The claim is a major departure for the service, which has long been known as a destination for posting short snippets of text.
It’s amazing watching a platform with no substantial competitor kill itself so badly. AltaVista was killed by Google, MySpace was killed by Facebook, Twitter is killed by the ramblings of the lunatic who bought it.
And yet there are so, so many people that don’t seem to be able to pull themselves away from it.
I really don’t get it.
For the reason above. There’s not a serious alternative that replaced it for those people.
It’s fucked up how threads immediately devolved into a bigoted Antisemitic shit hole like twitter in a fraction of the time.
Is it impossible to develop a social media platform that doesn’t get overrun with conspiracy whack jobs and assholes?
Is Mastodon overrun too recently, or…?
It’s just not a useful platform at present. Maybe one day it’ll be relevant enough but not today.
Social media in modern times is an instrument of war. It will always be used as such whenever possible. So no, I think the answer is no
Social media in modern times is an instrument of war
It is fascinating watching what Iran, Qatar and Russia have pulled off this past few years.
I think we just underestimate the amount of people who think like that
Sadly I’ve just come to assume most people are Antisemitic bigots these days. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.
It’s not about having a serious alternative, what twitter does can mostly be written by like 10 people in 3 months. The problem is scaling it to be big enough while eating that cost until enough people start using it.
AND the advertising budget.
There’s no real way to break into that now without a ridiculous amount of investor capital which investors are gunshy in offering for shit like this right now.
We don’t need an alternative, we need the next generation and I hate to say it but it might just be Discord if they get their shit together.
I never seriously used twitter (I probably have used it less than 10 hours total), but what really is stopping people from getting on mastodon? It’s the same thing, and is extremely easy to sign up for.
It’s right there, not that I have much of a desire to use it, but if people like twitter, is it just that not enough people are on it? Just the network effect?
Twitter has more people, meaning more content. It’s the same reason I still have Reddit downloaded.
Social momentum is a hell of a thing
The network effect is a real doozy.
It’s all about stickiness. Twitter still has accounts people want to follow whereas other platforms don’t so people can’t shift or find it hard to. I’ve seen some prominent users move to Threads, Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon etc. but not enough and scattering to the four winds doesn’t help either. If there were an actual exodus of accounts across media, news, celebrities, sports, government etc. then Twitter die on its ass. Or even if big accounts started mirroring their content across other social media services.
And these rival services should really federate. But we all know that the commercial services are loath to cooperate with each other when they want all the pie.
To be fair, there are also people like me who didn’t use it at all before, but now do just to watch it burn cause it’s funny.
I really don’t get it.
I’m still on Xitter, but on my own terms. I use a plugin called Control Panel for Twitter, which means I don’t get anything on my feed other than stuff from those I follow, and what they share, unless they share some bollocks then I will block shares from them. There are a bunch of Hong Kong activists, journalists and fellow HK travelers who don’t use other platforms yet, and I don’t want to get cut off from what’s happening there. There is also good motorsports contributors, who also post on TikTok and IG which I refuse to go near. In addition there are feeds and posters related to my work, some I can’t see anywhere else, then there is some random stuff I can’t see anywhere else.
I don’t have the Xitter app on my phone and use the same Control Panel plugin to ensure my terms of engagement are maintained on mobile. This plugin, for example blocks anyone who paid Xitter for a blue badge, so I don’t see any of their putrid bile in response to those I follow. It also frees you from the “algorithm” that determines what Xitter want’s you to see, I only get a chronological timeline feed. Upsells, ads, who to follow, bookmarks and other random bits of UI I never use are also gone.
Basically, it is exactly how I want the whole Xitter experience with none of elmo’s shit polluting my screen.
Get it now?
I use Twitter with the control panel and ad block. Both on my desktop and my phone. The phone doesn’t use their app, it uses a web app which gets stripped of all the ads and other bullshit. I peek into Bluesky and Mastodon and post the odd thing there. Some Twitter accounts I follow are starting to mirror on other sites which is a positive thing. I just wish the news services I follow would do the same. I don’t get why the BBC (for example) doesn’t mirror its content or other news orgs when Twitter / Musk is so hostile to them and their journalists.
No. You’re still supporting that shitpile and its piece of shit owner.
Also a likely mix of ketamine and alcohol.
You seem to be taking pleasure in it, but the fact is this was the plan from the moment he was locked into the purchase. Buy the business, run it into the ground, destroy the platform that people use to organise on. On the way down, try a bunch of shady shit and see what they can get away with - this will be the new standard for any platform that comes next.
That’s been the outcome, but I think you’re dramatically overestimating Musk if you think that was his intent.
It seems clear to me that he’s of below average intelligence with an overinflated, incredibly fragile ego.
