Somewhat curious to see what happens over the next year. Anyone got a betting pool going? lol No matter what takes place, hopefully Mastodon gets a big uptick in users!
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2022
38 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
34448 readers
358 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
No kidding. You think Twitter's bad now? Just you wait. Consider that Musk is a thin-skinned egomaniac. Now consider that Twitter has one of the most vocal toxic people on the internet. This can only end well.
It can go both ways. Musk also managed to hire competent managers for SpaceX and does not seem to interfere too much in the day to day business of it (only the grand vision I guess).
Came here to comment the same. A lot of left liberals and various kinds of anticapitalists will probably move and Mastodon luckily is the most thriving project in the fediverse.
do you really expect it to change that much?
I don't think it will die, or something, but probably there will be a moderate exodus, a big one if we are successful and the libre software activists know to take advantage of this opportunity and propagandize Mastodon.
Really hope this helps the fediverse grow.
Same, every time there is twitter drama fediverse gets an influx of users. And the more fediverse grows the more attractive it becomes to new users since there's more content available. Mastodon has millions of users on it now, and it's pretty vibrant. I think a lot of people leaving twitter will be pleasantly surprised by it.
Nobody created twitter.social yet?
Wouldn't that create a lawsuit?
Maybe witter.social ? Tooter.social ? Twit.social? We can find one
The problem is that sometimes it is not avoidable to read a post on Twitter. Luckily there is Nitter redirect to do it. Too bad there is no equivalent front-end for Facebook (AFAIK), where you have to continue accessing with TOR, VPN, covered webcam, disinfectant spray, mask and rubber gloves.
He doesn't buy a social network, he really bought was the best training engine for his artificial intelligence division (especially the one related to robots, which curiously seek to be "as human" as possible.
So on second thought, I think Elon is going to be forced to sell Twitter soon. Hear me out.
While Elon is wealthy af, very little of that is liquid assets. The largest portion of his assets are tied up in Tesla stock. So if he's doing a purchase like this, he either is selling Tesla stock or doing a leveraged buyout using the Tesla stock as backing. Problem is, Tesla's value has dropped significantly year-over-year. Banks are reluctant to loan and Tesla stocks will be sold at a discount. And considering that Twitter is not a great investment to begin with, it eventually may be more advantageous to just get out of his little vanity social experiment.
It's all going to depend on whether he figures out a way to monetize Twitter. One way that was floated before was to create a paid tier and use that as a source of revenue instead of ads and analytics. Cutting down 75% of employees and moving to this model could actually make Twitter profitable.
I'm curious where that 75% of employees would even come from. I have my doubts that they can just slice off 3/4 of their workforce and not jeopardize the long term viability of the company. Not to mention I assume tasks like reviewing reported tweets must be highly labor intensive.
It looks like they have monetized their API. I can't see how they monetize the actual UI itself.
My experience is that SV companies tend to hire people as part of demonstrating growth to investors. Layoffs starting with the data engineering team is suggestive that they may deprioritize analytics going forward. Twitter having less moderation going forward is also highly likely. At the end of the day these companies just care that enough users stay on the platform to monetize. Remains to be seen where this goes, but it's certainly possible for twitter to be profitable if they focus on direct monetization. For example, if they charge a fee for blue check accounts that could create a significant revenue.
The irony is that Twitter isn't even really that big of a platform as Internet giants go. It has outsized influence because it's the platform of choice for media outlets, journalists, celebrities, etc.
It's basically a glorified RSS feed
In fact, Techlore got banned from there and created their own update system complete with an RSS feed.
In any case, I would only worry if Musk buys Lemmy. I don't think there are that many here who participate in Twitter or other Big Brother networks.
it’s ridiculous to believe that musk will bring freedom back to twitter,it will be a disaster for freedom in our country
The real disaster is that public forums like Twitter are owned by oligarchs in the first place. Which particular oligarchs happens to own Twitter is a far lesser concern.
can’t agree anymore,just from one abyss to another
Elon: Okay, let's poke some holes in this ship!