It is simply inaccessible to anyone not using the platform. You need to create an account and join the community/"server" to see anything posted there. You cannot find anything by using a search engine and are completely unable to export anything for local use.
What lblume and nicce said, with the addition of it being both a Chinese-controlled privacy nightmare (with it apparently requiring non VOIP phone numbers for verification after being logged in for a while), as well as it making the bar to entry for cretins close to zero, meaning you'll soon find whatever chatroom you set up a prime example of Eternal September.
Think it as software which is designed for chatting NOW. Threads, pins and whatever are just treating the symptoms instead of fixing the actual problem, where you need organised and searchable knowledge library instead of platform which was designed for interaction with memes.
That isn't true. I signed up for a fresh account for a project I was working on. Despite following no-one and not having interacted with anything, all I was pushed were racists, bigots, and extremist political content.
While this is an interesting data point, the main thing it tells us is that when the algorithm has no information about your preferences, that it skews racist.
This might be because, absent other information, the algorithm defaults to the "average" user's preferences.
Or it might be evidence of intentional bias in the algorithm.
The next piece of data we need is, if we take a new account, and only interact with non-Nazi accounts and content (e.g. EFF, Cory Doctorow, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, AOC/Obama/Clinton etc), does the feed become filled with non-racist content, or is it still pushed?
Or you can just leave the platform. We don’t always need to interrogate the exact reasons why something happens, we can just see it, document it, then go elsewhere.
Even if you believe that Musk and team don’t “touch the scales” of the algorithm, the inevitable consequence of the decision to prioritize comments of people willing to pay for blue checks, is to discourage users not in that segment from engagement at all levels.
The resulting shift in attention data naturally propagates to weight the input to the algorithm away from “what does an average user pay attention to” and more towards “what does a paying user pay attention to.”
Setting morality aside, this is a self-consistent, if IMO short-sighted, business goal. What it is not is a way to create a fair and impartial “mirror” as you have described.
I created an account, picked "pets" as my interest. I was suggested several pet-related accounts to follow, and followed none.
I went to the home page and "for you" was populated about 80% from known right accounts and angry right-flavored screeds from people I didn't recognize.
The other 20% was just a smattering of random, normal stuff. None of it about pets.
I think it's good advice, the main difference is that Bsky encourages you to do that by giving you the possibility to customize your feeds (and set whatever as the default). You can have a combination of personal lists and custom algorithmic feeds (your own or someone else's).
Even ignoring musk's takeover, I think it's a better model that reduces doomscrolling, ragebait and generally low quality interactions.
If I visit a buffet looking for a healthy snack, but 90% of the dishes are fast food, then I'll probably spend a lot of time looking through the fast food, and may even eat some as the best worst option.
Similarly, I have found the overall content pool to have significantly worsened since Musk's takeover. The algorithm keeps serving me trash. It doesn't mean I want trash.
You can take your analogy further. The buffet noticed you pausing on unhealthy food, and begins replacing all the healthy options with unhealthy options. People shame your criticisms and note you could easily put blinders on and intentionally look longer at healthy options anytime you accidentally glance at an unhealthy one. the alternative would be an absolute repression of free speech after all.
A whole lot of machine learning practitioners use X. Makes it difficult to avoid if you're interested in the news. It's definitely a network effect issue.
He didn't need to own Twitter for this, so even if you give Musk some slack about his God-awful opinions, his (real and hypothetical) achievements are still not a good reason at all to stay on X.
Literal moon shots, while he contributes meaningfully to worsening conditions on Earth. His dismantling of USAID will have a more consequential effect than 90% of his fever dreams ever will.
Not only that, but his @grok bot is now completely unhinged too (the public version) spewing an even more polarized version of his exact views without any ability to consider new information:
On October 22nd the US national debt passed $38 trillion, a record number. That is the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. We only hit $37 trillion in in August.
Further, unless you are in the top .1% of earners, or you live on tips (I somehow doubt there are many stippers on HN) your taxes will not decrease as a result of any of Trumps "cuts".
