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Twitter is still going to be around, Tumblr is still around. I just hope Musk keeps it open to everyone. There was a DNC bias in its content moderation before h

Twitter is still going to be around, Tumblr is still around. I just hope Musk keeps it open to everyone. There was a DNC bias in its content moderation before him. I prefer to hear everyone’s opinion and propaganda. It makes thoughts less inbreed.

wpietri 3y ago
There's a very good chance Twitter won't be around. Even Musk has said so. Or it might be around in some negligible way, where it's a backwater that people mainly used to use, as with MySpace. Tumblr survived through a long era of benign neglect due to luck, not some inexorable law.
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  That's all speculation. Something as big as Twitter doesn't get thrown away, it gets repurposed. I prefer the way Musk is running it but it has it's elitist detractors. Under Jack Dorsey it was a rumor mill for independent spin doctors, character assassins, and propagandists. A fishing hole for DNC PR.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Yes, all discussion about the future is speculation, including your claims. Something as big as Twitter is less likely to get thrown away, sure. But it is shrinking, and could well shrink further. There's also a big question of who might buy it. The first time Tumblr got sold, it was for $1 billion. The second time, for $3 million. And the receiving organization has been putting a lot of money into it trying to create a viable business. It's perfectly possible that nobody with the money to buy and run Twitter would actually want it. Twitter was available for sale for many years, but was never purchased except by somebody doing it for decidedly non-economic reasons. Consider how Disney decided not to buy it, for example: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney-streaming-code https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney... For many organizations, Twitter is brand poison. It'd be a continuous source of bad PR. And with some of its key assets destroyed or lost, plus so much negative press, it's going to be at best a fixer-upper. And what would they get out of it? It was never a good business even before the Threads launch when it had no serious competition for its niche. I have a hard time imagining who would pay for it even at fire sale prices.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      If I said a traffic light will turn from red to green you'd be exaggerating if you called my statement speculation. To my knowledge the only social media sites that have been shutdown were the ones that never had any traffic. LiveJournal is still up. Disney is a massive corporation that buys other companies, why and why not is speculation. Twitter's brand under Dorsey was "brand poison", that's how it attracted so many post-progressive lunatics. A lot of those lunatics are now fleeing and/or attacking the site. CNN and FOX News have good reason to hate Musk's approach. Mainstream media has lost almost all credibility, if we could see a return to something approximating journalism that could hurt them.
      - wpietri 3y ago
        If you see yourself as to the right of not just CNN but Fox News, I hope you can understand that your perspective on what makes for a good platform is not likely to align with not just the median user, but executives who will have billions of dollars in acquisition budget. I also note that you haven't named any plausible buyers for Twitter, which suggests to me you're not very serious about this discussion.
        slowhadoken 3y ago
        I voted for Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders. Realignment is exactly what our two party system needs. Obama was right when he told a group of children that politicians should be fighting for our vote. That's what I believe. Also I'm not your butler, find your own plausible buyers. Maybe if you stop pretending to be a mind reader you could learn to think for yourself.
        wpietri 3y ago
        I already said I don't think there are any plausible buyers. If you are claiming they exist, please name them.
        slowhadoken 3y ago
api 3y ago
I’ve wondered if censoring the Nazis and antivaxx cranks might have been helping them. Twitter today is a showcase for how dumb they are, with all their posts followed by pages of people laughing or debunking or gawking at them. My personal favorite are the Roman statue avatar trad accounts posting photos of classical art and architecture with “why is this not done anymore?” followed by either debunking of the photo or 50 examples of similar work from today. Fox never would have let Tucker interview Andrew Tate, but Twitter is happy to provide a place for him to do that to himself. Give them more rope?
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Isn't the Taliban on Twitter? It's an odd place. Then again I don't like the idea of censorship but I am an American. I prefer idiots to speak and be debunked. Silent errors are the real headache.
- miguelazo 3y ago
  The functionality issues have had 95% of the impact-- almost no one actually cares about the changes in "content moderation."
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    Functionality seems fine to me. It appears that they're making improvements and that's causing slight disruption that lasts for at most a day. And I care about content moderation, I don't know why you're using quotation marks. It was huge a issue when Jack Dorsey ran things. He and Vijaya Gadde got grilled on Joe Rogan's podcast and then in front of a US Senate hearing about it. It's all anyone is talking about lmfao
    - miguelazo 3y ago
      I meant that functionality issues, which have been quite real (especially rate limiting and API access) have had more impact in terms of driving away users than an increase in content they perceive as offensive.
delecti 3y ago
DNC as in Democratic National Committee/Convention? Because Twitter themselves has admitted to unequal algorithmic boosting of right-wing accounts [1], and ignoring violations of right-wing accounts [2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/twitter-congressional-hearing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/twitter-congr...
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  The Guardian and The New York Times haha good one
- miguelazo 3y ago
  While DNC might have been the wrong group to reference, they're obviously alluding to the government and Biden campaign censoring (or attempting to censor, especially in the case of Adam Schiff's office) Twitter content. It was well-documented as clearly shown in internal emails and likely far more consequential than the right wing boosting you're talking about. https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-files https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-fil...
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    I meant DNC because they're responsible coordinating party brand. The DNC promotes the Democratic Party's interests at a national level. I don't know of another entity by name that plays a bigger role. But yeah Biden's camp has it's own strategies, which once they become public, should align with the Democratic Party brand.
p1necone 3y ago
> Twitter is still going to be around It should be, given some barely baseline level of competence from the people running it. But not paying office rent or cloud bills might be below that level... I imagine if it gets close to properly dead though it'll get sold again.
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  It's so funny how people talk about Musk like he's a volatile child and then rave about how well SpaceX is doing. Social media is a cognitive dissonance echo chamber.
  - zen928 3y ago
    You don't need to be personally offended that people dislike controversial billionaires, it's really not a big deal.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      Who's offended? I said I thought it was funny. Also you could stick to the point instead of being passive aggressive, it's really not that hard.

