Is it just me, or are there others out there too who are just getting tired of these offerings made by companies owned by billionaire narcissists and/or VC firms? It seems like big tech is more...
Is it just me, or are there others out there too who are just getting tired of these offerings made by companies owned by billionaire narcissists and/or VC firms?
It seems like big tech is more and more going towards being money making machines at the expense of the actual use experience.
Infinite scroll, algorithmic feeds, non existent search, hyper-fast content turnover, more trackers than lines of code, controversial moderation practices, personality cults and so forth.
Threads sounds just like another platform where you get spoon fed content at an insane rate while being told what to think about things. It’s like straight out of the movie idiocracy.
Sadly, it has become a part of life. At the start of this century when computing was still in its nascency, we had the option of going the GPL way (of Richard Stallman et al.) or the Open Source...
Sadly, it has become a part of life. At the start of this century when computing was still in its nascency, we had the option of going the GPL way (of Richard Stallman et al.) or the Open Source way (of the general plebs but serving the interests of big tech capitalists). Unfortunately, we plebs chose convenience over freedom and most problems in technology today are due to that.
I just hope technologists will realize this mistake and course correct before it's too late and surveillance capitalism takes over the world completely.
This lass has a really heartfelt "fuck this" to the current Internet and what it stands for. It's something I've felt for decades and so many others have too.
Stallman is my favorite tech person, love his presentations, proprietary software sucks, and open source misses the point, the closest thing I'll say to open source is FLOSS, otherwise I say Free...
Stallman is my favorite tech person, love his presentations, proprietary software sucks, and open source misses the point, the closest thing I'll say to open source is FLOSS, otherwise I say Free Software
I mean they already are. Just look back and see how the experience changed with platforms like YouTube, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), Reddit when the goal shifted from "don't be evil" to...
It seems like big tech is more and more going towards being money making machines at the expense of the actual use experience.
I mean they already are. Just look back and see how the experience changed with platforms like YouTube, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), Reddit when the goal shifted from "don't be evil" to "money printer goes brrrr".
I, unfortunately, use Instagram for work and the experience is abysmal, how people still use this horrendous app is beyond me. It's basically a TikTok repost machine.
I feel like that's all that is to the internet anymore. In the past few years, it's also become impossible to google anything and getting actual useful results. It's just monetize, monetize,...
I feel like that's all that is to the internet anymore. In the past few years, it's also become impossible to google anything and getting actual useful results. It's just monetize, monetize, monetize.
I think the old Internet could be a terrible place, but I miss it a lot. At least there was a way to form genuine connections and participate in enjoyable communities. Now it's like you're a little drop in the ocean every time you post, and at the complete mercy of the algorithm. The only platform that is still kinda nice is Tumblr. I've been thinking a lot about how one could build a better alternative to the current situation, but I really can't think of anything that would function well in this day and age.
The fediverse and facebook folks can sure help each other a lot. One has an effective fediverse software but not the massive infrastructure needed to run that ecosystem, other has the infra but...
The fediverse and facebook folks can sure help each other a lot. One has an effective fediverse software but not the massive infrastructure needed to run that ecosystem, other has the infra but its software sucks. If the fediverse can run on meta's infrastructure, it could be a win-win for all parties?
It could, but I think it will go the Google Chrome way. More and more people join the fediverse via Meta instance. After 90%+ of users are using Meta, they can steer the boat and make the rules.
It could, but I think it will go the Google Chrome way.
More and more people join the fediverse via Meta instance. After 90%+ of users are using Meta, they can steer the boat and make the rules.
At which point it would probably be defederated from the rest of the fediverse. So there'd be the 10% that's the independent fediverse and a big Metaverse (lol).
At which point it would probably be defederated from the rest of the fediverse. So there'd be the 10% that's the independent fediverse and a big Metaverse (lol).
I don't think Meta would have a high chances of success, but a big social media co in the fediverse would probably be a good thing. Yes, you'd have the Chrome problem, but that's better than a...
I don't think Meta would have a high chances of success, but a big social media co in the fediverse would probably be a good thing. Yes, you'd have the Chrome problem, but that's better than a world with no Chrome and no Firefox. You'd have an operator that could actually run a massive instance, legions of paid man hours working on open protocols, and you could interact with people on Facebook or whatever without having to make an account.
