6 ms·

You know, for all the talk about how twitter is going downhill and making stupid decisions, this is the only one so far that really, really, does seems stupid.

You know, for all the talk about how twitter is going downhill and making stupid decisions, this is the only one so far that really, really, does seems stupid. Verification was bad and now it’s a joke, api rate limits have some possible argument etc - but why in the hell buy a household name just to change it? Why not build X from scratch?

dotcoma 3y ago
I guess he wanted 400 million prospective customers for $ 100 each.
dooraven 3y ago
It still has a boatload of users and is still the cultural town square of the tech world. To build X from scratch you'd have to convince people like Marc Andreessen, Paul Graham, a bunch of other VCs etc to move. Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard.
- meibo 3y ago
  My entire tech bubble moved to mastodon and it's been great. No ads, no algorithms. Maybe the VC bubble is just stuck with it because of what it used to be?
  - dooraven 3y ago
    I'm curious about the composition of your tech bubble - is it programmers / technical folk mostly? cause yeah lots have moved. The non-technical tech sphere hasn't really moved though, but maybe my circles are quite different to yours.
    - orwin 3y ago
      Infosec/cybersec. If you just want CVEs, automatic updates, and LinkedIn-style influencers, Twitter is still fine. If you want the stories, the how, the why, and reading humans live updates, you go to mastodon/Activitypub (bonus if you're a student: make your own activityPub reader!)
      - thefreeman 3y ago
        can you recommend an instance with this type of content?
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Who's paying for servers, moderation, etc?
    - stephen_g 3y ago
      A lot of the medium to large instances use crowdfunding subscription services like Patreon, Ko-Fi etc. to cover costs.
      - mavhc 3y ago
        Wait, aren't we against paying to use a social media site?
        pjc50 3y ago
        Not in principle, we're just against paying to use Twitter. (The dynamic is very different when it's voluntary and feels like supporting a community, though, and in practice it's going to be a few whales making donations)
        coldpie 3y ago
        No, I'm a big fan of paying for what I use, and I actually do give money to a small social media site that I use. However, I'm also strongly opposed to giving money to transphobes and Republicans, so Twitter is out.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
    Definitely a lot of electronics/EE stuff has also moved to mastodon (at least people that i was following). I follow a bigger group there than I have ever on twitter. Mastodon is still a bit quirky sometimes, but my mastodon feed is now definitely more interesting than my twitter feed.
  - andreygrehov 3y ago
    How do I, as an investor, make money with mastodon?
    - rajamaka 3y ago
      You don't, which is why it doesn't suck
    - somehnguy 3y ago
      You don’t - oh well. I’m sure there is an endless number of other ways you can try to make money investing if that’s your main concern.
    - flagrant_taco 3y ago
      There could be a market for one central Mastodon host with better UX that makes it easier to onboard non-tech people, but I'm not sure why making money is a pre-req here. Mastodon was never meant to be a for-profit enterprise as far as I'm aware.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      You... probably don't? I continue to believe that there may be some small value in a single-person-instance-as-a-service product for celebs etc (particularly if Threads goes ahead with its embrace of ActivityPub; lots of value for celebrities in having the audience but having some independence from Facebook), but it's very niche. Not everything has to be about making money, you realise.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        It seems like a hassle to re-negotiate federation each time for each celebrity. What about a general PR themed instance (strictly moderated so that everyone will peer with it).
        rsynnott 3y ago
        > re-negotiate federation That's not really how it works. Federation happens ~by default in general; restriction is reactive, not proactive.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Does anyone make money from your Mastodon use? I understand how moving to your own place could be good, hell, if you're just talking to each other you could even consider retroshare, but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server.
    - ke88y 3y ago
      > but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server. Why pay (as much) to advertise to an empt(ier) room?
  - thefreeman 3y ago
    what instance did you join?
- eropple 3y ago
  > Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard. I think this is pretty optimistic thinking. "Oh no, I can't pick my way through a bunch of bigoted garbage to which the owner responds 'Concerning' or read Marc Andreesen being deeply weird or see 30,000 reply guys to Paul Graham hawking shitcoins, whatever will I do?" is, I think, probably okay at this point. Having the thinkfluencey types before the spam and impersonation taps were turned on to full was probably valuable; now Twitter is getting the stink on it and that's hard to wash off. Personally speaking, Bluesky picked up pretty much everybody I care to talk to and remaining on Twitter in a material capacity is a flag that I probably don't want to hear from you.
  - dooraven 3y ago
