This morning, I discovered that my Twitter account is “rate-limited”. Actually, everyone’s account is rate-limited.
So I’m only allowed to read 600 tweets per day. What that means in practical terms, since I follow about 800 people, when I first log in Twitter will access all the tweets made by those people overnight, and then…I’ve reached my limit within minutes, and I’m done. That’s all it takes, Twitter is over for me before I take my first sip of coffee.
I pity all those people who are paying $8 a month to get privileged access — now nobody is going to read their prioritized tweets, except other blue check users, and even then, only until they finish their breakfast, and then they’ll be done, too.
Brilliant move, Elon. Just shut it down.
Meanwhile, I’m on @pzmyers@octodon.social.
I don’t follow Elon Musk, but does he even realize that he’s just effectively blocked people who do? Probably not.
This may have something to do with Twitter failing to renew their cloud contract.
Cloud contract. Heh. I’m in Northeastern PA and we get clouds WITHOUT a contract.
Cue Puccini’s Death of Butterfly, played by Spike Jones & His City Slickers.
Or maybe Wagner’s Götterdämmerung finale, on kazoo.
I’m sure the fact that he fired most of his engineers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, has nothing to do with this. It is the fault of nefarious “scrapers” and other ne’er-do-wells that just keep trying to sabotage this stable genius.
Apparently, several people with some understanding of this have pointed out that the server requirements of monitoring who has accessed how many tweets is actually causing more problems for Twitter than just user dissatisfaction. The upshot is that what Twitter is doing essentially constitutes a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on itself. So a hefty part of the meltdown today where tweets could not be accessed is actually Twitter’s own doing, caused by this decision of Musk’s to try and limit the scraping of data. Once again, Elon proves that he’s a stupid businessperson who has no idea how his business actually functions.
Who has time to read 600 tweets per day anyway?
I only follow Twitter when a link takes me to Twitter.
Almost all of those are about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It’s probably 1-5 per week.
I once recently accidentally ended up on the Twitter homepage.
It was unreadable, like a news aggregator set up by trolls.
I deleted my Twitter account a while back, around when Muskrat pissed and shat all over the place by kowtowing to the farthest right, trolls, bots and maniacs.
Given a choice of going back to Twitter under Muskrat and screwing a running wood chipper, well, bring the wood chipper on!
Oh, only Muskrat could turn a safe stock into penny stock.
I’m sure that the advertisers are thrilled with his fundamental breach of contract with them.
I never used Twitter much when I had it, and then Musk wanted to charge me for the privilege or something, so I killed my account. Can’t say I’ve missed it.
Go ahead, Phony Stark, and run Shitter into the ground. I’m on Mastodon now and literally don’t care.
@ 5 raven
You won’t be able to follow links to tweets anymore unless you have a twitter account.
Which sucks because I don’t want a twitter, but also often follow (or indeed post myself) links to tweets. :-(
Musk says it’s temporary but not for how long. I’d provide the source but Elon won’t let me. lol
Silentbob @10: It’s temporary until Twitter crashes.
@15 Silentbob:
You can get tweets (at least earlier, before they announced the rate limit) by changing your user agent to Google’s.
It’s not actually a rate limit. Turns out, Muskrat just refused to pay Google to renew Twitter’s contract for use of Google’s servers, then lied about it. Shocking to think that he’d lie, I know.
How to Turn a Functional Website With Minor Problems Into a Complete Mess of Website Within Months While Trying to Look Cool and Principled but Actually Looking Pathetic: A Critical Review.
Sooper Jenius Phony Stark: “I have a social media company that gets its profit by providing eyeballs to advertisers. SO I’ll start limiting what the eyeballs can see anything. I’m certain the new CEO is now seriously reconsidering her decision to lash herselt to the mast of this sinking ship.
@5- raven
If Twitshit is unusable for me I won’t even care. Good riddance. Musk is a dingbat obviously.
@14- yeonkimu and @15- brucej
Musk is a disastrous walking talking PSA against weed sad to say. My last reference point was krypto decades ago but definitely an excess of strong cannabis. It makes you feel really smart until the next day for most people. The High Times crowd must be scrambling for damage control after this debacle.
raven: allegedly it’s checking whether your Twitter client tried to read 600 tweets — it’s not checking whether the human did.
