Twitter is broken. Thanks, Elon...
About six months ago, Elon Musk bought your favorite neighborhood bar. Then he fired veteran bouncers and bartenders, tried to stiff the landlord and at least one vendor, and demanded that regulars pay a cover charge. He has frequently struggled to serve his customers, yet he has penalized them for mentioning the competition. He has tamped down the revelry in general, really — a lot of conversation at his watering hole has been drowned out by Musk’s own never-ending stage act, which consists mainly of him yelling dad jokes at customers through a bullhorn. Pour one out for Twitter, then. I had been open to Musk’s purchase of the social network, but half a year in, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Musk moved fast and broke nearly everything — the speed and totality with which he has ruined the site has been almost impressive. By Musk’s own reckoning, the company is now worth less than half of what he paid for it. It has lost many large advertisers, most of its employees and, with them, much of its functionality.

If you’re wondering what the rainbow pentagon thing is that a lot of accounts use, it’s the Fediverse logo :fediverse:

It’s a public domain / CC0 design, its original designer shared a high quality copy at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fediverse_logo_proposal.svg

It represents all the different server types that make up the Fediverse (https://fedi.tips/what-other-kinds-of-servers-are-on-the-fediverse/)

(Note: There can be no official logo on the Fediverse as there’s no central authority to make anything official. However, this logo is by far the most widely used one.)

@feditips

Chris Trottier (@atomicpoet@mastodon.social) (Mastodon)
Media are calling the Fediverse a failure because they want it to fail—and they believe if they repeat the same narrative, it will some day come true. But they were wrong about the Internet in 1995 when they called it a novelty. They were wrong about social media in 2008 when they called it a fad. They are wrong about the Fediverse today. 11 million people are here now. 12 million people will likely be here next month. Most startups wish they could “fail” like we do!

@mattnavarra @ubiquity75 The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Chris Messina. It reads as follows:

“And, it’s done. I’m no longer legacy verified. Not that I care (I don’t), but this is as good a time as any to bid farewell. So long, and thanks for all the hashtags.”

Chris then appends a screenshot of his Twitter profile with a red circle drawn around the place his verified mark used to be.

Please always include #AltText for visually impaired users. #AltTextForYou

@Rachel_Thorn

The End of Computer Magazines in America by Harry McCracken

The April issues of Maximum PC and MacLife are currently on sale at a newsstand near you—assuming there is a newsstand near you. They’re the last print issues of these two venerable computer magazines, both of which date to 1996 (and were originally known, respectively, as Boot and MacAddict). Starting with their next editions, both […]