jpoulos
Virginia HeffernanHow I'm beginning to feel about Twitter and Meta:
“You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.” — Doris Lessing
Twitter (pop 206m daily active) and Facebook (pop 1.91b) are, of course, much bigger empires. But they have uneducated, cruel, and impulsive emperors; no succession plan; no army; no compelling ideas; and virtually no land.
Nick Ali@virginiaheffernan that sounds like a bad thing to us, but there are lots of communities who think that is prefect, like any of the *Chan forums. Those are the environments they thrive in.
Melissa Chimera@virginiaheffernan oh ye of Magic and Loss know the territory of which you speak, me thinks
Thom Pintello@virginiaheffernan
I’ve never heard it put that way before, but yeah.
I’ve never heard it put that way before, but yeah.
Ashton@virginiaheffernan to be fair, impulsive and cruel describes the rulers of most real world empires as well. Most of what we “know” about empires is the product of propaganda.
Michael FenichelVery much sharing some of your wonder, &/or shock in terms of Twitter. Watching migrations.
Meta has stopped laying global drift nets and the Zuck chewed up and disrupted many lives, as so many seem to do. But stay away from Mark's strawberries & Elon's sandbox. Everyone will be wearing their helmets & hats any day now.
So I think I know your feeling, a bit like Lessing's in the case of Twitter & Meta. Empires, institutions... Or more to the metaphor, the Queen is Dead.
Arindam Basu… And walled gardens, 🙂
pam_1965@virginiaheffernan
And how much of their current population are verified real people?
And how much of their current population are verified real people?
Charlotte Clymer@virginiaheffernan Hey Virginia! Great to see you here!
Tina@charlotteclymer @virginiaheffernan Glad you are here also, Charlotte.
Mary Carney@virginiaheffernan it’s kinda nice to start fresh in a smaller community.
dise@virginiaheffernan that's how I feel about russian federation
KateSaltLake@virginiaheffernan a very apt analogy
Andrew Leahey@virginiaheffernan I find myself often skeptical of “things” (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) ending that seem so fed by inertia. What I’m realizing is that inertia is just energy in movement, and it may very well be energy spent moving the entity towards destruction.
Joseph Tesfaye@virginiaheffernan The disappearance of Twitter and Meta is not that inconceivable though
@josephtesfaye @virginiaheffernan seems like we just have short memories. Digg died *fast*, and slashdot and Tumblr survived barely after severe haircuts. Quick failure is actually pretty common for places that live and die by network effects.
josh buermann@ashton_k @josephtesfaye @virginiaheffernan
Almost like the monopolies that develop around processes dominated by network effects are inherently unstable.
Wendy MsGator 🐊@virginiaheffernan I'm in the process of weaning myself off Facebook. The birdsite is already dead to me. Told my daughter yesterday I was leaving FB and she said, and I quote:
"... thank God. Social media's just toxic."
She doesn't know about Mastodon.
Fisionchips@WendyMsGator @virginiaheffernan Such a shame your daughter hasn’t experienced properly moderated social media. Before FB and Twitter etc, there were plenty of special interest #forums. Most of them were volunteer run, well moderated, benign & therefore pleasant to inhabit - I was on one of the largest, #Castlecops, a computer security forum. #Twitter, #FB being centralised, for-profit and largely unmoderated by comparison are more like an online Lord of The Flies.
@Fisionchips @virginiaheffernan
I'm also on Whirlpool forums, an Australian techie/geek forum. One of the best moderated forums I've ever been on. I doubt I'll ever leave that one. I don't even regard it as social media.
HiFi@HiFi @WendyMsGator @virginiaheffernan 4chan didn’t have registration so there was no effective moderation (if any). Just as with Mastodon, there are/were bad sites, but the user kind of knew before signing up what they were signing up to.
