To build a richer user profile of you. So they can serve you content that will keep your eyeballs and charge more for ads since they are hyper targeted
To build a richer user profile of you. So they can serve you content that will keep your eyeballs and charge more for ads since they are hyper targeted
I'm not saying this is why they are doing it because y'know, it's Meta, but there are legit reasons for that sort of access. If they want to hook Threads into making automated posts from your...
I'm not saying this is why they are doing it because y'know, it's Meta, but there are legit reasons for that sort of access. If they want to hook Threads into making automated posts from your fitness app, for example. Or letting you make payments or do shopping through it.
One of the downsides to having a well segmented privacy system is that if your app wants to be able to do wide-ranging stuff you often have to ask for wide-ranging access to be able to do let it do that.
Again, not saying this is what Meta are doing in this instance.
Is the app store incapable of allowing users to (optionally) escalate additional privileges after install? Or is the app store page just showing all potential, and not strictly required,...
Is the app store incapable of allowing users to (optionally) escalate additional privileges after install? Or is the app store page just showing all potential, and not strictly required, privileges?
I only found some stale user reported data ~2019 that the app store does not display permissions, and only prompts after install.
The linked data privacy policy is massive and "health" only comes up three times, one of which permits use for improving products and analytics (extremely broad and including "publishing"), only requiring that the information is provided by the user, which presumably installing the app qualifies.
Not to mention everywhere the data might referenced in the policy, simply under a broader category than "health".
It does do this. An iOS app has to ask you for permission before it can use the microphone, camera, etc. otherwise the app is blocked from using that feature. For example, the 5K running app I use...
Is the app store incapable of allowing users to (optionally) escalate additional privileges after install?
It does do this. An iOS app has to ask you for permission before it can use the microphone, camera, etc. otherwise the app is blocked from using that feature. For example, the 5K running app I use had to ask me for permission to update my health and workouts data. There are also system-wide status indicators when your microphone, camera, or location are in use by an app, so you know if an app is using it in the background.
You can even deny apps from tracking your activity across other companies' apps and websites, which Meta threw a fit about and (to the surprise of no one) allegedly circumvented.
Fitness info often includes movement & location, which... Source:...
Fitness info often includes movement & location, which...
Significant research has shown that “anonymized” data can often be re-identified, especially in the context of location data. One set of researchers demonstrated that, in some instances, it was possible to uniquely identify 95% of a dataset of 1.5 million individuals using four location points with timestamps. Companies that make false claims about anonymization can expect to hear from the FTC.
Financial could be Instagram Business, or the Instagram Store. I'm not a huge fan of the vaguely broad descriptions. Yes, you can hide a lot of valid use cases in them. But just tell me what you...
Financial could be Instagram Business, or the Instagram Store.
I'm not a huge fan of the vaguely broad descriptions. Yes, you can hide a lot of valid use cases in them. But just tell me what you collect.
But here's great thing: due to the fact that it'll support activitypub, you don't need to use meta's privacy invasive/apps instances in order to communicate with people on meta. You can use the...
The "Data Linked to You" section on the appstore listing is terrifying:
But here's great thing: due to the fact that it'll support activitypub, you don't need to use meta's privacy invasive/apps instances in order to communicate with people on meta. You can use the privacy respecting mastodon, lemmy, kbin, etc instance of choice, whilst benefiting from the massive increase in number of fediverse users/content.
True, but to elaborate: Threads won't federate at launch, from what I've read. Mastodon.social will eventually federate, I believe. Many other instances have pledged to uphold the fedipact:
True, but to elaborate:
Threads won't federate at launch, from what I've read. Mastodon.social will eventually federate, I believe. Many other instances have pledged to uphold the fedipact:
"i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity"
As a facebook user, my burning question is more "what will threads collect that facebook doesn't already know about me". I suspect the answer will be "not a lot more".
As a facebook user, my burning question is more "what will threads collect that facebook doesn't already know about me". I suspect the answer will be "not a lot more".
Interesting to see Instagram jumping in and picking up the people fleeing Twitter. A little surprised that they’re spinning off a new app but we’ll see how successful it becomes. The biggest...
Interesting to see Instagram jumping in and picking up the people fleeing Twitter. A little surprised that they’re spinning off a new app but we’ll see how successful it becomes. The biggest obstacle to Mastodon was rebuilding the social network that took decades to build in Twitter. But because there is probably a high percentage of users that have both Twitter and IG accounts, it means that if you follow someone in both Twitter and IG, and you log into Threads using the IG handle, you can maintain that social circle. That’s a big benefit for Meta.
Will definitely be interested to see the rate of adoption.
Strategically it's interesting to watch from afar, but as a user I find it completely uninteresting. It's hard to look at what's happening to Twitter and Reddit, consider Facebook's history in...
Strategically it's interesting to watch from afar, but as a user I find it completely uninteresting. It's hard to look at what's happening to Twitter and Reddit, consider Facebook's history in turn, and think a new social media site by Meta is going to go down a different enough path to not turn into it's own very bad time quickly.
Disagree. The Fediverse is confusing for mainstream, normiecore people. Which instance do I choose? Who can see me? Can I only talk to people on my instance? Why isn't anyone using Mastodon? The...
The biggest obstacle to Mastodon was rebuilding the social network that took decades to build in Twitter.
Disagree. The Fediverse is confusing for mainstream, normiecore people. Which instance do I choose? Who can see me? Can I only talk to people on my instance? Why isn't anyone using Mastodon? The bar is set significantly higher for joining than Facebook or Twitter.
There are a lot of FAQs and helpful materials for Mastodon but nobody ever reads the manual and they'll figure it out for themselves. If you have to read about something before doing it, folks will be disinclined to participate. Twitter? Facebook? Just have an email and a phone number and you're off to the races.
If Mastodon made it easy and mindless for people to sign up and understand, it could be more of a competitor to other social media sites. As for now it's a niche hybrid of Tumblr and Twitter.
Exactly this. Was a struggle to sign up for Mastodon years ago, still find it a struggle. Can't bother. Fediverse is hard to understand, people just want to install an app, sign in and start doing...
Exactly this. Was a struggle to sign up for Mastodon years ago, still find it a struggle. Can't bother. Fediverse is hard to understand, people just want to install an app, sign in and start doing their thing.
100%. This is why I haven't bothered with Lemmy at all. It's attempting to recreate Reddit (not a bad thing) using the Fediverse (doomed to be limited to tech savvy people). Tildes isn't...
100%. This is why I haven't bothered with Lemmy at all. It's attempting to recreate Reddit (not a bad thing) using the Fediverse (doomed to be limited to tech savvy people).
Tildes isn't attempting to recreate Reddit, but it's also much much easier to understand and use and get started with, ignoring the invite aspect.
If you are want to make a replacement for twitter or reddit (or compete with them), yes, you do. And yes, it means more mindless posts, but it also means more niche subjects get talked about which...
If you are want to make a replacement for twitter or reddit (or compete with them), yes, you do.
And yes, it means more mindless posts, but it also means more niche subjects get talked about which means easier to find info on anything niche you are interested in. So far I like this place but I will say I miss having subreddits dedicate to the games I am interested in (Some smaller than others). And even specific games (not gaming in general) isn't as niche as some stuff reddit is good for.
And you know why I picked this place over kbin or lemmy? Less confusing (I never used twitter so no real need to replace that but honestly even twitter was annoying to me the little I tried it). I just want a place where I can read about something and read people's thoughts on it.
Do I want everyone? No. Do I want to see the people I have been tweeting with for 5 years prior? Yeah I do, they're my internet friends, I like them and part of the reason I go on twitter is to...
Do I want everyone? No.
Do I want to see the people I have been tweeting with for 5 years prior? Yeah I do, they're my internet friends, I like them and part of the reason I go on twitter is to engagement with them.
Without those connections and folks I know I would have to start from scratch and find new strangers to connect to, while any of my real life friends and connections aren't on it because it's not user friendly.
That just doesn't appeal.
And yes, I talk to strangers here on Tildes. But it's a forum set up to facilitate those conversations. Not quite the same as listening to one person talk about their personal stuff.
It goes hand in hand. It's confusing and difficult so users give up. Because users aren't signing up in huge numbers, those that try now can't connect with their old twitter friends because those...
It goes hand in hand. It's confusing and difficult so users give up. Because users aren't signing up in huge numbers, those that try now can't connect with their old twitter friends because those folks aren't using mastodon. It's lacking numbers because it's so hard to use and that lack of engagement further alienates those that want to try.
You know, your point about not reading the manual made me think about how dismayal people's literacy usually are. Perhaps that's why they can't use technology with a UI beyond simple symbols -...
