back to article Musk's latest X-periments: No more headlines, old posts vanish, block gets banned

Elon Musk's seemingly arbitrary decision making was on display over the past few days at the site formerly known as Twitter, most recently in the billionaire's decree that X will strip titles and text from links on the platform, leaving only a lead image behind. Musk confirmed early this morning that the headline-stripping …

  1. b0llchit Silver badge

    ...Musk Xcreeted on Saturday.

    FTFY

    BTW, the poop emoji did not vanish. It has simply altered image and has now taken form of the site's usual Xcreetions.

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Ahhhh man! And here I thought I was being all clever in coming up with that very same play on words! Only to find you beat me to it by about 7 hours! Stop stealing my ideas before I even have them!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      IMHO it could simply be replaced by a miniature of his face.

    3. GruntyMcPugh
      Pint

      'Xcreeted' you made my day. And I'm totally stealing that. It's the weekend, have a beer on me ->

  2. TJ1
    Facepalm

    Accessibility?

    I don't use the thing but as described in the article this sounds like information generally used by accessibility support tools such as screen readers will be lost - is that the case? In many jurisdictions there is a legal requirement to ensure equal access to services for those with accessibility needs.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Accessibility?

      It looks like it will affect everyone, not just those using accessibility tools. If someone included a link and didn't provide a label of their own, it would show the title of the destination page. Now, it's going to be some opaque mystery link which probably shows a shortened URL. People can either click through to go who knows where or get the link and use the various tricks to get the shortener to tell you what the long URL is. I wonder how many people know those tricks and how many people know that it's useful. I only know the methods for three of the shorteners, and one of them is tinyurl which I don't think people use too much anymore.

    2. JimmyPage
      Flame

      Re: Accessibility?

      In many jurisdictions there is a legal requirement to ensure equal access to services for those with accessibility needs.

      (In UK) While true in theory, unless you have a few hundred thousand £££ lying around, such laws are of academic interest only.

      Rights you can't enforce aren't rights at all.

    3. msknight

      Re: Accessibility?

      Block is the feature that I use to kill adverts. When I get an ad in my feed, I just block the user where it came from.

      This is probably more to do with making sure people see ads, because I'm not the only one doing this, by any means.

      1. My-Handle

        Re: Accessibility?

        I also wouldn't count out the fact that too many people were blocking Elon himself. While it sounds like the Mute tool could be used to do the same thing, I'd bet my lunch that X / Twitter will conveniently 'forget' which users blocked Elon.

  3. Nate Amsden

    so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

    Never used twitter myself. But have seen screenshots over the years where "XYZ user has blocked you". So that person who was blocked couldn't see the stuff from the person blocking them, is that how it worked?

    I always thought that idea was dumb(maybe for once I agree with Elon, not sure). I mean how hard is it to sign up for another account to get around the block?(assumed it wasn't hard, or even easier perhaps simply view the blocking user's tweets while not logged in to twitter so it doesn't know you are blocked?). Not as if you need to change your primary account to this new account to get around the block, but if you are REALLY interested in seeing what that person(that doesn't like you) has to say, it seems pretty trivial to do regardless of block.

    But maybe there is more to blocking than just that aspect. I read recently that users were blocking advertisers(I think? unsure how that works, I assume the intent is so they don't see the ads from those advertisers? but that sounds more like "muting"(can't see the advertiser) vs blocking (advertiser can't see you). But of course never having used the platform, not sure what those terms mean to users on twitter(I mean X).

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

      I agree with you. At least previously, it was possible to see what someone had posted without logging in. This was <del>useful</del> used by me as I didn't have an account but sometimes people would post links to Twitter posts to show what someone had said. In my experience, it always took a long time if I needed to read more than one tweet at a time, but it was an option. As such, it would seem that blocking someone wouldn't stop them from viewing what you'd written very long as all they'd have to do is open a private window and view it anonymously. Maybe I'm missing something, but otherwise the block and mute options sound basically the same from harassment potential.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

        Block means they can't reply to your threads and you don't see their posts, mute means they can reply to your threads but you don't see the posts.

        The difference is RWNJs still get to stomp all over your threads and insult you if they want and your followers get to see that even though you don't.

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

          Alright, that's a difference I didn't know about. Thanks for clearing it up for those of us who don't understand the system. That's a significant difference in functionality.

