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Honest-to-God question: is Elongated Muskrat intentionally screwing up Twitter so people can’t use it as a means to communicate? It sounds like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but it’s the only logical thing I could think of at this point that explains this kind of stuff they’re pulling.
The man came in his first day carrying a sink. Now he’s sinking the company. Seems pretty straightforward.
The only reason why I’m not so keen on the conspiracy, is that it doesn’t make sense to me that someone so wealthy would have to stake this destruction on his own reputation and take collateral losses on his other business if he was being machiavellian about it. He could tell his puppet CEO to take all those destructive measures and still maintain his tech genius image. It just seems more like a wild ego thing.
But the people who funded his acquisition, this obvious hare-brained idea, maybe they were aiming for its destruction. They should have known that he was paying far more than the website was worth and that its income would never repay it.
I think initially, he just wanted to do his duty as a right-wing reactionary and use his influence to shame Twitter for deplatforming white supremacists, likely having heard that Truth Social was eying up a plot next to every other dead social network that pandered to fascists.
But like every other figurehead of that crowd, below the bluster and bravado lies a very tiny dick and his preferred method of wearing shorts in the shower is spending millions of dollars in an effort to convince everyone he is the smartest man in the world.
So pretentious screeds about “free speech absolutism” quickly turned into self-aggrandizing posts about how he could do it better and before he even got a chance to call someone a pedo, he’d accidentally made some comments about buying Twitter that he was legally obligated to follow through on.
He tried to squirm out of it for a while, muttering about bots and whatnots, but it seems his lawyers informed him that yes, he had also bragged away his opportunity to back out and he was going to have to follow through.
And so a couple of months later, he walked into a mostly empty office with 4 goals in mind.
First, he needed to get far-right propaganda back on track. Too many people had started to see through the “we’re not neo-nazis we just have the opinions, goals and pundits”, plausible deniability schtick and the far-right funnel just wasn’t flowing how it used to before all the domestic terrorism.
That kicked off a flurry of actions like unbanning mentally ill hip-hop artists, internationally embarrassing politicians and pseudo-intellectuals who’d spent decades striving to achieve mediocrity before they said something bigoted and were immediately placed on a pedestal.
Second, he needed to self-soothe after doing something so stupid in front of so many people. $44 billion dollars down the drain! That’s not what the smartest man in the world would do! Especially not if money was the only thing that made him noteworthy in the first place.
So he marched around unplugging things and pretending he knew what he was talking about and wasn’t just lifting key phrases from more intelligent people like a celebrity parrot.
It was an unconvincing show for anyone in the industry who quickly realised he barely had a junior-level understanding of a single moving part, let alone the hundreds that keep a site like Twitter online.
Third, he needed to claw back every penny he could, carefully balancing things like “gleefully firing all the heartbroken staff” with other important business like “indulging his teenage edgelord”.
But each new idea is even more dogshit than the last. He bought a sinking ship and he’s trying to bail out the water with every piece of cutlery in the kitchen. It’s only a matter of time before the office supplies turn up on ebay.
And fourth and, probably most importantly: “Are there any women in this place worth manipulating into prostitution? I need everybody back in the office tomorrow for a face to face”
There are people that benefit from Twitter sinking (foreign governments, the US government, Twitter’s Saudi investor), so this has been my theory as well. I don’t think it’s a scenario where he’s aware though. I think he’s a useful idiot that can be manipulated.
So the Saudi investor invests in something that he wants to go broke?
For political aims, possibly. What is sure is that Twitter would never be able to repay the amount of debt the company got saddled with. It was barely making ends meet and now it has to pay an additional billion dollars a year in interest. Why would someone would put their money in such a bad deal?
That’s precisely why they invested in it. Sinking that ship means that one of the few remaining lifelines for working class communication around the world goes down in flames. When mass protests, school shootings, the Capitol invasion, and police violence occurred, which social media platform was almost always the place you’d end up reading about it from someone on the ground? Twitter. Think about how much easier the narrative can be controlled when Twitter is gone (or at least behind walls).
