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I remember the conspiracy theory that was going on in the right wing circles of the internet a few years ago, where people like Tim Pool were saying that the blue checkmark was an attempt from Twitter to create a “privileged class on Twitter”…
All of those people are the ones that Elon’s been pandering so hard to and look at Twitter now.
Why is it with these people, that them who cry wolf so often, also turns out to be the wolves so often?
Also many companies provide tech support via Twitter (e.g. PayPal).
I also wanted to add that ZSSK (Slovakian state-owned passenger train company) uses Twitter for reporting extraordinary events like trains being very late, cancelled, alternative bus transport (which can be pretty important as buses can’t always get to each station), etc., but checking zssk.sk I noticed they switched from Twitter to Mastodon after these recent events.
A tip isn’t a story in itself, it’s a suggestion of where to start looking for one. “Hey, I’m off the record here, but some shady shit is going down at my job and you might want to fire off a Freedom of Information request for x, y and z or talk to a and b” is a pretty good tip.
Guess you’re right, I just find it weird for anyone to leave a worthwhile tip over an unencrypted third party company’s messaging. It’s like “I’m off the record… but I don’t really care who hears me say it”.
It seems crazy that Twitter is actively taking steps to become a worse social media company. Back when I was a kid, companies were supposed to be these well thought out, highly methodical entities that would only make the most optimal moves. I suppose it’s 2023 now though.
Look up enshittitication, it’s an interesting rabbit hole.
Basically, the idea is that there is a path companies go along where they first please users to build a user base, once you are bound to a platform and don’t want to leave (because “everyone” is there) they instead start to shift towards pleasing advertisers until they also feel trapped (because “everyone” advertises there). The final move is trying to squeeze as much as possible out of all these trapped people and companies. It’s not just social media, although this of course makes it most obvious at least for a trapped user base. But this also applies for any other big thing that “evryone” uses.
I didn’t want to say that Twitters execution of it is perfect, it’s just why Elon comes up with all these seemingly insane ideas. He has a huge userbase that won’t leave, he had advertisers who he thought wouldn’t want to leave and now he’s trying to squeeze. The problem is that he obviously didn’t have his grasp as tightly around the advertisers as he thought, which is why step 3 of Enshittitication entirely fails, at least from what is known to us. The idea is to keep everyone kind of hostage while you squeeze and while it seems to work with a huge chunk of the userbase, a bigger portion of the advertisers simply move on.
It’s not that huge of a userbase. Pinterest is bigger. Twitter just have a disproportionate amount of celebrities, politicians and journalists addicted to the instant feedback and drama.
Elon is hooked and high on his own supply, so he seems incapable of understand what Twitter actually IS for most users and that “ego boosting machine for the rich and famous” is not a business plan.
Enshitification implies a degree of planning and success that he seems incapable of right now. And you can’t jump to step three without achieving steps one and two. Never good for (most of) the users, never good for the advertisers. Nothing to squeeze.
I mean, it has gone to shit, but it doesn’t seem intentional. Even in the best of circumstances these changes would not be better for the bottom line than just doing nothing.
“Enshittification” isn’t a rabbit hole, it’s a term made up by a pretty hacky young adult sci-fi author like a few months ago for behavior that has been happening and documented in capitalism for at least a century.
Putting a name on a century-old concept isn’t the worst idea because now we can easily refer to it when it happens once again. And yes, the old age of that problem is why I consider it a bit of a rabit-hole. It’s not just something Twitter does now or that tech companies do now because they copy from each other. It’s a quite old concept you’ll hear about again and again and can read up on quite a bit, if you really are interested into more than the basic concept or why companies keep trying even though the outcome does not always see positive (from an outside, users perspective).
It’s not “happening once again,” it has been happening constantly for a century. It’s just another form of rent seeking. People like yourself are so focused on tech that you can’t put it together and realize that this is something that happens everywhere in capitalism. Giving it different names due to slight variations, or depending on which market, makes it impossible to do anything about on a large scale because it keeps people fractured in their understanding of what is happening.
I’m glad a bunch of people are finally starting to grasp rent seeking, but it’s important that people realize that this is a long tradition that has been “enshittifying” their entire lives (and their parents’, and grandparents’, and great-great-… you get it).
As long as people believe that what they’re experience is a unique type of problem, and other industries don’t have that specific problem so therefore they have their own separate battles to fight, then nothing will ever change.
That sci-fi author is 52 “young” already, has spent like 25 years writing and active about the evolution of the Internet and how it impacts personal rights, so I’d give him the right to coin a new term for an old concept.
It doesn’t prevent anyone from calling it:
“Attract, Fidelize, Monetize”
“Entice, Entrap, Exploit”
“Capture, Enslave, Squeeze”
…or whatever other set of words doesn’t elicit a negative connotation in the business world at the particular moment in time.
Young-adult authors write books for young adults. The author’s age is irrelevant (actually, the older they are, the creeper writing books for pre-teens becomes).
They are seeking to increase their wealth without providing additional productivity, or anything of value. That’s rent seeking. Not a new concept, happening constantly around us, and nobody seems to want to call it what it is.
Does anyone even use Twitter for anything other than dumb ass politics and seeing free nudes of their favorite e-thot anymore? I don’t think I’ve seen anything entertaining on there in years.
I have a list on there with National Geographic and other accounts that only post interesting things, barely any political stuff. Space and other photography. Trolls don’t appear much there.
Probably the only reason I still open it now and then.
it used to be where i would message my girlfriend (i dont know why twitter thats just how it ended up), but after a few years we made the switch to discord (for now) due to the incoming limits
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