Three Things: Crustpunk Nazi Bar Update, $42K Extortion Edition
[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
It’s been a while since we had a chat about the crustpunk Nazi bar known as Twitter. The dead-ending bird decided press the issue for us.
~ 3 ~
Community members have been asking in comments about the now-empty widget in the right-hand vertical navigation zone.
The widget in the right-hand navigation column which featured latest tweets by emptywheel contributors no longer works because Elon Musk changed the business model at Twitter yet again, requiring users of Twitter’s API to pay $42,000 to continue to do so.
That kind of money can buy a lot of original reporting as well as platform updates and hosting.
The original developers of that widget also stopped servicing it years ago.
It will be replaced at some time in the near future with a Mastodon or Fediverse-friendly widget though we don’t have an estimated time to completion.
Bear with us on this matter, please and thanks.
You can continue to follow Marcy, bmaz, Ed Walker, and Jim White on the bird app without having to log in –- just click on the embedded links. Unfortunately this will also count as engagement at the crustpunk Nazi bar which Musk will use to continue to claim the bird app is a going concern.
Whenever the major news outlets and U.S. officials both elected and appointed – yes, taxpayer-funded persons are using the crustpunk Nazi bar – get their heads out of their asses and migrate from the Nazi bar, more of Team emptywheel will move as well. But as long as the media and government entities continue to use the Saudi-funded right-wing mouthpiece the bird app has become, some of the team will tweet there.
As for the exorbitant and extortive fee Musk wants for API access, the damage is not just emptywheel readers being unable to read tweets through this site.
Now academic researchers and NGO monitors of hate speech, illegal activity, disinformation, and foreign influence may no longer be able to access bird app content. That’s not a bug but a feature.
~ 2 ~
Speaking of hate speech and illegal activity and other content typically moderated by reputable social media platforms, Mike Masnick at Techdirt created and shared an excellent game in which players can experience what moderators must do to boot crap out of comments and still keep their jobs:
(Side note: Techdirt left the bird app this past week because of the $42K fee. Good for them.)
Moderation here at emptywheel is not as strenuous as Masnick’s Moderator Mayhem game because this site’s traffic simply isn’t a big factor 95% of the time. We can also predict most traffic spikes which lead to trolling upticks based on news events and specific posts as well, unlike most Big Tech social media platforms.
But the fuzzy nature of some comments which moderators must screen can be challenging and is likely to be more so over time here and at the big platforms as influence operations incorporate AI to weasel around moderation.
Unlike the Big Tech social media platforms this site doesn’t demand community members provide a cell phone number or verifiable email address or other personal data which links them personally to content they share in comments. It’s a careful balancing act between recognizing legitimate human participants commenting in good faith and assuring them privacy. Moderation at Big Tech socmed platforms compromises privacy to eliminate the necessity of validating legitimate community members.
Balancing community members’ privacy and site security means we spend a bit more obvious effort asking community members who want to comment to create and maintain a username which can be readily recognized over the history of their comments. The emergence of AI will make this more important to prevent spoofing of established community members.
All of which means emptywheel community members will continue to be nagged for a unique username consisting of a minimum 8 letters which they will use every time they comment, or risk moderation.
For more perspective on moderation, it’s worth reading Vanity Fair’s article about new socmed platform Bluesky’s problematic approach (or lack thereof) to moderation. You’d think Jack Dorsey would have had this nailed down before launch given his experience at Twitter but no – he’s proven he’s another “free speech absolutist” which is just code for crustpunk Nazi bar owner/operator.
~ 1 ~
Aside from how the bird app and moderation affects emptywheel’s site, the bird app continues to find out about its fucking around.
Or rather, certain persons foolish enough to trust Elmo and the bird app after he fired ~85% of its employees are finding out about Elmo’s fuckery.
In a debacle rivaling SpaceX’s 4/20 Starship launch explosion, we’ve all heard by now about Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis’ spectacular implosion on soft launch last Wednesday when Twitter Spaces failed to work as expected during his presidential campaign launch announcement.
One of Twitter’s top engineers, Foad Dabiri, quit on Thursday, amid much speculation the exit was due to the Twitter Spaces failure and not a resignation but a separation.
You’ll note the first comments at that Yahoo News piece are Elmo fanboi trolls who blame the Twitter Spaces’ failure on sabotage.
The other shoe dropped Friday: it seems Elmo didn’t pay the bill for the Redis Labs software which handled audio streaming traffic.
