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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4853884
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4853256
To whom it may concern.
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Ah change.org the platform best known for not changing anything ever.
Yeah, but they’re great at discharging the righteous indignation of people who might otherwise do something extreme like going on demonstrations or start campaigning for non-“moderate” political parties.
This way people just put their personal data next to a meaningless and powerless piece of text on a website alongside that of other people, get the feeling of release after having done something about what pisses them of, and won’t do anything further about it.
Petitions are the single greatest invention of the Internet Age to keep the masses dormant (Social Media would’ve been it if, it wasn’t that, as the far-right has shown, it can be used to turn some people into activists).
Everyone who signed the petition should close their Twitter accounts. And write their newspapers that they would cancel their subscriptions if the articles quoted or embedded tweets. I didn’t sign any petition, and I’m already doing it. Well, sort of. I didn’t have any Twitter account ro close.
Maybe not quote, but embed. They should still quote noteworthy things on there, but don’t force us to interact with the site
I hate the amount of lazy journalism that embedded tweets have spawned, I will find articles that say “people are saying” something and the proof is three random tweets with about 6 likes between them.
but that’s what exactly embeds do. forcing you to interact with the site
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my comment. I think it’s fine if they quote what somebody tweeted. I don’t think it’s fine to have Twitter embeds in articles.
Come to think of it, I should write a uBlock origin custom rule
it was clear
I see. wouldn’t the default disabled social blocking lists block that too?
another way is to have libredirect redirect the embeds to nitter. some instances still work
There is a filter list built in.
I see. wouldn’t the default disabled social blocking lists block that too?
another way is to have libredirect redirect the embeds to nitter. some instances still work
You can always quote without giving the source. “Politician XY said that …”, instead of “Politician XY tweeted that …”
Closed it. Viva la France!
Agree with the first part, but news ought to still quote tweets while it exists, otherwise they cannot denounce many of the wrong things going on in there. I quote the Guardian’s email I received this week (even if I prefer quoting to embedding, as tweets get deleted, and embeds brings traffic to the site):
Dear reader, Yesterday we announced that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our content elsewhere. This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse. X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages. Our reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for newsgathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we don’t officially engage. Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but, at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there. You can also enjoy our journalism on the Guardian app and discover new pieces via our brilliant set of regular newsletters. Thankfully, we can do this because our business model doesn’t rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms – instead we’re funded directly by our readers.
My twitter account is just a link to my mastodon profile, with a script that posts a link to it every week or so to stop it getting banned for inactivity.
I actually can’t remember the last time I saw someone under 60 buy a newspaper. I think the cross over in the venn diagram is going to be pretty small.
write their newspapers that they would cancel their subscriptions if the articles quoted … tweets.
Given the former and future president of the USA’s habit of announcing policies there, that seems unworkable.
You can describe something without quoting it
And you can quote something without embedding it.
I’m not American, but even I heard about Trump tweeting like a maniac. Here in Europe, though, the media understand that politicians use social media to communicate with their supporters, and nothing else. So, traditional media usually ignores them (unless they say something clickbaity), and focuses what was said outside the social media. Perhaps the same could be applied in the US. Especially if Trump is indeed as narcissistic as he’s portrayed. When he realizes people don’t listen to him, he may change his methods of communication.
Ah, a change.org petition . I eagerly await the sweeping improvements to life abroad.
Has any petition here ever actually lead to any change?
Not going to sign it, too. Change.org is part of the problem, and not of the solution.
Just a casual bystander with no clue what’s going on… why’s change.org a problem?
Edit: ok, read more posts, understand now
I couldn’t find any posts talking about it, what’s wrong with it?
It’s like waving a disapproving finger at a brick wall, has always been my criticism.
Protests shouldn’t be so easily tossed in a bin. If you aren’t a problem, then no one has to listen to your message.
Petitions in Europe are required to be discussed when they reach a certain threshold. The platform does not matter.
Do all that reach that threshold get discussed though?
Yes.
I read up on it but there doesn’t even seem to be a threshold: https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/petition-eu_en
Maybe I was confused with a specific country requiring a threshold. Or maybe there are thresholds for how high up it needs to get discussed.
even if they do nothing about the petition, it still directly shows that people care about the issue. Its just one of the things that ever so slightly could tip the scales in right direction. But yes, if people think that its all done and good by signing the petition and nobody doing anything else, you might as well yell in the wind about it. But there could be people with a bit more influence that want to do this too. Even the surveys dont get information from every single person of the populace so having many signs could help even if they dont have to immidiately put it on effect.
Op, if you want to submit a petition to the EU, you should use their portal https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/home not change.org
Exactly. This is the only correct answer. Change.org petitions are as worthless as a 7 euros banknote.