You may underestimate the amount of money the Saudi government has
foreign governments yes (Saudi) but how does the US government benefit…?
If Twitter is at least hindered, it no longer works as a platform that gives people on-the-ground information about what’s going on in the country. When Twitter was at its peak, it was a tool for the working class to stay connected about protests and other events occurring in real time. That makes it more difficult for a government to control the narrative. Since the media can’t be trusted, Twitter would often become the place people go for information about shady shit a company is doing, outing cops trying to blend into protests, and other corrupt shit.
Now that Twitter is becoming almost entirely paywalled and stripped of any real value, one of the last bastions of information for the working class is essentially gone. It’s no longer a hub that people use for such things. If you want to stay connected to a mesh network of people in a mass protest or something like that, Twitter is no longer a viable option to get information out immediately.
Because US politics might actually become less about who gets the most likes on social media. Look, I don’t know, but I can say after our previous presidency that the platform can’t be entirely beneficial to the US.
Removing the Like button means you can’t be Ratio’d anymore, even compared to the comments of your detractors. That means vile, unpopular opinions will no longer be identifiable by the lack of likes. They get to stand on equal footing with popular opinions, with the average person none the wiser. Also, advertisements take one more step to being indistinguishable from organic posts.
Homogenizing content on Twitter supports Musk’s two two main allies (or people he wishes were his ally): advertisers and fascists.
That’s not what’s happening, although that’s what the headline implies. What’s changing is that you need to click a post to show the options to retweet and like.
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I think he knows it is a money pit that will never be profitable so is intentionally trying to kill it. It will never make him money only cost him money. He can’t just shut it down without seriously damaging what credibility he has left. Seriously, what are his options to stop this ‘money leak?’
I think shuttering it would have saved more of his credibility than whatever the fuck this is he’s doing.
Yup. That has to be it honestly. I’ve mulled it over a lot and if Musk knows a single thing it’s finance. These moves have all been financial. Twitter, I suspect, was not profitable when he bought it. Rather than admit he did a mistake, he tank it. Tracks with his egomaniacal moves so far.
Well, he could try to actually make it a usable platform and offer features people might be willing to pay for?
Think about it, this blue checkmark subscription would have absolutely worked two years ago. You have to prove who you are, pay 10 bucks a month and then you’ll get the checkmark. A lot of people and institutions would have done that.
Offering advanced, paid features for professionals might also help. Like user management or thread based user mappings, so that large accounts can get management by a team efficiently. Companies are definitely willing to pay substantial amounts of money for things like that.
Could he though? I don’t think he is that smart. He has smart people running his other companies, but he is running the show at twitter. I think this is us seeing him fail when left on his own.
That is not the question. He does have option, whether he is willing and able to realize them, is another question.
Anyway, unless there is some serious change of policy (and realistically, ownership) happening over a Twitter, is will slowly die off.
The first thing he did at Twitter (as it was called back then) was to fire most developers. There’s no way he can introduce significant new features.
I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Each of them a complete shit show of disinformation and censorship. Blogs and personal web sites are pretty much dead. It’s getting harder and harder for anyone without buckets of money to stand on equal ground.
Higher intrest rates are dynamiting an already sketchy busniess model. Once the era of the cirpo macrowebsite ends santiy will return to the web
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
But he’s a very stupid and very malicious man, how do we know?
The capability of stupidity to explain things adequately when it comes to business and politics is very limited. In both those fields there are people constantly enacting malicious schemes and playing dumb.
That reminds me of this SMBC comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/artificial-incompetence
Honestly, that gives Elon just an easy out, making him look as if he is actually competent. Which he is not.
daily reminder that elon doesn’t work on rockets or cars, HIS EMPLOYEES FUCKING DO THAT.
He’s never worked a day in his life
In the way that no boss, manager or team leader works on anything, as they “just” order workers around. You really think his employees came up with something as dumb as the cybertruck on their own?
