• Flying Squid
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      105 hours ago

      “Elmo” is better if you ask me. They’re both annoying children that need to shut the fuck up and go away.

        • Flying Squid
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          125 hours ago

          As someone who once had a toddler, he’s not beloved, he’s hated by most parents. Because he’s fucking awful. Stop talking to the fish and the baby, Elmo! They can’t fucking understand you! Also, you don’t seem to notice that Mr. Noodle keeps changing and that lack of basic attention to detail is worrying.

          On top of that, his parents basically neglect him, which is why you never see him.

          Fuck Elmo. Give me Cookie Monster, Ernie and Bert and Oscar the Grouch.

    • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      197 hours ago

      Now that’s just kind of rude toward toddlers. He acts like what he is… a Ketamine addled, narcissistic billionaire, who got lucky in life and thinks he crafted his own destiny all by his own hands.

      • @Dasus@lemmy.world
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        87 hours ago

        Fair enough, fair enough. Toddlers are way more pleasant than him, even when they’ve shat their pants. I apologise to all toddlers.

      • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        Ketamine is a dissociative which strips away what you know about things, sort of like how a child doesnt know things. So in a way, he’s actually a toddler.

      • @freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world
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        146 hours ago

        X/Twitter will soon be making more changes to the block button, with CEO Elon Musk confirming that all public posts will be viewable going forward, even to those who have been blocked

        • @Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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          36 hours ago

          I thought most stuff was viewable even without account. Doesn’t seem like a big deal if you can view their post but not interact with it since I would’ve thought others interacting with you was what you wanted to block them from doing anyway.

          • @SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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            12 hours ago

            If you’re blocking users left and right that you know spread misinformation, you will still see their posts. No way you can keep track of the usernames in your head, and now you may hear a misinformation or two and assume it to be a fact.

        • @Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          36 hours ago

          Isn’t that how it works on most platforms though? You can see the account you’ve been blocked by, but can’t interact with them.

          • @TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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            25 hours ago

            On reddit it stopped the blocked person from seeing your account and comments.
            Or it used to. Or I’m misremembering.

        • @joenforcer@midwest.social
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          06 hours ago

          Which is not even a big deal because blocked users could just create a separate account to view posts they’re blocked from anyway.

    • @joenforcer@midwest.social
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      16 hours ago

      No they aren’t. They are changing how it works, in a way that is mostly immaterial to the user. That is not even close to completely removing.

      • @somtwo@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        No longer being able to hide your public posts from specific users seems hardly immaterial to me.

      • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        115 hours ago

        Yep.

        From the sounds of it:

        Before: if you block somebody, they cannot see your stuff.

        After: if you block somebody, they can still visit your profile.

        Usually, when you block someone, they can no longer see your feed; instead, it’s replaced with a message stating that they’re blocked. Now, they can freely browse your feed; they’re just not allowed to interact or comment on your posts.

        https://www.makeuseof.com/x-block-feature-poor-job-blocking-people/

        NGL Elon’s excitement sounds like he was blocked by a lot of people and Daddy Musk will not have closed doors in this household! 😮‍💨

  • @celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    249 hours ago

    It beggars belief, how one who grew up in the abject lap of luxury, surrounded by prolific and successful businesspeople that negotiate billion dollar deals for a living, how that child grew up to be one of the most illiterate fools on Earth when it comes to economics and business administration. It just further reinforces my belief that the $22B he took from MBS for the purchase of Twitter was part of a larger plot to destroy its reputation and make it unusable for any would be revolutionary group to use to organize. Like, assume for a second that he ran his mouth and then was forced to buy Twitter (as the popular narrative goes). Why would MBS be cool with giving Elon $22 BILLION for his fuckup?

      • @Korne127@lemmy.world
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        158 hours ago

        Mastodon has more users than Bluesky. (I fear it won’t stay like that for a long time anymore though as Bluesky has a bigger growth rate.)