As much as I dislike Musk, expansion of the great firewall of Europe seems like a bad idea.
+1
They should discourage institutions from using it (and use government Mastadon instances of course). This is honestly long overdue.
Yep they should keep fining him exponentially till he leaves (he obviously will never fall in line with EU rules)
They only need to expand it a little bit. Add a rule against Nazi websites, and enforce it. That’s not restrictive very much at all. Drag has gone drag’s entire life without relying on Nazi sites
Lol. That’s true. I suspect that Xitter doesn’t have the staff or engineering talent left to pivot to enforce any new rules internally. It should be possible to catch them in a constant automated ban without hitting anything worthwhile.
To operate there they would have to hire the staff back then, or not do so. That said, usually intent is all that matters, so if something gets through, so long as you showed efforts to prevent it and remove it in a reasonable manner, they would be fine.
Sure but an automated ban and manual review and removal could easily leave them blocked for more hours than not, each day.
Sure but, yeah.
Does the article say anything about censorship? Usually bans like this are financial. So X offices would close in the EU and bank accounts seized and they wouldn’t be allowed to conduct business (eg with advertisers) in the EEA
It specifically cites Brazil as an example, that involved a complete block of the website.
More than that. The Brazil government made it illegal for it’s citizens to access the site, as well as the use of a VPN. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil, chapter ‘Blocking’).
I think it’s a swell idea, banning your citizens from reading information you decide is wrong.
Let’s at least block the government agencies from using it in favor of open platforms and protocols to communicate with its citizens.
At least give me some good ole RSS in the backend, and they could host their own Mastodon instances that people can subscribe to from other public instances.
Let’s at least block the government agencies from using it in favor of open platforms and protocols to communicate with its citizens.
Yeah. When public services solely use Xitter or Facebook pisses me off. We can and should make that shit illegal.
Germany did this years ago. Their government hosts a mastodon instance for various agencies
Watch the next government go back on all of that.
Corporate nationalist social media like “X” (American oligarchy) and TikTok (Chinese oligarchy) are a danger to the sovereignty and stability of the Western world.
and the reddit Russian psy-op? certainly not helping
Ew, that sounds bad. I would prefer “promote open twitter-like social media” instead of “ban X” (you can replace X with any other website/software, even FOSS one). No banning should be allowed in EU.
Yeah, keep X on and pile up the multi-million fines if they don’t comply with laws. That’s the only thing companies care about - something eating up their profits.
And if they keep not complying - then ban it altogether, like Brazil did. I prefer to recognize and ban it for the illegal activities it does, not because some folks don’t like it and banded together against it.
They should pass a resolution that all EU member nations shall create official Mastodon and Lemmy instances. Moderators and admins would be actual jobs constrained by the relevant national or EU law.
(Or replace Mastodon and Lemmy with whatever open platforms you deem appropriate)
I like this idea.
Twitter was supposed to be the “online town hall”. And online public spaces are not publicly owned, they’re run by private companies that can ban you at their own whims.
With each country having their own federated platforms, they can truly act as online public spaces where the usual laws apply as they would do offline.
You’d need to employ thousands of moderators though if everyone was online but honestly I think it’s worth it.
But don’t be handing out prison sentences for posting stupid shit. Online harassment and calls for violence can still be legally handled the same way they are offline, but jailing people for offensive jokes and stupid hot takes is just idiotic.
Best way is temporary bans increasing exponentially in length, then small percentage of income fines again increasing exponentially.
Also, and I’d argue we already need this, a court system for online crimes. This means the regular court system doesn’t get more workload added on to it and specialist judges and lawyers can be appointed.
I’m okay with this as long as things like general political or religious speech is protected. When you’re punised for speaking against the majority, congratulations you have left/center authoritarianism and it’s no better than fascism in my opinion.
Agreed. Perhaps the best implementation is a highly integrated mix of Mastodon and Lemmy where Mastodon is used for general discussion and news and Lemmy is used for organising communities around subjects like politics and religion.
I don’t like the idea of governments banning access to a website, unless its like CSAM.
See it more like “preventing a website whose owner refuses to comply withEuropean law from operating in the EU”.
What do you mean by operating in the EU? Twitter is run from America
And it’s fine to continue to operate in the US.
But if it doesn’t abide by EU laws then it can’t operate in the EU.America doesn’t set the worlds laws
I understand each government can have its own regulation about what websites should be accessible. I still don’t understand how Twitter operates in the EU. It’s a part of the world wide web. My understanding of how the internet works is that users reach out to the server, which in twitters case is in the US
Twitter operates servers in the EU. They will have at least Frankfurt server. Probably UK and probably elsewhere.
It’s geographically closer, so reduces latency and server load (faster to complete a request, faster to discard allocated resources).
