Very interesting look at some of the less obvious implications of generative AI.

I feel like I say this whenever I post a link to a Twitter story, but I honestly can’t believe how dumb this stuff gets sometimes. Also, is Musk going to give someone else control of @ldschurch?

I’m tired of reading Twitter news, but I’m professionally obligated to do so, no matter how dumb it gets.

Starting to get notices about my Twitter API access being suspended. So long, Twitter research: You were an important part of my career, and I’ll miss you.

To paraphrase Mike Masnick, the defining motto of the Musk era seems to be ‘it can always get more stupid.’

How does this acquisition continue to get dumber and dumber?

The pettiness continues.

Some good commentary here. Musk loves certain buzzwords and flashy stunts, but they’re often in tension with the other decisions he makes.

Fascinating read—and one that reminds me that academic journal software doesn’t always render emoji either, which is a problem for social media research.

This is another dumb move by Musk. Masnick is excellent at calling him out on hypocrisy.

RIP my Twitter research. Glad I have other irons in the fire…

Twitter just gets worse and worse. What a joke.

This is dumb and worrying. The CEO of Gab has been promising to develop “based AI,” but he’s a bit player. Musk has the resources and influence to make this a bigger problem.

This is just so petty. I don’t know how his leadership at Twitter is defensible anymore.

Every time I think this acquisition can’t get dumber, it does.

Of all the dumb responses to perfectly legitimate content moderation, this is perhaps the dumbest.

I presume this decisuon also cuts off academics; this is going to have a huge impact on research, and not in a good way. I’m glad I’ve pivoted to other platforms, but this is still infuriating.

Ah, the kind of answer that only raises more questions.

Repeat after me: Content moderation is a good thing.

Although it’s been a real delight to see so many people joining Mastodon over the past few weeks, I’ve found that there’s also a disadvantage that I hadn’t expected: I’m spending a lot more time scrolling through Mastodon these days than I ever have since setting up my Mastodon accounts.

When I began setting up Mastodon accounts and shifting away from Twitter back in April, I felt like I had made a big leap forward in terms of my online consumption. One thing that I’d always struggled with on Twitter was the feeling that I needed to see every single post from every single account. I’d eventually helped with that by consuming Twitter via RSS and narrowing my followed accounts down to the ones that I really, really wanted to follow. By virtue of converting Twitter to RSS, I was still consuming all the posts from those accounts, but it also forced me to only pick those accounts that wouldn’t overwhelm my RSS reader with posts I didn’t really care about.

What a weird week it has been in Twitterland.

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any worse. Will be really interested to see if Dorsey gets banned.

This has been one of the most delightful moments I’ve experienced in my relatively short time on Mastodon. This week has been a good one for Mastodon: Musk’s continued missteps have brought more people, and a meme like this one helps give the fediverse more of a shared culture.

I’ve posted a bunch of articles about this already, but Masnick’s take is super helpful.

Free speech is genuinely important, but it’s hard to take the ideal seriously when its advocates twist it to mean something specific and self-serving.