A Two-for-One Threads.net Sale! Transphobia and LLMs, Oh My!

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I woke up on my day off like I usually do, basically just procrastinating for hours and hours. And then I logged onto Mastodon, and then Threads. I like to start off my day by doing some posting, like you do. And then I saw that, uh, well, the official Threads account is attempting to commit career unaliving.

Post by @threads

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If you've followed along on the platform at all, you'd know that Threads has been very careful about controversy, politics, and news. So, it was kind of a big surprise to see them using the main official Threads account to promote works by one of the most transphobic authors in the world, who is constantly embroiled in hate campaigns on the platform formerly known as Twitter. So much so that even Elon Musk himself has asked that she ... post something else she's interested in.

While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex/gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 4, 2024

Essentially saying that while he agrees with violent transphobia, he wonders if the head of the TERF movement has any ... interests. You know, aside from what a stranger's genitals look like (I don't know why she doesn't just get a Pornhub account and put her addiction into a more private setting).

That the official Threads account would appear to endorse all of this, completely out-of-the-blue, and unprompted, is ... well, troubling. Especially since nearly every single reply to the thread is people trouncing Threads for being so tone-deaf as to make a post like that. Specifically, since we are in 2024, where the thought of Harry Potter and sorting houses should have been something that people stopped caring about over a decade ago, years after the series was concluded.

Post by @willforrestthewriter

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Post by @bealeiderman

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On that topic, I urge you to read a different book, such as Children of Time.

But, that was only the first, "What in the actual Hell?" coming from Threads, so far today. The second instance of oh-my-god-ery coming out of the platform, this time, isn't by the official account itself. Instead, it comes from a random with an average looking username, turning out to be an LLM, on a platform that is only a year old.

Post by @frank_william3191

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Post by @frank_william3191

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Nothing like the equivalent of botting your Twitch chatters on a social media platform to really put things into perspective here. Did a random user set this up as an experiment, free from the knowledge of the team behind Threads, or is this sanctioned by Threads themselves? Not entirely sure, either way. But that an account like this exists, and isn't or hasn't been flagged, well ...

This is something I'd expect to see on Twitter, a platform that died six months ago and is struggling to retain optics that make it look like an active platform, versus something completely new, that apparently has 100 million+ users. And now, you really gotta wonder, how many of them are bots without thought or feeling?

And this sucks, because I just recently wrote up a post on here recommending Threads over Twitter, to social media users who wanted something new, but don't like the concept of Mastodon.

It's got me thinking I should move all of my activity, at least in text form, back to Mastodon, or, my personal Mastodon instance, exclusively. And just forget about this corporate mess of AI-bubble-obsessed tech leadership who can't see the forest from the trees.

Because, this is, of course, an issue that also resides in the user arena on mastodon.social. Wherein, a few weeks ago, I suspended a user from federating with my server, due to him being an account (from mastodon.social) that was completely maintained by ... you guessed it, a language learning model.

But this is a problem that reaches all the way back to 2016. The moderation team behind the flagship instance of Mastodon, does next to no moderation, essentially forcing any instance smaller than it to perform either constant suspensions, or they simply hit mastodon.social with an instance-wide suspension (which I have already done).

Bad politics and AI are infecting everything, and it is sadly becoming more and more prudent to hollow out your own space, and put up a firewall to keep the theft machines and the genital obsessed weirdos out. Why this had to be a double-issue involving both of these things today, is beyond me, but here we are.

I put this post up in order to be fully transparent about my thoughts, and my evolving opinions about things. Yes, I have issues with Mastodon and some of the people who occupy the fediverse. I also have issues with Threads, and the questionable decisions Meta makes in regard to its health and development.

The question is now, do I still recommend people who don't like the concept of Mastodon to just sign up on Threads?

I'm still thinking on that topic, and I'll get back to you. But, just in case this has you thinking you might want to look at Mastodon as an alternative, head on over to my instance sign-up page, and give it a shot! If I don't immediately respond to your user request, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.