The claim is a major departure for the service, which has long been known as a destination for posting short snippets of text.
It’s amazing watching a platform with no substantial competitor kill itself so badly. AltaVista was killed by Google, MySpace was killed by Facebook, Twitter is killed by the ramblings of the lunatic who bought it.
And yet there are so, so many people that don’t seem to be able to pull themselves away from it.
I really don’t get it.
For the reason above. There’s not a serious alternative that replaced it for those people.
It’s fucked up how threads immediately devolved into a bigoted Antisemitic shit hole like twitter in a fraction of the time.
Is it impossible to develop a social media platform that doesn’t get overrun with conspiracy whack jobs and assholes?
Is Mastodon overrun too recently, or…?
It’s just not a useful platform at present. Maybe one day it’ll be relevant enough but not today.
Social media in modern times is an instrument of war. It will always be used as such whenever possible. So no, I think the answer is no
Social media in modern times is an instrument of war
It is fascinating watching what Iran, Qatar and Russia have pulled off this past few years.
I think we just underestimate the amount of people who think like that
Sadly I’ve just come to assume most people are Antisemitic bigots these days. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.
I never seriously used twitter (I probably have used it less than 10 hours total), but what really is stopping people from getting on mastodon? It’s the same thing, and is extremely easy to sign up for.
It’s right there, not that I have much of a desire to use it, but if people like twitter, is it just that not enough people are on it? Just the network effect?
Twitter has more people, meaning more content. It’s the same reason I still have Reddit downloaded.
It’s not about having a serious alternative, what twitter does can mostly be written by like 10 people in 3 months. The problem is scaling it to be big enough while eating that cost until enough people start using it.
AND the advertising budget.
There’s no real way to break into that now without a ridiculous amount of investor capital which investors are gunshy in offering for shit like this right now.
We don’t need an alternative, we need the next generation and I hate to say it but it might just be Discord if they get their shit together.
The network effect is a real doozy.
Social momentum is a hell of a thing
I got on twitter because artists I want to follow post there, a lot of them exclusively. They do this because – in theory – that is where the audience is, with the biggest potential for growth. Then they all get shadowbanned, even the ones that don’t draw porn, because they don’t bring in ad revenue or something. Alternatives exist but so many of them refuse to go to another platform because there isn’t an audience there, pre-packaged and waiting for them.
I understand it, but also I don’t. It’s a cyclical problem but only the content-producing side has the power to solve it.
It’s all about stickiness. Twitter still has accounts people want to follow whereas other platforms don’t so people can’t shift or find it hard to. I’ve seen some prominent users move to Threads, Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon etc. but not enough and scattering to the four winds doesn’t help either. If there were an actual exodus of accounts across media, news, celebrities, sports, government etc. then Twitter die on its ass. Or even if big accounts started mirroring their content across other social media services.
And these rival services should really federate. But we all know that the commercial services are loath to cooperate with each other when they want all the pie.
To be fair, there are also people like me who didn’t use it at all before, but now do just to watch it burn cause it’s funny.
I really don’t get it.
I’m still on Xitter, but on my own terms. I use a plugin called Control Panel for Twitter, which means I don’t get anything on my feed other than stuff from those I follow, and what they share, unless they share some bollocks then I will block shares from them. There are a bunch of Hong Kong activists, journalists and fellow HK travelers who don’t use other platforms yet, and I don’t want to get cut off from what’s happening there. There is also good motorsports contributors, who also post on TikTok and IG which I refuse to go near. In addition there are feeds and posters related to my work, some I can’t see anywhere else, then there is some random stuff I can’t see anywhere else.
I don’t have the Xitter app on my phone and use the same Control Panel plugin to ensure my terms of engagement are maintained on mobile. This plugin, for example blocks anyone who paid Xitter for a blue badge, so I don’t see any of their putrid bile in response to those I follow. It also frees you from the “algorithm” that determines what Xitter want’s you to see, I only get a chronological timeline feed. Upsells, ads, who to follow, bookmarks and other random bits of UI I never use are also gone.
Basically, it is exactly how I want the whole Xitter experience with none of elmo’s shit polluting my screen.
Get it now?
