2y ago

can we please keep this community about technology and not Twitter/X and elon news?

312 comments

This is a technology community, and (whether you like it or not) Twitter being rebranded to X is pretty big news in the world of tech.
Especially with the slipshod way they are doing with it, there is bound to be a lot of articles covering different weird tangential effects from the rush job.
- Yeah I don't like this. Can't we just use our upvotes to decide which news are important?
  
  Most people on All don't check what comm a post is from before upvoting. That's why on Reddit all subs that regularly hit r/all are basically the same. I'm fine with the Twitter news here, but upvotes don't work as quality control.
  
  The point is that news about Twitter rebranding is simply not related to technology. This is a technology community. These submissions should not even be posted in the first place to have the opportunity to be voted on.
  
  Are you really suggesting that we take the low quality Reddit approach to high quality subs like /r/funny?
  I suppose this is what happens when the lowest common denominator goes down coupled with ignorance of how the lowest common denominator affects community quality.
  Communities lose their niche by catering to the lowest common denominator and become homogeneous with each other. This has been a long-standing phenomena on Reddit, one which I would expect to not be carried over to Lemmy since it's largely a symptom of a user base that has more interest in memes, funnies, and celebrity worship than discussion and real news.
  
  I keep downvoting them. But I am apparently alone.
- Twitter being rebranded to X is pretty big news in the world of tech.
  Maybe, but we have seen it now. If every fart of Musk needs a new thread, maybe better to make a Musk group.
  
  reddit used to have r/EnoughMuskSpam lol
- Big news, yes. But not tech related at all. Those Elon news should be on TMZ.
- twitter isn't relevant in technological development, it's just a toxic social media site which hasn't changed in any significant way since its inception (technologically speaking)
  
  I agree with you that no one in the tech world is looking at Twitter for advice atm, but to say nothing changed at Twitter in any significant way since it's inception is disingenuous at best. Twitter's rapid growth and adoption led to the development of a number of key technologies needed to run global 24/7 uptime services at scale, just to name one macro example.
- Twitter being rebranded to X is pretty big news in the world of tech.
  Is it? It doesn't change anything.
- Is this place called technology news, or technology? Asking for a friend
  
  Neither. It's a rant about "Twitter/Elon/whatever billionaire does something stupid today" community.
  As you can see, nothing tech related. Just people related to the tech industry somehow
- It is definitely very big news, but I guess the amount of articles on that topic is overshadowing the rest of tech news.
  Maybe we could consider that news relative to Twitter/X should be on their own community, that users can choose to subscribe, ignore or block?
- That is not Tech news that is business news.
  What technology was developed, explored, integrated, improved, or otherwise innovated or more broadly applied by this?
  Nothing, it does nothing, it's a branding decision, business news, not tech news.
  
  Curious, those criteria you listed out are not present anywhere I can see in the community rules.
  Perhaps you should petition the mods to change them if you feel so strongly about it.
  
  What technology was developed, explored, integrated, improved, or otherwise innovated or more broadly applied by this?
  This is an interesting standard to apply and I'm curious to see how many posts would actually fit that, especially posts which seem to be about tech. Arguably, 30-60% of the top posts right now don't meet this.
- No, a rebrand is not a true technological news. It is regular news. Same would apply if Pizza company changed it's name. Internal policy changes of a website are not technological news either. Appointing a new director or firing staff, is still are not technological. Sure they its news, but have nothing to do with technology.
- I agree. I don't use Twitter and I really don't know much about Elon, but when one of the wealthiest people in the world is doing something with a major tech company, Id like to be somewhat informed
- Elon must stay rich from living in everyone's heads rent-free..

I’d rather want to know why we have 10 posts about twitter changing it’s name but the one post about grindr employees unionizing gets removed because it’s apparently not tech related
- Are unionization posts getting removed here? That seems against the whole idea of an open internet here.
- Wait, what? I dont give a fuck about the elon musk shit, but I care about grindr employees. Seems this community is earning a block from my side
- This sort of situation is why I believe the human interests around technology should be covered.

I get that this is a contentious topic and I agree that Musk gets too much coverage, but....I strongly believe that people should be able to post whatever they want as long as it adheres to the community's topic (technology) and adheres to the rules.
The arguement of, "I don't wanna see {topic here} so stop posting about {topic here}" is a really slippery slope. Clearly there are quiet users here that DO actually want to hear about X news and DO want to dicuss it. What about topics that appeal to you, or like 20% of the community, but 80% couldn't give a shit? Where is the line?
Realistically, this is on you. You don't like it? Downvote and scroll past it. Want a perfectly curated source of news you care about? Use an RSS reader that offers topic filters. This is a community of diverse interests that may not always reflect yours. Deal with it, or go elsewhere.
- Your point is absolutely valid, but what's happening at Twitter really is only relevant to social media news. There's no tech changing or advancing, just a really bad marketing decision. I personally do not believe that this is tech news or relevant to it.
  
  I agree. It's more political than technology related.
  
