantees in a way a Postgres contractor can not.
This is also a factor for independent developers (who build airline reservation systems) who need to choose a RDBMS for their product - they'll choose oracle, because ... Oracle can provide support guarantees in a way a Postgres contractor can not.
Which makes Oracle not a different class of product than Postgres, but a different class of support for the product. (which could be considered part of the product, so ... maybe you're right)
Maybe I'm cynical but every file locker service makes money selling access to downloadable material that doesn't belong to them, mega was just honest/stupid about it.
I completely agree that there is a distinction, and one I also feel strongly about. But really the only distinction between the pirate bay and megaupload from that point of view is maturity and technical/political savvy. I feel I have to draw the line at a place where selling access to a file locker that you know is mostly used for infringement is ok or I'm a hypocrite. Especially when you look at from a "what should be legal" point of view where you have to consider enforceability rather than a hypothetical ethical question.
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