Discussion

• @rodhilton@mastodon.social Rod Hilton on mastodon

  Frankly the algorithmic timeline is the only “advantage” Twitter offers over something like Mastodon, if you're into that sort of thing.  —  He's disabling the only thing of value at the company.  —  Masterful gambit, sir.

• @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org Lauren Weinstein on mastodon

  @paul Hey, Elon, tell us more about these advanced AI Twitter bot swarms!  Sounds very sci-fi!

• @rodhilton@mastodon.social Rod Hilton on mastodon

  Holy hell he really thinks people are going to pay him $8/mo to broadcast to the world how badly they need attention

• @joshuatopolsky@mastodon.online Joshua Topolsky on mastodon

  This guy is truly hilarious

• @joeross@mastodon.social Joe Ross on mastodon

  Every decision he makes is worse than the last.  —  Everything he does appears calculated to continue decreasing the value of a now-$20B company he paid $45B for only a matter of months ago.  —  Just wow.

• @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social Jeff Jarvis on mastodon

  Well now in the waning days of Twitter, I will have NO reason to ever look at “for you,” populated as it will be with the fools who bear the Blue Check Mark of the Eight-Buck Schmuck.

• @willoremus@mastodon.social Will Oremus on mastodon

  If this goes how I expect it to go, get ready for another big surge in Mastodon's popularity.

• @ChrisPirillo@mastodon.social Chris Pirillo on mastodon

  y'all gotta understand that #twitter users won't migrate to #mastodon until mastodon charges them $8 for the full feature set, starts serving up ads / tracking, and institutes a nonsensical algorithm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• @danyork@mastodon.social Dan York on mastodon

  And so Twitter will go to being primarily pay-for-play as of April 15.  Only paid users ("verified") will have their posts appear in the “For you” tab. …

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations. The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle. Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.

• @mikescollins Mike Scollins on x

  Every blockable account in one handy tab. A gift. https://twitter.com/...

• @eve6 @eve6 on x

  Starting April 15th only white nationalists with 30 followers will be in For You recommendations https://twitter.com/...

• @buccocapital BuccoCapital Guy on x

  Throttling reach unless you pay. Desperate “For You” is already curated dogshit - now it's adverse selection of everyone paying for Twitter? What a joke https://twitter.com/...

• @noahgarfinkel Noah Garfinkel on x

  This fucking guy is really trying to migrant caravan us about AI bots. https://twitter.com/...

• @bestofdyingtwit @bestofdyingtwit on x

  he did it, folks. he found a way to make For You worse https://twitter.com/...

• @fiercemilder @fiercemilder on x

  I hate how transparent his reasoning is every time he tries something. Confidently saying that “the only way to solve the bot situation” always involve paying for an account, but not saying why. A better way to remove bots from the For You tab is to remove the For You tab. https:…

• @pixelatedboat @pixelatedboat on x

  Starting April 15th, only dogshit content from bootlicking freaks will be eligible to be in For You recommendations https://twitter.com/...

• @espiers Elizabeth Spiers on x

  For context, Twitter Blue has made a grand total of $11 million so far. Next up: eroding the integrity of the platform, driving verified celebrities with millions of followers off of it, making recommendations and polls even more useless... profit! https://twitter.com/...

• @emmakennedy Emma Kennedy on x

  Elon Musk doesn't understand this platform. The end. https://twitter.com/...

• @0xgaut Gaut on x

  subscribe to Twitter Blue to see full tweets https://twitter.com/...

• @benjysarlin Benjy Sarlin on x

  Finally, someone is addressing the advanced AI swarm bots constantly clogging my For You feed https://twitter.com/...

• @semaforben Ben Smith on x

  If the $ buys distribution .... it'll be the cheapest form of marketing on the internet https://twitter.com/...

• @mnateshyamalan Soul Nate on x

  objectively a terrible development for this stupid app that i love, but there's no denying that this is about to be hilarious https://twitter.com/...

• @buccocapital BuccoCapital Guy on x

  Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Pinterest, Snapchat etc have probably spent a collective trillion dollars building perfectly-curated, finely-tuned algorithmic content feeds Elon is deliberately losing billions destroying Twitter's algorithmic feed

• @astroehlein Andrew Stroehlein on x

  Worse and worse... It will all be paid advertising one way or another soon: https://www.bbc.com/...

• @jeffjarvis Jeff Jarvis on x

  Well now in the waning days of Twitter, I will have NO reason to ever look at “for you,” populated as it will be with the fools who bear the Blue Check Mark of the Eight-Buck Schmuck. https://twitter.com/...

• @bmkibler Brian Kibler on x

  Remember when he said he'd step down based on that poll? https://twitter.com/...

• @saruman1 Marisol on x

  Twitter vs. Twitter. 🤮🤮🤮 https://twitter.com/...

