The claim is a major departure for the service, which has long been known as a destination for posting short snippets of text.
I haven’t visit twitter/X for a while. A “video-first platform” typically supports live streams, captions/subtitles and 4k videos. Does X supports these?
Best I can give you is low quality videos with a max length of 2:20 that occasionally lose audio sync, and sometimes the audio decides it doesn’t want to work at all.
Something that I feel needs to be reiterated with all of these “news” pieces - the “71% drop” everyone is touting is from the stupidly high price Musk bought Twitter for that only ever represented his desire to flex, not the value held by the site itself. Even Musk knew it wasn’t worth that much and tried desperately to get out of the deal himself.
Somethings only worth what someone pays for it
Twitter was trading around $40 at the time he made the offer for $54 per share. At the current value, that equals $15 per share. The last time Twitter was trading at that value was 2017.
These are all rough numbers based on some graphs I looked over quickly.
If you want to play devils advocate on this topic you should understand what you’re talking about.
What? I’m not really sure what you’re trying to disprove here. We seem to be in agreement that the buyout sum didn’t match the trading price*.
*The price before Musk started manipulating it with his showboating.
it would be accurate to say Musk assigned the value of $44B to Twitter by paying that much for it because that’s how capitalism works. He instantly inflated the price by paying far over its previous market value in a stupid showboating maneuver, and has, in doing so (as well as his subsequent antics) totally screwed himself and his investors by causing it to lose 71% of that value.
Correct.
It wasn’t just him though, he put up less than half the money. Other investors and lenders backed that price and hoped to profit after the purchase. I think it’s fair to say that the market valued Twitter + Elon at the price he paid, and was initially willing to pay more than what Twitter was trading at because they bought into the idea that he’d do good things with it.
Elon only wanted to back out after tech stocks overall dropped further following an increase in inflation concerns (they were already down, providing an opportunity for the buyout, but continued to fall after the deal). But most tech stocks have since recovered those losses and the nasdaq is up about 10% from where it was at the time of the deal.
Him paying the full amount doesn’t really factor into my point, which is that Twitter wasn’t that valuable.
The amount the Saudis are willing to pay to kill the platform so it can’t support the next Arab Spring and the amount “the market” thinks the company is legitimately valued at for non-ulterior motives are two very different things.
Which only means he double fucked himself from the start, not that everyone else is wrong for laughing at him
By all means, laugh away. He deserves to be mocked endlessly. I just appreciate accuracy/clarity.
Twitter videos don’t even load half the time on mobile browsers.
That is on purpose. They want you to use the app.
I would believe that if they worked on the app. But videos don’t load on the app half the time either.
That is on purpose. They want you to use the browser.
I know you’re joking but, related: I tried opening a Webex meeting on my phone which told me to download the app. App downloaded, try to open meeting, app opens…and then opens the meeting in Firefox.
I really hate apps that could be a website (hint: most of them).
Yea, that sort of stuff is most likely deliberate… tiktok doesn’t work in the browser either
A few months back and he was driving his employees to produce banking apps and god knows what else. I wonder what they think of their mercurial asshole boss who’ll demand everything all at once.
It’s “just” programming, how hard are can it be the program the app that does everything? /s
My first comment on here.
Welcome to lemmy
spits
Edit: jk welcome aboard
This guy never told a truth in his life.
Meta already did the “pivot to video” scam. I doubt most media outlets are going to fall for it again.
Xitter inflates its video metrics - scrolling past a video is the same as watching it. So yeah, basically the same playbook.
“Pivot to video” - How many popular sites turned to shit and died 15 years ago.
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Honestly if Elon The Musky Husky wanted to rebrand twitter as a competitor to Youtube, there’s a 10% chance I might start using the platform, which is 10% more than usual.
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If he built X.com as a video sharing site to rival YouTube instead of rebranding Twitter and turning it into a Nazi bar, I think people would have a more favourable view of him.
Musk can have good ideas but he’s being blinded by his own hubris.
Musk can have
goodideas but he’sbeing blinded by his own hubrisan idiot.Fixed
Where exactly was the good idea?
Making Twitter/X an ‘everything app.’ if we’ve learned anything from WeChat in China, LINE in Japan & Taiwan and KakaoTalk in South Korea, such apps can be hugely influential.
