#twitter successor

[tomorrowusa]

The Elon Twitter chaos continues. 

The crisis at Twitter reached new heights on Friday as hundreds of employees were reported to have rejected Elon Musk’s ultimatum to keep working for the business, threatening its ability to keep operating.

As the company temporarily closed its offices to staff, Twitter users began saying their goodbyes and linking to accounts on other platforms.

#RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown, Mastodon and Myspace were all trending on the platform after the deadline passed on Musk’s ultimatum for the remaining workforce to sign up for “long hours at high intensity”, or leave. It has been estimated that hundreds of the remaining staff opted to go.

Seriously, a type of loyalty oath? Trump-style management didn’t save Trump’s numerous failed businesses and it won’t help Elon Musk.

This is what a slow implosion looks like. We’re gonna need a lot of popcorn for this one.

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return, current and former employees said.

Those former Twitter workers need to start working on a replacement platform ASAP. It would be a foolish waste of talent and a missed opportunity if they let this go by. 

Government-related Twitter accounts like that of the French Embassy in Fiji are already announcing to followers where they can be found elsewhere online. There is a gap that needs to be filled quickly.

Musk isn’t the only person to blame for Twitterpocalypse. The stupidity of Twitter’s former chair Jack Dorsey and the greed of Twitter’s former board of directors including CEO Parag Agrawal must share responsibility for this disaster. If you give a flamethrower to a known arsonist then you can’t claim you’re innocent of starting a wildfire.

Any successor to Twitter should preferably be a not for profit corporation to make it resistant to takeovers by the clueless billionaires of this world. Being nonprofit doesn’t mean you make no money. Strictly speaking, IKEA is part of a nonprofit group. A nonprofit New Twitter (or whatever you wanna call it) could still have enough income to attract talent and make investments in itself.

The internet has become too important to trust to egotistical oligarchs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

[footlongdingledong]

rhythm heaven is great you'll go into a remix and the background music will start and it'll be someone absolutely belting their heart out confessing their love and shit and it'll slam .and onscreen you're playing as a monkey doing a little dance for at least one fifth of it

[nonbinarygamzee]

people have loved to hand wring about media literacy and use examples of tumblr/twitter users refusing to engage with the depth of writing as proof of the fall of humanity or whatever the fuck a lot in the past year or so but can we be honest there is literally nothing more obnoxious and offputting than someone who is convinced that their capacity to grasp surface level thematic storytelling makes them like. a special genius.

[mwagneto]

it's so fucking funny shadowhunters is old enough that they say "simon's twitter account" and "i follow him" in that specific voice that makes it obvious it's something that's meant to make them sound very #hip and modern

[cruelangel94]

Frieren x Nadesico

Artist By ガミガミ

[fabledivine]

scorp and frasier!! frasier and scorp

[kerbrobro]

While going through my Gameboy collection I stumbled on "Metal Walker" again. It's a weird little billiards-style Pokemon clone with robots. It's a really cool idea that I'd love to see them try again. Really fun mecha designs, but the encounter rate is so high it basically ruins the game, especially since battles are very involved and can't often be ended super quickly. Definitely a game that would've benefited from having a lower encounter rate, more defined areas where you can run into enemies, or having battles exclusively happen by interacting with other characters. It's really the kind of game I want to like more than I actually do.

Also "Pokemon clone" isn't totally accurate since you exclusively battle with one robot that you evolve by finding parts, and you just scan enemy robots to get new items to use in battle. The scanning is a neat system, but also feels like a lot of effort for not that much payoff. Maybe it'd be better if scanning the enemies got you stuff you could permanently equip or alter your robot with, rather than just a consumable item that randomly drops into the field, and does an attack or status effect if someone touches it.

[supercharged-streamer]

OH YEAH that infamous Pokemon Uranium game has a "sequel" now (Pokemon Flux)

I think I'll play it when I'm done with the fan game I'm currently playing. (It's going to take a while though)

[angstics]

tumblr please make a mute feature that removes blogs or posts from your dashboard and activity page. amen

[bluevoltaire]

Oh we LOVE long form content on the website that

[checks notes]

popularized character-limited posts

Canonical enshittification

This is the Facebook playbook: you lure in publishers by promising them a traffic funnel ("post excerpts and links and we'll show them to people, including people who never asked to see them"), and then the rug-pull: "Post everything here, don't link to your own site. Become a commodity supplier to our platform. Abandon all your own ways of making money. Become entirely subject to the whims of our recommendation system."

Next will be: "We block links to other sites because they might be malicious."

Then some kind of "pivot to video."

