A very good guide to our brand new internet from my friend Brandy.

https://embedded.substack.com/p/my-internet-brandy-zadrozny

@mmasnick @mmasnick I think what COULD make this place take off is an intuitive app with an incredibly simplified signup flow.

There’s a lot of bullshit out there about how you have to sign up for Mastodon like six times to follow the people you like. The backbone is good here, it just needs a couple of good UX people to build on top of it, which could be anybody. I know that app Ivory is trying this and it could win.

@Dave3307 Yes.

Was thinking about trying out pine tar soap and read some reviews on Amazon. I’m even more confused than before.

"Smells like an electrical fire." 4/5 stars.

New Mandiant report today assesses with moderate confidence that the GRU directed the pro-Russian "hacktivist" DDoS attack on Mississippi's Secretary of State, keeping it offline most of election day. I expect this to be a huge concern come 2024.
https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/information-operations-2022-midterm-elections

Hello Mastodon!

All in on Argentina now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/world/americas/argentina-world-cup-witches.html

If it behooves you, instead of thinking any more about Twitter—hit us with some PDFs, some incomprehensible sociology, a fact about your town, some poetry no one cares about, political theory that will never land, obscure social history, climate links, math things, some tech so obscure 20 people use it. We want your inner noise. Just push the gas on your own ephemeralism and launch us into the future.

❤️

I heard I'm supposed to do an #introduction.

lol

Woah. Watching Twitter misuse our research by putting warnings on links to Mastodon.

Here for example is the warning that @georgetakei "may be unsafe."

In a study led by Ben Kaiser at Princeton, we tested the effect of interstitial warnings on user behavior.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/warnings-work-combating-misinformation-without-deplatforming

Statement from Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee:

This type of pointless banning moves the Overton Window.

If tomorrow Musk says “it was only temporary” a bunch of newsrooms will just carry on as normal having “won” the argument.

Twitter suspends journalists who have been covering Elon Musk and the company. They include Ryan Mac of the NYT, CNN’s Donie O'Sullivan of CNN, WaPo’s Drew Harwell, Micah Lee of The Intercept and indie journalists Aaron Rupar and Keith Olbermann
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-suspends-journalists-covering-elon-musk-company-rcna62032

No warning. I report on Elon Musk and other topics for The Washington Post and will keep doing so because free speech and transparency are important for the world.

In the last few days I ... wrote about Elon Musk. I posted links to publicly available, legally acquired data as well as links to Mastodon, which also now is banned on Twitter.

Elon Musk is free to ban whoever he wants from Twitter, just like people are free to take their speech somewhere else.