Author denies Elon Musk kicked him off platform and says he is joining rival Threads

Summary

Stephen King announced his departure from X (formerly Twitter), calling the platform “too toxic” and urging followers to join him on Threads.

King has frequently clashed with X owner Elon Musk over verification charges and political disputes, including Musk’s support for Donald Trump.

Other entities, including The Guardian, German football club St Pauli, and actor Jamie Lee Curtis, have also left the platform, citing concerns over toxic content, misinformation, and hate speech.

Rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky are gaining traction, with Bluesky reporting nearly 15 million users globally.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      281·
      6 days ago

      I wish people would have left earlier as well, but it’s not just sunk cost fallacy. Network effects are a rational reason to stay, and that’s the issue. If he has a community, he loses the community. I get it.

      That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once - it’s far more likely their network will follow them in that case, both hurting X more and helping themselves more, and accelerating people leaving as the network effects disappear on X.

      The physics metaphor applies pretty directly here: They need to create momentum to counteract inertia.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        161·
        6 days ago

        That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once

        I think that’s a herding cats issue. Especially when you’re dealing with a bunch of people with big egos. But it would be nice.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
          17·
          6 days ago

          SAG making a push for union members to leave it would definitely help.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            7·
            6 days ago

            Not a terrible idea. I wonder what Fran Drescher’s position on the election is? I’m betting she’s not a big Elon fan as a union president.

            • SeaJ@lemm.ee
              4·
              6 days ago

              You hear that, @frandrescher? Head over to Bluesky and/or Mastodon and take your minions with you!

              Note: I have no idea how to Twitter.

        • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          Yeah, for sure. But there’s been trends set off without explicit coordination in the past, especially where there’s an unspoken, unacknowledged pressure built up over time.

          I suspect many both celebs and normies are ready to leave, and they’re waiting for an excuse, a signal that they won’t be leaving alone and losing those networks. If Taylor Swift does it, and then some movie star follows, and so on, it can organically cascade.

        • oo1@lemmings.worldEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          Yes, you maybe need a “bandwagon” or some FOMO. Other psychology crap like that.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      121·
      6 days ago

      Sunk cost fallacy hits people hard.

      It’s true. I never deleted my reddit posts and comments because I spent like 13 years with that account. A part of my brain says “don’t delete those, you might need them later.” It’s like a natural hording instinct.

  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.eeEnglish
    7813·
    6 days ago

    Anything but Mastodon/Activitypub, eh? These fellas rlly love sucking on corporate dicks, don’t they

    • fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      633·
      6 days ago

      It really boggles my mind the cognitive dissonance of everybody constantly complaining about corporations screwing them over, then refusing to use the obvious solution to their problems.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        703·
        6 days ago

        I can absolutely believe that an old guy like Stephen King has never even heard of Mastodon. It’s not like there’s a big Mastodon PR team being paid to advertise its existence.

          • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
            91·
            6 days ago

            Yeah like the average person has never heard of enshitification. It’s not even an established concept in their mind.

            They may have a vague sense that things are getting shittier on the big platforms, but probably don’t even consider smaller platforms or decentralization as solutions

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            12·
            6 days ago

            Do you think people on Lemmy talking about Linux are trying to court non-tech people? It’s a discussion board, and it has communities for discussion of Linux. What do you think you’ll find when you go there?

            That’s right, people discussing Linux. Wild.

        • fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          161·
          6 days ago

          I can totally believe that he didn’t know about mastodon, but even Bluesky is like a reasonable platform. Threads… I see literally no upside to using threads. It’s on a timer from the beginning to turn into another X. Just look at how long Facebook has been a cesspool of Nazi propaganda.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            72·
            6 days ago

            I’ve been using Bluesky for a couple of days and I honestly think it’s okay. I’m not big on microblogging in general, but I can follow just my long-distance friends and no one else and only have to see other people’s crap if one of my friends shares it. So that’s nice. My only issue with Mastodon was one of the same ones I had with Twitter- if I followed people I was interested in but didn’t know, my feed just got too busy for me.

            But that seems to work for a lot of people?

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
        102·
        6 days ago

        We’re here for fun. Celebs are on social media as part of their brand. It’s them doing business, and they’re going to use what the feel will reach the largest audience with the least effort on their part, and something with corporate backing likely has customer support for moderation, hacking, and whatever else. They’re not here for a digital revolution, they’re here to keep their name and income stream out there.

        I imagine it’s the same reasoning why a business will pay for Red Hat when they could run Linux for free. It may or may not be the best option, but they feel it offers tangible benefits.

        • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          This is absolutely correct. And these businesses are typically paying employees to manage these social accounts so there is financial risk with choosing one that’s not going to result in revenue. Why market on a platform with no audience or backing?

          I’m not saying I like it, but that is indeed how things work.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
            4·
            6 days ago

            Yup, I just replied to another comment, what’s so bad about having a place that’s just regular people? I enjoy having my comments actually read here and getting to know some of you to some level. I’d lose interest in this place if it turned into new Twitter. I can’t compete with Taylor or Beyonce or whoever the flavor of the week is. We can have both platforms if we so choose, so why wreck one for the sake of another?

