People are having trouble following Harris’s campaign Twitter account

Twitter is not a utility. We really need to stop treating techbro services like utilities. If we feel they actually are utilities, the government can step in and make that claim and the appropriate changes.
- You would be shocked to know how many people use TikTok as a search engine
  
  I'm not on tiktok, but I'll admit to using YouTube as a search engine a lot. Also googling something and immediately hitting the video tab before reading any of the results.
- If it's a private company that con do what it wants, like blocking political opponents, it should not be under safe harbor protections.
  That's the point in yelling about this. If Elon wants a private forum for him and his mates, he should also be fully responsible when his mates posts child porn on his servers.
  
  Which safe harbor protections?
  
  Wanna Make Big Tech Monopolies Even Worse? Kill Section 230 by Cory Doctorow
- The EU has declared Twitter and a few others to be gate-keepers and they will now be held to a higher standard. But I don't think the EU is going to use this power to save US democracy.
- I disagree. We should nationalize it.

Imagine trying winning chess when the board itself plays against you. Twitter/X must be dropped immediately, it's a censorship-propaganda machine which is now only works for those who control it.
- Wasn't that the case when progressives controlled it? Either way, fk X and all other social media services.
  
  Jack Dorsey was a progressive?

If only the federal government could implement some sort of server that would allow them to self-host social media for officials and prominent candidates. I wish there were some well-known and tested service that other governments were using and they could just implement in the USA.
- If only there was some ~~Soviet~~ Union with their own mastodon
- Sounds impossible! Does this technology even exist?????
- If they build it, will anyone come? Or does private social media only work because the user base is already scrolling endlessly there?
  
  @XeroxCool welcome to fediverse. I'm replying to you from mastodon.
  
  if they build it, the press will go there and report on what's posted there
  
  This kind of event is precisely what drives things like social media adoption. If Harris and the DNC organized an actual messaging campaign and took advantage of this energy to promote Twitter alternatives, a lot of people would join.
  
  Newsies will go there for the announcements. That's the wedge that keeps growing.
  Not all growth strategies are just having the bandwagon.
  
  I mean, it wouldn’t stop them from continuing to post to Xitter. They can do both!
- I don't think legally the Federal Government is allowed to do that. Maybe if the service is available to everyone. Now that option would be pretty cool. I'm fine with nationalized federated social media hosts.
  
  That sounds pretty shakey. Federal employees have their own email addresses, but you can't just go ask for a .gov email address, you have to get a job with the government for one. The federal government has plenty of places that only some are allowed to post to. Now, if they were to say, only allow certain people to have accounts with no apperent rhyme or reason that would be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit, but they could simply say "any verified current or former federal elected official, federal department head, or state governor is allowed an account" and expand or shrink the scope as needed. The fediverse honestly makes that so much cleaner than something they host themselves with all of the nuances of what is and isn't federated, the government could simply configure the federation to meet their legal and liability needs while users can stream in from any fediverse instance
  
  are you allowed to post on whitehouse.gov?

Free speech and so on.

Oh noooo....
Stop using fucking Twitter
- Can't believe Biden let the world know his decision first on Twitter, even before the White house Press office.
  
  Had to let the Republicans know first, so they didn't cry "fake news" for a week.

Sigh. Not surprised.. given that Musk is a hypocrite on free speech completely. It's getting wild. I use this place now because after years of no issues.. suddenly I'm shadow banned on Reddit. Instead of getting mad I just left. Screw those who would stifle others but pretend to believe the opposite.
- Welcome to Lemmy!
  
  Thank you, much appreciated
- Reddit is far-right garbage run by radicals. Some instances on Lemmy are far-left garbage run by radicals, but you can route around them.
- You are definitely not alone. You are in good company here. Welcome aboard!

Yet another reason to ditch that platform.

do the entire world a favor and delete twitter already

What are these fucking people doing on Twitter anyway? Why they hanging out with the Nazis? You're still on Twitter this point I have some healthy suspicions about your character.
- People go where they think the people are. X is still the closest thing to Twitter since Elon came along. I deleted my account, but feel like I’m in the minority.
  
  You know I once read this really amazing book called They Thought They Were Free. It was written by a journalist right after World War II who went to Germany and talked to normal Germans just German citizens. About how they allowed Nazis to take over how they lived in a Nazi Society how they were okay with it how they kind of joined in on it. A lot of the things they said being said in this thread. It's all the same fucking logic.
  
  If they choose to support Twitter, they must expect to take the consequences. It's a known cess pit. Being active on a centralised network does harm. You can't grizzle after drawing innocent people in to such a bad place.
- They are on Twitter because nothing has displaced Twitter for what it is. That's tricky because people follow the content, so the content generators, the heavy hitters, have to choose en masse to go somewhere else.
  
  I think that's what that Dulles brother said about why he kept doing business with the Nazis even into the 1940s. Even when the rest of the heads of his business said you should stop doing this we don't need to be invested with the Nazis they just invaded Poland he said no money still there I want to hang out with Nazis.
  Cuz here's the thing if everyone who wasn't one left that site it wouldn't be a problem anymore, a different site would be used.
- I'm on Twitter because all the OSINT people who track the invasion/war in Ukraine basically only use Twitter. I like following OSINT info to get a real perspective on what's going on.
  
