The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don’t involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.
I just went on twitter today and saw the change. X? What is that man’s obsession with the letter X? Half of his kids are named X-something, his newest scheme is called x.ai or something? I swear to god he’s an android or something.
I’m sorry if it’s frustrating to you to have megathreads like this. I’m not enthused about the extra effort in redirecting posts to the Megathread, either, but I’m not aware of a better way to handle topics that are flooding a community other than gathering them up in a thread like this. It annoys users (and mods) when dozens of articles about the same topic are dominating a community, so we’d like to do something to alleviate that when possible. I’ve seen similar concepts used in a number of different places (old-school forums, reddit alternatives like Tildes) because, as far as I’ve seen, there’s not a better alternative for wrangling topics that might otherwise clutter the feed.
If you have any ideas about better ways to handle this type of thing in the future, I’d love to hear them (and I genuinely mean that - I think we’re open to suggestions if a better way exists).
Seems to me that these threads keep coming up and rising up because people want to talk about them.
The better solution reddit had was to let posts be sorted by tags so that people who don’t want to see a certain topic can turn it off, rather than that decision being made for everyone else.
So despite the fact that a ton of current tech news revolves around Elon musk and his companies, the solution is to bury any and all discussion about him in a megathread we all know people will never read or comment on?
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread. The idea here is more to contain stuff about the man himself, as it gets spammy and repetitive after a while
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread.
That is not entirely correct.
so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring).
So 1) ALL things X/Twitter/Musk, 2) you can only talk about his other companies if it doesn’t involve him (which are the vast majority of stories about his companies).
This is functionally banning Musk and his companies from being discussed. No one will check the megathread. We both know this.
I hope you can appreciate and understand that the decision was made, in part, because we had users asking for it. I recognize the shortcomings of a megathread. However it won’t be possible to make every user here happy. We’ve taken the actions that we thought were best based on the desires of some of our users.
We appreciate feedback, and are welcoming any suggestions on how this could be handled better
Day 3 and not a single post/comment about Musk, just you taking a needless jab at me because it’s funny to you. This thread is dead except for you and me right now.
As others have suggested maybe having a sub for trending news, that might be good actually. That way people can easily sub and unsub to this stuff without having to worry. (An on-going catch all for this kind of news, I think it would be better than focussing on a single current topic)
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great. It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum while still providing an outlet for people to discuss.
If your goal is to idly consume content, then a megathread probably sucks. Same if you want to be an influencer, it’ll cut down on your exposure. Megathreads also can hide major developments that can hide behind a thread that people should be notified about. And if there wasn’t much content on a platform to begin with… A megathread can force a ghost town.
There are definitely both good and bad things about Megathreads and there’s a ton of depth and nuance that could be had.
In this case, I’m not sure whether a megathread was warranted or not though
If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Strong disagree. My experience with megathreads is primarily being full of memes and puns, with so many hundreds of root comments that even using extra tools it was impossible to follow any real conversation or updates.
It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum…
That is the only thing megathreads accomplish, IMO.
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Nobody on Reddit, Lemmy, etc. behaves that way. Nobody checks megathreads unless it’s an ongoing, high profile situation. I guarantee you this megathread is going to get essentially no engagement within 48 hours and now for some odd reason all news about SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla is functionally banned.
I don’t think I really need to tell y’all that megathreads are, as a general rule, worthless. The only way they are even moderately useful is if they are recurring, such as a weekly megathread for beginner questions on a technical/hobbyist sub. A static, one time megathread means that no one will ever talk about it at all. That is not the right call.
Anybody who has been a mod for more than a week knows that a megathread only stifles discussion unless it’s some major event happening in real time, such as Jan 6th. I get you don’t want musk spam but you’re over correcting.
While people have made some interesting comments on the downsides of megathreads, I’m glad we have a way of containing the Musk stuff. It gets a bit much.
To people who do have concerns though, if you’re tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It’s in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren’t how we want them to be.
To people who do have concerns though, if you’re tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It’s in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren’t how we want them to be.
