Veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg announced on Tuesday he was deactivating his X (formerly known as Twitter) account, saying Elon Musk’s takeover of the site turned it into a “cesspool.”

Mr Mossberg is a well-respected name and expert in the US tech writing industry, who also co-founded media sites such as Recode and AllThingsD. He announced his boycotting of X on Meta’s new platform Threads, saying his reasons revolve around business tycoon Mr Musk’s threats to sue the Anti-Defemation League (ADL).

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    He continued on to say he will only be found on Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram

    Mastodon: “Am I a joke to you?“ >:(

    • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Hey Mr. Tech journalist, why don’t you write about federated communities and get off the corpo-web? Help us all out with that big name of yours I’ve never heard.

      Edit: oops. That was meant to be a top level comment. Whatever.

      • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I would be shocked if he or his colleagues haven’t written about federated communities and the like.

        But if he will have no engagement or meaningful interactions, why would he waste time managing and understanding social media for another platform? Like, this isn’t someone just shitposting. Building and maintaining his brand is a significant part of his job. Same with understanding what people may be interested in reading about to know how to steer stories and the like.

        And we very much learned from the olden days that just mirroring the same post to every site doesn’t really do anything positive and mostly pisses people off when they realize they aren’t the audience.

        • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Building and maintaining his brand is a significant part of his job. Same with understanding what people may be interested in reading about to know how to steer stories and the like.

          If that’s your full time job then maybe dont outsource it to some random company that gets bought by some random dude…

          Yeah… Full time work is hard

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      1 year ago

      It’s all about brands. Pretty sad when a “tech expert” thinks Facebook Instagram and threads is honkey dorrey.

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      1 year ago

      Someone in another thread said he has a mastodon account. Dunno if he posts there or not.

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        1 year ago

        He looks over 60, so he likely saw all the trans people and rainbows thriving there and his innate Boomer deep fear of something novel and amazing and different took over.

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          1 year ago

          Your comment supposes that transphobia and bigotry are not problems in younger generations, and, well, this is absolutely incorrect.

          Maybe measuring social metrics isn’t best done by using arbitrary and artificial labels for entire groups of people?

          Nah, it’s gotta be those older folks, right, because you’re young and free and wild and some shit.

        • geosoco@kbin.socialOP
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          1 year ago

          Are they still thriving there? I’ve seen a few, but there seems to be way more on bluesky.

            • csgraves@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Just yesterday I had an interaction on Mastodon.social that gave me pause and made me question using even the Fediverse.

              Someone posted about KOSA legislation coming to “protect children” from trans people like myself.

              Somebody got in the conversation and had a link to an organization that actually uses the terminology “map” to refer to the people who are more properly called pedophiles.

              I shut that shit down, deleted my comment, and am seriously considering deleting all of my Fediverse accounts.

              Like, I’m not here to make friends, but I am not opposed to it either.

              I am here to be informed, entertained, maybe sometimes outraged a little.

            • csgraves@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              To continue the previous comment, I want absolutely no association with people that like to play games with terminology like this.

              I don’t want any connection with a person that would be okay with sexualizing children, or changing names of the evil people who do it under the guise of being tolerant or pc or some shit.

              I don’t want any loli garbage, hentai, nazis, etc.

              And that the Fediverse seems to not have any content moderation ( am I wrong/missing something?) makes me want to give up on it.

              Maybe go outside, write music, read a book.

              • hypelightfly@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                The fediverse isn’t a unified whole. Some instances don’t have moderation or have shitty inconsistent moderation. You should move to an instance like beehaw.org or lemmy.blahaj.zone if you want admins that don’t put up with that shit. Both will ban users and other instances that do that allow that kind of shit. While lemmy.world seems fine with it, but if you call out their use of discord they may ban you.

            • geosoco@kbin.socialOP
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              1 year ago

              That’s definitely fair. I’ve thankfully not seen that content.

              The only content I’ve found that I care about were some of the more active folks on Twitter that had insightful takes or were occasionally funny like Popehat, Mike Masnick, and Kashana.

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              1 year ago

              Why would that prevent them from moving and thriving? They just invite their friends.

              I’ve seen a few posts from folks complaining about the culture on mastodon and effectively getting harassed there.

            • Countess425@lemmy.world
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              It’s not closed to the general public, any member of the general public can join as long as you get an invite. I’m not sure how to get invites as I don’t interact with BlueSky much, but I was invited by my brother and he’s nothing special on the Internet.