But that’s dubious. I’m logged in to a corporate twitter id. We follow almost nobody, and we don’t use it anymore (we’ve never used it much). I still can’t see any tweets.
Can’t remember the instance I registered with and my assword mangler isn’t revealing anything.
Any recommendations for a stable instance to re-register on for Mastodon?
hemidactylus:
How so? Musk isn’t known for doing weed. He’s more known for doing a variety of uppers. Weed isn’t known for making you manically make unbelievably stupid decisions; it’s known for making you do nothing.
@19- numerobis
Maybe I muskpoke:
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/is-elon-musk-a-fan-of-marijuana
There’s probably something far more wrong with Musk than Mary Jane. Most potheads are nothing like him. An embarrassment to the culture.
Wow, odd. Tried signing up on the primary Mastodon instance with my gmail, no confirmation yet, been a half hour.
Did it from an alternate service, instant confirmation e-mail.
Is it the Grand Conspiracy of the Space Aliens again? ;)
Screw the hat, I’m leaving before that wet trout hits me.
Yay! Got onto Mastodon, tried adding PZ via the link’s suggestion and it failed.
Sure that Muskrat didn’t plan this too?
Or have we reinvented fight-o-net?
Yeah, I was part of fidonet, back in the day. I ran a node from US to Australia, due to a bit of extraneous income at the time. That link via a C=128D in burst mode, using software otherwise in C=64 mode. Off of a modified Lt Kernal HD, running out of an XT case to handle the additional HD space.
And yes, I had a muxer.
Well, back to debugging my MythTV install. I suspect the installer bollocksed the damned database. Ran into that nearly a decade ago.
So, I’m scraping memory to fix it or otherwise debug it and a novel problem I introduced and a proper graphics card to be delivered tomorrow will fix.
Dad may have raised a dummy, but he didn’t raise no fool.
~My dad
@ 19. numerobis : Er, actually as hemidactylus has pointed out Musk is famous fro smoking marijuana and for adding juvenile references to 420 even seemingly influencing the date of Space X launches :
Source : https://www.independent.co.uk/space/spacex-starship-launch-date-4-20-elon-musk-b2323352.html
See also :
Source : https://futurism.com/the-byte/starship-explosion-420
As well as :
Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tesla-stock-plummets-after-elon-musk-smokes-weed-live-show-n907476
Musk’s decisions here almost look like he’s deliberately trying to destory twitter to me..
Bloody hell, StevoR. Mate, he smoked some puffs of a joint when he was on Joe Rogan’s show what, 3 or 4 years ago? I saw that clip, and he very definitely said it wasn’t really his thing.
Oh yeah, a total druggie, he.
A few hundred thousand times richer than you are, but that’s quite irrelevant.
Which is to say (given your “almost”) that they do not look like he’s deliberately trying to destroy twitter to you.
(Toys get broken sometimes when one plays with them.
That’s when one gets a new one)
—
(Cue someone to indignantly tell me how I am defending Musk)
@StevoR, the reality is, Muskrat’s intentions are purely ego driven, not rationally driven.
That results in destruction without intent. His incessant war with the FTC should suffice as evidence, as by all rights, they should’ve bankrupted him early on with his transparent stock manipulation antics on Twitter, which were gently sanctioned – repeatedly.
You or me do that, we’d be under the federal prison.
As for Mastodon, it’s so fragmented as to be utterly useless. The old fight-o-net was faster and superior, given it was invented during 300 baud days, that should be embarrassing.
It’ll likely go the way of FreeNet, sort of there, but gradually shrinking.
https://octodon.social/@pzmyers fails in the demanded search box, @pzmyers works.
Boy, am I somewhat dull, not working around that one instantly!
If it ain’t a bad day, I really need to see doctor ASAP.
@ 25 Morales
The 420 references are an actual thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)
https://www.google.com/search?q=musk+420+referencers
Sorry, cut. Take two.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=musk+420+references
Hey Morales, your lucky day – fresh meat X-D
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/06/29/tell-me-what-is-ideological/comment-page-1/#comment-2185686
Sic ’em boy!
