• Otter
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    9 months ago

    Those ads don’t even look like they’re useful to anyone, they’re like the “He figured out how to download a car. Doctors hate him!” ads from a decade ago

    just why

    • Match!!
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      649 months ago

      Bots advertising to bots, like Facebook

      • Ken27238
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        309 months ago

        But Elon hates bots! That’s why he bought twitter in the first place!

    • @coffee_poops
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      89 months ago

      Three only people who will pay to advertise to neo-nazis.

      • Flying Squid
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        69 months ago

        The thing is, neo-Nazis are ignorant, so they’re exactly the people to advertise your scam to.

    • @[email protected]
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      -119 months ago

      Maybe it’s a kind of dummy content for the test phase? Pretty sure too many people blocked ads and this is their solution

      • dinckel
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        249 months ago

        No real brand wants to advertise on his platform anymore, so he’s serving dogshit ads like this now, to the first people who pay. It’s not a conspiracy

        • ZeroCool
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          9 months ago

          Yep, we’re about six months away from Elon Musk personally hawking snake-oil diet supplements and survivalist gear to doomsday preppers a lá Alex Jones. Heck, once Alex Jones’ bankruptcy proceedings are finished, Elon can just buy out his stock, cross out Info and sell them as “ElonWars Supplements.

        • @[email protected]
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          19 months ago

          Yes but the question is why would anyone pay for ads like that? How is that investment going to make any sense?

  • @[email protected]
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    769 months ago

    Instead of renaming it to “X,” Elon magically renamed his platform to “X, formerly known as Twitter.”

    • Otter
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      159 months ago

      It annoys me more than it should every time I read that. Like one person gets to sit down every day and make some proclamation, and now everyone else has to go along with it.

      I’m not sure what is better, but even something like “X/Twitter” might be easier than repeatedly saying “X, formerly known as Twitter”

        • Turun
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          39 months ago

          I love the /-style of writing it, precisely because of the way it would be pronounced.

  • ryan213
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    709 months ago

    Hahahahhahah why are there still users there?!

    • Otter
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      229 months ago

      For some people, it’s because not enough of a particular community has moved… somehow

      Some academic / research / medical communities for example. For others it’s the journalists that have yet to move

      • @[email protected]
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        89 months ago

        And still too many artists instead of pages like deviantart, artstation or pixiv.
        vTubers of various agencies and indied also using it as a main communication platform. Youtube communities usually as a 2nd platform.

        • @[email protected]
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          39 months ago

          Can’t speak for the rest but deviantart turned into a free speech absolutist shithole that caters to racists and bigots, no different to twitter.

          • @Vendetta9076
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            39 months ago

            What when? I just use it for rainmeter skins to be fair.

            • @[email protected]
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              9 months ago

              Hadn’t used it for a couple of years, I went back there shortly after the whole Rhode v Wade debacle in the US and the place was a cesspool, the forums were horrendous. I actually went and wiped my account because I didn’t want to be tempted to go back.

              Also all the old artist resources and community made stuff that I used to be part of was either inaccessible, unfindable, or just wasn’t catered to anymore.

    • @[email protected]
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      49 months ago

      Because there’s no viable replacement.

      Before you or someone else mentions Mastodon (and probably compare it to the Reddit migration to Lemmy; I’ve been through this conversation before): Both Twitter and Mastodon are built on the concept of following people. If those people don’t migrate to another platform, then the people following them won’t migrate, either.

      But Reddit and Lemmy are built on the concept of following ideas. It doesn’t matter if one person who, for example, enjoys anime, only stays on Reddit. Others who who enjoy anime may move to Lemmy and become part of one or more of the anime communities on Lemmy instead.

      Basically, the comparison isn’t 1-to-1.

    • @[email protected]
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      49 months ago

      I can’t speak for all, but: porn. I have a bunch of people I follow, it’s literally the only reason I still have an account. Waiting on a bluesky invite but not all have signaled migration to another platform so… I just want to see twinks in kink gear sigh

      • Granite
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        79 months ago

        DM me for a Bsky invite*

        Hoping the cross-platform messaging has been fixed.

        • @[email protected]
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          9 months ago

          The ability/button to message you is disabled in Thunder, but you can hit me up with any public contact method I have, just check my site (username + .com).

          Edit: got one :)

    • Zellith
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      49 months ago

      I figure most don’t know where else to shit post. I personally can’t think of a Twitter alternative of the top of my head. Note I’m a hermit.

    • Y|yukichigai
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      29 months ago

      Porn. The porn side of Twitter is still intact and really quite… okay I was gonna say “wholesome” but maybe I should say “holesome”? Ehh? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh?

      …anyway.

      That said, a lot of adult content creators have been creating accounts on bsky once they get invites. If bsky opens up more there could actually be an exodus.

