For the same reason I still called Alphabet - Google, and Meta - Facebook. I refuse to let large corporations just try and shake off their shitty past with a name change.
Having fallen in love with Carmen Miranda before reading La United Fruit Company stilllll sucks.
Also add Blackwater to this list. Warcrimes and looting by American plutocratic mercenaries and now their name is not obviously pronounceable. They did an amazingly good [bad for everyone but them] rename.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected]
Theirs actually made a bit more sense. They didn't try to actually get people to use the new name, because it was a business restructure, not a "brand" restructure.
For business management purposes, it didn't make sense for a search engine company to do things like "own a car company". So they split the business units up and made things a little more organized. They ran into some name issues because the most recognizable face of the company is so strongly associated with search, and they didn't want to mess with that, so they made a new name for the top.
Companies do stuff like that all the time, but it usually doesn't raise to public attention because it doesn't happen to major brands, or hit the top level of the business.
They still label all their stuff Google, and their stock ticker is still googl.
Not quite. They are pushing it a little harder. You still have the Facebook website, but their branding for other things now has Meta more front and center (i.e. Oculus Quest -> Meta Quest)
Corporate shitholes have the most people, which means more views, which means more money. They’re actively encouraged to stay off smaller platforms since it’s not as an effective use of their time.
Nah, I could follow all the artists I wanted in peace and not have deal with any of the other political doxxing stan wars crap going. Now you can't even do that without the website breaking or pushing paid check mark chuds braindead tweet onto your feed.
I even deleted/deactivated my account months ago, and got an email notification last week that it was reactivated. Who did that? Is Elon necroing all the abandoned accounts?
I'm just sick of every article in existence calling it "X formally known as Twitter" like what's the point, just either say X or say twitter it's filler bullshit to extend the article.
I see that as a kind of professional fu to Elon. As in "We know we need to call it X now, but since nobody actually does that, we'll also add the actual name".
"X" letter is pronounced as "shh" sound in China for example Liu Cixin, the Chinese author of Three Body Problem, his last name supposed to be spelled "Cishin". So there is precedent.
Why had to update all the share icons at work because of Muskrat. I argued for leaving them as the bird, but I was overridden. Nobody has fond feelings about the site anymore. Every time it is brought up everyone's reaction is "ugh, that site..."
The fifth option, allowed for only very small part of the population, should be "I'm Elon Musk and I call it twitter, and have to be constantly reminded to not do so by assistants, executives, shareholders, janitors, strangers."
I really don't have a passionate stance about it, I just know I called it Twitter for ages, X is shitty branding and isn't going to work, and I stopped using the platform well before Musk took over, so I'm not doing any sort of mental labor trying to make myself use the crap name he chose.
It's a dead website to me, and it's everyone else's problem that they trapped themselves on Twitter, having no career without it. I'm not doing a single thing on behalf of anybody who is still there, those are ghosts, let them howl in the attic, I don't work here.
It's not a human person. It's a website full of assholes. I would make an effort for a transitioning person, but not for Elon Musk and his ham-fisted stupidity, for the folly of some wealthy prick.
Shouldn't renaming a social media really be up to the users? Shouldn't twitter users vote on that?
We just conceded that social media are owned by some corporate entity but the only values is in the users themselves. They build it. They should "own" and control the social media democratically, it should be accountable to them. It seems much more obvious than with traditional media that these should be democratic institutions.
Elon Musk behaving so blatantly stupid is unusual but the problem is really much larger.
Users shouldn't have any say over how a social media company is run -- there would be utter chaos.
Take Twitter for example -- I would imagine there are 33% liberals, 33% conservatives, 5% neo-nazis, 5% neo-communists and 24% who don't give a crap about politics because they are bots from China.
(I am just using these figures for an example -- I have no idea about real figures).
So if you need a new name then there would be a huge fight to call it any number of things, none of which relate to a corporate brand.
And if you ask them about corporate policies? "Censorship"? "Should we allow free speech?" "Should we allow hate speech?" "What is hate speech?"
Can you imagine the chaos?
No. Social media should not be run by its users. It is just asking for it to implode within a day.
