X marks the drop for European users Everything is super, over at X (the social media service formerly known as Twitter), which has shed around 10 percent of its European users in the past six months. anti x poster in camden uk An anti X poster in London's Camden Town urges people to ditch their accounts – click to enlarge The figures were revealed in X's …
This is prime example why this bill is a nothing burger.
Xitter openly spreads disinformation, terrorist content and other carp.
UK government> We have the strongest bill in the world, protecting British people from miscreants!!!
People> Use it then!
UK government> Ah not like that!
People> Like what then?
UK government> Did your aunt say something hurty? We are on it!
Whereas Facebook, Insta and other sites also post misinformation, but as long as it’s about white people not “minorities” (when white people globally are a minority despite what government would have you think), that’s fine.
Two tier moderation, just like British policing nowadays!
Whatsa Stonetoss, is that somebody? I never heard of the person.
(I resisted twitter for YEARS because it's a bunch of "twits", then set up an account so I could communicate with these nice folks who used to own an iPhone that they left in a e-recycling bin, and left their twitter details on the phone, and HOUNDED them online until they "released the iPhone", and then the account stagnated for a couple more years, and then Musk threatened to buy the twitter and I was like "THAT's ball game!" and I've been outta there since like, before or whenever.)
I still have the iPhone, it's grand! I think it was all worth it. Good experience.
Stonetoss is a cartoonist who uses a meme style so people who share memes will share his cartoons. Some of his cartoons are perfectly innocent and can even be funny from time to time, but the intent of them is as a gateway to get people looking for more of his work. If you do, you'll find that most of his output is full on Nazi.
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"If every single European politician, government department and public funded body moved to Blue sky, dumping Twitter, that would send a huge message."
They've all been advised that they need to be present on all Social Media. So they have accounts and some have staff to monitor them, file complaints against other users and petition the companies to delete posts/comments they find detrimental to their remaining in office/being re-elected.
I question why they believe the must have SM accounts. The most prominent can have a simple blog site that they control and can do anything they want with and rest assured that whatever they post will be copy/pasted everyplace else for them.
"There are plenty of services out there for official communication"
Official communications should never be communicated through only social media. Companies and governments should have a means to post via their own web sites and refer to that as "official" with any social media posts as "supplemental". SM companies can edit, truncate, delete, strip links or hold postings at their discretion. Who wants access to official government information controlled by gatekeeper Musk or some blue-haired activist moderator?
Blue Sky isn't the answer.
Europe political class were complicit in the uptake of the US hosted social media platforms. (Allowing government departments and state media to advertise Facebook and Twitter for free, "Follow us on Twitter")
If European politicians want to promote commercial businesses for free, particularly those with the power to spread mass propaganda, I'd really hope those businesses were European and subject to European law in full.
TheReg demonstrates a real world example for the use of AI in corporations that is actually good, well, not shit.
Instead of getting newspeak responses from corporate PR people, Grok tell it how it is ... until that gets enshittified away.
But right now, definitely in improvement over the shit emoji auto-reply.
They won't ever ALL leave, because you have your own small infestation of right wing nutjobs, but all organizations should leave it behind. There's zero reason for the Euro press for instance to be supporting Musk. Those of you who live there and pay for subscriptions should check and see if they're on Twitter and tell them you want to them to leave Twitter or you'll reconsider your subscription. And press your governments to drop Twitter too.
Musk may have a favorability rating in the 30s here in the US still, but I have to think that it is a fraction of that in the EU since his extreme right wing views and nazi salutes have to be a much bigger problem with the typical EU citizen than they are in the much further right and more racist US.
>> the much further right and more racist US
Much further right, so far.
More racist? I would never claim that the US is great on racial stuff, but it has worked on this and made changes over the last 70 years. I have limited experience of Europe (and all of it as a white guy). But I'd be interested to hear how (for example) the descendants of the Windrush would grade the UK, or immigrants from Francophone Africa would grade France.
disgruntled yank,
Back when we were in the EU - the UK regularly came top of the Commissions annual survey of least racist places to live. Not that we don't have racism here, but the UK is probably one of the least racist places around. On this we even beat the Scandinavians, who are the perennial class goody-two-shoes - for having the best social services, education, and being the happiest as well - the total bastards!
I'd be interested to hear how (for example) the descendants of the Windrush would grade the UK, or immigrants from Francophone Africa would grade France
A whole lot better than brown people would rate the US since Trump's ICE was unleashed to live out their darkest jackboot fantasies, that's for sure!