    You're looking at it from Musk taking over twitter, which I agree with, chasing away users is easy. The conversation was about X being built from the ground up and attracting new users which is much harder. BlueSky only started gaining traction after Musk started pissing people off, doubt prag would have done the same.
    - eropple 3y ago
      Sure but like, Twitter's userbase is now a toxic asset. Starting there seems worse than starting fresh because you can't get rid of the baggage but advertisers also don't want to spend money on them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Their audiences will move first, then either they'll move, or they won't have audiences, and will stop posting.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago
Apparently tweets will now be called "x's".
- whoopdedo 3y ago
  And audio-visual tweets will be "X videos" I presume.
jacquesm 3y ago
> this is the only one so far that really, really, does seems stupid. To you.
croes 3y ago
I don't know, putting 13 billion debt on Twitter and cutting ad revenue down to half seems pretty stupid too.
- Choco31415 3y ago
  I hate to say this, but is there a good way to remove Musk’s ownership of the platform?
  - pjc50 3y ago
    The only route is to wait for it to fail further and be reposessed by its creditors.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    Sure. Avoid the platform, continue to mock it and companies that use it to drive down its valuation to the point where he gives up and sells it for a massive loss.
  - danans 3y ago
    In the event of bankruptcy, wouldn't ownership pass to his creditors, i.e. the Saudis and others?
  - marvin 3y ago
    Well, you could buy it from him.
hourago 3y ago
> Verification was bad and now it’s a joke Verification was serviceable, now it is harmful. There is a big difference there. Even if formerly was not perfect.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- erulabs 3y ago
  It was a political game for journalists and now it’s officially instead of unofficially meaningless, but it was never serviceable and certainly not “harmful”. Hyperbole is a plague.
  - DoughnutHole 3y ago
    It is absolutely harmful for the user experience because it's tied to a boost in the visibility of your tweets. It's essentially made replies a useless avenue for interesting content. Instead of the top replies to popular posts being tweets that have been boosted by a signal that arguably indicates quality (views, likes, retweets, replies of their own) tweets are boosted by a signal of the opposite - the poster's willingness to pay for visibility of content that couldn't rise to the top on its own merits or that of its poster. Replies to popular content are now a wasteland for interesting content or discussion unless you've mass-blocked Twitter Blue subscribers - definitely harmful.
    - ke88y 3y ago
      This is why I stopped using Twitter. The quality went way down and there's porn/onlyfans spam everywhere.
dorkwood 3y ago
Could this all be part of Musk's plan, though? As Sun Tzu said, "when you are strong, appear weak". There's no denying that Musk is highly intelligent. If a play of his seems completely bone-headed, there's a good chance it's actually the opposite.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  > "there's a good chance it's actually the opposite." There isn't a "good" chance. It's extraordinarily, extremely rare that someone makes such a genius play that other experts consider it foolish. These events in sport buisness or other areas are often stuff of legend because of how rare they are. Sure, if this play works out and turns to have been undoubtably right, it will be studied for years in buisness schools around the world. But up until that moment, we can be reasonably sure that this isnt one of those exceptionally rare cases
- jacquesm 3y ago
  There is a better chance it's actually completely bone-headed.
- jeltz 3y ago
  How often is thidsever true? This kind of 4D chess move is from my experience very rare in real life and mostly exist in the realm of fiction.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Was the full quote “when you are weak, appear strong, so cut off your arms if you want to intimidate people,” or something like that?
mihaaly 3y ago
Probably X fits into the story then, for most of us seeing an X means "close this window".
ncallaway 3y ago
> api rate limits have some possible argument API rate limits for external API clients sure. API rate limits for their own application is insane (caveat, super high rate limits to prevent against truly exceptional use would be fine, but anything that impacts even the 98% user is nuts). There’s no argument for it. Every goal of these sites is to increase time on site. A rate limit that kicked normal users of the site off in 10 minutes is… well, a truly and unambiguously bad choice.
throwuwu 3y ago
Like Threads?
laichzeit0 3y ago
I think he actually wanted to change it to Titter and have the bird logo have tits. Seriously.
- samstave 3y ago
  Is that because the owner of twitter is acting like a 'boob' (colloquial phrase for acting the fool)
X6S1x6Okd1st 3y ago
> On February 13, Musk expressed concern over the fact that his tweet about Super Bowl LVII had garnered fewer impressions than U.S. President Joe Biden's. Summoning another meeting with engineers, Musk ordered an 80-person team to address the perceived issue, under penalty of being fired. As a result, engineers altered Twitter's algorithm to boost Musk's tweets by a factor of 1000 > By December 17, Twitter was blocking some links to Mastodon as being "potentially harmful" or "malware". Other top contenders
sanderjd 3y ago
This was is the most obviously and definitely stupid, sure, but the other stuff was also very stupid.