Silentbob:
FFS. Yes, I know all that stuff. I’ve commented on it in the past!
—
Show us your style, buster. I’ve given you a few hints, already.
Probe. Leave apparent weaknesses. Give rope. Then pounce.
—
PS this amuses me:
(Still got it wrong, of course. Was a comedian, was a reality TV host, now is a podcaster)
[ah well, Rex I am — remember the commercial, Silenbob?]
Got it to work, for a changeish.
Uncertain for propagation.
Just checked my usual tech forum to see why the Upperclass Twit of the Year’s fanboys think this was an absolutely genius move.
I only found lots of whining about “haters” and the mainstream press bashing their idol, but even the fans can’t seem to find an excuse for that dumbass decision…
hemidactylus: I’m not sure if you’ve been on the internet before (your article is definitely aimed at people who haven’t), but there’s these things called memes. Some people find them funny. Musk is so internet crazed he bought a whole Twitter so that more people could see him joke about 420 and 69 and doge while ranting transphobic bullshit.
Making 420 jokes is quite poor evidence that he smokes weed.
Evidence he takes drugs is widespread — ketamine is his latest kick, the Tesla board was worried about his use of ambien, lots of rumours of LSD, he is in favour of legalizing cocaine, etc. Basically all the Silicon Valley brain hacking stuff, he’s into. But they aren’t big on cannabinoids.
Perhaps the era of “journalism by block quoting bunches of twitter postings” is finally over.
If some visionary, back in the USENET days, had created a news group called alt.newsposting.aboutnewspostings it would have been twitter. I suppose USENET was not valuable to our capitalist overlords because it was hard to monetize and control.
Maybe that’s the solution: bring back USENET!
@37- Marcus Ranum
Usenet via nntps hasn’t gone anywhere. Its users have (eg- PZ). Some use web based (https) Google Groups, which is an abomination. Its still there.
There’s trolls and unwelcome crossposting. Not sure how useful, interesting, or accessible Usenet would be to the typical person. Without moderation it’s the Wild West. Trying to think how it would be implemented for journalists posting story snippets versus users following the action. OPs would be the main crux and further comments easily ignored or bad actors killfiled by the users.
Many people are on phones and tablets. Mobile newsreaders are few and far between. Maybe people could develop better web based interfaces than Google Groups, which hijacked DejaNews in the late 90s.
Mastodon has its kinks, problems and learning curve, but the people are in general really really nice, and the distribution is a real game changer, no one person owns or controls it, I really feel like it’s the future.
The excuse is simplicity itself, dumbfuckery.
Musk is a needed reminder that someone can be brilliant and successful — and an idiot and a failure.
I feel in retrospect I may have thrown weedheads under the bus in my effort to bash Musk. I apologize. Moving forward I will try not to engage in that sort of thing again. Musk is not a true 420er (no true Scotsman?).
numerobis @36 I kinda know what an internet (or more recent the web) and memes are. I wasn’t aware Musk is merely virtue signalling to true weedheads with the 420 thing.
As an aside, which gets perilously close to Godwin territory, a certain someone had a birthday on 4-20. No not really that either though those attuned to that 420 may feel more empowered on Twitter now under new management. 420 is awkwardly polysemic.
@25- John Morales
“Oh yeah, a total druggie, he.
A few hundred thousand times richer than you are, but that’s quite irrelevant.”
You are often far too subtle for mere mortals and not defending Musk, but he has given his “times richer” status than StevoR or I an inordinate amount of influence over our current world as it is.
StevoR might agree with me that Max Verstappen is too ascendent. In Indycar Alex Palou seems in the same lane or grid placement. But they lack the placement and world influence of Musk. In the late 90s it was Gates (which my keypad keeps wanting to spell Fates). Prosperity gospel and Calvinism…
Now that the Trumpster is going to jail, we need some other dark Homer Simpson to keep us amused.
