Elon Musk Closes Deal - Owns Twitter

[SouprMatt]

Yes, it will happen again.

Which will give someone else another opportunity to make a platform, which when successful someone else will try to buy. It's the sad nature of our society, it's capitalism.

It also means making the most of something while we can, and not take it for granted. It's the acceptance some people are finally realizing with digital media of any kind. They are buying anything to own, they are paying to rent it until the big company decides otherwise. Which is the appeal of physical media, but if you notice, physical media itself is becoming harder & harder to get. Likewise if things become too decentralized, "oligarchs" will come for that since that control it. Whether it will use gov't, financial pressure, or whatever. It's the inevitable cycle / chase. Someone / something will make that decentralization harder to use over a more convenient platform.

With Twitter crashing and burning, competition has actually opened up. Before Elon bought Xitter, Bluesky was a proof of concept, threads didn’t exist, and mastodon had users in the thousands, not the millions.

Threads tried to capitalize on the X fail by automatically giving IG users an account… but most people don’t even know they have it, nor do they care. Bsky is something you need to sign up for, so people going there actually want to go there. And mastodon is just slowly chugging along, growing slowly, but maybe never big enough to be more than a niche player. But too big to disappear, so it will stick around.

 

[Jay Mysteri0]

Or perhaps we can be a little more proactive about it, otherwise we'll be destined to deal with this see-saw swing of social media bullshit (see 2016=>2020=>2024 social media regulation).

In cases like this, with a platform of any sort, won't that require capital of some kind? Which will get us right back into the situation we've already been in.

With Twitter crashing and burning, competition has actually opened up. Before Elon bought Xitter, Bluesky was a proof of concept, threads didn’t exist, and mastodon had users in the thousands, not the millions.

Threads tried to capitalize on the X fail by automatically giving IG users an account… but most people don’t even know they have it, nor do they care. Bsky is something you need to sign up for, so people going there actually want to go there. And mastodon is just slowly chugging along, growing slowly, but maybe never big enough to be more than a niche player. But too big to disappear, so it will stick around.

Xit's purpose as far as emo is concerned has been fulfilled. Now he'll let it grind along until he can craft a reason why the American taxpayer needs to maintain it, or he'll let it go down slowly in flames while blaming anyone else.

One of the biggest things Bluesky has accomplished isn't so much with xit, but instead with Threads. In Meta's desperate bid to avoid addressing anything political & having to moderate ( sound familiar old PRSI members? ) they made Threads into the platform they wanted. NOT the platform users wanted. Sure giving IG users an instant Thread account boosted numbers, but the complaints about how the platform worked were many. Now since the rise of Bluesky, Threads has rushed thru a bunch of "improvements" that make it more like the platform users wanted.


Xit isn't feeling the heat from Bluesky, Threads is. Threads is suddenly rushing out "improvements" in just a weeks time. I wonder why? 🤣

 

[P___X]

In cases like this, with a platform of any sort, won't that require capital of some kind? Which will get us right back into the situation we've already been in.

Not necessarily. Think Linux. Mastodon is the Linux of social media. Do I use linux? Well, not directly, but my car does, my WIFI router does. Knowing that if MS or Apple goes out of line, I can switch to another OS is a great thing.

 

[SouprMatt]

In cases like this, with a platform of any sort, won't that require capital of some kind? Which will get us right back into the situation we've already been in.



Xit's purpose as far as emo is concerned has been fulfilled. Now he'll let it grind along until he can craft a reason why the American taxpayer needs to maintain it, or he'll let it go down slowly in flames while blaming anyone else.

One of the biggest things Bluesky has accomplished isn't so much with xit, but instead with Threads. In Meta's desperate bid to avoid addressing anything political & having to moderate ( sound familiar old PRSI members? ) they made Threads into the platform they wanted. NOT the platform users wanted. Sure giving IG users an instant Thread account boosted numbers, but the complaints about how the platform worked were many. Now since the rise of Bluesky, Threads has rushed thru a bunch of "improvements" that make it more like the platform users wanted.


Xit isn't feeling the heat from Bluesky, Threads is. Threads is suddenly rushing out "improvements" in just a weeks time. I wonder why? 🤣

To me, Threads is Meta’s Songs of Innocence - a U2 album nobody asked for, but was added to their iTunes library anyway. Improvements won’t matter much, because it was dumped on so many people who have no desire for it.

On the apolitical nonsense from Threads, they partially integrated with the Fediverse. So I follow a couple people there. I already have been seeing complaints that posts with political content aren’t being seen by others on the platform. I’m also seeing a much reduced posting frequency as people are presumably fleeing the platform.

How long until Bluesky starts sanitizing the discussion, MR-style? Which, as we all know, results in anything outside the white conservative male mainstream POV being labeled as “political” and hidden or removed.

 

[Jay Mysteri0]

Not necessarily. Think Linux. Mastodon is the Linux of social media. Do I use linux? Well, not directly, but my car does, my WIFI router does. Knowing that if MS or Apple goes out of line, I can switch to another OS is a great thing.

That's just it. I don't think of Linux. While we don't use it directly, we also don't use it with anything up front. That can be an issue.

When it comes down to mass acceptance of a social platform, ease of use is important. Which isn't a hallmark of a decentralized system.

The path to a platform easy enough to attract people ( especially away from another platform ) for now requires large ( and nowadays promising to investors you can exploit your members to train some kind of AI as a bonus ) financial boost. Mastodon showed that any friction can reduce acceptance. While Threads offering what a company wants over it's membership isn't a winning hand ( who knew? ) either. Bluesky for now is the balancing point, as far as an alternative to xit, because of it's simplicity I believe.

I should mention that I also frequent Cara, but it's a niche platform that can barely handle it's membership & gets a little financial help from people on the platform.

 

[P___X]

To me, Threads is Meta’s Songs of Innocence - a U2 album nobody asked for, but was added to their iTunes library anyway. Improvements won’t matter much, because it was dumped on so many people who have no desire for it.

On the apolitical nonsense from Threads, they partially integrated with the Fediverse. So I follow a couple people there. I already have been seeing complaints that posts with political content aren’t being seen by others on the platform. I’m also seeing a much reduced posting frequency as people are presumably fleeing the platform.

How long until Bluesky starts sanitizing the discussion, MR-style? Which, as we all know, results in anything outside the white conservative male mainstream POV being labeled as “political” and hidden or removed.

this, through and through. i didn't know facebook has been limiting political content until I dove into the settings last week. I'm not interested in istagram, because I'm just too old for posting or even looking at people posturing on ultrafiltered photos. Or looking at food photos or looking at other people's vacation photos that give this false impression of everyone else is having more fun than you do. People displaying how happy they are is also one of the traps of social media. I'm probably the happiest I've ever been in my life at least from the perspective of not needing or being interested in anybody's approval. The more one posts, the more they crave approval, the less likely for them to be truly happy and thus the more phony the whole thing feels. Which takes us to: I'm here for the conversations. To read the takes of people I respect, to learn about new ideas that go beyond pixels, etc.

And your take on MR is spot on.

 

[SouprMatt]

I had no idea that Scottie Pippen completely lost his marbles….

 

[SouprMatt]

Is this the same guy who insisted everybody else needs to endure some financial hardship? Couldn’t be…