wpietri 3y ago

There's a very good chance Twitter won't be around. Even Musk has said so. Or it might be around in some negligible way, where it's a backwater that people mainly used to use, as with MySpace. Tumblr survived through a long era of benign neglect due to luck, not some inexorable law.

slowhadoken 3y ago
That's all speculation. Something as big as Twitter doesn't get thrown away, it gets repurposed. I prefer the way Musk is running it but it has it's elitist detractors. Under Jack Dorsey it was a rumor mill for independent spin doctors, character assassins, and propagandists. A fishing hole for DNC PR.
- wpietri 3y ago
  Yes, all discussion about the future is speculation, including your claims. Something as big as Twitter is less likely to get thrown away, sure. But it is shrinking, and could well shrink further. There's also a big question of who might buy it. The first time Tumblr got sold, it was for $1 billion. The second time, for $3 million. And the receiving organization has been putting a lot of money into it trying to create a viable business. It's perfectly possible that nobody with the money to buy and run Twitter would actually want it. Twitter was available for sale for many years, but was never purchased except by somebody doing it for decidedly non-economic reasons. Consider how Disney decided not to buy it, for example: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney-streaming-code https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23339402/bob-iger-disney... For many organizations, Twitter is brand poison. It'd be a continuous source of bad PR. And with some of its key assets destroyed or lost, plus so much negative press, it's going to be at best a fixer-upper. And what would they get out of it? It was never a good business even before the Threads launch when it had no serious competition for its niche. I have a hard time imagining who would pay for it even at fire sale prices.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    If I said a traffic light will turn from red to green you'd be exaggerating if you called my statement speculation. To my knowledge the only social media sites that have been shutdown were the ones that never had any traffic. LiveJournal is still up. Disney is a massive corporation that buys other companies, why and why not is speculation. Twitter's brand under Dorsey was "brand poison", that's how it attracted so many post-progressive lunatics. A lot of those lunatics are now fleeing and/or attacking the site. CNN and FOX News have good reason to hate Musk's approach. Mainstream media has lost almost all credibility, if we could see a return to something approximating journalism that could hurt them.
    - wpietri 3y ago
      If you see yourself as to the right of not just CNN but Fox News, I hope you can understand that your perspective on what makes for a good platform is not likely to align with not just the median user, but executives who will have billions of dollars in acquisition budget. I also note that you haven't named any plausible buyers for Twitter, which suggests to me you're not very serious about this discussion.
      - slowhadoken 3y ago
        I voted for Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders. Realignment is exactly what our two party system needs. Obama was right when he told a group of children that politicians should be fighting for our vote. That's what I believe. Also I'm not your butler, find your own plausible buyers. Maybe if you stop pretending to be a mind reader you could learn to think for yourself.
        wpietri 3y ago
        I already said I don't think there are any plausible buyers. If you are claiming they exist, please name them.
        slowhadoken 3y ago