BTW StevoR NASCAR is doing a downtown Chicago street race in the wet and WTF! I have never seen anything like this in NASCAR! More please! Hardcore stuff! NASCAR in the wet oh wait buncha wrecks. We shall see!
Surreal stuff! Fuck oval superspeedways. More of this please!
Jerry Coyne said: “The big NASCAR race—the Loop 121 Xfinity race, supposed to go around the streets of downtown Chicago yesterday, was postponed because of rain. It’s supposed to start this morning but it’s still raining. I’m very glad; I don’t want big race cars tooling around the streets at high speeds. It’s a terrible idea meant to draw Chicago-ans into the NASCAR ambit. All the roads downtown have been blocked for weeks as they set up the course and the walls supposed to keep spectators free from flying cars.”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/07/02/sunday-hili-dialogue-436/
I love this race in Chitown even more now. Sorry a wet street race! NASCAR! Hell yeah! Amazing stuff!
I will never, if I remember this post and wet street race, mock NASCAR for being scared of wet races again. Holy shit!
@hemidactylus, many posts
As a stoner, WE DON’T CLAIM HIM. Elon Musk is the exact opposite of the entire stoner, uh, what’s the word, ethos.
And, uh, I think you’d be surprised at the demographics when it comes to who partakes.
Dare I say world class shit? Monaco is an F1 street race. The rain was a plus in Chicago. NASCAR needs to do a serious reset and end tracks like Daytona and Talladega if they want to bring me back. Street races everywhere! And rain. Lots of it.
Indycar had a street circuit race in Detroit not too long ago. No rain though. That’s a key element IMO.
What we’ve learned these past weeks, is that billionaires seem to have a natural tendency to implode.
hemidactylus @ 45, maybe we need to bring back junkyard derbies again?
A bit of trivia. When I was 9, we moved out of Philly to the suburbs. Two blocks from State Route 420. So, when 420 became a culture term, it initially caused some degree of confusion for me.
And some degree of annoyance. Marijuana smoke is the only trigger for a moderate asthma attack in me that I’m aware of. As in, smoke it outside my house, I’ll have an attack. So, try to smoke up on the property, you get warned and if you continue onward, I very well may shoot you in the face with a bazooka – as soon as I get a bazooka. That’s just under my list of things to acquire, a taste testing sample of Ebola.
How many billionaires have imploded these past weeks, SQB?
(learning, I like)
Latest news via Aussie ABC :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-03/australian-company-sues-twitter-for-not-paying-its-bills/102556688
Seems like Musk has not paying his bills in common with Trump..
hemidactylus: I appreciate that you are now aware of all internet traditions.
StevoR: Musk stopped paying all suppliers when he took over Twitter, because by his announcing he was buying the joint he drastically reduced its revenue stream (advertisers fled, even before he took over), and the buy-out saddled it with a huge increase in interest costs. The company is either insolvent or very nearly.
The main power landlords have is to evict and end the lease agreement, which for the most part (except maybe their HQ) is what Twitter wants anyway after closing those various offices. It’s other suppliers that are more problematic for Twitter continuing to tweet, and might be at the source of the current disruption.
On this note, what actually demonstrates that Musk is brilliant? I mean, if we disregard buying things, hiring people, or having a vague idea that other people need to figure out how to make work in real life, what has he done himself?
I googled a bit and found some lists, but most of the items were of the “bought/founded companyX” variety. I tried asking ChatGPT, but it seems to have trouble distinguishing between being the guy that orders people around and being the guy who actually does stuff.
E.g. “Musk played a crucial role overseeing…”, “Musk recognized the importance of…”, “Musk worked closely with…”, “Musk provided guidance and input into the development of…”
Granted, a lot of the behind the scenes stuff is probably not public knowledge, but it still leaves the open question: Absent his role as an owner/boss, what has he actually, you know, done?
@ 45. hemidactylus :
Cheers! I’ll check that out..
Plus #43 :
Definitely! Although F1 can be like that – it was with Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel respectively for a few years too and I’m old enough to recall all too well the 1988 Mclaren dominance where they won all but one race in the season with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost..Of course, so far this year, RBR look like going one race better on that score but it is a very long season (22 races or so versus 16 for 1988) and still plenty of races left.. It would be nice to see some different race winners for sure.
