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> The incessant lazy about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons. I'm absolutely shocked by the appetite people have for weekly stories p
by pessimizer 3y ago
> The incessant lazy about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons.
I'm absolutely shocked by the appetite people have for weekly stories proclaiming that their enemy is on the verge of being vanquished. So angry, and so incoherent and belligerent when confronted or even ignored. This is a person, not a demon. Also, a person with fairly median-of-the-road politics. He's gross because he's rich and you can't become rich without being unethical, and you can't remain rich without continuing to be, but there's 1000 other guys like him, most a bit less successful (government teat.)
It's bizarre behavior coming from people who are behaving increasingly strangely. I won't be surprised if they're his biggest backers 5 years from now, because he was their ally during some invasion, or helped to defeat some left-wing politician who they used to love until the television and the President said it was time to hate them.
I remember Tea Party people like this, but I honestly thought that kind of sensitivity to media could only thrive in fairly rural or exurban, churchy areas. Instead it's all the people who moved back into the city from the suburbs in the 90s-2000s and their dopey kids, ready to stand up for their DLC and W. Bush Republican kings. They just refuse to consume any information that upsets them. They think of it as assault, which is causing them trauma.
It's a social grouping that demands the right to be traumatized by what they just watched on television. Enough of the rant.
I think he's making a bunch of crazy, thoughtful plays borne out of the desperation of getting some worth out of this thing he was forced to vastly overpay for because of his own dumb mouth. But the valuation could have been wrong; it may not have predicted radical changes like Musk is trying, it was just assuming that this stable social network that was already half-merged with government was going to putter along as it was.
Charging more for participation seemed inevitable, and keeping that pricing structure fairly flat would make people more likely to get used to it. Those things also massacre trolls, socks, and spammers, and allow celebrities/influencers to exclusively interact with people who are willing to sign what they say, and to clean up their timelines. They also stopped both giving away their DM service for free (or at least split it into a premium/free plan), and stopped having a backend that allowed people who abuse by DM free access to the eyes of the people they wish to abuse - if you're not blue, you go to another tab or non-blues can be blanket blocked altogether i.e. if you want to talk to me, do it in public.
All of it sounds like an adventurous way to get money out of people's pockets, and give them some satisfaction in exchange. I don't know if people will pay for twitter, but the way that the internet is going at this moment, people are going to be paying for everything. Web3 but the only crypto involved is the Web Integrity API...
- renewiltord 3y agoHave to agree with this part > I'm absolutely shocked by the appetite people have for weekly stories proclaiming that their enemy is on the verge of being vanquished. Probably the worst outcome of Musk acquisition of Twitter is the weekly stories of how Twitter is Dying; Netcraft Confirms. Reminiscent of Reddit's Bernie is Winning, Ron Paul is Winning, Trump is Losing, etc. etc. More Wunscherfüllung than reality. Many statements also far divorced from truth. Don't understand purpose. Reality is Twitter did not immediately collapse after senior engineers fired. Did not collapse after advertisers withdrew. Did not collapse after Threads launched. Did not collapse after nth prediction of collapse. Surely posteriors must be different from priors given evidence, but Twitter is always D+14 from collapse due to various reasons. Clearly incorrect and low quality prediction. Anyway, Esther Crawford tweet was good. People jumping on her were always wrong. She gave it a solid shot, good for her. No shame in trying.
- vGPU 3y agoJust like the daily articles I see proclaiming “Ukrainian counteroffensive will take Moscow by the end of the week” or “Putin will have Zelensky’s head on a pike for CNN’s cameras tomorrow”. When the reality is that nothing much is happening aside from Ukraine slowly getting put through the meat grinder, and we likely won’t see any major action until mid-next year as the weather changes. People have a psychological thirst for “bad” people to be punished, and by golly it had best happen now.