Someone noted that basically all of the media from the Arab Spring—which was a massive Twitter moment—has been wiped out.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
339 points (96.4% liked)
News
23300 readers
4256 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I’m sure the Saudis who bankrolled The Muskrat’s purchase of Xitter had nothing to do with that.
Not at all. This is totally a coincidence. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I heard they "only" own 7 percent. Can you provide more details?
A great situation to point to when someone asks why decentralized social media is important
And also why we need non profit foundations backing the big social media sites so their priorities aren't increasing profit.
Ah, yes. A “glitch”. And, how fascinating that it affects links from the early days when Twitter was really gaining traction and being used to rouse populaces.
The thing is, Musk, whether he was paid to do this or not, is acting purposefully. This is all a grand scheme to fully dismantle what was once our global town square. Twitter was once a place where “the people” could hold politicians, corporations, and the generally wealthy accountable for their actions publicly. In the past year, the platform has become unsteady, blue checks are untrustworthy, and even the name has changed to something that causes one to pause.
I dislike the man as much as the next normal person, but all of this nonsense has been planned from the start. He’s not a complete idiot. These actions have been calculated steps to take away the voice of the people and eliminate a single source of truth as things get worse and worse.
If you want further verification of that, look at where the money that he used to purchase Twitter came from.
It came from the Middle East, it came from oppressive regimes with wealth inequalities equivalent to the difference between a newborn baby that has to pay the hospital bill for its own birth and Elon musk.
It came from areas where people who were unhappy with the extreme laws that they were forced to live under used Twitter to organize so that they could vote and push for laws that brought them greater equality in life.
The fact that Elon is also using Twitter to fragment the American population and prevent them from unifying in a vote or having a single location where everyone can go and talk about the things that they are interested in is secondary to that but also serves the purposes of Elon who profited immensely from the Republican tax cuts from 2016 to 2020.
Elon went from a net worth of $11 billion dollars to $70 billion dollars in 4 years, and from $70 billion in 2020 to $219 billion dollars today, because the tax breaks that Trump instituted during his presidency have not been repealed or adjusted.
Additionally the Arab spring started on social media, which literally toppled multiple Middle East regimes. This makes perfect sense
Probably one of the few places where all sides of the political spectrum inhabited.
What a dumpster fire. Meanwhile, I'm still getting alerts from my local fire department through twitter. Doesn't exactly make me feel safe.
Some governmental entities have started setting up their own Mastodon servers. I think that’s really the way to go. There’s no reason emergency services should depend on Musk’s goodwill and technical competence.
can't rely on things that don't exist
Volunteer.
Ive been helping small nonprofits move off of Twitter for the past few months. I'm sure a polite email can take you far.
Like 2018 or so it seemed like everything the local governments in my area wanted to do was via Twatter. The library had some situation and was closing early today? Don't check the website, check Twatter. The parks department is moving the summer concert to the rain date? Again only on Twatter. It took minutes to setup an account, it was free, and everyone could do it.
Ours sends normal texts through the emergency system. Works ok.
Ours does too but the tweets always seem to get sent out first.
It's pathetic really.
10$ a month to get emergency alerts half an hour earlier, allowing you to beat traffic when a natural disaster hits.
Are we referring to Musk as a glitch now?
And all those websites that embedded tweets are now fucked.
And Elon Musk drove another spike into twitter. Websites are going to know not to embed tweets anymore, which will cut out another avenue of traffic to Twitter.
What a idiot.
Websites are going to know not to embed tweets anymore
They'll forget within two weeks.
Who the hell doesn't just use a fucking screenshot?
Everyone should have anticipated this. Twitter is a dead zone now.
Guarantee this is related to the Trump indictments.
Which of them goes back so far?
He was running for office for 2016 versus Hillary, but the run up to the election started way before that. Plus I'm sure Elon decided to maybe erase 6 to 12 months before Trump really went Twitter crazy just to make it seem less suspicious.
If only there was a technology to make an archive copy you could selectively restore from...
Pity
I doubt the pictures were deleted or anything, they just fucked up the link shortener.
twitter was a public register documenting many events worldwide and he's actively destroying it.
On the bright side if you go and twat now "screw you future historians trying to figure out stuff" you might manage to annoy someone in a thousand years.
Hmm come to think of it. People should be make random references right now to really mess with the future. "I saw Zoey today, her brother John is called the Messiah by some"
"Glitch"
I am sure that there was a lot of proof of a lot of wrongdoing in those tweets. And now they are miraculously gone.
Now it's Xitter.
Pronounced "shitter".
Makes sense as you now X-crete when you post and they are call X-cretions.
Man this is just depressing
Back then Twitter was much more open and there were places like the Library of Congress archiving everything. Things with historical significance will live on.
losing old media, just like myspace
I wouldn't mind not having to see her dead serial killer eyes ever again.