  I'd like in on that perspective but I'm not going to twitter for anyone. Shit is toxic and stupid.
  On Ukraine, got any non twitter suggestions for perspective? Also, not familiar with OSINT. Care to enlighten me? Open source intel tools?
  
  Maybe it would behoove you to remind those people that they're on a website run by someone who has a material and vested interest in the destruction of Ukraine. That they should change to another website.
- Porn
  
  If you can't porn from Pornhub because of silly age verification laws. Twitter is the next best place, I guess?
- Unfortunately Twitter is the absolute best source for the most up to date breaking sports news and nothing that I'm aware of comes close.
- Not all parts of twitter is chock full of Nazis. The parts I follow probably won't ever move over to Mastodon, so I'm stuck with Twitter. The good thing is that part barely has any Nazis.
  Good job on brushing everyone on Twitter with the same broad stroke, though. Really shows how progressive you can be.
  
  The good thing is that part barely has any Nazis.
  What was that saying about letting a few nazis into your bar as long as they stay on the side and don't cause trouble?

Good. They should abandon twitter and all other racist, misogynist, transphobic, xenophobic, homophobic bigoted platforms. I hope they have a bad time there.
- Political parties should host their own mastodon instances, and give their members accounts. Companies should do the same. It removes all the problems of imitation because the organisation stands as guarantor that the account is the official one.
  
  That’s actually a pretty good idea
  
  I'm not sure on the capabilities of Mastodon. But companies will never go for this if Mastodon doesn't support saml or active directory (or other Auth systems). It needs to integrate with their enterprise tools.
- I tend to feel the same but at the same time, the shadowy figures involved there would love it to see the ratio of extremist increase. An exodus of more sane members might play straight into their hands.
  That said, I can’t understand why anyone without an official state role is still on that platform.

This reminds me that someone set up a donation link via actblue where donations via that link come with the message that she and her campaign should set up their own mastodon server.
They are up to $40,000 as I type this.
So if you were thinking of donating anyway, you can go through here to point that money to a “cause” you want her to consider. May not happen, but at least we might get it on their radar.
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon-for-harris
The originator of this started with this Masto post:
https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/112831902073897712
- Share this on !fediverse, this is a very good idea
- This has the opportunity to be a great battle.
  Harris, backed by Mastodon users vs Trump, backed by Twitter bots.
  
  Isn't Truth Social essentially just out-of-the-box Mastodon?
- The VP having control over the platform they announce things?
  What a novel idea /s
  So dumb how much power twitter got for politics. Fediverse for life!
- Nice, I did it through this portal. Thanks for sharing.

Why don't they use mastodon also?
- :(
  (Note, Nov ‘23)
  
  It pisses me off how twitter went to fuck. People cried that we need something not owned by some rich cunt. We told everyone to join mastodon so that wouldn't happen again. What did people do? Wait for another rich cunt (mark suckerberg) to start a clone and the original creator of twitter to make another one and join that...
  People are dumb as shit... I'm sick of it.
  
  What I'm saying is that on twitter they could promote the mastodon account
  
  ...but these people just use it as a way of talking to the media. As long as people of power and influence shift, so will the press, and then so will everyone else.
  Home many times do you hear "Trump, on his platform truth.social, said...."? They've gone there because he's gone there.
  
  Makes me curious if you get more attention on mastodon though. Like if I pitched something on Lemmy there's a good chance I get the same number of eye balls compared to Reddit, not counting ads. (Although if Kamala posted about Linux and/or Star Trek that's front page, no ad money needed! Lol)
  
  in november of 23, i had a client that let me schedule mastodon posts. this was not made by someone who uses mastodon.
  
  Nice graphic! But this data seems wildly out of date. For example, LinkedIn has over 1 billion users. Unless this is referring to weekly active users or something, but the row just says “users”.
- The EU has an instance
- It's not about the campaigns not using Mastodon, it is about the voters. They are on Twitter still so that is where the campaign wants to meet them.
  Mastodon needs to be more widely known for that to be a realistic option.

I used to think "Elon Musk" was some type of fancy French perfume. I miss those days.
- It still could be!
  
  Viva la revolution?

Yeah, I have a problem too! No, wait. It's because I don't have an X/Twitter/whatever account.

Who would have guessed that a social media platform owned by an apartheid-loving fascist would trend conservative?