• @chrismessina Chris Messina on x

  PremiumSocial becomes the default. So much for taking power from the Lords and distributing it to the plebs. This is pure pay-to-play. Is the only way to defeat advertising on the web to turn everyone into an advertiser? https://twitter.com/...

• @tomwarren Tom Warren on x

  For You on Twitter is about to get even worse 🙄 https://twitter.com/...

• @kris_willis Kris Willis on x

  You mean the fake verified accounts https://twitter.com/...

• @epro Emil Protalinski on x

  Elon does it again For You is about to get even more useless https://twitter.com/...

• @jamesrbuk James Ball on x

  Oh no, the tab we all basically hate will be even less usable. I reckon we're probably about three months away from Musk just throwing the kitchen sink at it and saying you need to pay to tweet. He just does not understand this place *at all*. https://twitter.com/...

• @nycsouthpaw @nycsouthpaw on x

  I'll be in the spam folder with my friends. https://twitter.com/...

• @jonlionfineart2 Jon Lion Fine on x

  So this will officially be twitter's demise? Telling people “pay for twitter” or nobody will see your tweets? This is sad. People left in flocks before...now it will become a ghost town. I'm just a dumb artist...but this is a wrong move imo https://twitter.com/...

• @seyitaylor @seyitaylor on x

  People keep talking about Twitter's engineers like they were incompetent but I promise you that if these were tech problems, they'd have figured them out. In the end, our industry cheered while someone set fire to something we all get value from... for reasons.

• @pitdesi Sheel Mohnot on x

  Comical to claim that all these decisions that are 100% about revenue are actually about bots or safety. Have to be honest, despite Elon making a ton of decisions I think are dumb, overall the experience is about the same as it was before he took over (with many fewer employees) …

• @ultimashadowx @ultimashadowx on x

  This poll made him so upset that he made voting on Twitter Polls restricted to people who pay him, LMAO https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @dieworkwear Derek Guy on x

  i can tell you from experience that $8/month will get you thousands of daily messages like “why are you showing in my timeline?” “you suck ass” “who fucking cares” “[insert a total misreading of what you wrote]” “you should hate yourself” “i cant stand you” “are you fucking stu—”…

• @internethippo Mr. Bedtime on x

  Plan A was to make amazing features that made people want to subscribe and that lasted less than 6 months so Plan B is to make the free user experience progressively shittier https://twitter.com/...

• @tszzl Roon on x

  Dawg were never getting to mars https://twitter.com/...

• @jarvis Jarvis Johnson on x

  starting april 15, you can safely bully anyone in the the For You recommendations https://twitter.com/...

• @daveleeft Dave Lee on x

  There is not a critical mass of Twitter users who are so desperate for attention they will pay for it. There just isn't. It means the majority of the For You content could end up being organizations who have paid for that. Surely more “elite” than ever? https://twitter.com/...

• @edzitron Ed Zitron on x

  The for you feed is going to just be dogshit now, and it was already pretty bad. Everyone will switch to following by default anyway. Mr business strikes again https://twitter.com/...

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Anyway Musk is his own worst enemy. Felt like this place was working better, engagement was up again. He could have run with things and brought back some of the lost high-paying advertisers and stabilized the business. But instead he's gonna screw it up again.

• @seyitaylor @seyitaylor on x

  People that said Elon would kill it at Twitter because of Telsa and SpaceX also incorrectly said that Twitter had technology problems. Twitter never had tech problems. Twitter had media and monetization challenges, and very few of them could be solved by tech.

• @skillupyt @skillupyt on x

  I got off the ‘For You’ tab some weeks ago when I realized it was just partisan culture war rage bait and people getting beat up in public. It was already a total cesspool. I can only imagine how bad it will be now that the only content there is from people dumb enough to pay $8.…

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  This explains why they removed explanations for why people show up as For You recommendations. Soon only users who pay will be recommended. This is actually breaking new ground in user hostile design. https://twitter.com/...

• @rleighturner Leigh Turner on x

  Looks like my “verified” blue Twitter tick confirming who I am is about to disappear; and that from 1 April (yes!) my tweets will be less visible. Sorry. I'll soldier on for a bit but it feels like the end of this platform being much use, after 12 years https://www.bbc.com/...

• @modeledbehavior Adam Ozimek on x

  Fees and prices can absolutely be part of making a two sided marketplace function efficiently. But extracting value and calling it adding value is a real risky move. https://twitter.com/...

• @heydudeimadam Adam Ruehmer on x

  This app is becoming more and more useless by the day. https://twitter.com/...

• @ashleymayer Ashley Mayer on x

  I paid for the old Twitter Blue, and there are many hypothetical features I would happily pay for (ability to unread/favorite DMs, direct support when impersonated, follower analytics, etc) but this...this feels kinda gross. https://twitter.com/...