I’m a bit torn on the algorithmic feed because when the facebook timeline was chronological if you wanted anyone to see your stuff you had to post at specific times of the day when your friends...
I’m a bit torn on the algorithmic feed because when the facebook timeline was chronological if you wanted anyone to see your stuff you had to post at specific times of the day when your friends would be logging in to see it. The algorithmic timeline makes sense in the context of wanting to not bury your party album or engagement announcement underneath random musings.
But then they decided ads and upworthy clickbait should dominate the feed over anything your friends post. And that ruins it.
I guess I was being a bit too hyperbole. Algorithmic sorting can be useful, look no further than here on Tildes. But it is useful to be able to have different sorts.
The algorithmic timeline makes sense in the context of wanting to not bury your party album or engagement announcement underneath random musings.
I guess I was being a bit too hyperbole. Algorithmic sorting can be useful, look no further than here on Tildes. But it is useful to be able to have different sorts.
Some of those are unavoidable parts of any community, IRL or online. Like, complaining about authority (parents, boss, teachers, etc) is one of the most common tropes on media. Mods are just...
Some of those are unavoidable parts of any community, IRL or online. Like, complaining about authority (parents, boss, teachers, etc) is one of the most common tropes on media. Mods are just online community authorities.
But yes, in an overall sentiment I just want a place to post and (mostly) read discussions on topics I'm interested in. So:
a decently designed, readable, organized forum format (I like the tree format, but I'm still fine with the old school linear format). Ideally one that works on mobile and desktop
relevant topics to my interests
enough moderation to keep the bad apples from ruining anything
a modest amount of ("productive") activity.
But it seems that (IMO) humble checklist is becoming harder to do, mostly because of #4. The internet has been converging from hundreds of medium sized forums to a half dozen huge sites. Sites optimized more towards sharing media (format that is easy to lose and hard to search) or providing floods of short blurbs or quickly shifting conversations rather than something more akin to a book club.
But in many ways that is also the will of the people, so maybe my views are old fashioned, outdated. I could barely get into twitter and Tiktok is definitely that moment I realized I was a metaphorical boomer in the social media space.
On one slightly contrary end to many other denizens, I think it's great that content creators can make full time jobs providing entertainment. But monetizing text has historically been difficult (as we see with major news sites starting to become subscription only over ad supported). And that may be the way the next "Reddit" of the internet becomes so.
Sure, if the perspective is something like 2000 or 2005. But it's been that way ever since, it was just easier to ignore while technology kept rapidly opening up entirely new areas. Curse you,...
It seems like big tech is more and more going towards being money making machines at the expense of the actual use experience.
Sure, if the perspective is something like 2000 or 2005. But it's been that way ever since, it was just easier to ignore while technology kept rapidly opening up entirely new areas.
But surprisingly, no social media site was ever a charity, as hinted at by being owned by for-profit companies. Curse you, Tildes! Curse youuuuu! 😅 No seriously, everyone is correct of course, there is a middle ground. But realistically any large enough site will naturally eventually fall into a pattern where either a publicly traded company buys it up or it itself gets publicly traded, and the moment that happens it's all over and it's profits-only-nothing-else.
You're currently on one. ;) Well, technically it's a non-profit, but that's only because charities in Canada have pretty strict requirements for the organization's purpose. From the docs:
But surprisingly, no social media site was ever a charity
You're currently on one. ;) Well, technically it's a non-profit, but that's only because charities in Canada have pretty strict requirements for the organization's purpose. From the docs:
Why is Tildes a non-profit and not a charity?
Canada only grants charity status to organizations with certain purposes. Generally, the organization has to be devoted to relieving poverty, advancing religion or education, or the benefit of the (local, real-life) community. These are quite restricted definitions; note that Wikimedia Canada (the Canadian branch of the organization behind Wikipedia) is also a non-profit and not a charity. If even building Wikipedia doesn't seem to qualify as "advancing education", I don't think there's any chance that Tildes will.
No organization is without running costs, that is true. But why have we chosen this black-and-white dichotomy? Either you need to have 10 000 staff to host a messaging platform and earn a billion,...
No organization is without running costs, that is true. But why have we chosen this black-and-white dichotomy? Either you need to have 10 000 staff to host a messaging platform and earn a billion, or you shouldn't exist?
We chose that dichotomy when we chose capitalism as the way of life. The big fish gobbles up the small fries, one with 10k staff will run the smaller one out of existence sooner or later, that's...
