Twitter's new TikTok copycat is filled with animal cruelty videos. Elon calls content "Edgy"

Why is everything to do with this story completely unsurprising.

Because we've all come to accept that Elon Musk doesn't know how to run a social media site?

Musk is a proponent of near-absolute free speech

Anything goes, so long as it doesn't hurt his feelings personally

As long as you don't use the term cisgender :)
Or say the word "cisgender”
- Woah dude, cool it with the c-bombs.
Kinda far from absolute imo.
- I would claim actual free speech absolutists don't exist.
- Didn’t he also give in to block a few accounts of political opponents in Turkey instead of risking being banned there completely, because he said it would be better to lose a few accounts instead of losing the whole country?
Freedom, by Musk... a cologne that's actually mace with directions to the local old folks home and instructions on how to use InShot.
Or when an authoritarian government asks him to block literally anything

The best anyone can do right now is to migrate off of Twitter entirely. As long as Musk is in charge (or in charge through his puppet CEOs) the site will be a cesspool of toxicity and hate. I'm honestly not sure why reputable people are still using the site... guess the view and media exposure are better than doing the right thing and leaving?

- Why would anyone want to move to another functionally similar microblogging site if Twitter still has more users?
  Perhaps because the quality of the experience is better, even if the number of users is lower. As Twitter appeals more and more to the far right, those might not be the users people want to be hanging around with.
- or specific forums like HardOCP/Forum screwing the pooch
  ah genmay, that takes me way back
Anyone who is still on Twitter has, in my opinion, fewer issues with being a corporate puppet and being associated with all the hatred there than they have with losing views.
- I have (had?) plenty of friends on Twitter who loudly proudly boycotted the Harry Potter game due to JKR's comments about trans people.
  But they’ve stayed on Twitter despite its horrible owner and how he runs things.
  I’m willing to give a pass to creators who make a living off their online audience. If the audience went off Twitter, so would they.
  Everyone else, though? I don’t ever care to hear about what they're boycotting again if they can’t pull themselves off Twitter.
We (most of the people here), already did. Thats how mastadon was born!

"TikTok copycat"

You know, way way back in the pre-Elon days, they had another one. I think it was called Vine?

I still don't understand why they killed it. Must've been a real money sink.
- high costs server side, poor quality of the videos, poor-ish internet connections, not enough powerful cell phones, etc. They were ahead of time. They achieved a decent success in the US but not much outside of it because of much of the reasons listed above.
Yeah, and it closed because they weren't making money on it. Turns out all you needed was a few years for server costs to go down.

Does he? Is that even possible?
- 4chan doesn’t fuck with animal abusers. They fuck their lives up and doxx them.

12ft link

The fediverse is looking like the objective best alternative, more so day by day.

One day the far right has to realize we're here, and they'll pile in to hurl abuse etc. When that happens I'll be looking for instances that moderate and defederate them away. I didn't realize how much that stuff got me down until I came here from reddit and found people having reasonable conversations, just like in the old days. It's a rare thing to find on today's internet.

All social media is filled with animal cruelty.
There's so many pictures and videos of cut up animal corpses with people going "yum" in the comments..

I don't get how I never see that on regular Twitter.
- You've never seen any posts containing meat?
- The content moderation is more active I guess. People post stuff like that all the time on Facebook and Instagram too. Not sure if they have an algorithm or whatever to trigger removal but a good amount are still manually removed by workers, some who quit because of the psychological repercussions
  https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
- Do people post much food content on Twitter? I never really used Twitter other than when news stories included tweets so I have no idea what's popular out there.
Folks, there is important, valid discussion to be had about meat eating both from ethical an environmental perspectives. I'm not sure that !Technology is the place to have that discussion, however.
More importantly, this thread was not the way to discuss these issues, particularly on Beehaw. The behavior in this thread was not nice, and is not the way that these types (or any type) of discussion should be conducted.
- I just made a comment about animal cruelty on social media, in a thread about animal cruelty on social media.
  Sadly speaking up for the animals provokes angry responses in many people.
- This is definitely a problem that's going to get worse, fast. Federated communities+feed that draws from a pile of them without particular reference+larger userbase...
Yes there's no difference between a picture of a steak and fries on a plate, and a kitten being tortured then burned alive. Absolutely the same thing.
- Not to vegans, they're clinically insane.
- They're both clearly abuse, the steak used to be a living being who was tortured and killed for profit/taste.
  Why are you people downvoting me? Do you think steaks don't come from cows who are killed?

I don't use Tiktok but I gather that this is a big problem over there as well, so it sounds like Twitter is working just as well as the site it's riffing off.

I don't either but my understanding from other feedback, and from the article linked, is that no, it's not a problem there. More accurate algorithm and proper moderation.
- it’s not a problem there
  It is, because my wife is an avid Tok user and complains about it, and reports it, frequently. She also says there are many animal videos that are "unsettling" but not outright abuse.

What kinda goofy response was this from Musk? AYO!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1673116176757694465

Try not to link if you can, just screenshot or copy text. Don't need to drive any traffic to that pit of despair.
https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1673116176757694465
Expected from someone who responds with the 💩 emoji
- I actually didn't find much wrong with that, that was funny. But this here is a completely inappropriate response

are there videos of apes with nualink in their brains?

Many reported being alarmed by a stream of graphic videos they encountered while scrolling through the feed, including videos showing gun violence, police brutality, physical altercations and vaccine misinformation.

So it's working as intended?

Of course Elon would.

Steve “spez” Huffman calls the feature “visionary” and jokes that he wishes some protesting Reddit moderators be featured in the videos.

System is working as intended... I guess then huh Elon?

Only use it via browser and wasn't even aware of such feature nor do I care. These short videos are a rabbit hole I don't want to explore because there's no coming back

I've used them several times. Every time I get 3-4 videos deep and get pissed off because it lacks basic functionality, there's zero curation so it's just a stream of shit, the content is shit because they try to cram it into a vertical video, a format that makes zero sense, and I come away from every video thinking "WTF did I just watch?"
Seriously this segment of entertainment truly befuddles me.
- yeah I downloaded tiktok to see what the deal was
  I am immediately bombarded with some stupid auto play video I didn’t ask for, so I swipe it away
  which just sends me another stupid video in an endless stream of garbage
  I’ll never understand this type of social media, it truly felt like idiocracy

As for the free speech claims. I guess it's code for Elon doesn't want to pay people to moderate the content.

Except where the word "cisgender" is used, then he brings in the last employee that knows how to work the only machine left in the office with a working version of the software for modding content, while him, Ronnie, and other top members of the Reich look over his shoulder.

Sounds like tiktok