You know, your point about not reading the manual made me think about how dismayal people's literacy usually are. Perhaps that's why they can't use technology with a UI beyond simple symbols - reading is simply hard for a lot of people. They want to look at images and watch videos, not read content.
That's the biggest issue with a reddit clone as well. For better or for worse a lot of people were on reddit and we can hopefully get more people on board here. But people are the content with...
The biggest obstacle to Mastodon was rebuilding the social network that took decades to build in Twitter.
That's the biggest issue with a reddit clone as well. For better or for worse a lot of people were on reddit and we can hopefully get more people on board here. But people are the content with sites like twitter and reddit so it'll be interesting to see in a year where we're at in the whole social media fucky wucky that seems to be happening lately.
I mean other than most Mastodon instances already pre-emptively blocking the threads-domains from federation, this could be a win overall for both sides as it seems threads is built on...
The biggest obstacle to Mastodon was rebuilding the social network that took decades to build in Twitter. But because there is probably a high percentage of users that have both Twitter and IG accounts, it means that if you follow someone in both Twitter and IG, and you log into Threads using the IG handle, you can maintain that social circle. That’s a big benefit for Meta.
I mean other than most Mastodon instances already pre-emptively blocking the threads-domains from federation, this could be a win overall for both sides as it seems threads is built on ActivityPub. I could interact with people Meta can easily pull over from a threshing Twitter (if it comes that far, but Meta is one of the few companies big enough to effect such a death) from my mas.to account. Or wherever.
I get why server admins are defederating en masse as they don't know what the implications or the load will be like, but I hope we end up with a federated system with Meta's implementation. It'd be really good for the concept of federation to score such a win.
I get that the high load could be an issue, but i honestly don't see any other disadvantages to it, outside of just advantages. A company as large as meta, bringing that many users and the wider...
I get why server admins are defederating en masse as they don't know what the implications or the load will be like
I get that the high load could be an issue, but i honestly don't see any other disadvantages to it, outside of just advantages. A company as large as meta, bringing that many users and the wider range of content to the fediverse, would be a great thing for the fediverse.
Besides, why not just let the user de-federate client side from meta, and let them decide, rather than having the instance owner make that decision for them? This is entirely possible in mastodon. By blocking it server side, it's directly going against the "no censorship/freedom" goals of the fediverse.
I can find no such mention of anything like that on joinmastodon.org, under Morals on joinfediverse.wiki, Mastodon's GitHub, its CoC or really anywhere. Why do you think these are goals of the...
By blocking it server side, it's directly going against the "no censorship/freedom" goals of the fediverse.
I can find no such mention of anything like that on joinmastodon.org, under Morals on joinfediverse.wiki, Mastodon's GitHub, its CoC or really anywhere. Why do you think these are goals of the fediverse? The fediverse is more about escaping known-evil megacorporations, escaping the prevalent and unrestricted harassment and abuse hosted by major social media, and providing platforms for the disenfranchised than it is about free speech.
"no censorship/freedom" is decidedly not a goal of the Fediverse. Anyone can run their own instance and federate with whatever other instances they want, but those instances can reject federation...
"no censorship/freedom" is decidedly not a goal of the Fediverse.
Anyone can run their own instance and federate with whatever other instances they want, but those instances can reject federation with them if they choose to. Most Mastodon instances have a long list of other instances they completely block because they're full of spammers and abhorrent content.
The option to defederate is a key feature of Fediverse software.
Because defederation ensures no data will be exchanged with Meta while a user-side block does not. Also, yeah, "no censorship/freedom" is not a goal of the Fediverse and such a line would get you...
Because defederation ensures no data will be exchanged with Meta while a user-side block does not.
Also, yeah, "no censorship/freedom" is not a goal of the Fediverse and such a line would get you preemptively suspended from a boatload of instances.
Absolutely. I tried mastodon and it never really worked for me because most of the people I followed prior weren't on it, or at least not on it prior. Threads has the benefit of giving me easy...
Absolutely. I tried mastodon and it never really worked for me because most of the people I followed prior weren't on it, or at least not on it prior. Threads has the benefit of giving me easy access to a lot of people I already follow so it's way easier to find people on it.
I'm honestly curious to see how this plays out. I expect it to be very basic at first, with more features coming as it grows, but we'll see. Also it remains to be seen if the general public will...
I'm honestly curious to see how this plays out. I expect it to be very basic at first, with more features coming as it grows, but we'll see.
Also it remains to be seen if the general public will bother to give it a try. Assuming it integrates with existing Instagram accounts, it should be a low barrier to entry.
I won't be making an account though. I don't use any Meta services and I plan on continuing not to.
I’m just glad I don’t use Twitter or Facebook, and haven’t really touched either in over a decade now. I think threads has a pretty good chance of replacing Twitter, with how much of a gong show...
I’m just glad I don’t use Twitter or Facebook, and haven’t really touched either in over a decade now.
I think threads has a pretty good chance of replacing Twitter, with how much of a gong show it sounds like it is from commentary.
IMO, unless Twitter shuts down, goes bankrupt, or does something so unthinkable that would really piss off regular users, I don't see anything replacing it. Yes, power users, internet conscious...
IMO, unless Twitter shuts down, goes bankrupt, or does something so unthinkable that would really piss off regular users, I don't see anything replacing it.
Yes, power users, internet conscious people and techies in general will jump ship if Threads looks like a legit competitor, but most people will stay on Twitter, unless all the celebrities and companies and influencers also jump ship.
Most of my Twitter user friends are on it for the memes, for keeping up with news and seeing what their favorite celebs post. They are aware of Elon's antics and the shitshow that's going on, but it doesn't really affect their daily usage.
As long as their usage experience isn't noticeably harmed, they'll keep scrolling. If I were them, I'd also keep on scrolling.
But to be fair I haven't asked if they ran into any rate limits these days, nor did they tell me by themselves. I should ask.
I have a B2B company which benefits from presence on exactly two social media platforms: LinkedIn and Twitter. I can tell you right now that we are no longer updating Twitter, because both...
Yes, power users, internet conscious people and techies in general will jump ship if Threads looks like a legit competitor, but most people will stay on Twitter, unless all the celebrities and companies and influencers also jump ship.
I have a B2B company which benefits from presence on exactly two social media platforms: LinkedIn and Twitter. I can tell you right now that we are no longer updating Twitter, because both confidence and interest in the platform are decreasing at a break-neck pace.
Why spend money on updating your presence on a platform which is in decline? The potential clients are already on another platform.
I know this is a fairly specific use case, but I believe it's representative of how B2C companies will also start to think (the smaller ones first, then the larger ones). Say I sell Android phones for example; I will want a presence on IG/FB/TT/Twitter.
Why bother with that fourth one if most of the users are anyway on the other three? The platform's decline means, for example, that any progress we make on the account's followers is met with existing followers leaving the platform. So instead of investing money into a marketing avenue that grows, we're wasting money into one that shrinks.
I think you’re mostly right. But I also think your describing a scenario like what happened to Hotmail when Gmail started to grow, or when MySpace was basically replaced with Facebook. It’s just...
I think you’re mostly right. But I also think your describing a scenario like what happened to Hotmail when Gmail started to grow, or when MySpace was basically replaced with Facebook.
It’s just one of those things, where people keep using what they’re comfortable with. And over time their more tech savvy friends who moved on will start linking memes and interesting stuff from a new source. And then the less tech savvy will start to creat new accounts on the new service. And slowly we will see the change where people just abandon the old site, since the new one does the same thing but that’s where everybody is now.
I think it’s possible, but not a guarantee. The new service will have to do something that catches their audience, like when Facebook created the poke, and made it quick and easy for even your grandma to make an account and keep in touch with family.
Twitter doesn’t have that. As an outside person who’s only gone on Twitter when someone else links me to it, I find their site really confusing to navigate, and frustrating to use.
I agree most users don't care about the internet politics, but I am still wondering how long Twitter can go until it simply breaks. They are running on a skeleton crew, and have for a while. It's...
I agree most users don't care about the internet politics, but I am still wondering how long Twitter can go until it simply breaks.
They are running on a skeleton crew, and have for a while. It's currently mostly working, but showing little glitches here and there. Occasionally replies don't show up in my notifications until hours later. Lately every video I tried to play gave me a playback error. This is at the same time I hear people talk about users downloading full movies to twitter for the hell of it.
I honestly think it will be less 'I am leaving twitter because Elon is Evil' and more "Twitter keeps taking ages to load and this puppy meme video won't play. I hear Stephen King is on Threads, guess I will check that out instead".
Once Elon announced that many layoffs I think we all expected it to stop working one day, and so far it hasn't, but I also don't have confidence he can keep it running smoothly without issues for years to come. It's gonna break bit by bit most likely.
WhatsApp is, for a large portion of the world, even more important than SMS is to people from the US. They've made themselves indispensable, and opting out of it is voluntarily opting out of a...