We chose that dichotomy when we chose capitalism as the way of life. The big fish gobbles up the small fries, one with 10k staff will run the smaller one out of existence sooner or later, that's the way of capitalism. Technology is just one sector, it can't be immune from the effects of culture norms and configurations in greater economy and society.
A bigger problem is probably that for some reason you need 10000 staff of engineers nowadays, or at least that's how bloat-hiring always works, before the cycle shifts back to slimming-firings....
A bigger problem is probably that for some reason you need 10000 staff of engineers nowadays, or at least that's how bloat-hiring always works, before the cycle shifts back to slimming-firings.
And in the end both are just based off of perceived market valuation, depending on whether right now you need to present growth or cost saving to potential investors. Neither is truly based on the worker's needs who need more colleagues or slimmer structures.
I don’t think it’s possible to get much good talent when you go on these rapid hiring binges. The talent market is flooded with truly mediocre devs who know how to string some copy pasted bits off...
I don’t think it’s possible to get much good talent when you go on these rapid hiring binges. The talent market is flooded with truly mediocre devs who know how to string some copy pasted bits off stack overflow together and call various microservices but can’t design anything under the hood. You often see senior devs on these teams doing all of the thinking and even mid level guys needing way too much handholding.
I think it was easier to hire software engineers a decade or so ago before every high school grad was getting “learn to code” STEM propaganda and went into these fields without any genuine passion or interest. They were rarer, but when you got one they knew what they were doing. Now we have a generation of comp sci majors who don’t know how file systems work.
I believe this is most true of niches of software engineering where the barrier to entry is lowest. Point in case, I’ve been part of the process of trying to hire a capable, experienced, mostly...
I believe this is most true of niches of software engineering where the barrier to entry is lowest.
Point in case, I’ve been part of the process of trying to hire a capable, experienced, mostly self-sufficient Android dev, and though there were no shortage of applicants they almost all displayed major weaknesses… stuff like not being able to write a substantial app from scratch, not being able to write a moderately complex UI widget from scratch, etc, and most didn’t seem all that interested in their work.
This is almost the exact opposite of my experience hiring iOS devs, where there’s tons of intermediate-to-senior candidates who not only know what they’re doing but are passionate about it. We were spoiled for choice and could’ve made multiple hires if we wanted.
Intuitively, it makes sense. More accessible niches are going to attract more people, including more who are there because that’s where they were told they should be even if they don’t really care for it.
The words not written but everyone understands as explicit are "for-profit, therefore appalling behaviour". Sadly true, although as but one example it would have been entirely possible for Reddit...
The words not written but everyone understands as explicit are "for-profit, therefore appalling behaviour".
Sadly true, although as but one example it would have been entirely possible for Reddit to effect the change they want, but without being complete idiots.
I would argue that for Reddit the moment they decided to go for being publicly traded they already lost the game. But of course, in the end there wasn't much reason to do that in the first place,...
I would argue that for Reddit the moment they decided to go for being publicly traded they already lost the game. But of course, in the end there wasn't much reason to do that in the first place, but if the controlling stake is concentrated enough in few enough people then when those people want to "cash out", an IPO is of course their choice.
I really don't see this working out for them. Meta's got a terrible reputation. The average user might not know or care, but early adopters and content creators that bring people to the platform...
I really don't see this working out for them. Meta's got a terrible reputation. The average user might not know or care, but early adopters and content creators that bring people to the platform are much more likely to.
And even if they did somehow manage it by burning oceans of cash and brute forcing their existing user base, I can't see the end result being all that valuable. Even before Musk, Twitter was showing signs of being past it's peak and slowly dwindling. Twitter 2 would be even smaller than the original. Why fight over a sinking ship?
The only reason Meta bothers with making a Twitter clone is that Twitter is slowly collapsing. The reason Twitter is slowly collapsing is that an out-of-touch billionaire took it over. Now we’re...
The only reason Meta bothers with making a Twitter clone is that Twitter is slowly collapsing. The reason Twitter is slowly collapsing is that an out-of-touch billionaire took it over. Now we’re supposed to trust another out-of-touch billionaire with an alternative, lol. And honestly, Facebook has somehow a worse track record than Musk, i.e., they have a track record.
