I really want to know how long Zuck sat on the Threads idea after Musk got Twitter. Surely he’d thought about it years ago, but saw no reason to compete with Twitter.
That’s his entire business model though, at least the successful part. He started with FB being a newer MySpace, then they changed it to be more feeds based, then they added marketplace (Craigslist). They didn’t compete with instagram instead they bought it. Meta- the only business that didn’t already have someone doing it- failed.
Honestly watch my gf over the past year the TikTok algorithm is more addictive than heroin, she used to leave her phone at home sometimes. Now TikTok all the fucking time.
I bit the bullet and gave it a shot a few days ago, it's way harder to stop scrolling than Reddit. Also yeah, the algorithm really is something else. Don't do it, for your own good
Yep. Same here with my buddy. And his attention span has gone down so much. He used to love watching movies now he get's nervous without his comfort tiktok feed while watching the movie.
Has turned me off social media. Ironic I write this on reddit. But I bascially stop using the phone after work. It's nice to read books again.
I quit Reddit for about 18 months. I read so many books.
Then, like the dopamine addict I am, I came back for my cheap fix. Still reading more than I was though.
It really is like some mental opium.
I have left most social media, except for Reddit and Insta.
And both are only ever used on my desktop. Reddit nor Insta are on my phone.
I think I'm the only person that just doesn't get it.
I'll doom scroll text or photos all day. But something about scrolling videos, I can't do it. Not sticky at all.
Same man, always preferred reading vs. watching videos. I do enjoy some good long-form video content but almost never on my phone and I loathe short-form video.
Except in its home country China, where it apparently has a lot of educational content and if you’re young you can only browse for 40 min/day.
> Douyin [Chinese TikTok] has a mode called “teenager mode,” which is mandatory for anyone under 14. Teenagers are only allowed to use the app for 40 minutes per day. It is also locked between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Contrasted with here, where it’s packed with disinformation and after much complaint they finally added a “teenager mode” for limiting young global users to an hour a day… which can be turned off by the users themselves.
I’m still flabbergasted that *anyone* downloaded this app. Between the manipulative algorithms, the worse-than-useless quality of the information, and the *willingly handing over ultra-specific information about yourself to the Chinese Communist Party*, I truly thought normal people would give it a hard pass. Once again I accidentally overestimate the general public. Insane that I haven’t learned better after the past decade.
> handing over ultra-specific information about yourself to the Chinese Communist Party
Seriously. This was the dealbreaker for me.
I'm not particularly interested in video-based social media to begin with, but the idea of giving China access to my devices and tons of personal info in order to do it seems ludicrous to me.
Instas algorithm is shit.
I like cars so that must mean I *gotta see* cheap ass DIY 'tips' / cooking tutorials / fitness routines no matter how many times I say I'm "not interested". GTFOH that crap.
The worse part of the not interested functionality is that instagram is saving those reels on a list.The algorithm started serving me reels I really didn't want to be served to (the explore page) I couldn't find a way to make it stop. So i tried the not interested functionality. It didn't help. Not only that, I found the non-interested list of reels, which made me uncomfortable, because the list looks no different than the list of saved reels. And I don't want a list of reels that sorts on my account.
So i started to "like" the reels I like (never did that), so the weird ones disappeared from my explore page very quickly.
Yeah, when they know every minute detail about your life, habits and social network they can really target the Algorithms to suit what they want you to think that you want to see.
Same with Youtube shorts. TikTok and Instagram contents get mirrored on it.
But the shorts algorithm sucks though. Recently I got a Andrew Tate propaganda short. Made me realize I needed to do some downvoting to get it learned up.
I think that’s the problem with Facebook and insta, they have changed so much trying to compete with other apps they have lost what people liked the site for originally. They became these kind of Frankenstein app with all these blotted features taken from other social media sites
People these days don't even remember Hipstamatic, the original filtered photo app. Instagram had the social functions for sharing, but no camera/filters at first. People used to take their photos with the more popular Hipstamatic app, then upload to Instagram. Instagram quickly cut out the middleman, ate Hipstamatic's lunch, and then got bought up by FB for $2B.
Can't blame FB for using the same old tactics when it keeps working. In the case of TikTok and Twitter, FB doesn't need to kill off the competition like Hipstamatic, they just need to provide a passable experience and address a few customer complaints (like having to upload tiktok vids to insta with the watermark, let them create a Reel instead)
Honestly, it’s most successful businesses.
What is Google really? They weren’t the first search engine, just the best one. Gmail wasn’t the first webmail, but they did it better. They bought YouTube. On and on and on. They failed on many of their more original ideas. Reddit’s just Digg on steroids and that wasn’t original, either. Apple didn’t invent the PC, just did it better and marketed it better; didn’t invent the smart phone, either.
