2022 and beyond Social Media Thread

[albionmoonlight]

I'm on Mastodon, and it is fine. The news/politics folks seem to be migrating over there. But I miss the sports folks.

And, I think that Mastodon's great strength--no ads and no algorithms and no owner and no profit motivation--will also cap it out. It is simply less engaging, to me, than a site with algorithms designed to keep me engaged (go figure).

I see it kind of like the local farmer's co-op. It is great in theory. And you enjoy going there for a change of pace. And you feel good inside for supporting something good. And you even tell yourself "Let's just shop here from now on."

But you still somehow finding yourself back at Walmart the next weekend.

[Ksyrup]

Exactly. Sports and other entertainment is missing, but I hope that's just because the vast majority of early adapters are those more inclined to politics given the Elon situation.

My "Plan B" is to strip out any politics from Twitter and just let it be mainly a sports/entertainment feed. But that's a lot of work. I've also considered creating a brand new FB account and just subscribing to the 8-10 groups I used to enjoy. I do miss the inside info and group discussions about certain interests.

[Ghost Econ]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

My "Plan B" is to strip out any politics from Twitter and just let it be mainly a sports/entertainment feed. But that's a lot of work. I've also considered creating a brand new FB account and just subscribing to the 8-10 groups I used to enjoy. I do miss the inside info and group discussions about certain interests.

I literally do that on Twitter, only follow sports stuff and don't engage with right wing Twitter. It doesn't matter anymore. I even told it not to show Elon Musk, Big & Rich, etc. tweets and it still finds different ways to put them in my feed (i.e. business news, celebrities, etc).

Similar with Facebook. I literally am only friends with family and a few friends but damned if I can see what their up to without wading through sponcon. I checked today, literally had the following sequence: 2 ads, post, 5 ads, 2 posts, 4 ads, post, 4 ads. Gave up.

[Mota]

Originally Posted by Ghost Econ

I'm not sure what is worse:

Trying to scroll Facebook with 90% ads just to see what my cousins are up to; or

Trying to scroll Twitter to see sports updates but intead seeing 90% of posts being rando conservative celebrities talking about pedophilia.

Social media is dead.

Yeah, I've noticed that too with Facebook. More and more ads, and things "suggested for me". Also more of these ads are now just social media influencers peddling stuff to us, I guess it's more profitable to pay someone in free goods these days to produce our advertising content.

[sterlingice]

Good lord the phone app is awful - it's like what Ghost Econ described - it's literally 2-3+ ads for every post. It motivates me to stop scrolling real fast and just switch over to Reddit

SI

[bhlloy]

Facebook is something else with ads - I can’t imagine how low value those ad spots are, but my feed is literally garbage with a mix of;
- Clickbaity sites - you know the ones “You won’t believe this happened on the set of Jaws” with the payoff to the text hidden so they want you to click on the pic which takes you to their shitty site
- Australian rugby news (zero interest or relevance to me but I may have once clicked on an article that is still in their algorithm somewhere)
- The occasional local ad (they finally managed to update my location to the right country/city a few months ago but it’s still garbage - food delivery for places 15/20 miles away that wouldn’t deliver to me anyway and the like)

You wonder at what scale anybody is making any money out of this shit, the expected ROI on me ever clicking any of that stuff is negative, but I guess at some step in the chain people are making money? If it wasn’t for one hobby group that I regularly use and is a good group of people I’d ditch the platform entirely.

[cuervo72]

Ad-wise, I used to get a lot of underwear ads. Women's underwear. Now it seems to have moved to bras (thirdlove). I do not know why, but I am not complaining. (Well, a return of some ass shots wouldn't be unwelcomed.)

[bhlloy]

You know why

[Mota]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Ad-wise, I used to get a lot of underwear ads. Women's underwear. Now it seems to have moved to bras (thirdlove). I do not know why, but I am not complaining. (Well, a return of some ass shots wouldn't be unwelcomed.)

Your feed is customized to your clicks.

[Kodos]

I rarely ever scroll on Facebook. And I only go to it via a browser. I look in my alarm bell (whatever it is called) and pick out the items of interest. Eventually, the algorithm figures out who I am actually interested in, and shows me mostly their posts.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

This board is the last true social media site for me. Not even kidding.

It is by far my favorite as well.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

You know why

Originally Posted by Mota

Your feed is customized to your clicks.

I am afraid someone needs to tweak FB's algorithm then. If I'm googling for topless (or bottomless) women it's not because I am interested in buying them tops.