  To be fair it's a tech company though so it can impact those in the tech space. Generally it doesn't but you know what I mean.
- That's an even bigger contentious debate. And the fact that there is no one mutually agreed on answer means we either need a formal definition in the rules or the people in this community need to understand that there are people that exist with a broader or narrower definition of technology than they have.
  That said, like it or not, go to any major tech blog, podcast, YouTuber, and they all talking about X / Twitter. The tech communities outside of Lemmy have all agreed that Twitter / X is technology. And Lemmy doesn't live in a bubble.
  
  I think it would help define it or give examples of what it is or isn't intended to include. Should it include biotech, materials tech, or is it limited to computers, Internet, AI? Or...?
  Technology to me includes things like papyrus and typewriters and the above and much more. But what I expect to see in a technology community is narrower than that.
  
  It seems a lot of people here think that anyone who runs a Web site is a tech company.
  
  anything including and beyond hitting a nut with a rock to open it
  
  You asked
- Politely disagree, in that I suspect this is a hypocritical sentiment. Most users who get off of Elon news will agree with this position now but then cry foul when this community is spammed with a subject not to their liking. And as much as the ideology of free speech (rightly) resonates, just like with free markets, some minimal regulation is needed in practice; otherwise some fanatics could choke this feed up with, I dunno, 99% Microsoft news, all the time, and you wouldn't be able to say shit because you "strongly believe people should be able to post whatever they want". I doubt that you would stand by your lofty convictions so strongly then.
  Beyond that, there is nothing wrong with expressing a desire for more or less of something—it's just an opinion. It's a bullshit argument to say, "If you don't like it, instead of articulating why, just use the limited non-descriptive tool provided to reduce your passionate sentiment into a trivial binary value and cast it into the sea of thousands just like it; or else, like, go create an entirely new community or a custom feed or whatever you want. But mainly, just fuck off."
  
  Let me make this clear.
  I don't give a FLYING FUCK about Elon. I actively ignore any posts about him or his shitty empire. Stop using the behaviors of his idiot stans to argue with me. I am not them.
  What I do care about is a community telling people what they can or cannot post, not through rules changes, not through mod action, but by agreeing internally to bully every person who dares to post what every tech publication is talking about.
  I think you need to evaluate why you let this shit trigger you. I mean, this is like going to a coffee shop and raising a stink because they sell pumpkin spice lattes. Don't consume it. Use Lemmy's tools to filter it out if you really need to.
  Its not the community's job to cater to your specific content desires. This isn't a news site. Its a place for people to talk about whatever they think technology is. It's your job to moderate what you pay attention to.
  
  Funny enough I think it's a hypocritical sentiment but on the other foot -- users who are tired of this news are going to eventually find some news they are interested in, and then resist having it sequestered somewhere else.
- What rss reader are you using? I've been using feeder and have like it so far. Also have freshRSS running but don't use it so much
  
  I've tried so many and I'm always on the hunt for better ones. I wss on Pallabre until it went abandonware. Currently on inoreader but still hunting.
  Problem is that I want something that can easily sync my feed and subscriptions across devices, but the ones that support that compromise in other areas. I might need to just settle for good import/export functionality. But Inoreader works for me for now.
  But the nice thing is there are a ton of RSS apps out there. So, theres bound to be something for everyone.

Or limit it to a pinned permathread?
- Just call it "Elon Madness"
  
  One for Elon, and another for Reddit.
  
  Melon ad-ness. It’s partly newsworthy but mostly free publicity.
- That's what !technology@beehaw.org does: https://lemmy.ml/post/2431344

Yeah, Lemmy is for obsessively shitposting about Reddit, not Twitter.
- Also, memes about that movie I was promoting.
  
  Yay oppenheimer
- We can keep that Twitter shit over on Mastodon where it belongs.

Currently chatting with the other mods about this and while we don't want the community to be overrun by Elon, the articles are some of the most upvoted in the past few days. It seems, that people do want to hear about what's going on but not at a rate that drowns out other content. We've been careful to prune out duplicates to keep the flow down, but the volume of Elon posts and Twitter / X is definitely... a lot. I do see how some find it annoying so we're keeping an eye on the situation, but I do agree it does meet the criteria of being both news and tech related. I assume that he'll eventually run out of Twitter pieces to break, right :P
Please do keep an open line of communication with us and all replies, feedback and opinions are always welcome! Cheers!
- why did you remove the Grindr unionization post
  
  @enu reply to this please
- It's not just an inconvenience. I unfollowed the sub because the quality of the content was poor. I want to learn about technology, not social media companies and every minutiae about their employees bowel movements. I'm getting more value from Linux than from here, despite the fact some of it is more low level than I'd like.
- I see the role of moderators as guiding the flow of people's interests. If you went solely on upvotes, it wouldn't matter what you called the community or whether it had moderators. If you want it to be about technology, make it that way. If you want it to be about the business decisions of social media companies tangentially related to technology, at least do the kindness of changing the name so that people don't mistakenly come here thinking they'll hear about new technology.
- Great, and thank you for implication and consideration. This community, like any other needs some rules or guide lines. Yet, if people are interested in other topics, they can just subscribe to communities about those other topics.
  To be more precise, "technology" "technology news" and "news" are very different subjects that may have their own communities.
- I believe the upvotes mainly come from rage engagement. I don't wanna see them either, but they provoke a reaction.
  
  It's not rage, it's amusement from watching the slow motion train wreck.

312 comments