Twitter is now blocking Mastodon links - to both posts and accounts - as "harmful". Checked it myself, here's the error message that pops up. Give it a shot with any Mastodon link you want.
And yes, it's the Mastodon link. Break it and the tweet sails through just fine
There are a couple of takeaways here.
First, this is an *incredibly* stupid and self-destructive move. These next screenshots are from the @FTC's fact sheets on the Sherman Act (U.S. antitrust law). See the problem?
Blocking a competitor's content from a service that it makes publicly available ... that's just begging for FTC enforcement.
(And no, Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on social media or microblogging. But when it blocks competitors it's attempting to creat one)
Second: Twitter (well, Musk) is absolutely *terrified* about the threat posed by Mastodon. Elon wanted to buy Twitter, not Gab-light or ersatz-Parler. They appear to see Mastodon as a real threat to that.
Third, not that you needed any additional confirmation of it, but Musk's supposed "free speech absolutism" is utter bullshit; if it's speech that he likes or doesn't care about, he's fine with it and allows it on Twitter. If it's speech he dislikes or is harmed by, he doesn't
Which tells you pretty definitively how Elon feels about the racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and other content he allows on here in the name of "free speech", doesn't it.
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OK, folks, this Yoel Roth imbroglio, of all things, has effectively been the last straw for me. I'm going to be significantly decreasing my twitter usage and migrating my Litigation Disaster Tours over to Mastodon (mastodon.sdf.org/@AkivaMCohen). I'll post links to them here when I do.
Twitter's been an absolutely amazing place for me. I've found better friends, partners, and clients than I could've ever imagined, some great communities. Somehow 40K of you decided I was worth paying attention to, which seems like a mistake. But ...
If I wanted to have an account on Gab, I'd just have opened an account on Gab. We're the product, and with the owner of this site effectively using it to paint targets on people and apparently seeking to turn it into Fox.Social, I don't feel great about contributing
Listening to oral argument in Moore, joined midway through. Kavanaugh & Alito both sound skeptical of the appellants.
Gorsuch, on the other hand, is absolutely in the tank for the appellants
Kavanaugh skewering the appellants counsel, gets him to acknowledge that state courts under his rule could interpret state statutes "in light of the state constitution"
So, I've been a bit busy this week and this weekend. But as you all probably know, on Thurs the 11th Circuit issued its ruling overturning Judge Canon's insane order appointing a special master to review materials seized at Mar-a-Lago
Let's start with the panel who issued the ruling and how they did it.
If Trump could have drawn up his dream panel, this is probably what he'd have picked: 2 judges he himself appointed, plus Pryor, an arch-conservative who's called abortion docs as "abortionists" in opinions
That "Per Curium"? It basically means "all of us, equally and together"
Many times, it can be the sign of a panel that doesn't want to have a particular judge's name associated with a controversial opinion. Here, it reads way more as "we're in lockstep because this is obvious"
We are already representing some of the fired Twitter employees (from this and other waves) Musk is trying to stiff out of their severance. So are a number of other excellent firms/attorneys.
These people have options and should talk to MULTIPLE attorneys before signing anything
And yeah, multiple. Obviously, I think we're the best option to represent these folks - if we didn't, we wouldn't be taking people on. But this is not a decision anyone should make quickly, or without fully investigating their options.
Talk to your fellow tweeps. Connect with various attorneys. Pick who you're most comfortable with and make the decision that is best for you and your family - which may well be just taking what they are offering and moving on. That's a personal choice.
Like ... this is who your audience is, Chaya. This is who you are playing to. @libsoftiktok is not meaningfully different, at this point, than any of the neonazi accounts that focus on "Jews behaving badly" - though in her case, "behaving badly" is just "existing"
Understand this: religiously, what Chaya is doing is considered *at best* "lashon hara" - which is one of the single worst things any Jew can engage in. It's a sin for which, in Jewish tradition, one loses their entire share of the World-to-Come.
It's not just that the people on here going "Twitter's going to be fine" don't necessarily have all the information about what's happening *in* Twitter, it's that they're not recognizing what's happening *on* Twitter
Twitter's biggest asset isn't its systems, or its employees, or its reach, or its user base.
It's Twitter's lock-in effect. People come here because people *are* here. And people don't leave here, because it's where our pocket friends are
Whether or not Musk manages to heroically right the ship at Twitter despite the company being staggered by employee losses (and attendant severance costs) that went way beyond what they were expecting (and it is, btw) is uncertain. Seriously uncertain.