[albionmoonlight]

Watching rich/powerful people when they leave their protected bubbles and have to actually engage the world is always amusing:

So here's the thing. You can only violate people's legal rights and your own word so far before they lawyer up and come after you.

I really do hope Musk changes his mind and does the right thing - the employees deserve that. But it'll be fun as hell if he doesn't. pic.twitter.com/VA04hFDVBX

— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 2, 2022

I'm sure Musk has had dozens of conversations with his lawyers that all amount to him saying some version of "But I want to!" while they patiently explain the law to him. Then he gets tired and frustrated and tells them to leave while he "thinks about it" and then goes and scrolls fanboy tweets for a few hours.

[sterlingice]

This all goes back to the whole idea that it's not like Jack Dorsey is some giant liberal and Musk is going to go back and re-find out the use case for each and every rule that Twitter was put in place.

SI

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Watching rich/powerful people when they leave their protected bubbles and have to actually engage the world is always amusing:

I'm sure Musk has had dozens of conversations with his lawyers that all amount to him saying some version of "But I want to!" while they patiently explain the law to him. Then he gets tired and frustrated and tells them to leave while he "thinks about it" and then goes and scrolls fanboy tweets for a few hours.

It is the "Trump" view of the law. "I have enough layers that I pay enough money that they can attempt to delay and draw things out as much as possible." I just don't understand the sick brain that would rather pay lawyers than pay what they rightfully owe. The only reason I can think of they do it is because it ends up paying off for them more than it hurts them.

[Ksyrup]

Sometimes people like that make irrational decisions simply because they care more about looking like they are in control or are dictating the terms of engagement, even if the balance sheet implications (and possible PR ramifications down the line) don't work out.

[sterlingice]

Kanye West’s Twitter Account Suspended After Posting Swastika – The Hollywood Reporter

Actual line in actual "news" story:

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to a Twitter rep for comment, but that employee no longer works at the company.

SI

[sterlingice]

Matt Taibbi did some of the best investigative journalism during and after the 2008 financial crisis and it's a shame he was writing for Rolling Stone instead of financial news (of course, I would assume financial news would be, you know, news, and not a giant grifting enterprise -silly, naive me). But he's gone down so many bad rabbit holes the last few years and I guess #Twittergate is just another one. I was sad to see his name trending next to Musk's latest silly distraction. If saying "Hunter Biden Laptop" three times fast makes some GOP shill appear, we're going to be up to our armpits in them over the next two years, aren't we?

SI

[whomario]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Kanye West’s Twitter Account Suspended After Posting Swastika – The Hollywood Reporter

Actual line in actual "news" story:



SI

Also: Technically the last Tweet before suspension was that holiday pic of Musk getting hosed down by his much more in shape employee.

[Solecismic]

I still don't get social media. The last thing I'd want is to trust a site to tell me what I want to see based on some algorithm. That's like eating every meal at McDonald's and expecting my next physical to end without blood tests showing that I have approximately ten McNuggets remaining in my life.

Facebook was interesting for keeping in touch with friends and family, but ads and their algorithms made that so much work that these days, no one is even active on facebook except for the people who think their political views are worth posting... endlessly. Probably because everyone in their immediate family runs screaming from the room every time they open their mouths. I just post cat pictures and vacation photos once or twice a year.

Between that and not owning a smart phone and cutting the cord and trying to read less online, it's my hope that my life is becoming more worth while. Hard to say. The more I cut, the less I feel the world is ending.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

I still don't get social media. The last thing I'd want is to trust a site to tell me what I want to see based on some algorithm. That's like eating every meal at McDonald's and expecting my next physical to end without blood tests showing that I have approximately ten McNuggets remaining in my life.

Facebook was interesting for keeping in touch with friends and family, but ads and their algorithms made that so much work that these days, no one is even active on facebook except for the people who think their political views are worth posting... endlessly. Probably because everyone in their immediate family runs screaming from the room every time they open their mouths. I just post cat pictures and vacation photos once or twice a year.

And kid pictures. Lots of kid pictures. But those are ok, too, in moderation.

Social media is engineered to get engagement however possible and the algorithms are a real problem. Of course, if we wanted to, you know, regulate this - it's very possible. I mean, it could be a set of rules with things as simple as like "80% of all posts seen by a user must be from friends or a community they subscribe to". Suddenly, FB isn't giving you 3 ads for every pet picture and YouTube isn't taking you from some gamer review straight to alt-rightsville. But that would require us to actually create and enforce regulations rather than just caving to industry interests and going "well, whatever is in the best interest of shareholders, social consequences be damned." Yes, it realize it's not quite that super simple and companies will always find ways around regulations, in time - but if we actually wanted to, we could pick some of the low hanging fruit really easily.