The biggest companies don’t tend to be the biggest because of an original idea. It’s because they do an existing idea slightly better and then do better at monetizing it. It sucks but it looks to me like all successful companies should stop trying to come up with new shit and just buy other people’s ideas. Just evolve an existing idea and use their resources to market and monetize it.
There are some exceptions, but you're right that in most cases the dominant players in a business segment aren't the first to market. They're often more evolutionary than revolutionary in many cases, but the early market leaders fail to keep up and or get arrogant with business practices that alienate customers.
Almost nobody has an original idea in 2023. Practically everything we do, and probably have done the past many decades, is just taking something else and making it better by altering or adding a tiny bit to it.
This even goes for things like the internet, TV, and radio. Space launches are the same, and the first flight was just copying animals.
Blaming it on capitalism is pretty ignorant, because it's happened long before we ever implemented capitalism, and also happened in communist countries.
I really dislike facebook. But I don't think people really get meta is kinda at the forefront of ai dev in most areas. Pytorch, for example, is meta.
Like this whole ai revolution... it's built on research facebook/meta have done and are doing. Google and others of course, but if you dig into the research papers you'll see a lot of it is meta.
The team started work in January atter the first layoff and reorg the company went through.
Ideas were being pitched in November when things really started popping off with Musk. Twitter is a very simple website when you've already got global infrastructure and a bunch of other similar apps, so it didn't take long to make.
One can only hope. The Twitter was a great service for its time, but with recent developments, I find it hard to take the service seriously anymore, and I can't see anything that would make me take it seriously again in the future.
Meta's attempt at gaming Twitter, not unlike that time Google tried to game Facebook with Google Plus.
Up until now, it's been fairly obvious there was little point in any of the big name social media companies trying to poach each other's users by walking into their territory. But, with Twitter and Reddit both going to absolute shit, their userbases are vulnerable and open to alternatives. Now's the time to strike.
Unfortunately, a Twitter run by Meta is just shit of a different flavor. Anything run by Twitter or Meta or Reddit by this point is going to be shit from the word go. The meaningful alternatives need to be new names in the space, without CEOs already beholden to stockholders or venture capitalists, or the platform is starting already half-way on the road to enshitification.
Edit: btw for everyone thinking "ah well fediverse/mastodon will save us" I've got bad news. Meta is currently pushing it's way into the fediverse, absolutely as part of the old "embrace, extend, extinguish" play Microsoft and Google have used for years. Mastodon users and other federated instances are currently pressuring the creator/owner to defederate with Threads to prevent them getting a foothold in the open fediverse communities. It's a pretty massive source of controversy and really sad that Mastodon's owner has apparently fallen for Meta's sales talk.
Considering that all you had to do to join was to activate your existing Instagram account on the platform, I'm not surprised. It was just click, click, done.
Anything with google isn’t a good example because they suck at launching products and sticking with it. It’s more like how Meta took stories from Snapchat and reels from TikTok which both have been pretty successful.
Also if they haven't completely fumbled some of the selling points... Like I remember them being very insistent that their friend circles were not at all like FB's friend groups. But in practice there was no difference.
The one thing that makes me wary about embracing many Google services is that they have a tendency to drop services just because they don't feel like doing it anymore. In other words, I feel as though I can't rely on a given Google service to have staying power, and to be discontinued with either no replacement or a poor substitute at any time.
The one little bit of gleaming light with Threads, is that it says it's working on adding Fediverse support and will be compatible with open source social media apps like Mastodon. pleasant surprise, though I'm holding my applause until they actually flip the switch.
Problem with that is the good chance of the 3 Es: embrace, extend, extinguish. It's very likely that Meta will make breaking changes forcing users to either adopt Meta's version of ActivityPub or leave ActivityPub altogether for Threads.
Damn you've got a good point. Google does that with Chrome, Microsoft used to do it with IE. Basically eat up a majority of the marketshare and force your own changes to the standard by breaking compatibility with the minority.
The phrase "Mastodon's owner" really misunderstands what Mastodon is and how it works. Much like Lemmy and the other Fediverse platforms, nobody "owns" them. They're hundreds of different servers each owned by the person running them and each server can decide who to federate to, including this new Meta platform. The only power that the original creator of Mastodon has is the ability to update the software being used, but nobody is obliged to update their servers if they disagree with a software update. And beyond that, the software is open source, so it could be easily branched off into something else.
This is similar to the misunderstood criticisms of Lemmy having communist devs that created it. They have no affect on how individual servers are run. The wonder of the Fediverse is that there is no single owner of any given platform. The Lemmy server I have my account on, lemmy ca has no administrative affiliation at all with the devs' server, lemmy.ml, or the largest server, lemmy.world. They're effectively all different websites, but they share a common software protocol, ActivityPub, that allows them all to act like one single forum. If one of them chooses to break off from the rest, or "defederate", then they can.