@Fisionchips @HiFi @virginiaheffernan
I've already blocked one Mastodon site (yes, the entire site) that was boosted by someone I follow. t wasn't obscene, I just didn't care for it. Gorn. I like being able to do that.
sarantium@virginiaheffernan I'm proud of never having signed up to Facebook. Never liked it from launch. I do have a twitter account though and am just trying to decide if I can deactivate it.
iluXan 🤣@virginiaheffernan the one thing that I find just super useful on Facebook (and not at all toxic) is the groups. Special interest info about various kids things or travel that’s hard to find otherwise. How would this be replicated, so that everyone can join easily (so easier than WhatsApp chats, say)? If we somehow imagine that everyone has a mastodon acct in the future - is there a way to do this? Or do we need some other service?
MyBelle@iluxan @virginiaheffernan try and see what Geneva app is doing. It's basically FB groups. Also Circle and Mighty Networks and Telegram.
JonChevreau 🇨🇦@iluxan @virginiaheffernan agree: I help moderate a FB group: Younger Next Year 2022 and there is a very useful group in our local community, South Etobicoke
SpinozasHeresy@virginiaheffernan
"Don't it always seem to go, that ya don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" - Joni Mitchell.
I swore off FB after watching perfectly reasonable friends start smearing Trump funk over the entirety of their being. Haven't looked back...it ain't so bad Joni, it ain't so bad...
Robert J. Berger@virginiaheffernan The mention of Doris Lessing reminded me of my favorite "Space Fiction" Series by her: Canopus in Argos: Archives and particularly Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikasta but they were all amazing
Paul ClarkeThe difference is that Twitter's demise is possible in the near term, especially when you consider it's never been consistently profitable.
Meta is a different beast. Despite recent losses, it remains a powerful business, with a significant empire. It won't fall without a fight.
ocdtrekkie@virginiaheffernan Google next, please.
Dewi Ioan@ocdtrekkie @virginiaheffernan highly unlikely, and too many links to other companies to fall easily
@DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan It's collapse will look different, but could happen just as quickly. Google can't be as easily bought out, but most of Google's business is illegal. It's just a matter of enforcing the law.
@ocdtrekkie @virginiaheffernan Google makes its money from advertising, that's not illegal?
@DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan The vast majority of Google's ad profits come from advertising scams and malware (and they are aware of this), and forcing companies to pay for ads on their own trademark to avoid Google placing a competitor's ad above their own search result.
Google would not be a viable company if it's ads constituted telling consumers about products they might be interested in.
@ocdtrekkie @virginiaheffernan ..and your evidence for this is.....?
Google gets it's money from legitimate ads, (I hate ads...) advertising companies boycott ad platforms that allow trademark spoofing, theft, or spam ..
Google gets it's money from legitimate ads, (I hate ads...) advertising companies boycott ad platforms that allow trademark spoofing, theft, or spam ..
@DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan All of the top revenue-generating terms are propped up by scam advertisers, and they allow it because it makes them a ton of money. You can't boycott Google, it's a monopoly. 😂
Oh, also, the way they operate the ad market as a whole is *also* illegal, and it's being investigated in multiple global jurisdictions for antitrust on those grounds as well.
@DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan Here's one vertical they got caught: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google-search-scam-florida-treatment-centers
After it got unveiled, they did start to crack down on this, but they made billions on these scams and they get to keep all of those profits even if they caused massive harm to people at risk.
They had entire full-time sales reps dedicated to this industry, and it was all scams behind it.
@ocdtrekkie @virginiaheffernan you win the prize,my first block on Mastodon....
This is not Twitter....
This is not Twitter....
simon gray@virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen — See also: the Soviet Union; I remember going to bed one night, the Soviet Union had existed since forever and would continue to exist forever, and then the next morning the Soviet Union no longer existed. Nothing lasts forever, no nation state no political alliance no corporation no social structure; we would do well to remember the fragility of seemingly immutable structures.
jerry111 🇪🇺 citizen@simon @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen David Attenborough will go on for ever surely? possibly John Craven as well.