I don’t even know it’s the billionaire thing I have a problem with. It’s the out-of-touch part. You could imagine a person with lots of money running something like Twitter as a quasi-charity that should be doable with a billion dollars, even long term. Wikipedia is close in reach and complexity and it works as a non-profit. They could run a Twitter clone as a business but with the bare minimum amount of advertising/sponsorship to not make it lose money, something that does not need invasive user tracking.
But somehow no billionaire tech bro is able to commit to this. They do make their new “disruptive” alternative but from the start, the focus is hyper-growth and investments that only make sense with a $50 billion exit in mind. Nobody seems to care about the quality of the product beyond growth. And we never escape this cycle.
If we're choosing between the lesser of two evils to build a social media platform I think I am still choosing barf Mark Zuckerberg though. At least he understands. Musk is just a billionaire with...
Now we’re supposed to trust another out-of-touch billionaire with an alternative, lol. And honestly, Facebook has somehow a worse track record than Musk, i.e., they have a track record.
If we're choosing between the lesser of two evils to build a social media platform I think I am still choosing barf Mark Zuckerberg though. At least he understands. Musk is just a billionaire with some strange mission in life to amplify voices of people that no one wants to hear.
The approach for drawing users to this new app feels so disingenuous and adds to the weird nefarious nature of Zuckerberg. It literally relies on influencer culture which I think is part of the...
The approach for drawing users to this new app feels so disingenuous and adds to the weird nefarious nature of Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s company is already courting celebrities and influencers to test the app. Meta has been negotiating with TV host Oprah Winfrey and Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama to open accounts, hoping that high-profile early users can help tempt the masses to join.
It literally relies on influencer culture which I think is part of the reason the internet is in the state it is today. This weird concept of seeing an individual with thousands of followers, karma, likes, etc. is enough of a convincing factor for others to take value in their words even if it's complete drivel. The content those people create isn't revolutionary, it's just enough to drive clicks and gather users on their platform to eventually be the ad revenue generating product they are meant to be.
This new social media will only draw the people who are oblivious to that or desire areas for conflict; just another Facebook and will probably attract the same folks due to its association with Meta. Zuck's idea of just throwing money at celebrities to use his product feels so dated and comes across as the Bloomberg method to social media. I'm doubting its potential for success due to the bad association of Zuckerberg’s name being attached to it, but there's always the chance it will be overvalued by investors.
I can't help it, whenever he gets the puppy-dog eyes goin' 😂 Seriously though, I have hopes for something wiki-like (even if that's not the direction he's going for a forum) as there are insights...
I'd give the Jimmy Wales platform a shot - give money even...
I can't help it, whenever he gets the puppy-dog eyes goin' 😂
Seriously though, I have hopes for something wiki-like (even if that's not the direction he's going for a forum) as there are insights to be gleaned both with searching modern forums (searching "site:whatever.com yourQueryHere") as well as platforms like slack ("Searchable Log...") with the potential benefits to forums that are designed with thought put into how they can also act as information archives/repos.
I think I tried that one. There was some hype for it last year. But it was weird to use and had a strange priorities. A good Reddit alternative would be simple. Almost all the money/investment...
I think I tried that one. There was some hype for it last year. But it was weird to use and had a strange priorities. A good Reddit alternative would be simple. Almost all the money/investment would go into good moderation. I think crowd-sourcing basic rule-enforcement is a dead-end.
I want to like wt.social, but I just can't get on board, it's trying more to be like Facebook more than anything I feel like, and I just really can't get into it. The 2.0 site design is so weirdly...
I want to like wt.social, but I just can't get on board, it's trying more to be like Facebook more than anything I feel like, and I just really can't get into it. The 2.0 site design is so weirdly obnoxious and dated that I can't even stand to look at that that much. I really just wish they'd replicate Google Reader/Reddit/Tildes, just a stream of posts/headlines that I can mindlessly scroll through.
I'm happy to have more competition in the market but Meta has such a terrible reputation at this point that I don't think it's going to work out for them.
I'm happy to have more competition in the market but Meta has such a terrible reputation at this point that I don't think it's going to work out for them.
Oh awesome, the worst of everything social-media all in one place, where do I sign up? I won't touch anything from Zuckerberg and I can't stand Twitter's short-form content. It's weird, I...
Oh awesome, the worst of everything social-media all in one place, where do I sign up?