The premium tier of access makes it actually usable as a social media platform, my prime complaint about Twitter beforehand was that you’d never get any interaction with your posts unless you were a celebrity with a big following. Musk’s dumbassery in this case was selling verified access.
I don’t think pandering to the right wing is a good idea either, but if Musk made X a secure messaging platform, a decent dating app, capable of hosting livestreams and even a way to support creators which cut out middlemen like Patreon, OnlyFans, etc, it would have been huge.
The big difference between Twitter and all those other apps, as someone who has used both KakaoTalk and Line, is that they didn’t start out as social media posting apps - they were just chat messaging apps for talking to your friends, not the world. Then they added payment for things like buying stamps or sending friends money. From there, once they had established payment methods and users that trusted them, they started slowly adding services people thought were useful. The ecosystems built up organically over time. No one planned for them to be everything apps or tried to force it on the apps and users. They became those because they adapted to how people were using the internet on their phones.
I’d say if any app is poised to become the Western world’s ‘everything app’, it’s Facebook.
They’ve got a marketplace, video content, livestreaming, photo sharing, instant messaging, online dating which shits all over mainstream dating apps, and that’s just what Facebook can do.
Facebook is probably as close as we’ll get to a western “everything app.” They kind of missed the window, though, which is another thing Elon doesn’t seem to realize - the big eastern “everything apps” were there as people were starting to switch to doing things on their phones, so the ecosystems grew around them as things were developing (especially WeChat). Elon’s coming in trying to turn Twitter into an everything app nearly ten years too late.
That’s not an “idea”, he’s literally just trying to copy authoritarian states where the people are stuck with the
“influential ‘everything’ app”power concentrating garbage, like WeChat, so he can have that power too.
Being born rich is a pretty good idea.
Man, if only I had thought of being born rich…
I’ve thought of it many times and it hasn’t helped me for shit
Having a social media platform that doesn’t rely on censorship to resolve the cesspit problem.
Unfortunately, people are more than happy to back censorship if it’s against ideas they dislike.
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I think his idea was to reduce visibility of harmful content (like exclude it from the algorithm, or maybe just penalize it heavily) without fully banning it.
I suppose downvotes are also a solution (up to a point - doesn’t work unless there is a strong enough consensus).
But even if these don’t work it doesn’t mean censorship is the only solution. Just because we don’t have a good idea doesn’t mean nobody will.
Radication and disinformation are serious problems and some censorship is better than nothing - but still seems like there has to be a better way.
You can’t coherently convey whatever you think Elon was on about because, whatever he was on about, was complete bullshit designed to make him look smart to the people dumb enough to buy it.
his idea was to reduce visibility of harmful content
He’s got a funny way of accomplishing that goal. So funny that it looks like his goal is exactly the opposite. GENIUS!
Elon’s statements are the verbal equivalent of getting drunk and vomitting on a wall. Stuff comes up that you never expected to see, it creates a huge mess, and whatever sticks, sticks.
#fuckingcapitalists #goddamnedfascists
I suppose that’s better than being a ‘white supremacists first platform’ but I bet they’ll probably still do that too.
He probably figured that it was implied that they would be white supremacist videos. I mean, what other kind would they host at this point?
You need video to show with certainty that they are white. Text can be written by anyone
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.
The network effect is a real doozy.
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 got on twitter because artists I want to follow post there, a lot of them exclusively. They do this because – in theory – that is where the audience is, with the biggest potential for growth. Then they all get shadowbanned, even the ones that don’t draw porn, because they don’t bring in ad revenue or something. Alternatives exist but so many of them refuse to go to another platform because there isn’t an audience there, pre-packaged and waiting for them.
I understand it, but also I don’t. It’s a cyclical problem but only the content-producing side has the power to solve it.
Social momentum is a hell of a thing
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.
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.
For the reason above. There’s not a serious alternative that replaced it for those people.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He isn’t. However, you can still make something from a loss - such as establishing new standards of what social media websites can get away with.
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.
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.
You should read the article. It details how Musk followed the text’s suggestions exactly, and is aligning himself closely with the same far right neo-nazis that begged him to buy Twitter and deplatform it.
Even if that exact text didn’t convince him, one of the well known far right political pundits has definitely tried. Free speech is like their worst enemy, they can’t let Twitter be open to all that free information.
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.
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.
