| Non-motoring > Twitter and Elon | Miscellaneous |
| Thread Author: Manatee | Replies: 5 |
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New Fri 11 Nov 22 22:28
Twitter and Elon - Manatee
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Putting this here because it's really about social media, Elon Musk, not so much computing. I've never liked Twitter, opened an account over 10 years ago and closed it soon afterwards. In this last year I signed up again to follow a handful of very good posters on science/medicine, economics and politics. All passive, almost never posting. I find Twitter quite nasty. Like FB, you get your own 'bubble' which tends to reinforce what you 'like' (I almost never 'like' for that reason) and/or view. But even high quality posters get quite aggressive replies, hence I rarely read replies. And then - 2 weeks ago Musk completed his purchase of Twitter for $44bn. All hell has broken loose. About half the staff seem to have been sacked, some without being informed first - they just found their logins had been deleted. Latest is that he has fired the security people and security has gone over to developers, at least the ones who haven't been fired. Users report that moderation is much reduced, and bot activity has increased. Some have been looking for an alternative - obviously there isn't one when your network is on Twitter, but there is a feeling that Twitter will continue to decline. A small proportion of users have now opened Mastodon accounts. Mastodon is part of the fediverse, a 'hive' of thousands of servers. It's quite a nerdy thing, or was. I like Mastodon, it's more polite than Twitter, has no adverts, and doesn't employ algorithms to keep its users clicking. You can choose the accounts you want to follow, and that's what you see. Trouble is, until a couple of weeks ago Mastodon probably had a million users. Now it has over 10 million, and its creaking. Some Mastodon servers have thrown in the towel - even if they don't accept new accounts on their server, the massive increase in load on the 'fediverse' has caused them problems. Twitter has 300 million users, allegedly. Exactly how many real accounts it has has been a subject of debate between Musk and Dorsey. But it's pretty clear that Mastodon can't take a material proportion of Twitter users. Now there is concern that Twitter will actually collapse. www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-how-a-twitter-engineer-says-it-will-break-in-the-coming-weeks/ apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-0d3d4618a3f4631dfd253ae8798c5196 The interesting thing to me here is whether a new type of social media can develop. Perhaps it's necessary for the established biggies to collapse Much of what is bad, really bad, about SM is because the users are the product, being sold to the real customers, who are the advertisers. This is the reason for algorithms that create 'rabbit holes' to keep users 'engaged' (addicted). At the moment Mastodon is supported by donations. Maybe that will become subscription. Either way, it has to be better than being the product. I just hope it can survive long enough. Something very few thought of - the archive. www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/11/1063162/twitters-imminent-collapse-could-wipe-out-vast-records-of-recent-human-history/ |
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New Fri 11 Nov 22 23:04
Twitter and Elon - Zero
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Social media channels regularly rise and fall and churn, starting with the first - Friends Reunited. People who invest in them get burned. Facebook is on managed decline, Twitter was about to start the decline, Tic Toc is on the rise, The interesting thing about twitter is that Musk did not seem to realise that, vastly overpaid for it, waltzed in and killed its revenue stream in a heart beat. Lets see how much Musk loses in his madness moment. The Archive? The internet is always losing data at source, always did and always will. The internet is a transient place, but its always regurgitated and repeated elsewhere usually. Human History? Twitter is just one very small source of misinformation that has screwed western society rigid these past 4 years. Perhaps this misinformation is best lost, lest it be reused again. |
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New Fri 11 Nov 22 23:09
Twitter and Elon - Manatee
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>>Perhaps this misinformation is best lost, lest it be reused again. Can't imagine anyone wanting to browse it. And half of it is fake news. |
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New Sat 12 Nov 22 09:30
Twitter and Elon - tyrednemotional
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...I used to frequent a few Newsgroups back in the day - the forerunner of much SM on the web. They fell into disuse as other forms of such took over, and were eventually taken on by Mr Google as part of Google Groups (and then became even more dead). All/most of the Newsgroup content was transferred to Groups, and as the facility is still alive, it makes for quite an entertaining ramble, being able to review, in context, my posting activity from best part of 30 years ago... ;-) (Interestingly enough, the majority of the exchanges were much more measured and pleasant than one generally finds on most platforms nowadays. (Present company, mostly, excepted)) |
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New Sat 12 Nov 22 09:27
Twitter and Elon - Zero
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>> see how much Musk loses in his madness moment. www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63597087 |
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New Sat 12 Nov 22 10:00
Twitter and Elon - Manatee
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That was totally predictable, nd sure enough it happened. Elon could be the most extreme expression of Dunning Kruger effect ever known. Or he's so clever that we haven't worked out what the agenda is. But it's starting to look as of he has evaporated most of $44bn. in a couple of weeks. |
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