• @willoremus Will Oremus on x

  Who's excited for a Twitter feed populated entirely by the sort of people who pay $8 a month to get a blue check next to their name? https://twitter.com/...

• @oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x

  See y'all in the no-go zone! https://twitter.com/...

• @franklinleonard Franklin Leonard on x

  Just say “people who pay for Twitter” etc. It's easier and more clear. The only thing verified about “verified accounts” in this form is that the credit card payment cleared. https://twitter.com/...

• @drewb Drew Benvie on x

  Trolls are the problem on Twitter, not bots. Moderation is the solution, not Blue. Let's not polish this turd any harder, Elon. https://twitter.com/...

• @rjcc Richard Lawler on x

  I think folks may have missed (because it's hard to parse and I could be wrong) that his tweet said recommended. The for you page doesn't mark “recommended” tweets anymore, but those are the ones you see from people you don't follow, not every tweet on the for you page https://tw…

• @bradfross Brad Ross on x

  He's taken apart a watch to see how it works. Now he's left with a mess of parts and no idea what time it is. https://twitter.com/...

• @angryblacklady @angryblacklady on x

  lol who cares. everyone hates that feature https://twitter.com/...

• @mollywood Molly Wood on x

  Put another way, if you haven't already encountered this, Twitter is no longer a reliable outlet for either reach OR consumption. Oh, well. https://twitter.com/...

• @willoremus Will Oremus on x

  On second read, it's unclear whether “For You recommendations” means *everything* in your For You feed—or just the tweets in your For You feed that are from people you don't already follow. Or something else entirely!

• @jonfavs Jon Favreau on x

  No need to insult our intelligence by pretending this is about bots, just say that you need to make money because you've done a horrendous job managing the company you bought. https://twitter.com/...

• @selviano Michael Selvidge on x

  This all stems from his twisted belief that the system is rigged against right wingers. No, the majority of people in the world just hate assholes. https://twitter.com/...

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  When the company you bought for $44B has lost over half its value in six months and no one wants to pay for blue checks so you need to threaten users with losing traffic unless they pay up. https://twitter.com/...

• @daveleeft Dave Lee on x

  Menswear guy* is having a miserable time due to Twitter algo-driven popularity. Musk's business model assumes people want to *pay* to feel that way. I don't see it. (*who seems great, fwiw) https://twitter.com/...

• @turtlesongfarm @turtlesongfarm on x

  Want to vote in a poll? That will be $8/month. Elmo is definitely deliberately trying to destroy Twitter https://twitter.com/...

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  Hey, look what's starting to trend over on the other site.

• @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org Lauren Weinstein on mastodon

  Musk limiting the “For You” section of #Twitter to his pay-to-play blue accounts sounds like a fine idea to me.  I always found the timeline that wasn't restricted to users I chose to follow to be basically worthless. …

• @dangillmor@mastodon.social Dan Gillmor on mastodon

  That journalists continue to support Elon Musk should be astonishing.  What's incredibly sad is that it's just what you expect at this point.

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  @caseynewton @zoeschiffer fwiw, it looks like the main criteria for many of these is basically “does Elon like interacting with them”

• @caseynewton@mastodon.social Casey Newton on mastodon

  Every day is like “starting tomorrow only people who post ‘Elon is cool’ will be eligible to have their tweets appear in English” and the entire press corps and all of my friends continue to post there like nothing has changed

• @sharearea@mastodon.online @sharearea@mastodon.online on mastodon

  So pretty much on #Twitter you will be able to hide your #BlueCheck.. but you also get bumped up in replies and added to the #ForYou list...  ..technically making it bone easy to spot people wanting to obfuscate …

• @rodhilton@mastodon.social Rod Hilton on mastodon

  Nobody cool would pay for Twitter.  —  So on April 15th, every single user's For You feed becomes unreadable.  Literally, every single user's timeline is irreparably broken. …

• @hunterwalk@mastodon.cloud @hunterwalk@mastodon.cloud on mastodon

  @Techmeme The Real Twitter Files

• @mmasnick@mastodon.social Mike Masnick on mastodon

  HAHAHAHAH. @caseynewton and @zoeschiffer got Elon's secret “twitter accounts to boost” list and it is so bizarre.  —  Meanwhile, remember how Elon complained about the former folks doing this in secret? …

• @zoeschiffer @zoeschiffer on x

  New: For months, Twitter has maintained a list of VIP users, including LeBron James, Glenn Greenwald, Ben Shapiro, AOC, and Marc Andreessen, that it monitors and gives increased visibility to on the platform. 1/ https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x

  “The secret list of Twitter VIPs getting boosted over everyone else” Oh the hypocrisy. And the ridiculous far-right account ‘Catturd’ is part of this? You cannot make this stuff up. https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @islivingston Ian Livingston on x

  Stupidest website Elon is such an incel wannabe https://twitter.com/...