    • @makyo@lemmy.world
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      148 hours ago

      Mastodon has serious UX problems that even other federated networks don’t have. I’m pretty well tech literate and love Lemmy, for instance, but I just couldn’t ever get Mastodon to stick for me, like it just didn’t have the right feel and wasn’t fun to use. And if it’s not working for me then it’s never going to take off with a more general audience.

      Bluesky is a lot better. It still has some issues that I feel keep it from fully replacing Twitter, especially Twitter before Elon screwed it up. But it does manage to keep me checking it, even though it’s probably only once or twice a week max.

    • @mke@programming.dev
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      149 hours ago

      I think one of the biggest reasons is that the Fediverse is often a pain to get into and sometimes a pain to use.

      Bluesky and Threads “just work.”

      Some people say it’s marketing and in Threads’ case I can believe it, but I haven’t seen any example of large marketing campaign by Bluesky.

      • @gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 hours ago

        I wonder whether it was the right decision to not federate with Threads.

        On the one hand, yes, they would have caused a lot of problematic content, but on the other hand, it would have meant a lot of new users, and that would have livened up the place a bit. I guess.

        Maybe we could do a switch in the user profile for Lemmy where it says “show Thread posts in All posts”. Or something.

      • @Korne127@lemmy.world
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        48 hours ago

        How is Bluesky easier to use when it’s literally also federated? And you can just create an account on any Mastodon instance like mastodon.world or mastodon.social and start using it.

        • @Lanusensei87@lemmy.world
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          188 hours ago

          It may be easier because Bluesky already made the choice for you, you don’t need to pick an instance, the default is Bluesky Social and that’s it, if you want a different one you can search it or make one. It removes that tiny mental block of having to commit to a server you don’t know if you will like.

        • @mke@programming.dev
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          8 hours ago

          That’s inaccurate and reductive. ATproto and ActivityPub do not federate the same way, and how they work greatly affects how users interact with the entire ecosystem.

          On Mastodon, pick the wrong instance and there’s content you’ll never see, migration isn’t complete, discovery is so bad they started a new initiative to try fixing it, instances have their own cultures, and so on.

          Bluesky has issues, some I’d consider critical, but they’re not directly user-facing for the most part. Make an account, you get the same experience as everyone else.

          edit: Sorry, I have this issue where I try to be concise, yet feel like I end up being rude. I get your confusion, but they’re quite different. Hopefully this helped; I can elaborate if you want.

    • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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      2210 hours ago

      Because Mastodon needs a reliable instance with a catchy domain name. Maybe even the slightest bit of advertising.

      Someone reputable could make a real Twitter competitor for about $2m a year these days.

      I’d say Mozilla, but they just took all their social media funding away and threw it at AI. Genius.

      • @Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        16 hours ago

        I’d say Mozilla, but they just took all their social media funding away and threw it at AI.

        Nobody was using their instance from what I heard. So a bit of a wasted effort.

        What sort of money are they throwing at AI? I only know about the sidebar and that’s basically just a tab to a website of your choosing. Couldn’t have been expensive.

        • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          They never allowed people to use it. There was a wait-list. It never opened afaik outside of Mozilla people.

        • @GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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          79 hours ago

          I would worry that Google will simply discontinue the product abruptly. Google is unreliable with product longevity.

        • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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          29 hours ago

          It’s rather see NYTimes get into it. Even if they time allow outside signups on their instance.

    • stinerman [Ohio]
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      37 hours ago

      The budget for Mastodon gGmbH is measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and Bluesky’s is much more than that.

      • @mke@programming.dev
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        36 hours ago

        Yet, Bluesky didn’t even support video posts until two weeks ago. Many other highly requested features are still missing. To what extent does the success of each platform come down to money? What did Bluesky do with a larger budget to get an edge?

        • stinerman [Ohio]
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          14 hours ago

          My recollection is that they advertised and got Important People™ to post there as part of their invite-only beta. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe they paid some of these people to create accounts and post there. Not sure if that was a rumor or not.

          • @mke@programming.dev
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            13 hours ago

            I looked around, but was unable to find more about this. Until something new comes up, I’m assuming it’s just a rumor.

