this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Google decimates Twitter search results after Elon Musk imposes limits on reading tweets (www.rawstory.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Google has reportedly removed much of Twitter's links from its search results after the social network's owner Elon Musk announced reading tweets would be limited.

Search Engine Roundtable found that Google had removed 52% of Twitter links since the crackdown began last week. Twitter now blocks users who are not logged in and sets limits on reading tweets.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google reported 471 million Twitter URLs as of Friday. But by Monday morning, that number had plummeted to 227 million.

"For normal indexing of these Twitter URLs, it seems like these tweets are dropping out of the sky," Schwartz wrote.

Platformer reported last month that Twitter refused to pay its bill for Google Cloud services.

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[–] FlagonOfMe 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Words mean what people use them to mean.

Check out definitions 3a and 3b.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate

Dictionaries document word usage, and a very large number of people use decimate to mean the definitions under 3.

[–] Feweroptions 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Words mean what people use them to mean.

I'm not sure when that changed, if ever, but it irritates me. What is the point of a dictionary if I can convince people to start using a term incorrectly for fun so that I could change the definition?

What is the point of words if people can take a word like decimate, which comes from the latin decimare (the removal or destruction of one tenth) and turn it into massive or near total destruction?

Words should not warp into what people incorrectly use them for. At least to me, in a sane world.

[–] FlagonOfMe 2 points 2 years ago

I'm kinda with you there. When people use a word like decimate in that sense, they are using it wrong. But if enough people use a word "wrong", then they are actually using it right. All that matters is that (some) people agree on that meaning. Even a word like irregardless is in the dictionary, but at least lexicographers have the decency to mark it as "nonstandard".

The point of dictionaries is to document word usage. All words, at their core, are just made-up mouth sounds which people associate with a thought. Who decides what sound should be associated with what thoughts? People. There's really no rhyme or reason to it. Where did decimare come from? Some other word? And where did that word come from? It's all arbitrary.