It wasn’t his intent when he posted about wanting to buy the company, but after the SEC forced him to buy, and once he formed a coalition to buy it, the plan became to kill the business off with a leveraged buyout.
Make no mistake, Twitter isn’t dying because of Musk’s mismanagement, it’s dying because it was saddled with $13bn of debt that it could never have hoped to pay back. The mismanagement is just a show to provide deniability.
That isn’t to say that Musk is some kind of genius, just that he’s a clown playing his role.
How is Musk going to profit from running Twitter into the ground? I think I did not understand that part.
Everyone is downvoting as if this is a baseless conspiracy and ridiculous.
For those people, here’s a source
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/was-elon-musks-strategy-twitter-rcna118490
And an excerpt;
On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright.
Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the 3,000-word anonymous article said, would amount to a “declaration of war against the Globalist American Empire.” The sender of the texts was offering Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, a playbook for the takeover and transformation of Twitter. As the anniversary of Musk’s purchase approaches, the identity of the sender remains unknown.
The three texts were sent on April 4, 2022. In the nearly 18 months since then, many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination.
But…how does NBC News have texts that Musk received…?
Edit: Revealed in a court filing.
See relevant text:
The messages from the unknown sender were revealed in a court filing last year as evidence in a lawsuit Twitter brought against Musk after he tried to back out of buying it. The redacted documents were unearthed by The Chancery Daily, an independent legal publication covering proceedings before the Delaware Court of Chancery.
God damn but that gun is smoking like Australia in a heatwave.
I bet that anon texter practically jizzed himself to see how much chaos a few words could create.
That is one explanation, but imho a more likely explanation in the spirit of Hanlon’s razor is that he receives 100s of crazy texts like this on a daily basis and one of them just happens to somewhat align with what crazy shit he is doing now.
He’s gunna be gutted when he finds out xvideos is already taken.
Time to spread the news that X is rebranding to xvideos
Easy, just call it xxvideos.
Throw a third one in there to show you mean business: xxxvideos.com
If X platform is pivoting towards video’s, shouldn’t XVideos sue X for copyright infringement, like Mr Beasts’s Deez Nuts being to close to another brand’s Dee’s Nuts. Even if they are not the same nor similar product but the fact that there is confusion such as have you seen the X video (Elon site video) vs Xvideo ( +18).
Trademark, not copyright.
Sorry not well versed in the technicalities but yes then, trademark violation.
The law says you have to show them your genitals now.
It’s an odd law.
Dammit, but my parents did not raise me to be a criminal. Now Elon, hope you are ready to see my ginormous 1,5inch monster
New X url is now xvideos, the sites never been better imo.
It blew us all.
You forgot to say “away” again.
dont turn on that light, aint nobody gonna see what frank’s face look like
Of course let’s take a platform that barely holds itself together to show just text and let’s pivot it to be the most technical demanding and expensive kind of service. It will work fine, I’m sure.
The only thing worse than its video player are the literal nazis on the site, has he tried watching video there? To call it dogshit would be an insult to dogshit, which can presumably be useful as fertilizer.
It’s funny how Tucker Carlson thought he could just do his show on Twitter and basically instantly lost his entire audience.
No no no you’ve got it all wrong:
The Nazis are supposed to be a feature of the platform.
Free speech
*free speech if Elon agrees with you
Paradox of tolerance and all that. You want a tolerant site? Can’t allow Nazis.
Secondly, there was a wave of banning of leftists and journalists recently, it’s very much only free speech for the right there.
The paradox of tolerance is a gross misunderstanding of the concept of tolerance
You tolerate your gay coworker - you treat them like a coworker. If any of your coworkers make inappropriate sexual comments or unwanted advances, that’s not okay. You respond appropriately, such as expressing your discomfort to them or going to hr or the police. There’s no conflict
You tolerate racists - so long as they stay within the social contract, they’re allowed to hold whatever they want in their hearts.
But if they violate the social contract, such as by saying racist things, you respond appropriately.
If someone believes Nazi ideas deep down, you tolerate them. If Nazis want to organize, spread their ideals, or do Nazi things, you respond appropriately.
It’s that simple.
I thought Xitter was going to be a bank! Honestly, who can follow the mentally-ill, cocaine-fueled ramblings of this man-baby?
How Elon deals with advertising complaints: “Go advertise someplace else.”
Advertisers:
The microblogging platform that once limited posts to 140 characters is now a “video-first” platform?
If Twitter’s a video-first platform, then Twitch is a text-first platform.
Just like that and with way fewer engineers somehow.
I don’t see a problem as long as the videos are capped at 140 characters
I can’t wait for X to transition finally into “no longer existing”
Thing is, it probably won’t. MySpace is still around. LiveJournal is still around. Big social media platforms don’t tend to stop existing. But they do stop being culturally and socially relevant, and that’s what I hope comes sooner rather than later to Twitter: irrelevancy.