    • IntheTreetop
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      59 hours ago

      Sadly, Mastodon had its shot during the pandemic and blew it. The non-tech savvy didn’t understand how federation worked and they marketed themselves very poorly.

      • stinerman [Ohio]
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        17 hours ago

        I agree, but there was also the problem of Mastodon has no marketing budget. Before Musk closed the sale on Twitter, they had 2 full time employees, IIRC.

      • @Korne127@lemmy.world
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        27 hours ago

        Why replace horrible company with bad company run by literally THE guy that let the prior company become horrible instead of replacing it with good non-profit network?

        • @mke@programming.dev
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          16 hours ago

          Are you talking about Dorsey? Because if so, he left Bluesky as he didn’t like their focus on moderation.

          Not that it matters much, I sincerely doubt most users look up such details before joining anything. It’s all about the experience.

        • stinerman [Ohio]
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          17 hours ago

          FOMO. More celebrities are on Bluesky than Mastodon and people don’t care enough about open protocols and so forth to forego that. If Taylor Swift was only on some Fediverse-enabled platform and nothing else, people would come here in droves. Taylor Swift does not post on Mastodon so people don’t want an account here. Replace Taylor Swift for anyone of any sort of popularity and ask the same questions.

          I do wonder who the most famous person in the world is that exclusively posts on a Fediverse-platform. It could very well be Eugen Rochko, who probably has about a 0.05% name recognition throughout the world.

    • Sabata
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      2010 hours ago

      The real life inspiration for super genius Cave Johnson from Portal.

        • Sabata
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          9 hours ago

          A bit unfair since real life idiots don’t have good writing teams.

          • @BallsandBayonets
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            Sometimes they have good PR teams though. Musk used to have a PR team back when he was rich enough to afford one but not rich enough to not need one.

    • @Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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      16 hours ago

      Definitely has managed to invest in some incredibly profitable stuff but he also says and does the absolutely stupidest shit imaginable. It’s astounding

  • @danc4498@lemmy.world
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    10413 hours ago
    • Brazil asked Elon to ban 7 fascist accounts spreading disinformation
    • Elon refused pretending it was a free speech issue even though he complied multiple times with similar requests from right wing govts

    Gotta say, this is new information to me. I’ve briefly looked at the stories and the banning of twitter, but I never realized this was entirely because Elon wouldn’t ban accounts as he does for right wing government.

    Elon seems like a kinda shitty guy.

    • @Denjin
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      6912 hours ago

      Elon seems like a kinda shitty guy

      Hot take!

      • @9point6@lemmy.world
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        1611 hours ago

        I mean it genuinely is because of the “kinda” and “seems”

        “Elon is a shitty guy” is one of the coldest takes out there at this point

  • SouthFresh
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    2011 hours ago

    This is a hint at why he wanted involvement in PayPal and wants X to be a financial service. You can’t take away money from a system he controls.

    • Obinice
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      47 hours ago

      What’s this got to do with Twix? I love a good Twix…

      Fuck me, now I gotta go buy a Twix. And a Lion, do they still make those? God they were the best.

    • @GardenVarietyAnxiety@lemmy.world
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      Back in late 2022 I was in an argument with my (adult) nephew about how the government isn’t limiting free speech on Twitter. I was explaining how “the free market” is deciding whether Elon will sink or swim. He just could not understand how the government -wasn’t- responsible.

      …idfk

      (Yes, there were some Governmental take down requests, but none of them seemed very sus to me)

      • @SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world
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        3012 hours ago

        I had a similar discussion with some people at a barber shop back when Pre-Elon Twitter banned Trump. They were complaining about free speech and I asked if they knew what it actually meant (in the US). When I explained that we are ONLY guaranteed free speech from the gov’t, and that Twitter was a private business and could ban whoever they want, the same way this barber shop could tell someone not to ever come back everyone got real quiet like “oh shit I have to rethink my whole world view”. I actually got thanked at another time by one employee for telling them how it actually works.