This has literally nothing to do with whether or not relegating topics to megathreads is a good thing. In order to fix the issues with megathreads, we’d have to fundamentally change how these forums work, which no one is going to do and users aren’t going to follow unless most, if not all, instances follow suit. It has to be baked into the platform. The entire cycle of content sites like reddit, lemmy, etc. depend on is antithetical to megathreads outside of extreme high profile events, such as a presidential election or (yet another) still ongoing school shooting or something.
another change to Twitter’s ad policy. Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
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If only containing Elon Musk and his immature drivel to a single location was as easy in real life…
https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-twitter-x-transform-9627a8d5?st=vl5hgv0r7sr73no
Elon musk containment thread thank God.
Now if only billionaires could be contained in real life.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/01/musk-twitter-x-russia-propaganda/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjkzNTQwODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjk0OTIzMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE2OTM1NDA4MDAsImp0aSI6IjhlMDRlNWI5LTA2MjEtNGFjMi1hYmIwLTBlNGJlYmY1YmQyYiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS90ZWNobm9sb2d5LzIwMjMvMDkvMDEvbXVzay10d2l0dGVyLXgtcnVzc2lhLXByb3BhZ2FuZGEvIn0.S9HxTVnFHJPSGcK3Uyn-OzorYLvjQI39e5NW1hsOmpA
X suspends pro-Nazi account after two brands halt advertising
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/x-suspends-pro-nazi-account-after-two-brands-halt-advertising/
https://wapo.st/45vCZtS
I just went on twitter today and saw the change. X? What is that man’s obsession with the letter X? Half of his kids are named X-something, his newest scheme is called x.ai or something? I swear to god he’s an android or something.
https://wapo.st/3QwZXwu
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/technology/twitter-x-center-for-countering-digital-hate.html?unlocked_article_code=PBeqxWTCGpvZ3oVIUQxfNei6D0CIAMPUhjhkafzAfPFYyGEmeZMaNs9nhR6FJrApN0oRBt_qcTJx3k57U6if6ool6tpcdN-hbZy9iz6TCmdbTXucO0rAWvncJVNfXB5p-vBw4Vkt5t-H3tsWYYT0gOixOPTqw7fdi1z4Ru_jvbVk97CIfjPf_ak_Ls0PIpcHy3hC7zZRw3HlQT8ukrgSlISKEyzTw5_srXHrtK_SoJlxAEGW_ZI03IYPtd47h1K_MbdT5I9dfNIPyuiE03975u6nSLl0G4pfG2k4h2s1aEP2i14FPp_PoDTypNP65AtP75ewgVa8mLUtwOgusCcsAthkPoX8Bi_3DM1DBTpLU2zUsvB4iFu1Q3g5
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html?unlocked_article_code=QwNKy2ucSzh2k2pDXa6wN9eHL73soABdXg8X40EsDrUL4luNxtOaZzQNTPMjdnOu2CeNgjLwODB510Vmo54nGs0i3MVlwHqM3yuCmz08jUcIB6PKfS3HruTCKXkHn_C-0ThKe7Tt69HWZ5sC2ABrPn2czq9I9rVQtI8XZaG-h9V1wsX_TaetzaNgjpRHT6lKicqfMkhiMhAJVmQza02u_iu4-tMiT8zISA9FQAUGIIJlMlBuQVI6riVjMEn6qSIF1Qr6Zdyw9OIInMbDyodqxq4J7-2Kb8geRTq9bT4jSZ8aSMfzb9FfMFQSC93PCYSAA0XZ3sHuRtLzqxlgRbuqBub_6A
Great, a megathread, let’s bring over one of the worst parts of Reddit and moderation 😒
I’m sorry if it’s frustrating to you to have megathreads like this. I’m not enthused about the extra effort in redirecting posts to the Megathread, either, but I’m not aware of a better way to handle topics that are flooding a community other than gathering them up in a thread like this. It annoys users (and mods) when dozens of articles about the same topic are dominating a community, so we’d like to do something to alleviate that when possible. I’ve seen similar concepts used in a number of different places (old-school forums, reddit alternatives like Tildes) because, as far as I’ve seen, there’s not a better alternative for wrangling topics that might otherwise clutter the feed.