I use Twitter with the control panel and ad block. Both on my desktop and my phone. The phone doesn’t use their app, it uses a web app which gets stripped of all the ads and other bullshit. I peek into Bluesky and Mastodon and post the odd thing there. Some Twitter accounts I follow are starting to mirror on other sites which is a positive thing. I just wish the news services I follow would do the same. I don’t get why the BBC (for example) doesn’t mirror its content or other news orgs when Twitter / Musk is so hostile to them and their journalists.
No. You’re still supporting that shitpile and its piece of shit owner.
Also a likely mix of ketamine and alcohol.
You seem to be taking pleasure in it, but the fact is this was the plan from the moment he was locked into the purchase. Buy the business, run it into the ground, destroy the platform that people use to organise on. On the way down, try a bunch of shady shit and see what they can get away with - this will be the new standard for any platform that comes next.
That’s been the outcome, but I think you’re dramatically overestimating Musk if you think that was his intent.
It seems clear to me that he’s of below average intelligence with an overinflated, incredibly fragile ego.
It wasn’t his intent when he posted about wanting to buy the company, but after the SEC forced him to buy, and once he formed a coalition to buy it, the plan became to kill the business off with a leveraged buyout.
Make no mistake, Twitter isn’t dying because of Musk’s mismanagement, it’s dying because it was saddled with $13bn of debt that it could never have hoped to pay back. The mismanagement is just a show to provide deniability.
That isn’t to say that Musk is some kind of genius, just that he’s a clown playing his role.
How is Musk going to profit from running Twitter into the ground? I think I did not understand that part.
He isn’t. However, you can still make something from a loss - such as establishing new standards of what social media websites can get away with.
Everyone is downvoting as if this is a baseless conspiracy and ridiculous.
For those people, here’s a source
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/was-elon-musks-strategy-twitter-rcna118490
But…how does NBC News have texts that Musk received…?
Edit: Revealed in a court filing.
See relevant text:
The messages from the unknown sender were revealed in a court filing last year as evidence in a lawsuit Twitter brought against Musk after he tried to back out of buying it. The redacted documents were unearthed by The Chancery Daily, an independent legal publication covering proceedings before the Delaware Court of Chancery.
God damn but that gun is smoking like Australia in a heatwave.
That is one explanation, but imho a more likely explanation in the spirit of Hanlon’s razor is that he receives 100s of crazy texts like this on a daily basis and one of them just happens to somewhat align with what crazy shit he is doing now.
You should read the article. It details how Musk followed the text’s suggestions exactly, and is aligning himself closely with the same far right neo-nazis that begged him to buy Twitter and deplatform it.
Even if that exact text didn’t convince him, one of the well known far right political pundits has definitely tried. Free speech is like their worst enemy, they can’t let Twitter be open to all that free information.
I bet that anon texter practically jizzed himself to see how much chaos a few words could create.
He’s gunna be gutted when he finds out xvideos is already taken.
Time to spread the news that X is rebranding to xvideos
Easy, just call it xxvideos.
Throw a third one in there to show you mean business: xxxvideos.com
The microblogging platform that once limited posts to 140 characters is now a “video-first” platform?
If Twitter’s a video-first platform, then Twitch is a text-first platform.
Just like that and with way fewer engineers somehow.
I don’t see a problem as long as the videos are capped at 140 characters
How Elon deals with advertising complaints: “Go advertise someplace else.”
Advertisers:
I can’t wait for X to transition finally into “no longer existing”
Thing is, it probably won’t. MySpace is still around. LiveJournal is still around. Big social media platforms don’t tend to stop existing. But they do stop being culturally and socially relevant, and that’s what I hope comes sooner rather than later to Twitter: irrelevancy.
Preach!
One can dream.
Lmao, he doesn’t have the bandwidth capacity to handle videos
Neither does his platform…
Nothing a little random plug swapping can’t fix!
My internal cable management goblin just had an aneurysm.
Nor the cash to increase the bandwidth capacity to do so.
Omg that’s a significant change in spend. Holy shit, there’s no way he can handle that. My boy scaled up twitch at the beginning. The amount of work, talent, etc …
I never, ever see any actual ads anymore. It’s either some dude with an Indian dude smiling saying “Hello!” or the same exact ass picture from “Hailey201238712985723” or “Jonah9018328412873” advertising the same porn site. No advertiser worth their salt would ever advertise on Elon’s Twitter.
