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General Megathread for Elon Musk Nonsense and Twitter News (beehaw.org)

submitted 10 months ago by TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Hey folks -

The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we've decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.

This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we're including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don't involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.

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[-] QHC@kbin.social 123 points 10 months ago

I agree with others that the concept of "mega threads" are fundamentally broken and not something I'm interested in carrying over from Reddit.

This is a place for discussion where users vote to decide what rises or stays obscure. Let the system work how it is designed. If there are too many posts about a particular topic, it's either extremely relevant at the time or there are other moderation rules that could be considered to make sure low-effort posts are not dominating more substantial posts.

[-] oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip 33 points 10 months ago

Tagging. Flair. Hashtags. Some kind of meta information.

Even in reddit posts can have flair. Lemmy have come to the edge of not having a filtering system, and need one asap. community specific tags or lemmy-wide tags or organic loose tagging, something is needed.

[-] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 10 months ago

Tags with mods having tag powers feels like the best option long term. Any sorting system can be applied without worrying about compatibility.

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[-] blip@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

I agree. Even when the megathread included a list of posts relevant to a topic, whatever nuance was there gets lost in the grand comment thread. We really need a tagging and filtering system so that users can opt out of topics.

That way, it's not incumbent on mods to make a Megathread, or make a judgement call on whether there are too many posts on any one topic.

[-] mrmanager@lemmy.today 93 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think it's a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can't scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

I agree its not great with multiple threads but it's also not the end of the world imo. Users want to talk about these things. Let them.

It's not fun to post on megathreads because your comments get buried. At least it was like that on reddit.

[-] mifan@feddit.dk 41 points 10 months ago

To rid the feed of Elon news we now have a stickied post with Elon news. I feel like there’s a meme hidden there somewhere.

[-] Frog-Brawler@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

That’s the reason I want a mega thread. I want to be able to scroll past anything Elon. Putting it in one spot is ideal.

[-] mrmanager@lemmy.today 23 points 10 months ago

It's ideal for you since you don't want to discuss it, yes.

[-] limeaide@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 months ago

Not only that, but it slows down discussion and more niche/focused topics are often missed

[-] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think it’s a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can’t scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

The problem is there are so goddamn many, to the extent that I'm working on a userscript that lets me entire hide posts that contain keywords. Checking my frontpage using Subscribed/Active, 5 of the first 20 posts are about this "news". And that's a full day after it happened, yesterday was far worse

Edit: The userscript is ready!

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Of course there are a lot of posts about it. There are big changes happening over at Twitter right now. It will obviously settle down eventually, but it’s an ongoing, pretty significant event.

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[-] fearout@kbin.social 83 points 10 months ago

No one is going to post news/articles here and then discuss them as they would in a regular post. It won’t get bumped up on the subscribed page if something interesting happens. Most of the comments here are going be about the megathread itself.

So this is effectively banning all the discussion concerning all of his companies. Which might be something you want to do, every community can decide for itself what kind of stuff they want to forbid after all. But I feel like it should be said directly, not via making a catch-all megathread.

[-] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Everybody's subscribe page is different. It will get bumped in active and new comments on Lemmy as I understand them. This feels like the intended use case for those sorts.

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[-] negativenull@negativenull.com 70 points 10 months ago

I felt a great disturbance in the Lemmyverse, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly ... moved to this post.

Bravo. Thank you

[-] TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

Lol, thanks. We'll most likely leave posts that were submitted before this thread since most of them have already generated discussion and we'd hate to cut that off. It would be great if there was some way to bundle up existing posts under a single post without removing them, but I've yet to see a site with a feature like that.

[-] anlumo@feddit.de 9 points 10 months ago

Isn’t the “correct” way (using that term very loosely here) to create a new community and move the stuff over there? Then people who are interested in that topic can just subscribe that one. You could call it /c/eloncirclejerk or something like that.

Conceptually, a megathread is like a community, but within the hierarchy of another community.

[-] AnonymousDeity@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago

!enoughmuskspam already exists somewhere I think

[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 43 points 10 months ago

Elon musk containment thread thank God.

[-] jhulten@infosec.pub 13 points 10 months ago

Now if only billionaires could be contained in real life.