The best engineers in the world can’t turn a deadbeat into a viable production platform. No wonder the engineer left; one might wonder if Dabiri was a green card employee who had no choice to stay until it was obvious it would damage his personal cred.
The failure reflected badly not only on Elmo and Twitter but on DeSantis. Why would any sentient being risk their next desired job on a platform which has been riddled with problems since Elmo bought it, let alone a platform run by a guy who has twice tweeted supportive comments about a rival candidate Sen. Tim Scott and is in part funded by another major campaign contributor, Larry Ellison?
That’s just begging for an opportunity to find out.
~ 0 ~
As with all social media platforms, your mileage may vary. Engage wisely.
Mark it: it’s 8:24 p.m. ET as I press Publish on this post. I am now counting down the moments to a comment this moderator wholly expects this post to produce.
I even have a reply drafted. Tick-tock.
Here you go! Mastodon and/or Fediverse are NOT replacements for twitter, they are simply pathetic.
You’re slow on the uptake this evening, boo, took you nearly an hour.
______
Yes, dear community members you will likely hear bmaz’s opinion yet again about Mastodon. We have already heard on numerous occasions he thinks Mastodon sucks, although he’s not yet tried alternative iOS clients like Ivory as far as I know, nor has he tried other Fediverse microblogging platforms like Calckey or Misskey which offer more functions than the basic Mastodon platform offers. Do not engage on this point.
I’ve now racked up more than 10,000 posts on Mastodon across my multiple accounts since I left the bird app on October 28. I’m not having any problems; in fact I’m experiencing almost no trolling and have met some lovely new friends. Again, do not engage on this point.
Your mileage may vary.
______
ADDER: Former Twitter Trust and Safety Director Yoel Roth was interviewed last month on This American Life. It’s worth a listen, segment starts at 26:25:
https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/110250920916223465
I’m sure his remarks have been carefully parsed for compliance with NDA/Non-Disparagement Clause.
No, as none of the people I need to talk to are on those other shit sites either. If people don’t want to be on Twitter, fine. But I draw the line at actively hoping it dies quickly, As new commenter Jacqueline did, because that will hurt a lot of valuable people and work, in my case journalists and lawyers. They just are not really on those other places like they are Twitter. I would not wish her LinkedIn and subscriptions to be erased, but here she is.
She’s hoping a Nazi bar dies quickly. The excuses people offer for remaining at a Saudi/Qatari-funded site are laughable, as if Twitter was both easy and important the first couple years after it launched.
Musk has just this month helped throw another tight election by blocking Turkish opposition to Erdogan from posting. But keep telling yourself it’s such a good thing and you must have it along with your equally discerning cohort.
She can go straight to hell. We shall remain at a standoff on this. Twitter works just fine set up properly, and you don’t have to be a tech savant to do it. Engagement being more at Mastodon is patently laughable. The people I want to interact with there are not, in fact, there or effectively not there. There was a ton of anti-Erdogan material in my feed, and not a single pro one.
Also, I frequent a “Nazi bar”, did I understand that right? Seriously??? The hyperbole on this horse manure is simply stunning. And I have loathed Musk since well before anybody else here likely ever heard of him.
Okay, boomer.
And yet your claim to hate Elmo falls flat because you willingly support using his platform brought to you and paid for with Saudi blood money all because it’s convenient for you.
Screw you. I met, loathed, and have known about Must since the summer of 2006 when I attended the rollout of the initial Tesla Roadster at the Santa Monica airport. A truly terrible human and an asshole. And, yeah, I use things that are convenient and that actually work, so what? If you don’t want to, that is your problem. And, no, despite how I despise Musk, he will never be the sole factor as to how I view Twitter so long as it is by a light year the better and more usable platform.
The whiny hysteria over the Saudis is laughable. They invested $1.9 billion “before” Musk and his $44 billion, and they have nowhere near a controlling interest. Should I also not use gas and oil because the Saudis are involved in that too? By the way, you do not know your ass from a hole in the ground about me, and never presume you do. So, “fall flat” on that.
Al Waleed’s $1.9B isn’t the only Saudi or fossil fuel money financing Twitter but whatev.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/10/31/saudi-prince-alwaleed-becomes-twitters-second-largest-shareholder/?sh=5834fab1523a
Now that it’s a privately-held company the public won’t know if more fossil fuel money has been invested.