WhatsApp is, for a large portion of the world, even more important than SMS is to people from the US. They've made themselves indispensable, and opting out of it is voluntarily opting out of a large part of modern society and infrastructure in those places. Consider how you'd view someone who told you they refused to have a cell phone. Not having WhatsApp would be worse than that in a lot of countries. I'm glad it hasn't caught on to that degree in the US, but pretending it hasn't elsewhere is fairly ridiculous. It's considered the world's first everything app for a reason.
Except I get it, because I’ve been using WhatsApp since before it was bought by Meta and when you had to pay to use it (£0.99 per year if I recall). I have other privacy focused messaging apps I...
Except I get it, because I’ve been using WhatsApp since before it was bought by Meta and when you had to pay to use it (£0.99 per year if I recall). I have other privacy focused messaging apps I use now such as Threema and Signal, but 99% of people where I live, including companies, schools and government use it to communicate and that leaves it impossible for me to avoid.
And I’m not saying it’s a fault of character for you to use it, or that there’s anything wrong with you. But you literally use meta products now, that’s the simple fact. I just found the sentiment...
And I’m not saying it’s a fault of character for you to use it, or that there’s anything wrong with you.
But you literally use meta products now, that’s the simple fact. I just found the sentiment that someone would refuse to use their products funny, when they do in fact use them. Nothing to do with if it’s necessary, it’s just a funny thought.
Jeez, you need to chill out dude. It’s just an observation, and you’re putting your own thoughts and feelings into how you think I feel about you. It’s a funny thing, it’s ironic. End of story....
Jeez, you need to chill out dude. It’s just an observation, and you’re putting your own thoughts and feelings into how you think I feel about you.
It’s a funny thing, it’s ironic. End of story.
Congrats on trying to blow a small observation out of proportion.
I got the joke, I was just pointing out that, depending on where you live, WhatsApp can literally be the case where that contradiction makes perfect sense, because it's practically a utility.
I got the joke, I was just pointing out that, depending on where you live, WhatsApp can literally be the case where that contradiction makes perfect sense, because it's practically a utility.
Once again, you’re assuming I’m attacking your character or don’t understand why you use WhatsApp. I’m not. You do you, no hate. It’s just an ironic thing to say, full stop. No other commentary on...
Once again, you’re assuming I’m attacking your character or don’t understand why you use WhatsApp.
I’m not. You do you, no hate.
It’s just an ironic thing to say, full stop. No other commentary on your life from me. I’m sure you’re lovely.
Similarly to your experience, I don't use any Meta products myself. No because of some extreme boycott of the company (I'm not a fan of them, but life is mostly a "choose your poison" game when it...
Similarly to your experience, I don't use any Meta products myself. No because of some extreme boycott of the company (I'm not a fan of them, but life is mostly a "choose your poison" game when it comes to big companies and services), but because their products mostly don't interest me. I use WhatsApp because I live in the UK and here it has become the defacto communications app. Few people text or use other messaging platforms, so it's a safe bet you'll be expected to have WhatsApp when you exchange numbers with them. I would prefer to use something like Signal, or even Telegram, but without a critical mass of contacts also using these, it's pointless.
Not like people used to say they have to have Facebook to stay in touch with friends. No one ever had to have Facebook for that.
I don't see how your inability to communicate with many of your friends differs to other people's similar experiences with Facebook? I have one friend who doesn't use WhatsApp and doesn't keep credit topped up on his pay as you go SIM card, so texting with him is not an option. Before we stopped speaking, the only way I was able to chat with him outside of calling was via Facebook Messenger (and losing contact with him several years ago was the last straw that resulted in me deleting my account there).
I think they’re probably going to push it pretty hard on peoples instagrams, especially if they have something like “look at all these people you follow here that are already on there”. That could...
I think they’re probably going to push it pretty hard on peoples instagrams, especially if they have something like “look at all these people you follow here that are already on there”. That could cause people to try it out, since they know there will be content on there.
I think the more old school idea that "what you put on the internet is out there forever" privacy mindset was more afraid of what other users could do to you, rather than what the websites and...
I think the more old school idea that "what you put on the internet is out there forever" privacy mindset was more afraid of what other users could do to you, rather than what the websites and corporations were going to do. Perhaps you were equally suspicious of tech companies back in the day while they were still small and growing but you might not have realized others weren't on the same page as you and only had malicious users in mind.
People seemed more afraid back then of the idea that whatever you put out there can't be deleted and might embarrass or incriminate you later.
People were afraid to post their deepest darkest secrets while leaking their name and then become the gossip subject of every new person they meet who searches their name online. Hindsight is 20/20 but I don't think most people expected companies aggressively and opaquely tracking and selling us out.
That's why I think there could be a perceived shift from "be careful what you post online, nothing is private" to "how dare Meta, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. track me and disrespect my privacy so much!!!" - people were thinking they had to protect themselves from a different threat than the one that actually emerged.
The surveillance capabilities changed, that's what happened. Back in the day when you posted a comment on some website, that's all the info you were giving them. There was no expectations of...
Riddle me this
The surveillance capabilities changed, that's what happened.
Back in the day when you posted a comment on some website, that's all the info you were giving them. There was no expectations of privacy because the info wasn't private, it was a public comment. At most you might give them your email address to register, though even that was often optional.
Nowadays that social media app is tracking everything - from your gender, your age, your ethnicity, your political affiliation, to your GPS location, browsing through your entire contact list of everyone you know, the more egregious ones even wanting access to camera and microphone. And that's on top of 3rd party cookies following you across websites to track your entire browsing history, or in-app browsers following your every move.
If all facebook was saving was your public comments (and maybe your email address), I don't think people would be feeling their privacy all that violated.
Were old-school forums generating "shadow profiles", collecting detailed private info on people who haven't even registered yet? No? Well, facebook does. So people will complain about it even though they didn't complain about that forum back in the day.
They collect a lot more than what we willingly and KNOWINGLY put out there. The old web wasn't designed for data extraction and surveillance. What was out there was what you yourself put out...
what we willing put out there?
They collect a lot more than what we willingly and KNOWINGLY put out there. The old web wasn't designed for data extraction and surveillance. What was out there was what you yourself put out there. It doesn't work like that any more. The old internet and the present internet are not the same place. The goal posts keep being moved.
So when did we go from accepting that the internet is not a place of privacy to being outraged that companies actively collect what we willing put out there?
When apps and websites started embedding third-party resources that help the devs but strip mine the devices and lives of their clients and visitors.
When Google went from just a useful search engine to a profiling machine, and invented surveillance capitalism.
When Sheryl Sandberg exported surveillance capitalism from Google to Facebook.
When Facebook decided, long after the fact, to secretly train facial recognition on photos people presumed to share only with their families and friends.
When neighbors started pointing Ring surveillance camera's with facial recognition and backdoor data-sharing deals with the police at your house.
When we learned that Silicon Valley enabled the U.S. government to do what the Stasi did, not just to their citizens, but (especially) to the rest of the world.
When we stopped being able to opt out.
You can't physically walk away from the internet any more like you could a decade or two ago. Even if I choose to only publish offline, it's a mere question of when something I do or say or write or am will be digitized. Probably without my knowledge. Just walking down the street will result in your likeness, location and a timestamp to be recorded and uploaded by some device or another.
I absolutely do not want Meta or Google to have any (ANY!) of my data, but my friends use Android phones or Instagram and allow access to the photos they take and the contact information they entered. They use Gmail addresses. Hospitals share patient data with those companies. Any commercial operation that I have ever interacted with - even before the consumer Internet became a thing - will share at least some of my information with Google or Facebook for targeted advertising.
And now we live in the waking nightmare that our likeness, our voice, our vocabulary can all be reproduced and used to create credible fakes of us. I didn't opt into that back when I shared a photo or a video or an audio recording in 2007 with some friends through some platform.
Much as I loathe Musk and modern-day Twitter, this is quite possibly the only thing I'd be even less willing to use. I managed to dodge creating a Facebook account unlike many of my peers; the...
Much as I loathe Musk and modern-day Twitter, this is quite possibly the only thing I'd be even less willing to use.
I managed to dodge creating a Facebook account unlike many of my peers; the last thing I want to do is join it now, much less encourage them to own even more of the social media space. They're already far, far too large for the public good as it is.
It's a shame how despite having a bad experience with a centralized social network people will repeat their mistakes and go to yet another centralized social network, but this time by a renowned...
It's a shame how despite having a bad experience with a centralized social network people will repeat their mistakes and go to yet another centralized social network, but this time by a renowned data hoarder/seller. If only Mastodon got intuitive enough for non-technical people to use instead...