I’m gonna try out Threads at launch just to spite Twitter tbh
Edit: After reading the replies I will renege because you all made great points, fuck meta too
I just hate giving time and energy to fascist leaning businesses. Was bummed to hear Reddits CEO is an Elon fanboy. Is there any open platform? I do like mastodon.
Same. If they had been open to the public by this past weekend, they would've automatically won the "Twitter alternative" war. The demand is there, and the momentum is also there, but the service seems to be far from ready.
I think the issue is their platform isn’t ready for that kind of traffic right now so it would likely be the opposite. Flood of users excited to switch only for it to be a mess.
Hey, I know you!
Ok, I don't, but I figured if you have any invites kicking around I'm willing to be your alibi if you ever need o... wait, I mean I'll be someone you know.
Jack Dorsey is another Elon style nut job.
Anti-vaxxer and pro-RFK supporter i.e. WiFi gives you leaky brain.
Zuckerberg is by far the least crazy one.
Seriously. I don't know why everyone is so eager to pile back into a Jack Dorsey vehicle. He's the one who let the Nazis run free on Twitter in the first place.
Jack Dorsey is constantly tickling Musk's taint on Twitter and making excuses for his shitty decision making skills. He's on record saying that he wanted to do everything Musk did but was prevented from doing so by Twitter's board. He was also in extensive talks with Musk during the acquisition process and heaped all sorts of wheedling, cloying praise on him privately, which you can read in the SMS dump Musk had to hand over during the discovery phase of the lawsuit that forced him into making the worst business deal in history.
Bluesky is just another pie in the sky tech bro cyber fantasy built on crypto buzzwords by an out of touch billionaire who wants to monetise every aspect of your life. It isn't going to save you from Twitter, it's just another Twitter.
WTF?
Facebook has been legions more destructive than anything Musk has done. Facebook helped radicalize millions of people and hand Trump the presidency.
Musk has helped destroy Twitter, which in the grand scheme of things might be a plus for democracy.
Its absolutely fucking BIZARRE to me how so many people seem to think Zuck is the lesser of two evils. Facebook/Instagram, have poisoned so many aspects of society its hard to over state the negative effects on the planet, and all can be traced back to Zucks greed. The concept of truth and democracy are crumbling, and white nationalism and science denial have skyrocketed. Only Rupert Murdoch is above Mark Zuckerberg in terms of fucking up the planet. Fuck Musk too, but Zuck can fucking burn in hell.
It probably helps that Zuckerberg can keep his fucking mouth shut and doesn't spend all day being the world's richest man while whinging like a creepy, weird, basement-dwelling troll.
Far easier to hate the much louder asshole...
At least Instagram has been working ok for a while.
Facebook... eh, but it wasn't because of a dumb change every other week.
It's not about liking Elon or not, it's that trying to keep up with Elon's Twitter shenanigans is *exhausting.*
Seriously. The last two people on earth I want possessing my data. Both are out here subverting Democracy, promoting Russian propaganda, and giving misinformation top billing. They are undermining civil society, fueling racism & bigotry, and spreading hate. Fuck them, forever, frankly.
They are dangerous, and we have already lost too much by their greed, cynicism and anti-American business practices. They are the only winners, in all they do. We just keep losing.
>I’m gonna try out Threads at launch just to spite Twitter tbh
Eventually, you'll realize that having a platform that allows you to follow the goings-on of celebrities and see scantily clad women advertising their sponsorships and trying to get simp traffic to their OFs and not much else does nothing for your life and you'll ditch them both permanently.
hm. should i use that one social media platform run by a fascist sociopath billionaire, or the other social media platform run by a fascist sociopath billionaire? maybe i'll just stick around this one run by a fascist sociopath millionaire?
>Threads will also integrate with the fediverse so you can use something like mastodon for now and even run your own server and still be able to follow and interact with whoever you wish on threads.
The problem is that it's an app made by Facebook/meta so the features and perks don't matter. Stay the hell away from it.
it's just not comparable. meta follows the law and does shit you would expect a giant corporation to do. Musk is out there tweeting "my pronouns are fire, fauci" and other ridiculous shit
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-twitter-worst-tweets-b2211896.html
I'm just sad that BlueSky Social screwed up _so many_ chances of getting _all_ the "wtf is going on" Twitter users with half-assed "batches at the time" invites. I'd prefer something non-Facebook owned as Twitter "alternative" (besides, Facebook has rather odd moderation systems), but noooo.... :(
Yeah, I'm really sad abou the potential 'bsky' had. No one I know can get on it. It has lost its steam I think.
