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).

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.

Germany did this years ago. Their government hosts a mastodon instance for various agencies

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.

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.

Closed it. Viva la France!

Maybe not quote, but embed. They should still quote noteworthy things on there, but don’t force us to interact with the site

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.

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

Yep they should keep fining him exponentially till he leaves (he obviously will never fall in line with EU rules)

+1

They should discourage institutions from using it (and use government Mastadon instances of course). This is honestly long overdue.

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

Whats wrong with bluesky? Ive been using it fornthe past week and its definitely more intuitive and accessible for the average joe than Mastodon.

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

I never liked Musk, even when he was “In.” Even the Mars colonization meme rubbed me the wrong way, as the science does not line up with that.

It felt like a cult of personality to me. He was always a fickle jerk, a mixed bag.

You have a point though, people’s opinions were largely political, I think. Or just based on pure hope/cultism

Correction, we went from fanatical Elon worship to a sudden realization, that he’s the greatest scam artist of all time (quite literally, nobody EVER burned more tax payer and inverter money) and went into sudden shock and disbelief.

we have moved to musk hating but i fail to see how all of it could be characterised as nonsensical; there are elements for sure

There is a certain, disturbingly large, segment of the population which doesn’t even appear to attempt to think for themselves.

It’s like JK Rowling all over again.