Now will Google look the other way because of Twitter’s pull like they do with YouTube’s drain or will this lead to further disruption between the two companies?
YouTube is part of Google (Alphabet if you want to use the legal name). It's a much different decision when an unrelated company is using a lot of your resources and not paying for them.
All the major social medias shitting the bed as more and more people are asking important questions seems a bit convenient for it to be just some rich guy fucking up. Hopefully we get some more of the freedom of mass communication back with the fediverse.
I don’t think that there’s any conspiracy or ill intent there.
It’s just that the tech bubble is exploding and investors are running out of money - or rather are running out of willing to spend money for these social media platforms.
So they go public or get bought by some ultra rich people.
There’s also the issue that as communities grow to insanely bit proportions, the operating costs also grow exponentially. Server costs of course, but then you also need to start investing in teams of lawyers, support, community managers, dedicated DevOps and developers… all of that while the community loses its sense of being part of a “little village” and get less inclined to financially help foot the bill.
These social media services have pretty much committed suicide - or egocide rather because I don’t believe that they will go anywhere. They’ll stay afloat without issues, but they’ve lost their souls a long time ago. They’re working for money now, and not for their community or users anymore.
And they cannot go back either, because the operating costs don’t just go down by themselves, so they need to act greedy in order to survive. There’s nothing the Reddit or Twitter leadership could do to stop that now. It’s a one-way byproduct of uncontrolled growth.
The right “moral choice” for these leaders would probably be to just let their platform slowly die while alternatives emerge - but that’s a very painful thing to do when you invested 20+ years of your life into it. Dorsey managed to do it for example, which is impressive and quite commendable.
I’ll add that it’s unlikely that the Fediverse will suffer from the same fate, because… there’s no management. There’s an “agreed upon” structure but everyone can do their own thing and that’s what’s beautiful about it. It cannot “lose its soul” because as a contract/protocol, the “soul” of the Fediverse is the only thing that makes it exist. It might splinter, it might evolve into different “universes”, but it will never die.
It’s pretty much a re-creation of how the 2000’s internet worked. Which had its problems, yeah, but which was also a very resilient and independent place.
as its contract comes up for renewal this month, which could result in the social media company's trust and safety teams being crippled, Platformer reported on Saturday.
Since Musk's acquisition, Twitter has cut costs dramatically and laid off thousands of employees. Musk ordered the company to cut infrastructure costs, such as spending on cloud services, by $1 billion, a source had told Reuters in November.
Can Elon keep Twitter afloat with all the money it's been losing?
I don't see how. It's possible to block most ads you see on the platform and there aren't enough companies advertising to replace them so you end up with a mostly ad-free feed.
The point is to kill Twitter. Elon Musk is beholden to the Saudis with his investment. They used Twitter tracking to find and kill Jamal Khashoggi. What you see happening to Twitter is entirely on purpose, so it can't be used to stir up uprisings again like the Arab Spring in Egypt, or the organization of Hong Kong protesters.
Twitter was the catalyst for some big progressive social movements. I think the ruling class got its money worth out of hamstringing them.
They shouldn't have. Organizers should have just picked up and moved to Mastodon, but of the few of them that I saw scout it, all but one left after a few days because they were totally unwilling to learn new tools.
"We don't have the time for that," they'd said.
They then turned around and turned to Twitter, where they are effectively shadow banned.
Mastodon had a relatively large and active group of users who were there for a certain set of reasons, and those reasons included being hidden away from other people.
They didn't take well to the influx of difference. But then, that influx outnumbered them 4:1 and could have just ignored them.
Here, though, the influx outnumbered the existing user base by several thousand to one, and no thought has been given to whether anyone should care about lemmygrad. They can, and will, continue to do their own thing.
I think the reddit migration might be the kick in the pants the fediverse needs to really get going. As a knock-on effect it will probably help mastodon and may get that fire going again. I hope it does, twitter sucks.
By big, I don't mean expansive, I mean culturally impactful. Things like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wallstreet did not come with Pepsi sponsorships.
Large groups of people advocating for small social reforms are not what anyone is trying to shut down. In fact, they get sponsorships because that kind of "protest" is what they want people spending their time on, rather than anything that actually risks impacting political order.
And people used Twitter for the latter. And now they effectively can't.
Progressive social movements are massively popular, that's how they become "movements". Corporations are just adapting to match what the market wants. Notice how you specifically called out "social" movements, and not other progressive agendas like the massive wealth gap or single payer health care. Those are not things that corporations would support, regardless of how popular, since it impacts their precious profit margins.
these kind of shenanigans make me weary of telsas. there's no way elon's antics are contained only in twitter. he has to be cutting corners and making awful grease-fire decisions there, too.
Not saying you're wrong, but Tesla has entire teams of people devoted to managing Elon. Twitter was never structured like that, so the company was directly exposed to his every whim.
Also Space X just blowed up a launchpad. For no real reason.
Just expanding on this for anyone that is not aware. Large rockets like the Saturn V and Space Shuttle are the only historical comparisons to the Starship and Booster that was tested recently. Both of those used multiple methods of handling the extreme forces involved in a rocket launch of this magnitude: specifically, flame trenches drenched with a stupendous amount of water. This helps absorb the massive sound waves from physically tearing the launch complex apart.
Starship's first orbital launch attempt destroyed the launch pad, which did not have flame trenches. We found out later that Elon personally overruled the engineer's recommendation for a trench after deciding that the (significantly reduced power and duration) static fire tests showed it wasn't necessary.
Musk ordered the company to cut infrastructure costs, such as spending on cloud services, by $1 billion, a source had told Reuters in November.
At some point all these numbers seem like magic space money. Not that that's what they spend, but that's what they could reasonably (for whoever's definition thereof) cut?
Sometimes there are inefficiencies. Sometimes you can cut features. But it’s a process that takes time, and has repercussions, and limits. The 1$ Billion mark could come from extensive evaluation of the current infrastructure, but it comes from Elon’s vibes and massive incurred debt from the leveraged acquisition.
Elon thinks that he can use office space and not pay for it. He is delusional. And he knows less about cloud services and code than he knows about leases.
Twitter is still online because providers can’t believe THE AUDACITY, and are hopping they will get paid. Let’s see how long they can justify the hole in the books and keep subsidizing Musk’s House of Hate Speech.
Twitter just like me. I had a trial for $300 and Google let it auto renew without charging me then tried to come back 6 months later saying I owe them money when my card was expired. They sent it to collections but cannot verify the debt. GG
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