Twitterdämmerung!!!!

Subject: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 07:34 PM

Gaaaahhhhh! Well I wanna know - is it Folk?









P.S. That's what Google is for.... :-)

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Peace
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 07:38 PM

It depends on how you define folk, Foolestroupe.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 09:34 PM

"music by the people, for the people".... :-)

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 09:36 PM

I suppose it's a bit like like...
Can newly composed song become folk song

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 03:59 PM

FT - we seem to be in a loop here. Have you finally cracked up?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 05:50 PM

Will it compete with Monday Night Football?

Forgot- not available over there.

Things to do for folk with nothing to do.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 06:48 PM

Short and sweet, at any rate! Do you Twitter, Foolestroupe?

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Nov 22 - 05:02 PM

This seems an excellent name for a thread where I will share an article about a rather complicated process if you want to shift to another Twitter-like program (if you're willing to set up a server to do it). Don't want to deal with Elon Musk's drama and the collapse of Twitter? Then set up something kind of like it on your own - much assembly required.

Ditching Twitter? How to get started with Mastodon
Now that Twitter is under new (and controversial) management, a decentralized open-source alternative has seen surprising growth. Here's how the Fediverse works and how you can get started.

Elon Musk's first few days as CEO of Twitter have been great news for one social media network. No, not Twitter. The unexpected breakout star of social media in 2022 is instead a free, decentralized, loosely organized group of servers that collectively make up the Fediverse, short for federated universe. And on the Fediverse, nothing is hotter right now than the open-source Mastodon software that powers the Twitter-like service that runs on that collection of servers.

It's difficult for most consumers to wrap their minds around the concept of the Fediverse, which has a lot of technical jargon and wonkiness associated with it. Arguably, though, it's not that different from the way modern email services work. Each server runs the same core software, and all the servers know how to talk to each other. Crucially, each user has an identity on a single server. If that identity is an email address at Gmail.com, you can exchange email messages with folks on other servers that support the same protocols.

Mastodon works like that, with one crucial difference. You can't go to a massive, centralized server run by a megacorporation to sign up. Instead, you have to find a server on your own, set up an account, and hope that the server you choose can handle the pressure as all these newbies sign up. For a hint of just how fast the Mastodon community has grown, look at the above chart assembled by Esteban Moro (@[e-mail]), an MIT researcher and associate professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Mastodon servers have been straining under the stress, with users reporting long wait times before an email confirmation arrives and similarly long delays in getting those accounts properly set up.

Follow the link for the rest of it.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 08 Nov 22 - 05:49 PM

This is from a week ago:
Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them
Many servers are not accepting new users since that was written.

Stupid name, Mastodon.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Nov 22 - 08:27 PM

Agreed about the name - a plodding extinct mammoth doesn't sound like a replacement to an agile bird.

I wonder how many people might actually set up servers (buy the device, pay the IP company for the speedy access) to run this kind of connection?

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 02:41 AM

I doubt if many individuals would run it on their own hardware. They're more likely to run it in the cloud. I know someone who set one up the other day on Amazon's AWS S3 - he's expecting it to cost a few dollars a month for his trial server. If it got big then the storage cost might be considerable - all those cat pictures!

The trouble with running your own hardware - even if you have a server lying around - is security, firewalls etc. It'd get attacked immediately.

You need a domain to hang it on, of course.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 03:45 AM

Raspberry Pi and VPN with a dedicated IP address?

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 04:16 AM

You could probably run a server on an rPi but I don't know if it would be quick enough. No need for a VPN.

You don't need to run you own server to use Mastodon, of course. I thought about joining https://mastodon.me.uk earlier, when it was accepting new accounts, but couldn't think of a use for it.

You can see what sort of people are using it on that or any server without having an account.

You can search for tags, like #folkmusic. I didn't find much.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 10:43 AM

Use Microsoft and an Azure account to set up something? I've played with it but never pulled the trigger.

A friend told me recently about setting up an AWS (Amazon Web Services account). Might be something to consider. Would either of these account for the capacity needed to join?

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 11:58 AM

I don't know why you'd want to run your own Mastodon server. If there are lots of new users then servers will appear. You just have to choose one you trust, unlike Twitter where there's only one and you have no choice.

I've used AWS's Lambda (free tier) to run little services. It's highly automated - I had difficulty configuring it - and the help is aimed at sysadmins. You could, for example, run a script to notify you when Mudcat is down, and up again.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Nov 22 - 01:27 PM

That's a point - finding one you can use. So far I haven't bothered to look for a list. Someone posted this morning that they're now on "Tribel Social." The spelling is off-putting, for starters.

Musk needs to assign a board to run Twitter and step back completely from the operation.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: leeneia
Date: 10 Nov 22 - 02:39 PM

Brief history of Twitter stock:

March, 2020 - $25
Feb 2021 - $77
pay off to other shareholders after Twitter was taken private: $54.

