• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

News Elon Musk and the End of Twitter

So I did end up hanging on to my account as my friend convinced me to stay as people figure out what’s next. I say this since I can firsthand confirm either RT’s or QRT’s are breaking now as posts are looking extra funky right now to the point I don’t know if either they are writing it or it is just copying what others wrote. Pretty wild watching this thing melt completely down with a front row seat. I don’t remember if it was posted last night here, but people are uploading all kinds of copyrighted material including whole movies(!) since that system broke.

Seems like two new Twitter alternatives are gaining traction, something called Post and another called Hivemind. Might give them both a try once I get more info. I’m on Cohost as a backup, but with only three people running it and everybody hopping on the site is barely holding together. After using it for a while I do like it, but it’s no Twitter.
 
0
As snarky as I've been about this whole thing, I actually do very much agree with this thread and am pissed about the blow Musk is dealing to worldwide communication.

As much as I hate twitter, I can see that some found value in it.

If its such a successful/important idea, someone or someones will come up with a replacement of a sort. Good ideas survive past mistakes and stumbles.

Also the fuck is Musk tweeting at Trump now..... Dude is becoming a laughingstock, which he can afford not to care about but can you imagine going into business with this guy???? Seriously, I thought the guy was a jerk but was at least competent at running successful companies. He may be tweeting while blazed which, as a fellow blazer, doesn't lead to anything that anyone but you thinks is funny or understands. Just sit there with your headphones on drooling at Arkham Knight like the rest "partakers" buddy, the high is better without distractions.
 
0
I get that Twitter is fucked right now, and Elon is a piece of shit. But I'm not sure I get this rush to other sites like Hive when it's unlikely they'll even be as good as Twitter on life support.
 
I get that Twitter is fucked right now, and Elon is a piece of shit. But I'm not sure I get this rush to other sites like Hive when it's unlikely they'll even be as good as Twitter on life support.
People really want to find the next place as soon as possible since people really like the Twitter experience (microblogging with the whole world) and don’t want to give that up just because a rich, pathetic jerk drove our home into the ground. We might go through a few places before we find the next one and it might take longer than we want ultimately, but if we don’t give some of these other places a chance they’ll never get the reach Twitter had which the true successor will need to truly become the next Twitter.
 
I get that Twitter is fucked right now, and Elon is a piece of shit. But I'm not sure I get this rush to other sites like Hive when it's unlikely they'll even be as good as Twitter on life support.
Yeah. And Hive... I don't know if it'll be an adequate replacement for Twitter, especially since some people (including me) only use it on Desktop systems.
 
I’ve got Mastedon and Hive so far, Hive looks to be the closer one to Twitter and it’s ease of use makes it the current front runner in my eyes, but yeah it really needs a desktop site.
 
I’ve got Mastedon and Hive so far, Hive looks to be the closer one to Twitter and it’s ease of use makes it the current front runner in my eyes, but yeah it really needs a desktop site.

Question; if everyone moves to hive, will the posts be called "Jives"?

(My account too young to be banned for a bad joke)
 
0
I'm sort of holding off to see if Elon ends up being forced to sell twitter after more failures than he already has with this dumpster fire. Like maybe selling it to Big Tech that I've mentioned a few times since they're practically the only companies that can afford and probably run twitter lmao.
 
I'm sort of holding off to see if Elon ends up being forced to sell twitter after more failures than he already has with this dumpster fire. Like maybe selling it to Big Tech that I've mentioned a few times since they're practically the only companies that can afford and probably run twitter lmao.
With the company in Elon’s hands watch him sell it to somebody even worse than him.
 
People talk about Elon being "forced to sell," but sell to who? Who would buy a company that has

1) billions in debt
2) no profitable revenue stream
3) a skeleton crew of employees that needs to be reevaluated and restaffed
4) a user base fleeing in droves
 
Looks like Hive just hired another developer, hopefully they can grow the team and iron out the kinks in the apps.
 
0
People talk about Elon being "forced to sell," but sell to who? Who would buy a company that has

1) billions in debt
2) no profitable revenue stream
3) a skeleton crew of employees that needs to be reevaluated and restaffed
4) a user base fleeing in droves
Eh, The only ones that can practically afford to buy and then "salvage" Twitter are Big Tech. And Twitter would essentially fit one of Big Tech's goals or needs, specifically ones like Microsoft. Gives them a high and active userbase, gives advertisers some relief and confidence to stay which would hypothetically benefit various parties, a way to expand their marketing outreach, and so on. And they can likely easily figure out how twitter works and see if they can salvage it.

Although this is just my naive take.
 


Phil Schiller's gone.