Well I doubt it exists. But your arguments should logically apply just as well to democracy in general. Not saying you're totally wrong because you'd get politics and misinformation, but the attitude to self determination of people is a bit worrying.
But -- polite insults aside -- all I am saying is that I am not sure how companies and corporations can be democratically answerable to their customers. (Again -- I am excluding those companies/corporations that have shareholders).
If they want to listen to their customers, or customers want to stage boycotts to force companies to act in a specific way that's a different matter, but......... take Globodex.
Globodex is a fictional company that is a multinational company with branches in America, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Australia.
It doesn't have any shareholders -- it is run by a board of twelve men and women.
How could that be democratically run by its customers? Given that there are millions of customers across eight countries?
And why would you think that because I believe this -- that we shouldn't have a say in how companies we use are run -- that we shouldn't have a say in how our country is run? Because that seems like a very wild jump that is entirely unfounded by any evidence.
If you want to talk about respect, let's talk about Elon's disrespect to everyone who used Twitter or talks about it now. I noted elsewhere in the discussion that the convention for websites is "name" .com or .org
Google (.com)
Twitter (.com)
Wikipedia (.org)
etc.
Breaking that mold to be "edgy" doesn't make one clever, it just causes confusion and wastes people's time.
In this case, it's wasted a lot of time because of how high-profile it is.
Side note - I'm also in MN. WDYT about the lake in Minneapolis that they renamed a few years back? It seems like there might be some parallels, but I don't think it's a good example for a worldwide audience. I only bring it up because of your username.
To the first part of your reply. I understand that Elon changed the name of both the company and the website, with a redirect of the former website. Is that not the case?
I am surprised how much time I am spending on the twitter/X thing.
As for the lake, I didn't have an issue with it. The local community, that has naming rights, decided to change the name to better reflect their community and values. The new name is not mean or disrespectful. Maps will take a bit to update, but the lake name won't be the only thing to change.
If you respond, what do you think of the flag?
Edit: I tested and X.com redirects to Twitter.com. So that is stupid.
Personally, I struggled with the new name for the lake. I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it at first. Nothing in school prepared me for how to read "Bde", and I definitely wouldn't have expected it to rhyme with "g'day".
I don't particularly care for the new flag design, but I suspect I'll get used to it. I'm not entirely clear on the motivation behind redesigning the flag in the first place, tbh.
Good points. I heard it on the radio a bunch, which makes it easier. Maybe radio versus print impacts acceptance?
I think several of the finalists were better than the final, but all are better than the current. I will also get used to it. (Anyone reading this, look under "History" section on Wikipedia for the finalists.)
Ownership doesn't give you some moral right to rename something. Especially ownership of a public platform
It probably gives you the legal right... That's it.
Maybe it's disrespectful, but I'd strongly argue the opposite - it might be a husk of its former self, but Twitter is an impressive technical feat. They did a lot of good in pushing the limits of technology, and modern programmers stand on their shoulders.
A drunk man-child changed its name late one night, with no respect for what he's destroying or even the slightest consideration of how to actually do it
I've never liked Twitter itself, but I think the creators deserve respect for advancing computer science
Thank you for your perspective. I had not considered that some would think of Twitter as something special and valuable. While Twitter has created some neat ideas, I see them as the "also ran that win due to huge amounts of cash". No morals involved.
The community that grew around Twitter was special, but temporary. Just like to communities before and after it.
I appreciate that, but I don't even mean the community or the platform (I'm not sure that form of social media is a good thing for humanity, at least I don't think Twitter was) I mean the technologies developed (and shared widely) by Twitter
A big one is sharding. They needed to spread horizontally - no matter how powerful, a single database is a bottleneck at that scale. They needed to put databases in many datacenters too to serve a worldwide user base
But, since Twitter wanted to have one unified platform for everyone (as opposed to several country
, and required (near) real time communication. But most of all, it had to be fast
So they invented (or maybe advanced, it's been a while since I read the write up) sharding. It's a way to keep multiple databases in sync. If someone in the UK responds to a tweet in the US, a user in the UK is going to update the UK/EU database. But now you have to sync them - and someone else in the US might've commented in the meantime.