IMO this will continue to be the achilles heel for practically every federated network. The answer to "what server shall I use", "which server is the authentic resource for X", "will my server...
If only Mastodon got intuitive enough for non-technical people to use instead...
IMO this will continue to be the achilles heel for practically every federated network. The answer to "what server shall I use", "which server is the authentic resource for X", "will my server cope with my toot going viral" (a lot of them won't), "will enough people donate to cover the server costs" and "oh no I picked a server that allows federated networks full of users screaming the N-word" are all questions that non-technical people don't want to answer.
Threads sidesteps some of these questions by being from a big company, with a built-in verification network, and by only federating with agreeable servers.
But its not. It's decentralised due to the fact that it supports activitypub. So you can continue to use other fediverse services to communicate with meta users, without even needing to touch the...
and go to yet another centralized social network
But its not. It's decentralised due to the fact that it supports activitypub. So you can continue to use other fediverse services to communicate with meta users, without even needing to touch the meta app. You can use lemmy, mastodon, kbin etc to do so.
Well at least that's good. Still, it falls victim to centralization. All the posts you make on Threads will be hosted on Facebook's servers, who will at the end of the day decide what to do with...
Well at least that's good. Still, it falls victim to centralization. All the posts you make on Threads will be hosted on Facebook's servers, who will at the end of the day decide what to do with them. Same goes with big Mastodon instances owned by corporations, but in the case of Threads you also get your data stolen for no additional charge!
It's difficult to really fix this aspect, though. By their very nature, you want to be on the largest instance of a social network in most cases. It's "where everyone else is", so the chance...
Still, it falls victim to centralization.
It's difficult to really fix this aspect, though.
By their very nature, you want to be on the largest instance of a social network in most cases. It's "where everyone else is", so the chance encounter rate is far far better there. Just look at how Lemmy for example is effectively ~2,5 instances. Or Mastodon is massively mastodon.social . And those are the instances more and more will want to join as more and more of their friends are already on them, further centralizing the network.
While federation works well enough on a technical level, I feel it is important to recognize that for entirely human social reasons, these networks are ideally as centralized as possible, or rather everyone involuntarily can use such a place far more smoothly.
After all, you could stay friends with everyone you know just by calling regularly. But it's far easier to do that if you see them every few days in person. It's not impossible without, but tougher. So if presented with those two options you'll always subconsciously choose the direct presence if the goal is to stay in contact with friends.
Agreed, it is difficult to see this as a fixable issue. The only solution I see is to try and explain to people why they shouldn't join the biggest instance and just interact with one another...
Agreed, it is difficult to see this as a fixable issue. The only solution I see is to try and explain to people why they shouldn't join the biggest instance and just interact with one another across servers.
That's not really how the fediverse works. It might show up on other instances, but instances are informed that the post was deleted and will purge it unless they've been modified otherwise. And...
That's not really how the fediverse works. It might show up on other instances, but instances are informed that the post was deleted and will purge it unless they've been modified otherwise.
And of all the things that "they [could] decide to do with them," deletion is one of the most tame.
You might be thinking of the blockchain? The fediverse is federated, not decentralized.
Important to note that it will not be available in the EU for the foreseeable future, due to the absurd amount of data they want to collect from their users. Relevant article
Important to note that it will not be available in the EU for the foreseeable future, due to the absurd amount of data they want to collect from their users.
Was just looking at Bluesky and it looks identical to Twitter. I don't have an invite but one of the reviews (iOS App Store) mentioned you can use your own algorithms which is interesting. Perhaps...
Was just looking at Bluesky and it looks identical to Twitter.
I don't have an invite but one of the reviews (iOS App Store) mentioned you can use your own algorithms which is interesting.
Perhaps that will enable that tricky thing where you can follow someone for a particular interest but not be bombarded with their views on stuff you really don't care about.
its similar to twitter. I'm new to it, but it has content blocking, mute lists (subscribe to a list of accounts to ignore), individual mutes, and full account blocking. The home feed can be...
its similar to twitter. I'm new to it, but it has content blocking, mute lists (subscribe to a list of accounts to ignore), individual mutes, and full account blocking.
The home feed can be somewhat tuned wrt the amount of replies, quotes, etc.
All in all, I think its what Twitter should have been like by now.
Well, for Bluesky, they'd have to let people use it to see whether it would be better. I joined the wait list back in February, still no invite. I joined with my backup email address a couple of...
Bluesky
Well, for Bluesky, they'd have to let people use it to see whether it would be better.
I joined the wait list back in February, still no invite. I joined with my backup email address a couple of months later, still no invite.
If you want an invite, PM me. But I'll warn you - it's pretty boring. It moves slowly. There aren't any big celeb accounts, and the people I follow that do "skeet" do so often. Mastodon is far...
If you want an invite, PM me.
But I'll warn you - it's pretty boring. It moves slowly. There aren't any big celeb accounts, and the people I follow that do "skeet" do so often. Mastodon is far more active and interesting for me, personally. But like I said, happy to extend an invite.
Edit: Hey gang, I've gotten a ton of PMs. I'm out of invites and now have a long backlog. Sorry!
I have been really happy with Mastodon this time around. It does move a little slowly, but get a good list of follows going and it's generally great. Positive, quirky, nerdy vibe in my corner of Fedi.
I have been really happy with Mastodon this time around. It does move a little slowly, but get a good list of follows going and it's generally great. Positive, quirky, nerdy vibe in my corner of Fedi.
i wouldn't really use bluesky to be honest, it doesn't use activitypub unlike threads, so even though its "federated", it's not of much use outside of communicating with other bluesky instances....
i wouldn't really use bluesky to be honest, it doesn't use activitypub unlike threads, so even though its "federated", it's not of much use outside of communicating with other bluesky instances.
Threads would already be able to communicate with the dozens or so of activitypub services as mastodon, lemmy, kbin, peertube, pixelfed etc are all built on activitypub, yet bluesky for the sake of "account portability" decided to reinvent the wheel and as a result won't be compatible with those services.
This looks like a service that will be killed off in a few years with intent that users migrate to regular Instagram. I know they're doing this to try and see if it can garner a large following...
This looks like a service that will be killed off in a few years with intent that users migrate to regular Instagram. I know they're doing this to try and see if it can garner a large following and become the next Twitter. Maybe I'm just jaded from all the services google spins up only to kill off a few years later.
It’s kind of sad to see Bluesky lose first mover advantage here because of their waitlist. It’s been pretty obvious that Twitter is on its last legs since the Elon acquisition but I’ve been on the...
It’s kind of sad to see Bluesky lose first mover advantage here because of their waitlist. It’s been pretty obvious that Twitter is on its last legs since the Elon acquisition but I’ve been on the waitlist since then and haven’t gotten even a confirmation email.
If Threads gets a critical mass I’ll probably switch my Twitter usage over to it but I’d kind of prefer to keep my Instagram and Twitter account separate not so much because of Zuckerberg but because I use those platforms for different audiences and purposes.
Twitter feels less personal to me but Instagram I only use to keep up with people I’ve met and know. I guess I could make separate accounts but I liked that separation and it’ll be a shame if Bluesky ends up languishing and Zuck ends up owning everything.
I signed up for the waitlist when the first wave of twitter meltdown started once elon bought and I just got my invite a week~ ago. You might be getting yours soon.
I signed up for the waitlist when the first wave of twitter meltdown started once elon bought and I just got my invite a week~ ago. You might be getting yours soon.
If this wasn't made to EEE the Fediverse and wasn't owned by Meta I'd actually like this, but it is so I hate it Why does a social media app need all of that information? I'm not giving facebook...
If this wasn't made to EEE the Fediverse and wasn't owned by Meta I'd actually like this, but it is so I hate it
Why does a social media app need all of that information? I'm not giving facebook my card info so i can interact with my family members who refuse to drop meta, I'll do it through a mastodon instance.
I'll give it a try, why not! I liked Twitter. I found it fun because I created my own little corner of people I followed. I have an instagram account as well and while I don't use it but maybe...
I'll give it a try, why not!
I liked Twitter. I found it fun because I created my own little corner of people I followed. I have an instagram account as well and while I don't use it but maybe once a month, if I could follow some those same people on threads/twitter like app, I'd probably use it.
I’m actually rooting for Meta. This looks like it’ll be good alternative to Twitter. The Fediverse was dead on arrival for me because of its (albeit small) barriers to entry that not many seem to...
I’m actually rooting for Meta. This looks like it’ll be good alternative to Twitter. The Fediverse was dead on arrival for me because of its (albeit small) barriers to entry that not many seem to acknowledge. This could be good.
The Fediverse is "dead on arrival" the same way people on Reddit were saying Tildes is "dead on arrival": it's not. Are there high barriers to entry? Sure. Will it ever be as popular as...