[-] Kerrigor@kbin.social 37 points 10 months ago

Great, a megathread, let's bring over one of the worst parts of Reddit and moderation 😒

[-] TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org 38 points 10 months ago

I'm sorry if it's frustrating to you to have megathreads like this. I'm not enthused about the extra effort in redirecting posts to the Megathread, either, but I'm not aware of a better way to handle topics that are flooding a community other than gathering them up in a thread like this. It annoys users (and mods) when dozens of articles about the same topic are dominating a community, so we'd like to do something to alleviate that when possible. I've seen similar concepts used in a number of different places (old-school forums, reddit alternatives like Tildes) because, as far as I've seen, there's not a better alternative for wrangling topics that might otherwise clutter the feed.

If you have any ideas about better ways to handle this type of thing in the future, I'd love to hear them (and I genuinely mean that - I think we're open to suggestions if a better way exists).

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 19 points 10 months ago

Seems to me that these threads keep coming up and rising up because people want to talk about them.

The better solution reddit had was to let posts be sorted by tags so that people who don't want to see a certain topic can turn it off, rather than that decision being made for everyone else.

[-] chloyster@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately tags are not currently a Lemmy feature, so this isn't an option

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 10 points 10 months ago

So despite the fact that a ton of current tech news revolves around Elon musk and his companies, the solution is to bury any and all discussion about him in a megathread we all know people will never read or comment on?

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[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Y’all have functionally banned all news related to Elon musk, Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.

[-] Chozo@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago

Some see this as a feature, not a bug.

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[-] Caststarman@kbin.social 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great. It's also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum while still providing an outlet for people to discuss.

If your goal is to idly consume content, then a megathread probably sucks. Same if you want to be an influencer, it'll cut down on your exposure. Megathreads also can hide major developments that can hide behind a thread that people should be notified about. And if there wasn't much content on a platform to begin with... A megathread can force a ghost town.

There are definitely both good and bad things about Megathreads and there's a ton of depth and nuance that could be had.

In this case, I'm not sure whether a megathread was warranted or not though

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago

Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.

Nobody on Reddit, Lemmy, etc. behaves that way. Nobody checks megathreads unless it’s an ongoing, high profile situation. I guarantee you this megathread is going to get essentially no engagement within 48 hours and now for some odd reason all news about SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla is functionally banned.

[-] QHC@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.

Strong disagree. My experience with megathreads is primarily being full of memes and puns, with so many hundreds of root comments that even using extra tools it was impossible to follow any real conversation or updates.

It's also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum...

That is the only thing megathreads accomplish, IMO.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 28 points 10 months ago

I don’t think I really need to tell y’all that megathreads are, as a general rule, worthless. The only way they are even moderately useful is if they are recurring, such as a weekly megathread for beginner questions on a technical/hobbyist sub. A static, one time megathread means that no one will ever talk about it at all. That is not the right call.

Anybody who has been a mod for more than a week knows that a megathread only stifles discussion unless it’s some major event happening in real time, such as Jan 6th. I get you don’t want musk spam but you’re over correcting.

[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 16 points 10 months ago

Popcorn! Get your popcorn Hheeeerra!

[-] trashhalo@beehaw.org 15 points 10 months ago

An alternative that may address the concerns in comments would be temporary sub communities for loud events

Create community technology_elon_bs@
Mods of parent community inherit sub
Create a pinned post in parent community announcing.
Close sub community when noise goes down.

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[-] storksforlegs@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

What would be more helpful I think would be a "hide post" option.

That way you could hide stuff you're not interested in, or posts you have already read. (Something good from reddit)

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago

I like the idea of a megathread wrt to Musk. Seeing my front page composed of 50% Musk threads all of which are roughly the same, is frustrating. Or, hell, maybe make a Musk News sub and confine posts of it there that people can subscribe to if they want. It's just too much of a whack a mole right now because there's so much going on with it.

However, I do wish we had a "hide post" option. There was a post a while back that involved animal harm, and seeing that in the middle of my feed for 2 days straight was extremely upsetting, and there was nothing I could do about it.

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[-] EnderWi99in@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lemmy/Kbin really don't function in a way that make megathreads work though. This won't work here and we can't be thinking about trying to adopt Reddit behaviors in a platform that works very differently. Unlike Reddit, there isn't a singular community around Technology. There are dozens that we can all see built across every instance. I had to scroll just to see I was looking at the Beehaw one.

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[-] wildeaboutoskar@beehaw.org 9 points 10 months ago

While people have made some interesting comments on the downsides of megathreads, I'm glad we have a way of containing the Musk stuff. It gets a bit much.

To people who do have concerns though, if you're tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It's in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren't how we want them to be.

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[-] westingham@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago

Terrible idea.