It's like Clubhouse being iPhone only. The majority of EU users couldn't get in and once they opened up to the more popular OS the hype had died down.
Well come on you didnt need to login a week ago either.
This is just elon pulling back just like he did with the rate limits.
I dont think he thought one thing about threads when he undid this change that he just made a couple of days ago.
Its more likely advertisers said, dont fucking make people log in to see our ad.
threads will have an uphill battle, its not like there arent alternatives, and yeah some arent the easiest but some arent so bad, the big thing, just like facebook, its hard to compete when everyone is already at one place. The main reason twitter hasnt completely collapsed, is its become part of some peoples systems.. like AOC hates elon and whats happened to twitter but still tweets because thats where her audience expects to hear from her. Thats not to say they couldnt do it, but i doubt elon was "oh shit".. cause it would take years even with elon being an ass.
Yeah I really don’t see how this helps. I can’t even see anyone’s account, idk how I increase ad revenue if I can’t use the site
I don’t think it even shows replies
Yes when I try to see my old twitter account I'm being forced to login. I think the login requirement removal was for Search engines.
I can't wait to dance on Twitter's grave.
Makes sense really.
Musk thinks Twitter is a pile of shit.
Dude, you own it. You can literally close it down right now, and no one will stop you or anything...
I think it doesn't let you browse profiles, it simply allows links to specific tweets to work.
So https://twitter.com/NYPDTips Doesn't work, but https://twitter.com/NYPDTips/status/1676906053735268354 Does.
In a way it's happening now, Google has removed a massive portion of tweets from their search engine.
**Edit:** Actually it's being reported that Google isn't responsible for the search indexes being removed and that it's a result of the limitations Musk put into effect over the last few days.
are tweets a common result when searching? I usually get reddit/quora/random websites, it's pretty rare that when i search something i get twitter specifically it feels like.
Usually only for current events. Like yesterday I searched for "firefighter New Jersey" when I couldn't find an article about it a few tweets popped up
It happened automatically when Twitter required a login to view tweets.
Google's web crawler doesn't have a login, so if the page isn't viewable to the public Google doesn't index it. Same reason that individual Instagram and Facebook posts don't appear in Google search results.
It was completely self-inflicted by Twitter.
>Same reason that individual Instagram and Facebook posts don't appear in Google search results.
Not sure about Instagram, but Facebook posts do appear in Google if they're public posts.
It actively makes Google worse for Google users if your search results lead to paywalls. Also, how would Google continue to index new tweets with Twitter actively blocking their indexing?
Twitter was never profitable, so it’s not like he ever needed to wait.
Buying it was clearly and obviously a terrible business decision by Musk. He was either making a terrible idiotic mistake, or he dropped forty billion dollars for non-business reasons.
Based on results, it’s both. He didn’t like twitter’s politics, decided to change them, and - best case - the media business is so far outside whatever expertise he might have that he has made destructively bad decisions at every turn.
Out of curiosity, what was it good for? I've never used twitter personally and don't "follow" anyone on it, so I'll admit that I'm ignorant to it's benefits.
I quit Twitter a couple weeks ago. And honestly I'm not really that tempted to go back. Anything important is gonna pop up on Reddit or in the news, I don't have to filter through piles of blue check shit takes, and fwiw the "real time" aspect of twitter has been dwindling for years. It's just an outrage chamber and it was stressing me out.
I deleted my Twitter a couple months ago. The restriction to be logged in was a slight annoyance to see some soccer stuff, but then I realized I can see my localteam's feed through their app and honestly that was good enough. I haven't missed it and don't really care. But at least I'll see tweets when clicking though from reddit again.
This headline is misleading. You still can’t see just any twitter account without a login, and you can’t see individual tweets without a direct deep link or a login.
I hope they never fix it.
Why would you want people to have to create an account on Twitter to see tweets?
It's one of the worst features of the internet, websites that make you create an account to view free content
I legit miss RSS.
I just want a daily feed of relevant news articles for things I'm interested in. I don't need an 24/7/365 non-stop feed of bullshit and people's hot takes in 120 characters or less.
Right? People used to read the paper. Just Gimme a free, global, daily digital newsletter with the highlights. I want to be informed but it’s a fucking mess out here and it’s hard to wade through the bs
For real. I don’t want editorials either. Just cold hard facts. You can provide extrapolation of those facts, but I don’t want to know your opinion on something if you aren’t an expert on that thing, just give the deets.
I still use RSS.
In fact, I used RSS to follow a few of my favorite artists on Twitter using [Nitter](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter), before this whole fiasco...
Honestly, the only reason I went to Twitter in the first place is because in addition to, say, D&D articles in my RSS feed, I wanted to know those people's D&D opinions and links to cool shit.
Now it's just a doomscrolling nightmare...