The author of this tweet is taking a pretty huge logical leap, from a person leaving a platform to them actively trying to prove that the platform is violating the rules his company sets. While I do think there's good indication that Twitter may see the App Store turn against them, those indications look more like:
  • the rising rate in pornography and adult imagery being displayed everywhere throughout the platform,
  • the lack of moderation against hate speech, harassment, and bulling on the platform, and
  • the blatant piracy of entire films being left up for tens of hours, including those by Disney
That said, should the question come up, Phil Schiller has less vested interest in keeping the platform around.

I do think these questions will be coming around soon. We've seen the App Store take action against platforms like Discord and Tumblr in the past for their adult content, and the various "free speech platforms" the fascists have developed and posted there. While I don't think an App Store removal is imminent, I find it hard to believe Musk will be able to acquire enough content moderators to assuage the issue in a timely manner.

Though I could see companies like Disney, Netflix, Sony, telling the app store to take down what's becoming a piracy website from their storefront.
 
Anybody get into post yet? I'm only still on Twitter until post news is up and running, that seems to be the real Twitter successor that has all the tech folks backing it.The wait-list is annoying but I'm just watching the twitter pyre to waste time. All the others are way too image based for me and don't have the subtle image ratios of Twitter, but that's because they feel aimed at photos and visual artists.
 
TechCrunch: Musk’s impact on content moderation at Twitter faces early test in Germany

Since the self-proclaimed ‘free speech absolutist’ took over Twitter at the end of October and set to mass sackings and radical policy shifts (including, just this weekend, lifting a permanent suspension on former U.S. President Trump), concern has been riding high among lawmakers and social media users that Twitter could degenerate into a hellscape of low-to-no content moderation under its new staff-liquidating, shitpost-loving billionaire owner.

Thing is, some content moderation laws do apply to Twitter internationally — and Germany has one: The ‘Enforcement on Social Networks’ law, commonly referred to as NetzDG (an abbreviated version of its full German name), allows for fines of up to €50 million for failures to comply with reports to takedown illegal hate speech.

NetzDG has its issues, but if it takes down Musk I'll be slightly less salty about it for the remainder of the year.
 
0
Yeah. And Hive... I don't know if it'll be an adequate replacement for Twitter, especially since some people (including me) only use it on Desktop systems.
Hive is very early and have lots of potential. Features are coming, just have to be patient.
 
0
While I don't think an App Store removal is imminent, I find it hard to believe Musk will be able to acquire enough content moderators to assuage the issue in a timely manner.
I worked in content moderation at one of the big 4, for a few years.

Most of the low-level stuff is automated processes with human checking being done by workers in Costa Rica / India / Philippines.
As long as you have your outsourcers, these things can run on auto-pilot, at least for a few months, until a tool breaks or some new content moderation policy comes up.

Internal Structure would have to be so messed up (No one at Twitter left to give outsourced contractors directions, handle escalations / Contractors themselves terminated) for content moderation to break down this quickly.

Either that or Twitter actually did content moderation all in-house....
 
0
Think I'm just going to wait and see where people end up. That'll be the deciding factor since none of the alternatives are standing out to me right now.

Mastodon's instanced nature seems to be putting off people, and I've seen some stuff about marginalised people having a kinda terrible time on there (though I'll admit I haven't looked into these stories deeply).

Hive seems very early and doesn't even have a desktop app yet.

Cohost got a bit of buzz but also seems pretty small and the buzz seems to have died off? Not sure what's happening there.

Post apparently disallows NSFW content, which I don't care much about, but ask Tumblr how that went.

And then, I guess, there's also Tumblr itself. I've never jived with it, personally. It potentially connecting to the Fediverse is interesting though.
 
0
I joined Hive today. Lots of gaming friends on there already which is awesome. Way more for me then Cohost or Mastodon (which I haven’t joined yet tbc). Feels the most like Twitter so far even if some features aren’t there and it crashes a lot. Most amusing, getting my first follower crashed the app lol. I tend to post on mobile the most, so it not having a desktop app isn’t too inconvenient for me, but I hope it gets added ultimately.

I have to get used to it, but I think I like you only see conversations if you dive into posts. Makes the scrolling experience more pleasant.
 
0
Super gross :(

It’s difficult to know who voted, but it’s worth remembering that Musk spent a long time trying to get out of buying Twitter based on claims that the service was filled with bots and inauthentic accounts.

lol
 
"CEO of platform who complained about almost all users being bots puts up a poll on his platform to make controversial decision. Abides by most controversial outcome."
Zero self-awareness.
 
It's interesting that he's arrived at two solutions - verified users having to pay and using different coloured checkmarks for different classes of user - that I've been arguing for for years. Hope it works out.

