Tag: twitter

From Mashable:

However, it appears that a significant portion of that traffic on [Twitter] could be fake, according to data provided to Mashable by CHEQ, a leading cybersecurity firm that tracks bots and fake users.

According to CHEQ, a whopping 75.85 percent of traffic from [Twitter] to its advertising clients’ websites during the weekend of the Super Bowl was fake.

Are we really surprised? These stats are coming out of the mouth of Elon Musk, who is not only a liar, but didn’t even want to buy the website in the first place. He then changed the name and ruined Twitter’s own brand value and recognition (there is a reason we don’t refer to it by its new name on this blog) for fun.

He wants you to think this was intentional, and that the name and its CEO in-name-only Linda Yaccarino are a fresh start and chapter for the website, but that’s not true. Inside the company’s walls sits Elon Musk–who is still very much the owner with full control over everything. Yaccarino can’t even give straight answers to anything, and every interview she does is really awkward because of it. It’s embarrassing.

I won’t say the previous regime was great–all of my run-ins with them were always drama-filled–but they never pulled things like this, and they weren’t helmed by a billionaire and his fake CEO who couldn’t tell you how a social media platform is supposed to function.

And no, unlike what DHH suggested many moons ago (based on potentially fraudulent numbers to begin with*), the layoffs and subsequent “cloud exit” did not correspond to anything good. In fact, Twitter is now plagued with numerous bugs and tons of issues — like frequent outages — that have only been exacerbated by Musk’s lack of knowledge and shoddy leadership skills.

*And importantly, the reason I say this is because we know now that the numbers most recently cited for the Super Bowl are fake, so how can we believe anything that the company said or will say in the future? We can’t. We have to question it now.

The truth is, Musk’s dream of an “everything app” akin to that of China’s WeChat will never happen unless governments around the world forgo democracy and enforce its use. And that’s just not going to happen. Elon Musk can’t even get people to subscribe to his platform’s “Premium” offerings, as the offering only has around 640 million people subscribed to it as of September 2023. (Still waiting on more recent data, but I suspect it hasn’t gone up that much.)

I close with this quote from the same Mashable article:

Most […] users who are regularly on the platform can attest to a noticeable uptick in seemingly inauthentic activity in recent months. When a post goes viral on […], its now commonplace to find bots filling the replies with AI-generated responses or accounts with randomly generated usernames spamming a user’s mentions with unsolicited “link-in-bio” promotions. Now, there’s data which backs up that user experience.

Yep. That’s what happens when you lay off your moderation staff, and sell boosts and verified badges for money… Rest assured, the world will not be doing “everything” through an app produced by Elon Musk any time soon. It just won’t happen.

In “Twitter is really creepy” news, this happened. To be honest, I’m not sure how they get away with this. They’re not supposed to be allowed to pull from your web history or anything if you have the inferred identity and analytics permissions stuff turned off. My guess is that, like many things at Twitter, that feature is broken. Probably intentionally. And even if it wasn’t intentional, it’s not like they’d be willing to fix it: they don’t really have the manpower to do so.

Sigh. I hate that website.

Hi! Before continuing, please read my original blog post from the other day. It gives some important context to this entire situation.

Hey Slade,
I let Engineering know about your friend blocking you once again, [sensitive information withheld], just for a sanity check. They got back to me pretty quickly with confirmation that it is showing as a legitimate block. They’ll look into it if they get a chance but I can’t make any promises.

I know you’re not doing the best mentally right now and I think you could use some friends around you right now. So please, take this advice: reach out to them soon and talk to them. Just talk, nothing more. Isolating yourself is only going to make things worse. Please, lean on your friends and just get better, because that’s what they’re there for. I’m sure they’d tell you the same thing.

All my best,
A [name withheld]

This isn’t the answer I was hoping for, but it’s one of the more thoughtful ones I’ve ever gotten. My contact isn’t wrong, I’ve been getting more and more anxious over this. The truth is I have no idea what’s going on, and neither does the skeleton crew at Twitter. Max can see my account, but I can’t see his. I can’t DM him, I can’t even see past DMs. And I definitely can’t interact with him at all. It’s so beyond frustrating and weird.

It’s what I’ve been referring to as a “phantom block” — wherein the block is there for me, but definitely not for him. I’m hoping they can find a resolution soon — but it sucks I can’t keep up with one of my best friends on Twitter until it is. Somehow. I am at the mercy of the team behind a platform that is actively on fire.

But don’t worry, I’ll be taking that advice my contact gave and reaching out to Max and a couple of my other friends privately within the next day or so. They’re right: I haven’t been doing well, and isolating myself isn’t going to help anyone. My friends are there to lean on if I need them, and I do… so I’m going to stop isolating myself and be more communicative.

The future is bright, folks.

Developer dimden, known for being the creator of the Old Twitter Layout browser extension, has been working on an “actually good” Twitter replacement called Whispy for a while now. Well, they took to Twitter to announce that there had been “great progress” made on Whispy and they think there will be a closed beta in February. They didn’t make any promises, however.

From Whispy.org: