There are too many options for social media so far. Twitter is dying of a surfeit of Nazis and an incompetent overlord; Bluesky I haven’t tried, but I don’t trust it, since it’s run by the old overlord, and will probably follow the same trajectory; I’ve been on Mastodon for a while, and am comfortable with it; the new kid on the block is Threads, which is owned by the repulsive Zuckerberg. Let’s see what the First Dog on the Moon has to say about it!
I think the final category, “Owner seeks dominion over the Earth,” is definitive, which means I’ll stick with the distributed community of federated websites that lacks an owner.
I think I’ll read a book.
I opened a Mastodon account seven days ago, but wasn’t able to find PZ. So far I just have George Takei and Robert Reich. Never had Twitter or any other service. Help welcomed.
Matt G @2
Here… https://octodon.social/@pzmyers
That’s what we need here on FTB: a billionaire skeptic-bro owner who can lavish us with, um, budget cuts and layoffs and help us improve our cardio by jumping through flaming hoops while carrying sinks.
Thanks, Tabby@3. My server is mastodon.social – I get an error trying to log in because PZ is on octodon.social (and it even warns me about this). When I hit the “follow” button, it goes to follow and then immediately reverts back.
Cory Doctorow is always great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vluAOGJPPoM
@Matt G #5: This is the most annoying thing.
From mastodon.social, you need to paste PZ’s full address in the search bar (top left) then hit Enter: in the list of result you will be able to click on the icon to follow him directly.
i hope threads magazine sues zuckerberg for copyright infringement. threads mag is for sewing enthusiasts so z has never heard of it.
When the malevolent Musk bought Twitter, I said there was a huge opportunity for a Twitter clone, without the toxicity of Musk. Call it Twitter Muskless or Chirp.
Twitter was a good idea done well.
I was right.
Meta’s Threads signed up 50 million users in its first day.
I’m sure you all see the problem.
Zuckerberg is almost as evil and toxic as Musk.
I don’t have a Twitter account or a Facebook account for those reasons.
It’s like rooting for Stalin over Hitler.
I suppose Meta is an improvement over Musk but not by much.
I’m probably not going to get a Threads account either.
Mastodon isn’t going to replace Twitter.
It isn’t even designed to do so, decentralized and doesn’t have the worldwide server bandwidth.
Twitter is truly broken now.
I only see it when I follow links to Tweets.
The last few about news article on the Russian invasion of Ukraine asked me to sign in
to my nonexistent Twiiter account to prove I’m over 18. Which is absurd for an open news article in the Washington Post.
The last time was to see a photo of a cat.
The error message was, “This didn’t work, try again” Try again didn’t work either.
How hard is it to display a Tweet with a photo of a cat anyway?
Twitter is done.
Maybe we could get a new billionaire to run Twitter. Here’s the Forbes WORLD’S BILLIONAIRE LIST: The Richest in 2023 (all-cap theirs) to pick from.
Sadly, the total worth of billionaires is down from $12.7 trillion by $500 billion ($12.5 trillion). All their tears is the reason the West Coast got so much rain this winter.
Elon is now #2, of course, while the #1 slot goes to Bernard Arnault, head LVMH. Wait a second: a French guy in the fashion business is the world’s richest person!? I don’t even know what to say.
Anyway, the US still has the most billionaires at 735 members (worth about $4.5 trillion) while China is second at 562 billionaires (worth $2 trillion). And if you ask how can a Communist worker’s paradise have some many billionaire capitalists…well just don’t, okay.
As for the US lead in total billionaires (27.8% of the total), I think that explains a lot about our current political situation. We need fewer billionaires and more choices for social media outlets.
Twitter is going to remain dominant forever, just like Myspace is.
Yeah, I went there.
Myspace was on top, Murdoch’s News Corp took over, stopped all that wasteful innovation and simply tried to market a version to multiple countries, it shriveled up and died, being supplanted by the book of faces.
Or, let Musk continue to do what he did for his launchpad with Twitter. Everyone loves a good smoking ruinous hole in the ground.
Can’t wait to see his Mars colony…
Genuinely not a terrible summary. Though I’d say the Nazis just haven’t had the opportunity to infect bluesky. Soon as they can open their own federated instances, it’ll happen, no matter how good the primary instance moderation is. And then they have to make Decisions.
Ah, but one can filter federated instances at the server level.
Rooting for Threads over Twitter is like hiring a burglar to stop an arsonist — far from ideal, but if it gets the job done, it’s worth the risk.
Sure, choosing the lesser of two evils among billionaires sticks in the craw, but if Musk succeeds with Twitter, his goal is to create an uber-social media network of his own, and one without even the inadequate controls Meta employs to keep the worst of the wolves at bay.
That number for billionaires is zero. If you put a hard cap of, say, $500 million on the net worth of every individual or family, what’s the downside? I can’t think of one.
Nintendo and Activision Blizzard are both highly profitable video game companies, with around $10 billion in annual revenues. The CEO of Activision Blizzard earns around $150 million/year, the CEO of Nintendo earns around $2.5 million/year.
Clearly, that extra $147.5 million/year has bought Activision Blizzard nothing.
tacitus:
That’s up to the shareholders (the owners, it being a publicly traded company) to decide. If it were clear to them, they’d likely do something about it.
Re: tacitus @ #16…
I’d b inclined to say that the CEO of Activision is paid $150 million per year. He probably earns about $200K.