muxauy 🚴🇪🇺@simon it was also a myth, empires always want you to believe they've existed since forever, but in reality the Soviet Union only existed for 69 years @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen
@lanzz @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen — The Wikipedia list of empires is…
…‘instructive’ — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_empires
…‘instructive’ — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_empires
@simon @lanzz @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen this starts new empires as control and names change, so some of them look shorter than they are (especially more recent), but conflates similar changes for historic empires
@lanzz @DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen — true, but basically I see it as an instructive example that empire and colonialism isn’t an exclusively northern-western European affair that emerged spontaneously 500 years ago (or 2,000 years ago); the history of humanity is the history of people all over the world going round subjugating each other and thinking their nations were eternal;
@lanzz @DewiIoan @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen — and perhaps if we collectively looked at scales more global across the whole of world history rather than being locked into our own individual backgrounds and circumstances we might shock ourselves into realising just how barbaric we’ve behaved as a species.
Peter Ellis
Keith@lanzz @simon @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen If Georgy Malenkov had lived another 18 months he would have seen the entire history of the USSR.
John O’Donnell@virginiaheffernan @simon @davidallengreen
It does seem to be that working from the shadows to influence rulers is a much more surefooted way to ensure your institution’s survival.
After all The Catholic Church is still around. Can’t think of anything else that is still going after all that time. Maybe Japan? Did they have all the islands as one state since 400AD or whatever?
It does seem to be that working from the shadows to influence rulers is a much more surefooted way to ensure your institution’s survival.
After all The Catholic Church is still around. Can’t think of anything else that is still going after all that time. Maybe Japan? Did they have all the islands as one state since 400AD or whatever?
@davidallengreen @simon @virginiaheffernan
Then again, maybe the Emperors have existed since time immemorial, or beyond, but they haven’t been in charge all the time, and definitely aren’t now. China has broken up and reformed many times, and deposed their emperor, so both of them are out.
Then again, maybe the Emperors have existed since time immemorial, or beyond, but they haven’t been in charge all the time, and definitely aren’t now. China has broken up and reformed many times, and deposed their emperor, so both of them are out.
@davidallengreen @virginiaheffernan @simon
It’s interesting, because if you asked someone from Japan, they would probably say it has existed for thousands of years.
English people think England has existed since Athelstan’s reign, despite the Vikings, the Normans, The Commonwealth, The Union, the loss of Empire, and everything else.
Guess it’s a matter of perspective.
It’s interesting, because if you asked someone from Japan, they would probably say it has existed for thousands of years.
English people think England has existed since Athelstan’s reign, despite the Vikings, the Normans, The Commonwealth, The Union, the loss of Empire, and everything else.
Guess it’s a matter of perspective.
Andreas K@Jodami @davidallengreen @virginiaheffernan @simon
Yeah, that's probably a question of identity too.
Just yesterday I've seen an image of same Habsburg Emporer of Holy German Empire at the TV (yeah, our TV during the daytime is usually tuned into some documentary channel), and in passing thought, one of our old guys, (me being an Austrian), curious that I cannot put a name on him now.
Rationally modern Austria has little to do with k.u.k. Austria-Hungary.
@Jodami @davidallengreen @virginiaheffernan — I guess that probably depends on what one means by ‘Japan’ and ‘exists’, but a look at the history of Japan on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan suggests that the country has gone through just the same changes of composition, structure, territories, and governance models as any other country / nation over the centuries.
@simon @davidallengreen @virginiaheffernan
After I posted that I remembered that Japan itself had it’s own overseas empire in Korea and part of China.
As you said, nothing is eternal.
After I posted that I remembered that Japan itself had it’s own overseas empire in Korea and part of China.
As you said, nothing is eternal.
@virginiaheffernan @Jodami @davidallengreen — I didn’t know about Korea but I did know about China; I used to know somebody who was born under Japanese imperial Chinese rule, and she did not have good things to say about them.
PJ "Vote Green" Coffey@Jodami @davidallengreen @virginiaheffernan @simon
*William of Orange has entered the chat*
Mystic Churchwarden@simon @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen I will never forget being glued to the television, watching the Berlin Wall fall. And yes, absolutely, having arrived at 21 under the threat of nuclear war at any moment, it felt the Cold War was forever.
Fuzzysteve@simon @virginiaheffernan @davidallengreen My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my works ye mighty, and despair.