That’s addressed in the alt text:
It’s remarkable how much nicer the world is when you imagine all bad actions are made in pursuit of higher ends.
Edit: The extra panel, too.
Destroying Twitter was always his goal. He really thought the “blue checks” were some cabal of liberal elites that Twitter facilitated so they could suppress the speech of others, and day one his whole purpose was to break that imagined control.
You give him far too much credit. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
Malice and stupidity aren’t exclusive, though. His actions can be stupid and malicious
I mean there’s communication between Musk and right wing figures before the sale about driving all the blue checks off and devaluating the company which we know about because the messages and communications were released in the court battle
No, he’s just incompetent. At his other companies he has handlers, at Twitter he doesn’t
I’m just waiting for
“After moving all features behind a paywall, Musk hides the Login button.”
At this point, he’s obviously just trolling.
He shouldjusyt shut it down at this point
At this point, he’s obviously just
trollingan idiot.
2 weeks from now “Elon musk plans to lock the ability to like and retweet behind subscription”
Next up on the chopping block: Posting and reading tweets.
Seriously, everyone here, if you know somebody still using Twitter, you should take the time to inform them about mastodon and explain why continuing to use that dying abusive platform and give Musk legitimacy is a bad idea.
The moment you get actual content creators to move off twitter and provide their content on mastodon, I’m deleting it too. Until then I don’t really see mastodon being a proper replacement, if anything it looks like bsky is taking the lead in that area unfortunately. Besides, half of mastodon community is seemingly against the idea of becoming mainstream anyway… so I dunno if it’s ever going to work out that way.
Twitter has always been garbage but now it’s way worse than ever before
As somebody who produces content (with a full time job so not as often as I like) it’s so much harder to get engagement on mastodon without the algorithm tbh. I’m trying to get my name out there but engagement is slim to none compared to say, Instagram. I’m not on Twitter but both BlueSky and Mastodon have been a struggle. I don’t see myself devoting too much energy into them as far as posting content goes tbh.
I’m sorry but that’s because you are treating Mastodon like an advertising platform, not a social network.
engagement is slim to none compared to say, Instagram
This is because Instagram is an ad platform with social features.
I’m fully aware of that thanks, I was responding to:
The moment you get actual content creators to move off twitter and provide their content on mastodon, I’m deleting it too.
And saying from the perspective of a content creator, that’s an issue that’s hard to overlook. So mastodon won’t get to that point of having all the content creators if there isn’t something to help them share their content. I don’t know what the solution would be, maybe a separate feed with an algorithm that people can switch to if they want.
Edit: and the antisocial comments below is why mastodon will never take off with the larger population and therefore never really compete with Twitter, Threads, or BlueSky for content.
My point was that creators should want to disconnect from these artificial engagement driven systems that make people care about their “brand” and all that corpo bullshit.
I don’t think mastodon has to do anything to draw creators to it, it is what it is and many people like it that way. I don’t like the fake, engagement driven, clout goblin mentality that infests instagram and if mastodon started doing things to cultivate that vibe I would consider it a bug not a feature.
You’re bunding all of it together. I don’t want EA to run their marketing campaign or mastodon (although why not - it’d add legitimacy to the platform and I can easily block/not follow them), but I do want smaller youtubers posting there, I want artists to share news or boost other artists. I want developers to post announcements about what they are working on or when an update drops for their game. I want developers to have their personal accounts there and share stories about the development too.
All of this i get on twitter. I haven’t gotten any of it on mastodon because none of these people have moved off twitter, and never will because mastodon doesn’t want to give them a platform on which they can reach the same audience.
Right. I guess I just loathe the relentless commodification of our social interactions and one of the things I like about mastodon isthath the “always be promoting your personal brand” thing is notably absent. It reminds me of early social media, before people became brainrotted chasing the influencer lifestyle. I guess I just don’t think you can have an algorithm for that kind of thing because then the connections aren’t real.