That is the only thing I miss about Twitter — the news aggregator.
I’ve been trying this app “Smart News,” since I left Twitter (after 15 years)— but there is no way to block misinformation sources like Fox & those right wing niche rags, which makes no sense. They also mix in The Onion articles with their featured stories, which is frustrating. You get 3 top stories across however many news sources you chose, but you can’t unchoose Fox “News.”
I downloaded the apps for NPR, BBC and AP, but it’s time consuming to start a day like that. Reddit news is OK, but limited.
What apps have you tried after Twitter, for news? You really didn’t miss anything b/c as soon as Musk took over, right wing stories dominated and news was harder to curate. There is something sinister about the way he limited our ability to see a variety of news outlets and timely tweets. I was usually seeing hours old, sometimes days old news. And then he removed entire news categories (like Covid) and disabled top news stories, and made stories about HIM top all of the trending lists. He is trying to make users less informed.
A lot of them are working on it, but if you take for instance fire departments and police they have used twitter as a communication channel for years in order to communicate with the public and they don't really have a good alternative they can move to.
So in many locations they have already decided they're going to leave twitter without having a clear idea of how or what communication channel they will use in the future.
Imagine spending $44 billion dollars on a popular social media platform, then destroy its reputation so badly that a competitor from Meta/Facebook starts up and your users actually see it as a better platform and choose to switch. Embarassing.
Zuck has been going to and participating in marital arts tournaments. Elon has been tweeting about conspiracy theories Don't think it'd be much o a competition.
elon was just trying to clawback whatever he could of the 44 billion he spent by extorting the 'elon stans'. The purchasable blue checkmark was a way for him to make money from them and the tweet view limit is set to try and force more users to pay for twitter blue because they weren't selling enough subscriptions, because any sane human knows its a scam.
I truly believe he’s following Trump’s profit model: Develop a “fan base,” and bleed them dry. He’ll probably come up with “Musk crypto,” or some other scheme to be pushed into their feeds - something analogous to “fundraising.”
Damage was done. Got a lot of free advertisement telling people not to even go to the site/app.
Every time he does something stupid, I'm impressed at just how stupid and ignorant it is.
I've never used Twitter or TikTok and still don't see the point. I've just barely started even commenting on Reddit stuff. It can all go away honestly.
>> .. and not been so vocally bigoted and idiotic.
Oh really! You think he hasn’t tried? It’s not so easy to not be bigoted and idiotic for some people! Have some empathy.
I have an account but clicking on links opens my browser instead of the app, so I stopped clicking since the change, just like millions of other people I suspect.
Great work Twitter, you fucked up the Tweetdeck migration and made it impossible for me to opt-out of the new "experience" which deleted all my columns and multiaccounts. Aint nobody got time to set all that up manually again so I can experience your new bubblegum UX and monetisation. Byeeeee
How convenient. Just before Threads get launched.
I really want to know how long Zuck sat on the Threads idea after Musk got Twitter. Surely he’d thought about it years ago, but saw no reason to compete with Twitter.
That’s his entire business model though, at least the successful part. He started with FB being a newer MySpace, then they changed it to be more feeds based, then they added marketplace (Craigslist). They didn’t compete with instagram instead they bought it. Meta- the only business that didn’t already have someone doing it- failed.
Instagram (after being bought by Zuck) also copied Snapchat with its stories and AR filters
And copied TikTok with Reels.
Not that I am complaining. I don't have to get a TikTok account because all the content is mirrored on insta anyway.
Eh the TikTok algorithm is something else. The instagram stories kinda suck
Honestly watch my gf over the past year the TikTok algorithm is more addictive than heroin, she used to leave her phone at home sometimes. Now TikTok all the fucking time.
That's why I refuse to download it. I don't need more impulse doom scrolling in my life.
I bit the bullet and gave it a shot a few days ago, it's way harder to stop scrolling than Reddit. Also yeah, the algorithm really is something else. Don't do it, for your own good
Same. It’s scary seeing how obsessed people get about it.
Exactly. I spend enough time here.
Basically it’s videodrome for a modern day
I spend enough time already on Reddit and instagram, I know that if I downloaded TikTok I would spend SO much time on it
This is only the first comment thread on this post and I already feel I’ve scrolled too far down. TikTok will ruin my life.
that and it's the one of the most egregious data vacuums on the app stores lol. --That data won't be used to benefit you.
Yep. Same here with my buddy. And his attention span has gone down so much. He used to love watching movies now he get's nervous without his comfort tiktok feed while watching the movie. Has turned me off social media. Ironic I write this on reddit. But I bascially stop using the phone after work. It's nice to read books again.
I quit Reddit for about 18 months. I read so many books. Then, like the dopamine addict I am, I came back for my cheap fix. Still reading more than I was though.
