Social Media Discussion

[Exodor]

I've been there for awhile as Exodor

It's pretty quiet and there's not nearly as much content as I used to get on Twitter but there are a lot less nazis.

[Holman]

I'm there as pwroberts

[Zaxxon]

Yeah, hoping critical mass comes now that people can explore over there without a patron...

[Kraken]

I'm kraken57.

[disarm]

Just joined as 'disarm'

Never bothered with a twitter account before, so not sure how much I'll use Bluesky, but at least I've locked down my name.

[Zaxxon]

Just joined as 'disarm'

Never bothered with a twitter accident before

Excellent slip there, good sir.

[Alefroth]

Straylite

Most of my follows are pretty quiet.

[Isgrimnur]

The behavior I'm currently seeing as an anonymous viewer on Twitter/X is that I can access an individual tweet if I have the URL for it, but I can't see any replies to that tweet. If I try to view someone's feed, I get redirected to the login page.

Nitter is fully functional again, so I'm just using that to access Twitter/X for anything other than clicking through links to specific tweets.

Twitter front-end Nitter dies as Musk wins war against third-party services

NoLog, a Czech group that ran another Nitter instance, announced its demise today. NoLog operated one of the largest Nitter instances but is a different group than the one that created Nitter itself.

"Nitter is over—it's been a fun ride. Twitter blocked the last known way to access their network without a user account," the NoLog update said.

Users reported that many Nitter instances went down about eight months ago as Twitter (now called X) imposed new API restrictions. Some instances stayed online with workarounds, which no longer work.

"Most Nitter servers were using a technique of generating loads of temporary tokens that were used for accessing the content, but that path is now blocked as well," the NoLog update today said.

[Max Peck]

Yeah, Nitter has been dead for me since sometime in January, IIRC. Which means that Xitter is functionally dead for me as well.

[LawBeefaroni]

Hey, look, Musk's sockpuppet calling in to Alex Jone's Infowars.


(Last 25 mins or so - this isn't a link to Infowars but a podcast about Infowars/Alex Jones)

[Kraken]

Is Facebook down this morning? I'm unable to log in on three different devices. Keeps telling me my password is wrong. (edit) Can't load Instagram either.

[pr0ner]

Is Facebook down this morning? I'm unable to log in on three different devices. Keeps telling me my password is wrong. (edit) Can't load Instagram either.

Yep, down for me too.

[UsulofDoom]

Is Facebook down this morning? I'm unable to log in on three different devices. Keeps telling me my password is wrong. (edit) Can't load Instagram either.

Yep, down for me too.

meta.com is down too. Can't login.

[LordMortis]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/05/faceboo ... users.html

“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on the social media site X Tuesday.

The hashtags ”#instagramdown” and ”#facebookoutage” were trending on X Tuesday morning. Shares of Meta were down more than 1%.

Additionally, Meta is experiencing “major disruptions” across its Meta Admin Center, Facebook login, WhatsApp Business API and Marketing API, according to a company website that tracks the status of its business products.

It is not immediately clear when the outages will be resolved.

[Kraken]

All better now.

[Rumpy]

Amazing the trouble it causes when Facebook is down... I tried resetting my password, but when that didn't work, ie it didn't seem to even recognize I had put a new one in, I figured it was a login server issue.

I really wish there'd be a way for them to give proper error messages or notify users at the top of the login screen that there's an issue. The standard boilerplate messages just cause confusion and panic.

[Carpet_pissr]

Panic?

[Rumpy]

Well yeah, not being able to login would cause some panic among people. Particularly when paired with the 'password not recognized' message.

[MCQueen2]

Amazing the trouble it causes when Facebook is down... I tried resetting my password, but when that didn't work, ie it didn't seem to even recognize I had put a new one in, I figured it was a login server issue.

I really wish there'd be a way for them to give proper error messages or notify users at the top of the login screen that there's an issue. The standard boilerplate messages just cause confusion and panic.

I was scared to delete facebook and move on to newer Social Media platforms...

Now I have almost a year since I deleted it and never looked back to it since... Such a liberating feeling.

