twitter

Chris Knight's avatar

Regarding Murthy v. Missouri: the Supreme Court decision yesterday about government coercing social media companies to censor users’ activity based on political content.  SCOTUS decided that the plaintiffs had no standing and dismissed the lawsuit.

This seems like a colossal victory for the government and social media companies.  HOWEVER…

The case was *not* dismissed.  Today’s ruling dealt with the temporary injunction in the case, not the case itself.  The case was REMANDED, back down the legal chain.  It could still come before the high court where the plaintiffs can better frame their arguments with solid evidence of coercion and censorship.

I believe that such a thing is not only possible, it is almost guaranteed to happen.

Twitter, or X as it’s called now, is going to be VERY interesting to watch as it pertains to the case.  When Murthy v. Missouri was first filed it was confronting ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This line from the 1983 movie WarGames has come to mind in the past couple of days:

Except right now it’s Elon Musk instead of Dabney Coleman.  And instead of the WOPR computer the problem is that Twitter is, at the moment, complete junk.

A few years ago I embedded the timeline of my most recent tweets on this blog, in the right-hand column toward the top of the page.  It gradually came to be a great complement to the blog proper.  Instead of making a post about anything that I found interesting enough to share, I simply tweeted it and it would also come up on the blog.  It had become a “secondary spinal cord” of my humble website.

Well, as you can see, the timeline is gone.  There is just a link to my individual Twitter page and you can see some of my tweets there. I say ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Five years from now Twitter will barely exist.  If it still does its market value will be significantly wiped out compared to today.

The board of that company needs to fire Jack Dorsey, now.

Even worse than other tech giants, Twitter is trying to be both publisher and platform.  It’s not sustainably possible.  And it’s heading toward disaster.

Expect an ever larger exodus of users from Twitter to competitors like Gab and Parler (the latter is supposed to be back online soon after its web services was yanked by Amazon, arguably against the terms of the service contract)....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Well, it happened.  But from the looks of things I am in plenty of good company.

Last night I made a tweet on Twitter.  The now much-beleagured company that along with Facebook (is that a possible RICO charge?) has been censoring any mention of yesterday’s New York Post story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter and their dealings with Burisma.  Among other things.

There is a photograph of Hunter Biden using a crack pipe.  Or maybe meth.  I don’t know.  Meth would be a lot nastier.  But I know this photo exists.  I know because I have seen it.

So last night I made a Twitter post, along the lines of “the question that should be asked of every journalist, news outlet, and social media giant: Why should we trust you?”

Below that I added: “P.S.: there is a photo of Hunter Biden with a crack pipe.”

I just ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

In what might be the most hilarious case of unintended consequences in recent memory, today Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled that President Donald Trump was wrong to have blocked users from his Twitter feed… which inadvertently has officially designated Twitter (and by extension Facebook and YouTube and other social media outlets) to be common carriers like the telephone system!


In a 75-page ruling, Judge Buchwald declared that Twitter was a “designated public forum” on which Trump could not discriminate against selected readers by blocking their accounts. “This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, ‘block’ a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States,” Buchwald said ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Voting is underway until tomorrow night at midnight for The 4th Annual Shorty Awards, which is “a worldwide effort to engage hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to identify the best people and organizations on social media.”

So I’m gonna pitch the case to y’all that in my opinion, Addy Miller deserves to win a Shorty. Because she’s an incredibly talented young actress who is also immensely sweet and nice in real life, and she always takes time to interact with her growing number of fans.

In case you forgot who Addy is, here’s a reminder…

Yup, she’s the “little girl zombie” that Rick Grimes shot down in the very first scene of the very first episode of AMC’s megahit series The Walking Dead. And word is that she’s gotten involved in a bunch more great projects since then!

Here’s a pic from a few months ago, when ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

What a crazy day this has turned into!! A little while ago we were at Woods of Terror in nearby Guilford County and had our photo taken with Addy Miller, AKA the cute lil’ zombie girl from the very first episode of The Walking Dead. But before we did that, this afternoon there was the Trunk or Treat event at Fairview Baptist Church. What a great opportunity to pull off something that I had the idea for way back in the spring…

So here we are: Kristen Bradford as Naomi Pryce, Yours Truly as William Shatner, and Steven Glaspie as Big Deal from the TV commercials for Priceline!

But that’s not all! After Kristen posted that pic onto her Facebook page I immediately Twitter-ed about it.

And William Shatner himself re-tweeted it!!!

Click on the link, and behold the visual record of our epic geek ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This photo is so fascinating, and I can’t quite articulate why. Pope Bendict XVI, using an iPad 2 and quite obviously on Twitter, to “tweet” a brief message to inaugurate the Vatican’s official news site.

And what was the Holy Father’s first message in 140 characters or less?

“Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI”

The Catholic Church was the primary repository of knowledge and learning in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire on through to the Renaissance. To have gone from a collection of scrolls and parchments, to seeing this photo of its leader communicating to the world with a piece of high-tech silicon and glass…

As I said: “fascinating”!

(But I’m also wondering if His Holiness might use his snazzy new gizmo for the occasional game of Angry Birds. Not that ...

Read more