I’m not sure if this is technically Technology news, but I can remove this post if it’s in the wrong community
Archive link: http://archive.today/3XM6s
Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.
Musk didn’t mention timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost.
Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.
This is one way to finally get rid of Twitter. I wonder if Spez is considering charging for Reddit?
It really feels like a lot of social media platforms are intentionally self-sabotaging themselves. I keep expecting them to die off every time something like this happens, but they appear to continue on regardless.
I think that social media sites actually dying off is actually impossible with enough inertia (even if their base decreases) and that’s why they are emboldened to do such anti-consumer practices.
All this to say that I’m sure Steve Huffman has immediately started furiously texting everyone he knows about his new idea to charge for Reddit as well as a boosted version of Gold called “Alien Orange” or something.
Even if a social network loses 99,99% of the user base due to charging to use it, those left are the ones that see no problem paying to use it, so they are more likely to eat up some insane pricing, which would help recoup losses from a smaller user base. Basically whales.
I think the only way to try to kill a social network is by going full scorched earth on it. Remove all your comments, or change them to be an annoying copy pasted comment about why you’re getting off the platform. And even then I don’t think it is helpful, I did that with Reddit but was forced to leave technical posts intact because I feared I might prevent someone from solving their issue.
They see no issue paying now.
When there’s no content left they’ll eventually notice it’s a shit deal.
It’s the regenerative braking version of monetizing a website.
It seems silly to not have actual physical brakes on a car and to rely on electric inertia to slow down, it works well in practice. When the pressure starts being applied it may seem like the vehicle is not slowing down but the process of slowing down has begun.
Twitter has had financial brakes applied to it and you just got to wait a little while and it’s either going to slow to a crawl and then stop, a new conductor is going to be put on board, or it’s going to completely derail.
So I mean, if this was in lieu of data collection and tracking, this is what more of the software world should actually do. Running platforms isn’t free, and making the user the product is a malicious and unsustainable solution.
That said, I certainly wouldn’t pay Twitter - I think I’d rather donate to a Mastodon instance, or pay for some other private alternative. Musk is awful for so many reasons, holds way too much power, and deserves no money of mine.
That’s actually a good point about how some services do require payment to provide safe service to their users. A very close to home example would be your local Lemmy instance. In order to run the servers and keep it ad (and tracking) free, each instance needs donations from their users. The same is true for Mastodon, as you mentioned.
The problem is, I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well, but they all basically boil down to most users not wanting too give money to Twitter, and if they were ok with that, they would already have purchased Twitter Blue.
I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well
One of those issues being the idiot child in charge. As long as Musk is running the place, there’s no such thing as safety for the users.
Fully agree.
if this was in lieu of data collection and tracking
I guarantee this isn’t in lieu of, it’s in conjunction with.
Yup. You can see this kind of stuff happening with ads in things you buy.
There was a model of “ad supported” and “pay to own”
But some exec figured out you could do both and double dip.
There is no world in which things get more consumer friendly unless it’s forced
I know it is a popular sentiment that people should migrate to Mastodon, but I personally think people will migrate wherever the people they follow migrate to.
With this in mind, I suspect Bluesky will be the platform to usurp Twitter; but with Twitter chasing off all their users in the near future, it may go to whichever platform is readily open at the time.
I’m very curious to see if Bluesky or Spill open up when Twitter closes the door on its users. If not, Mastodon may have a shot at being the next large platform…
The biggest problem with Bluesky is it’s owned by another musk.
He’s not great, but that’s an exaggeration
Not an exaggeration.
There’s more than one Musk!? 😱
Unfortunately, yes.
What would that be, Meesk? Like, “a Daddy-didn’t-hug-me of Meesk just got out of that limo over there.”
I wouldn’t say the owner is anywhere near musk-like, however it is still centralized. The system seems to be setup to allow fediverse-like federation in the future, but right now the only instance is the official Bluesky instance.
Dorsey more of a proto-Musk IMO. He went off to an island to live with cocaine and guns. He only came back recently to create another social network
because he hates Musk’s guts. (Edit: I guess I was wrong, and he doesn’t hate Musk)Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure the guys fucking insane, but I also don’t think he’s as bad as musk or as hell-bent on destroying democracy. He’s just interested in making money to buy more cocaine and islands and guns.
Dorsey is a best pal of Musk’s
Are you sure? I know they used to be super friends, but I thought they had a falling out.
Thick as thieves.
Hmm… either they made up, or I’m thinking of something else. I’ll take your word for it.
