As misinformation proliferated on X thanks to verified users, a massive account sharing accurate information hit its Musk-imposed posting limit.
Twitter did eventually get its shit together and lift the API limits on NERV’s accounts, but people on JP Twitter were furious, and “Elon” in Japanese (イーロン) was trending, with people basically cussing him out for effing up Twitter by limiting NERV and getting rid of the chronological timeline. Folks were also upset at all the “reply zombies” (blue check bot accounts) commenting complete garbage like “nice” and “happy new year” in posts about the earthquake.
As for misinformation, the evening of the quake “人工地震” (manmade earthquake) was trending on Twitter, and NHK news yesterday actually had a segment on last night explaining that no, the quake was not manmade, and that misinformation was being spread on Twitter.
Where there Angels emerging from the epicenter of the earthquakes?
So how have Twitter fucked up here then? NERV isn’t a government body, it isn’t an official public safety channel, it’s a private not for profit organisation. The official government ones already have no limits, it’s just everyone in Japan uses NERV because they’re so damned good.
Now, I don’t agree with API charges (much like data charges for internet, they aren’t proportionate to cost) but setting that aside, NERV didn’t automatically deserve the exemption and never even tried to get it.
Musk has still made a shit system, but it’s not shit because of this event.
Maybe if he hadn’t fired 85% of his employees, there might have been someone who checked alerting accountsand made sure no api limits applied, but nope. Dude fired so many people the simple, basic shit isn’t getting done.
Nah, I don’t think there’s a sure fire way you could ensure that everyone that should get a free pass gets one. The effort they made to give free passes to government public safety bodies and the like was reasonable.
What isn’t reasonable is having API charges to begin with. Musk didn’t drop the ball here with Japan, he dropped it ages ago.
API charges are not flawed because they’re inhibiting public safety channels, they’re flawed because they inhibit regular people from making genuinely amazing positive contributions. That could be NERV, or it could be a lone reporter in a war zone, or just a person in their bedroom updating everyone on the crazy shit happening right outside. That narrative doesn’t really garner as much sympathy, but it’s far more honest.
Super frustrating to see a platform that was doing just fine (it wasstill Twitter, so I mean relatively) get flown directly into the ground so hard. Like, has he actually done anything whatsoever that has made it better? Twitter was technically profitable was was aiming to be actually profitable and now it’s just a dumpster fire of money
Absolutely. But no, I don’t think he’s made it better in any way - and that wasn’t the point. Ever since he was locked into the purchase the plan seems to have changed into running it into the ground.
There’s no way they can maintain the $13bn debt he saddled it with, most of what he’s been doing is something of a farce to cover up that as the reason for the business closing - eg “those advertisers leaving are going to kill the business!” That, and any of the dodgy shit they get away with (like API charges) becomes the norm for any future social media platforms.
It clearly wasent reasonable, as it missed the actual main alerting account for a nation of hundreds of millions. Basic data analysis should have caught that a non goverment body was important enough to exempt, but they just didn’t do it. The exceptions they did do were clearly to basic or lazy.
Yes, applying API limits is deeply flawed and stupid, but if youre going to do it, you have to do a good job, or people who relied on your service may literally die.
Its clear Musk gives no shits about the larger responsibility that taking over a social network with hundreds of millions of users brings.
Basic data analysis should have caught that a non goverment body was important enough to exempt, but they just didn’t do it.
What kind of “basic data analysis” are you referring to? I mean, it would be nice if that was a practical idea, to assess nearly every Twitter account and determine if it should have an exemption, but I don’t see that it is. You either have an insanely labour-intensive process, or you have an imperfect automated process. Or, you just draw a line in the sand, as they did.
I don’t think you can claim that Twitter has a “responsibility” in any meaningful sense, either. It’s a private website, they get to set the rules and change them as they see fit. That’s how it’s always been. The responsibility lies with the organisations tasked with distributing the information (which also doesn’t include NERV, they do it voluntarily).
I don’t even think Musk made this change to try and make money - in my opinion, ever since he was locked into the purchase the plan changed to running it into the ground. On the way down, Musk can experiment with all sorts of horrible things - such as API charges - and while they won’t get away with everything, the things they do get away with will set the standard for any social media platforms that come after the business ceases operations (primarily due to the debt accrued in the leveraged buyout Musk performed).
So yeah, Musk doesn’t give any shits, the whole operation is intentionally destructive. But like I say, he didn’t drop the ball here with Japan, he did it ages ago.
