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It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

401–410 of 472 posts

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even new governments traditionally have 100 days But companies do not. Buy a company and start making big mistakes and there will be consequences. The competition for users is fierce. If you want 100 days, get elected instead of being forced into buying a company you didn't really want in the first place.

There will be consequences both ways. It is well possible that new Twitter will attract other people if its politics changes. Not everyone in America, much less outside it, wants to pretend that they share the values of Californian Democrats from the progressive tribe, which according to this study [0] makes up whopping 8 per cent of the American population. [0] https://hiddentribes.us/#america-s-hidden-tribes

Lots of things are possible. But what we are discussing is why GP deleted his account: Musk and the rest of the PayPal mafia are hardcore neofeudalist libertarians.

You can make all the promises and guesses about the future that you want, but until those guesses materialize, they are vaporware. People can rightly continue to leave a platform they have no interest or faith in.

If any of your guesses do materialize people can presumably change their mind and come back to Twitter.

> Not everyone in America, much less outside it, wants to pretend that they share the values of Californian Democrats from the progressive tribe

That's not very relevant to an advertising platform. TV and radio stations rarely appeal to more than one or two tribes and both platforms are highly moderated to the point where the public has almost zero voice. Musk's dream of forcing people to tolerate free speech is rather idealistic. According to your source, if Musk wants to attract the biggest audience, he should ban politics from the platform.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#402
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a promise. Its value will be established sooner or later. It is too early to call any Twitter-related promise "empty". Even new governments traditionally have 100 days before it is considered fair to rip into them.

> Its value will be established sooner or later. It is too early to call any Twitter-related promise "empty". By default I can't take any promise from Elon seriously, nor do I understand how anyone believes anything he says. He underestimates every problem and never has any plans until after he makes announcements. I can't believe how many "eventually" promises people will still believe from one guy who obviously mak…

Self driving cars any day now.

https://electrek.co/2022/09/15/tesla-facing-class-action-law...

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how capitalism works. Their business should be providing value to their users, which, in turn, would make their platform attractive for advertisers. Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform, so banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests. Now, advertisers come from different parts of the political spectrum, and if some advertiser would decide…

> Their business should be providing value to their users Yes, their paid users being the advertisers. The end "users" are the product. > Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform Can you please give a source for your engagement figures? > banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests. Again, please provide a source for this. Evidence of this could be groun…

Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? If so, I resign from arguing with you.

For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#404
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You avoided my question. Can you provide your source for your claim about Facebook?

Oh sorry I didn't read your comment clearly. And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one.

> And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one.

What I've found is Facebook is not popular with young people: the audience many advertisers are the most interested in. The stock market is certainly not happy with their latest results. So sure, I can easily find a source that says Facebook is still the most popular platform. The details matter. Is it growth in Asia that's keeping their numbers up while US users shrink? Are they failing to attract young people? Have they lost users among the HN demographics? These details matter if you want the actual story.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their business should be providing value to their users Yes, their paid users being the advertisers. The end "users" are the product. > Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform Can you please give a source for your engagement figures? > banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests. Again, please provide a source for this. Evidence of this could be groun…

Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? If so, I resign from arguing with you. For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

> Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter?

I didn't claim anything. I asked for your sources. You are the one who made a claim. And now you're acting astounded that someone would dare question your claim.

Truth Social can't seem to become profitable [1]. So Trump's ability to produce (or drive away) advertising revenue is certainly open to being questioned.

> For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

Elon didn't make the claim. You did.

> If so, I resign

If you can't back up your claims with a source, then yes, it's right of you to resign.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DWAC?p=DWAC&.tsrc=fin-srch

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#406
post #247

Regarding Mastodon, I really like the idea behind it but always hit a wall when thinking about starting an instance. The alternatives appear to be * paying around $9/month for a managed instance * hosting it yourself (with all the costs and responsibilities that come with yet another self-hosted service) * signing up at a public instance (and potentially lose everything connected to it once an operator loses interest…

Mastodon doesn't require you to host an instance. You can sign up for an account on any instance of your choosing. Every service offers a choice between "run your own" or "trust someone else". I don't trust Twitter but the people I follow are on there so I guess I'll keep my old account. I trust the Mastodon folks more because they're running on donations, which makes their profit model quite transparent. The differe…

Thanks for the details, of which most I already figured. However, your response does not address the issue of solving content disappearing once the instance goes away. It doesn’t matter if the network itself is alive when the content itself can disappear at any time without warning.

If I am correct in this assessment, I can really see no upside besides minutiae regarding an illusion of control to established social media. In this regard, a website with a comment section would serve much the same purpose.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? If so, I resign from arguing with you. For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

> Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? I didn't claim anything. I asked for your sources. You are the one who made a claim. And now you're acting astounded that someone would dare question your claim. Truth Social can't seem to become profitable [1]. So Trump's ability to…

I resign from communicating with you because you are not arguing in good faith.

Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available is pure demagoguery, as this figure is irrelevant for our discussion: it does not matter if ad revenue from user engagement created by Trump was XXXXX USD or YYYYYY USD, as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero. So blocking him was against the commercial interests of the platform.

Likewise, the success (or lack of it) of other platforms, like Truth social, is hardly relevant here. It is another demagogue technique called 'straw man', as you try to bait your opponent into arguing about a completely different social platform.

Now, you may claim victory in this internet discussion, and celebrate it like your other imaginary victories.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#409
'It looks like' - so the big headline already contains a 'maybe'?

recent tweet of his: 'To clarify: I'll likely continue to post new stuff (blog posts, project releases etc) here, and I'll watch out for DMs and mentions, but I'm not going to be refreshing my timeline or actively seeking out conversations to engage in any more' - link for the curious: https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1588778119422701568

reminds me of all the "Quitting Facebook" memes.

I'm gladly going to be wrong, but Mastodon will never be mainstream _anywhere near_ to what Twitter was/still is for all the reasons that have been pointed out on every HN thread about it for days now... How about waiting to see what happens instead of an ideological knee-jerk 'pat myself on the back' half-quitting but not really reaction? Sigh... and the love it gets here, I can't understand it...

It's going to come off as harsh but I can't read this and not think of a petulant child not getting what it wants.

Maybe it's just because I don't have Twitter, Facebook or any of that crap so I guess I can't understand it because I don't have a stake in any of it... guess that kind of reaction is typical for someone living the messy life of hour by hour social media craze.

(sorry I could not refuse to write this comment)

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#410
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sorry I didn't read your comment clearly. And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one.

> And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one. What I've found is Facebook is not popular with young people: the audience many advertisers are the most interested in. The stock market is certainly not happy with their latest results. So sure, I can easily find a source that says Facebook is still the most popular platform. The details matter. Is it growth in Asia t…

User-wise Facebook seems to be doing fine:

> One area where Meta showed promise was in adding to Facebook’s massive user base

> Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users. 1.98 billion daily active users. That was up from 1.97 billion three months ago.

> Facebook has 264 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada alone. The majority of Facebook’s users belong to the 25 to 34 age group.

> Twitter has 206 million daily active users.

> TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users (MAU’s).

Facebook is going through a massive pivot and spending a wild amount of $$ on the Metaverse. All tech stocks are down. So I wouldn't put too much weight on stock price.

The other major thing is how Apple changed ad tracking works which reduce ad prices by 20% on average. That's a major decline in revenue for any company ("Advertising represented 98.2% of the company’s total revenue"). But YoY revenue only declined by 4%.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-facebook-q3-earnings-repor...

https://www.demandsage.com/facebook-statistics/

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