        2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

          Re: Blocking to keep your thread cleanish

          Some high profile RWNJs convinced Musk to fling their xcretions far and wide. They got blocked by vast numbers of users, to the point that the blocks limited their reach. They complained to Musk and Block->Mute is the immediate result. The longer term result is users will see more gab/truth flavoured xcretions. That should be enough to convince some of them to contact John Mastodon.

    2. aerogems Silver badge

      Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

      Side Note

      Over the weekend Twitler got into an argument with some other right-wing douchebag about the whole mute vs block thing and it ended in Twitler blocking the douchebag.

      No doubt Twitler will keep the block feature, and maybe eventually it'll be rolled back out as a premium feature for the suckers who actually pay for Twitter. And, no doubt the removal of the block feature is so that the next time Twitler's account "mysteriously" shows up in everyone's feed, they won't be able to block him and it'll make it seem like his engagement figures are much higher. I don't know if the reports of him abusing Ketamine are true, but it does seem pretty clear the guy's abusing something. Cocaine, ketamine, amphetamines... all of the above or some combination thereof.

      1. Blank Reg

        Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

        Maybe he's abusing something, or maybe he's just a fucking idiot

    3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

      As posts on Twitter are public by default, the whole blocking thing was always a bit weird. If I make a statement that is then publicly available, why should I then try and restrict access? Muting always made more sense (so people don't see some of the sometimes very hurtful comments about what they've written) but wasn't implemented. This still begs the question as to why go on a public forum if you're afraid of the comments? However, I don't think engineering will be the reason for this decision, not least because most of the engineers have left.

      Telegram lets you do both, though, as it doesn't default to a telling the world everything, has less of a problem with trolling.

      1. Orv Silver badge

        Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

        Even if they could see what you wrote by logging out, blocking them from sealioning your comment threads still had some value.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    “we will try our best to make there be at least one”

    Such support for the Zuck!

    Nice.

  5. Winkypop Silver badge
    Facepalm

    All this money and bother, for what?

    It’s just social media.

    If only the same money was put into affordable public housing.

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: All this money and bother, for what?

      Or how about when he said he'd give the UN a few billion to eliminate world hunger and then welched on the deal? That was, IIRC, around $4bn, so like 10% of what he spent to be queen bitch on his own personal mean girls platform.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: All this money and bother, for what?

        I hate to defend him in any way. I'm literally feeling a bit of revulsion typing these sentences. However, he didn't exactly promise that and he had a point in doing what he did. Someone made the suggestion that a payment around that level, I think it was $6 billion, could end world hunger. Musk responded claiming that he would pay for it if they could prove their point, but they, perhaps unsurprisingly, were unable to substantiate the hyperbolic claim that you could eliminate famine and all its causes with that much. I don't think he ever intended to pay it, even if it could have permanently ended it, but he was making a point in an argument, not a promise to donate that amount.

        His selfishness aside, I think the general act is logical when someone claims a problem is much easier to solve than it is. Those who like to simplify problems to the point of inaccuracy make it harder to really solve them. Like a cryptocurrency adherent who thinks that adopting Bitcoin as legal tender will eliminate fraud, someone who thinks that a specific piece of software will mean that there will be no more security vulnerabilities, or a politician who says that electing them will mean nothing can go wrong in the country, we shouldn't assume them to be correct. The claim that was made about hunger is equivalent to telling you that you can solve the problems of someone living in a civil war by paying them £50. If that worked, you'd probably be happy to pay it, but you know it won't actually fix their life up. This doesn't mean we should avoid donations, and in fact knowing what can really be done is a reason to donate more if you can, and we owe it to ourselves to understand what we're really doing instead of assuming problems are easier than they really are. Failing to do that will likely result in people giving up when what they were told would solve it proves insufficient.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          "I hate to defend him in any way"

          Well, don't then. You'll feel better for it.

          Even if shown the evidence asked for, Musk would back out - he has form. He tried to back out of buying Ex-Twitter. It doesn't look like the promised dough-boy versus Zuck match is going ahead.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            Re: All this money and bother, for what?

            If you read the rest of my comment, you will see that I said the same thing. I think that, if he was presented with evidence that solving world hunger was actually that cheap, he would find some other reason why he didn't have to keep his pledge. The person who couldn't demonstrate it was able to name a lot of useful things that such a donation could do, and that clearly didn't sway him. I'm not defending his selfishness, but I think it is valid to understand that he was not promising to donate anything, thus his failure to donate, while caused by selfishness, is not what it is painted to be.

