Is this it for 'X' (the app formerly known as Twitter)?

awhyley

Well-Known Member

Twitter bans account for D.C. area bus system without explanation​

The social media app suspended the @metrobusinfo account on Tuesday and gave Metro transit officials no explanation why.

By Justin George and Faiz Siddiqui
Updated January 10, 2023 at 4:39 p.m. EST

Twitter suspended the account Tuesday that the D.C.-area’s largest transit system uses to inform bus riders of delays, scheduling changes and other information without explanation to the transit agency.

Metro officials said they weren’t told why the social media company suspended the account, @metrobusinfo. Before the suspension, Metro officials said, the account had not posted anything other than standard content, which includes route scheduling information, delay and detour updates, customer service-related tips and replies to customer complaints or concerns.

The suspension mirrors some of the irregularities and policy inconsistencies that have arisen since the social media company was taken over in late October by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk. In a few months, Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who has long been critical of Twitter policies limiting what the social media app has allowed or restricted — has cut more than half of Twitter’s employees, suspended journalists who covered a ban on an account tracking his private jet and launched new features such as a verification check mark for anyone willing to pay $8.

There was no indication that other transit or governmental agencies were similarly affected Tuesday. Some largely automated accounts or those repeatedly posting links, even those not engaged in spam or harassment, appear to have been previously caught up in sweeps of bots on the site. Musk, whose replies are often littered with crypto scams, said cleaning up spam has been a key priority for him as owner.

Asked why Metro thought its account had been suspended, spokesman Ian Jannetta said the transit agency had no answers.
“All great questions,” Jannetta said in a text message. “Let us know if Twitter answers them for you [because] we are asking the same ones.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. The transit agency announced that the account — one of three primary accounts the transit agency uses — had been suspended on its main @wmata account just after noon.

Metro directed bus customers who relied on the account to use the agency’s website at wmata.com/alerts.

“We’re working to get this restored for our bus customers,” Metro said on Twitter. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Since Musk took over, Twitter has been beset with inconsistent applications of its policies and sudden bans on longtime accounts, with few avenues to appeal or obtain a reversal. Last month, Twitter banned an account tracking the live location of Musk’s private jet, citing a new policy prohibiting the sharing of live-location data that could reveal a person’s whereabouts.

The company followed that ban with a rash of suspensions against other accounts run by the owner of @elonjet, college sophomore Jack Sweeney, including his personal account. Then, Twitter suspended more than a half dozen journalists, including Post reporter Drew Harwell, as Musk baselessly alleged the journalists — some of whom had been reporting on the jet account — posted “basically assassination coordinates” for him.

Musk said the journalists were free to rejoin, but they quickly learned they could only do so if they deleted the tweets, resulting in a stalemate because the journalists maintained they had done nothing wrong. Officially, Twitter’s policy prohibits sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal a person’s location, regardless if this information is publicly available.” It wasn’t known whether that policy resulted in the bus account’s suspension, or whether the suspension was conducted through automated means.

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/01/10/dc-metro-twitter-account-suspended/
 

Peppermynt

Defying Gravity
Saw this is the Sproutible thread and noted that Twitter did actually post this today.

What does this mean to regular users though?

I also went to spoutible but their website was down every time I tried yesterday.

ETA - tried this AM and it works but you apparently can't sign up til 2/6 unless you pre-registered??? :confused:
 

ThursdayGirl

Well-Known Member
What does this mean to regular users though?

I also went to spoutible but their website was down every time I tried yesterday.

ETA - tried this AM and it works but you apparently can't sign up til 2/6 unless you pre-registered??? :confused:
I think the API is more for people who program and may make tools from or that work with Twitter. For most people, it probably doesn't matter.
 

PatDM'T

Well-Known Member
Glad to see
that I can view
Spoutible without
needing an account
or being signed in


But why is
Ryan G trying
to confuse me? :spinning:

IMG_20230204_130424.jpg

Been saying it
as SpOUTible?
Am I alone?
 

Peppermynt

Defying Gravity
What does this mean to regular users though?

I also went to spoutible but their website was down every time I tried yesterday.

ETA - tried this AM and it works but you apparently can't sign up til 2/6 unless you pre-registered??? :confused:
Tried to sign up today. Now you can't sign up til 2/9???