The Fediverse is "dead on arrival" the same way people on Reddit were saying Tildes is "dead on arrival": it's not.
Are there high barriers to entry? Sure. Will it ever be as popular as Twitter/Facebook? No, but so what?
I've preemptively defederated threads.net from my Pleroma instance. Why would I want to federate with another ad-supported race-to-the-bottom metadata vacuum social network that (I'm assuming) will be filled with thousands of JimBob Duggars casually posting transphobic and racist nonsense and conspiracy theories, MLM bossbabes, or influencers peddling garbage? We know what these corporations will do, so why are we celebrating this?
Agreed, the last thing I would consider doing is rooting for the big corp data vacuums to succeed. I hope they all go out of business and wither into nothing. Yes, the fediverse/mastodon/etc may...
Agreed, the last thing I would consider doing is rooting for the big corp data vacuums to succeed. I hope they all go out of business and wither into nothing.
Yes, the fediverse/mastodon/etc may never reach critical mass, but that's quite okay. The barriers to entry might be a good thing. Anything that does is likely destined for ruin without a significantly different vision. Anything that is going to take Twitter's place needs to be fundamentally different in terms of moderation, safety, privacy, openness/transparency, 'business' model, etc.
While I won’t personally use this and try to stay away from anything Meta-related, I’m actually rooting for Zuck over Elon this one time, which is something I never could have imagined. I hope...
While I won’t personally use this and try to stay away from anything Meta-related, I’m actually rooting for Zuck over Elon this one time, which is something I never could have imagined.
I hope this vacuums up Twitter refugees and leaves it a husk of its former self. It’s been brutal seeing two beloved web properties go up in flames in such a short timespan.
I'm excited to try it out. Presumably you have access in some way, either as suggestions or already as connections, to your instagram follower/followees, which makes the part where you build the...
I'm excited to try it out. Presumably you have access in some way, either as suggestions or already as connections, to your instagram follower/followees, which makes the part where you build the social graph significantly easier. I think this has the best chance at getting the Twitter niche, since most of the "important" or "famous" people also have instagram accounts already, although if I had to bet on it, it won't succeed in killing Twitter or anything.
An interesting addition to the social networks, though.
Overall, it seems like they're just capitalizing on Twitter's downfall and I think they'll get a decent amount of steam into it but it'll die off after three years or so. Aside that, I've yet to...
Overall, it seems like they're just capitalizing on Twitter's downfall and I think they'll get a decent amount of steam into it but it'll die off after three years or so. Aside that, I've yet to hear of the fediverse integration they've apparently integrated(which is great, the farther I am from Meta, the better)
I don't believe he actually wanted to buy Twitter. I believe he wanted to be told no so he could bitch about it. Twitter called his bluff. I think he's stubborn enough to destroy it rather than...
I don't believe he actually wanted to buy Twitter. I believe he wanted to be told no so he could bitch about it. Twitter called his bluff.
I think he's stubborn enough to destroy it rather than admit he screwed up. Someone else will be to blame.
Yea, I’d buy that. I think he wanted to sell TSLA without spooking the market. A fake run at buying Twitter, and getting told no would have been perfect for that. Sell TSLA to buy up a 20% stake...
Yea, I’d buy that. I think he wanted to sell TSLA without spooking the market. A fake run at buying Twitter, and getting told no would have been perfect for that.
Sell TSLA to buy up a 20% stake in Twitter as part of a failed hostile take-over, then you can sell off the Twitter holdings whenever you want.
Who do you think has enough money to bribe Musk when he spent $44 billion on a website for no good reason? (Not all of that was his own money, but billions of it was.) This is an extreme outlier....
Who do you think has enough money to bribe Musk when he spent $44 billion on a website for no good reason? (Not all of that was his own money, but billions of it was.)
This is an extreme outlier. Motivations are tough to judge.
But I think it's more likely that someone dared him to do it. He likes to live dangerously. Someone who liked to play it safe wouldn't have bet the company so many times. They'd have settled for a base hit and retired and we wouldn't ever hear about them.
As much as I love to think Musk took external money / was dared to shut up Twitter either to spin the 2024 elections or be able to control the narrative on wealthy peoples' shady doings, I...
As much as I love to think Musk took external money / was dared to shut up Twitter either to spin the 2024 elections or be able to control the narrative on wealthy peoples' shady doings, I genuinely think Musk got in over his head and he doesn't realize it.
I'll go with stupidity > malice in this case.
He has been riding high on that sweet dopamine feedback loop twitter provides for years, being told he is the greatest human being alive and can do/achive everything. He craves the attention so much that he grandstanded himself into the stupid and initially completely showy offer to buy Twitter.
That doesn't mean of course that now he is in on the whole thing, he wont use the platform to suppress voices he doesn't like or is suggested to not like.
Tinfoil hat alert detected and I will jump right onto it. He didn't take money, he didn't want his nasty and illegal habits dragged into the open. But in the end he might just be a smug idiot that...
Tinfoil hat alert detected and I will jump right onto it. He didn't take money, he didn't want his nasty and illegal habits dragged into the open.
But in the end he might just be a smug idiot that believes he can't be wrong and sniffed his own farts too much.
He's into MacAskill and cares more about a fictional future 1 million years from now than the present, and would go to lengths of the believes it would be for the best of human survival on a distinct planet in a distinct world, even if it means destroying lives now.
He bought it for bravado, then tried to back out and got legally pushed in to following through. The idea of putting your money where your mouth is really went wrong for Mr Musk.
He bought it for bravado, then tried to back out and got legally pushed in to following through.
The idea of putting your money where your mouth is really went wrong for Mr Musk.
The "Data Linked to You" section on the appstore listing is terrifying:
Especially when you compare it to BlueSky Social:
Why do they need my health and fitness info? Or my financial info for that matter...
To build a richer user profile of you. So they can serve you content that will keep your eyeballs and charge more for ads since they are hyper targeted
I'm not saying this is why they are doing it because y'know, it's Meta, but there are legit reasons for that sort of access. If they want to hook Threads into making automated posts from your fitness app, for example. Or letting you make payments or do shopping through it.
One of the downsides to having a well segmented privacy system is that if your app wants to be able to do wide-ranging stuff you often have to ask for wide-ranging access to be able to do let it do that.
Again, not saying this is what Meta are doing in this instance.
Is the app store incapable of allowing users to (optionally) escalate additional privileges after install? Or is the app store page just showing all potential, and not strictly required, privileges?
I only found some stale user reported data ~2019 that the app store does not display permissions, and only prompts after install.
The linked data privacy policy is massive and "health" only comes up three times, one of which permits use for improving products and analytics (extremely broad and including "publishing"), only requiring that the information is provided by the user, which presumably installing the app qualifies.
Not to mention everywhere the data might referenced in the policy, simply under a broader category than "health".
It does do this. An iOS app has to ask you for permission before it can use the microphone, camera, etc. otherwise the app is blocked from using that feature. For example, the 5K running app I use had to ask me for permission to update my health and workouts data. There are also system-wide status indicators when your microphone, camera, or location are in use by an app, so you know if an app is using it in the background.
You can even deny apps from tracking your activity across other companies' apps and websites, which Meta threw a fit about and (to the surprise of no one) allegedly circumvented.
Fitness info often includes movement & location, which...
Source: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/07/location-health-and-other-sensitive-information-ftc-committed-fully-enforcing-law-against-illegal
Financial could be Instagram Business, or the Instagram Store.
I'm not a huge fan of the vaguely broad descriptions. Yes, you can hide a lot of valid use cases in them. But just tell me what you collect.
Or Mastodon's official app:
But here's great thing: due to the fact that it'll support activitypub, you don't need to use meta's privacy invasive/apps instances in order to communicate with people on meta. You can use the privacy respecting mastodon, lemmy, kbin, etc instance of choice, whilst benefiting from the massive increase in number of fediverse users/content.
This is the best feature meta's brought to date.
It's called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. First support the protocol, then add fancy/proprietary, then drop protocol for "consumer benefit".
True, but to elaborate:
Threads won't federate at launch, from what I've read. Mastodon.social will eventually federate, I believe. Many other instances have pledged to uphold the fedipact:
As a facebook user, my burning question is more "what will threads collect that facebook doesn't already know about me". I suspect the answer will be "not a lot more".
Lieber Gott, wann kommt Bluesky aus der Beta?
Interesting to see Instagram jumping in and picking up the people fleeing Twitter. A little surprised that they’re spinning off a new app but we’ll see how successful it becomes. The biggest obstacle to Mastodon was rebuilding the social network that took decades to build in Twitter. But because there is probably a high percentage of users that have both Twitter and IG accounts, it means that if you follow someone in both Twitter and IG, and you log into Threads using the IG handle, you can maintain that social circle. That’s a big benefit for Meta.