dotcoma 3y ago

I guess he wanted 400 million prospective customers for $ 100 each.

dooraven 3y ago

It still has a boatload of users and is still the cultural town square of the tech world. To build X from scratch you'd have to convince people like Marc Andreessen, Paul Graham, a bunch of other VCs etc to move. Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard.

meibo 3y ago
My entire tech bubble moved to mastodon and it's been great. No ads, no algorithms. Maybe the VC bubble is just stuck with it because of what it used to be?
- dooraven 3y ago
  I'm curious about the composition of your tech bubble - is it programmers / technical folk mostly? cause yeah lots have moved. The non-technical tech sphere hasn't really moved though, but maybe my circles are quite different to yours.
  - orwin 3y ago
    Infosec/cybersec. If you just want CVEs, automatic updates, and LinkedIn-style influencers, Twitter is still fine. If you want the stories, the how, the why, and reading humans live updates, you go to mastodon/Activitypub (bonus if you're a student: make your own activityPub reader!)
    - thefreeman 3y ago
      can you recommend an instance with this type of content?
- mavhc 3y ago
  Who's paying for servers, moderation, etc?
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    A lot of the medium to large instances use crowdfunding subscription services like Patreon, Ko-Fi etc. to cover costs.
    - mavhc 3y ago
      Wait, aren't we against paying to use a social media site?
      - pjc50 3y ago
        Not in principle, we're just against paying to use Twitter. (The dynamic is very different when it's voluntary and feels like supporting a community, though, and in practice it's going to be a few whales making donations)
      - coldpie 3y ago
        No, I'm a big fan of paying for what I use, and I actually do give money to a small social media site that I use. However, I'm also strongly opposed to giving money to transphobes and Republicans, so Twitter is out.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  Definitely a lot of electronics/EE stuff has also moved to mastodon (at least people that i was following). I follow a bigger group there than I have ever on twitter. Mastodon is still a bit quirky sometimes, but my mastodon feed is now definitely more interesting than my twitter feed.
- andreygrehov 3y ago
  How do I, as an investor, make money with mastodon?
  - rajamaka 3y ago
    You don't, which is why it doesn't suck
  - somehnguy 3y ago
    You don’t - oh well. I’m sure there is an endless number of other ways you can try to make money investing if that’s your main concern.
  - flagrant_taco 3y ago
    There could be a market for one central Mastodon host with better UX that makes it easier to onboard non-tech people, but I'm not sure why making money is a pre-req here. Mastodon was never meant to be a for-profit enterprise as far as I'm aware.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    You... probably don't? I continue to believe that there may be some small value in a single-person-instance-as-a-service product for celebs etc (particularly if Threads goes ahead with its embrace of ActivityPub; lots of value for celebrities in having the audience but having some independence from Facebook), but it's very niche. Not everything has to be about making money, you realise.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      It seems like a hassle to re-negotiate federation each time for each celebrity. What about a general PR themed instance (strictly moderated so that everyone will peer with it).
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        > re-negotiate federation That's not really how it works. Federation happens ~by default in general; restriction is reactive, not proactive.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Does anyone make money from your Mastodon use? I understand how moving to your own place could be good, hell, if you're just talking to each other you could even consider retroshare, but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server.
  - ke88y 3y ago
    > but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server. Why pay (as much) to advertise to an empt(ier) room?
- thefreeman 3y ago
  what instance did you join?
eropple 3y ago
> Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard. I think this is pretty optimistic thinking. "Oh no, I can't pick my way through a bunch of bigoted garbage to which the owner responds 'Concerning' or read Marc Andreesen being deeply weird or see 30,000 reply guys to Paul Graham hawking shitcoins, whatever will I do?" is, I think, probably okay at this point. Having the thinkfluencey types before the spam and impersonation taps were turned on to full was probably valuable; now Twitter is getting the stink on it and that's hard to wash off. Personally speaking, Bluesky picked up pretty much everybody I care to talk to and remaining on Twitter in a material capacity is a flag that I probably don't want to hear from you.
- dooraven 3y ago
  You're looking at it from Musk taking over twitter, which I agree with, chasing away users is easy. The conversation was about X being built from the ground up and attracting new users which is much harder. BlueSky only started gaining traction after Musk started pissing people off, doubt prag would have done the same.
  - eropple 3y ago
    Sure but like, Twitter's userbase is now a toxic asset. Starting there seems worse than starting fresh because you can't get rid of the baggage but advertisers also don't want to spend money on them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sanderjd 3y ago
Their audiences will move first, then either they'll move, or they won't have audiences, and will stop posting.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago

Apparently tweets will now be called "x's".

whoopdedo 3y ago
And audio-visual tweets will be "X videos" I presume.

jacquesm 3y ago

> this is the only one so far that really, really, does seems stupid. To you.

croes 3y ago

I don't know, putting 13 billion debt on Twitter and cutting ad revenue down to half seems pretty stupid too.