Twitter is no longer sold on the stock market.

So here's a company whose stock price tripled in eleven months for no particular reason. Those who bought at 25 and sold at 77 did very well. Those who bought at 77 and were bought out at 54 lost abt 25% - yet Twitter was just doing what it always did.

Twitter of today can turn to ashes if people grow disenchanted, if somebody starts an evil rumor, if another site gets to be more fun.

Once I read a piece of advice from mutual fund manager Peter Lynch. He said to invest in a company that makes something. I think it's still good advice.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Nov 22 - 02:21 PM

From the New York Times Tech Fix column:

How to Prepare for Life After Twitter
Don’t delete your account just yet. Elon Musk’s takeover can teach us valuable lessons about our relationship with social networks.

Sheer chaos has surrounded Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter over the past few weeks. More than half of Twitter’s employees have been fired or have resigned. The verification system no longer means much. And some users have reported problems with security features. So if you have an account on the social network, what do you do?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. But this continuing spectacle presents an opportunity for us to learn how to have healthier relationships with social platforms so we are not dependent on any one of them.

First, it is important to understand what is happening at Twitter. Threat experts told me they were concerned that the turmoil at Twitter, including the sudden lack of cybersecurity leaders and many community moderators, will cause parts of the site to stop working and, at worst, that security holes might lead to compromised accounts. But deactivating a Twitter account also poses risks because an impersonator could then more easily manipulate a person’s followers.

What’s more, those who have already left Twitter quickly realized there was no real alternative. Apps like Mastodon, the open-source site that involves posting on a social feed similar to Twitter’s timeline, are tricky for most people to set up. Reddit is more siloed by topics. LinkedIn is work-focused, Pinterest is centered on hobbies, TikTok is video-centric and Meta’s Facebook — well, let’s just say it has its own problems.

“Usually when we have an exodus, we’re going from one place to another,” said Zizi Papacharissi, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “Here, the problem is, what is the other?”

Yet there is a silver lining. This tumultuous situation with Twitter, according to social media consultants and security experts I interviewed, can serve as a template with valuable lessons for everyone, including casual tweeters and celebrities, on how to safely navigate any social network.

It goes on to talk about an exit strategy and how to spread out your bets to multiple platforms, and to possibly decide to let Twitter go.

Let's hope they don't all come over to Mudcat to join the BS section. :)

Subject: RE: Twitterdammerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 16 Nov 22 - 03:20 PM

Apps like Mastodon, the open-source site that involves posting on a social feed similar to Twitter’s timeline, are tricky for most people to set up.

Mastodon is not difficult to join - provided you can find a server that's accepting new users. But it's probably difficult for people used to Twitter or Facebook, which are a single sites, to understand.

This piece is reasonably informative
Observer: Joining the herd: what’s it like moving from Twitter to Mastodon?
This is amusing, but uninformative:
‘Guardian: Could this be Twitter without the toxic slurry?’ My week on Mastodon

'Toots' are now called 'Posts' btw.

Still nothing under #folkmusic. Little under #music apart from people just linking to videos they like. But this on the servers I'm linked to; there may be servers full of informed music posts - but they don't appear on my site's searches - I'd have to know and follow individual posters.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Nov 22 - 09:11 PM

Looks like Musk let Trump back in - with all of the orcs that follow him.

Anyone with a robust or important archive at Twitter might well ask for a download of it soon. Michele Weigle has information on how to save the archive to take out the twitter t.co part that will break the links if Twitter dies.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Nov 22 - 10:34 AM

One of the accounts I follow on Twitter has pointed out that if all of the rest of us leave, Twit-Elon and Twat-Trump win. Good point. But it's such a hot mess and the bots are voting in a way that isn't helpful. I think a leave of absence is in order.

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 20 Nov 22 - 01:17 PM

... ... if all of the rest of us leave, Twit-Elon and Twat-Trump win.

That argument is invalid. Twitter is not a public space or organisation which Musk is trying to influence, like Trump's attempts to influence the Republican party. Musk owns Twitter - or at least he is the controlling shareholder. He can do what he likes with it.

Leaving is the only way people can influence it. If he has his way, and people put up with it, then he wins.

Why would anyone have a 'important archive' on Twitter? It's a micro-blogging site.

(Dämmerung has two 'm's, btw.)

Subject: RE: Twitterdamerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Nov 22 - 04:26 PM

There are some quite remarkable threaded conversations that have been archived by various agencies and libraries; you're correct that Musk now owns Twitter, and a weak comparison but the only easy one is that if Zuckerberg was so singularly and personally involved with running Facebook, it would be a different space altogether. Or gone. He has boards and groups who do things there. Musk appears to not be trying to understand the mechanics of Twitter before disassembling it.