You can sync it through code design, like activity-pub does for the fediverse - you could make each tweet or action a separate record, and push updates to every server. But then you're constrained in your design - everything must be built in a compatible way, and more complex records would take more custom code.
It could probably work for something like Twitter, but they made something more general. They came up with a way to do it at the database level - through some clever designs, they make it so multiple out of sync databases can be treated as a single database.
Now, you can just set up sharding, and don't need to worry about it anymore - now if you build a site and need to scale up quickly, it's basically a drop in solution. You barely have to change your code, if at all... The databases handle everything behind the scenes
They also made bootstrap, the first (or first widely used) style framework. You didn't have to style every button or block of text manually anymore, plus it came with some widely used components (like modals that pop up and gray out the screen, or those drop downs that let you pick a date). It made building modern websites so much easier, especially for people like me that had to be taught color theory to understand how to match my clothes.
Unfortunately, it seems like it was killed thanks to an elongated muskrat or something. But it led to many such frameworks and improved the web as a whole greatly
They did a bunch of public good work like that, kind of like Facebook their core business might be harmful, but they did a lot to advance software engineering as a whole
For the same reason I still called Alphabet - Google, and Meta - Facebook. I refuse to let large corporations just try and shake off their shitty past with a name change.
Adding Xfinity - Comcast to this list
See also:
Having fallen in love with Carmen Miranda before reading La United Fruit Company stilllll sucks.
Also add Blackwater to this list. Warcrimes and looting by American plutocratic mercenaries and now their name is not obviously pronounceable. They did an amazingly good [bad for everyone but them] rename.
They've changed names so many times I guess you missed that it was already there:
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Is there a makemesuffer community (with more than 0 posts)? Because that’s where this belongs. Jesus Christ.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected]
Are you a knight who says Nee?
I so very much appreciate your use of née
Kinda shocked that the most hated company on Lemmy (Nеstlé) hasn’t tried their luck at this game yet
I guess Nestlé isn't hated enough by the general public yet. We need to step up our game.
Charter did the same thing with Spectrum.
I honestly think ‘X’ has more stink on it than ‘Twitter’ which is why I’ve been happy to start referring to it as ‘X’.
I don’t think continuing to call it ‘Twitter’ hurts Elon one bit.
No, but it makes us feel like we're contributing to the conversation.
Didn't the Alphabet rebranding happen because boomer investors were confused about which Google stock to invest in?
Theirs actually made a bit more sense. They didn't try to actually get people to use the new name, because it was a business restructure, not a "brand" restructure.
For business management purposes, it didn't make sense for a search engine company to do things like "own a car company". So they split the business units up and made things a little more organized. They ran into some name issues because the most recognizable face of the company is so strongly associated with search, and they didn't want to mess with that, so they made a new name for the top.
Companies do stuff like that all the time, but it usually doesn't raise to public attention because it doesn't happen to major brands, or hit the top level of the business.
They still label all their stuff Google, and their stock ticker is still googl.
Same story with Meta
Not quite. They are pushing it a little harder. You still have the Facebook website, but their branding for other things now has Meta more front and center (i.e. Oculus Quest -> Meta Quest)
Which Google stocks are there?
These are worth a fortune:
GOOG and GOOGL
don’t ask me the difference, I didn’t understand in my two minutes on Wikipedia, but I’m sure there’s an article that could explain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.
That site is as dead as Reddit to me now. I don't care whatever it's called
Corporate shitholes have the most people, which means more views, which means more money. They’re actively encouraged to stay off smaller platforms since it’s not as an effective use of their time.
The Fediverse just hasn’t hit critical mass yet.
Twitter has been a shithole since it’s inception.
Reddit only became a shithole like five or six years ago.
Nah, I could follow all the artists I wanted in peace and not have deal with any of the other political doxxing stan wars crap going. Now you can't even do that without the website breaking or pushing paid check mark chuds braindead tweet onto your feed.
I even deleted/deactivated my account months ago, and got an email notification last week that it was reactivated. Who did that? Is Elon necroing all the abandoned accounts?
I'm just sick of every article in existence calling it "X formally known as Twitter" like what's the point, just either say X or say twitter it's filler bullshit to extend the article.
