According to Klippenstein, Musk sent a message in which he said, “I’ve asked X Safety to unsuspend him, even though I think he is an awful human being… Important to stay true to free speech principles.”
Klippenstein revealed Vance’s social security number in an opposition “dossier” he posted to Twitter. He was suspended. He redacted the personal information, and was reinstated.
Saved you a click, and talk about burying the lede!
People are starting to wake up. This notice needs to be expanded to include all printed media, broadcast, movies, streaming, video gaming, and even tabletop role playing. The billionaires in question are at the top of companies like Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard, which collectively own a controlling stake in almost every single company in the US. Larry Fink has become the poster child of this effort, because he literally said the quiet part out loud.
The next time you wonder why your favorite entertainment started being terrible all of a sudden, realize that these investment companies directed that to happen, and they’ve got more money than God to lose on spreading their messaging. It has become a complete top-down reprogramming of society. The only major platform/channel standing apart from this is Twitter, and that’s why they hate Elon Musk.
There were a handful of websites I found way back in the 2000’s that I liked, and kept on a short list to check every few days. This one stuck in my head because of the domain name, which I thought was terribly clever. I dug it up in the Internet Archive. It’s been taken over by some film company? Or something? I’m not clear if it’s run by the same people or not.
Another one was called “The Bassment” (sic), made by a guy who worked at SGI. It was named that way because he played bass, too. I can’t find it in the archive. It was run out of an Indy he had at his house, which inspired me to run my own web and email servers out of my house for 15 years.
There were others, like “Ze Frank,” who has moved to TikTok and YouTube (and probably others).
Anyway, I just wanted to capture the kind of free design that used to be prevalent on the internet before everyone started using “engines” and “templates” and “front ends.” And, no, the irony is not lost on me, sitting here using WordPress with a stock theme. And, sure, I started to rewrite another custom web site for my personal use, but I was using Bootstrap anyway. I readily admit that I’m not creative, but I used to at least try.
Graphics by FrontPage 97 and Image Composer
The web used to be a wild frontier of programmers and artists and writers who were exploring the new medium. Now, it’s just YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et. al., etc. There are very few personal sites left. It all got so boring. And for all the “AI” that’s supposed to be in “the algorithms,” TikTok and YouTube offer me 20 pieces of crap for every 1 thing I might have been interested in.
I was making a snarky comment on a post about how hackers should break into banks’ IT systems, and delete everyone’s loan information, and this happened.
The account has me blocked now. Surprise, surprise.
The CIA & NSA are running the media, “social” especially. Like the Allies cracking Enigma, and carefully choosing what pieces of intel to act upon, lest they give the game away, the deep state is very careful about what posts to amplify or remove.
FLASHBACK: This is the video that Donald Trump posted on January 6th telling people to go home peacefully that he just mentioned at the debate.
I’m GenX. I’ve been programming since I was 10. I’ve been programming professionally for 30 years now. I live with computers and software all day, every day. I am comfortable in macOS, Windows, and Linux. I want to share a couple of screenshots from my PS5 to Reddit. Seems simple, right? So how do I get them off the console, and onto a computer?
I see that I no longer have the option to upload to Twitter, which I had done before. (Has Sony officially joined the ranks of the He-Man Musk Haters Club? Or did Musk kill the API that Sony was using? Both possibilities seem equally likely.)
I also have YouTube, Discord, and Twitch accounts linked on the console. I have no options for sharing to any of these services either. What is the point of even having the option of linking them!? What is this doing other than just giving Sony permission to go fishing through those accounts?
I use the only option I see to upload them to the PS “app.” What is this doing for me? They don’t seem to be available anywhere on the Playstation website.
I install the PS+ app on Windows. It sticks for some time, so I kill it, only to see that Windows has hidden the UAE thing, so I never saw it. I try to install it again. It works.
I “sign in” to the PS+ app. I answer a stupid catcha, despite having 2FA on my account. Nothing happens.
I log in again. NOW I see my account. But I don’t see any way to access my screenshots. It’s just an ad page for a bunch of games that Sony should understand by now that I’m not interested in.
Grasping at straws, I install “Share Factory.” I shouldn’t need another application, but the name suggests possibilities… Aaand it’s a basic editor. Again, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get this media off the console. The only “sharing” option I see is to friend groups on the console. For this, it’s titled “‘Share’ Factory?” Are they serious?
I finally notice that the mobile PS app has the ability to look at my screenshots, and download them, but I don’t want to download them to the mobile device’s photo bank. I don’t want to allow the PS app access to my photos. I want to pull them to the PC, where I can more easily post them to Reddit.
At the end of all of this, the only option seems to be to put a USB memory stick in the console, and transfer media via sneakernet to my PC, like it was the 90’s all over again. The bottom line is that this seems — incredibly — to be the least amount of hassle to do what I want.
A rant on Reddit — before it was removed — surprise, surprise — confirms I’m not missing anything. I’m 54 years old. I live with bad apps and software and services like this every day, and I get sick of it. I have no idea how regular people are dealing with all of this “technology.” It makes no sense to me, and I’ve literally grown up with it. How can this be the best “we” can do here? Why aren’t we living in the future yet?
So forgive me if I can’t even get marginally excited for this latest kerfuffle over the new X branding. Primarily because of just how utterly removed the discourse around it is from a good-faith assessment of the merits of the particulars. It’s all turned into an endless proxy war, and every argument is wielded only in service of yet another petty ideological skirmish.
That’s apparently what I get for calling him on conflating two very controversial, yet very different issues, and asking why he would do that. It’s too bad. I mean, I know we have different politics, but he’s a great writer with a lot to say, and he’s smack-dab on the money about the corporate “enshittification” of every online service, and, indeed, every business in America these days. On the other hand, he’s one of the charter members of the he-man Musk haters club, and says he’ll be “leaving” Twitter soon, so I guess I’ll have a chance to get blocked on Mastodon or something in the future.
I’m not clear what about my profile someone in Germany could find offensive, but here we are. I appreciate this notice, and the German law that required it. We should have more of this kind of thing, to reduce the abuse of reporting systems that get accounts taken down over wrong-think.
Some mid account, posting a summary, of a news article, which says specifically the opposite of what he’s saying in the tweet…. 21.2K likes. The truth? Doesn’t even register. But it’s red meat for his audience, so…
Where’s Elon’s vaunted community fact-checking service on this one?
The “news”
There really isn’t a way to fix this on this platform. Maybe not on social media at all. But I’m going to start muting a lot more accounts in a last-ditch effort to make this platform useful to me.
