Seth Abramson on X: “Get your things together and be ready to go”(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Seth Abramson on X: “Get your things together and be ready to go”
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1704391054101721173
8 comments
My favorite part is that MySpace somehow isn't on this list. I.. I suppose I am one of today's lucky 10K:
https://myspace.com/
Incredible stuff.
https://myspace.com/
Incredible stuff.
The consequence of this will be that the entirety of online discussion will be in the hands of one company: Meta.
I hate social media either way but it does seem problematic to have the vast majority public discourse moderated and controlled by one company.
I hate social media either way but it does seem problematic to have the vast majority public discourse moderated and controlled by one company.
Kinda? It's not like there aren't alternatives, but the user base numbers are vastly different. I'd be curious to know how many of these are active users now.
BlueSky: 1 million (Sept 2023) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bluesky-officially-hits-1-mil...
Mastadon: 10 million (March 2023) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registere...
Threads: 100 million (July 2023) https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-twitter-rival-threa...
BlueSky: 1 million (Sept 2023) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bluesky-officially-hits-1-mil...
Mastadon: 10 million (March 2023) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registere...
Threads: 100 million (July 2023) https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-twitter-rival-threa...
Threads is also made by Meta
I never used Meta. Discussion platforms I use are HN, reddit, ocassionaly twitter/mastodon and online chats, like mattermost or discord.
Maybe I'm currently the minority, but even now it's not true that entirety of online discussion is controlled by Meta.
Maybe I'm currently the minority, but even now it's not true that entirety of online discussion is controlled by Meta.
Meta's services are not public though? You can only read a few lines before you need to login, I think.
Imo both of these things are true:
1. For anyone who uses X for more than a few hours per month, a low fee is totally worthwhile.
2. This is a huge gamble that has the potential to wreck the company.
1. For anyone who uses X for more than a few hours per month, a low fee is totally worthwhile.
2. This is a huge gamble that has the potential to wreck the company.
Fair or not, and whatever the implications of depending on ads, free access is just table stakes. Period.
But putting aside the mental barrier that something that's always been free should now cost money.
I could maybe have been convinced to pay a small amount for access to 2010-2015 era Twitter.
The 2015-Elon era would have been a harder sell. The experience was going downhill before the acquisition. Not his fault. And also we'd become less naive about the effect of social media on our lives and on society. Being asked to pay would have triggered a reexamination of the necessity of social networking in my life that should have happened around then anyway.
But the idea of paying for what Twitter has turned into post-acquisition? Ask me again next week when I stop laughing.
But putting aside the mental barrier that something that's always been free should now cost money.
I could maybe have been convinced to pay a small amount for access to 2010-2015 era Twitter.
The 2015-Elon era would have been a harder sell. The experience was going downhill before the acquisition. Not his fault. And also we'd become less naive about the effect of social media on our lives and on society. Being asked to pay would have triggered a reexamination of the necessity of social networking in my life that should have happened around then anyway.
But the idea of paying for what Twitter has turned into post-acquisition? Ask me again next week when I stop laughing.
I've always wondered what percentage of "users" are "lurks" who never login, occasionally check a profile or click on a tweet on another website.
One of the previous uses of twitter was "announcements". Government, corporate, emergency, community, software, etc.
The previous move to require logging in was already a massive blow to that, requiring a payment would decimate it was a use-case.
I don't see company's/governments putting announcements on a paid platform. You can't expect people to pay for twitter for announcements.
One of the previous uses of twitter was "announcements". Government, corporate, emergency, community, software, etc.
The previous move to require logging in was already a massive blow to that, requiring a payment would decimate it was a use-case.
I don't see company's/governments putting announcements on a paid platform. You can't expect people to pay for twitter for announcements.
I wonder what the price point would actually be. For example, paying a one time fee of two dollars to activate an account seems low enough for most people to shrug it off. And that would have the advantage of allowing Twitter to ban people via their payment method. But a monthly fee above a dollar would alienate people. And I wonder how they would handle international markets where their currency isn’t as strong against the dollar.
I feel somehow uncomfortable handing my credit card info to Musk...
No, twitter won’t charge a monthly fee; but in one tweet Elons caused N thousand people to start discussing the monetary value of access to twitter, and some million extra to read and think about it, too
If it makes sense to charge users for creating and accessing content, then it could also make sense for Google to charge X for indexing it and making it discoverable.
As someone who both actually likes Musk and uses Twitter a lot, there's a good chance I'll just naturally stop using it if you need a paid subscription.
Charging for access is at odds with the idea of a public town square. On the other hand, I can't help but feel that this will raise the level of discourse. Folks like the idea of free public speech, but then it inevitably becomes (in actual, physical town squares) overrun with religious fundamentalists, political zealots and marketers. What people actually want is a salon.
My feeling from what attention I've paid to twitter recently is that the class of users corresponding roughly to religious fundamentalists, zealots and marketers seem quite happy to pay $8 a month.
That’s okay, because there is no way anyone could mistake Twitter or any noncorporeal, private, online, TOS-limited, private property, coherent speech product, that was not taking on any role traditionally the province of the government for a public square. Charging admission won’t confuse anyone who was not already deeply misinformed.
Find it on this list soon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network...