        2. graeme leggett Silver badge

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          Musk was deploying the Nirvana fallacy - that you shouldn't do things because they are imperfect answers.

          Any billions would make a lot of lives better, not cure the problem but would improve the world for many and wouldn't make it worse

          Though if he gave it to health initiatives or climate change mitigation, he would be denounced on formerly-known-as-Twitter as a WEF operative in minutes

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            Re: All this money and bother, for what?

            Yes, he probably was. I take a more limited view: you should do things that aren't perfect answers, but you really shouldn't claim that they are perfect answers or someone will take you at your word and be disappointed when it doesn't perfectly solve the problem. Of course he should have contributed to solving this problem, which I'm quite sure he never would have done no matter how beneficial it could have been. It doesn't change the fact that the person he was responding to was inaccurately stating the problem and its solution.

        3. aerogems Silver badge

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          Fair enough. However, while $6bn might not be enough to permanently end world hunger everywhere, it would certainly be enough to make a very significant difference in a lot of people's lives. Compared to the near $50bn he spent on Twitter, and what he's done with it since, it would have been a far better use of resources.

        4. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          I think there has actually been some good research to show that the best way to lift people out of poverty is to actually give the money directly to them, individually, as they are naturally in the best position to know how to spend it to help themselves.

          The logic is that if someone is living hand-to-mouth in an undeveloped country, and you give them $100, they use that to take care of their immediate needs, then do things that are useful to themselves, such as buying livestock or crop seeds.

          The alternative model, in the US, of "non-profit organisations", and in the UK of "charitable organisations", involves pretty much full-time fundraising and payments to multiple levels of management, and very little of the money ever reaches the people who need it, not least because if NPOs and charities actually solved the problems they set out to solve, they'd have to cease to exist, and all those people would be out of work. That $100 is much more likely to get spent on office rent, or a new pair of trainers for a chugger.

        5. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          "I think it was $6 billion, could end world hunger. Musk responded claiming that he would pay for it if they could prove their point, but they, perhaps unsurprisingly, were unable to substantiate the hyperbolic claim that you could eliminate famine and all its causes with that much. I don't think he ever intended to pay it, even if it could have permanently ended it, but he was making a point in an argument, not a promise to donate that amount."

          Perhaps, but you and I both know that by the time Elon's statements get written up by a 'journalist' and their editor has peed on it, the statement would be boiled down to "Elon promises $6n to end world hunger". Anybody pointed back the original statement when they try to call Elon out on it will see he weaseled, but the purpose of the statement (getting it mangled and making him look good) was accomplished.

          Politicians are very good at this sort of thing. They can spew 100 words of pure weasel that sounds like they are in full support of something and making promises to "do something" when, in fact, they are promising nothing at all. The really good ones can do it in far less words. The science of the sound byte.

      2. sabroni Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: queen bitch on his own personal mean girls platform

        Stop trying to make X happen. It's not going to happen.

    2. Orv Silver badge

      Re: All this money and bother, for what?

      In the US the problem with public housing isn't so much that there isn't money for it (although that is "a" problem.) The insurmountable difficulty is no one wants it to be built near anything they own, and homeowners have outsized political influence.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: All this money and bother, for what?

        "In the US the problem with public housing isn't so much that there isn't money for it (although that is "a" problem.)"

        There isn't a way to build affordable housing. The costs are too high for new construction. The last time I wanted to get a sheet of plywood I nearly had a stroke over the price. A 5'x5' sheet of nice birch ply for cabinets can be $150. The cost of the humble 2x4 and 4x4 is crazy too. I've been getting short pieces, with permission, from building site scrap piles.

        I also work in real estate and subsidized housing is abused like you wouldn't believe. The damage and smell is more than even I, not the most fastidious of people, could come to cause. That leads to bad pest problems and huge costs to renovate. If you talk with somebody that rents properties, they can show you how long it takes to recoup the cost of replacing carpet/flooring, repairing walls and repainting to get a property ready for a new tenant. If the previous tenant had to be removed through legal processes, it might take 2-3 years to break even on a cash basis (not including paying down principal on a loan and other increases in equity).

        1. pomegranate

          Re: All this money and bother, for what?

          Worse yet, think how many 2x4s could have been made with all the Canadian trees we lost this season.

  6. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Terrorists

    X has become the Russian terrorist misinformation platform.

    If you report them, expect having your account suspended.

    Something authorities should be look into.