Will definitely be interested to see the rate of adoption.
Strategically it's interesting to watch from afar, but as a user I find it completely uninteresting. It's hard to look at what's happening to Twitter and Reddit, consider Facebook's history in turn, and think a new social media site by Meta is going to go down a different enough path to not turn into it's own very bad time quickly.
Disagree. The Fediverse is confusing for mainstream, normiecore people. Which instance do I choose? Who can see me? Can I only talk to people on my instance? Why isn't anyone using Mastodon? The bar is set significantly higher for joining than Facebook or Twitter.
There are a lot of FAQs and helpful materials for Mastodon but nobody ever reads the manual and they'll figure it out for themselves. If you have to read about something before doing it, folks will be disinclined to participate. Twitter? Facebook? Just have an email and a phone number and you're off to the races.
If Mastodon made it easy and mindless for people to sign up and understand, it could be more of a competitor to other social media sites. As for now it's a niche hybrid of Tumblr and Twitter.
Exactly this. Was a struggle to sign up for Mastodon years ago, still find it a struggle. Can't bother. Fediverse is hard to understand, people just want to install an app, sign in and start doing their thing.
100%. This is why I haven't bothered with Lemmy at all. It's attempting to recreate Reddit (not a bad thing) using the Fediverse (doomed to be limited to tech savvy people).
Tildes isn't attempting to recreate Reddit, but it's also much much easier to understand and use and get started with, ignoring the invite aspect.
A small barrier of entry is useful to keep mindless people away. Do you really want everyone on your social network?
If you are want to make a replacement for twitter or reddit (or compete with them), yes, you do.
And yes, it means more mindless posts, but it also means more niche subjects get talked about which means easier to find info on anything niche you are interested in. So far I like this place but I will say I miss having subreddits dedicate to the games I am interested in (Some smaller than others). And even specific games (not gaming in general) isn't as niche as some stuff reddit is good for.
And you know why I picked this place over kbin or lemmy? Less confusing (I never used twitter so no real need to replace that but honestly even twitter was annoying to me the little I tried it). I just want a place where I can read about something and read people's thoughts on it.
Do I want everyone? No.
Do I want to see the people I have been tweeting with for 5 years prior? Yeah I do, they're my internet friends, I like them and part of the reason I go on twitter is to engagement with them.
Without those connections and folks I know I would have to start from scratch and find new strangers to connect to, while any of my real life friends and connections aren't on it because it's not user friendly.
That just doesn't appeal.
And yes, I talk to strangers here on Tildes. But it's a forum set up to facilitate those conversations. Not quite the same as listening to one person talk about their personal stuff.
It goes hand in hand. It's confusing and difficult so users give up. Because users aren't signing up in huge numbers, those that try now can't connect with their old twitter friends because those folks aren't using mastodon. It's lacking numbers because it's so hard to use and that lack of engagement further alienates those that want to try.
You know, your point about not reading the manual made me think about how dismayal people's literacy usually are. Perhaps that's why they can't use technology with a UI beyond simple symbols - reading is simply hard for a lot of people. They want to look at images and watch videos, not read content.
That's the biggest issue with a reddit clone as well. For better or for worse a lot of people were on reddit and we can hopefully get more people on board here. But people are the content with sites like twitter and reddit so it'll be interesting to see in a year where we're at in the whole social media fucky wucky that seems to be happening lately.
I mean other than most Mastodon instances already pre-emptively blocking the threads-domains from federation, this could be a win overall for both sides as it seems threads is built on ActivityPub. I could interact with people Meta can easily pull over from a threshing Twitter (if it comes that far, but Meta is one of the few companies big enough to effect such a death) from my mas.to account. Or wherever.
I get why server admins are defederating en masse as they don't know what the implications or the load will be like, but I hope we end up with a federated system with Meta's implementation. It'd be really good for the concept of federation to score such a win.
I get that the high load could be an issue, but i honestly don't see any other disadvantages to it, outside of just advantages. A company as large as meta, bringing that many users and the wider range of content to the fediverse, would be a great thing for the fediverse.
Besides, why not just let the user de-federate client side from meta, and let them decide, rather than having the instance owner make that decision for them? This is entirely possible in mastodon. By blocking it server side, it's directly going against the "no censorship/freedom" goals of the fediverse.
I can find no such mention of anything like that on joinmastodon.org, under Morals on joinfediverse.wiki, Mastodon's GitHub, its CoC or really anywhere. Why do you think these are goals of the fediverse? The fediverse is more about escaping known-evil megacorporations, escaping the prevalent and unrestricted harassment and abuse hosted by major social media, and providing platforms for the disenfranchised than it is about free speech.
"no censorship/freedom" is decidedly not a goal of the Fediverse.
Anyone can run their own instance and federate with whatever other instances they want, but those instances can reject federation with them if they choose to. Most Mastodon instances have a long list of other instances they completely block because they're full of spammers and abhorrent content.
The option to defederate is a key feature of Fediverse software.
Because defederation ensures no data will be exchanged with Meta while a user-side block does not.
Also, yeah, "no censorship/freedom" is not a goal of the Fediverse and such a line would get you preemptively suspended from a boatload of instances.
Absolutely. I tried mastodon and it never really worked for me because most of the people I followed prior weren't on it, or at least not on it prior. Threads has the benefit of giving me easy access to a lot of people I already follow so it's way easier to find people on it.
I'm honestly curious to see how this plays out. I expect it to be very basic at first, with more features coming as it grows, but we'll see.
Also it remains to be seen if the general public will bother to give it a try. Assuming it integrates with existing Instagram accounts, it should be a low barrier to entry.
I won't be making an account though. I don't use any Meta services and I plan on continuing not to.
I’m just glad I don’t use Twitter or Facebook, and haven’t really touched either in over a decade now.
I think threads has a pretty good chance of replacing Twitter, with how much of a gong show it sounds like it is from commentary.
IMO, unless Twitter shuts down, goes bankrupt, or does something so unthinkable that would really piss off regular users, I don't see anything replacing it.
Yes, power users, internet conscious people and techies in general will jump ship if Threads looks like a legit competitor, but most people will stay on Twitter, unless all the celebrities and companies and influencers also jump ship.
Most of my Twitter user friends are on it for the memes, for keeping up with news and seeing what their favorite celebs post. They are aware of Elon's antics and the shitshow that's going on, but it doesn't really affect their daily usage.
As long as their usage experience isn't noticeably harmed, they'll keep scrolling. If I were them, I'd also keep on scrolling.
But to be fair I haven't asked if they ran into any rate limits these days, nor did they tell me by themselves. I should ask.
I have a B2B company which benefits from presence on exactly two social media platforms: LinkedIn and Twitter. I can tell you right now that we are no longer updating Twitter, because both confidence and interest in the platform are decreasing at a break-neck pace.
Why spend money on updating your presence on a platform which is in decline? The potential clients are already on another platform.
I know this is a fairly specific use case, but I believe it's representative of how B2C companies will also start to think (the smaller ones first, then the larger ones). Say I sell Android phones for example; I will want a presence on IG/FB/TT/Twitter.
Why bother with that fourth one if most of the users are anyway on the other three? The platform's decline means, for example, that any progress we make on the account's followers is met with existing followers leaving the platform. So instead of investing money into a marketing avenue that grows, we're wasting money into one that shrinks.
I think you’re mostly right. But I also think your describing a scenario like what happened to Hotmail when Gmail started to grow, or when MySpace was basically replaced with Facebook.
It’s just one of those things, where people keep using what they’re comfortable with. And over time their more tech savvy friends who moved on will start linking memes and interesting stuff from a new source. And then the less tech savvy will start to creat new accounts on the new service. And slowly we will see the change where people just abandon the old site, since the new one does the same thing but that’s where everybody is now.
I think it’s possible, but not a guarantee. The new service will have to do something that catches their audience, like when Facebook created the poke, and made it quick and easy for even your grandma to make an account and keep in touch with family.
Twitter doesn’t have that. As an outside person who’s only gone on Twitter when someone else links me to it, I find their site really confusing to navigate, and frustrating to use.
I agree most users don't care about the internet politics, but I am still wondering how long Twitter can go until it simply breaks.
They are running on a skeleton crew, and have for a while. It's currently mostly working, but showing little glitches here and there. Occasionally replies don't show up in my notifications until hours later. Lately every video I tried to play gave me a playback error. This is at the same time I hear people talk about users downloading full movies to twitter for the hell of it.
I honestly think it will be less 'I am leaving twitter because Elon is Evil' and more "Twitter keeps taking ages to load and this puppy meme video won't play. I hear Stephen King is on Threads, guess I will check that out instead".
Once Elon announced that many layoffs I think we all expected it to stop working one day, and so far it hasn't, but I also don't have confidence he can keep it running smoothly without issues for years to come. It's gonna break bit by bit most likely.