api 3y ago

I’ve wondered if censoring the Nazis and antivaxx cranks might have been helping them. Twitter today is a showcase for how dumb they are, with all their posts followed by pages of people laughing or debunking or gawking at them. My personal favorite are the Roman statue avatar trad accounts posting photos of classical art and architecture with “why is this not done anymore?” followed by either debunking of the photo or 50 examples of similar work from today. Fox never would have let Tucker interview Andrew Tate, but Twitter is happy to provide a place for him to do that to himself. Give them more rope?

slowhadoken 3y ago
Isn't the Taliban on Twitter? It's an odd place. Then again I don't like the idea of censorship but I am an American. I prefer idiots to speak and be debunked. Silent errors are the real headache.
miguelazo 3y ago
The functionality issues have had 95% of the impact-- almost no one actually cares about the changes in "content moderation."
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Functionality seems fine to me. It appears that they're making improvements and that's causing slight disruption that lasts for at most a day. And I care about content moderation, I don't know why you're using quotation marks. It was huge a issue when Jack Dorsey ran things. He and Vijaya Gadde got grilled on Joe Rogan's podcast and then in front of a US Senate hearing about it. It's all anyone is talking about lmfao
  - miguelazo 3y ago
    I meant that functionality issues, which have been quite real (especially rate limiting and API access) have had more impact in terms of driving away users than an increase in content they perceive as offensive.

delecti 3y ago

DNC as in Democratic National Committee/Convention? Because Twitter themselves has admitted to unequal algorithmic boosting of right-wing accounts [1], and ignoring violations of right-wing accounts [2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/twitter-congressional-hearing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/twitter-congr...

slowhadoken 3y ago
The Guardian and The New York Times haha good one
miguelazo 3y ago
While DNC might have been the wrong group to reference, they're obviously alluding to the government and Biden campaign censoring (or attempting to censor, especially in the case of Adam Schiff's office) Twitter content. It was well-documented as clearly shown in internal emails and likely far more consequential than the right wing boosting you're talking about. https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-files https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-fil...
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  I meant DNC because they're responsible coordinating party brand. The DNC promotes the Democratic Party's interests at a national level. I don't know of another entity by name that plays a bigger role. But yeah Biden's camp has it's own strategies, which once they become public, should align with the Democratic Party brand.

p1necone 3y ago

> Twitter is still going to be around It should be, given some barely baseline level of competence from the people running it. But not paying office rent or cloud bills might be below that level... I imagine if it gets close to properly dead though it'll get sold again.

slowhadoken 3y ago
It's so funny how people talk about Musk like he's a volatile child and then rave about how well SpaceX is doing. Social media is a cognitive dissonance echo chamber.
- zen928 3y ago
  You don't need to be personally offended that people dislike controversial billionaires, it's really not a big deal.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    Who's offended? I said I thought it was funny. Also you could stick to the point instead of being passive aggressive, it's really not that hard.