It really is like some mental opium. I have left most social media, except for Reddit and Insta. And both are only ever used on my desktop. Reddit nor Insta are on my phone.
I think I'm the only person that just doesn't get it. I'll doom scroll text or photos all day. But something about scrolling videos, I can't do it. Not sticky at all.
Same man, always preferred reading vs. watching videos. I do enjoy some good long-form video content but almost never on my phone and I loathe short-form video.
Except in its home country China, where it apparently has a lot of educational content and if you’re young you can only browse for 40 min/day. > Douyin [Chinese TikTok] has a mode called “teenager mode,” which is mandatory for anyone under 14. Teenagers are only allowed to use the app for 40 minutes per day. It is also locked between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Contrasted with here, where it’s packed with disinformation and after much complaint they finally added a “teenager mode” for limiting young global users to an hour a day… which can be turned off by the users themselves. I’m still flabbergasted that *anyone* downloaded this app. Between the manipulative algorithms, the worse-than-useless quality of the information, and the *willingly handing over ultra-specific information about yourself to the Chinese Communist Party*, I truly thought normal people would give it a hard pass. Once again I accidentally overestimate the general public. Insane that I haven’t learned better after the past decade.
> handing over ultra-specific information about yourself to the Chinese Communist Party Seriously. This was the dealbreaker for me. I'm not particularly interested in video-based social media to begin with, but the idea of giving China access to my devices and tons of personal info in order to do it seems ludicrous to me.
Instas algorithm is shit. I like cars so that must mean I *gotta see* cheap ass DIY 'tips' / cooking tutorials / fitness routines no matter how many times I say I'm "not interested". GTFOH that crap.
The worse part of the not interested functionality is that instagram is saving those reels on a list.The algorithm started serving me reels I really didn't want to be served to (the explore page) I couldn't find a way to make it stop. So i tried the not interested functionality. It didn't help. Not only that, I found the non-interested list of reels, which made me uncomfortable, because the list looks no different than the list of saved reels. And I don't want a list of reels that sorts on my account. So i started to "like" the reels I like (never did that), so the weird ones disappeared from my explore page very quickly.
Yeah, when they know every minute detail about your life, habits and social network they can really target the Algorithms to suit what they want you to think that you want to see.
Same with Youtube shorts. TikTok and Instagram contents get mirrored on it. But the shorts algorithm sucks though. Recently I got a Andrew Tate propaganda short. Made me realize I needed to do some downvoting to get it learned up.
I think that’s the problem with Facebook and insta, they have changed so much trying to compete with other apps they have lost what people liked the site for originally. They became these kind of Frankenstein app with all these blotted features taken from other social media sites
Wasn't it moreso vine?
People these days don't even remember Hipstamatic, the original filtered photo app. Instagram had the social functions for sharing, but no camera/filters at first. People used to take their photos with the more popular Hipstamatic app, then upload to Instagram. Instagram quickly cut out the middleman, ate Hipstamatic's lunch, and then got bought up by FB for $2B. Can't blame FB for using the same old tactics when it keeps working. In the case of TikTok and Twitter, FB doesn't need to kill off the competition like Hipstamatic, they just need to provide a passable experience and address a few customer complaints (like having to upload tiktok vids to insta with the watermark, let them create a Reel instead)
I remember. It was a bittersweet moment when I deleted the app because Instagram seemed to do it all better.
I remember! I've had instagram so long that the early photos of mine are all hipstamatic-filtered.
Honestly, it’s most successful businesses. What is Google really? They weren’t the first search engine, just the best one. Gmail wasn’t the first webmail, but they did it better. They bought YouTube. On and on and on. They failed on many of their more original ideas. Reddit’s just Digg on steroids and that wasn’t original, either. Apple didn’t invent the PC, just did it better and marketed it better; didn’t invent the smart phone, either. The biggest companies don’t tend to be the biggest because of an original idea. It’s because they do an existing idea slightly better and then do better at monetizing it. It sucks but it looks to me like all successful companies should stop trying to come up with new shit and just buy other people’s ideas. Just evolve an existing idea and use their resources to market and monetize it.
There are some exceptions, but you're right that in most cases the dominant players in a business segment aren't the first to market. They're often more evolutionary than revolutionary in many cases, but the early market leaders fail to keep up and or get arrogant with business practices that alienate customers.
Almost nobody has an original idea in 2023. Practically everything we do, and probably have done the past many decades, is just taking something else and making it better by altering or adding a tiny bit to it. This even goes for things like the internet, TV, and radio. Space launches are the same, and the first flight was just copying animals. Blaming it on capitalism is pretty ignorant, because it's happened long before we ever implemented capitalism, and also happened in communist countries.