Are you trying to say that Twitter doesn’t have data engineers capable of parsing tweets by “geography+ follower count + $disasterKeywords?”
If Twitter doesnt have the capability to do the equivalent of basic sql agaisnt its dataset, I dont even understand what the remaining 15% of people are doing there.
I think the counter to everything you said is that all the pressure and anger on Twitter over Nerv getting API limited got them registered as a Public Utilities App so they could tweet automatically. They’d been trying to get registered as such for a while but Twitter doing do it until AFTER an emergency and “イーロン” (“Elon”) was trending on Jp Twitter because people were so angry.
This is an issue that never should have arisen.
Had they been trying to for a while?
X fucked up by imposing the limit in the first place.
Exactly. The whole thing is scummy, not because of this specific incident but by its very nature.
The idea that centralized social media should serve as an emergency broadcasting system is…a bad one. It’s only guarantee is that ads are to be served alongside propaganda.
People are too stupid. Think of how we don’t teach dolphins tricks, just harness the ones they already know. Can’t convince people to download a “save your life” app. Have to just take advantage of what they’re willing
mass sms to everyone work, and there’s even a whole “emergency alert” system built into both Android and ios. it’s used all the time in America for things like missing children.
You can turn off emergency alerts though. And you can’t get them back after they’ve been dismissed from your phone.
Android retains emergency alerts for the lifetime of the phone, even after they’ve been viewed/dismissed. They can be seen in the settings app under emergency alert history.
Well I would like a federal app that had Federal, state, and city only feeds. But that would cost money and people hate taxes. Don’t need your real name, read only and can get push notifications and see what is going on in the state, city.
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Too bad they don’t just open their own instance and post there, unlimited. It was always a bad idea to put public safety information channels in private hands.
They have their own Mastodon instance and have since 2017. They also have an app. They were telling people to get the app once they realized they were being API limited.
But people in Japan have trusted Twitter for emergency info since the big Tohoku earthquake and still go there for information. Elon wrecked that trust.
Its maddening how hard it is to get people to move socials. Maybe this will be the People’s wake up call. It really illustrates the point that most people just want to be where everyone else is.
This is true, and I also think the ‘lack of an algorithm’ keeps many people away. While many of us don’t want to be force fed a list of ‘for you’ messages, a lot of people are hoping to get traction for viral tweets and build an audience of people who will get/read/respond to their posts, and that engagement doesn’t exist on Mastodon in the same way.
That is a great point that I personally have never heard. A lot of these people want to be influencers. They want to be paid to have a following and post stuff. Thats not possible here, at least not in the same way.
That’s one thing that I have noticed and appreciated about both Fediverse and Mastodon: they’re boring.
And I mean this in the most positive way. Commercialized social media has zeroed in on the 'ol dopamine pump to move content around. This place is full of interesting articles, discussions, and even shitposts, but it all lacks the sheer eyeball-grabbing, visceral pleasure provoking, potential of the bad stuff. It’s like going on a diet or kicking a bad habit. Instead of doom-scrolling or looking at piles of cat memes all day, you just kind of get “full” and go do something more productive with your time. It’s fantastic.
But that’s also at odds with “viral” content. It seems that, for now at least, thought provoking, genuinely interesting, and well produced content gets the most traction. Call me regressive, but I see this as a feature and it’s no wonder that folks will keep away because of it.
A lot of these people are utterly hopeless. I went into a really bad argument with a fellow creator for daring to suggest them to at least try the fediverse, even after Twitter nazis harassed them.
One another issue is the paid blue checkmark’s effect on making one invest even more into the platform, which is needed to avoid your reach being completely borked.
Meamwhile I completely discontinued my engine’s own account there in favor of a Mastodon account ( @PixelPerfectEngine ), and I only visit Twitter for the few creators that didn’t make the jump.
I’m mostly shocked they’ve had their own instance sinxe 2017. You aren’t goinf to get people who are on socials to make money to move here until it reaches a certain saturation point. Even then, unless theres a way to monetize the views that whole influencer culture won’t come here. Maybe thats a good thing, I dont want monetization here.
Glad to hear they’ve taken the right steps. Hopefully it’s still running when/if they can get the people to shift over.
A public utility shouldn’t depend on a for-profit platform
I think the problem is people use Twitter as a public utility instead of there actually being a public utility. I can only speak to the US but I think all we’ve got is mass notifications for emergencies.
I’d be laughing if I wasn’t horrified.