The idea that a business or newspaper or influencer is somehow entitled to free use of the platform twitter has created - ostensibly to make money - when twitter itself has never done anything but lose money - that makes no sense at all to me. If twitter is so essential to your job / business / whatever, surely you're willing to pay for it, at least to the point it breaks even and can survive?

It seems to me like people get confused with the fact that a company's stock price is high or getting higher (which is a purely speculative measure) and the fact that it might be completely unprofitable. They see the stock going up and the market cap increasing by 100s of millions and think the company is "making" hundreds of millions.
 
It's interesting that he's arrived at two solutions - verified users having to pay and using different coloured checkmarks for different classes of user - that I've been arguing for for years. Hope it works out.

The idea that a business or newspaper or influencer is somehow entitled to free use of the platform twitter has created - ostensibly to make money - when twitter itself has never done anything but lose money - that makes no sense at all to me. If twitter is so essential to your job / business / whatever, surely you're willing to pay for it, at least to the point it breaks even and can survive?

It seems to me like people get confused with the fact that a company's stock price is high or getting higher (which is a purely speculative measure) and the fact that it might be completely unprofitable. They see the stock going up and the market cap increasing by 100s of millions and think the company is "making" hundreds of millions.
doc-rivers.gif
 
Is she talking in thought speech
You mean because of the angle brackets? No, she's speaking Japanese.

This artist does a webcomic where Americans end up in Japan, and the way he differentiates between characters speaking English and characters speaking Japanese (but written in English for the sake of the reader) is the brackets. IIRC it's a technique utilized by manga translators and he brought it into his own work.
 
It's interesting that he's arrived at two solutions - verified users having to pay and using different coloured checkmarks for different classes of user - that I've been arguing for for years. Hope it works out.

The idea that a business or newspaper or influencer is somehow entitled to free use of the platform twitter has created - ostensibly to make money - when twitter itself has never done anything but lose money - that makes no sense at all to me. If twitter is so essential to your job / business / whatever, surely you're willing to pay for it, at least to the point it breaks even and can survive?

It seems to me like people get confused with the fact that a company's stock price is high or getting higher (which is a purely speculative measure) and the fact that it might be completely unprofitable. They see the stock going up and the market cap increasing by 100s of millions and think the company is "making" hundreds of millions.

Spoiler: it won't work out. Twitter is going to lose more money than ever before because the idiot in charge drove away tons of the advertisers.

And you've got this the wrong way around: the "businesses or newspapers or influencers" are doing an obscene amount of unpaid labour for twitter which is fundamental for twitter to exist as a platform. If anything, twitter should be paying them! They're quite literally what brings users to the platform to begin with.
 
Yeah, the idea that media outlets and companies are freeloading off the service that Twitter nobly provides is a bit of a stretch.

Twitter is designed to be a platform where the more followers you have, the more reach your posts have. Media outlets and influencers are the archetypal users to fill exactly this bracket - they create posts that are seen and shared by millions of users, driving up site engagement and advertising hits.

The problem is that unlike Facebook, Twitter haven't yet worked out how to turn mass engagement and advertising into a profitable income stream. But that's their problem, not the problem of users.
 
It's interesting that he's arrived at two solutions - verified users having to pay and using different coloured checkmarks for different classes of user - that I've been arguing for for years. Hope it works out.

The idea that a business or newspaper or influencer is somehow entitled to free use of the platform twitter has created - ostensibly to make money - when twitter itself has never done anything but lose money - that makes no sense at all to me. If twitter is so essential to your job / business / whatever, surely you're willing to pay for it, at least to the point it breaks even and can survive?

It seems to me like people get confused with the fact that a company's stock price is high or getting higher (which is a purely speculative measure) and the fact that it might be completely unprofitable. They see the stock going up and the market cap increasing by 100s of millions and think the company is "making" hundreds of millions.
It seems to me like you're confused about the controversy surrounding paid verification.
 
Spoiler: it won't work out. Twitter is going to lose more money than ever before because the idiot in charge drove away tons of the advertisers.

And you've got this the wrong way around: the "businesses or newspapers or influencers" are doing an obscene amount of unpaid labour for twitter which is fundamental for twitter to exist as a platform. If anything, twitter should be paying them! They're quite literally what brings users to the platform to begin with.
Musk has driven away advertisers because of his highly erratic approach to running the company that appears to politically favour republicans and other toxic individuals in some kind of misguided free speech absolutism that cannot work for a social media platform. That is different from the question of what the best way to monetize twitter is, or what the best way to handle veriified users is. I'm not out here supporting Musk - whom I cannot stand - I'm out here wanting the best for the platform. But I do believe that the era of advertising entirely supporting platforms is going to end - no matter how well run they are - which is where I'm coming from.