Anyway, the rest of what I said stands. Dorsey may be bonkers (check out that Vice interview from a year or two ago), but he’s not even in the same league of evil bastards as Musk. He may be completely a self-interested billionaire, scumbag, but he’s not a literal fascist with Musk’s track record, nor is he actively stoking neo-nazi activity while personally interfering with an ongoing war in favor of our country’s greatest and longest-standing enemy.
I think you’re giving Jack Dorsey a bit too much credit by calling him another musk.
Edit: Although… he kinda was “Musk before Musk” if you know what I mean. Like I first said: proto-Musk.
Is bluesky up yet? I’d assume everyone will just go to bluesky anyway.
Yes, but it’s invite-only. Either you join the wait-list and get lucky, or someone gives you an invite (members get an invite to hand out to friends every 10 days or so). Amusingly this has resulted in a large chunk of blüski being furry and LGBT, due to how tightly knit the communities are. I know a lot of the furry discord servers I’ve been in regularly have people openly offering invites, whereas most of the non-furry servers seem to be completely unaware of how active it is or that it even exists (my experience is that blüski feels way more active than Twitter due to it not giving preferential treatment to Elon shills; you’re far more likely to have random people seeing your posts).
@MossyFeathers
Also the folks on blue sky recently managed to bully Jack Dorsey into deleting his account there, for being, uh, too close to being Musk.
@iHUNTcriminals
From what I can tell, it’s still on the invite system; but I haven’t been keeping a close eye on it. I figured if it opened up, I would hear about it online.
Why Bluesky when there is ecosystem of dozens community-baked and deployed apps?
@smileyhead
This thread talks about some of the reasons https://mstdn.party/@gwensnyder/111088343873242234
@UrLogicFailsGovernments switching away from Twitter won’t suddenly switch to bluesky after already having set up mastodon, and overall similar incentives (mostly the control that comes with self-hosting) exist for corporations though those don’t have an incentive to be early adaptors.
Sure there’s always going to be a baseline presence of those types of users on basically all platforms having any kind of general reach precisely for general communication but if you are an architect and want to follow the building code department of the ministry of – who the fuck is responsible for that? dunno, in any case, no you won’t do that on bluesky. Why would they want to get burned twice by a platform when some state IT department somewhere runs software they can use for the purpose.
I’ve been loving Threads lately and I’m seeing more and more people using it. It almost feels like Twitter 2012.
Bluesky? Well I put my name on the waiting list like A YEAR AGO or whatever and they haven’t given me access not that I’m bitter haha.
Spock: Twitter is dying.
Kirk: Let it die.
Musk is an absolute idiot. But I’d rather pay for a system than have it mine me for data. I’m guessing he wants to do both though. Because that’s what he does with Tesla cars.
Yeah, it’s both. Final answer.
Do it! Do it!
Rip the bandaid off! Get this shit closed down and be done with it.
Gotta hand it to Musk, he’s mastodon’s greatest promoter.
I want to charge Musk every time he makes another asshole announcement about running one of his companies into the ground. Just fuck off, dude.
If you had a nickel for every time musk edged a promising platform closer to worthlessness and destruction you’d have a mother fucking shit ton of nickels.
He should totally do it and charge per post as well.
One of the richest people in the entire world wants still more money. Tell me again how “trickle-down economics” works?
Ok, I loathe the man, hate the shit show he’s made TwitX, think he’s a clown, generally hate billionaires, etc. But this is kinda a really stupid comment.
No, see, it’s like an inverted pyramid, and the little our overlords permit us of the product of our labor trickles down to them, you see.
Xitter, pronounced shitter
On one hand, I’d love for it to finally die, but those toxic communities will simply move to a new site and do the same thing they did on Twitter. Like ants.
On the other hand, a lot of people have grown their business through Twitter and have relied on it. Most other sites don’t have the same functionality and large number of people that make it so easy like Twitter.
So I guess I’m on the fence about Twitter dying.
Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
The people that seem to like it are those that want to be “the person” people follow or those that want to follow “the person”. Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.
Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook’s status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You’d follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.
Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.
The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.
Okay.
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma thing. People have had ample time and opportunity to move to mastodon, but as you say Twitter is still where the bulk of eyeballs are, but that only remains true if everyone’s too afraid to leave it.
A new platform has the potential for better moderation and better design to keep those unsavory elements in check. Since Musk has made himself the enemy, the only path forward is for Twitter to die. Nothing good will come from it as long as he is in charge.
@UrLogicFails Good idea! This just HAS to kill it. 😁
Of COURSE Musk is buddying up with Bibi. He’s really leaning hard into the evil persona.
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