If you do ask, please post an update. I'd be curious to hear if they are noticing any issues and if they are looking at other SM apps.
So you WILL use a meta product because you have to, to stay in touch with friends.
WhatsApp is, for a large portion of the world, even more important than SMS is to people from the US. They've made themselves indispensable, and opting out of it is voluntarily opting out of a large part of modern society and infrastructure in those places. Consider how you'd view someone who told you they refused to have a cell phone. Not having WhatsApp would be worse than that in a lot of countries. I'm glad it hasn't caught on to that degree in the US, but pretending it hasn't elsewhere is fairly ridiculous. It's considered the world's first everything app for a reason.
I’m not pretending it’s not useful. I just found it funny someone could say they refuse to use meta products, except for the meta products they use.
Except I get it, because I’ve been using WhatsApp since before it was bought by Meta and when you had to pay to use it (£0.99 per year if I recall). I have other privacy focused messaging apps I use now such as Threema and Signal, but 99% of people where I live, including companies, schools and government use it to communicate and that leaves it impossible for me to avoid.
And I’m not saying it’s a fault of character for you to use it, or that there’s anything wrong with you.
But you literally use meta products now, that’s the simple fact. I just found the sentiment that someone would refuse to use their products funny, when they do in fact use them. Nothing to do with if it’s necessary, it’s just a funny thought.
Jeez, you need to chill out dude. It’s just an observation, and you’re putting your own thoughts and feelings into how you think I feel about you.
It’s a funny thing, it’s ironic. End of story.
Congrats on trying to blow a small observation out of proportion.
I got the joke, I was just pointing out that, depending on where you live, WhatsApp can literally be the case where that contradiction makes perfect sense, because it's practically a utility.
Then we’re agreed.
Once again, you’re assuming I’m attacking your character or don’t understand why you use WhatsApp.
I’m not. You do you, no hate.
It’s just an ironic thing to say, full stop. No other commentary on your life from me. I’m sure you’re lovely.
Similarly to your experience, I don't use any Meta products myself. No because of some extreme boycott of the company (I'm not a fan of them, but life is mostly a "choose your poison" game when it comes to big companies and services), but because their products mostly don't interest me. I use WhatsApp because I live in the UK and here it has become the defacto communications app. Few people text or use other messaging platforms, so it's a safe bet you'll be expected to have WhatsApp when you exchange numbers with them. I would prefer to use something like Signal, or even Telegram, but without a critical mass of contacts also using these, it's pointless.
I don't see how your inability to communicate with many of your friends differs to other people's similar experiences with Facebook? I have one friend who doesn't use WhatsApp and doesn't keep credit topped up on his pay as you go SIM card, so texting with him is not an option. Before we stopped speaking, the only way I was able to chat with him outside of calling was via Facebook Messenger (and losing contact with him several years ago was the last straw that resulted in me deleting my account there).
I think they’re probably going to push it pretty hard on peoples instagrams, especially if they have something like “look at all these people you follow here that are already on there”. That could cause people to try it out, since they know there will be content on there.
If you like tildes, please keep the post quality higher than this.
I think the more old school idea that "what you put on the internet is out there forever" privacy mindset was more afraid of what other users could do to you, rather than what the websites and corporations were going to do. Perhaps you were equally suspicious of tech companies back in the day while they were still small and growing but you might not have realized others weren't on the same page as you and only had malicious users in mind.
People seemed more afraid back then of the idea that whatever you put out there can't be deleted and might embarrass or incriminate you later.
People were afraid to post their deepest darkest secrets while leaking their name and then become the gossip subject of every new person they meet who searches their name online. Hindsight is 20/20 but I don't think most people expected companies aggressively and opaquely tracking and selling us out.
That's why I think there could be a perceived shift from "be careful what you post online, nothing is private" to "how dare Meta, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. track me and disrespect my privacy so much!!!" - people were thinking they had to protect themselves from a different threat than the one that actually emerged.
The surveillance capabilities changed, that's what happened.
Back in the day when you posted a comment on some website, that's all the info you were giving them. There was no expectations of privacy because the info wasn't private, it was a public comment. At most you might give them your email address to register, though even that was often optional.
Nowadays that social media app is tracking everything - from your gender, your age, your ethnicity, your political affiliation, to your GPS location, browsing through your entire contact list of everyone you know, the more egregious ones even wanting access to camera and microphone. And that's on top of 3rd party cookies following you across websites to track your entire browsing history, or in-app browsers following your every move.
If all facebook was saving was your public comments (and maybe your email address), I don't think people would be feeling their privacy all that violated.
Were old-school forums generating "shadow profiles", collecting detailed private info on people who haven't even registered yet? No? Well, facebook does. So people will complain about it even though they didn't complain about that forum back in the day.
They collect a lot more than what we willingly and KNOWINGLY put out there. The old web wasn't designed for data extraction and surveillance. What was out there was what you yourself put out there. It doesn't work like that any more. The old internet and the present internet are not the same place. The goal posts keep being moved.
When apps and websites started embedding third-party resources that help the devs but strip mine the devices and lives of their clients and visitors.
When Google went from just a useful search engine to a profiling machine, and invented surveillance capitalism.
When Sheryl Sandberg exported surveillance capitalism from Google to Facebook.
When Facebook decided, long after the fact, to secretly train facial recognition on photos people presumed to share only with their families and friends.
When neighbors started pointing Ring surveillance camera's with facial recognition and backdoor data-sharing deals with the police at your house.
When we learned that Silicon Valley enabled the U.S. government to do what the Stasi did, not just to their citizens, but (especially) to the rest of the world.
When we stopped being able to opt out.
You can't physically walk away from the internet any more like you could a decade or two ago. Even if I choose to only publish offline, it's a mere question of when something I do or say or write or am will be digitized. Probably without my knowledge. Just walking down the street will result in your likeness, location and a timestamp to be recorded and uploaded by some device or another.
I absolutely do not want Meta or Google to have any (ANY!) of my data, but my friends use Android phones or Instagram and allow access to the photos they take and the contact information they entered. They use Gmail addresses. Hospitals share patient data with those companies. Any commercial operation that I have ever interacted with - even before the consumer Internet became a thing - will share at least some of my information with Google or Facebook for targeted advertising.
And now we live in the waking nightmare that our likeness, our voice, our vocabulary can all be reproduced and used to create credible fakes of us. I didn't opt into that back when I shared a photo or a video or an audio recording in 2007 with some friends through some platform.
Much as I loathe Musk and modern-day Twitter, this is quite possibly the only thing I'd be even less willing to use.
I managed to dodge creating a Facebook account unlike many of my peers; the last thing I want to do is join it now, much less encourage them to own even more of the social media space. They're already far, far too large for the public good as it is.
It's a shame how despite having a bad experience with a centralized social network people will repeat their mistakes and go to yet another centralized social network, but this time by a renowned data hoarder/seller. If only Mastodon got intuitive enough for non-technical people to use instead...
IMO this will continue to be the achilles heel for practically every federated network. The answer to "what server shall I use", "which server is the authentic resource for X", "will my server cope with my toot going viral" (a lot of them won't), "will enough people donate to cover the server costs" and "oh no I picked a server that allows federated networks full of users screaming the N-word" are all questions that non-technical people don't want to answer.
Threads sidesteps some of these questions by being from a big company, with a built-in verification network, and by only federating with agreeable servers.
But its not. It's decentralised due to the fact that it supports activitypub. So you can continue to use other fediverse services to communicate with meta users, without even needing to touch the meta app. You can use lemmy, mastodon, kbin etc to do so.
Well at least that's good. Still, it falls victim to centralization. All the posts you make on Threads will be hosted on Facebook's servers, who will at the end of the day decide what to do with them. Same goes with big Mastodon instances owned by corporations, but in the case of Threads you also get your data stolen for no additional charge!
It's difficult to really fix this aspect, though.
By their very nature, you want to be on the largest instance of a social network in most cases. It's "where everyone else is", so the chance encounter rate is far far better there. Just look at how Lemmy for example is effectively ~2,5 instances. Or Mastodon is massively mastodon.social . And those are the instances more and more will want to join as more and more of their friends are already on them, further centralizing the network.
While federation works well enough on a technical level, I feel it is important to recognize that for entirely human social reasons, these networks are ideally as centralized as possible, or rather everyone involuntarily can use such a place far more smoothly.
After all, you could stay friends with everyone you know just by calling regularly. But it's far easier to do that if you see them every few days in person. It's not impossible without, but tougher. So if presented with those two options you'll always subconsciously choose the direct presence if the goal is to stay in contact with friends.
