from the whims-are-not-policy dept

It’s been clear because the takeover, that Elon’s working Twitter completely based mostly on his fleeting and oft-changing whims. The bizarre choice final week to immediately, with one week’s discover, remove the free tier for Twitter’s primary API, has create a little bit of an uproar, as tons of instruments, providers, and helpful bots made use of it. Many have been posting farewell messages on Twitter, main Musk (as he appears to do all too typically) to announce a coverage change in a reply tweet. He did this when he rolled again his bizarrely silly coverage that you just had been no longer allowed to link to other social media (a coverage so clearly silly, that solely Musk’s mom would defend it). Musk rolled that one again in a reply tweet — which means a tweet that only a few folks would see, as a result of they don’t present up practically as a lot.

Right here, Musk responded to a tweet from the automated @PepitoTheCat account, which identified his account must be shut down beneath this new coverage. The brand new coverage, based on Musk on this reply tweet (which bought many fewer views that his common tweets) is that:

I suppose we might give all Verified customers entry to the API for posts like this

Responding to suggestions, Twitter will allow a lightweight, write-only API for bots offering good content material that’s free

Actually.

So… the coverage is perhaps that “all verified customers” get entry to the API… however just for “posts like this.” Or… it may very well be {that a} “write-only API” (don’t even get me began on how nonsensical that is) for “bots offering good content material that’s free.”

The purpose is: these will not be insurance policies. These are mind fart whims. That is no option to run a enterprise with many tens of millions of customers.

After all, it’s paying homage to the naivety that Musk has demonstrated about all of this earlier than. Like when he declared that content material moderation was easy: you simply delete the “flawed and unhealthy” stuff, and assist the “good” content material.

Okay, genius: outline “good.” Outline “good” in a way that your stay group of flying monkeys can put it into apply with out having to continually seek the advice of your tweet replies to see in the event that they’re doing it proper.

The method of content material moderation on a reliable belief & security group entails crafting a coverage that may be understood by the group answerable for carrying it out. Creating a very distinctive coverage could be one that almost all customers can perceive.

None of that’s taking place right here. Musk’s random “effectively, if it’s good” they will get some kind of bizarre sorta API entry just isn’t fixing something. That is what good belief & security groups truly do, and what they’re expert at doing. It’s a relentless problem, after all, as a result of as you write insurance policies, you’ll continually be working up towards exceptions and issues that problem the insurance policies. However saying “make an exception for ‘good’ bots” is worse than ineffective.

It’s merely reinforcing simply how dangerous and ridiculous it’s for anybody to construct something that depends on Twitter in the present day. Who is aware of what nonsense will come from a random reply Tweet to a cat meme tomorrow?

In the meantime, I’ll simply observe that over the weekend, I found three new providers being constructed on the Mastodon API which might be changing issues I used to make use of Twitter for. Certainly one of which, FeedSeer, is principally identical to TweetShelf, an unimaginable Twitter software that appears prone to must shut down thanks to those adjustments.

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