Dr. Jorge CaballeroAt some point it becomes impossible to give people the benefit of the doubt. As it relates to generating content + revenue for a bigoted billionaire who is friendly with fascist regimes around the world, that point in time is fast-approaching.
Like, seriously, I don't fcuking care how important you think Twitter is to your job. All that's telling me is that you're willing to sell out entire swaths of the population for your personal gain.
If you don't like Mastodon, fine- find something else that works for you, but don't think for one second that the people you're selling out don't notice that you're actually on Twitter and cross-posting to other platforms.
Yeah, even if you host your own crossposter, it's pretty fcuking obvious that you're not really here when you don't engage *at all* with anyone that responds to your posts
But, since we're being honest, let's be real and call a spade a spade: the thing that holdouts don't like about Mastodon is the absence of a caucophany of pro-fascist voices. The far-right extremism makes the center-right extremism feel less extreme, but it isn't. Center-right extremism is anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and on and on.
If you're reading this, I'm not talking to you. Thanks for being on the right side of history.
But, I am probably talking to your acquaintainces and friends. You know them better than I do, and I urge you to reach out to them－ tell them how you feel about the fact that they're willing to sell you out for the dimming prospect of maintaining their relevance via a platform that is overrun by anti-semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-everything you are and/or care about.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the end game for El** is to keep the fowl place afloat long enough to get advertisers to come crawling back. The *only* way that he'll succeed is if there's a critical mass of influencers creating content for him *and* there's a critical mass of followers consuming that content. That's it.
That's all El** and advertisers care about. Why? Their goal is to insert ads into that creator-consumer relationship. That's it.
This is the reason he does shit like amplify RU mouthpieces claiming that the U.S. will devolve into a Civil War: when there aren't enough content creators generating engaging content, he literally steps in to juice the numbers. It's so fcuking transparent that it's laughable.
Well, it would be laughable if he weren't cheerleading WWIII in the process, but that's who he is: an opportunistic narcissistic asshole who doesn't give a flying fuck what happens to the world so long as he's on top
His *entire* strategy is predicated on the notion that there are enough content creators with massive audiences out there who are willing to say, "Let's see how this plays out." time-and-time again until the advertisers start writing him checks again.
Twitter Blue? That's literally pennies on the dollar. 92% of the fowl place's $5 billion in revenue for FY 2021 stemmed from advertising. That's $4.6 billion.
*Even if* every monetizable active user paid El** $8/mo, he'd be $3.9 billion in the hole *EVERY YEAR*
The math doesn't work.
sources:
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/
Twitter Revenue and Usage Statistics (2024)
Twitter is a real-time microblogging platform, publicly launched in July 2006. At launch, its defining features were the tight limits placed on each post, known at a tweet. Originally, users could only use 140 characters, although that has been elongated over the years. Formed by former Odeo employees Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the site originally used SMS to send tweets onto the network. It received its first boost of users at SXSW 2007, when the founders showed all the tweets hitting the network in real-time. From there, Twitter grew out its userbase to reach over 300 million monthly active users. It added new features, but for the most part has retained the same look and feel of early Twitter, much
So, as I said earlier in this thread, let's call a spade a spade: influencers who are generating original content for Twitter are the *only* reason that place is still around. They are literally enabling the hate and vitriol that they *claim* they are fighting against. Those claims are performative bullshit. The data makes it abundantly clear that they're doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing but keeping El** from bankruptcy, and selling out human rights in the process. That's it.
To those around to read this rant: Happy New Year! Thanks for ushering in 2023 on the right side of history.
/X
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)@DataDrivenMD happy early new year to you as well. I'm working on a post about people staying on Twitter, is it okay if I quote from and link to this thread?
@jdp23 sure thing
@DataDrivenMD i didn't get permission to quote from the other people I asked so I decided to restructure it without quotes. It's probably just as well, it would have come across as call-out-y, which really wasn't my intent. Thanks anyhow -- I'll tag you when I share the draft.
Astrid@DataDrivenMD I came here to make content but it would sure help if people saw it
Dr. B Learned Hand@DataDrivenMD
Well said “…influencers who are generating original content for Twitter are the *only* reason that place is still around. They are literally enabling the hate and vitriol that they *claim* they are fighting against.”
Well said “…influencers who are generating original content for Twitter are the *only* reason that place is still around. They are literally enabling the hate and vitriol that they *claim* they are fighting against.”
Futurist Jim CarrollMy potential $8 spend on it has gone instead to my $12 spend on having my own Mastodon instance. Plus, I was real verified since Biz and I hung out a bit. Not paying for it!
Oh, and I own a Tesla. I'm pretty pissed!
Zorro Notorious MEB 😡@DataDrivenMD The only reason I am still on Twitter is that I don't want to let some ne'er-do-well claim the "znmeb" handle. I've used that since the early 1990s - it's as much of my online persona as anything else. If that happens, I don't have any legal recourse. I can't trademark it.
I don't engage there any more. I still read the #WNBA accounts a couple of times a week, but that's it. The rest of my social networking is on Mastodon and LinkedIn. That will have to do for now.
@AlgoCompSynth Sure, just do the bare minimum. I'm doing the same thing. Like I say later in the thread, I'm not talking to you but I am talking to the people you follow or know. *Those* are the people that are helping the bigot prove his business thesis
@DataDrivenMD The people I regularly engaged with on Twitter are all either here or LinkedIn or both. It's the people I follow that I have no influence on that I'm concerned about. At this point that's almost all #WNBA players, teams, coaches and reporters.