I won't touch anything from Zuckerberg and I can't stand Twitter's short-form content. It's weird, I generally like reddit/tildes' format of having short headlines (with addtl content/discussion board when you click on the headline), but I really have never liked Twitter's short-form posts, especially when you see someone having to spill their topic across multiple posts. I dropped my facebook account years ago and I haven't looked back.
Is it just me, or are there others out there too who are just getting tired of these offerings made by companies owned by billionaire narcissists and/or VC firms?
It seems like big tech is more and more going towards being money making machines at the expense of the actual use experience.
Infinite scroll, algorithmic feeds, non existent search, hyper-fast content turnover, more trackers than lines of code, controversial moderation practices, personality cults and so forth.
Threads sounds just like another platform where you get spoon fed content at an insane rate while being told what to think about things. It’s like straight out of the movie idiocracy.
Sadly, it has become a part of life. At the start of this century when computing was still in its nascency, we had the option of going the GPL way (of Richard Stallman et al.) or the Open Source way (of the general plebs but serving the interests of big tech capitalists). Unfortunately, we plebs chose convenience over freedom and most problems in technology today are due to that.
I just hope technologists will realize this mistake and course correct before it's too late and surveillance capitalism takes over the world completely.
There's a lot of folks out there who've gone the OS / none techbro route that's for sure. Look at us lot over here as a good example.
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
This lass has a really heartfelt "fuck this" to the current Internet and what it stands for. It's something I've felt for decades and so many others have too.
That'll teach me to post before any coffee is in my system, thank you... I'll get that corrected promptly.
Edit: Done and fixed. Apologies.
Stallman is my favorite tech person, love his presentations, proprietary software sucks, and open source misses the point, the closest thing I'll say to open source is FLOSS, otherwise I say Free Software
I mean they already are. Just look back and see how the experience changed with platforms like YouTube, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), Reddit when the goal shifted from "don't be evil" to "money printer goes brrrr".
I, unfortunately, use Instagram for work and the experience is abysmal, how people still use this horrendous app is beyond me. It's basically a TikTok repost machine.
I feel like that's all that is to the internet anymore. In the past few years, it's also become impossible to google anything and getting actual useful results. It's just monetize, monetize, monetize.
I think the old Internet could be a terrible place, but I miss it a lot. At least there was a way to form genuine connections and participate in enjoyable communities. Now it's like you're a little drop in the ocean every time you post, and at the complete mercy of the algorithm. The only platform that is still kinda nice is Tumblr. I've been thinking a lot about how one could build a better alternative to the current situation, but I really can't think of anything that would function well in this day and age.
The fediverse and facebook folks can sure help each other a lot. One has an effective fediverse software but not the massive infrastructure needed to run that ecosystem, other has the infra but its software sucks. If the fediverse can run on meta's infrastructure, it could be a win-win for all parties?
It could, but I think it will go the Google Chrome way.
More and more people join the fediverse via Meta instance. After 90%+ of users are using Meta, they can steer the boat and make the rules.
At which point it would probably be defederated from the rest of the fediverse. So there'd be the 10% that's the independent fediverse and a big Metaverse (lol).
I don't think Meta would have a high chances of success, but a big social media co in the fediverse would probably be a good thing. Yes, you'd have the Chrome problem, but that's better than a world with no Chrome and no Firefox. You'd have an operator that could actually run a massive instance, legions of paid man hours working on open protocols, and you could interact with people on Facebook or whatever without having to make an account.
I’m a bit torn on the algorithmic feed because when the facebook timeline was chronological if you wanted anyone to see your stuff you had to post at specific times of the day when your friends would be logging in to see it. The algorithmic timeline makes sense in the context of wanting to not bury your party album or engagement announcement underneath random musings.
But then they decided ads and upworthy clickbait should dominate the feed over anything your friends post. And that ruins it.
I guess I was being a bit too hyperbole. Algorithmic sorting can be useful, look no further than here on Tildes. But it is useful to be able to have different sorts.
Some of those are unavoidable parts of any community, IRL or online. Like, complaining about authority (parents, boss, teachers, etc) is one of the most common tropes on media. Mods are just online community authorities.
But yes, in an overall sentiment I just want a place to post and (mostly) read discussions on topics I'm interested in. So:
But it seems that (IMO) humble checklist is becoming harder to do, mostly because of #4. The internet has been converging from hundreds of medium sized forums to a half dozen huge sites. Sites optimized more towards sharing media (format that is easy to lose and hard to search) or providing floods of short blurbs or quickly shifting conversations rather than something more akin to a book club.