Well, it certainly won’t be a controlling interest. This discourse is getting simply ridiculous with hysteria. But, hey, as you know, I am a Nazi, fascist and troglodyte. And also hey, you invited me to weigh in with your first comment. Maybe you did not need to do that? But whatevs.
He can’t take criticism can he?
Oh, hi Jared, you are back yet again. Do you have a regular car? Have you mothballed it for EVs because of the Saudi involvement with US oil and gas? Please describe. If you own an EV, and assuming it is not a Tesla, because you are seemingly also fervently anti-Musk, the next two biggest manufacturers are Chinese. Do you have any problem with the Chinese, or is that all good for your condescending schticht? Do you have enough money to buy a Lucid? My neighbor has one, but, frankly, extremely expensive and not worth the money. Also, like a Tesla S, heavy, clunky and far too computerized.
How about the US government, which has huge ties to Saudia Arabia, have you pulled up stakes and moved to Bolivia or Costa Rica? No?
Who is the “hypocrite” now, Jared? Not sure you are on a good gameplan here. There is some criticism for you; how will you take it? Please note: I did not call you a Nazi, fascist, troglodyte nor Saudi supporter as has been blithely inferred, if not said, about me.
Sounds like I seem to know plenty. You’re a hypocrite and you’re selfish.You straight up whine about holier than thou responses of others and yet not once bothered to listen or read your own words. I mean it would take little to no effort to acknowledge the problematic relationship and involvement of the Saudis but you’d rather insult people who disagree with you and are willing to try something different to know some not friendly people down a peg.
I did t call you a nazi or troglodyte either nor a supporter of them or Saudis. I did say you don’t seem to have a problem with them, is there not a difference?. I just said you’re selfish, a hypocrite and you can’t take criticism. Or is there not a difference in your mind. I’m actually working towards getting myself a Ford ev, my wife would prefer a Chevy herself. But we’re working towards it. And I actually have cut back on my driving especially to and from my work so I can get exercise and not buy gas.and as for money ing to another country, we have talked about moving to Germany or Australia. Just need to work towards it like everything else. But I will say I do appreciate the irony of calling me condescending and you still not having even the slightest bit of self awareness or reflection
Oh, hi yet again Jared. Yes, you were a dick on the other items, but easily joined in the other attacks that did exactly that as to what I described. So, no, there is not really much difference. And apparently you too are a giant hypocrite that can’t take pushback. Take a look in the mirror. If you hate the US so much, go now.
I really don’t care about what you do about EVs, it was a rhetorical question; however, you ought look at what percentage of parts on Ford and Chevy EVs actually come from other places, including China. And there is nothing wrong about that unless you are all about whining about minor percentages of involvement in something by countries you do not approve of. The world is a big and interconnected place now Jared.
Lastly, you are hijacking this thread by making it about you and me. Continue with that, and your comments will not be approved. Find substantive material, and others should too, as opposed to starting internecine wars with contributors here. That is not productive in the least. Stop.
yes, we know you don’t like them. TOO BAD.
Too bad if other people like deficient and unusable so called alternatives. Twitter works perfectly for me still and is an extremely valuable portal to many people I want to, and need to, connect with. They are not on the lame other sites. You want to talk about things that don’t work, take a look at Mastodon and Fediverse. They don’t work for squat. If other people don’t want to be on Twitter, fine. But I very much object to them cheering for me to get screwed. And new commenter Jacqueline does not know, nor why. Now she does.
“OK boomer.”
“Ok Karen”
I want to point out, for anybody not already aware, that the $42K is per month. Effin’ ridiculous.
Thank you. We’re just not going to touch that even at $42K a year.
I have to say that I’m going to miss having that twitter widget, though. I would come here every morning to see what Marcy, Rayne, Bmaz, Ed, and Jim had to say about whatever was going on, and then take advantage of that as I read all the pathetic news coverage at mainstream sites.
I can still do that on Twitter, of course, but it was really nice to have it all in one place.
There is still too much of value on twitter for me to hope for its demise. I think people turn their loathing of Elon Musk — a loathing I share, by the way — into a hope that anything associated with him crashes and burns. But twitter (at least so far) is a lot more than just Musk, and is still a net positive.
Look, as long as people continue to use Twitter and not build an alternative, the network effects are fragmented. What’s particularly frustrating is that most users who are not technologically and network savvy have no idea they are not getting out of Twitter what they had 2-3 years ago. Shadow banning is rife.
