If Jack Dorsey & Elon Musk (who are friends) just wanted to run a MAGA site full of fascists, they could have just bought Parler & saved themselves approx 43.999 billion dollars.
What they wanted was to cripple the sad remnants of investigative journalism, and the political left, which successfully used Twitter for political organizing, activism & messaging throughout the Trump regime.
Why would anyone who cares about either of these things go to Jack's #Bluesky project.
Amid rumors he'd been forced out as Twitter CEO (for the 2nd time), Dorsey reached out to Musk & together they planned his takeover, which Dorsey backed to the tune of $1 billion in shares.
A Jack Dorsey owned protocol or platform will never, ever be a safe space for Democratic or progressive organizing, or even a safe gathering space for any marginalized community (which includes women).
It's actually a big deal to throw away this moment - an opening of possibility to meaningfully disrupt the cycle of Enshittification & to build a vastly more democratic social media space.
@jbzfn@chargrille I keep seeing people try to make Bluesky Jack's. I understand he has some stake in ownership, but he's ALL IN on Nostr.
Nostr's concept/tech is the best in terms of decentralization, but it puts the impetus of moderation on each user. AND it's 90% crypto oriented in terms of content, which is more than a little off putting
@chargrille Mastodon for activism and awareness, Bluesky for cute animal pics and general shitposting, and never the twain should meet.
I agree with your assessment of the musk/dorsey intent, what I wonder is why all this chipping away at Twitter, rather than pulling the plug immediately. The endless blunders and faceplants have shifted musk's carefully crafted public persona from "visionary genius" to bumbling incompetent.
It's clear he doesn't give a crap about the $44B or lawsuits from contractors and creditors, would it not have been better for his reputation (and boundless ego) to take Twitter offline with the vague promise of overhauling the site, then announce he would be "taking the company in an exciting new direction" or whatever, and then simply never follow up?
Can he honestly love posting boomer-humor and getting fluffed by sycophant crypto/fash THAT MUCH? So much that he'd trash his entire reputation over it? It's astonishing.
@AminosBilly@chargrille
It is absolutely astonishing. It makes me wonder if this is incompetence or intentional. I'm leaning towards a blackmail type scenario.
Maybe something to do with the friends he keeps...
Musk won't prevail in any misappropriation claims against #Meta for #Threads because he hasn't tried to enforce against #Bluesky, which directly competes with Twitter, hired Twitter employees & all 3 of its Board members worked at Twitter. BS's clearly been using information acquired at Twitter to accelerate its development. Its attraction to users is b/c it's a copycat clone of Twitter - but Musk has never made a peep about it. And never will.
Failure to protect against misappropriation is an affirmative defense in CA.
Dorsey had duty to keep Twitter's TSs. "It is misappropriation to disclose or use another’s trade secret, knowing or having reason to know, that...the trade secret was acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use, or was derived from or through a person who owed a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use. (Cal. Civ. Code, §§ 3426.1(b)(2)(B)(ii) and (iii).)"
@chargrille The major platforms are like the One Ring. Everyone claims to know their dark power, but most cannot bring themselves to give up their Precious - in particular, the content creators. They're addicted to the power they associate with their follower numbers, and they'll do mental triple backflips to rationalize providing unambiguous material support to Musk and Dorsey. That's why allegedly caring people continue to post and read there.
@chargrille Dorsey and Musk, along with a bunch of other immensely rich men who are all in the throes of their mid-life crises, have turned to transhumanism/longtermism whackjobbery as a way to deal with the sense of impending doom that comes with the realisation of mortality.
Unlike other generations whose wealthy dealt with mortality and legacy by building libraries and art galleries, or by trying to solve big health problems, we’re stuck with these narcissistic losers hellbent on breaking political, economic and social systems so they can ‘restructure’ humanity to suit their stupid pseudo-philosophy. There are too many politicians and media folk listening to their nonsense.
Although this is the effect, it most likely wasn’t even their intention. The reality of capital is that business owners can act in the profit interest which has devastating effects on society, democracy, and the well-being of the majority of people, without having any bad intentions. They are acting as the system guides and encourages, most likely with no evil thought in mind.
The system isn’t broken, it’s working as intended.
@chargrille I love Mastodon but there are good reasons to use commercial sites. E.g. your instance hasn't signed up to the Mastodon Server Covenant (most haven't), which means they could shut the server down with no notice.
Also, commercial sites don't need you to move instances when volunteer admins lose interest or close down servers.
Having said that, I have no plans to join #BlueSky or #Threads 🙂
Sure but a) This is about Dorsey & Musk's track records, not 'commercial vs. non', & b) it's ironic to posit commercial sites as a bastion of reliability given this week's Twitter crisis, & that Musk's commercial site has spent the last year suspending accounts on his individual whim & inexorably shutting down user services "with no notice."
I support instances signing the Mastodon Server Covenant. My server is run cooperatively by friends & sudden shutdown is not a concern.
@chargrille I agree with you, but Mastodon's model is both a boon and a barrier.
I've tried to get friends to use Mastodon but they say it's either too techie or nobody they're following is on it. I've seen notable figures join Mastodon and then leave when they get little engagement.
I wish I knew the answer.
I love Mastodon, but I understand why people would want a less techie network with all the celebs and influencers etc.
@johnhowesauthor@chargrille My wife is deaf and blind and uses Mastodon. She said you have to be a toddler not to be able to use Mastodon. It's more like not wanting to use it. Bad attitude and privilege all around.
If people can understand how to use email, they should be able to understand fedi. Like, why is it that people understand that gmail, hotmail, whatever, is a provider and not email itself, but find it so hard to understand that the same thing applies to the fediverse? And that you can check your email using the gmail client, outlook, Thunderbird, the mail app on your phone, or whatever, but not that Mastodon, Tusky, Toot!, Calckey, Akkoma, and so on all let you communicate with the rest of the fediverse even if they look differently? It's weird to me.
But I can agree that the fedi network generally has a loooooot of techie people on it which normies find uninteresting. But is that really it? Because I think that's true for most stuff that isn't yet mainstream.
@chargrille mastodon would take off as the next investigative platform, it really has everything needed for it.
What is lacking is an algorithm. If the only people who ever saw your posts are the people who follow you, would your investigation ever reach the public?
I wish mastodon has an algorithm. If it did, it would pretty much kill twitter and bluesky.
@void_trans@chargrille That's what you have boosts for? If it's really good or important, people will spread it around so it reaches large parts of the network.
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