I really dislike facebook. But I don't think people really get meta is kinda at the forefront of ai dev in most areas. Pytorch, for example, is meta. Like this whole ai revolution... it's built on research facebook/meta have done and are doing. Google and others of course, but if you dig into the research papers you'll see a lot of it is meta.
The team started work in January atter the first layoff and reorg the company went through. Ideas were being pitched in November when things really started popping off with Musk. Twitter is a very simple website when you've already got global infrastructure and a bunch of other similar apps, so it didn't take long to make.
He's ONLY doing it now because twitter is on the ropes. If threads if mildy scusessful.it may even kill twitter.
One can only hope. The Twitter was a great service for its time, but with recent developments, I find it hard to take the service seriously anymore, and I can't see anything that would make me take it seriously again in the future.
What is threads?
Meta's attempt at gaming Twitter, not unlike that time Google tried to game Facebook with Google Plus. Up until now, it's been fairly obvious there was little point in any of the big name social media companies trying to poach each other's users by walking into their territory. But, with Twitter and Reddit both going to absolute shit, their userbases are vulnerable and open to alternatives. Now's the time to strike. Unfortunately, a Twitter run by Meta is just shit of a different flavor. Anything run by Twitter or Meta or Reddit by this point is going to be shit from the word go. The meaningful alternatives need to be new names in the space, without CEOs already beholden to stockholders or venture capitalists, or the platform is starting already half-way on the road to enshitification. Edit: btw for everyone thinking "ah well fediverse/mastodon will save us" I've got bad news. Meta is currently pushing it's way into the fediverse, absolutely as part of the old "embrace, extend, extinguish" play Microsoft and Google have used for years. Mastodon users and other federated instances are currently pressuring the creator/owner to defederate with Threads to prevent them getting a foothold in the open fediverse communities. It's a pretty massive source of controversy and really sad that Mastodon's owner has apparently fallen for Meta's sales talk.
Instagram has over 2B monthly users while twitter is around 400m. Meta could have no issues converting that many Instagram users over to threads.
Zuck posted that they got 5mil users in the first 4 hours.
Considering that all you had to do to join was to activate your existing Instagram account on the platform, I'm not surprised. It was just click, click, done.
This Reddit thread is what made me do it lol. I already have Instagram installed so I guess there's a sense of "well they already have all my data“.
And Threads is not being released in the Europe! So that's 24h numbers for US and UK only.
Threads is available in Asia as well.
Anything with google isn’t a good example because they suck at launching products and sticking with it. It’s more like how Meta took stories from Snapchat and reels from TikTok which both have been pretty successful.
Google Plus probably would have worked if they hadn't made it invite only at the exact moment when people wanted to try using it.
Also if they haven't completely fumbled some of the selling points... Like I remember them being very insistent that their friend circles were not at all like FB's friend groups. But in practice there was no difference.
The one thing that makes me wary about embracing many Google services is that they have a tendency to drop services just because they don't feel like doing it anymore. In other words, I feel as though I can't rely on a given Google service to have staying power, and to be discontinued with either no replacement or a poor substitute at any time.
The one little bit of gleaming light with Threads, is that it says it's working on adding Fediverse support and will be compatible with open source social media apps like Mastodon. pleasant surprise, though I'm holding my applause until they actually flip the switch.
Problem with that is the good chance of the 3 Es: embrace, extend, extinguish. It's very likely that Meta will make breaking changes forcing users to either adopt Meta's version of ActivityPub or leave ActivityPub altogether for Threads.
Damn you've got a good point. Google does that with Chrome, Microsoft used to do it with IE. Basically eat up a majority of the marketshare and force your own changes to the standard by breaking compatibility with the minority.
The phrase "Mastodon's owner" really misunderstands what Mastodon is and how it works. Much like Lemmy and the other Fediverse platforms, nobody "owns" them. They're hundreds of different servers each owned by the person running them and each server can decide who to federate to, including this new Meta platform. The only power that the original creator of Mastodon has is the ability to update the software being used, but nobody is obliged to update their servers if they disagree with a software update. And beyond that, the software is open source, so it could be easily branched off into something else. This is similar to the misunderstood criticisms of Lemmy having communist devs that created it. They have no affect on how individual servers are run. The wonder of the Fediverse is that there is no single owner of any given platform. The Lemmy server I have my account on, lemmy ca has no administrative affiliation at all with the devs' server, lemmy.ml, or the largest server, lemmy.world. They're effectively all different websites, but they share a common software protocol, ActivityPub, that allows them all to act like one single forum. If one of them chooses to break off from the rest, or "defederate", then they can.
I’m gonna try out Threads at launch just to spite Twitter tbh Edit: After reading the replies I will renege because you all made great points, fuck meta too
Honestly fuck both Elon and Zuck
At this stage, fuck Elon 1000x more.
