Interesting Links for 11-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Twitter has already started suffering minor issues, it's going to get a lot worse

(tags:Twitter engineering Doom viaPatrickHadfield )

2. Animating over reality with pens, transparencies, and white-out

(tags:animation video )

3. KFC apologises after German Kristallnacht promotion (for *cheesy chicken* of all things!)

(tags:chicken kfc Holocaust OhForFucksSake Jews )

4. Does Twitter Have Any Employees Left Who Remember That The Company Is Under A Strict Consent Decree With The FTC?

(tags:Twitter law Doom )

5. Highlighting the many "successes" of Twitter's new identify verification system

(tags:Identity Twitter epicfail )

6. Inside the Twitter meltdown

(tags:Twitter Doom viaPatrickHadfield )

7. Clearly the best artist's assistant

(tags:dog video art viaSwampers )

Comments

[mtbc]

That KFC thing was mouth-opening in not the intended way.

[calimac]

3) Would the bot that suggests chicken for any special day marked on the calendar also suggest chicken for Good Friday?

1, 4, 5, 6) That's a lot of items not read because I don't give a hoot about Twitter.

#3 KFC?

[lsanderson]

I am stealing that one.

[dewline]

1, 4, 5, 6. This is an unholy mess all of its own.

3. What the actual Hell.

I'm glad to have pivoted away from them and Popeye's (owned by the same company that runs Tim Hortons) towards Mary Brown's.

[hairyears]

There are things that I cannot comment on, and one of them is That One Time I was technical lead for a project to manage our way out to completion and discharge of a Consent Decree.



The point of these decrees is that someone has *already* lost in court, badly.

Or worse, the Court has agreed to defer or *suspend but not halt* a prosecution that everyone knows is rock-solid and impossible to 'defend' with anything other than a guilty plea, and 'mitigating circumstances' arguments that won't make difference.

So the court has consented to them paying some, but not all, of the penalties...

...Having decreed that there will be a program, with detailed waypoints and a verifiable endpoint, to remediate the flaws that got everyone into trouble in the first place.

There's no leeway, no lenience: *the penalty is already in place, and it's hanging over you*.

Musk is, figuratively, sawing at the threads from which a multi-billion dollar fine and jail-time penalties are hanging.

And then? If the remediations ordered by the decree aren't in place?

...There is every possibility that the law will be broken, again.

And the evidence obtained from the failure of the Consent Decree process is admissible.

The penalties for that second offence - or the resumption of the unresolved one that was left hanging as a deferred prosecution - would be eye-watering.

People go to jail for this, and the former executives of Twitter know that.

The FTC also know that hiring people too stupid to know that is A Thing and, while the gullible Musk fanbois who stand in the way of that truck will get hit by it, the people who used these fools as 'fall guys' will be hit much, much harder.

Jail time harder.

Do not fuck with a Consent Decree.

[andrewducker]

Thank you for the context. I do wonder how badly this is all going to go for Musk. Hopefully very.

[bens_dad]

My guess is twitter wont be around long enough for this to be a problem.
I suppose the FTC could still persue Musk and put compliance requirements on him personally ...

[channelpenguin]

Ooh. I wish I could think that latter could happen. But surely the ultramega rich can just rig elections and get themselves pardoned? Or move them and business to somewhere that will protect them?

[andrewducker]

I'm pretty sure that buying Twitter is seriously impairing Musk's liquidity.

[channelpenguin]

It's got to hurt him a bit, but isn't it really a drop in the ocean - at least as far as his "worth" is concerned? Though I personally think from stuff I've read that he's in more trouble with nearly all his businesses... (But since I personally *want* that to be true, I don't and should not trust what I've read...).

[andrewducker]

It's his liquidity I was talking about. It's all very well owning Twitter, but if he can't sell shares without that causing a crisis in confidence and their value to plummet then that doesn't help him much.

[channelpenguin]

Yeah. But I think he could still easily find enough to bend or avoid the laws somehow, or avoid their effects on him personally. Sadly.