Looking at my account and making a list of who I'm following so I can look them up elsewhere is something I need to do. I haven't Tweeted anything noteworthy that I need to archive in my own account.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 20 Nov 22 - 04:54 PM

My favourite cartoonist Matt Golding posts his daily cartoons there as do some other Australian cartoonists who twitter thinks I should be interested in. I don't have a twitter account & just close the page whenever twitter tells me to join up! I've been reading his page since before I even got a mobile (cell) phone which was 2 years.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Nov 22 - 10:04 AM

I'm sure everyone understands Musk is a prime example of arrested development. We are left being the suckers for the billionaires.
Sam Bankman as a billionaire last week was able to make 32 billion dollars from small CRYPTO investors disappear. Bezos let go of his wage slaves to cut his overhead. You know what Trump did.

Musk, as the only billionaire 'decider' of a Monopoly, made hate and division the major theme on Twitter again, as many anti-democratic despots do.

Billionaires usually exist because we legislate to allow them to exist instead of taxing them and having anti trust laws that work.
We are suckers who hear "I alone will break the system of the big banks and government and give you the power to get rich too !"
Caveat Emptor; that person is the future thief.

Honestly, it is our own fault that the billionaire exists.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Nov 22 - 11:14 AM

The ability to throw the bums out are stymied by an election system that is all billionaire skewed with billions to get elected, gerrymandering and an electoral college. Money itself was ruled to be free speech. Even the good guys have to be billionaire friendly to get elected.

98% of the population can't afford to run for office so its a 'rich only - all others stay out' club at this point. School Board elections are known to cost $300,000 or more.

Voting rights are not racially friendly to the courts and Jim Crow decisions are given to the States so red states get redder and blue states get bluer.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Nov 22 - 11:34 AM

PS Bernie Madoff was a 64.5 billionaire.
I love to see Billionaires bite off more than they can chew.

Was there ever a James Bond Mega Villain that was not a billionaire?
Yet billionaire worship goes on.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Nov 22 - 07:01 PM

OR...
We are witnessing the Dunning Kruger effect in action.

The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when a person's lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence. By contrast, this effect also causes those who excel in a given area to think the task is simple for everyone, and underestimate their relative abilities as well.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 02:41 AM

The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when a person's lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence.

Like all the political pundits here on Mudcat?


DC

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 02:44 AM

Or pseudo-scientists, for that matter.

DC

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 05:49 AM

Fair enough, I prefer the term fan but maybe football fans are just pseudo football players. As kids I bet they used to play.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 07:42 AM

It’s perfectly possible to be a fan and a player. I played in local league football from schooldays until my mid-thirties, and all that time I was a fan of, and used to go watch, both my local FL side and Leeds Utd.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 07:52 AM

That sounds like the best way to go. Some just choose to make a living doing it but that is too competitive/hard for me.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 08:00 AM

I would have loved to make a living at it, but I was nowhere near good enough a player, not even good enough to be a semi-pro, let alone full-time. But I loved playing at local-league standard, and I loved watching my two pro sides.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 08:31 AM

Twitter on this thread, guys.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Nov 22 - 09:01 AM

Advertisers that have left twitter:
GM, Phizer, Oreo and subsideries, REI, General Mills, United, Audi,
IPG, formerly known as the Interpublic Group of Companies, is one of the biggest advertising firms in the world. The company influences a significant chunk of corporate America’s marketing budgets, representing brands such as American Express, CVS Pharmacies, Johnson & Johnson, and Spotify.

Carlsberg and more to come.

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Dec 22 - 01:07 PM

The Twitterscape hasn't improved in the weeks since our last post. Beyond that, this erratic behavior makes me fear for other Musk enterprises that have done a great deal of good - like the Starlink satellites to Ukraine when Russia invaded and the US Space Program. Will he start teetering on the edge of rational behavior in those businesses also?

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: DaveRo
Date: 17 Dec 22 - 02:37 PM

I've been monitoring hashtags on Mastodon to see if it shows useful posts. I have a column of the web interface set to
(#folk or #folkmusic) and not (#rock or #ambient or #remix or #art) - this exclusions list increasing daily.

John Spiers (@[e-mail]) posted this today:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cUwih29j_L4

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 17 Dec 22 - 02:48 PM

> like the Starlink satellites to Ukraine

Point of order: I saw someone claim that the reason that SpaceX hasn't gone *sproing* in the Chief Twit's hands is that he was Obliged to hand the operation over to a grown-up to run. Can someone confirm or refute this, please?

Subject: RE: Twitterdämmerung!!!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Dec 22 - 04:44 PM

From CNet - SPACE
Elon Musk’s SpaceX could spin off Starlink as public company by 2025, analysts predict

Elon Musk could spin Starlink off from SpaceX and carry out an initial public offering by 2025, tech analyst firm CCS Insight said in a report.

Starlink uses satellite to provide broadband internet to users and is part of Musk’s space exploration company.