[Rumpy]

Amazing the trouble it causes when Facebook is down... I tried resetting my password, but when that didn't work, ie it didn't seem to even recognize I had put a new one in, I figured it was a login server issue.

I really wish there'd be a way for them to give proper error messages or notify users at the top of the login screen that there's an issue. The standard boilerplate messages just cause confusion and panic.

I was scared to delete facebook and move on to newer Social Media platforms...

Now I have almost a year since I deleted it and never looked back to it since... Such a liberating feeling.

I've often thought about it, but it's the only way I can connect to friends and family.

[Moliere]

Amazing the trouble it causes when Facebook is down... I tried resetting my password, but when that didn't work, ie it didn't seem to even recognize I had put a new one in, I figured it was a login server issue.

I really wish there'd be a way for them to give proper error messages or notify users at the top of the login screen that there's an issue. The standard boilerplate messages just cause confusion and panic.

I was scared to delete facebook and move on to newer Social Media platforms...

Now I have almost a year since I deleted it and never looked back to it since... Such a liberating feeling.

I've often thought about it, but it's the only way I can connect to friends and family.

That and FB Marketplace is still a good place for buying and selling stuff. It often outperforms Craigslist and OfferUp when I am trying to sell items.

[Rumpy]

Amazing the trouble it causes when Facebook is down... I tried resetting my password, but when that didn't work, ie it didn't seem to even recognize I had put a new one in, I figured it was a login server issue.

I really wish there'd be a way for them to give proper error messages or notify users at the top of the login screen that there's an issue. The standard boilerplate messages just cause confusion and panic.

I was scared to delete facebook and move on to newer Social Media platforms...

Now I have almost a year since I deleted it and never looked back to it since... Such a liberating feeling.

I've often thought about it, but it's the only way I can connect to friends and family.

That and FB Marketplace is still a good place for buying and selling stuff. It often outperforms Craigslist and OfferUp when I am trying to sell items.

I've never used the Marketplace, but I could see how it would be useful due to the expanded userbase.

[Kraken]

That, and the Dull Men's Club is endlessly entertaining if you're a dull man. Those are my people.

[Rumpy]

For some reason, I have a number of those groups appearing on my feed. I'd never seen any of them until about a month or so ago.

[Alefroth]

Just after Kraken started mentioning it?

[Rumpy]

No, slightly before he first mentioned it. Now it's showing them at least once a day.

[Jaymann]

No, slightly before he first mentioned it...

But he was thinking about it.

[Rumpy]

That's some powerful algorithm then

[Isgrimnur]

It's just a letter. Words are cheap. It's just...silly? Pathetic? Gutless? All of the above...

Suit filed in California. Which has a very strong anti-SLAPP statute. I wonder if this is going to go the way Musk thinks it will...

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is suing a research group that investigated hate speech on the social media platform, alleging that researchers violated its terms of service in a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers.”

In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, X alleged that the American and British operations of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) “engaged in a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data.”

Tossed

A lawsuit that Elon Musk's X filed last year against a research group was thrown out Monday, with US District Judge Charles Breyer saying, "This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech."
...
But Breyer wrote "there can be no mistaking" that the real motive of the suit was to bully X's critics into silence.

The decision cited a survey that found "social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X" as a result of Musk's policies as CEO.
...
In his scathing dismissal, Breyer said the CCDH exercising its First Amendment rights was the fundamental issue, despite X's attempt to sidestep it with arguments about data privacy and security.
...
"It is apparent to the Court that X Corp. wishes to have it both ways," Breyer wrote, "to be spared the burdens of pleading a defamation claim, while bemoaning the harm to its reputation, and seeking punishing damages based on reputational harm."

In a footnote, he added: "If there is any question about the 'punishing' part, X Corp. filed a similar suit, not before this Court, in November of 2023 against Media Matters, another non-profit media watchdog, for 'reporting on ads from major brands appearing next to neo-Nazi content.'"

