Social Media: the good, the bad, the wierd

[useridgoeshere]

I only look at the “Following” tab on X, so no or minimal toxicity. It tries to push me to the “For You” cesspool, but I notice pretty quickly. I do get tricked on the Trending with labels that sound okay, but turn out to be awful, but it’s not that bad.

[The Gold Stream]

im still liking twitter or "x" but ive noticed on my mobile phone if i try to watch long form videos (1+ hrs) on the platform it often is interrupted and resets. I am unsure if this is an issue with the app or my device, i am able to watch the same videos on the desktop site

[Catlady in training]

Miss France in woke row over 'androgynous' winner with pixie cutç




Isn’t the new Miss France beautiful and feminine…? People in social media are strange…

I still don't see what is androgynous about her appearance? (Not that that would be a problem, IMO.) Is this a huge issue in France, or just the regular international/English speaking media where we don't know where the "offended" people even write from?

[Zelena]

I still don't see what is androgynous about her appearance? (Not that that would be a problem, IMO.) Is this a huge issue in France, or just the regular international/English speaking media where we don't know where the "offended" people even write from?

Well, about the androgynous, it is also the fact that she is also very thin…

A controversy that is not specifically from the English speaking media, I think… There are apparently many people that revolve around the Miss France contest who are very conservative and social networks took advantage to create the buzz.

That being said, it has been a while that I have been surprised that almost all women in popular shows had long hair. I have the impression that, thirty years ago, there was more diversity…

About this, I can’t help thinking about Disney’s Snow White… Was she woke?

[CaptainEurope]

I'm not a fan of The Intercept, but it certainly sets a tone when Elon Musk brings back Alex Jones but bans Ken Klippenstein.

[ed2962]

Kanye West supposedly stopped his wife from using social media for her own protection.

https://pagesix.com/2024/01/29/enter...ampaign=nypost

Ironically, ye just deleted his Instagram after being criticized for posting risque pics for Bianca there. But sure...he's trying to "protect" her.

[ed2962]

The Congress is questioning social media heads today. I won't be able to watch the rest of it, but I caught a clip of Tom Cotton going after the CEO of Tik Tok regarding the Uyghurs genocide. The CEO was like, "Sir, I'm here to talk about Tik Tok..."

[CaptainEurope]

"The Messenger" has already been canceled. I kind of liked it because it was completely financed by advertising and had nothing behind a paywall, and they had hired some good journos. But apparently, the business model was bleeding money.

[Tami]

"The Messenger" has already been canceled. I kind of liked it because it was completely financed by advertising and had nothing behind a paywall, and they had hired some good journos. But apparently, the business model was bleeding money.

Didn't know about it until now: Upstart digital news outlet The Messenger shuts down less than a year after launch

I can already tell you where they went wrong. A new company like that needs to start out small and slowly build up a following ,while promoting it's self and focusing on generating revenue.

You can't expect to survive if you go big from the start while neglecting self promotion. Shame, it sounded promising.

[Shalla Bal]

Miss France in woke row over 'androgynous' winner with pixie cutç




Isn’t the new Miss France beautiful and feminine…? People in social media are strange…

Huh--hard to believe this is controversial

She reminds me of Linda Evangelista, who in the '90s epitomized (and popularized) this type of look. This is timeless beauty.

[CaptainEurope]

How a Trump re-election could favor Elon Musk in his fights with U.S. regulators

Few people have more riding on the 2024 presidential election than tech magnate Elon Musk.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, is waging at least 11 separate regulatory or legal battles with the Biden administration or independent federal agencies related to his sprawling business empire, according to a tally by NBC News. If those fights extend into next year and former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, Musk would be likely to gain from relaxed enforcement, experts in regulatory law said in interviews.

The 11 ongoing battles, which involve seven government entities, touch on a wide array of subjects, from unions to vehicle safety to privacy on the social media app X.

“He would be in much less trouble in a Trump administration because Trump shares his hostility to regulation and regulators,” said Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University specializing in government regulation.

He never should have been allowed to buy the world's biggest soap box.

[Tami]

How a Trump re-election could favor Elon Musk in his fights with U.S. regulators



He never should have been allowed to buy the world's biggest soap box.

Blame the naive idiots who sold it to him. Jack Dorsey thought Musk would be the ideal caretaker, boy was he wrong.

[CaptainEurope]

Good:

Judge skeptical of lawsuit brought by Elon Musk's X over hate speech research

A federal judge in San Francisco appears poised to toss a lawsuit brought by Elon's Musk's X against a nonprofit that found the platform allowed hate speech to spread on the site once known as Twitter.

Last year, lawyers for X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, claiming the group improperly scraped X to prepare damning reports about the proliferation of hate speech on the site.

But in a hearing over Zoom on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer appeared highly skeptical of the case, devoting the majority of the proceeding to grilling Musk's lawyer over why the lawsuit was brought at all.

Jon Hawk, X's lawyer, said at core the suit is about honoring data security agreements to protect the platform's users.

Breyer was unconvinced.

"You put that in terms of safety, and I've got to tell you, I guess you can use that word, but I can't think of anything basically more antithetical to the First Amendment than this process of silencing people from publicly disseminated information once it's been published," Breyer said.

"You're trying to shoehorn this theory by using these words into a viable breach of contract claim," the judge added.

Judge calls argument from Musk lawyer 'vapid'
X contends that the CCDH violated the platform's terms of service by using a third-party tool called Brandwatch to analyze posts on the site to prepare reports critical of X.

The social media company argued that, in the process, CCDH gained unauthorized access to nonpublic data.

Much of Thursday's hearing turned on what exactly constitutes scraping and whether the center did indeed violate X's terms of service by collecting data for its reports.

X is seeking damages from the center, arguing that the platform lost tens of millions of dollars from advertisers fleeing the site in the wake of the nonprofit's findings.

But in order to make this case, X had to show the group knew the financial loss was "foreseeable" when it started its account and began abiding by Twitter's terms of service, in 2019, before Musk acquired the site.

X lawyer Hawk argued that the platform's terms of service state that the rules for the site could change at any time, including that suspended users whom the group says spread hate speech could be reinstated.

And so, Hawk said, if changes to the rules were foreseeable, then the financial loss from its reports on users spreading hate should have also been foreseeable.

This logic confused and frustrated the judge.

"That, of course, reduces foreseeability to one of the most vapid extensions of law I've ever heard," Breyer said.

CCDH's lawyer: Case is a nonprofit versus the world's richest man

...

[ed2962]

Musk is also out here trying to sue Open AI

https://time.com/6836815/the-key-iss...gainst-openai/

[CaptainEurope]

Usage Of Elon Musk’s X Dropped 30% In The Last Year, Study Suggests

Twitter experienced a 30% drop in usage from 2023 to 2024, according to a study from Edison Research that clashes with favorable traffic metrics shared by the social media platform’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, and CEO Linda Yaccarino.