But in many ways that is also the will of the people, so maybe my views are old fashioned, outdated. I could barely get into twitter and Tiktok is definitely that moment I realized I was a metaphorical boomer in the social media space.
On one slightly contrary end to many other denizens, I think it's great that content creators can make full time jobs providing entertainment. But monetizing text has historically been difficult (as we see with major news sites starting to become subscription only over ad supported). And that may be the way the next "Reddit" of the internet becomes so.
Sure, if the perspective is something like 2000 or 2005. But it's been that way ever since, it was just easier to ignore while technology kept rapidly opening up entirely new areas.
But surprisingly, no social media site was ever a charity, as hinted at by being owned by for-profit companies.Curse you, Tildes! Curse youuuuu! 😅 No seriously, everyone is correct of course, there is a middle ground. But realistically any large enough site will naturally eventually fall into a pattern where either a publicly traded company buys it up or it itself gets publicly traded, and the moment that happens it's all over and it's profits-only-nothing-else.You're currently on one. ;) Well, technically it's a non-profit, but that's only because charities in Canada have pretty strict requirements for the organization's purpose. From the docs:
Dammit! 😂
Fair point, should not have used hyperbole in the original post.
No organization is without running costs, that is true. But why have we chosen this black-and-white dichotomy? Either you need to have 10 000 staff to host a messaging platform and earn a billion, or you shouldn't exist?
We chose that dichotomy when we chose capitalism as the way of life. The big fish gobbles up the small fries, one with 10k staff will run the smaller one out of existence sooner or later, that's the way of capitalism. Technology is just one sector, it can't be immune from the effects of culture norms and configurations in greater economy and society.
A bigger problem is probably that for some reason you need 10000 staff of engineers nowadays, or at least that's how bloat-hiring always works, before the cycle shifts back to slimming-firings.
And in the end both are just based off of perceived market valuation, depending on whether right now you need to present growth or cost saving to potential investors. Neither is truly based on the worker's needs who need more colleagues or slimmer structures.
I don’t think it’s possible to get much good talent when you go on these rapid hiring binges. The talent market is flooded with truly mediocre devs who know how to string some copy pasted bits off stack overflow together and call various microservices but can’t design anything under the hood. You often see senior devs on these teams doing all of the thinking and even mid level guys needing way too much handholding.
I think it was easier to hire software engineers a decade or so ago before every high school grad was getting “learn to code” STEM propaganda and went into these fields without any genuine passion or interest. They were rarer, but when you got one they knew what they were doing. Now we have a generation of comp sci majors who don’t know how file systems work.
I believe this is most true of niches of software engineering where the barrier to entry is lowest.
Point in case, I’ve been part of the process of trying to hire a capable, experienced, mostly self-sufficient Android dev, and though there were no shortage of applicants they almost all displayed major weaknesses… stuff like not being able to write a substantial app from scratch, not being able to write a moderately complex UI widget from scratch, etc, and most didn’t seem all that interested in their work.
This is almost the exact opposite of my experience hiring iOS devs, where there’s tons of intermediate-to-senior candidates who not only know what they’re doing but are passionate about it. We were spoiled for choice and could’ve made multiple hires if we wanted.
Intuitively, it makes sense. More accessible niches are going to attract more people, including more who are there because that’s where they were told they should be even if they don’t really care for it.
The words not written but everyone understands as explicit are "for-profit, therefore appalling behaviour".
Sadly true, although as but one example it would have been entirely possible for Reddit to effect the change they want, but without being complete idiots.
I would argue that for Reddit the moment they decided to go for being publicly traded they already lost the game. But of course, in the end there wasn't much reason to do that in the first place, but if the controlling stake is concentrated enough in few enough people then when those people want to "cash out", an IPO is of course their choice.
Always has been.
Mirror for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/rBdSV
Thanks.
I really don't see this working out for them. Meta's got a terrible reputation. The average user might not know or care, but early adopters and content creators that bring people to the platform are much more likely to.
And even if they did somehow manage it by burning oceans of cash and brute forcing their existing user base, I can't see the end result being all that valuable. Even before Musk, Twitter was showing signs of being past it's peak and slowly dwindling. Twitter 2 would be even smaller than the original. Why fight over a sinking ship?