One of the reasons tech savvy folks have left is that true engagement is higher at Mastodon than Twitter. See Brent Toderian’s observation from December, which I’m sure had improved greatly since then. https://mastodon.online/@BrentToderian/109464925069925191
Never had a twitter account or other similar social media except linkedin for my business. I love this site and subscribe to 4 newspapers online, 2 on paper. Hoping twitter tanks soon.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. SECOND REQUEST: Please use the same username each time you comment so that community members get to know you. “Jaqueline oconnor” is your third user name. You’ve commented before as “Obansgirl,” to which you may wish to revert. Thanks. /~Rayne]
Twitter is a very valuable resource for some of us, but you hope it “tanks” so the people that still use it get screwed over? Nice sentiment, thanks!
If Twitter tanks other sites will grow in it’s place. Kinda like you no longer use Prodigy.
I never used Prodigy.
Meh.
Probably relevant: Elmo’s neighbors in Texas aren’t all that fond of him, either.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/texas-welcomed-elon-musk-now-his-rural-neighbors-18123617.php
The common thread seems to be that he doesn’t believe that rules apply to him and his businesses.
Classic narcissist — it’s all about him and what he wants. Like Trump he’s managed to evade accountability for his shitty self-involved bad decisions.
This is why I am skeptical about Elmo’s neutrality when it comes to DeSantis, whose candidacy runs counter to the candidate Elmo appears to want.
Are you suggesting that Elmo deliberately sabotaged De Santis’s dog and pony show ?
Would not surprise me.
Let’s put it another way: Musk was supposed to participate in what is more or less a glorified conference call with DeSantis in which the latter was to announce his candidacy for 2024. By now Musk *should have known* the dependencies on which this call was based, including the audio streaming software. Why would a CEO who purports to be an engineer not make an all-out effort to ensure every i was dotted, every t was crossed before that scheduled call?
Unless that CEO just didn’t think it was a priority…
ADDER — 3:27 p.m. ET —
This is just *chef’s kiss* perfection.
https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/110449890493876504
DeSantis still rewarded Elmo with a state get out of liability free card when launching rocket junk from Florida, especially when it’s a spectacular failure. Maybe he’s hoping he’ll move more stuff over from Texas, but Texas has been pretty inviting, too.
How many companies have gone broke, only for new ownership to take over the wreckage for pennies on the dollar and bring it back to something resembling what it was in its glory days? That’s my hope for Twitter; not for it to go away for good, just for things to get to the point where Elon is forced to give it up. It must become financially unviable for him to continue on, but also financially viable enough for someone else to feel like it’s salvagable. Someone who did not already spend $44 billion, and wouldn’t buy it for anywhere close to that either.
You’re operating on the assumption that 1) Elmo makes rational decisions based on profitability, and 2) that $44 billion to a guy worth a couple hundred billion is meaningful, and 3) that Twitter’s investors and debt holders won’t find greater value in tanking Twitter than in propping it up.
What do you think it’s worth to trash the other GOP frontrunner’s campaign launch well before 2024, ahead of their biggest campaign fundraising event?
It’s this same lack of imagination which allowed a corrupt mothertrucker like Trump to become POTUS. He couldn’t possibly be that abusive toward women, though he confessed on video days before the election he was a pussy grabber. He couldn’t possibly be that much of a bigot though the first week in office he ordered a ban on Muslims entering the country. He couldn’t possibly be that much in bed with the Russians but he gave away classified info in his first F2F meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador less than 4 months after taking office. Et cetera, so on — always underestimating the depth of this monstrousness.
Elmo, like Trump, is a corrupt narcissist. Think like a corrupt narcissist, think like an equally corrupt and fascist investor with the wherewithal to manipulate a narcissist. Burning down a social media platform to own the libs and thereby control both social conversations and manipulate the outcome of elections and investigations is worth far more than $44 B.
Enjoy the ashes.
I think your comment in the article was spot on. Elon is pricing access to his service out of reach for the vast majority because he doesn’t want them. No blog or academic, presumably not even Stanford itself, could justify spending $42k a year or a month for its users to more conveniently access a host’s twtrfeed. He can always give a discount or freebie to other Nazis, but, like Trump, extracting cash from people more likely to pay may be the point.
The cash extraction also works with his investors and debt holders; he’s not likely to be held to account by his biggest investor, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, for example, because disrupting climate change organizing by acquiring and screwing with Twitter is cheaper than the present and future loss of fossil fuel export sales resulting from climate change initiatives.