• @thelincoln Lincoln Michel on x

  So weird Taibbi didn't scoop this 🤔 https://twitter.com/...

• @stokel @stokel on x

  Oh look, a heating button to non-transparently manipulate the working of the algorithm that dictates what content we see. I'm sure this will be treated as a concern by everyone. https://twitter.com/...

• @notcapnamerica Chris Evans on x

  In case you were wondering why you keep seeing the same people on your timeline that you don't follow 👇🏾 https://twitter.com/...

• @boringstein @boringstein on x

  no, this is one of maybe the only instances of the musk era twitter knowing its audience— this is a near-perfectly curated list of accounts that can function as jangling keys in some form for 80% of twitter https://twitter.com/...

• @timodc Tim Miller on x

  Kinda self-defeating to lift Andreesen's tweets when he blocks more people than anyone else on this site. Maybe it's some kind of billionaire spite thing where Elon wants to tire out Marc's blocking finger. https://twitter.com/...

• @vanessa_abee @vanessa_abee on x

  shocked that matt taibbi missed this https://twitter.com/...

• @priyamvadagopal Priyamvada Gopal on x

  So much for ‘equalising’ and not privileging celebs https://twitter.com/...

• @scottjohnson Scott Johnson on x

  A kind of reverse Twitter files. https://twitter.com/...

• @teri_kanefield Teri Kanefield on x

  The VIP users stir strong emotions, which (as the Facebook whistleblower explained) increases engagement. More engagement = more $ I suspect that the future of social media is decentralized and federated. https://twitter.com/...

• @katie_roof Katie Roof on x

  I guess that's one way for @pmarca to get ROI on his investment https://twitter.com/...

• @edburmila Ed Burmila on x

  Free speech is when a billionaire manipulates a social media site to drive traffic to my substack https://twitter.com/...

• @banikarim Susie on x

  probably just a coincidence that there's only one woman on this list and it's a woman he's clearly desperate to impress. https://twitter.com/...

• @silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x

  That explains why Greenwald has 2m followers now. https://twitter.com/...

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  That Twitter artificially boosts the tweets of Ben Shapiro, AOC & Catturd2 is both hilarious and sad. https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @wongmjane Jane Manchun Wong on x

  It's interesting how most of these people don't show up on my timelines (except those whom I follow) https://twitter.com/...

• @adhutchinson Andrew Hutchinson on x

  Particularly interesting to note the strong US bias in this list. Twitter has more US users than any other region, but they still only make up 17.5% of the platform's overall audience. The emphasis on US politics makes little sense for the majority of users. https://twitter.com/.…

• @caseynewton Casey Newton on x

  There's a secret list of Twitter VIPs whose accounts the company has been boosting over everyone else's. And @ZoeSchiffer got it. Congrats to Ben Shapiro, AOC, and ... LeBron? Subscribe to read: https://www.platformer.news/ ...

• @hunterw Hunter Walker on x

  So, basically, the exact kind of manipulations of viewership that conservatives have always complained was going on here is only really happening under Elon. https://twitter.com/...

• @lorakolodny Lora Kolodny on x

  among the favored vips - massive TSLA promoters, an investor in deals with Elon Musk, as well as content creators (jounalistish) featured on a platform run by another Musk friend & backer https://twitter.com/...

• @joshtpm Josh Marshall on x

  hmmm. Totally a cross section of people on Twitter. Lol https://twitter.com/...

• @trashtaeks @trashtaeks on x

  @ZoeSchiffer boost dril and only dril

• @edzitron Ed Zitron on x

  At least 5 people on this list have complained about biased algorithms https://twitter.com/...

• @daveleeft Dave Lee on x

  Twitter Files UPDATE https://twitter.com/...

• @oalexanderdk Oliver Alexander on x

  I thought that Musk was all about treating all users equally now? The fact that Glenn Greenwald and CatTurd are on the booster “VIP” list is equal parts hilarious and pathetic. https://twitter.com/...

• @kurtwagner8 Kurt Wagner on x

  Not shocked by this one. Twitter has long granted special treatment to VITs (very important tweeters), including better protection against trolls/abuse. It makes businesssense for the most famous people on Twitter to get more amplification than the rest of us https://twitter.com/…

• @jangles Neville Hobson on x

  What a manipulative #untrustworthy platform #Twitter is now turning out to be https://twitter.com/...

• @johnpaczkowski John Paczkowski on x

  They sure made short work of that “lords and peasants” system ... https://twitter.com/...

• @chrisfralic Chris Fralic on x

  Shadow Promoting https://twitter.com/...

• @mollymckew Molly McKew on x

  Twitter was powerful was bc real valuable information—from historians, revolutionaries, reformers, emergencies, issue experts, OSINT, what have you—could come from ground level & have breakthru influence Now it will just be another elite influence box crowding out real people /1 …