As far as I can tell Twitter ads are currently some sort of scam used to feed money from stolen credit cards into the site - this is why they're all from verified accounts with crypto/ape avatars. Hard to say who's benefiting but has to be worth reporting to the FTC or Stripe or someone.
As for Bluesky and Japan, a bunch of accounts I follow (minor celebrities like game VAs and some artists) actually have moved over there. Not sure why; current status is something like:
- Twitter is doing fine in Japan, the ads are still legit businesses and it's not full of Nazis.
- but people are starting to notice the no moderation; in the big earthquake recently there were a lot of fake posts and every trending hashtag was filled with spam.
- Japanese people love new apps, probably don't want people taking their usernames, and "Bluesky" sounds like a Japanese name. (feel like the last one matters)
One thing that might be an issue is Japanese users tend to run into problems with Western moderation because there's nothing Japanese people like doing online more than drawing naked anime girls, which Twitter doesn't care about but other services sure do. (Especially non-US ones where it's often actually illegal.)
It always baffles me when people take the time on social media to say "X suggestion that isn't meant for me is bad and hurtful!". Just move on, bro. It's not for you, and that's OK.
The wild thing about that Gould piece is that if that's how benevolent her husband is coming off in her own accounting, I cannot imagine how things were in reality. That guy must have the patience of Job, because quite honestly, almost any one of those things could be a dealbreaker in a marriage. Plenty of people divorce over financial infidelity alone, let alone the rest of that stuff.
I think this piece is disappointingly closed-minded, to be honest, not as thoughtful as the output I've found from your other writing. You seem to think that once someone does something embarrassing or has a crisis, the only reason they would share it would be for masochistic attention-getting. I haven't read the Gould piece so I can't comment on it—though Phoebe Maltz Bovy had a good piece about it that seemed to derive some value from it (https://phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/goulded-cages )—but the Cowles article has, I think, good actual reasons to exist; it brings readers actual value, not just prurient disaster-gawking.
First, stupid though she may be, obviously Cowles is not the only person to be taken in like this, so apparently there are a lot of people out there with this variety of stupidity, some of whom will read this piece and get a good lesson from it. So that's a reason for the article to exist, as a cautionary tale. After all, one thing scammers rely on is people being too humiliated to tell other people what they've done—that's how Victor Lustig was able to sell the Eiffel Tower twice.
Second, I think there's genuine psychological insight here about how a claim (like the CIA agent) that would seem absurd if someone led off with it becomes more plausible if there have been earlier steps that seem believable (Amazon, then the FTC) and if you're under the influence of fear or stress so you're not thinking clearly. The author points out that police get false confessions using similar manipulations; someone I talked with about the piece said it reminded her of how cults work, starting with broadly plausible and seemingly helpful principles and gradually getting more out there once you're hooked. Now, you can say "I wouldn't buy the CIA thing no matter how many layers they gave me first," and I think you're probably right; I bet you wouldn't believe in Xenu either, and that's great. But that brings us back to the value of this piece for people who aren't as prepared! "Just don't be stupid" is obviously not worthwhile advice.
Basically I think "just don't write this kind of story" is a pretty pointless message, and I certainly got much less out of it than I got from the Cowles piece, and I imagine less than I'd get from the Gould one too. Sorry to be critical but I think you invite that with your dismissive tone.
> And the site’s ads are still a disaster.
As far as I can tell Twitter ads are currently some sort of scam used to feed money from stolen credit cards into the site - this is why they're all from verified accounts with crypto/ape avatars. Hard to say who's benefiting but has to be worth reporting to the FTC or Stripe or someone.
As for Bluesky and Japan, a bunch of accounts I follow (minor celebrities like game VAs and some artists) actually have moved over there. Not sure why; current status is something like:
- Twitter is doing fine in Japan, the ads are still legit businesses and it's not full of Nazis.
- but people are starting to notice the no moderation; in the big earthquake recently there were a lot of fake posts and every trending hashtag was filled with spam.
- Japanese people love new apps, probably don't want people taking their usernames, and "Bluesky" sounds like a Japanese name. (feel like the last one matters)
One thing that might be an issue is Japanese users tend to run into problems with Western moderation because there's nothing Japanese people like doing online more than drawing naked anime girls, which Twitter doesn't care about but other services sure do. (Especially non-US ones where it's often actually illegal.)
Also, that is an incredible buried lede wtf
The Weekly Scroll is definitely a better name
Re: Should Leftists Work Out?
It always baffles me when people take the time on social media to say "X suggestion that isn't meant for me is bad and hurtful!". Just move on, bro. It's not for you, and that's OK.
The wild thing about that Gould piece is that if that's how benevolent her husband is coming off in her own accounting, I cannot imagine how things were in reality. That guy must have the patience of Job, because quite honestly, almost any one of those things could be a dealbreaker in a marriage. Plenty of people divorce over financial infidelity alone, let alone the rest of that stuff.
I think this piece is disappointingly closed-minded, to be honest, not as thoughtful as the output I've found from your other writing. You seem to think that once someone does something embarrassing or has a crisis, the only reason they would share it would be for masochistic attention-getting. I haven't read the Gould piece so I can't comment on it—though Phoebe Maltz Bovy had a good piece about it that seemed to derive some value from it (https://phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/goulded-cages )—but the Cowles article has, I think, good actual reasons to exist; it brings readers actual value, not just prurient disaster-gawking.
First, stupid though she may be, obviously Cowles is not the only person to be taken in like this, so apparently there are a lot of people out there with this variety of stupidity, some of whom will read this piece and get a good lesson from it. So that's a reason for the article to exist, as a cautionary tale. After all, one thing scammers rely on is people being too humiliated to tell other people what they've done—that's how Victor Lustig was able to sell the Eiffel Tower twice.
Second, I think there's genuine psychological insight here about how a claim (like the CIA agent) that would seem absurd if someone led off with it becomes more plausible if there have been earlier steps that seem believable (Amazon, then the FTC) and if you're under the influence of fear or stress so you're not thinking clearly. The author points out that police get false confessions using similar manipulations; someone I talked with about the piece said it reminded her of how cults work, starting with broadly plausible and seemingly helpful principles and gradually getting more out there once you're hooked. Now, you can say "I wouldn't buy the CIA thing no matter how many layers they gave me first," and I think you're probably right; I bet you wouldn't believe in Xenu either, and that's great. But that brings us back to the value of this piece for people who aren't as prepared! "Just don't be stupid" is obviously not worthwhile advice.
Basically I think "just don't write this kind of story" is a pretty pointless message, and I certainly got much less out of it than I got from the Cowles piece, and I imagine less than I'd get from the Gould one too. Sorry to be critical but I think you invite that with your dismissive tone.