It sounds like Grok needs a bit of an update on what Elon has been up to since it seems to be unaware of him endorsing Trump, the Nazi salute, him hoovering up all the data from government depts in his new job as unelected US prime minister as other potential reasons why people are leaving Twitter.
Twitter was always a company with an "eventually we'll come up with a business model" strategy. Good marketing to its main users – lazy journalists – saw it become popular for celebrities, subsequently followed by politicians craving publicity, but never with a convincing business case and caught between the Silicon Valley, or perhaps more specifically San Francisco, bubble and the real world. It had great user numbers but no good way of making money from them. Moderation kept the most active engaged and companies looking to advertise their brand, but came with high personnel costs. Then along came the SAFA, and I think I'm using the term correctly here, narcissist, who wanted to be king of the dump. He certainly cut costs, but removing moderation encouraged long-standing users to leave and many advertisers left, not to return because creating a positive brand image is difficult in a torrent of hate speech.
But the biggest problem was maintaining a value proposition in a changing market. From the start it was susceptible to bots and I'm proud to know my port of ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyoulivethere.com to a bot is still in existence, though inactive since it switched to OAuth! Evgeny Morozov amongst others highlighed the problems with echo chambers on social media, but Facebook then Instagram then TikTok and others found ways to swallow their conscience and earn lots of money anyway. But Twitter stayed pretty much as it was, remaining the darling of the chatterati but failing to attract the right kind of advertisers to pay for them. Even the laziest journalistst got the hint and started quoting from other services: Mastodon, Bluesky, Telegram, et al. It's going to be folded in Musk's AI business but this is now for PR purposes – I mean which self-respecting LLM wants to be based on content that has been largely machine produced for over a decade?
More than that - Musk has been focusing Tesla on the Cybertruck. That's been a millstone round the company's neck in Europe and the UK because due to various factors of the design, it's illegal to have one on the road in those regions.
"Meanwhile BYDs promises 2000km range and less than 2.5l/100km in its new compact hybrids."
I suppose if you live really far away from a petrol station, having that much range could be useful. Even on a really long trip, I'd have to stop for a pee long before needing to fill up. Several times in fact.
"The range is a consequence of the increased fuel efficiency."
Yes, but it also implies a larger fuel tank. A larger fuel tank is heavier (heavier still when full), takes up more space and drags down that efficiency. The competition cars have wee petrol tanks that have been optimized down to minimums. A bit crazy for a daily driver, but there isn't much real world return on having more range past a certain point. Most ICEV's are in the 400mi category. That's a once per week fill up for the bulk of people and 6-7 hours of highway driving with a bit of margin on a long haul. 4-5 hours starts pushing the iron-bladder class and it's roughly the usual time between feeds. I tend to plan my stops to eat, refuel and pump bilges for really long trips. As the years go on, I stop for my comfort more often. I'm also not doing cannonball runs where I try to get from point to point as fast as possible. Flying is at least half a day and often close to a full day so any driving trip that's longer than that with no other goal than A to B is something of a waste.
No, it's from the efficiency of the engine, which is around 43%, this is how you get the lower litre/100 km (= higher MPG) using a standard tank. This is done using very high compression and higher RPM.
For me, it's not about how far I can travel without stopping for fuel on a single trip – our current car does around 1000km which is more than enough for any single day – but on how often we have to fuel at all. Cars like that suggested by BYD would mean filling maybe only once a month, or possibly only once every two months if we get a wallbox fitted.
I was looking for the original video where I saw the details, but I couldn't find it quickly and it took a long time to make its points. As I said, let's see what they really offer.
I think it's right to be sceptical, and the compact is so far only available in China, but the tech is already in an SUV:
https://bydautomotive.com.au/sealion-6
As for the science, I think it's certainly possible by pushing this kind of design – as I've been arguing myself for a while – by optimising the petrol engine for the electric drive train and improving the batteries. In the real world, I don't think it matters whether you really get 2000 km, but 1500 km would really put the pressure on existing manufacturers, who have too often focussed on upmarket guzzlers for their EVs.
106m in 2024 which out of EU pop. of 449m which is roughly 22% which even adding the oddities of Norway and Switzerland or multiple accounts for both natural persons and corporations is rather high. Even adding the ex-EU UK only brings that down to 20%.
The ~10% drop in both "active recipients" and signed in accounts seem to correlate.
I don't imagine the Europeans (and incidentally many Commonwealth citizens) are too amused by Musk's fascists antics and the hard core fascists infesting X, the hectares of war graves and cenotaphs bear testimony of the dreadful cost of previously having to deal with this abomination.
Perhaps boycotting corporations and organisations that still use X to communicate with their clients might hasten the demise of the platform.
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