Between that and not owning a smart phone and cutting the cord and trying to read less online, it's my hope that my life is becoming more worth while. Hard to say. The more I cut, the less I feel the world is ending.

I have taken a lot of steps back from social media over the last few years for my own mental health. I also try to remind my wife to do the same as I see its effect on her and maybe it's easier to see it on someone else than on ourselves.

Of course the obvious question is "is the world any less ending just because you don't know about it or you personally aren't affected by it?" I'm not saying the world is or isn't ending - though by a number of objective measurable metrics, it's worse than most times in my life. Nor can I say that you or I can personally affect it. But how is that mentality different than just being an ostrich of hedonistic ("i.e. my personal pleasure is better because I don't see anything") or nihilistic ("i.e. I can't do anything about it so who cares what the world does") persuasion?

SI

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Of course the obvious question is "is the world any less ending just because you don't know about it or you personally aren't affected by it?" I'm not saying the world is or isn't ending - though by a number of objective measurable metrics, it's worse than most times in my life. Nor can I say that you or I can personally affect it. But how is that mentality different than just being an ostrich of hedonistic ("i.e. my personal pleasure is better because I don't see anything") or nihilistic ("i.e. I can't do anything about it so who cares what the world does") persuasion?

SI

I think it is that however bad the world is or is not, social media will always make you think that it is worse than it is. The business model is to keep you stressed.

Realistically, all one needs to do to be a reasonably informed citizen is find one source of national news you trust, a few sources of local news you trust, and check them once a day.

Maybe if there is an acute event (natural disaster, etc.) that is happening in real time, then you can consume that through up-to-the-minute media.

But the idea that we need to be getting BREAKING UPDATES every time Trump files a lawsuit or something is 100% a creation of the click-creators.

[GrantDawg]

There is no doubt that social media runs on the driving people to "doom scroll" through negative after negative. The sad thing is that obscures the very obvious good it provides as well. There are people I have interacted with, and places and things I would have never been exposed to. I just wish there was more money in the positives than trying to emphasize the negatives.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[Edward64]

I don't necessarily disagree with Musk on Twitter (maybe) overdoing it. Some mistakes may have been made and if there truly is a "trend/pattern", it should come out. Twitter is on the bleeding edge on figuring out what is appropriate or not, so some mistakes will be made, there will be grey areas etc.

But with Musk wanting Twitter transparency, the below resonated with me. Hope there is a campaign for this ...

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status...87304827875328

If Musk is committed to transparency over influence at #Twitter he should release *his* communications with political operatives & politicians, foreign & domestic.

Like representatives from the Chinese & Saudi governments.

[GrantDawg]

There are indications that Twitter is about to create its own crypto-currency, because Musk didn't fleece enough of his crypto-bro's with Dogecoin.

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I think it is that however bad the world is or is not, social media will always make you think that it is worse than it is. The business model is to keep you stressed.

Realistically, all one needs to do to be a reasonably informed citizen is find one source of national news you trust, a few sources of local news you trust, and check them once a day.

Maybe if there is an acute event (natural disaster, etc.) that is happening in real time, then you can consume that through up-to-the-minute media.

But the idea that we need to be getting BREAKING UPDATES every time Trump files a lawsuit or something is 100% a creation of the click-creators.

But isn't this social media and the world in general in its current state? All of our sources of news are ones that each individual trust as opposed to all of us trusting whatever Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and/or Dan Rather said as the source?

[whomario]

He really is just a passive agressive teenager:

You can sense the quiet seething that went into the recently replaced verification description pic.twitter.com/AqAPllturD

— steven ''italian elon musk'' monacelli (@stevanzetti) December 7, 2022

[albionmoonlight]

So Neuralink is under governmental investigation for apparently just torturing animals.

Teslas blow up at an above-average rate, and their self-driving AI runs over kids (and the company is about to get crushed by legacy carmakers because it didn't manage to corner the EV market with its first-mover advantage)

I think that whether through panic instinct or planning, Musk has decided (or lucked into the fact) that becoming an ally of the MAGA right helps him escape liability because he can classify every legitimate investigation of his business as the woke deep state trying to take him down. And 45% of the country will agree.