  7. Howard Sway Silver badge

    Continual tinkering is just getting boring

    Why not just move straight to the desired end destination? Elon can get 250 Neuralink electrodes wired into his brain, connect the cables to the internet, then retire to a nutrient fluid cylinder and simply broadcast his commands thoughts and other people's messages he approves off to his legion of followers 24 hours a day.

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Continual tinkering is just getting boring

      I'd rather we stuff him in a rocket and forcibly make him fuck off to Mars. The rocket making it into orbit, let alone Mars, is purely optional.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Continual tinkering is just getting boring

      only if the fluid cylinder is full of piss and vinegar

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Continual tinkering is just getting boring

        Not even that - He's already full of one of them.

  8. sarusa Silver badge
    Devil

    'The pair of orders follow claims from the world's richest man on Friday that X would also eliminate blocking from the platform, except for direct messages, which many users feared would enable more harassment on the platform.'

    To Elmo, more harassment on the platform is a /feature/. That is why he decided to buy it in the first place, to make it for friendly for racists, nazis, and right wing trolls. He even said this, though he didn't explicitly name them as racists, nazis, and right wing trolls for some reason *cough*.

    Also, can you just stop calling them X in the headlines? It's still Twitter, f@#$ Elmo. Don't give him the satisfaction of playing along with his every stupid whim. You could call it Twxttxr, or if you need it for the SEO, then say 'Twitter (aka X)'.

    1. Blank Reg

      What happens when there is no one left except for racists, nazis, and right wing trolls? They may have to turn on each other

    2. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

      I prefer "(e)X social media," I'm surprised it hasn't gone out of business yet, but I suppose ol' Musky-boy still has plenty of funds to flush away promoting hatred rather than doing anything useful with it

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        "Musky-boy still has plenty of funds to flush away promoting hatred rather than doing anything useful with it"

        Not likely. His wealth is based on his Tesla stock and most of that is pledged against loans. He's a lot less wealthy in reality according to the sorts of entities that track that sort of thing. If you look at the House of Windsor, their wealth is in land, going businesses, etc and isn't highly leveraged. It's not apples and apples. Somebody such as Warren Buffet is very diversified so while his wealth is tied up in many stocks, it's not just one. Warren's concept of a "producing/productive asset" is one I really like. I'm also fond of things like land as a store of wealth. While taxes eat away at the value, many assets require maintenance costs so it's a matter of holding time and how much those costs are. If I can buy the lot next to my house at tax sale, if I keep it separate, the property tax could remain as low as $50/year if I don't build anything on it. My plan is to use it as a large garden so I don't want to combine lots and wind up paying more tax.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "reduce the height of tweets"

    Well, yes, cutting them off at the knees will reduce their height, but maybe, just maybe, they will also lose a bit of functionality?

    (Resisting the temptation for the obvious comment, about "maybe if we demonstrate cutting off at the knees on Musk, he'll get the idea").

    1. Dinanziame Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: "reduce the height of tweets"

      I'm reminded of Mao ordering that Chinese farmers would double productivity by planting closer.

  10. that one in the corner Silver badge

    "but we will try our best to make there be at least one"

    > "The sad truth is that there are no great 'social networks' right now," Musk's xit said on Saturday. "We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one," the X owner added.

    So which one will that be? As he X-its the social space, will he put his backing squarely behind Make America OnLine Great Again?

  11. DS999 Silver badge
    FAIL

    It is amazing

    How every decision of his makes Twitter worse. He hasn't made a single change that has improved it!

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: It is amazing

      Concerning.

    2. aerogems Silver badge

      Re: It is amazing

      You'd think that statistically he should have had at least one idea that didn't suck by now.*

      * Assuming the goal the entire time wasn't to turn it into an even bigger shithole than it was before he came along

      1. Joe W Silver badge

        Re: It is amazing

        1. Buy it with it's own money

        2. Load it up with debt

        3. Send it into bankruptcy

        4. Lap up the rest for pennies on the dollar, stiffing the people helping with step 1

        I cannot see a problem, he's on track.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: It is amazing

          He bought it with a lot of his own money, so he's not coming out ahead on the deal it unless it becomes a LOT better at making money than it ever was before he bought it. And obviously it is doing worse now than it was before with half of the advertisers having fled and many who remain seriously cutting back on their spending.

          He provided over $20 billion of his own money, raised from selling Tesla stock, to make the deal happen. Not including the Twitter shares he already owned. The other half came from bank loans, equity investments from Larry Ellison and the Saudis, etc.

