Elon #Musk finally backs out of the deal to purchase #Twitter, citing unresolved questions about #bots and #spammers.
> "I'd say Twitter is well-positioned legally to argue that it provided him with all the necessary information and this is a pretext to looking for any excuse to get out of the deal," said Ann Lipton, associate dean for faculty research at Tulane Law School.
Now, I don't know whether this person has expertise in contract law and has read the agreement, so I cannot guess as to the result of the legal battle that will come out of this.
> In a filing, Musk's lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company's business performance.
> "Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement," the filing said.
I did find less garbage pushed when I tried Tweetdeck, but "50 columns mode" still has unwanted content, while missing some wanted content.
I went to the main #Twitter site recently and spent the whole time cicking "show less of this" (in my case, it was any post someone I follow had 'liked' and also random posts by unknown people). I had the feeling that there is an infinite pool of garbage waiting to be pushed in front of my eyes.
I really hate the site so much because they fill my timeline with so much unrequested garbage that I cannot even judge whether the people I'm following are still worth it.
It would be nice to have a big chunk of the people who are using #corpocentric #socnets like #Twitter and #Facebook and #Instagram move some or all of their presence over to the #OStatus and #ActivityPub branches of the #Fediverse, but I'd much rather they come because they want to try something different instead of coming because they are fleeing some change or impending change over there.
Why? Because these networks will never give them everything that those did. I personally believe that these networks can give some benefits that those cannot, but thus far, we've mostly tried to replicate their functionality ... without the benefit of nearly unlimited VC cash and a centralized model which puts $CentralizedNetwork at the center of its users' communications, where benefits built upon centralized knowledge of users' actions / choices / contacts.
Therefore, in 2-3 weeks, I expect 9 out of 10 new users to have have returned to Twitter ... or to some centralized network that springs up to duplicate Twitter without the Musk factor.
This has happened before. Maybe not on this scale, but it has happened. Multiple times. And always, most of them leave.
There have been reports of employees misusing supposedly private direct messages for years, so it isn't like Elon Musk can suddenly reach into the database and pull up your nude selfies. He hasn't even bought the company and assumed control yet.
I keep thinking about a couple #Twitter threads criticizing #Mastodon (the #Fediverse, really) for being inherently different than closed commercial platforms using far-fetched hypotheticals and extraordinary occurrences; while I do not want to make a useless point-by-point response, instead I'll tell you what I like about federated social media and #Friendica in particular.
After #Facebook froze my account for using a pseudonym (a spottily enforced rule), I started hosting my own #Diaspora pod because I could.
I didn't know anyone so I initially made contacts with other podmins and progressively extended my circle through shared posts. This is how I learned about #Friendica, a platform that was compatible with both #Diaspora and #OStatus (#GNUSocial, #StatusNet ) because it could.
Written in #PHP, liked both the multi-protocol approach and that I could contribute code to it. So I started hosting my #Friendica node and I kept following the same Diaspora accounts, because I could.
When #Mastodon was first released based on OStatus, I started following several accounts on there because I could. When #ActivityPub was released and supported by Mastodon, we followed suite a few months later, because we could.
With popularity came the right-wing trolls and free speech extremists who organized their own federated instances, but they never bothered me much as I blocked their entire instance domains because I could.
None of these are currently possible with commercial platforms. Not all people will end up hosting their own node and it's fine, but the breadth of possibility is what makes federated social network attractive.
I suspect it is because they reminded him that as a board member, he would have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of all shareholders, not just himself, and that he could face restrictions on what he could say & write.
Sure, the 14.9% cap probably also bugs him. I just don't think that was enough to dissuade him. While the fiduciary duty is something he may have had trouble with in the past.
Both share activity numbers but only the original status shows the replies. I wonder if comments on the retweet are automatically attached to the original post? I'm not even sure how to access the retweet status URL outside of the API.
A #VPN provider that I used shut down without much notice (in fact, the only way I found out was that I visited their site months later, trying to figure out why I hadn't been able to connect).
The #hotel I was using had a local provider that blocked #Fediverse instances (including Mastodon.Social), #Diaspora, #XMPP, #IRC, and a certain mail provider that I still use. They did not block: #Facebook, #Twitter, #GMail, or Outlook / #Hotmail
Because I couldn't connect to the VPN, I discovered how many perfectly normal sites were blocked because they weren't on the top 100 list. I went downstairs and informed the front desk that I would be leaving their establishment because of their blocking.
I received a phone call from their networking vendor, who logged into their router and proxy and turned off filtering on a list of about 25 sites they'd blocked.
But the point is, the hotel and its provider cannot be trusted not to fsck with your data. Always use a VPN.