      • @[email protected]
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        29 months ago

        Only three of my Twitter porn creators are on bs so far (out of ~100), but one of those is very… important (?) to me. He’s a lanky tall hung uncut sub and nudist. Whenever I check Twitter, I’d always go to his page first.

        We only need a few creators like that to tip the scale heavily, imo. Good content, large audience, regular updates, just nudging their viewers a bit.

  • Kalistia
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    409 months ago

    To be honest, the only reasonable question is: what are these people still doing on this crappy thing?

  • @[email protected]
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    189 months ago

    My solution works fine on Android

    1. Delete the Twitter app.
    2. Open the site in Firefox Mobile
    3. Open the Firefox menu and choose Install
    4. Install uBlock Origin into Firefox

    Now you have a launcher icon for Twitter that opens in Firefox and has all the ads stripped out. I believe there is even a “Twitter Control Panel” add on that will remove a lot of the remaining clickbait from the page too - what’s trending etc.

    • @[email protected]
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      9 months ago

      But then I’d have that terrible X logo on my phone instead of the much-less-terrible bird logo.

      I have yet to update to any version of the app that uses that logo.

      • @[email protected]
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        29 months ago

        Use Mastadon or some other social media platform. Not always a choice and if you’re stuck with Twitter you might as well ensure you’re not enriching the platform.

    • Dr. Dabbles
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      59 months ago

      Why? They’ve seen what we’ve seen and deemed it acceptable. Let them suffer the consequences. They’ve earned it.

          • @[email protected]
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            59 months ago

            And yet they still are. And yet you still complain that they still are. And yet you whinge that they aren’t elsewhere.

            If twitter is dead then why are you still talking about it?

            • Dr. Dabbles
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              09 months ago

              I think you mean to ask your question to the original poster, not me. Since I didn’t bring it up, only comment on it. But I get it, you miss your friends.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    79 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Mashable reports that users on X, formerly known as Twitter, have seen unlabeled ads in their feeds while scrolling through the company’s mobile apps.

    When users tap them, they’re taken to other websites, with no way to block or report them.

    Unlike normal ads that are just posts from company X accounts and have an “Ad” label, these new ones have no account associated with them.

    If you’re just scrolling, the embedded image and clickbait-style text might make you think it’s just another post.

    A “profile” picture made from the embedded image completes the illusion.

    Neither I nor my colleagues at The Verge have seen the new ads in our own feeds.


    The original article contains 152 words, the summary contains 112 words. Saved 26%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @[email protected]
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    69 months ago

    Downvote Musk spam.

    The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.

  • @[email protected]
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    29 months ago

    I only kept the app on my phone for the rare occasion I wanted to read a full post from one linked here. Those have evaporated so it lost its last little bit of usefulness.

  • @[email protected]
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    9 months ago

    The article linked also has ads I can’t block or report. This is just more “rocket man bad” crap.

    • @[email protected]
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      69 months ago

      These are unlabeled ads presented as legit tweets. Are the ads on the article disguised as news content?

      • @[email protected]
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        9 months ago

        Yes. Scroll to the bottom of the article. The ads all look like related stories (“sponsored content” section on verge). That’s how most sites do it too, and actually most are way worse and look more like related news without any sponsored content indication.

        It’s nothing new. It’s as normal as google putting sponsored ads as the first page of results, which look like search results and also can’t be blocked or reported.

          • @[email protected]
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            19 months ago

            Any idea how to block ads in the Twitter Android app? Or, rather, which sites to block? I’m using AdGuard to block ads on all apps, but it doesn’t seem to affect the Twitter app. Either the Twitter app runs ads differently or the ads aren’t part of any of the blocklists.

            • @[email protected]
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              29 months ago

              The twitter ones are really hard, because I think they’re interstitial with the actual twitter content. I haven’t used the platform in ages, either, but I think they come form the same domain as the rest of the content.

              To see if that’s the case, you could close everything, use the app and wait until you get an ad, then check the logs of your ad blocker to see what domains sre being hit. Pick a suspicious one, block it, and try to load the content. You’ll break something almost guaranteed, but it’s easy to just unblock the domain afterwards

              I’m not too sure how adguard works, I’ve never tried it, but I think it worked on the same concept as pihole etc, by blocking domains. As long as there’s a log file, you should be able to fiddle and see if you can block just that ad domain.

              Someone with more direct experience will likely have more to say on the matter, of course. This is just the technique I used to block ads on my city’s parking app - which I have to put up with AFTER I pay for parking! Heh

    • Swyper
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      19 months ago

      X, formerly known as Twitter, is one of the largest social media platforms. To not report on a change like this that injects ads that you’d see on “news” websites with clickbaity articles would be silly.