birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
Oh good, they banned him, even if they lied again about their reasoning for doing so. Hopefully this starts a trend of conspiracy theorists like Jones being kryptonite to major platform owners.
I will never forget them tolerating it when they thought it would be profitable. Fuck you forever, Jack.
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@Goldkin I'd heard somewhere that the real reason was that Ol' RedFace McScreamsALot targeted Jack directly-- is that what the reason really was?
'cause yeah, their official stated reason doesn't hold water against.. *motions to a sea of Nazis screaming death threats at trans folks who are at best slapped on the wrist*
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr It seems to be a combination of that, Jones’ screaming at conservative members of Congress, and the hearings on “bias against conservatives” (ugh) that Twitter and Facebook are up for this week, and how those play in the “conservative” (read: far right) media ecosystem.
I think what changed is Jones being *just* unpopular enough in terms of ad revenue to finally dump off the platform.
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr Also, I realized I missed including some context for how we get from Jones to bots.
The far-right media hellscape is an abuse and controversy factory meant to wear folks down, with accounts like Mike C and Jones on the supply side and bots forming the delivery pipeline. There are some very informative studies on how this is not an organic pattern, that it can be blocked, but Twitter is not doing so (in the US) because of their business model.
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr So yeah. Fuck Twitter’s business model forever.
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr Footnote: https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway/status/1036682350170656769
Fascism and abuse is efficient for ad clicks, at the expense of human activity. Which is the most succinct explanation I’ve seen for how Twitter got there in the first place.
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr No prob!
birdsite, mini-rant (+, ~)
@mawr I also ignore Twitter’s official reasoning on decisions at this point, because short-term profit motivation is more predictive (and I think accurate) under scrutiny.
Twitter has a legit fear of stock value dropping once bots stop showing up in their active user figures. That fear now has precedent after causing the single greatest drop of Facebook stock when FB started removing bots.
I could almost sympathize, if it wasn’t so fucking evil.