No user worth their salt would be on there either…
Which raises the question, why are you still seeing Twitter ads? Lmao
This is the right question… People keep bitching… Yet are on the platform. Do the same thing as reddit, fucking LEAVE
I’m getting adverts for prostate cancer and kids book charities. You are just a perv clearly. /s
Prostate cancer is a pretty hard sell.
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Of course let’s take a platform that barely holds itself together to show just text and let’s pivot it to be the most technical demanding and expensive kind of service. It will work fine, I’m sure.
I haven’t been keeping up with the changes to X but I checked out their videos site (xvideos, I presume) and it seems like it’s mostly porn with the occasional Tesla shareholder meeting keynote.
The keynotes seem a bit incongruous and I could do without them. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like it’s gone too far downhill.
If X is becoming a video site, Xvideos should absolutely sue them for infringement on their name.
As a porn site they could maybe go toe to toe with the now much diminished twixxer
Has anyone made any piece of technology that could block Elon Musk news? I understand he is currently ruining the world at full speed, but for fuck’s sake, some of us don’t think this is tech news worthy and it’s frankly annoying. He makes it to every paper, then to every news forum. Yuck. Enough Musk spam… you are only doing him favors, even when the news is bad. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
I’ve seen a Firefox plugin called block the rich… I guess it wouldn’t fly if they called it block Elon
Not used it so don’t know if it’s any good
Will try now and report back!
Edit: it’s good. It blurs out text. Sadly not images!
It blocks these:
Block List
- Steve Ballmer
- Jeff Bezos
- Michael Bloomberg
- Sergey Brin
- Warren Buffett
- Larry Ellison
- Bill Gates
- Kanye “Ye” West
- Elon Musk
- Larry Page
- Donald Trump
- Mark Zuckerberg
Immediate observation: really cool, also blocks comments about Elon Musk (including my own lol) Sadly doesn’t block images
Does it block the word “Musk”? Is it case-sensitive? Honestly curious, especially since some of these last names can refer to either the person or a noun.
It does not block “Musk” or “Elon” when they aren’t in the same sentence It seems to block “musk” or “elon” or “elon musk” in lowercase.
One problem I noticed is that it slows down the loading of other pages, like Protonmail via the browser, so I had to disable it for some web pages. I don’t think you can individually disable it for certain pages though, so I’d have to turn it on/off.
One awesome feature that I’d like to see them ad is allowing custom names. I don’t only dislike Elon Musk, but also Taylor Swift and all the other rich people who make it into my news and my brain every single day on every single news outlet… If it’s not about world economy, there really isn’t a reason why Taylor Swift would be on Reuters. There is no reason at all for Elon Musk to be on the news, and when the news is about the lives he ruined, they should put a picture of THEM up, not of his shitty face.
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Yeah thats a great way to stay up to date with technology, just pretend they dont exist!
What ever would we do without updates on technological marvels such as:
- Fraudulent car
- Fraudulent train
- Low-poly cosplay truck
- Animal abuse brain microchip
- Kepler syndrome ISP
- Self-destructing rocket to mars
- Social media for Nazis?
The car is fine, and honestly the software is too, it’s the label that’s the problem. It’s like if Tesla had invented the first really good cough medicine but named it “Death Cure Resurrection Elixir (and cough preventative)” and they have this mustache twirling clown villain selling it.
I don’t blame anyone for completely disregarding it as fraud.
Well sure it wouldn’t be fraud if you simply don’t lie about what the car does
You forgot the /s!
I think if you blocked the person who posted this you’d see a big reduction. It’s usually the same account posting Musk news.
Very good tip, thank you, stranger.
You realize that you are in a technology news section of Lemmy, right? This dude influences technology.
Does he though? Seems like it’s mostly him failing at business.
Anyway, the news coverage of him is unbalanced because it’s his plan to be on the news constantly and forever.
The solution lies between the monitor and to left mouse button.
Well no, I think bad publicity is a thing, with current cancel culture for saying the wrong things, it can ruin your career. Also pedo allegations do hit hard.
If this was the case, Musk’s career would have been over.
Instead this publicity fuels him and his wasteful endeavors.
Your career can only be ruined if you rely on other people to fund your career. He has enough money (and loans and solvent businesses he hasn’t decided to tank yet) independently to keep going when others would have had to pack up.