If you have any ideas about better ways to handle this type of thing in the future, I’d love to hear them (and I genuinely mean that - I think we’re open to suggestions if a better way exists).
Seems to me that these threads keep coming up and rising up because people want to talk about them.
The better solution reddit had was to let posts be sorted by tags so that people who don’t want to see a certain topic can turn it off, rather than that decision being made for everyone else.
Unfortunately tags are not currently a Lemmy feature, so this isn’t an option
So despite the fact that a ton of current tech news revolves around Elon musk and his companies, the solution is to bury any and all discussion about him in a megathread we all know people will never read or comment on?
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread. The idea here is more to contain stuff about the man himself, as it gets spammy and repetitive after a while
That is not entirely correct.
So 1) ALL things X/Twitter/Musk, 2) you can only talk about his other companies if it doesn’t involve him (which are the vast majority of stories about his companies).
This is functionally banning Musk and his companies from being discussed. No one will check the megathread. We both know this.
I hope you can appreciate and understand that the decision was made, in part, because we had users asking for it. I recognize the shortcomings of a megathread. However it won’t be possible to make every user here happy. We’ve taken the actions that we thought were best based on the desires of some of our users.
We appreciate feedback, and are welcoming any suggestions on how this could be handled better
You know you’re commenting on it now though right?
Day 3 and not a single post/comment about Musk, just you taking a needless jab at me because it’s funny to you. This thread is dead except for you and me right now.
As others have suggested maybe having a sub for trending news, that might be good actually. That way people can easily sub and unsub to this stuff without having to worry. (An on-going catch all for this kind of news, I think it would be better than focussing on a single current topic)
Y’all have functionally banned all news related to Elon musk, Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Some see this as a feature, not a bug.
Whether you do or don’t, it’s a flagrant attempt to end the topics without owning up to it. It’s window dressing.
asdfasfsadfsadf
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great. It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum while still providing an outlet for people to discuss.
If your goal is to idly consume content, then a megathread probably sucks. Same if you want to be an influencer, it’ll cut down on your exposure. Megathreads also can hide major developments that can hide behind a thread that people should be notified about. And if there wasn’t much content on a platform to begin with… A megathread can force a ghost town.
There are definitely both good and bad things about Megathreads and there’s a ton of depth and nuance that could be had.
In this case, I’m not sure whether a megathread was warranted or not though
Strong disagree. My experience with megathreads is primarily being full of memes and puns, with so many hundreds of root comments that even using extra tools it was impossible to follow any real conversation or updates.
That is the only thing megathreads accomplish, IMO.
Nobody on Reddit, Lemmy, etc. behaves that way. Nobody checks megathreads unless it’s an ongoing, high profile situation. I guarantee you this megathread is going to get essentially no engagement within 48 hours and now for some odd reason all news about SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla is functionally banned.
Popcorn! Get your popcorn Hheeeerra!
I don’t think I really need to tell y’all that megathreads are, as a general rule, worthless. The only way they are even moderately useful is if they are recurring, such as a weekly megathread for beginner questions on a technical/hobbyist sub. A static, one time megathread means that no one will ever talk about it at all. That is not the right call.
Anybody who has been a mod for more than a week knows that a megathread only stifles discussion unless it’s some major event happening in real time, such as Jan 6th. I get you don’t want musk spam but you’re over correcting.
While people have made some interesting comments on the downsides of megathreads, I’m glad we have a way of containing the Musk stuff. It gets a bit much.
To people who do have concerns though, if you’re tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It’s in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren’t how we want them to be.
This has literally nothing to do with whether or not relegating topics to megathreads is a good thing. In order to fix the issues with megathreads, we’d have to fundamentally change how these forums work, which no one is going to do and users aren’t going to follow unless most, if not all, instances follow suit. It has to be baked into the platform. The entire cycle of content sites like reddit, lemmy, etc. depend on is antithetical to megathreads outside of extreme high profile events, such as a presidential election or (yet another) still ongoing school shooting or something.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands