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Substack Notes Launched

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Re: Substack Notes Launched

#341

Post by nr2x »

nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #280
yifanl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean consider also: Imagine being in a position where you can spend 40 billion and it doesn't wipe you out.

Imagine spending only 30% of your net worth and getting to experiment with buying and growing one of the most used and talked about sites on the internet. If I spent 30% of my net worth I could buy a condo in the bay, possibly. Although odds are it would be worth close to that if I needed to sell it. But many people spend 30% of their net worth trying to start businesses with almost no traction. Musk spent 30% to buy…

I mean I could buy a very expensive Mercedes and drive it straight into the Bay at high speed.

That doesn’t make it a good idea.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#342

Post by tracker1 »

jascination wrote: post #333
alfor wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Edge and bing, God awful. You just feel their desire to take control of your experience of the web. On the flip site, made me see how much Google own us all.

What's wrong with Edge? I started using it when Chrome started eating my RAM, it's been mostly unobtrusive and unnoticed, like a good browser should be.

Can't speak for anyone else, for me I've mostly liked it. But I use a separate password manager (bitwarden) and disable most of the embedded addons (shopping, etc). So it's a bit mixed.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#343

Post by tomp »

jascination wrote: post #333
alfor wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Edge and bing, God awful. You just feel their desire to take control of your experience of the web. On the flip site, made me see how much Google own us all.

What's wrong with Edge? I started using it when Chrome started eating my RAM, it's been mostly unobtrusive and unnoticed, like a good browser should be.

I installed it on Mac to use Bing Chat.

It immediately took over my whole screen, in a completely weird way that no native Mac app ever did before (in my experience, though I don't use that many Mac apps).

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#344

Post by Pxtl »

naravara wrote: post #288
czbond wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's barrier wasn't that it was technically hard - it was that it was free and had critical mass. There still isn't much of a reason to move away from it, except for those who want to signal their disdain for Musk's political views

> There still isn't much of a reason to move away from it, except for those who want to signal their disdain for Musk's political views Most of the people I follow have moved off it. They use Twitter largely for announcements when they've put out something new but all their casual, unfiltered thoughts are going in Mastodon. Every time I check in on Twitter now it seems the noxious behavior to signal ratio gets worse.

In the artistic/creative space, a crapload of the best artists on twitter are trans. Musk is a loud and proud transphobe, and has implemented his politics into Twitter's moderation.

You don't have to be LGBTQ to see how important trans people are to Twitter's health. Many are still there because business is business, but many trans people and their allies have left because the new owner seems to hate them on a deeply personal level, and they have the professional wiggle room to ditch that promotional space.

Edit: W00t deep negatives for affirming that trans people exist and for stating the obvious that Musk hates them.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#345

Post by Dalewyn »

daveguy wrote: post #200
g42gregory wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he is definitely upsetting some (many) people. But, at the same time, he is getting the new set of people as users. In the last few years, I would not touch Twitter with a ten-foot pole. Mostly because, I could no longer assess the provenance of the posts and the authenticity of their rankings. Is this post popular/important or is this post was put into my stream by Twitter/other entities in order to influence…

I'm curious why you think Twitter is suddenly authentic and non-manipulative? If anything, it seems worse -- less news more hate.

Over on Japanese Twitter, the sudden shift in the kinds of post getting recommended pre- and post- Musk layoffs were undeniable. No longer were political posts the recommendations, but rather cultural posts such as those concerning games, anime, and manga among others.

Most of the Japanese user base welcomed the change, amazed at just how much manipulation Twitter Japan was (or is) doing behind the scenes.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#346

Post by Pxtl »

PaulHoule wrote: post #307

Substack really competes with creators leaving and setting up their own newsletter + payment gateway software. That’s like a $20,000 or so project from a web dev firm and for a creator who gets $200,000 a year from their newsletter it pays for itself in a year. The trouble is that substack makes almost all of its money from two handfuls of users who make more than that so if substack loses those creators it is left w…

I mean look at Patreon that basically exist as 100% overhead over just a Paypal account. They're doing fine. They demonstrated that convenient cash transactions for digital subscriptions is a viable business model.

I mean, youtube had half the internet complaining "I wish that link was text and not a video" and the other half complaining "I wish it was as easy to monetize writing as it was to monetize video" and Substack saw the obvious solution.

Most creatives don't want to run a business, they want to create.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#347

Post by emodendroket »

tracker1 wrote: post #338
Cardinal7167 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great shake up has started. Google pissing their pants with AIs abrupt arrival, Twitter dying a death by a million cuts, Facebook in mid-air making their VR play, the tech skyline will look very different in 5 years.

Relatively happy to see it... though I do tend to lean towards the free speech side of the coin, and kind of miss the relative wild west that was IRC in the 90's. I feel like centralized social media is a blessing and a curse. What's old is new again.

“Free speech” is a term that’s been completely abused and used in bad faith.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#348

Post by wpietri »

Pxtl wrote: post #304
jpmattia wrote: post #115

It wasn't like Twitter's business had a large technical barrier-to-entry. And Musk seems to be pissing away his non-technical barrier-to-entry just about as hard as he can. Good luck to Substack on eating twitter's lunch! Edit: That said, I've found mastodon (@jpmattia@mastodon.mit.edu) to be a much more pleasant interaction compared to twitter, so I'm curious what the landscape looks like in a couple of years.

I'm loving Mastodon myself (@pxtl@mastodon.social) but I worry that the UI stumbling blocks caused by the multi-server system and the far-poorer discoverability than what we're used to from Twitter will keep it from growing well -- twitter's algorithmic feed and relevant-to-the-user trending topics and features like that help make twitter feel lively even for a new user even with just a handful of follows. I don't kn…

I think "is X the next Twitter" is the wrong question to ask.

When I started working at Twitter (now years ago) my relatives asked me if they should join. And after thinking about it, my honest answer was "no". The only person who needs to be on Twitter is somebody who wants to feel like they're part of a global conversation. Most people just don't and won't.

Twitter is only successful because it started in an era where that was a novel and appealing idea, and because it developed a critical mass of users. Both traditional participants in that conversation (journalists, politicians, media personalities, etc) and new ones (like dril) came on board. It is now gradually losing that critical mass.

These days there are just too many options tuned to too many sets of needs. Mastodon will get a chunk of those people, as will existing social media properties. But I don't think we'll ever again see a global groupchat at the scale of Twitter. Assuming Musk persists in running it into the ground, I think in a decade's time Twitter will be in that bucket with MySpace or SixDegrees, one of those early-internet things that people remember with varying degrees of fondness but would never go back to using.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#349

Post by jononomo »

Johnie wrote: post #216
jononomo wrote: post #24

I think it would be fantastic if Substack Notes were to become dominant and replace Twitter.

What's the rationale?

I got banned from Twitter for tweeting that I would commit suicide if I were still programming in Java after the age of 50. I appealed, and I got rejected by a bot (I know because my appeal was rejected instantaneously). So I think Twitter is stupid. Also, Elon is stupid.
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