In short, you have been lied to and are celebrating unnecessary cruelty for the sake of cruelty which will save you personally $0.00 and which only further increases America's debts.
Worse the ridiculous tariffs are pushing us toward a recession that only AI investment has forestalled. AI investment now represents the single largest investment of capital in human history, and if that bubble bursts we will enter into what could potentially be the worst economic collapse in not only American history, but human history.
Yes. I literally mean that only strippers live on tips. Where I'm from only strippers are legally allowed to receive tips, actually. The local Caddies went on strike, but it didn't' work out. I hear the Dalai Lama blessed them though, so at least they have that going for them.
I am a messenger, and it turns out I've got some bad news as well.
My contention is that this kind of emotional appeal has been exploited to the point of (quickly) diminishing returns.
People are scratching the surface and following the money. Those who used such maudlin tactics to protect money laundering, war mongering and such things would do well to go and sin no more, lest more serious consequences come knocking.
Focus and determination can grant you the power of the queen on the chessboard.
But when you become blind to what happens around you, you become the pawn in someone else’s plan. A messenger is an authority’s favorite tool.
Someone would like to starve people and you are a part of their plan. If you feel the tug of appeal, it is because you understand something isn’t right here. If you don’t investigate, your mind is not your own.
> My contention is that this kind of emotional appeal has been exploited to the point of (quickly) diminishing returns.
That might apply to you personally, and if it does then it says a lot more about you than it does any broader societal point.
Personally, I’m able to distinguish between attempts to manipulate my emotions and the very real, very true fact that people are starving and dying as a result of cynical choices made by Musk and DOGE. There’s no reason to group that together with war mongering and money laundering, the only reason to do so is if you’re seeking to dismiss real documented suffering.
“People have cynically tried to manipulate my emotions so I don’t have any emotions any more” isn’t the retort you apparently think it is.
It is not an emotional appeal. It is a statement of objective and provable fact that cutting off funding for food resulted in people not having food. It's also obvious that this would be the result. The grandparent posted a link to one study. There are others if you do a quick search.
> People are scratching the surface and following the money. Those who used such maudlin tactics to protect money laundering, war mongering and such things would do well to go and sin no more, lest more serious consequences come knocking.
I have no idea what any of this even means. I don't live in whatever bubble you do, but it sounds like you believe there is some kind of global cabal of "them" that profited by these children not starving and you're out to stop that?
I think specifically these NGOs were run by board members that ran 10 other NGOs all called "Save the children Africa" etc... And the weird thing about it, is that no children were actually being saved. Instead the money went to ActBlue through a few actors.
Mr Beast has done more for Saving the Children in Africa with $5m than USAID has done with $500b per year.
Children are being left to die. SOMETHING is more important than that to the proponents of these policies. What is it? If it's lower taxes... they aren't achieving that goal. Taxes are only decreasing for the top 0.1% of the population and tip earners.
If it's to lower the national debt that also isn't working. The national debt has increased at record rates.
Is there some other goal I'm not aware of? Why is it so important that these children not be fed?
The most important goal IMO is to expose and weaken the misguided use and expansion of "soft power" in my name, with my tax dollars and without my consent.
Ironically, one of the consistent outcomes is starving and dying children. They're just delivered asynchronously and from the "wrong" side of the ledger.
As I said in my original comment, even if you disagree with the concept of USAID and want to shut it down you ramp it down over time to allow for replacements. Doing it immediately has an absolutely negligible effect on your tax dollars (putting aside the fact it’s a rounding error at best anyway) and is a deliberate choice to inflict suffering on innocent people.
The government decided to let food they’d already paid for rot while people starved. Twist yourself into a pretzel to defend that if you wish but I won’t be joining you.
those rockets use a lot of those same fossil fuels. And he can't even complete a project in Las Vegas, so lets not think he knows how to build on the moon. I live in Nashville, the site of his next little Tesla tunnel. I promise you none of us are holding our breath on that one.