@AlgoCompSynth You bring up a great point: sports Twitter is deeply-entrenched. I've been mulling over ways to get some influencers to at least *try* Mastodon but I've got nothing.
Part of the challenge in this topic area is that the antagonism (read: trolling) that Twitter excels at is *precisely* the kind of discourse sports media + influencers crave.
@DataDrivenMD Maybe - but I think for a variety of reasons that LinkedIn is a better place for the #WNBA than Mastodon. The commissioner is already there, as are most of the #WNBPA officers and about half of the teams. ESPN is there, many of the journalists are there, most of the advertisers are there, and so on.
@AlgoCompSynth I mean, if that's where they are, then I agree with your strategy: take the path of least resistance. Let me know if I can be helpful somehow
Dave Hogg@DataDrivenMD @AlgoCompSynth I have more than 120 Twitter lists - one for every team in the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB - that I use for covering the Detroit teams in those leagues. There are over 1,500 accounts on those lists - media members and team accounts, mostly.
I don't think 25 of those users have a Mastodon presence. When teams, leagues and broadcasters start using the site, you'll get some traffic. Until then, this is a void for sports fans.
@DataDrivenMD @AlgoCompSynth I will say that, if you actually believe members of the sports media are staying on Twitter instead of Mastodon because of the trolling, you're the wrong person to be making the case. Most sportswriters would love to delete their Twitter accounts and never have to deal with that shit again, and that's 1000x more true for women in the profession.
Sadly, that's now a huge part of the job.
@DataDrivenMD @AlgoCompSynth I was one of the first sportswriters on Twitter, when I had fewer followers there than I have here now, but that was a different world. That migration is going to take years.
@davehogg @DataDrivenMD Yeah ... LinkedIn would have to gear up to attract fans and manage them. And there's the issue of sports betting.
But somehow it needs to be a corporate, advertiser-friendly, fan-friendly site. I don't see that happening on Mastodon.I suppose ESPN could build a social media site, but it seems to me this is an opportunity for LinkedIn.
@davehogg @DataDrivenMD I'm by no means a sports fan in the general sense. I don't even root for my own Portland teams or go to the games. But I am a hard-core WNBA fan. I want to see the league grow and I want to see their social media presence on a site that isn't racist, sexist and homophobic.
@AlgoCompSynth @DataDrivenMD I can certainly understand that. I greatly enjoyed covering the Shock before they left for Tulsa, and it was the only time my daughter cared about sports. She loved that team.
Catherine is not complacent@DataDrivenMD @AlgoCompSynth husband was on Twitter to connect with MLB fans , not sports personalities. The group he interacted with all left early in November , the flood of random rage bots that suddenly appeared then made it intolerable .
@DataDrivenMD I've written a Change.org petition to the principals of the #WNBA and #WNBPA asking them to migrate the league to LinkedIn. But I haven't promoted it. Maybe I should. What do you think?
Job Bautista@DataDrivenMD LOL so I guess these anarchists are fascists to you now because they're not a fan of federation (and therefore dislike Mastodon): https://raddle.me/f/meta/127272/on-federation
Ariadne Conill 🐰
it's kind of interesting to see this perspective from you, given your work on fedified is largely intended to provide value for those who could be described as important twitter people. or maybe i don't understand the point of that project :)
@ariadne I tried to say this from the outset, but was shouted down: fedified is not a means to recreate the fowl place, but a way for mainstream users to find their niches on the fediverse. Some people will only engage with social media if they can be wallflowers, and that's OK. But in order for that to be possible, there need to be content producers, too. That's just the way that dynamic works.
@DataDrivenMD got it. for what it's worth, i agree that it is important to enable people to link social network identities together. i just think that the system should be inclusive of everyone, rather than exclusive to some specific crowd :p
@ariadne I wholeheartedly agree with this. The only reason I couldn't act on this was because the protocol/platform/whatever-you-want-to-call-it doesn't allow for it *in the absence of* 1) hosting your own instance and 2) that instance being very, very large. I didn't have either at the time, so I had to make do. In a perfect world, I would have been able to generate an inclusive list of active accounts belonging to *real persons* from twitter + mastodon.
@DataDrivenMD yeah i started building a service that allowed that (via colliding OpenID Connect claims) but then i decided to stop with the project because i wanted to delete my twitter account instead.
charvakaThe only thing the oligarch needs from any of us is our engagement on his platform. Some of us decided to stop giving it to him. Others are still rationalizing to themselves how giving him what he wants is “fighting” or “resisting.” It is nothing of the kind. It is aiding and abetting the oligarch, plain and simple. The right time to move was in November. It is already late, but tomorrow will be worse.
Aphrodite (recharging)Literally it’s a mailbox for me now and that’s it.
I hope and pray as much as i am able to without violating CFAA that the site crashes and burns.
Flávia FeijóSome of us are quitting softly, to avoid
to lose so many PEOPLE that are still not founded elsewhere. Despite what others are doing just now. There are important people for each one of us. Let's welcome them wherever they choose.
I read a post suggesting people would change the password there, while staying for a time.
The right wing with it's problems will have to hold on with us there, for a while.
Agora@DataDrivenMD I already reached that point a long time ago. I was blessed with the gift of not giving a f*ck and telling people what I think about their decisions.
The people still on that bird site have no more excuses left.
The people still on that bird site have no more excuses left.