Saudi Arabia earned $1B per day last year from oil exports.
The twitter is on life support.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aHkDgZ0W7Yk
The Federal Government Agency I work for tries to strengthen public engagement via “social media”. However, the rulemaking is so sclerotic that it would take 2-3 years to get approval for a different platform even if folks want to migrate away from twitter.
I’m morbidly curious what will happen the first time a spoof account with a purchased green check puts out something damaging in our name. I hope it will be at least as big of a deal as when agency social media staff put out facts that Trump appointees disliked.
I quit Twitter a couple weeks after Musk took over. The main reason being, I shouldn’t have to be trolled by a site owner for not being a Nazi.
I still get the Twitter highlights (that are worth seeing) via YT channels, podcasts, and Substack anyway.
I tried Mastodon but it’s like having a knitted jumper from Grandma, instead of the Nike tracky.
Basically Musk bought everyone’s favourite pub, had a shit on the bar, and all the locals bolted.
Western Union nearly monopolized the telegraph business, and then there was voice transmission.
Netflix crept into the movie rental business and the competition stumbled and disappeared.
The young people and the new software engineers will create something entirely new.
What do they say about Twitter already? Its for old people that have opinions that nobody cares about.
Agreed. The shelf-life of any given computer-derived business passes in the blink of an eye. I wouldn’t recommend getting too attached to any particular piece of software/hardware.
In fact, brick and mortar businesses aren’t much longer lived in the grand scheme of things either.
You do realize you’ve published that comment in a social media and web content management platform which is now 20 years old, yes?
LOL, why yes ; )
But nothing lasts forever Rayne, including us ; )
Heck, if Emptywheel was a person it wouldn’t be old enough to drink – just sayin’ ; )
emptywheel may not yet be 21 but it could drink outside the U.S. where legal drinking age is much lower. I’ll bet emptywheel consumes Beamish on the regular in Ireland, legal age or no. LOL
I find beer in Europe more appealing anyway. But microbreweries in the US are giving them competition. As it happens, my first beer was a Pilsner Urquell, albeit in Germany.
There are a few good Belgian brands available in the US—I really like the Chimay (esp. the Grand Reserve), and of course there’s the old standby, Stella Artois.
LOL, you have me there ; )
Slainte!
How things have changed. The drinking age where I grew up was when you could reach high enough to get your money on the bar. Alas, but that was in New Orleans, only vaguely in the USA.
Doesn’t that mean that the bird app is not a true monopoly? Some with more economic muscle than Ms. Wheeler could build a better Soc Med trap. But I admit I am guessing.
Long time viewer of such things here. Before twitter, before the internet, the largest private network was FD11959, The Dow Jones News (The Broad Tape because Dow Jones was on Broad Street), muxed with The New York Stock Exchange Ticker, the AMEX ticker, the Catholic News Service and 12 other feeds. This was sold to Global Crossing in 2000 which sent every former subscriber a bill whether they cancelled the service or not and then promptly went under themselves.
I agree. First TV will disappear as everything becomes streaming, Than a media company will create some new feedback mechanism and away we go.
Twitter after Elmo compared to Twitter before Elmo is like the difference between powdered and whole milk. You use it when there’s nothing else. Of course you can get better focused discussions and more reliable content elsewhere now that the whole site is suspect and owned by a red-pilled billionaire whose daddy made him rich at birth. Many of us are waiting for the next best new socmed app to arrive all packaged up and ready to use, like the fresh milk that used to get delivered to each door.
Occupy Democrats just tweeted this:
“BREAKING: The European Union drops bombshell, announces that Twitter just PULLED OUT of the European Union’s voluntary code of practice against political disinformation and hate speech — a code will become law in only two months.
But it gets WAY worse for Elon Musk and Twitter…
Business Insider reports that Twitter’s “withdrawal could signal that owner Elon Musk is preparing to cease operations in Europe entirely” — which would put Twitter’s economic future at serious risk.
Adding insult to injury, the European Union Commissioner tweeted at Musk in response:
“You can run but you can’t hide. Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement.” ”
Here is the Business Insider link:
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-to-pull-twitter-out-eu-disinformation-agreement-report-2023-5
IMO this is exactly what Musk and his investors want. The fossil fuel faction wants to remove a successful communications vehicle for organizing against climate denialism, especially as EU countries approach various climate commitment deadlines (ex. EU has banned internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 with a few exceptions). The tech investors like A16Z have their own agenda like herding users toward their own platforms (ex. Post).