Not the Senate. That takes 60 votes to end the democrat's filibuster, which is why the last dozen attempts by republicans to pass a clean CR with no changes to the current budget failed. (The last one yesterday[1] failed with 54 in favor 44 against. Three democrats voted with the republicans in that vote, still not enough.)
Not having supermajority doesn't mean they aren't in control. The fact is, the president could say one sentence, and the shutdown would be over. It's no surprise that the last 2 record setting shutdowns happened under this president.
They're in control of some things certainly, but not this. The decision to filibuster republican attempts to re-open the government is almost entirely up to Schumer, and under current rules the republicans can't do anything about that without 60 votes.
You're right of course that Trump could probably persuade Schumer to end the shutdown by agreeing to his demands, but I think it's disingenuous to suggest that means he's in "control" of what's happening. (Let alone the insanity of trying to suggest Elon Musk is somehow to blame as previous commenters did, or that X users are for continuing to use X. This thread about a new link preloading feature in Twitter got very off topic very quickly.)
Either the democrats vote the budgets in which republicans have removed all healthcare funding and millions die of preventable diseases, or they don't and millions starve because republicans are illegally holding onto the money for food stamps. How is it on the democrats again?
Not only is SNAP already funded via emergency funds, the administration was just told to resume SNAP benefits and they are unsurprisingly doing the absolute minimum.
If congressional Republicans could guarantee all funding will continue under a CR, I bet the shutdown would be over by now. But they can't, because in July they ratified Trump's authority to cancel any appropriated funding he wants. When challenged on rescissions, the Speaker said they're going to continue regardless!
How are budget negotiations supposed to work if one of the sides won't even promise to honor the agreements made?
Anyone who's invested enough to attention to the budget fight knows that it's not a hypothetical. Trump has killed a number of programs and departments that were funded by previous CRs, and has explicitly promised to continue doing so. I know you know this isn't true, but I don't understand what you think it accomplishes to lie, other than to further radicalize people against Trumpism.
How is Musk involved in the current budget debacle aside from being "republican"? It's easy to blame stuff on him when he was running DOGE, but since his falling out with trump blaming every cut on Musk is a tired and expired meme.
Given how much he contributed to the election outcome it hardly seems tired to blame him for the consequences.
Plus he's on Twitter every week publicly discussing how much he uses the platform to put his thumb on the scale of discourse towards his personal beliefs.
This is the problem with the dialogue around Musk. He's not 99% vaporware, he's 80-90% vaporware. That's problem enough.
In some cases, like Tesla, the vaporware is propping up the company (pivoting to robots!) even though sales are crashing because of the self-inflicted immolation of his personal brand. This is not going to end well.
Going to the moon was, at the very least, demonstrated as technologically possible in the 1960s, and you can literally go watch a Starship launch if you want. I have a very hard time putting it in the same "entirely prospective" category as androids, self-driving taxis, and Mars bases.
> Musk constantly promises to build things that never get built. He's 99% vaporware.
Absolutely laughable motivated reasoning. Hate the guy if you must, but claiming one of the most impactful business leaders in American history is "99% vaporware" makes you look silly.
The PYthon Software Foundation does not develop Python. They manage the package repository, do marketing pro-Python, and distribute money among people they like (in theory to promote the language).
> But guys famously will complain about:
> 1. Women reading science fiction
> 2. Women watching science fiction on TV.
> 3. Women playing d&d
> 4. Women playing online games
> 5. Women writing code.
In your head? The first two are specially absurd. How would anyone know what women watch or read in their houses?
As soon as women try to participate in fandom or attend conventions, they are derided as not being "real fans". This has been documented as a problem with geek culture for well over 50+ years.
> What he does is evil. Why is it evil? Because I resent him. Why do you resent him? Because I am no match for him. - Has anyone ever answered like this?
Fascism comes from “fascio” (not from the small town of Fascia) that means “bundle”.
The idea is that, like rods are fragile by themselves but strong as a bundle, an individual is either with the group (making it stronger) or an enemy of it. No room for discussion or disagreement