          1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

            And it's all going down the drain.

            Marvellous to watch.

            From afar.

          2. graeme leggett Silver badge

            Re: It is amazing

            So one good thing out of the Twitter purchase is he has less control at Tesla...?

            1. aerogems Silver badge

              Re: It is amazing

              Or at least he's spending less time focused on Tesla and SpaceX, so the adults can actually get shit done at both.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: It is amazing

            when will prince bonesaw get pissed at musktwat for flushing his billions, and can we get tickets for the show?

            1. DS999 Silver badge

              Re: It is amazing

              He got the money from the investor prince, not the bonesaw prince.

          4. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

            Re: It is amazing

            Being in hock to the Saudis might not be the best of ideas, either. I've heard they still chop people's hands off for the crime of theft.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: It is amazing

          "I cannot see a problem, he's on track."

          The large banks that had planned to flip the debt but couldn't after all of the delays meant the market wouldn't buy it off of them could cause problems not just for Elon, but any company he is a prominent part of. There's also that Saudi wealth fund that put a stack of money in. Somehow I don't think they'll be chuffed to have Elon lose all of the cash they put in. I expect that Elon may find pressure being applied in unpleasant ways and possibly in a very permanent way. All completely deniable, of course. He should already know all of this, right? He's a genius (eyes rolling).

    3. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: It is amazing

      Really? Every decision he made made twatter better. People jumped ship, advertisers went away. Give him another year and twatter will shut down. What could be better?

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: It is amazing

        "Give him another year and twatter will shut down. What could be better?"

        I have not issue with Twitter going away. People will just go someplace else and either FB will see Threads take first place or some other thing come to the fore.

        The issue is all of the houses of cards will be impacted. TBC and Neuralink aren't a big deal, but Tesla and SpaceX would both go through some major upheavals and restructuring. That will cause waves in all sorts of arenas. Think of pension funds losing gobs of value if the price of their Tesla stock cuts in half. Remaining investors in SpaceX might call for a comprehensive audit which could turn up some problems that have to be addressed if brought to the light.

    4. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: It is amazing

      "How every decision of his makes Twitter worse. He hasn't made a single change that has improved it!"

      All it see is Elon flailing around with no planning. He just gets and idea and runs with it. I suppose at this point he's fired anybody that had the rocks to question any of his decisions.

  12. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "We may fail"

    No, man. You WILL fail.

    This is on you.

    You have a CEO, why are you making more decisions ?

    Are you really that stupid that you don't see how bad you are at decision making ?

    To think that this waste of air is the one who got lucky with PayPal and swims in money.

    Sometimes Lady Luck would need some sort of consequence alert.

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: "We may fail"

      Thiel's (spit) Confinity merged with Musk's x.com. The result was run by Musk but before he could do lasting damage he was fired by Thiel. Thiel changed the name to PayPal, made the business valuable and sold it to eBay. Musk still owned a large proportion of the merged company so he got a huge payday from Theil's work and got to keep the x.com domain name. I am not sure I would call it luck. I would go with acting. He acted like x.com was worth merging with. He acted like he could run a company. The acting was good enough for a while but not good enough to fool Thiel for too long. Musk's acting might have improved but more likely the audience at Tesla was less discerning than at xfinitypal.

      The banks that loaned TwitterV2 money to buy TwitterV1 thought that Musk's acting was good enough and they could sell the debt on to greater fools. The timing was bad because the greater fools ran out of money leaving the banks with a problem. The previous solution was to sell Florida Man's debt to Deutsche Bank who got caught selling it to Alfa. I am not sure Alfa can afford to buy Musk even if they wanted to - or if anyone would risk trading with them now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "We may fail"

        pooty (they guy who hates nazi's but helps nazi's in USA, while being a nazi) will probably buy it with a few rubles, just to help keep it afloat to help musktwat help orangetwat keep his nazi supporters happy

      2. aerogems Silver badge

        Re: "We may fail"

        Pure speculation on my part, but I'm betting the person who sold the idea of investing in Twitler's hostile takeover of Twitter at each respective bank has long since been fired. The only exception might be the Saudi wealth fund, and only because I'm sure the Saudi's don't really care if Twitter lives or dies, but for however long it does live they now have all kinds of leverage to get info on any dissident citizens in their country using Twitter as a means of communicating with one another or spreading dissent.