Agreed, it is difficult to see this as a fixable issue. The only solution I see is to try and explain to people why they shouldn't join the biggest instance and just interact with one another across servers.
Even if meta decides to remove posts, it should still show up on other instances afaik
That's not really how the fediverse works. It might show up on other instances, but instances are informed that the post was deleted and will purge it unless they've been modified otherwise.
And of all the things that "they [could] decide to do with them," deletion is one of the most tame.
You might be thinking of the blockchain? The fediverse is federated, not decentralized.
Important to note that it will not be available in the EU for the foreseeable future, due to the absurd amount of data they want to collect from their users.
Relevant article
Wonder what Twitter clone will be better, Threads or Bluesky
Was just looking at Bluesky and it looks identical to Twitter.
I don't have an invite but one of the reviews (iOS App Store) mentioned you can use your own algorithms which is interesting.
Perhaps that will enable that tricky thing where you can follow someone for a particular interest but not be bombarded with their views on stuff you really don't care about.
its similar to twitter. I'm new to it, but it has content blocking, mute lists (subscribe to a list of accounts to ignore), individual mutes, and full account blocking.
The home feed can be somewhat tuned wrt the amount of replies, quotes, etc.
All in all, I think its what Twitter should have been like by now.
Well, for Bluesky, they'd have to let people use it to see whether it would be better.
I joined the wait list back in February, still no invite. I joined with my backup email address a couple of months later, still no invite.
If you want an invite, PM me.
But I'll warn you - it's pretty boring. It moves slowly. There aren't any big celeb accounts, and the people I follow that do "skeet" do so often. Mastodon is far more active and interesting for me, personally. But like I said, happy to extend an invite.
Edit: Hey gang, I've gotten a ton of PMs. I'm out of invites and now have a long backlog. Sorry!
I have been really happy with Mastodon this time around. It does move a little slowly, but get a good list of follows going and it's generally great. Positive, quirky, nerdy vibe in my corner of Fedi.
i wouldn't really use bluesky to be honest, it doesn't use activitypub unlike threads, so even though its "federated", it's not of much use outside of communicating with other bluesky instances.
Threads would already be able to communicate with the dozens or so of activitypub services as mastodon, lemmy, kbin, peertube, pixelfed etc are all built on activitypub, yet bluesky for the sake of "account portability" decided to reinvent the wheel and as a result won't be compatible with those services.
I think that's the appeal of BlueSky for many: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/innovation/news/twitter-bluesky-decentralized-network-protocol/
This looks like a service that will be killed off in a few years with intent that users migrate to regular Instagram. I know they're doing this to try and see if it can garner a large following and become the next Twitter. Maybe I'm just jaded from all the services google spins up only to kill off a few years later.
It's easy to merge systems when one is designed to be merged in from the get-go.
It’s kind of sad to see Bluesky lose first mover advantage here because of their waitlist. It’s been pretty obvious that Twitter is on its last legs since the Elon acquisition but I’ve been on the waitlist since then and haven’t gotten even a confirmation email.
If Threads gets a critical mass I’ll probably switch my Twitter usage over to it but I’d kind of prefer to keep my Instagram and Twitter account separate not so much because of Zuckerberg but because I use those platforms for different audiences and purposes.
Twitter feels less personal to me but Instagram I only use to keep up with people I’ve met and know. I guess I could make separate accounts but I liked that separation and it’ll be a shame if Bluesky ends up languishing and Zuck ends up owning everything.
I signed up for the waitlist when the first wave of twitter meltdown started once elon bought and I just got my invite a week~ ago. You might be getting yours soon.
If this wasn't made to EEE the Fediverse and wasn't owned by Meta I'd actually like this, but it is so I hate it
Why does a social media app need all of that information? I'm not giving facebook my card info so i can interact with my family members who refuse to drop meta, I'll do it through a mastodon instance.
I'll give it a try, why not!
I liked Twitter. I found it fun because I created my own little corner of people I followed. I have an instagram account as well and while I don't use it but maybe once a month, if I could follow some those same people on threads/twitter like app, I'd probably use it.
I’m actually rooting for Meta. This looks like it’ll be good alternative to Twitter. The Fediverse was dead on arrival for me because of its (albeit small) barriers to entry that not many seem to acknowledge. This could be good.
The Fediverse is "dead on arrival" the same way people on Reddit were saying Tildes is "dead on arrival": it's not.
Are there high barriers to entry? Sure. Will it ever be as popular as Twitter/Facebook? No, but so what?
I've preemptively defederated threads.net from my Pleroma instance. Why would I want to federate with another ad-supported race-to-the-bottom metadata vacuum social network that (I'm assuming) will be filled with thousands of JimBob Duggars casually posting transphobic and racist nonsense and conspiracy theories, MLM bossbabes, or influencers peddling garbage? We know what these corporations will do, so why are we celebrating this?
Agreed, the last thing I would consider doing is rooting for the big corp data vacuums to succeed. I hope they all go out of business and wither into nothing.
Yes, the fediverse/mastodon/etc may never reach critical mass, but that's quite okay. The barriers to entry might be a good thing. Anything that does is likely destined for ruin without a significantly different vision. Anything that is going to take Twitter's place needs to be fundamentally different in terms of moderation, safety, privacy, openness/transparency, 'business' model, etc.
I'm already really enjoying bluesky, you won't catch me on this crap
While I won’t personally use this and try to stay away from anything Meta-related, I’m actually rooting for Zuck over Elon this one time, which is something I never could have imagined.
I hope this vacuums up Twitter refugees and leaves it a husk of its former self. It’s been brutal seeing two beloved web properties go up in flames in such a short timespan.
I'm excited to try it out. Presumably you have access in some way, either as suggestions or already as connections, to your instagram follower/followees, which makes the part where you build the social graph significantly easier. I think this has the best chance at getting the Twitter niche, since most of the "important" or "famous" people also have instagram accounts already, although if I had to bet on it, it won't succeed in killing Twitter or anything.
An interesting addition to the social networks, though.
Overall, it seems like they're just capitalizing on Twitter's downfall and I think they'll get a decent amount of steam into it but it'll die off after three years or so. Aside that, I've yet to hear of the fediverse integration they've apparently integrated(which is great, the farther I am from Meta, the better)
I consider this an ice cold take but I proudly wear my tinfoil hat when I say I'm pretty sure Musk took money to destroy twitter.
I don't believe he actually wanted to buy Twitter. I believe he wanted to be told no so he could bitch about it. Twitter called his bluff.
I think he's stubborn enough to destroy it rather than admit he screwed up. Someone else will be to blame.
Yea, I’d buy that. I think he wanted to sell TSLA without spooking the market. A fake run at buying Twitter, and getting told no would have been perfect for that.
Sell TSLA to buy up a 20% stake in Twitter as part of a failed hostile take-over, then you can sell off the Twitter holdings whenever you want.
But then Twitter said “OK”
Who do you think has enough money to bribe Musk when he spent $44 billion on a website for no good reason? (Not all of that was his own money, but billions of it was.)
This is an extreme outlier. Motivations are tough to judge.
But I think it's more likely that someone dared him to do it. He likes to live dangerously. Someone who liked to play it safe wouldn't have bet the company so many times. They'd have settled for a base hit and retired and we wouldn't ever hear about them.
As much as I love to think Musk took external money / was dared to shut up Twitter either to spin the 2024 elections or be able to control the narrative on wealthy peoples' shady doings, I genuinely think Musk got in over his head and he doesn't realize it.
I'll go with stupidity > malice in this case.
He has been riding high on that sweet dopamine feedback loop twitter provides for years, being told he is the greatest human being alive and can do/achive everything. He craves the attention so much that he grandstanded himself into the stupid and initially completely showy offer to buy Twitter.
That doesn't mean of course that now he is in on the whole thing, he wont use the platform to suppress voices he doesn't like or is suggested to not like.
Tinfoil hat alert detected and I will jump right onto it. He didn't take money, he didn't want his nasty and illegal habits dragged into the open.
But in the end he might just be a smug idiot that believes he can't be wrong and sniffed his own farts too much.
He's into MacAskill and cares more about a fictional future 1 million years from now than the present, and would go to lengths of the believes it would be for the best of human survival on a distinct planet in a distinct world, even if it means destroying lives now.
Edit: Typo
Yes, it's a typo, I meant McAskill and longtermism.
You meant MacAskill.
This guy, for anyone interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_MacAskill
It'd be better if he were into Danny
Is there data of Twitter really tanking?
He bought it because of his big ego and he is tanking it because there is no government handouts for social media companies.
He bought it for bravado, then tried to back out and got legally pushed in to following through.
The idea of putting your money where your mouth is really went wrong for Mr Musk.
well, i’m never gonna use that… but i’m sure it will be really successful, tbh
Just burn it all down already.
I can see old normies using this.