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            1·
            6 days ago

            Couldn’t one person just copy/paste each thing they post on one platform, to the others? At least until it’s clear which platform will be twitter’s successor? They’re all free, so why not hedge? Do you really need to hire another person if you want to have another social media account on a different platform?

        • Everett@reddthat.comEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          Although federated social media has the “chicken or egg” problem with content and attracting users, I’m content with places like Lemmy and Mastodon staying the small size they are right now for a little longer.

          Sure, I definitely miss content from other platforms from time to time. But I think your comment about businesses and celebrities rings true. I’m happy to be clear of the grifters and influencers for as long as possible.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
            3·
            6 days ago

            Exactly. For all the things that typically get complained about: one product trying to do everything, people coming in to monetize things, feeling like your voice gets lost in oceans of comments, it seems like people forget that when it comes to the Fediverse.

            The same guys that spent all that time being mad about potential federation with Threads are mad that this place isn’t going to be Twitter 2.0? It doesn’t make sense to me. If you want ads and celebs, go see them at their place. Keeping this just place us regular people doesn’t need to be a negative. There’s room for both.

            • fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              6 days ago

              Well, if the corporatized platforms all went to federated instances, it’d be a lot easier to pack up and move to a different platform, or fix the existing platform by choosing different instances. It would make those platforms better and we would probably still have our own spaces either using different protocols, or different clusters of instances who only federate with each other.

              Threads being federated is not them actually trying to be federated, but trying to EEE the open competition, and I think that is more of a threat to us than people joining mastodon.

              Edit: I’m realizing that I’m kind of contradicting myself here lol

              • anon6789@lemmy.world
                1·
                6 days ago

                That was my initial gripe with the other commenters. Nobody ever likes the one-size-fits-all software platforms. It’s always got too much of what you dont want and not enough what you do. All these social platforms are free., why mix them when we can use the ones we want. Installing Lemmy and Bluesky apps is easy, but if you later decide you dont want Bluesky, you just uninstall. If all those people would come here, you’d have to get people to defederate or you have to pack up and leave for another instance. That seems a lot more hassle to me than just using a second app.

                Lemmy is great as-is. Let’s be proud of it. It gives me a day’s worth of content as it stands now…probably more than I actually should use it already!

    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
      147·
      6 days ago

      Why wouldn’t they want to join this place and be called bootlickers for moderate policy take by some screaming communist from a .ml? Sounds like a great time to me! Getting yelled at by flying squid twice a day is a joy!

      This place is primarily made up of a ton anarchist and communists screaming and spreading their own bullshit. Centrist and and less progressive folks are commonly shouted at, called bootlickers, or Nazis for relatively centrrist views.

      Mods and admins are far less balanced than reddit or pre x Twitter as well. LWis about to as close to center as you can get and it’s quite obvious.

    • Sl00k@programming.devEnglish
      61·
      6 days ago

      Mastodon is a far worse experience than Twitter and Bluesky, it’s not a 1:1 transition.

      • BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
        3·
        6 days ago

        Sure, but he’s not wrong. I’ll never get why people love to rail again corporations and enshittification while using those sites.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
      4·
      6 days ago

      There is a slight learning curve to Mastodon. Is there a method for verifying accounts? Honest question there. I signed up for Mastodon years ago but I used it as often as I used Twitter which is to say never.

  • garretble@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    6 days ago

    He has a Bluesky account already, and has posted…some.

    Everyone I’ve seen (mostly in the tech space) seems to say that Threads feels soulless. I follow a few people there from my Masto account (yay, federation), and that’s all fine and dandy. But I don’t know if I’d trust Zuck in the long run since he already seems to be kissing the ring.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      16·
      6 days ago

      Yes, kissing the ring for sure. I knew Zuck was gone as soon as he called Trump “badass” and that he “couldn’t vote for a democrat” after the first assassination attempt.

      Dude stood there and by his luck the bullet missed. This wasn’t some courageous action, this was “standing there until the secret service tackled me.” What exactly was “badass” about it?

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        7·
        6 days ago

        But you see raising his fist for applause was totally not narcissistic and was actually retroactive courage!!

  • capital_sniff@lemmy.world
    16·
    6 days ago

    I’ve been calling it the Roman numeral for ten site formerly known as twitter. Are people just abbreviating this to ‘X’ now?

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 days ago

    Drat, this Tower’s level

    I did get a warning to not engage in level hopping, which is why I must emphasize not to do so again

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
    31·
    6 days ago

    I have many different accounts for some time. People like King thought they definitely wait for Musk to end. BlueSky had not reached the number of users, and types, to make it interesting and useful. In the end, for apps like Mastedon, this is the driver for popularity. Bluesky is much better now, though still missing some types of feeds

  • callouscomic@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    6 days ago

    It was 10 years ago.

    People just want to be smug now cause it’s the cool thing to do.

  • Pixlbabble@lemm.eeEnglish
    217·
    6 days ago

    It’s tailored for your feed based on what you interact with. It’s a mirror my friend, you are toxic.

  • sir_pronoun@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    6 days ago

    Is saying “Oh boy, he’s really not the looker, is he?” toxic enough for you guys to send me off to X?

    • nomous@lemmy.world
      6·
      6 days ago

      King? He makes his money from knowing how to use words not how to use plastic surgeons.