this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023

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General Megathread for Elon Musk Nonsense and Twitter News (beehaw.org)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey folks -

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I agree with others that the concept of "mega threads" are fundamentally broken and not something I'm interested in carrying over from Reddit.

This is a place for discussion where users vote to decide what rises or stays obscure. Let the system work how it is designed. If there are too many posts about a particular topic, it's either extremely relevant at the time or there are other moderation rules that could be considered to make sure low-effort posts are not dominating more substantial posts.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Tagging. Flair. Hashtags. Some kind of meta information.

Even in reddit posts can have flair. Lemmy have come to the edge of not having a filtering system, and need one asap. community specific tags or lemmy-wide tags or organic loose tagging, something is needed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here's the issue for this feature : https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/317

It doesn't exist yet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, i found that. As it is pretty clear that official support for tagging is not there, causing mayhem here looks like the better idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Tags with mods having tag powers feels like the best option long term. Any sorting system can be applied without worrying about compatibility.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I agree. Even when the megathread included a list of posts relevant to a topic, whatever nuance was there gets lost in the grand comment thread. We really need a tagging and filtering system so that users can opt out of topics.

That way, it's not incumbent on mods to make a Megathread, or make a judgement call on whether there are too many posts on any one topic.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Elon musk containment thread thank God.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Now if only billionaires could be contained in real life.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (22 children)

I think it's a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can't scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

I agree its not great with multiple threads but it's also not the end of the world imo. Users want to talk about these things. Let them.

It's not fun to post on megathreads because your comments get buried. At least it was like that on reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

To rid the feed of Elon news we now have a stickied post with Elon news. I feel like there’s a meme hidden there somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That’s the reason I want a mega thread. I want to be able to scroll past anything Elon. Putting it in one spot is ideal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

It's ideal for you since you don't want to discuss it, yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I think it’s a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can’t scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

The problem is there are so goddamn many, to the extent that I'm working on a userscript that lets me entire hide posts that contain keywords. Checking my frontpage using Subscribed/Active, 5 of the first 20 posts are about this "news". And that's a full day after it happened, yesterday was far worse

Edit: The userscript is ready!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Of course there are a lot of posts about it. There are big changes happening over at Twitter right now. It will obviously settle down eventually, but it’s an ongoing, pretty significant event.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

IMO the important thing is removing duplicates and pushing people to post to the most relevant communities (and for us regular users, only upvoting the post in the most relevant community). As well, Lemmy itself needs better means of combining the same post across many communities.

When I say removing duplicates, I also mean for a given event, not a literal duplicate link. We don't need 5 posts from different media sites on the same event unless a new one is significantly different.

That's the issue I've been noticing a lot. Every major news site wants to post their own opinion piece on how dumb Musk is (can't blame em) and it feels like every single one of those will get posted to some Lemmy community.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I haven't seen official sourcing on it yet but apparently a QAnon guy got suspended for posting notoriously bad child sexual abuse materials and then Musk reinstated the account. I'm frankly afraid to look it up because I don't want to see the materials. https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1684329030500098048?t=747mnnSVncGD8OBd0Vhddg&s=19

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (6 children)

No one is going to post news/articles here and then discuss them as they would in a regular post. It won’t get bumped up on the subscribed page if something interesting happens. Most of the comments here are going be about the megathread itself.

So this is effectively banning all the discussion concerning all of his companies. Which might be something you want to do, every community can decide for itself what kind of stuff they want to forbid after all. But I feel like it should be said directly, not via making a catch-all megathread.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html?unlocked_article_code=QwNKy2ucSzh2k2pDXa6wN9eHL73soABdXg8X40EsDrUL4luNxtOaZzQNTPMjdnOu2CeNgjLwODB510Vmo54nGs0i3MVlwHqM3yuCmz08jUcIB6PKfS3HruTCKXkHn_C-0ThKe7Tt69HWZ5sC2ABrPn2czq9I9rVQtI8XZaG-h9V1wsX_TaetzaNgjpRHT6lKicqfMkhiMhAJVmQza02u_iu4-tMiT8zISA9FQAUGIIJlMlBuQVI6riVjMEn6qSIF1Qr6Zdyw9OIInMbDyodqxq4J7-2Kb8geRTq9bT4jSZ8aSMfzb9FfMFQSC93PCYSAA0XZ3sHuRtLzqxlgRbuqBub_6A

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I'm cool with this, I don't need these articles telling me about musk/zucc/spez running the old platforms into the ground anymore. It's stuck in the past and ragebait. I think it's best to look forward. Walking away from old platforms completely means not letting them live rent-free in our heads anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-twitter-x-transform-9627a8d5?st=vl5hgv0r7sr73no

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

An alternative that may address the concerns in comments would be temporary sub communities for loud events

Create community technology_elon_bs@
Mods of parent community inherit sub
Create a pinned post in parent community announcing.
Close sub community when noise goes down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I like this compromise solution.

Or, if one wanted a more permanent community instead, we could split a, idk, "Corporate and Billionaire Drama" or "Web Drama" community (something along those lines) off for this type of thing going forward, so "Technology" could stay more specifically about tech and not about all the crap around it. But maybe that line would be too hard to draw I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Lemmy/Kbin really don't function in a way that make megathreads work though. This won't work here and we can't be thinking about trying to adopt Reddit behaviors in a platform that works very differently. Unlike Reddit, there isn't a singular community around Technology. There are dozens that we can all see built across every instance. I had to scroll just to see I was looking at the Beehaw one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

https://wapo.st/3QwZXwu

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

https://wapo.st/45vCZtS

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