Probably not video (though who knows?) but some other feature that a major rival has, which Twitter will attempt to defraud its captive, commodified suppliers into financing an entry into.

In case you were wondering, yes, this is canonical enshittification. Lure in business customers (publishers) by offering surpluses (algorithmic recommendation and an ensuing traffic funnel). Lock them in (by capturing their audience and blocking interop and logged-out reading).

Then rug the publishers, clawing back all the surpluses you gave them and more, draining them of all available capital and any margins they have, until they die or bite the bullet and leave.

I would also give good odds on this leading to a revivification of the "Pay us tens of thousands of dollars a month for a platinum checkmark and we'll actually show what you post to the people who asked to see it."

That will be pitched as the answer to publishers' complaints about not wanting to turn themselves into commodity Twitter inputs. It will be priced at the same (or more) as the revenues publishers expect to lose from being commodified, making it a wash.

All of this seems to me to be an "unfair and deceptive business practice" under Sec 5 of the FTC Act.

If I sign up to follow you because I want to see what you post, and Twitter shadowbans your posts unless they are formatted to maximize your dependence on Twitter, they have deceived me, and are being unfair to you.

This is *very* analogous to the Net Neutrality debate, where a platform blocks or deprioritizes the things its users ask to see, based on whether the suppliers of those things are its competitors.

I've written about how an end-to-end principle for social media could be enforced under Sec 5 of the FTCA, how it would address this kind of sleazy practice, how it would be easy to administer, and wouldn't form a barrier to entry for new market entrants:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

[scyphan790]

The game I want to make and its 3 biggest inspirations

[prickly-paprikash]

Pushing aside the fact that I am, quite possibly, a Kendrick fan—disregarding my biases, I think Drake needs to stop. Push Ups was a good diss. Surface level, vapid, but it possessed that mean, petty spirit that carries a diss track all the way. Even bringing up accusations that are, realistically speaking, unlikely still works because a diss is supposed to show just how much you hate a person and how cleverly you can bring it.

Taylor Made was weird. I get that it was a strategy. Drop the main diss first and then drop this one to really prod at Kendrick. Using Pac and Snoop AI voices sucks though. Distilling Kendrick as Taylor's underling also doesn't work because Kendrick only collaborated with her once (twice when they remade Bad Blood) and that's it. Meanwhile Drake is out here always looking for new, up and coming artists to pounce on their trends or cling to established artists. Then it got taken down, because of course it would have been. You used 2Pac's voice. Did you really think his estate, his family, wouldn't do anything?

So he bought Pac's ring and used his voice without permission. More and more we see just how much of a vulture Drake is.

And then Euphoria drops.

Your first diss was met with solid reactions. Your second got taken down. Kendrick drops on a random hot Tuesday, and in a matter of hours surpasses your numbers that took weeks to accumulate. Kendrick did that. Euphoria was also harsh, clever, and sounded so good that people kept replaying it over and over again. Once more, Kendrick schools you.

A few insiders then say that Drake will drop that night. Right after. But he then allegedly gets cold feet. A few hours later from when Drake was supposedly ready to drop but backs out, Kendrick drops 6:16 in LA.

In your previous disses, you begged Kendrick to drop something with quintuple entendres. Euphoria did that. But he took it a step further by naming his second diss 6:16 in LA.

June 16: Father's day. Referencing the fact that Drake has been proven to be a deadbeat father.

June 16, 1971: Tupac's Birthday. Kendrick idolizes him. Drake steals from him.

June 16, 2019: First episode of Euphoria drops. A show Drake is listed as a producer on. A show about underage girls entering a life of sex, substance abuse, and more. Things that Drake has been accused of repeatedly in the past.

June 16, 2011: in June 2, 2011, Kendrick posted on his twitter that there will be a concert at Toronto on 6/16. Allegedly this is where Drake and Kendrick first met.

6:16 AM: The time of release for this track.

6:16: Multiple possible Bible verses, given Kendrick's Christian background.

Other claims felt like reaches though, so I'll stick to that.

The final two lines of 6:16 also reference the Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and their song "You Are Not Alone". Drake, who has always claimed he is Michael Jackson or at the very least his equal/successor, is now tied to him in a way he does not want. Because we know all of the dirt that came out after MJ's death. We all know what R. Kelly was sent to prison for. And we all know what Drake has been accused of multiple times.

Kendrick also alludes to the fact that you have a leak in your circle, Drake.

So Drake drops Family Matters. A scathing 7 minute song that makes fun of the GKMC van. Saying that Kendrick's daughter isn't his. Saying that his wife cheats on him with security. Saying that he beats his wife.