It also gives redundancy. If Frankfurt DC explodes, the system will fall back to the next closest DC (probably London).So let’s say that the EU DC stops existing. And requests go over the ocean to the US.
Twitter still has customers in the EU. They are still making money from EU citizens. Because twitter isn’t free. It costs money to manage, develop and run. Twitter tries to recoup those costs via adverts and subscription services.
So let’s say that twitter is no longer allowed to extract money from the EU. The EU bans companies advertising on twitter.
Any companies that have business in the EU (like selling to EU citizens) are no longer allowed to advertise on twitter.
Paypal, visa etc is no longer allowed to take payments from EU citizens for twitter services.
Any EU service that has twitter integrations is no longer allowed to charge for twitter features.
Basically, twitter has no way of getting money from the EU.Why would twitter spend money to access the EU population. It’s a cost sink. Dead weight.
There is no growth. Getting 50 million new EU users means a massive cost increase.
Plus paying for that extra load on (say) US based servers, and their international backbone links. (Just because you can reach a server on the other side of the world for “free”, doesn’t mean commercial services can pump terabytes of data internationally for free).So yeh, the servers could stay located in the US where twitter operations HQ is. Twitter could disband their international headquarters, so they no longer have companies in the EU.
But they wouldn’t be able to get any money from EU citizens. And if they tried to circumvent the rules, then they can be blocked by DNS and BGP. So the only way to access twitter is by a VPN.
That didn’t work well in Brazil, and twitter caved in to the demands of the Brazil government.I really appreciate your answer!
In practice, we could sever the connection between EU internet and the rest of the internet.
Maybe whitelist a set of ideas that are allowed to pass through the great eu firewall.
Or maybe, just maybe, fine companies that commit criminal acts.
There really is a fine line between turning into an authoritarian regime and doing basic police work, right?
operate in != run from
If you want an apt example of a company ‘run from’ America not allowed to ‘operate in’ another jurisdiction:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_BrazilI still don’t understand how Twitter operates in other countries. It’s accessible because it’s a part of the world wide web. When people use Twitter are they not reaching out to the servers located in America?
They’re not accessible anymore from a jurisdiction if said jurisdiction which rules they are violating decides to change their networking policies. And because twitter likes to be accessible, twitter decided to comply with the rules eventually. You seem intentionally obtuse btw.
Some thoughts: (1) networks don’t necessarily run according to judicial borders.
(2) you also have to penalize the use of rerouting tools, which Brazil seems to have done.
(3) it became incorrect to refer to it as “world wide web”(1) Agreed of course, but I don’t see much of an issue there. You try to get a 100% coverage on your blockade, but 99% will move twitter to compliance too. same goes for (2). As for (3), I’m not really sure why you directed that at me.
Apparently, it works by fining users that visit the site. See chapter “Blocking”.
How nice, a government that puts criminal penalties on it’s citizens reading the (according to them) wrong things. Banning technologies like VPNs.
fuck CSAM, but where do we draw the line?
let laws regulate society and don’t let government regulate directly.
for example, instead of banning access to X, outlaw the use of Social media in direct advertising. Make the EU market so hostile towards their business practices they can’t legally operate.
then, it’s “X” that refuses to operate within the laws we as a people have required, not just an over-reaching autocrat.
That’s a bad idea because of how reliant small businesses are on social media advertising. A regulation like that would essentially screw over every business that isn’t rich enough to go to bigger advertising venues.
Twitter is not the sole, or even the biggest social media company in Europe. It’s not even in the top 3.
The advertisement sector will be fine.
That’s what I’m trying to say. Losing Twitter isn’t a big deal.
yes… because businesses are more important than democracies…
you know, not that long ago these coverless books existed that came out every day. they had stories, news, even comics in them. and you know what? they even had advertisements in them!
social media is a convenience to business. government is not a social convenience.
Businesses are the ones that produce food, medicine, clothes, build houses, print books, provide gas and electricity, build roads, etc. There are businesses that have outlasted monarchies and democracies. I’m not a corpo schmuck but small businesses are the soul of the soul of our society.
People
Businessesare the ones that produce food, medicine, clothes, build houses, print books, provide gas and electricity, build roads, etc. There are businesses that have outlasted their usefulnessmonarchies and democracies. I’mnota corpo schmuckbutand culture issmall businesses arethe soul of the soul of our society.there, I fixed it.
the purpose of any business is to be profitable, otherwise it’s a charity. businesses have zero philanthropic goals.
people make a business profitable. People make the products and services. People consume the product.
no people, no business.
no government, no people, no business.
don’t let greed cloud your judgement.
Yes a business usually consists of people and is driven by profit, you sted the obvious, but what is your point?