And I fundamentally disagree with you as to who is providing value to who. If twitter (or some equivalent social media) did not exist, those companies would be paying traditional media to reach that audience in the same way - which would be more expensive, slower and with less reach. Is placing an ad on television unpaid labour for the TV network? Come on. Instead, they are getting instant access to this incredible pool of users for nothing, when it's worth a huge amount to them.

Is businesses, journalists and influencers etc all left tomorrow there'd stiil be enough appeal to the service that ordinary users would use it. To talk about sports or movies, to connect with people, to feel part of big events. Like they did before any of those people were involved - which is how it initially grew.

If there was no value to it, all of those people would have immediately moved elsewhere when the site started to be run against how they would like it to be. But they didn't - because there's no equivalent alternative that provides the same value, the same access to an audience, the same user experience etc.

It seems to me like you're confused about the controversy surrounding paid verification.
How so? The initial idea - that you could simply pay for a blue checkmark - was monumentally stupid and ruined twitter for users because you could no longer trust verification. This became immediately clear with the predictable fraud accounts getting verified - which threatened to destroy the site.

This idea - that users will once again need to be manually verified, but will then have a different coloured checkmark to indicate whether they are a state-based organization, company or individual, and will have to pay for it - seems completely sound.

Do I have anything about that wrong?
 
How so? The initial idea - that you could simply pay for a blue checkmark - was monumentally stupid and ruined twitter for users because you could no longer trust verification. This became immediately clear with the predictable fraud accounts getting verified - which threatened to destroy the site.

This idea - that users will once again need to be manually verified, but will then have a different coloured checkmark to indicate whether they are a state-based organization, company or individual, and will have to pay for it - seems completely sound.

Do I have anything about that wrong?
It helps to actually look at the history of verification on twitter and why it was introduced in the first place and who it serves (hint: it's not just the users). Tying that to monetization pretty much defeats the purpose of the entire system. And the only reason why this now "has" to be done is because Musk is scrambling after killing the previous system because he bought into this narrative (predominantly coming from right-wing chuds) that the checkmark is some kind of status symbol.

I mean, even if we entertain for a second the notion that this is actually a good idea, it's not like Musk has an actual plan here or the means to properly implement it. It's gonna change like 5 times before and after its official launch, the same way he went from $19,99 down to $8 in a tweet to Stephen King.
 
0
Musk has driven away advertisers because of his highly erratic approach to running the company that appears to politically favour republicans and other toxic individuals in some kind of misguided free speech absolutism that cannot work for a social media platform. That is different from the question of what the best way to monetize twitter is, or what the best way to handle veriified users is. I'm not out here supporting Musk - whom I cannot stand - I'm out here wanting the best for the platform. But I do believe that the era of advertising entirely supporting platforms is going to end - no matter how well run they are - which is where I'm coming from.

Well, if the opinion of advertising supporting platforms almost entirely is coming to an end, then that means those platforms are going to go. You can't support a platform like twitter any more based on users financial contributions, it simply does not scale with the userbase.

Wikipedia, probably the biggest most successful non-advert based website has a revenue of about $150-160m USD a year. Twitter's revenue with which they still failed to make a profit, is in the billions.

All demanding users who are the ones that actually provide the content for your website pay you money to do so, is ensure the decline of your website picks up it's pace.

And I fundamentally disagree with you as to who is providing value to who. If twitter (or some equivalent social media) did not exist, those companies would be paying traditional media to reach that audience in the same way - which would be more expensive, slower and with less reach. Is placing an ad on television unpaid labour for the TV network? Come on. Instead, they are getting instant access to this incredible pool of users for nothing, when it's worth a huge amount to them

What you don't seem to be understanding is people are literally on twitter for the content provided by the users you now want to charge. They're not adverts. What you're suggesting is more like saying Disney or whoever should be paying the TV network to show their latest film instead of the other way around.

Adverts are (... Were if musk keeps his idiotic behaviour up) separate and already were paying twitter for exactly what you're already asking for on the service.
 
0
Less bothered about Twitter's viability and more concerned with Musk's desire to turn it into a mainstream 4chan and a major platform for fascism, if I'm being honest.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/27/twitter-china-spam-protests/

With the recent protests in china, government-linked accounts spamming the city name where protests are being held with fake adult services ads for those cities. So much that real information is lost in a flurry of adult service ads.

Such an intriguing article, because it goes far and beyond what you think of when you think of normal content moderation (Offensive / hate speech, etc) and why a strong, what may seemed overstaffed, content moderation team is necessary.
 


Back
Top Bottom