And whenever the MAGA GOP gets in charge of an apparatus of government that is investigating him, he can pressure them to shut it down.

[Ksyrup]

There's probably something to that. And that maybe he sees trading blue state EV adopters for red state buyers who come to view a Tesla as a MAGA status symbol is a better long-term bet? Kind of like a tech version of My Pillow?

[cuervo72]

Summing the reactions of ex-Twitter workers to "The Twitter Files Pt 2"

Ex-employees seemingly saying three main things: 1) This has long been public; 2) The platform features called out are innocuous; 3) The new T&S head handed everything over, making this little more than PR pic.twitter.com/57wPKvah0i

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) December 9, 2022

[whomario]

Not content with indirectly and/or anonymously (well, ignoring the personally directed firings) ruining peoples lifes, Musk is now putting himself at the head of the mob singling out former employees. All but accused the former head of the Trust and Safety team (who stayed on and actually carried his water for a couple weeks before presumably seeing there was no way to sugarcoat the madness) of being a pedophile, digging around and posting snippets of his PHD thesis to 'prove' a point one of his spitlickle stans was making.

[sterlingice]

It's like if Geraldo went into Al Capone's vault and when he didn't find anything, just yelled at everyone around him and started sharing semi-private emails that had nothing to do with it to distract from what a dumpster fire it was.

SI

[sterlingice]

There's a decent chance that in 70 years, history books will have a chapter about the sale and weaponization of Twitter. And people will be like "how did the US let this buffoon and his motley crew of backers ranging from Saudi and Qatari funds, conspiracy theorists like Larry Ellison, and crypto bros take over one of the most important new sources of that fragmented time" right before or after they ask "And, jeez, Grandpa - how awful was your generation's attention span that one of the best news sources of the time was limited to 140 characters?" And anyone alive will have to just shake their head and be like "It was a strange time - you just had to be there".

That is, if we still have history books that look different than North Korea's. Or that we haven't destroyed all of civilization. Or that we just aren't all Gilded Age level wage slaves - time is a flat circle and all.

SI

[sterlingice]

It's really impressive how fast he's gone from genius futurist to Trump-tweeting-on-the-toilet

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

SI

[JPhillips]

Elon saying Twitter is a crime scene seems like an odd way to bring back advertisers, but what do I know?

[Ksyrup]

The whole thing is really frustrating for those of us who just want to enjoy Twitter. I want to leave - and in fact, I have a Post account - but there's this collective inertia that makes it nearly impossible to replicate any kind of widespread social media experience somewhere else. So I'm still sticking around enough to continue to see stuff that pisses me off.

Post is great for the fact that you don't have a bunch of alt-right bots and personalities and racists, but there's also precious few conservatives at all, which is a general problem. I don't want an echo chamber. And then there's the lack of any kind of sports/entertainment Twitter experience, which is the main reason I enjoy Twitter.

I'm not really sure where to go next...

[Ghost Econ]

It's weird that Elon has hundreds of billions of dollars, but instead of self-funding an investigation into the largest conspiracy that irrevocably changed the world... he makes snarky posts about Fauci.

Almost like he's not serious...

[albionmoonlight]

If you are the board of Tesla, at what point do you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to remove the guy shitposting Nazi stuff on twitter as your CEO?

[albionmoonlight]

This isn't theoretical. There are a lot of EV choices in 2022. And Tesla's whole deal is marketing itself as a brand as much as a car. And the figurehead of that brand spent $44 billion so he could show his ass more efficiently.

There have to be a lot of people who would have considered buying a Tesla who are not going to now.

[albionmoonlight]

double dola: But for all I know, Tesla's board might be all Elon fanboys. So maybe they'd rather the ship go down than get rid of the captain. No idea really.

[Ksyrup]

If MAGA has done anything, they've proven they will spend money and are diehard fans. I swear he's betting that he can create a new base of EV users that will proudly drive his car as a red hat symbol. It's either that or sheer ego-driven boredom. Or both.

[Ksyrup]

Given the rapid speed at which Elon is devolving in front of our eyes, I feel like at some point he's just going to rip off his mask and it will be Trump.

Because this reminds you of the energy of someone who... oh I don't know, let's say... doesn't like the press coverage of his small inauguration crowd, doesn't it?

Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter).

It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

[albionmoonlight]

If there's one thing unhinged leftists like, it is going to watch notorious transphobe Dave Chapelle.

[albionmoonlight]

dola: I don't even think for a lot of them it was political. It was that he's destroying Twitter. And people liked Twitter.