Do people buy their vacuums from Dyson Ltd. or from a guy named Kevin?
It’s not just about profits, it’s about accountability. That’s what the different forms of corporations represent. A singular private person can’t and shouldn’t be held accountable for every product the produce. A business is a layer of protection of limited (Ltd.) accountability. How could anybody be motivated to invent or produce anything if a single miss use of your product that causes any harm (intended or not) could lead to you directly being held responsible and possible going to jail. A business on the other hand usually has limited accountability but is also held to a much higher standard of quality and proof than a private individual ever could.
It’s not just about profits, it’s about accountability. That’s what the different forms of corporations represent. A singular private person can’t and shouldn’t be held accountable for every product the produce. A business is a layer of protection of limited (Ltd.) accountability.
this is laughable. Corporations aren’t being held accountable for anything anymore because they have personhood rights.
How could anybody be motivated to invent or produce anything if a single miss use of your product that causes any harm (intended or not) could lead to you directly being held responsible and possible going to jail.
People invent and produce things every day. You’re confusing yourself with mass production at scale.
A business on the other hand usually has limited accountability but is also held to a much higher standard of quality and proof than a private individual ever could.
no longer the case. a private individual would be put in jail (like you said) for harming one person with a product. who goes to jail when millions are poisoned by a company? Who maintains that standard of quality and proof? The same government that turns a blind eye when millions of Americans are poisoned?
But to get back on topic, People empower the business. Without the people, there is no business.
Business also managed just fine before social media advertising was a thing.
That’s true.
Now I’m imagining what the British East India Company’s Twitter account would look like
Yeah, I don’t think that banning social platforms is a good idea, unless its hosting illegal content. As bad as ““X”” is, banning it could be a slippery slope.
Although, I don’t think this change.org petition will get far.
That’s cool for the EU (probably) but there’s still the other 90% of the world.
It’s short sighted indeed.
Block? No.
Ask public law institutions to not use it. Maybe.
This is all they have to do
I’m glad they at least name mastodon and not bluesky as an alternative.
Whats wrong with bluesky? Ive been using it fornthe past week and its definitely more intuitive and accessible for the average joe than Mastodon.
Blue sky has an owner and investors, right?
Publicly funded organizations should be required to use open solutions.
If they want to also replicate what they post somewhere open to BlueSky and Xitter, and Facebook, so be it.
That said, I could see carving out an exception for BlueSky if it provides the full open stack (public unauthenticated HTML, RSS, federation, etc ), and only while it does so.
A lot of people and outlets have said Bluesky is open source, which is actually false. Only the frontend is open source. That being said, they do use the AT Protocol which is still experimental, but seems like less of a mess than Activitypub.
I can’t run my own bluesky instance. Its literaly the same problem as X
Petition calls to ban world hunger
Eh, BlueSky seems to be actually gaining some traction now, enough so that celebs and brands are jumping ship, so maybe just give it a few months and let it rot.
Don’t let the garbage sit until it rots. It will attract flies and possible more garbage.
Bsky has 20 million users, which is great, basically doubled in a month, but twitter has hundreds of millions of users. We talking a different order of magnitude.
While I definitely agree, enough momentum going both ways, alongside perhaps people choosing to leave Mastodon and Threads to go to the “winner of the alternatives” could sway this to a point where BlueSky is no longer the minnow here. Given that we’re only weeks detached from Trump’s win, I can only see it getting worse for Twitter, to the point where I can see Elon just selling it and moving on - perhaps even to BlueSky if Jack wanted a cut price deal.
FYI a lot of people on Lemmy use the fact Jack Dorsey was involved in Bluesky as a way to attack it, but that’s not super accurate.
He completely left bluesky a year ago and even deleted his account, he has no involvement with it whatsoever anymore.
He’s more of a fan of nostr, given how he is a crypto bro, that tracks.
Curves being what they are, these numbers don’t mean much. Yes twitter has more users but if bsky crosses some threshold, their user count can begin to catch up quickly.
How many bots and duplicate accounts on Twitter though?
Petition calls to ban war
Here quite a few of the popular social media are banned. They’re still popular but now every schoolkid, housewife and grandpa knows what a VPN is. Every time I hear such news, I am afraid of crackdowns on censorship evasion in those places too…
Does the article say anything about censorship? Usually bans like this are financial. So X offices would close in the EU and bank accounts seized and they wouldn’t be allowed to conduct business (eg with advertisers) in the EEA
That’s just my association with the word “ban” - blocking, because that’s what I usually experienced.
Yeah that’s not how laws usually work. Most legislation can’t censor (except some very oppressive countries), so ban usually means financial
Yeah, that would be less worrisome, hope this really is the case here.