Choco31415 3y ago
I hate to say this, but is there a good way to remove Musk’s ownership of the platform?
- pjc50 3y ago
  The only route is to wait for it to fail further and be reposessed by its creditors.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  Sure. Avoid the platform, continue to mock it and companies that use it to drive down its valuation to the point where he gives up and sells it for a massive loss.
- danans 3y ago
  In the event of bankruptcy, wouldn't ownership pass to his creditors, i.e. the Saudis and others?
- marvin 3y ago
  Well, you could buy it from him.

hourago 3y ago

> Verification was bad and now it’s a joke Verification was serviceable, now it is harmful. There is a big difference there. Even if formerly was not perfect.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
erulabs 3y ago
It was a political game for journalists and now it’s officially instead of unofficially meaningless, but it was never serviceable and certainly not “harmful”. Hyperbole is a plague.
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  It is absolutely harmful for the user experience because it's tied to a boost in the visibility of your tweets. It's essentially made replies a useless avenue for interesting content. Instead of the top replies to popular posts being tweets that have been boosted by a signal that arguably indicates quality (views, likes, retweets, replies of their own) tweets are boosted by a signal of the opposite - the poster's willingness to pay for visibility of content that couldn't rise to the top on its own merits or that of its poster. Replies to popular content are now a wasteland for interesting content or discussion unless you've mass-blocked Twitter Blue subscribers - definitely harmful.
  - ke88y 3y ago
    This is why I stopped using Twitter. The quality went way down and there's porn/onlyfans spam everywhere.

dorkwood 3y ago

Could this all be part of Musk's plan, though? As Sun Tzu said, "when you are strong, appear weak". There's no denying that Musk is highly intelligent. If a play of his seems completely bone-headed, there's a good chance it's actually the opposite.

RugnirViking 3y ago
> "there's a good chance it's actually the opposite." There isn't a "good" chance. It's extraordinarily, extremely rare that someone makes such a genius play that other experts consider it foolish. These events in sport buisness or other areas are often stuff of legend because of how rare they are. Sure, if this play works out and turns to have been undoubtably right, it will be studied for years in buisness schools around the world. But up until that moment, we can be reasonably sure that this isnt one of those exceptionally rare cases
jacquesm 3y ago
There is a better chance it's actually completely bone-headed.
jeltz 3y ago
How often is thidsever true? This kind of 4D chess move is from my experience very rare in real life and mostly exist in the realm of fiction.
bee_rider 3y ago
Was the full quote “when you are weak, appear strong, so cut off your arms if you want to intimidate people,” or something like that?

mihaaly 3y ago

Probably X fits into the story then, for most of us seeing an X means "close this window".

ncallaway 3y ago

> api rate limits have some possible argument API rate limits for external API clients sure. API rate limits for their own application is insane (caveat, super high rate limits to prevent against truly exceptional use would be fine, but anything that impacts even the 98% user is nuts). There’s no argument for it. Every goal of these sites is to increase time on site. A rate limit that kicked normal users of the site off in 10 minutes is… well, a truly and unambiguously bad choice.

throwuwu 3y ago

Like Threads?

laichzeit0 3y ago

I think he actually wanted to change it to Titter and have the bird logo have tits. Seriously.

samstave 3y ago
Is that because the owner of twitter is acting like a 'boob' (colloquial phrase for acting the fool)

X6S1x6Okd1st 3y ago

> On February 13, Musk expressed concern over the fact that his tweet about Super Bowl LVII had garnered fewer impressions than U.S. President Joe Biden's. Summoning another meeting with engineers, Musk ordered an 80-person team to address the perceived issue, under penalty of being fired. As a result, engineers altered Twitter's algorithm to boost Musk's tweets by a factor of 1000 > By December 17, Twitter was blocking some links to Mastodon as being "potentially harmful" or "malware". Other top contenders

sanderjd 3y ago

This was is the most obviously and definitely stupid, sure, but the other stuff was also very stupid.