He could have destroyed Twitter from the left, and he'd get the same boos.

[Ksyrup]

Here are some stats backing the thought that Tesla is becoming a tech MyPillow brand:

https://www.kbb.com/car-news/teslas-...-survey-finds/

Morning Consult’s numbers also reinforce the political divide. Among self-described Democrats, 24.8% saw Tesla positively in October. Just 10.4% said the same at the end of November. Self-described Republicans saw their opinion of the company rise, from a favorable 20% to 26.5%, over the same period.

Of course, he better hope for more GOP supporters, because his favorability hasn't risen as far as the Dem negativity has fallen.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

He could have destroyed Twitter from the left, and he'd get the same boos.

As far left as Twitter skewed, how could anything possibly have gone far enough to damage it in that direction? It was already at a 89 degree tilt.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

If you are the board of Tesla, at what point do you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to remove the guy shitposting Nazi stuff on twitter as your CEO?

Tesla has 8 members of its BOD. I took a look and four, including Musk, are probably fellow travelers of Musk: Elon & Kimbal Musk, James Murdoch, Joe Gebbia (joined Sept 2022, notable for having founded AirBnB).

Of the remaining four, one is from the VC firm DBL Partners, which was an early Tesla investor and clearly this is their seat based on that investment. Two are seemingly competent women clearly brought in (based on timing) due to #metoo concerns (not necessarily a bad thing), and the last is a long-time international finance & development expert I'm going to assume was added in 2020 to give more of a veneer of respectability to the overall board.


So, even if we discount the high likelihood that Musk controls a majority of voting shares (probably by controlling a majority of a different class of shares that give extra voting power), he likely has 4 or 5 of the 8 board members (the fellow travelers plus the VC guy) who have no real incentive to bring him to heel (I'm sure DBL Partners has long since realized significant profit on their initial investment, even if they continue to have a sizeable investment in the company).

And this is why corporate governance is a joke in America.

[sovereignstar v2]

What a snowflake

Musk bans live location sharing, says he’ll sue creator of plane-tracking bot | Ars Technica

[Solecismic]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

As far left as Twitter skewed, how could anything possibly have gone far enough to damage it in that direction? It was already at a 89 degree tilt.

Apparently higher than that (97-99% blue, based on political contributions). Since this story stems from inviting Bari Weiss and her team at Common Sense (now called The Free Press) to sit in a conference room for a week or so and use tools to search the Twitter archives, emails, Slack channels, etc, I'm inclined to listen to what they're reporting.

Her conclusion is that there's reason to worry that she might (or might not) be invited to do the same thing at some point in the future when Twitter has a new owner. But this is a very real story. I'd urge people to read her reports (they are being released on Twitter before she puts them on The Free Press - the only condition for the access her team was given).

Often the hook of subscribing to or signing up for something on social media is the ability to interact with fellow users. Even on a small scale, that can be an unpleasant hive-mind experience at times. It's unimaginably worse on a larger scale.

Social media combines the unending desire to have an opinion with the unending desire to be liked. It's like crack and produces similarly drugged minds.

I don't know why Musk thinks he can turn this into the Town Square that all of us were hoping for. It already was that. Perhaps he's imagining a Town Square where everyone has the same First Amendment rights as opposed to subject to the whim of corporate leadership.

But as everyone notes, some people just need to be banned. It's easy to agree on a reason like trafficking child porn. Not so easy if it's a group that takes public information and turns it into a tool that's easily co-opted by stalkers (like the cheap Apple disks that are in the news so much lately, or, somewhat similarly, the flight data on Musk's private aircraft). That gives those in power a lot of power.

What's present in the Town Square, but not possible online is accountability. If you advocate violence or even post evidence of having committed a crime, nothing happens. But the alternative is that it's so easy to police online and start delving into thoughtcrime (we see this in Europe, Iran, China on different levels) that those in power can enforce the hive mind anyway.

Maybe the Town Square was always an illusion. There has always been a cost for freedom. But if the government is going to interact with the owners of social media, issue any direction about content, whether it's protection like Section 230 or directives to censor in any way, then it needs to be transparent and everyone should have equal rights.

[Ksyrup]

He doesn't really believe any of that. For all of his talk and for all of the right wingers he's "freed" in the name of leveling the play field, he has shut down accounts of people on the other side who disagree with him or challenge/make fun of him, or who post about Twitter alternatives, or any other number of petty/vindicative things.