Preach!
One can dream.
It’s an interesting claim.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a platform struggle more with video than Twitter. Everything looks like it’s using RealPlayer. It’s the only platform where the Japanese wouldn’t have to censor their porn before uploading.
Oh my God. I forgot about real player. Plus DivX.
And QuickTime. You can still get both of these. I can only imagine they’re visited by people that’ve just come out of a 20 year coma and need something to play their .avi files on…
RealPlayer was, and still to this day is, a for-profit product. Somehow. RealNetworks LLC still exists, they apparently now provide “artificial intelligence and computer vision based products” though they still provide subscription-based online entertainment services…presumably for people who set up automatic bill pay then forgot about it for 15 years.
Also, do you mean DivX, the vaguely obscure MPEG-4-like video codec that some people even used for reasons beyond my understanding, or DIVX, the completely unrelated DVD rental system operated by Circuit City which involved encrypted DVDs with unique barcodes and a special DVD player with a modem in it that would phone home, check if the rental is still valid, and if so get the key needed to play the disc…which is now defunct and all the discs are useless. Because both of those pretty much sucked.
presumably for people who set up automatic bill pay then forgot about it for 15 years.
SHIT!
The codec was quite popular for a decent little stretch there… Far more so and for far longer than the circuit city product.
Real Player was pr….***buffering***
Reddit video…
I doubt their server infrastructure will hold after all the shenanigans Elmo pulled with it.
Video streaming is a lot more taxing than text.
Lmao, he doesn’t have the bandwidth capacity to handle videos
Neither does his platform…
Nothing a little random plug swapping can’t fix!
My internal cable management goblin just had an aneurysm.
Nor the cash to increase the bandwidth capacity to do so.
Omg that’s a significant change in spend. Holy shit, there’s no way he can handle that. My boy scaled up twitch at the beginning. The amount of work, talent, etc …
I never, ever see any actual ads anymore. It’s either some dude with an Indian dude smiling saying “Hello!” or the same exact ass picture from “Hailey201238712985723” or “Jonah9018328412873” advertising the same porn site. No advertiser worth their salt would ever advertise on Elon’s Twitter.
No user worth their salt would be on there either…
Which raises the question, why are you still seeing Twitter ads? Lmao
This is the right question… People keep bitching… Yet are on the platform. Do the same thing as reddit, fucking LEAVE
I’m getting adverts for prostate cancer and kids book charities. You are just a perv clearly. /s
Prostate cancer is a pretty hard sell.
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
I haven’t been keeping up with the changes to X but I checked out their videos site (xvideos, I presume) and it seems like it’s mostly porn with the occasional Tesla shareholder meeting keynote.
The keynotes seem a bit incongruous and I could do without them. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like it’s gone too far downhill.
If X is becoming a video site, Xvideos should absolutely sue them for infringement on their name.
As a porn site they could maybe go toe to toe with the now much diminished twixxer
I think next week it should be a nazi dating site.
That’s what Facebook is for
50yr old Brownshirt looks for Liebensborn partner. Blonde, 21max, fluent German.
Has anyone made any piece of technology that could block Elon Musk news? I understand he is currently ruining the world at full speed, but for fuck’s sake, some of us don’t think this is tech news worthy and it’s frankly annoying. He makes it to every paper, then to every news forum. Yuck. Enough Musk spam… you are only doing him favors, even when the news is bad. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
I’ve seen a Firefox plugin called block the rich… I guess it wouldn’t fly if they called it block Elon
Not used it so don’t know if it’s any good
Will try now and report back!
Edit: it’s good. It blurs out text. Sadly not images!
I think if you blocked the person who posted this you’d see a big reduction. It’s usually the same account posting Musk news.
Very good tip, thank you, stranger.
The solution lies between the monitor and to left mouse button.
You realize that you are in a technology news section of Lemmy, right? This dude influences technology.
Does he though? Seems like it’s mostly him failing at business.
Anyway, the news coverage of him is unbalanced because it’s his plan to be on the news constantly and forever.
Well no, I think bad publicity is a thing, with current cancel culture for saying the wrong things, it can ruin your career. Also pedo allegations do hit hard.
If this was the case, Musk’s career would have been over.
Instead this publicity fuels him and his wasteful endeavors.
Your career can only be ruined if you rely on other people to fund your career. He has enough money (and loans and solvent businesses he hasn’t decided to tank yet) independently to keep going when others would have had to pack up.
You think any other non-billionaire could weather the absolute drain of most advertisers leaving Twitter?
Your career can’t be easily ruined if you shit gold.
In a fair world, Musk would be rotting in some sewer.
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