They're about to lose me here. :confused:
 

awhyley

Well-Known Member
With both Sproutible and TribelSocial on hand, Twitter will be left in the dust if Elon can't get it together.

Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done​

- Meanwhile, he is still giving aggressive deadlines to make sweeping changes, like revamping how ad targeting works in a week.

By ALEX HEATH / @alexeheath
Feb 21, 2023, 7:42 PM EST|29 Comments / 29 New

On November 21st, Elon Musk gathered Twitter’s remaining employees at its San Francisco headquarters to tell them that, after forcing out roughly two-thirds of the workforce in a matter of weeks, layoffs were over. He keeps laying people off anyway.
Dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering departments were laid off last week, including one of Musk’s direct reports who was managing engineering for Twitter’s ads business, according to company sources and social media posts from affected employees seen by The Verge. This means Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. Meanwhile, he has given a directive internally to revamp how ads are targeted in Twitter’s main feed within a week — part of his plan to fix what he has publically called “the worst ad relevance on Earth.” (The Information first reported that fresh cuts hit the sales team last week.)

Musk’s plan is to change Twitter’s ad targeting to work like Google’s search ads, which target primarily by keywords that are searched for, rather than a user’s activity and profile data. It’s an approach that works well for a search engine — where people go to express specific intent for finding something — and has helped Google build one of the most profitable businesses of all time. But it hasn’t worked for a social media business to date.

In a tweet on Saturday, Marcin Kadluczka, the laid-off engineering manager for monetization who reported directly to Musk, hinted at the infeasibility of the one-week deadline in a tweet: “I believe Twitter can really improve ads in 2-3 months (no necessarily in a week though).” I’ve confirmed that Musk gave the aggressive deadline just before Kadluczka and others in the ads, consumer, and sales orgs were laid off last Friday.
Here is where I’ll caveat that Musk gave a similar deadline to revamp Twitter Blue when he first bought the company that wasn’t met. He could also change his mind about how ads should work on Twitter. He didn’t respond to an email asking for comment.

Improving Twitter’s ads has been a key focus of Musk’s since he bought the company. He has correctly pointed out that Twitter’s ads are less personalized and effective than its competitors. (As my colleague Nilay Patel likes to say, critiquing the Musk era of Twitter is by no means an endorsement of the previous regime.) But it’s unclear if changing targeting to be keyword-driven like Google ads will actually improve the quality of Twitter’s advertising, as others with a better understanding of the trade-offs than me have pointed out:

In a tweet on Saturday, Marcin Kadluczka, the laid-off engineering manager for monetization who reported directly to Musk, hinted at the infeasibility of the one-week deadline in a tweet: “I believe Twitter can really improve ads in 2-3 months (no necessarily in a week though).” I’ve confirmed that Musk gave the aggressive deadline just before Kadluczka and others in the ads, consumer, and sales orgs were laid off last Friday.
Here is where I’ll caveat that Musk gave a similar deadline to revamp Twitter Blue when he first bought the company that wasn’t met. He could also change his mind about how ads should work on Twitter. He didn’t respond to an email asking for comment.
Improving Twitter’s ads has been a key focus of Musk’s since he bought the company. He has correctly pointed out that Twitter’s ads are less personalized and effective than its competitors. (As my colleague Nilay Patel likes to say, critiquing the Musk era of Twitter is by no means an endorsement of the previous regime.) But it’s unclear if changing targeting to be keyword-driven like Google ads will actually improve the quality of Twitter’s advertising, as others with a better understanding of the trade-offs than me have pointed out:



Link: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/...r-layoffs-sales-engineering-ads-google-revamp
 

awhyley

Well-Known Member

Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee​


BARBARA ORTUTAY
Tue, March 7, 2023 at 5:53 PM EST


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you're not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it. Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.

He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job. Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire's attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.

“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.

Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy" and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.

Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.

“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”

Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk's tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”

“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has about 151,000 Twitter followers (Musk has over 130 million). He joined Twitter in 2021, when the company, under the prior management, acquired his startup Ueno.

He was lauded in Icelandic media for choosing to receive the purchase price in wages rather than a lump sum payout. That's because this way, he would pay higher taxes to Iceland in support of its social services and safety net.

Thorleifsson's next move: “I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik very soon,” he tweeted. “It’s named after my mom.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/musk-taunts-wheelchair-bound-twitter-225342629.html
 
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