Now, these are enormous accusations levied. But Kendrick has responded before, years ago, that the DV accusations were false. He has also always been open about his faults. Adultery. Sex addiction. Insecurity. God complex. Kendrick, for better or worse, has always laid out nearly every aspect of his younger life on his songs. This also helped by the fact that in both Euphoria and 6:16, Kendrick says that Drake has spent millions on finding dirt on him but came up with nothing. Again, these accusations can still be proven true and if so, Kendrick needs to be held accountable for them.

But if not? Then Drake just adds another to the pile of "He's a liar and a master manipulator."

Drake also posts a Parody on his Insta that gains little to no attention because 30 minutes after dropping Family Matters and supposedly going on his victory lap, Kendrick drops meet the grahams.

Another thing. 6:16's cover was a glove. That meant nothing to us, the audience. meet the grahams makes it make sense by zooming out of the glove and showing off a shirt and drugs that Drake supposedly uses. Drake has not had any receipts with his accusations against Kendrick. Kendrick puts Drake's supposed prescription, his full name, on a bottle of Ozempic. Kendrick, for now, seems to make good on his threat. OvO, Drake's company, is full of leaks. And they're leaking it straight to Kendrick Lamar.

Nearly 24 hours later, Kendrick drops Not Like Us.

Euphoria was a general character dissection and assassination of Drake: Insecure about his identity as a biracial man. Culture Vulture. Blaccent user. Code switcher. Fake abs. Womanizer. Misogynist. Using black features just to feel black enough. A deadbeat dad that knows nothing of raising a child. And even revokes Drake's ability to use the N-Word (I have no stake in that I am Asian so I will keep my brown mouth shut for that).

6:16 in LA was an ominous threat that slowly reveals that Kendrick has insider information on Drake. That he is ready to leak so much more should Drake continue.

meet the grahams is a brutal open letter to Drake, his parents, and even to Adonis, Drake's son. Saying that Kendrick could be a better mentor to Adonis. Saying that Drake abandoned you and that's not your fault. Don't be like your father—whatever anyone says, for better or worse, you are a black man and don't code switch just to make yourself feel better. He says that Drake failed his mother for what he did to women. Saying that Drake's father is the cause of his gambling issues. Drake is a body shamer. Leaving the mother of his children to rot. And of course, the reveal that Drake has a secret daughter, the same way Pusha T revealed Drake has a son. Adonis.

And of course, now. Not Like Us. Where Kendrick goes all in on one topic that he has alluded to in every diss track before. Drake is a groomer. A pedophile.

I am sick. I should not be tuning into this beef. But my fever can go ahead and end me, I need to know how this ends.

[suppermariobroth]

Mario Artist: Paint Studio was a successor to Mario Paint for the Japan-exclusive 64DD add-on for the Nintendo 64. It supported four-player simultaneous drawing.

This pre-release footage from a 1998 Nintendo company report (with the program being called "Mario Artist: Picture Maker" at the time) showcases a Pikachu being drawn collaboratively by four players.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

[duskvortex]

"Algorithms help pushing smaller creators"

One of the reasons I've come to prefer Tumblr and Mastodon over Twitter for posting art is bc I don't have to rely on the algorithm to get seen but instead simply put my art into the appropriate tags as I know the people who are looking for specific stuff will find it. Algorithms have never helped me and if Tumblr gets rid of its chronological feed it's going to be substantially harder for me to reach an audience. If the Tumblr staff also actually cared about smaller creators being seen, why not pick them for tumblr radar? I feel like I keep seeing the same people getting picked for Tumblr radar and I got so tired of it I ended up using uBlock origins to remove it from my dashboard. Picking the same people for Tumblr radar, especially ones that are already popular, feels incredibly lazy to me.

Also if staff really want to put an algorithmic feed, make it optional. Please. If chronological feed goes Tumblr won't be one of my fav social media anymore and it won't be good for me as a small artist who struggles to get noticed. I have an Instagram account and I barely get any engagement there. I also hate using it bc it's exclusively algorithm driven (on top of always massacring the quality of my art). Algorithms don't help small creators. They smother them.

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

[cruelangel94]

Artist By 冬野ユウキ

[crest-of-gautier]

hi i’m lizz and this is my games screenshot/clip dump sideblog! i post art and reblog things over on my main (crescentfool) :3c

general tags:

#lizz.txt - for text posts

#lizz.mp4 - for any posts w/videos

#youtube - for longer edits

#silly snipes! - snipes only tag

#lizz.gif - for any posts w/gifs

#lizz.jpg - for any posts w/photos

for the list of games i’m playing and their respective tags, click here! 👋