Post continues to seem even less appealing than it did initially.
I have yet to hear anyone speak of it positively, nor have I received any links to content published there.
From the very end of the Reuters account of the same story comes the Elmo-ist reaction to the EU folks that you could imagine:
Of course they did.
How can Elmo be running a legitimate for-profit enterprise when he responds to the public’s inquiries made via media with a poop emoji?
How? In a very shitty way, of course.
~snerk!~
So we have a second billionaire who doesn’t pay his bills?
If the twit disappears, something will replace it;
and the troglodytes will have to adjust, except for this troglodyke who has never had a twitter account, or facebook account or a paypal account…
So, people still on Twitter are not just Nazis and fascists, but are troglodytes too? It must be nice to be so high, holy and pure. The level of preaching and animosity from the anti-Twitter scolds is ludicrous.
Musk hasn’t been paying his bills — including rent on the corporate HQ in San Francisco. I think he used this “hold up” tactic to renegotiate rent, but it’s not a tactic which works for all goods and services. It is, however, the use of reverse SLAPP suits; Musk is gambling that vendors/providers won’t invest the expense to sue Twitter successfully to obtain payment due.
Given the low occupancy rate in SFO, Elmo probably assumed his landlords couldn’t find replacement tenants for his space. But it’s still theft.
An old colleague taught me to always consider the insurance issue in business situations (and social problems, like guns).
Maybe his landlords can’t make him to pay the rent he owes, but can they issue notification that his company is occupying the space illegally? What happens to his coverage and liabilities?
Thanks, Rayne, for the post, and bmaz for the dedicated opposition. Given the rapidity with which I became addicted to EW, I never posted on the Twitter account I started years ago; didn’t want to go down the rabbit-hole after Mr. diBenci began spending all his time there.
Thanks to its purchase by a businessman with a severely inflated image of himself as a genius, I’m no longer tempted.
> one might wonder if Dabiri was a green card employee who had no choice to stay until it was obvious it would damage his personal cred.
1) Dabiri’s been in the US for over 20 years, so he’s almost certainly got a green card or citizenship.
2) People with green cards are free to change employers (or not even have one) at will; that’s one of the major reasons to be on a green card rather than in H1-B or L-1 status.
Thanks for that. I meant H1-B, I should edit that in the post.
Musk is correct about control of the most heavily used mass media does help the advocates of blind nationalism and fascism.
I think of the US Civil War and how hard it was for the secessionists to peal away the five border regions attached to the broader US culture by publishing, telegraphy and railroads. Orwell wrote about how it could have worked in the age of cinema and TV.
Seeking control of Twitter had a rational political goal. But I doubt that is a real monopoly.
Rayne would know. But it seems that in Europe the other platforms are developed far enough that Europe can go on without Twitter.
This: “Musk is correct about control of the most heavily used mass media does help the advocates of blind nationalism and fascism” is bunk when the same asshole is using Twitter to aid nationalism and fascism. Like being correct about nuclear weapons ability to destroy a nation — and then turning around and using nuclear weapons to that end.
As for EU: the EU regulates social media commerce. It’s not that there are more/better social media platforms but that the EU’s laws prohibit a lot of what Musk has been doing. He’s pushing it as hard as he can and as far as I can tell it’s aimed at confronting and contesting EU on free speech in order to destabilize the EU’s regulatory framework. Given the relative success the EU has had with implementing the GDPR, I don’t think Musk has a leg to stand on. We should be moving federally toward something like the GDPR as well but we’re letting California do all the heavy lifting.
$42K a month or a year is just a lot of money. Some people do need to use twitter because for the reasons bmaz states. Others find they can do without. Never having signed on to twitter………, never found a need for it.
Most likely twitter will continue because it works for people until there is something else which will work for many, who also don’t like Musk and his antics.
That thing with Desantos and Musk was wierd and sort of funny. Lets hope its a sign of the future for both of them.
Where’s the white knight-created killer app that will render Twitter as relevant as MySpace.com The need is there—build it, and we will come.
Funny, MySpace was overrun with Nazis, too.
You’ve not learned the white knight is both a myth and a bad business model.
read this in today’s NYT
“Research from Glenmede Investment Management indicates there are signs that more consumers are cutting back on pricier purchases. The financial services firm estimates that households in the bottom fourth by income will exhaust whatever is collectively left of their pandemic-era savings sometime this summer.”