I see that as a kind of professional fu to Elon. As in "We know we need to call it X now, but since nobody actually does that, we'll also add the actual name".
indeed. i like to believe he hates when we do that
It probably helps searchability, since now there is a fracture of people looking up 'X news' and 'Twitter news'
"Twitter, also known by some as X"
This is the way.
Xitter is also acceptable in my book as long as pronunciation is left to the reader.
Obviously shitter
I like it that way. It's the same as "Twitter now renamed X by a fool".
Calling it "X" is anything but professional.
"Xitter". It pronounces almost like "Shitter".
No almost about it. It's Shitter and that's final.
This is the way.
"X" letter is pronounced as "shh" sound in China for example Liu Cixin, the Chinese author of Three Body Problem, his last name supposed to be spelled "Cishin". So there is precedent.
I call it excrement.
That's a shit poem.
Where's the excrement ode!?
I'm always shocked to see Tumblr talking about current events because I forget there's people still there
I mean gestures broadly at our own tiny userbase
Yeah but I can still see butt sex here
Hell yeah we can
Oh no it's broken for me! I'm going to assume it was buttsex and just shake your hand now
Other hand plz
Look at mr. Lemmy talking down a way bigger service as if Lemmy is more relevant outside of their little bubble.
Yeah but we're cooler.
It is true. We should petition the devs to add a gottem medal, and we could pay to get these meda- Wait.
But are we queerer
God knows we try, but...
Lol I never said this website is bigger
Yes but you made fun of it as if it has just a few users left
Yes. Yes I did. And it really isn't that deep but the website I'm making that comment on isn't really relevant to the little joke I made about Tumblr.
I started typing xxx and found new sites I enjoy more.
Lot of birds on those as well
The name is "X, formerly known as twitter"
Thats it. Thats the whole name.
The Website Formerly Known As Twitter.
Missing an option - "I'm combining the two names into a weird abomination that no one likes but that's what that platform deserves nowadays"
Xitter, pronounced shitter.
I'm partial to Xitter
Can you spell that phonetically
shitter
Xeet that on Xitter
I prefer Xhitter myself
How about "I just change the subject whenever that irrelevant we site is brought up"
Oh no. Imagine having to talk about twitter in a professional setting. Those poor bastards.
Why had to update all the share icons at work because of Muskrat. I argued for leaving them as the bird, but I was overridden. Nobody has fond feelings about the site anymore. Every time it is brought up everyone's reaction is "ugh, that site..."
I thought we agreed to call it xitter (pronounced as shitter)
My Aussie friend calls it 'a platform from a cunt for a bunch of cunts'. I think I'll go with that.
Are you sure they are not talking about Reddit?
You're not wrong
Ah yeah, that one's getting around and it's right on point.
It is always correct to Dead Name corporations.
It's also correct to Deadname Super Villains who think "Eggman" is somehow more intimidating than "Robotnik"
The fifth option, allowed for only very small part of the population, should be "I'm Elon Musk and I call it twitter, and have to be constantly reminded to not do so by assistants, executives, shareholders, janitors, strangers."
I wonder if they’ll roll back the name change at some point, seems almost inevitable if Elon ever sells it.
Personally I don’t think I’ll ever call it X, not even out of dislike for Elon, just because it will always be stuck in my head as Twitter.
I try not to refer to it at all, but when I have to refer to it at work I call it "uuggh, that xitter site".
I really don't have a passionate stance about it, I just know I called it Twitter for ages, X is shitty branding and isn't going to work, and I stopped using the platform well before Musk took over, so I'm not doing any sort of mental labor trying to make myself use the crap name he chose.
It's a dead website to me, and it's everyone else's problem that they trapped themselves on Twitter, having no career without it. I'm not doing a single thing on behalf of anybody who is still there, those are ghosts, let them howl in the attic, I don't work here.
It's not a human person. It's a website full of assholes. I would make an effort for a transitioning person, but not for Elon Musk and his ham-fisted stupidity, for the folly of some wealthy prick.
It's Twitter until I forget what it's called.
I call it X(уйня)
X, futurely Twitter.
The convention for websites is generally "name" dot com or "name" dot org. If you want to change the name, change the website name.