The only reason Meta bothers with making a Twitter clone is that Twitter is slowly collapsing. The reason Twitter is slowly collapsing is that an out-of-touch billionaire took it over. Now we’re supposed to trust another out-of-touch billionaire with an alternative, lol. And honestly, Facebook has somehow a worse track record than Musk, i.e., they have a track record.
I don’t even know it’s the billionaire thing I have a problem with. It’s the out-of-touch part. You could imagine a person with lots of money running something like Twitter as a quasi-charity that should be doable with a billion dollars, even long term. Wikipedia is close in reach and complexity and it works as a non-profit. They could run a Twitter clone as a business but with the bare minimum amount of advertising/sponsorship to not make it lose money, something that does not need invasive user tracking.
But somehow no billionaire tech bro is able to commit to this. They do make their new “disruptive” alternative but from the start, the focus is hyper-growth and investments that only make sense with a $50 billion exit in mind. Nobody seems to care about the quality of the product beyond growth. And we never escape this cycle.
If we're choosing between the lesser of two evils to build a social media platform I think I am still choosing barf Mark Zuckerberg though. At least he understands. Musk is just a billionaire with some strange mission in life to amplify voices of people that no one wants to hear.
The approach for drawing users to this new app feels so disingenuous and adds to the weird nefarious nature of Zuckerberg.
It literally relies on influencer culture which I think is part of the reason the internet is in the state it is today. This weird concept of seeing an individual with thousands of followers, karma, likes, etc. is enough of a convincing factor for others to take value in their words even if it's complete drivel. The content those people create isn't revolutionary, it's just enough to drive clicks and gather users on their platform to eventually be the ad revenue generating product they are meant to be.
This new social media will only draw the people who are oblivious to that or desire areas for conflict; just another Facebook and will probably attract the same folks due to its association with Meta. Zuck's idea of just throwing money at celebrities to use his product feels so dated and comes across as the Bloomberg method to social media. I'm doubting its potential for success due to the bad association of Zuckerberg’s name being attached to it, but there's always the chance it will be overvalued by investors.
Yeah, going to nope on this on principle...I'd give the Jimmy Wales platform a shot - give money even...
I can't help it, whenever he gets the puppy-dog eyes goin' 😂
Seriously though, I have hopes for something wiki-like (even if that's not the direction he's going for a forum) as there are insights to be gleaned both with searching modern forums (searching "site:whatever.com yourQueryHere") as well as platforms like slack ("Searchable Log...") with the potential benefits to forums that are designed with thought put into how they can also act as information archives/repos.
I think I tried that one. There was some hype for it last year. But it was weird to use and had a strange priorities. A good Reddit alternative would be simple. Almost all the money/investment would go into good moderation. I think crowd-sourcing basic rule-enforcement is a dead-end.
There's a version one that came out in 2019? I don't know when this version 2 came out but that's the one mentioned here:
https://tildes.net/~tech/16lv/jimmy_wales_co_founder_of_wikipedia_is_building_a_community_led_and_funded_reddit_alternative
Thanks for the link! Top comment on tildes makes me not very optimistic, though. "It looks like v2 is more of the same."
I want to like wt.social, but I just can't get on board, it's trying more to be like Facebook more than anything I feel like, and I just really can't get into it. The 2.0 site design is so weirdly obnoxious and dated that I can't even stand to look at that that much. I really just wish they'd replicate Google Reader/Reddit/Tildes, just a stream of posts/headlines that I can mindlessly scroll through.
I'm happy to have more competition in the market but Meta has such a terrible reputation at this point that I don't think it's going to work out for them.
Mark Zuckerberg is possibly the only person in the world I dislike more than Elon Musk, so thanks but hard pass.
Oh awesome, the worst of everything social-media all in one place, where do I sign up?
I won't touch anything from Zuckerberg and I can't stand Twitter's short-form content. It's weird, I generally like reddit/tildes' format of having short headlines (with addtl content/discussion board when you click on the headline), but I really have never liked Twitter's short-form posts, especially when you see someone having to spill their topic across multiple posts. I dropped my facebook account years ago and I haven't looked back.
In other news, gonorrhea is building an alternative to chlamydia.
Thanks, I hate it
Here comes the new boss
Same as the old boss