You’re not going to argue them out of Twitter. If they’re still there, it’s not for rational reasons. It’s because of nostalgia, or because they’re part of communities that are stuck facing the Fiddler on the Roof problem.
Shaming them for staying isn’t going to work, either. We need to make a space for them to move to, not away from, and, frankly, the Fediverse just isn’t that right now.
I always wondered why they didn’t use gestures. Going from using Apollo to to Twitter was jarring.
Not that it matters now, I fixed that by just not going to X.
This new arrangement of deck chairs will make the Titanic’s voyage perfect.
How to make 44B$ disappear: For aspiring billionaire magicians with no control over their tongue or egos.
He can always not pay the bank who actually paid for Twitter. It is already worth less than his debt.
Can confirm am idiot and use kbin…
I thought this was The Onion at first.
But Musk is doing a great job of achieving his goal of killing Twitter. I wonder who paid or blackmailed him enough for it to be worth the 44 billion?
The House of Saud.
How exactly?
They were one of the largest investors in Twitter before the purchase. Musk said he would buy it, then tried to back out, and his hand was forced
But how would they threaten him? What’s leverage could they have against someone on the other side of the world who has the means to protect himself by paying security etc.
By doing exactly what happened: he made legal claims that he would buy, then tried to back out. He could not legally do so and the house of saud sued to make sure he went through on his intentions. Which forced Musk to do so. It was quite a legal kerfuffle
It was like this on the Flamingo app aswell and I prefered it that way. I almost never interact with any tweets so those buttons were just useless clutter for me.
Here’s an empty bucket to yell into so you can hear your own voice. That’ll be $12/month. Thanks.
Almost a year since I started Cupoftea.social on Mastodon and left twitter and things have been going well and sign up waves every time Musk does something
I do appreciate how he and Spez seem to do things that annoy only a fraction of their users at a time; it allows the Fediverse to adapt to the incoming waves of users before the next wave hits.
Who used them?
I think “Who is still using them?” is a better question.
Pretty soon, no one, quite literally
Wtf kind of comment is this supposed to be?
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You know what? You’re right. I’ve noticed this recently too but didn’t put two and two together
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This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but kbin generally requires its users to be either unaware it is written in PHP or OK with using something written in PHP. That has to exert some selective pressure.
Says the person on a website programmed by tankies
And here comes the kbin ad hominem strawman. Didn’t take long.
I’ve been called a “tankie” here seemingly at random. It’s funny because as a liberal American I have zero idea of what that even is. But yeah sure whatever the randos online say. 🙄
Maybe read the comment I responded to again
I find myself to be an ass quite often so take my approval with a grain of salt. 🤣
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I’ve been saying this for months. Kbin folks are just a type it seems
no u
So the other 55% of the time it’s a Lemmy user? I.e. the majority of the time!? There is so much irony in your post.
Is Lemmy just one instance? Or is your gotcha that if you add all of the lemmy instances together this one kbin.social instance just BARELY doesn’t account for over half of the problems people notice. Because that’s not quite the win you were going for.
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Hey don’t lump me in with idiots like this guy
Can confirm Im an idiot and use kbin…
When I was in kbin and could see who voted because voting metadata is visible there, almost always left wing comments (e.g. supportive of trans rights) received downvotes from someone on lemmy.world while the upvotes were from multiple, varied instances. So I’m not sure kbin is the biggest problem unless things have changed since then
There are two problems: federation works best with a variety of instances of like-minded people, and people on open-registration generalistic instances abusing that to wreak havoc on other instances.
Same as Instances can fully de-federate from other instances, they should also be able to de-federate voting from “non-friendly” instances.
Every single person who actively used Twitter?
Can we simply stop talking about Twitter? At this time, we’re just drawing traffic to articles about it, encouraging more free advertising for Twitter to be made
Tbh i like this circling around the dying zebu part of media, especially when its about an oligarch slowly consuming himself!
Yeah. Like trump, I enjoy it, but it’s like alcohol, I know it’s not a good thing lol
Dying zebu?