Until we start going to x.com instead, I'm going to talk about twitter(.com)
I'm actually surprised x.com redirects to Twitter. Thought for sure that'd be a porn thing.
I call it "X, formerly Twitter"
"X | The website formerly known as Twitter"
Or "TWFKAT"
Or "The Website"
X is too short and generic. It is literally just a letter.
I am still waiting for a well-known media to call it "the website commonly known as Xitter", instead of "the website formerly known as Twitter".
Shitter, clearly the only acceptable name.
Won't even use it for porn now.
“Xwitter”
The X is like a fallen over t. Like twitter, falling apart.
I liked what one person said I forget where I saw it of calling it Xitter and pronouncing it like Shitter.
That’s pretty good. I might steal that.
I am not calling it "Twitter, formerly known as Prince"
I still call it Twatter
As long as Elon dead names his child (and supports dead naming), I'm dead naming that dumpster fire Twitter.
People talk about Twitter?
Twatter
Have you seen any good twats lately?
Epic rebranding fail.
In professional settings, I still call it Twitter because my customers doesnt know or understand the name change
Shouldn't renaming a social media really be up to the users? Shouldn't twitter users vote on that?
We just conceded that social media are owned by some corporate entity but the only values is in the users themselves. They build it. They should "own" and control the social media democratically, it should be accountable to them. It seems much more obvious than with traditional media that these should be democratic institutions.
Elon Musk behaving so blatantly stupid is unusual but the problem is really much larger.
No.
Users shouldn't have any say over how a social media company is run -- there would be utter chaos.
Take Twitter for example -- I would imagine there are 33% liberals, 33% conservatives, 5% neo-nazis, 5% neo-communists and 24% who don't give a crap about politics because they are bots from China.
(I am just using these figures for an example -- I have no idea about real figures).
So if you need a new name then there would be a huge fight to call it any number of things, none of which relate to a corporate brand.
And if you ask them about corporate policies? "Censorship"? "Should we allow free speech?" "Should we allow hate speech?" "What is hate speech?"
Can you imagine the chaos?
No. Social media should not be run by its users. It is just asking for it to implode within a day.
RIP democracy
Outside of companies with shareholders (who own part of the company) can you name any other companies where "users" get a say on how its run?
Well I doubt it exists. But your arguments should logically apply just as well to democracy in general. Not saying you're totally wrong because you'd get politics and misinformation, but the attitude to self determination of people is a bit worrying.
No offence, but you sound insane.
You sound like a fascist. Offense intended.
(grin) I can see how that could be the case.
But -- polite insults aside -- all I am saying is that I am not sure how companies and corporations can be democratically answerable to their customers. (Again -- I am excluding those companies/corporations that have shareholders).
If they want to listen to their customers, or customers want to stage boycotts to force companies to act in a specific way that's a different matter, but......... take Globodex.
Globodex is a fictional company that is a multinational company with branches in America, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Australia.
It doesn't have any shareholders -- it is run by a board of twelve men and women.
How could that be democratically run by its customers? Given that there are millions of customers across eight countries?
And why would you think that because I believe this -- that we shouldn't have a say in how companies we use are run -- that we shouldn't have a say in how our country is run? Because that seems like a very wild jump that is entirely unfounded by any evidence.
The owner wants it to be called "X", it is disrespectful to call it anything else. It is a happy coincidence that all name recognition is gone.
Edit: What is so hard to understand.
Calling it X reduces the value of Twitter. Calling it "X, formerly Twitter" tires the two together. I want people to pass on joining X.
You live your values. You should skip your values because someone else is a shit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitter-pronoun-rule-invites-bullying-lgbtq-groups-say-rcna87336
Musk believes people are free to ignore what people want to be called. So I think that we are free to ignore what he wants Twitter to be called.
Great, I want to be disrespectful to msuk the twitter destroyer.
He can spend all his money on ads for rebranding it to xshitter.
If you want to talk about respect, let's talk about Elon's disrespect to everyone who used Twitter or talks about it now. I noted elsewhere in the discussion that the convention for websites is "name" .com or .org
Google (.com) Twitter (.com) Wikipedia (.org)
etc.
Breaking that mold to be "edgy" doesn't make one clever, it just causes confusion and wastes people's time.