As for different billionaires yeah, there’s always flux and change there too but sadly there they do seem to be getting worse. Maybe thats misleading and down to the most famous examples, maybe not, maybe that’s glow of nostalgia hindsight or maybe not so much..
@25. John Morales
I didn’t say Elon Musk was a total druggie or that he was contuinually high or a “total druggie.” I noted that “Musk is famous for smoking marijuana and for adding juvenile references to 420 even seemingly influencing the date of Space X launches.”
Which is not Musk’s only or main claim to fame but, yeah, those are some of the things Musk is famous – or infamous – or just known for doing.
Indeed and probly still more than that even now given his wealth and my poverty respectively.
Sigh. Language, how does it work again? Yeah, in the colloquial sense when it comes to my useage here. As I’d imagine you might have already grokked.
IOW Musk might not be trying to destroy Twitter deliberately but it appears as though he might be doing so. Or maybe not because I can’t say that he is for sure because I don’t know but that looks plausible from his actions and decisions which seem tobe having that effect. “Almost” here is in essence “not sure but looks like it.” Is Musk destroying Twitter deliberately or just out of narcisstistic incompetence? Dunno. Both seem plausible and I wouldn’t rule ether out.
I also don’t know how much or often Elon Musk smokes weed. It doesn’t bother me if he does or if he makes juvenile jokes about it or sex. Mea culpa there myself on occassion. I really don’t care since its his business, his choice and as long as he’s not harming anyone, let him enjoy his life recreationally there as he pleases. IF all Musk did with his fortune was smoke weed and make cringe-y jokes, then no worries, fine by me. Lucky him.
What does bother me about Musk is his gain of wealth by cruelty and harming others and his extremist views that are now very far reichwing and the damage his words and actions are causing to others and our world in general. A world that Musk is making worse by his choices, his words and his actions.
I used to be kinda bit of a Musk fan even a year or so ago. I love what SpaceX has done and seeing their successes and still do. But as for Musk as a person, as for the damage he’s doing, well, see paragraph above. Musk would probly do better to smoke more weed and mellow out some and rethink his life.. and views some.
Well, as it turns out, the “billionaires” in the imploded sub weren’t actually billionaires. But I meant those.
Also, the Melon Husk has been imploding in slow motion for some time now.
Good response, StevoR.
Another datum: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/03/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-non-payment-for-office-services-in-four-countries
@57- StevoR
I’m totally sold on NASCAR street races in the wet.
The outcome of the F1 Austrian GP was no surprise but at least Perez got into a serious dogfight with Sainz for several laps starting at lap 60 worth watching and had climbed from starting 15th to podium.
I feel that all this ‘discussion’ about the multitude of ways the elongated muskrat has ruined twitter is like unto the arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Let’s face it twitter is now deteriorating to the point of being unusable. I never had anything to do with it. And, I won’t in the future. I would like to find a sane, honest forum for discussion. But, so far no one has come up with one (except for most of the civil comments her that PZ moderate, which I appreciate immensely).
shermanj:
Well then, it’s not a problem for you, is it?
Only for those who actually use Twitter.
(Or: it should not bother you at all)
I can’t help myself:
“Buttercup : Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.’s?
Westley : Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”
The last time I tried to access Twitter was yesterday.
I got a message, “Something went wrong. Try again.”
Which didn’t work either.
It was a link to a photo of a cat.
Now how hard is it to show a photo of a cat in a Tweet anyway.
It’s a step down from the last 4 times before that where I had to prove I’m 18 by logging into my nonexistent Twitter account.
This is a common experience for everyone these days.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-06/threads-by-meta-to-rival-twitter/102561536
Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over their Threads product, claiming “trade secret” violations. Meta countered in a statement with, “None of our Threads team ever worked for Twitter”.
Now, attorneys can and have made threats to litigate in the past and entirely refrained from filing worthless actions, but some have and occasionally got sanctioned.
Sounds like it’s nearly time to make some popcorn.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/tech/twitter-meta-threads-legal-threat/index.html