ML2 @mathlover@social.cleverlibre.org

@AnnemarieBridy Interesting article raising some very good points. I sincerely hope what it describes doesn't happen, but I think whether it does or not depends a lot on what Fediverse users do collectively.

There are some things the Fediverse has in its favor here compared to email, such as instance migration.

@georgetakei Welcome, and followed!

@slothrop Holy crap. I knew Musk was an awful human, but this is yet another new low.

@slothrop
I talked with someone on Thursday who has contacts and he hadn't heard of anyone returning.
Has something changed since then?

@CC_StormWatch @DataDrivenMD On the other hand I do not see the site lasting long from a technical perspective. Musk has fired half the employees with a disproportionate amount let go being the more productive individuals. He has frozen changes to the codebase he does not approve of. Today he fired an employee on social media for millions to see over being called out on his own nonsense, ensuring virtually no one will try to apply for any significant position there for fear of that happening to them.

It would utterly surprise me if Twitter doesn't have an extended or even permanent outage by the end of the month. It's highly likely one could happen this week, or even in the next day or two.

@CC_StormWatch @DataDrivenMD I don't have high hopes for that. Musk is of similar character to Trump, but has far more control of Twitter than Trump did of the US. There will be no adults in the room to stop Musk that he can't simply fire on the spot. He is no more going to sell than Trump was going to concede in the 2020 election.

@wonkothesane @taylorlorenz We shall indeed see. I personally think Musk's ego is far too big for him to sell Twitter, and from what I can find he doesn't have any history of selling companies once he gets control of them.

@wonkothesane @taylorlorenz I agree with everything you said except the very last sentence. I would be very surprised if Twitter survives to the end of the year given what I have seen so far, and most experts I have been following on the matter have been of a similar opinion.

On the other hand, Mastodon --- and the wider Fediverse --- is indeed quite heterogenous. There are science-focused servers, furry focused servers, NSFW servers, servers that are focused on *very* niche things (dolphin.town) ... I could go on all day.

@taylorlorenz
As a person on the autism spectrum myself who has struggled with associated social issues I must respectfully disagree with the thread in question.

Mastodon — and the wider Fediverse —may be decentralized, but there are aspects of its culture that are actually more inclusive to people with disabilities than Twitter was, such as the custom of using alt text with images, which is extremely helpful for those with vision impairments and/or blindness. Additionally, I would strongly disagree that decentralization necessarily implies marginalization any more than centralization implies inclusion; indeed, a centralized system run by open ableists would arguably be far worse for the disabled than a decentralized system. I would also argue that saying centralization is necessary for visibility of the marginalized implies that a central authority is needed to keep people at large from collectively being ableist and ignoring disabled voices of their own accord. Despite having seen and experienced ableism towards myself and others, I do not agree with this worldview; indeed, I find it openly contradictory to the democratic ethos of the Fediverse as a whole.

Also: some of the most inclusive spaces I have found online for people on the spectrum have been places like Discord and Mastodon which do not involve centralized moderation at scale, and they have also been places where I have been most able to actually change people's minds on ableism, as Twitter is not a place where I have ever been able to actually have a proper conversation with someone and convince them of something because of the culture and layout there.

@JoshuaACasey
Jesus Christ this guy has a really bad take. Like, Twitter has a consent order with the FTC but Musk sure seems intent on breaking it. Other than that, companies really don't have much in the way of binding privacy regulations in the US.
I'm actually moderately impressed by how ignorant these people are.

@RYMAN_BADGUY I've read that book. One of my favorite early futurist stories to be honest.