I'm not down with the perpetual victim-blaming against X/Twitter users here on Lemmy.
Sources like campaigns, news outlets, authors, studios, engineers, actors, comedians, etc. post on there because they basically have to -- if they want to get the word out, that is.
Consumers go there to read from the sources because they basically have to. While each source may have their own separate blog or whatever, X/Twitter is pretty much the only place that unifies those feeds. (I know, I miss the heyday of RSS too.)
Expecting people to just "take the hit" and go dark on their communications so we can build up alternatives to X/Twitter is not an acceptable recommendation.
What we need to do is:
Make it illegal to block third-party clients from interoperating with services
Compel providers of a certain size to expose a first-party API
Make it legal to reverse-engineer APIs so they can't just make the first-party API suck and call it a day
Then we integrate X/Twitter into the fediverse, so you can start using something else and still keep your X/Twitter stuff
- Victim blaming is a little extreme way to describe it, but yeah I don't blame politicians for using it, but I absolutely will blame them for exclusively using it and letting their media be controlled by a private entity, especially one that is no longer publicly accessible.
  POSSE (publish [on your] own site, syndicate everywhere) is the way to go. Don't assume everyone is just using a platform, especially if you're providing a public or essential service.
  re your points, I think the EU's gatekeeper law was pretty good.
  
  By the way, not calling you out specifically. Just seems to be a common theme in the comments, and a regularly-occurring sentiment.
  
  POYOSSE
- Twitter isn't a service. It is a useful platform and should not be ignored, but it is a larger, worldwide version of r/conservative at this point. Go in expecting hostility and "untraceable account bugs that tHeY juST cANt seEm tO ResOLve!".
- I have literally never logged into Twitter.
- What we need to do is: Make it illegal to run a business
  Twitter doesn't owe anyone anything. Kamala could go post anywhere else but she's not even though the left hates Elon.
  The idea that we should pass laws to force twitter to show certain info and expose endpoints to support third party apps is ridiculous. It's their data and they aren't putting a gun to anyone's head.
  Passing a law forcing the government to use only FLOSS software for day-to-day activities solves this problem, actually makes sense on a principle level and isn't a ridiculous overreach of power.
  
  Well, I gotta ask then... How do you feel about HP's printer business model? The fact that you can only use it with HP-approved ink, in HP-approved ways. Do you think that's a fair business model which will stand or fall on its own merits, or an abusive one that prevents consumers from using their own stuff the way they want to? Should it be legal?
  
  FLOSS software
  Lol

Because the butthurt south african shitstain wont let them. Crybaby cannot abide differing ideas

I'm surprised she even has one, given that Musk would shadow ban it anyway. Seems like wasted effort.
- Yeah if I were depending on Twitter I would have been informing people of my plans to move for months now.

I can't see her facebook or instagram, either!
Yet somehow I continue on voting straight ticket Democrat without asking or telling those billionaires what I am going to do first.
Unloved, alone, and linkedout. Hardly human. I am become life not worth life.
- IG has a default setting to not show you political suggestions from accounts you do not follow. I'm guessing that is the same for Facebook. You can change it in the settings though.

Fuck Twitter for doing this shit. Musk should just jump in a hole with all his money as we bury him with it, Sunset Riders style.

i followed it just fine on threads.
- Is it possible to follow the Threads account from the Fediverse?
  
  yes, but it's one-way: your content won't be integrated back in, so you aren't part of the conversation.
  
  i don't think right now as it doesn't seem like they've enabled federation from threads on their account

- Yeah, turns out it was an automated response to the account getting too many follows in a short time. There's enough genuinely bad things about the platform that we don't need to get mad at some speculation.
- Weird right? You'd think they might check. Then they would be able to write something like this.
  An initial search for KamalaHQ on The New Republic’s X account also found that the campaign account is limited. The campaign account showed up in repeated subsequent searches, seeming to suggest the issue is being resolved.
- Over all I upvote posts if its something I would like to know about.
  In this case its good to know that there was some limit issue that (as on the page say) is already resolved.
  If it was intentionally done or not we will never know, but its good to know if it would happen again that there is some limit.
  I upvote because:
  even if it was some wrongly implemented limit in this case, the shadow banning/hidding posts (or like in this case blocking follow) will happen in the future on all large platforms, it's human nature to abuse it if you can get away with it
  I dont like big central platforms, I rather would like to have a transparent/open platform but I know it will never happen as servers costs money and people like "free" and convenient stuff so platforma will keep monetizing people activity
  if it could be even slightly true I rather have as many (affected) people know about it that there was an issue with follow and now it is resolved so they can retry to follow

Hm I deleted my twitter account last year. Maybe I'll make a new one just to follow her

How much can this be abused before it is overdue to treat X as a common carrier?
Edit: why is this being downvoted? given how critical X is it should be regulated by the government(s). Yes we all moved to the fediverse but we are a minority, millions still rely on X for better or worse.
- You had one downvote, presumably from the person who replied to you twice.
  Edit what I can’t figure out though is now why they continue to pileup for you given your question isn’t wild.
  Idk dude.
- I'm childish and downvote anyone who refers to twitter as "x". It's like you're on your knees licking Elons bum, right after he told you to call it x, you did what you were told lol.
  Also I never got on the twitter bandwagon as it just didn't appeal to me. My social media addiction was reddit.
  Twitter sucks. X is a letter. Or a variable in algebra.
  
  Oh dear. If I were I wouldn’t be advocating for the government to effectively seize Twitter. I hated the nepo apartheid baby before it was cool.
- why is this being downvoted?
  Because people know who you are.
- How much can you bullshit before you answer anyone's questions?

Not technology.

I hope she isn't a Zionist also..
- She’s not
- Rheeeeeeee