In this case, it's wasted a lot of time because of how high-profile it is.
Side note - I'm also in MN. WDYT about the lake in Minneapolis that they renamed a few years back? It seems like there might be some parallels, but I don't think it's a good example for a worldwide audience. I only bring it up because of your username.
To the first part of your reply. I understand that Elon changed the name of both the company and the website, with a redirect of the former website. Is that not the case?
I am surprised how much time I am spending on the twitter/X thing.
As for the lake, I didn't have an issue with it. The local community, that has naming rights, decided to change the name to better reflect their community and values. The new name is not mean or disrespectful. Maps will take a bit to update, but the lake name won't be the only thing to change.
If you respond, what do you think of the flag?
Edit: I tested and X.com redirects to Twitter.com. So that is stupid.
Personally, I struggled with the new name for the lake. I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it at first. Nothing in school prepared me for how to read "Bde", and I definitely wouldn't have expected it to rhyme with "g'day".
I don't particularly care for the new flag design, but I suspect I'll get used to it. I'm not entirely clear on the motivation behind redesigning the flag in the first place, tbh.
Good points. I heard it on the radio a bunch, which makes it easier. Maybe radio versus print impacts acceptance?
I think several of the finalists were better than the final, but all are better than the current. I will also get used to it. (Anyone reading this, look under "History" section on Wikipedia for the finalists.)
Ownership doesn't give you some moral right to rename something. Especially ownership of a public platform
It probably gives you the legal right... That's it.
Maybe it's disrespectful, but I'd strongly argue the opposite - it might be a husk of its former self, but Twitter is an impressive technical feat. They did a lot of good in pushing the limits of technology, and modern programmers stand on their shoulders.
A drunk man-child changed its name late one night, with no respect for what he's destroying or even the slightest consideration of how to actually do it
I've never liked Twitter itself, but I think the creators deserve respect for advancing computer science
Thank you for your perspective. I had not considered that some would think of Twitter as something special and valuable. While Twitter has created some neat ideas, I see them as the "also ran that win due to huge amounts of cash". No morals involved.
The community that grew around Twitter was special, but temporary. Just like to communities before and after it.
Cheers
I appreciate that, but I don't even mean the community or the platform (I'm not sure that form of social media is a good thing for humanity, at least I don't think Twitter was) I mean the technologies developed (and shared widely) by Twitter
A big one is sharding. They needed to spread horizontally - no matter how powerful, a single database is a bottleneck at that scale. They needed to put databases in many datacenters too to serve a worldwide user base
But, since Twitter wanted to have one unified platform for everyone (as opposed to several country , and required (near) real time communication. But most of all, it had to be fast
So they invented (or maybe advanced, it's been a while since I read the write up) sharding. It's a way to keep multiple databases in sync. If someone in the UK responds to a tweet in the US, a user in the UK is going to update the UK/EU database. But now you have to sync them - and someone else in the US might've commented in the meantime.
You can sync it through code design, like activity-pub does for the fediverse - you could make each tweet or action a separate record, and push updates to every server. But then you're constrained in your design - everything must be built in a compatible way, and more complex records would take more custom code.
It could probably work for something like Twitter, but they made something more general. They came up with a way to do it at the database level - through some clever designs, they make it so multiple out of sync databases can be treated as a single database.
Now, you can just set up sharding, and don't need to worry about it anymore - now if you build a site and need to scale up quickly, it's basically a drop in solution. You barely have to change your code, if at all... The databases handle everything behind the scenes
They also made bootstrap, the first (or first widely used) style framework. You didn't have to style every button or block of text manually anymore, plus it came with some widely used components (like modals that pop up and gray out the screen, or those drop downs that let you pick a date). It made building modern websites so much easier, especially for people like me that had to be taught color theory to understand how to match my clothes.
Unfortunately, it seems like it was killed thanks to an elongated muskrat or something. But it led to many such frameworks and improved the web as a whole greatly
They did a bunch of public good work like that, kind of like Facebook their core business might be harmful, but they did a lot to advance software engineering as a whole
Thank you. I learned a lot from your post.
I am hopeful that the churning created by the upheaval will result in a number of new, innovative companies.