this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically.

If a user typed in "Twitter.com," they would see "Twitter.com" as they typed it before hitting "Post." But, after submitting, the platform would show "X.com" in its place on the X for iOS app, without the user's permission, for everyone viewing the post.

And shortly after this revelation, it became clear that there was another big issue: X was changing anything ending in "Twitter.com" to "X.com."

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[–] [email protected] 208 points 6 months ago (17 children)

X is just a BAAAAAAD brand that it's almost insulting the people who uses it, honestly were I'm from it sounds like an adult website..

[–] [email protected] 104 points 6 months ago (5 children)

One of the rules of branding is to choose a unique name to prevent confusion. Half the time I see the X logo I don't know if they're talking about X11 or the website formerly known as Twitter

[–] [email protected] 91 points 6 months ago

Not to mention that from a visual perspective the icon 'x' is synonymous with closing or exiting a window. It's a horrible choice on so many levels.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It’s funny that if you need to clarify X, you can say x11. If you need to clarify X, though, it’s still twitter

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Oh, do you mean X the window manager or X the social media website?

The fact that a clarification like that needs to be made shows that Twitter has a branding problem.

Now, tell me which is which:

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

Or the XCOM games.

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[–] [email protected] 155 points 6 months ago (14 children)

People need to stop using Twitter. It's like trying to using AOL or whatever now. It's basically a dead product.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I am so puzzled by this. I've been using the Internet for 30 years, and in early 2000 people were much more standing up to principles. The greatest example was when digg changed how it operated with v4, people left it overnight. Now they prefer to be fucked over and don't have any intention of changing it, and excuses are really lame like "alternatives are too hard".

I think Yuval Harari was right and social media figured out how to hack our brains and control us.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (7 children)

It's not only laymen either. I have Software Engineering friends who continue to use Twitter because RSS, Mastodon or any other alternative is "hard". They have no core values or integrity whatsoever.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

News sites also need to stop going on about it. Its like feeding the troll. I’ve never used the thing other than looking at it briefly in its early days, and yet I’m constantly hearing about it. And here I am commenting about this apparently (Western) globally important website which has served no purpose in my life. What a waste of energy all around. Self perpetuating negative feedback loop tech wank. Digital town square my arse. The little I know about it is from bad headlines which I wish I could unsee as its of zero consequence.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

There's a whole host of modern journalists who don't know how the fuck to do their jobs without twitter, I'd put money on that being the reason we still read so much about it

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Sell the twitter.com domain name you cowards.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Why not just switch your site redirects? Instead of x.com opening twitter.com make them go to x, and eventually stop the redirects and put a landing page on Twitter with a link to x.com. How do you expect people to stop calling it Twitter when that's literally the site name even if you type in x.com

[–] [email protected] 64 points 6 months ago

He doesn't just want the links to change. He wants the mindshare to change. To erase twitter.com from consciousness. Because X is like, super cool, man. So the solution is to rewrite tweets so it's impossible to say the ungood name.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Prob too many references to twitter.com in their code or whatever to fix or something similar?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago (3 children)

find -type f -exec sed -i 's/twitter.com/x.com/g' {}\;

Take a backup first in case it breaks something, which it most likely will.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I don't really know code but he has that curvy line and some different colors and shit so this should work. Ship it. No need to test.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago

You just passed the exam to be a Project Manager

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

We don't always test but when we do, it's in prod.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

Fuck it! We'll do it live!

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The only time it's ok to dead name anyone is, Twitter. Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Suck it elon!

[–] [email protected] 107 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It's fine to deadname any corporation. Corporations are not people.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Biologically it is a twitter and nothing can change that.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Some poor mfer's shitty regex just got put on blast at a Twitter emergency software dev meeting.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago

Some poor mfer's shitty regex just got put on blast

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck

at a Twitter emergency software dev meeting.

Oh thank goodness!!!

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

I don’t care what they do. If I have to refer to that social media platform/shitshow of a vanity project in any way whatsoever, I’m calling it Twitter.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 months ago (3 children)

They should switch the name to Wayland.com as a compromise.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (3 children)

When Elon stops allowing deadnaming on Twitter, I'll stop deadnaming his website.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Petty.

He doesn't have control over what others think and say no matter what he tries.

Social media should be owned and operated by the people.

Love you lemmy/mastaon

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Not just petty, but incredibly stupid. He bought one of the most recognizable brands on the planet. Everyone knows what a tweet is, a retweet, a quote tweet, hell, hashtags exploded in popularity because of Twitter. An entire community (re: customer base) self-organizing and inventing the concepts of your product for you, organically and for free - it's any business owner's wettest of wet dreams.

And then he threw that all down the drain because he couldn't recognize what was right in front of his face. Either that or he did recognize, but still wanted to relive some tech fantasy he cooked up twenty years ago and can't let go of. Either way, astronomically, gigantically, absolutely unfathomably stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago
Ctrl+F: Twitter.com
Replace all with: X.com

Someone at Xitter should hire me ASAP! My development skills are on-par with Elon.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (7 children)

For someone who is supposed to be smart, he’s an idiot.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Whatever, i'm still calling it Xitter.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (8 children)

I've been thinking about this while on the toilet. Why there? Because that's about the only time I waste time thinking about Twitter.

Call it X. Call it muskX. Call it whatever

But don't call it Twitter

See, twitter is dead. X is trying to capitalize on the corpse.

Continuing to call it Twitter just gives validity and credibility to X by pretending that it's the same thing under a different name.

Call it Shitter, call it anything but what gives musk any validation at all

[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago

Interesting reasoning, but I prefer mine. I will keep calling it Twitter if only because its CEO fumes when it's being called Twitter. And I'm okay with that.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But is X gonna give it to us?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I'm thankful that with my overkill combination of Firefox security extensions and various adblockers that they have completely broken the bird site from ever loading for me.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago

What happened to Xitter being a paragon of free speech? You can't even say "twitter.com" without them censoring you.

How unfortunate they can't deal with the spam bots quite so effectively.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

I'm still going to call it Twitter.

X sounds like a porn site of some kind. Fun fact, the government in India thought the same thing and banned it for that reason...for awhile.

Apparently it's not a well known story, so I'll remind everyone that India's government banned many different porn sites within their own country's internet access.

I don't know if it's at the DNS level or the actual IP address or what, but they banned almost every free porn site I've ever heard of, even more obscure ones like Jizzhut and alphaporno, even really really low budget ones that are just an index for a bunch of embedded videos from other sites

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

He should just rename it to elon.social instead. That's what I think of it nowadays and especially since the name change.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (4 children)

A shame that the pioneering Japanese visual kei band stopped referring to itself as just "X" back in the mid-1990s. That would have been a trademark fight for the ages. (Or at least, the hair and costumes would have been more interesting than what Musk usually sports.)

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (12 children)

I don't get why he's so stubborn on X dot com being a thing. Especially since when I hear dot com I think of the 90s or early 2000s, and specifically the dot com bubble.

x.social or x.net sound way cooler tbh.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

finally a use for the .fail TLD

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

how about x.org lmao

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

"Well that's embarrassing" - everything Musk / X does

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

Good. Let the platform die for good.

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