You think any other non-billionaire could weather the absolute drain of most advertisers leaving Twitter?
Your career can’t be easily ruined if you shit gold.
In a fair world, Musk would be rotting in some sewer.
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😂
“X” the thing you click to close videos you don’t like or are done with.
For real. Every time I’m scrolling through a news article and I see a rectangle with an X in the upper-right corner, my initial reaction is, “Oops. Ad. Scroll past.” I’m quite certain I’ve missed some embedded tweets that way.
“T” a drink with jam and bread!
It’s an interesting claim.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a platform struggle more with video than Twitter. Everything looks like it’s using RealPlayer. It’s the only platform where the Japanese wouldn’t have to censor their porn before uploading.
Reddit video…
I doubt their server infrastructure will hold after all the shenanigans Elmo pulled with it.
Video streaming is a lot more taxing than text.
With this guy, I can only assume he’s saying so because video ads generate more profit.
Twitter has no skin in the video serving game and they have no USP there (aside from famously allowing porn). When he realizes the folly of his actions, he’ll do another U-turn like the many he’s done since purchasing Twitter.
I didn’t know this guy’s character before he bought Twitter but am now fully convinced he’s but a charlatan who’s always trying to seek the popular ‘vote’ as a billionaire.
If he built X.com as a video sharing site to rival YouTube instead of rebranding Twitter and turning it into a Nazi bar, I think people would have a more favourable view of him.
Musk can have good ideas but he’s being blinded by his own hubris.
Where exactly was the good idea?
Being born rich is a pretty good idea.
Man, if only I had thought of being born rich…
I’ve thought of it many times and it hasn’t helped me for shit
Making Twitter/X an ‘everything app.’ if we’ve learned anything from WeChat in China, LINE in Japan & Taiwan and KakaoTalk in South Korea, such apps can be hugely influential.
The premium tier of access makes it actually usable as a social media platform, my prime complaint about Twitter beforehand was that you’d never get any interaction with your posts unless you were a celebrity with a big following. Musk’s dumbassery in this case was selling verified access.
I don’t think pandering to the right wing is a good idea either, but if Musk made X a secure messaging platform, a decent dating app, capable of hosting livestreams and even a way to support creators which cut out middlemen like Patreon, OnlyFans, etc, it would have been huge.
The big difference between Twitter and all those other apps, as someone who has used both KakaoTalk and Line, is that they didn’t start out as social media posting apps - they were just chat messaging apps for talking to your friends, not the world. Then they added payment for things like buying stamps or sending friends money. From there, once they had established payment methods and users that trusted them, they started slowly adding services people thought were useful. The ecosystems built up organically over time. No one planned for them to be everything apps or tried to force it on the apps and users. They became those because they adapted to how people were using the internet on their phones.
I’d say if any app is poised to become the Western world’s ‘everything app’, it’s Facebook.
They’ve got a marketplace, video content, livestreaming, photo sharing, instant messaging, online dating which shits all over mainstream dating apps, and that’s just what Facebook can do.
Facebook is probably as close as we’ll get to a western “everything app.” They kind of missed the window, though, which is another thing Elon doesn’t seem to realize - the big eastern “everything apps” were there as people were starting to switch to doing things on their phones, so the ecosystems grew around them as things were developing (especially WeChat). Elon’s coming in trying to turn Twitter into an everything app nearly ten years too late.
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Having a social media platform that doesn’t rely on censorship to resolve the cesspit problem.
Unfortunately, people are more than happy to back censorship if it’s against ideas they dislike.
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I think his idea was to reduce visibility of harmful content (like exclude it from the algorithm, or maybe just penalize it heavily) without fully banning it.
I suppose downvotes are also a solution (up to a point - doesn’t work unless there is a strong enough consensus).
But even if these don’t work it doesn’t mean censorship is the only solution. Just because we don’t have a good idea doesn’t mean nobody will.
Radication and disinformation are serious problems and some censorship is better than nothing - but still seems like there has to be a better way.
his idea was to reduce visibility of harmful content
He’s got a funny way of accomplishing that goal. So funny that it looks like his goal is exactly the opposite. GENIUS!
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Musk can have
goodideas but he’sbeing blinded by his own hubrisan idiot.Fixed