      3. Bebu
        Windows

        Re: "We may fail"

        《Musk's acting was good enough and they could sell the debt on to greater fools.》

        Was it not that sort of acting that got Elizabeth Holmes her eleven year federal all expenses paid holiday?

        If you are going to piss "greater fools" ill gotten gains up against the wall ensure they aren't from the real movers and shakers and especially those that have form with basement furnaces.

  13. jmch Silver badge

    Engagement??

    "Fitting more posts on a page would likely boost engagement numbers too, we note."

    More unintelligible posts will surely drive engagement down, though

    1. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Re: Engagement??

      I used to read a few accounts on Twitter periodically, mostly of subject-specialists who could be reasonably relied upon as authoritative sources.

      When the log-in requirement appeared, I continued to do so, but rather less frequently on nitter until it was broken and then on twstalker - but that now too has seemingly ceased to function.

      Musk isn't really in the business of engagement, he only wants users on his own terms. That's his prerogative, but it will be hard to make a going concern of a social media site that is essentially aimed at an audience of one.

    2. TangoDelta72
      Facepalm

      Re: Engagement??

      <quote>

      Twitter claimed the objective was to "reduce the height of tweets," thus allowing more content to fit on a user's screen at a time.

      </quote>

      I "raise" you one

      C

      O

      F

      V

      E

      V

      E

      1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        Re: Engagement??

        ISTR it was "Covfefe". We had a goldfish with that name for several years before he passed away. Was it really that long ago?

  14. sabroni Silver badge
    Boffin

    re: which many users feared would enable more harassment on the platform

    Twitter's users are split into two groups. The group that fear the removal of blocking because it will enable harassment and the group that are looking forward to the removal of blocking because it will enable harassment.

  15. Infused

    Verification Required

    There are also rumours that users will have to verify themselves with a video & government ID, though it might just be Premium users. Twitter/X is definitely going downhill. Running it clearly isn't rocket science.

  16. Chika
    Flame

    I don't care anymore

    I find that I have had less time to tweet anyway and since Muskrat took it over I've had even less inclination to post. If he really does enact these latest edicts against that which was once called Twitter then I suspect that I may be one of many that will be removing ourselves following all those others that have already said goodbye.

    Let's face it; Elon is a spoilt brat with more money than sense. Paypal only became successful after he went, Tesla has a record of making shoddy product and now the little whiner is doing everything that he can to kill off Twitter to try and make something that nobody asked for.

    And to think that I broke my long silence here just to say all that! What a waste!

    1. aerogems Silver badge

      Re: I don't care anymore

      Hey! C'mon! That's not cool! Muskrats are noble creatures that help maintain wetland ecologies and don't deserve to be compared to a human-shaped piece of shit like that!

  17. Someone Else Silver badge

    Of all the things we already know he's no good at...

    Now we find out that the Muskrat doesn't know shit about GUI design, either.

  18. trevorde Silver badge

    Meanwhile at X HQ

    [Yacc] No more headlines? WTF? Old posts vanish? WTAF? Block gets banned? WTAAF? Elon? ... Elon! ... [desperately] ELON!!

  19. Orv Silver badge

    Seeing as Apple already bent their own rules to let Musk have an app with a one-letter name, I'm skeptical they'll enforce any rules on him, including the ones that require a block function.

  20. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Twitter has been X'ed

    And I won't complain about that.

  21. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    Article is bullshit he isnt close to being the worlds richest man.

    I know a guy in Saudi Arabia who is spending $1T on building a line....did i also mention he has his own GP, and now is buying half of the European football.

  22. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Where's Linda

    I really didn't expect we'd be hearing anything from a CEO that wasn't Elon. The media follows Elon around and he isn't the sort of person that can delegate so Linda's role is going to be purely sacrificial if she isn't careful.

    If the problem was people blocking advertisers, it would have made sense to define a class of account for advertisers and if they did harass, intimidate or impugn others on the service, there would be big problems. In the mean time, those accounts couldn't be blocked. There's a very good reason that blocking was put in place and I'd think that the CEO, one with an advertising background, would have done things musk differently.

    Linda can't reign in Elon and she's not going to do herself any favors sticking around. Elon isn't going to listen to her and that appears to be pretty obvious since she's come on board.

    The captain is the last person to leave a sinking ship. If you see me leaving, you are to assume the rank of captain.

  23. Darrenking

    If you don't like it there's always Meta's Threads which has all the content moderation you miss.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like