[Smoove_B]

Been using Youtube without any problems since the last dust-up in the Fall of 2023, but it looks like things could start heating up again:

YouTube has been at war with adblockers for quite some time now and has employed various tactics to keep users off those extensions. Its most recent defense strategy is to skip right to the end of the video you’re playing. If you try replaying it, it’ll do that again. If you tap anywhere on the timeline, your video will buffer indefinitely.

...

So far, one of the most popular adblockers, AdBlock, has been handling YouTube’s measures quite well by tweaking its code and tackling every new strategy that YouTube utilizes. This is how it’s managed to survive multiple crackdowns. But YouTube, too, manages to quickly counter these new changes in this years-long cat-and-mouse game between YouTube and AdBlock.

...

Users have also figured out workarounds. Some are switching to AdBlock alternatives, such as uBlock Origin, while others recommend browser substitutes like Brave to fix the issue. A few disappointed consumers are also considering bidding farewell to the platform. Still, with no major video-sharing platforms to act as replacements, I doubt their boycott will be sustainable.

[LordMortis]

AdBlocker has always been seamless for me in Firefox. If it becomes a problem, Youtube can go. That's fine by me. I can appreciate that it takes money to run the service but I was driven to ad blockers by how poorly their ads were integrated. I won't go back to anything approaching that and the more google vehicles google takes from me, the more they will push me completely away from their sphere of commoditizing my Internet experience entirely. That's not where they want to be when they are losing their monopoly on search engining.

[Isgrimnur]

Google’s AI really is that stupid, feeds people answers from The Onion

Ben Collins, one of the new owners of our former sister site, pointed out some of AI Overview’s most egregious errors on his social media. Asked “how many rocks should I eat each day,” Overview said that geologists recommend eating “at least one small rock a day.” That language was of course pulled almost word-for-word from a 2021 Onion headline. Another search, “what color highlighters do the CIA use,” prompted Overview to answer “black,” which was an Onion joke from 2005.

Writer Parker Molloy conducted further tests that found Google’s AI simply couldn’t differentiate between news and satire. But other examples suggest the tool doesn’t know how to sift out bad information, period. One viral search on how to keep cheese from sliding off a pizza got a response to try using non-toxic glue, apparently culled from a decade-old Reddit comment.

[Jaymann]

Makes me wonder how many of my snarky jokes on OO will start showing up.

[hepcat]

Gemini appeared on my android phone last week and I already dislike it. The problem is it replaced Google Assistant when it was installed and stuff I normally just asked GA to do for me (play the news would result in news from a selection of radio/podcasts) was now giving me the wrong stuff (a shit ton of video news from sites I'd never even heard of).

I did eventually find the switch to go back. But sometimes smart can be TOO smart.

...thankfully, I will never experience that problem personally.

[Blackhawk]

Makes me wonder how many of my snarky jokes on OO will start showing up.

Given the range of topics discussed here? They almost certainly already have.

[LordMortis]

Octopus Overlords can refer to a few different things, depending on the context:

Cephalopods as Overlords:
In a whimsical and somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, Ars Technica published an article in 2016 suggesting that octopuses might be our new overlords1. The researchers proposed that the adaptability of cephalopods, their short lifespans, and their ability to change behavior quickly during their lives could contribute to their potential dominance. Of course, this is more of a fun thought experiment than a serious scientific claim!
Gaming and Fictional Contexts:
In the realm of science fiction and fantasy, the term “Octopus Overlords” has been used creatively:
In the video game “Fall from Heaven,” the Octopus Overlords are depicted as incomprehensible Lovecraftian entities, akin to the Cthulhu Mythos. They coexist alongside classical angels and demons, adding an eldritch twist to the game’s lore2.
On Roberts Space Industries, an organization called OCTOVRLRDS (Octopus Overlords) exists. Their description humorously states: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some space-faring cephalopods plying their trade among the stars” (a nod to Lovecraftian themes)3.
Even on Steam, there’s a group called Octopus Overlords where gamers gather to play games and recommend them to others4.
So whether you’re pondering cephalopod overlords or exploring fictional universes, the concept of Octopus Overlords certainly sparks the imagination!

[Blackhawk]

Every one but the first was an actual reference to us. Good job, AI.

(The AI knows too much. Send in the cleaners.)