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Scammers are targeting Chinese-language users, harassing political dissidents and influential figures.

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
    English
    105·
    10 months ago

    Honestly, the only real solution is leaving Twitter. With the plan to remove the block feature this will only get worse and worse. I really don’t see this sort of thing getting better anytime soon or later.

    Some options: Mastodon is great, push through that initial anxiety about servers and just hop on. Not threads! Unless you’re okay with FaceBook taking, very literally, all your data. Bluesky I’ve heard is okay, but it’s another billionaire project that has an algorithm to do whatever they want.

    • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      How do you find people you want to follow on other instances with mastodon? I’ve tried searching all kinds of ways with username and instance, but it doesn’t find the people I’m looking for (specific accounts)

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        421·
        10 months ago

        If he was competent at that, he wouldn’t be sinking it alongside his own reputation, he’d get his puppet CEO to undermine it and then call it inevitable.

        I think he wants this X app to be a thing, he just has no idea what he’s doing

        • falkerie71@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          I think I’ve heard this from a podcast but don’t remember which, but one conspiracy is that Musk is deliberately running the company to the ground, but is masking it with “optimistic” business decisions to prove he was trying to keep the company afloat, so as to avoid lawsuits and compensations when it goes under? I’m not that well versed in law so I can’t verify it’s legitimacy though, so take it with a grain of salt.

          • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
            71·
            10 months ago

            He is already being sued for a variety of issues related to how he is handling Twitter. The conspiracy has to go all the way around into suggesting that he intentionally wants everyone to think he is a fool, at expense of his other businesses, to make decisions even average people believe to be clueless and destructive, when he could arrange for that to happen much more subtly.

            Seems simpler to me to just believe he is a fool. This whole conspiracy seems to come from sheer disbelief that someone so wealthy could be so stupid. But it seems to me it proves that wealth and competence or intelligence aren’t correlated after all.

            • stopthatgirl7@kbin.socialOP
              4·
              10 months ago

              Exactly. It’s Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

              Stupidity alone more than adequately explains what Elon is doing to Twitter.

            • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nlEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              He is connected to Thiel who is connected to US intel. Perhaps decisions were made that Twitter is too influencial and influenced by users during elections? Just a theory.

              • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                10 months ago

                If anyone might be deliberately trying to kill Twitter, maybe it’s whoever financed it. Wouldn’t they realize that Elon offered for Twitter far more than it was worth and that repaying it is very unlikely?

          • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            I actually wonder if the point is to launder money through it? You buy it at a certain valuation. You tank it while promising investors that you have big ideas that will have them making money hand over fist in no time. You instead, make significant investment elsewhere using an unknown shell company or something to invest in its competitors, forcing users off the original platform and onto something else that makes you money. You insure it in some way so that you can get a payout when it finally whistles it’s last death rattle, the investors get a payout, you get a payout, the platform dies, and you move on to something else.

            I have no idea how it all works but haven’t most of us seen The Producers? Same basic premise. Bet against yourself. Take the winnings while leaving the liability elsewhere.

      • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
        5·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, nah.

        More likely situation is the ma child is simply bad at running a business. This is backed up by his history.

        • diprount_tomato@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          10 months ago

          Wasn’t there this thing of grandsons ruining their grandparent’s business?

          But seriously, Elon is doing it too wrong for it to be accidental

  • falkerie71@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    48·
    10 months ago

    “The new verification system will prevent bot spam!” - Some rich guy who has no idea how the internet works

    Seriously, it’s been such a pain reading Chinese content on Twitter/X/whatever. If you post any stuff that says something critical about China, no matter if it’s news, opinions, or just shit posts, and have some amount of Chinese speaking followers, you are now guaranteed to have sex-bots spam commenting your every post. And you can’t do anything about it, since they have multiple accounts, and some just leave the comment and block you so you can’t remove it.

    Edit: grammar

    • stopthatgirl7@kbin.socialOP
      25·
      10 months ago

      Twitter used to be an absolutely great way to keep up with breaking news, because so many reporters were there. I joined twitter during the Arab Spring, because so much that was happening was being talked about on Twitter. Same with a lot of social movements - twitter was a place where you could make something local go global. If anything was happening in the world, twitter was the place to follow it.

      But now? Now, it’s a desert of information. It’s depressing to watch a place that was so vibrant become the home of Musk shills and weird right wingers. I loved Twitter, before Elon took over. Now, it’s fading, and fast.

    • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      10 months ago

      It was good place to keep up with artists and game developers. They share each other’s work in a way that is great to discover more artists and games that you didn’t know about.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
      5·
      10 months ago

      I could say this about most social media. Im on facebook just as a last ditch way for friends and family to reach me, linkedin for keeping contact with workmates, never saw a usecase for twitter but I see folks ones below.

    • eleanor@social.hamington.netEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think anyone liked it. More like tolerated it because of a combination of network effects and it being less shitty than Facebook.

      At least, that’s why I was on Twitter. People I wanted to follow were there.

  • DosCommas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    10 months ago

    They are all over LinkedIn with really obvious fake profiles. LinkedIn is doing nothing to stop it.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        It may as well shut their doors in my opinion. No amount of changes or marketing is going to turn it into what they wanted it to be at this point. It’s at the point where if someone starts casually talking about LinkedIn they get sideways glances as to why they would even be using it, unless they work in HR.