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Twitter used to be open, but being open doesn't make you a lot of money. Thanks to the upcoming AI industry running on (scraping) user generated content, being

Twitter used to be open, but being open doesn't make you a lot of money. Thanks to the upcoming AI industry running on (scraping) user generated content, being open costs more and cuts into profits. The service went downhill fast once they needed to make a healthy profit.

pjc50 2y ago
That's certainly a risk, and bluesky STILL has no user funding, sustainable or otherwise. But making your site a heavily walled garden is bad for any kind of open Internet.
epistasis 2y ago
Have any of the X changes been positive for the investment, though? They all seem to have diminished audience, lessened influence, and resulted in less ad revenue. It's very clear that X has a far smaller burn rate than Twitter did, but it also seems to have lessened revenue, and it's really unclear that there's any profit at all.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  Perhaps Elon Musk and the people who helped pony up the cash to buy Twitter were more concerned with something other than profit.
  - soganess 2y ago
    It's not a publicly traded company and hence Musk + his backers can do whatever they want. It's their toy and I'm not in the business of policing anything (within the law) they do with it. It would be irksome if Musk went on lawsuit spree + PR campaign incessantly complaining that advertisers are 'killing free speech' by not advertising on the platform. Like some weird civic duty that publicly traded businesses with a fiduciary directive ought to have. But, let's be real, folks operating on Musk's level are too clever/business-savvy for anything that amateurish.
mayneack 2y ago
"used to be" being the operative part of that phrase. I see no reason to stick around because of a thing that is no longer true.
wink 2y ago
Twitter seemed to have some cool engineering going on but the number of developers always seemed kinda ridiculous, I suppose they added so many features the vast majority of users never used or needed. Most people I know used it just the same as when they signed up pre 2013 (maybe with the addition of lists).

pjc50 2y ago

That's certainly a risk, and bluesky STILL has no user funding, sustainable or otherwise. But making your site a heavily walled garden is bad for any kind of open Internet.

epistasis 2y ago

Have any of the X changes been positive for the investment, though? They all seem to have diminished audience, lessened influence, and resulted in less ad revenue. It's very clear that X has a far smaller burn rate than Twitter did, but it also seems to have lessened revenue, and it's really unclear that there's any profit at all.

EA-3167 2y ago
Perhaps Elon Musk and the people who helped pony up the cash to buy Twitter were more concerned with something other than profit.
- soganess 2y ago
  It's not a publicly traded company and hence Musk + his backers can do whatever they want. It's their toy and I'm not in the business of policing anything (within the law) they do with it. It would be irksome if Musk went on lawsuit spree + PR campaign incessantly complaining that advertisers are 'killing free speech' by not advertising on the platform. Like some weird civic duty that publicly traded businesses with a fiduciary directive ought to have. But, let's be real, folks operating on Musk's level are too clever/business-savvy for anything that amateurish.

mayneack 2y ago

"used to be" being the operative part of that phrase. I see no reason to stick around because of a thing that is no longer true.

wink 2y ago

Twitter seemed to have some cool engineering going on but the number of developers always seemed kinda ridiculous, I suppose they added so many features the vast majority of users never used or needed. Most people I know used it just the same as when they signed up pre 2013 (maybe with the addition of lists).