As noted by security researcher Will Dormann, some posts on X purport to lead to a legitimate website, but actually redirect somewhere else. In Dormann’s example, an advertisement posted by a verified X user claims to lead to forbes.com. When Dormann clicks the link, however, it takes him to a different link to open a Telegram channel that is, “helping individuals earn maximum profit in the crypto market,” he said. In short, the “Forbes” link leads to crypto spam
“Anymore”
As if it hasn’t always been a dumpster fire.
For a long time Twitter and Facebook were what you made them. When it was mostly personal acquaintances, and later tight communities, you had pretty good control over your experience. That was a long time ago at this point, but I wouldn’t say it was always a dumpster fire.
Facebook way back in the day was the shit. Everything was super private outside of groups which served as the public square. I haven’t found any federated platforms that come close. It might be seven or eight years now since I logged in.
Isn’t diaspora like that? They have a somewhat facebook-like interface and rely on ‘aspects’ to define how public or private something is. It is listed on the fediverse map, though it doesn’t use activitypub but a different protocol.
You can manually set things to be private, but I don’t know if there’s any way to set everything as private by default.
It has the problem with all Facebook alternatives where they feel like Twitter without post limits.