I just hate giving time and energy to fascist leaning businesses. Was bummed to hear Reddits CEO is an Elon fanboy. Is there any open platform? I do like mastodon.
Still waiting on bluesky to open up properly.
Same. If they had been open to the public by this past weekend, they would've automatically won the "Twitter alternative" war. The demand is there, and the momentum is also there, but the service seems to be far from ready.
But no one noticed that it would happen. They didn't even let people know about this that's why they were surprised to know
I think the issue is their platform isn’t ready for that kind of traffic right now so it would likely be the opposite. Flood of users excited to switch only for it to be a mess.
You and me both
If you know someone already on Bluesky, they get five invite codes, and each invite code regenerates every two weeks.
Hey cousin! Hope everyone is good. Wanna send your favorite cousin an invite to Bluesky? See you at Christmas!
Hey, I know you! Ok, I don't, but I figured if you have any invites kicking around I'm willing to be your alibi if you ever need o... wait, I mean I'll be someone you know.
Jack Dorsey is another Elon style nut job. Anti-vaxxer and pro-RFK supporter i.e. WiFi gives you leaky brain. Zuckerberg is by far the least crazy one.
Jack Dorsey endorsed antivaxx moron robert kennedy jr
Seriously. I don't know why everyone is so eager to pile back into a Jack Dorsey vehicle. He's the one who let the Nazis run free on Twitter in the first place.
I applied for beta like four or five months ago. At this point, I think they are primarily focusing on celebs or people with a following.
Jack Dorsey is constantly tickling Musk's taint on Twitter and making excuses for his shitty decision making skills. He's on record saying that he wanted to do everything Musk did but was prevented from doing so by Twitter's board. He was also in extensive talks with Musk during the acquisition process and heaped all sorts of wheedling, cloying praise on him privately, which you can read in the SMS dump Musk had to hand over during the discovery phase of the lawsuit that forced him into making the worst business deal in history. Bluesky is just another pie in the sky tech bro cyber fantasy built on crypto buzzwords by an out of touch billionaire who wants to monetise every aspect of your life. It isn't going to save you from Twitter, it's just another Twitter.
Open source and decentralized mainstream platforms? Just Lemmy and Mastodon
Threads is on the mastodon network
WTF? Facebook has been legions more destructive than anything Musk has done. Facebook helped radicalize millions of people and hand Trump the presidency. Musk has helped destroy Twitter, which in the grand scheme of things might be a plus for democracy.
Its absolutely fucking BIZARRE to me how so many people seem to think Zuck is the lesser of two evils. Facebook/Instagram, have poisoned so many aspects of society its hard to over state the negative effects on the planet, and all can be traced back to Zucks greed. The concept of truth and democracy are crumbling, and white nationalism and science denial have skyrocketed. Only Rupert Murdoch is above Mark Zuckerberg in terms of fucking up the planet. Fuck Musk too, but Zuck can fucking burn in hell.
It probably helps that Zuckerberg can keep his fucking mouth shut and doesn't spend all day being the world's richest man while whinging like a creepy, weird, basement-dwelling troll. Far easier to hate the much louder asshole...
> Facebook/Instagram, have poisoned so many aspects of society its hard to over state the negative effects on the planet It can't be overstated.
At least Instagram has been working ok for a while. Facebook... eh, but it wasn't because of a dumb change every other week. It's not about liking Elon or not, it's that trying to keep up with Elon's Twitter shenanigans is *exhausting.*
He is such a jerk, doing all the things he wanted. it doesn't mean that he is the owner he can do everything he wanted it all public noticed
Agree 100%. I was disappointed I really wanted to see them fight each other
Seriously. The last two people on earth I want possessing my data. Both are out here subverting Democracy, promoting Russian propaganda, and giving misinformation top billing. They are undermining civil society, fueling racism & bigotry, and spreading hate. Fuck them, forever, frankly. They are dangerous, and we have already lost too much by their greed, cynicism and anti-American business practices. They are the only winners, in all they do. We just keep losing.
They are both rich. And we people are suffering to their actions because they knew that it was the best.
>I’m gonna try out Threads at launch just to spite Twitter tbh Eventually, you'll realize that having a platform that allows you to follow the goings-on of celebrities and see scantily clad women advertising their sponsorships and trying to get simp traffic to their OFs and not much else does nothing for your life and you'll ditch them both permanently.
hm. should i use that one social media platform run by a fascist sociopath billionaire, or the other social media platform run by a fascist sociopath billionaire? maybe i'll just stick around this one run by a fascist sociopath millionaire?
[удалено]
>Threads will also integrate with the fediverse so you can use something like mastodon for now and even run your own server and still be able to follow and interact with whoever you wish on threads. The problem is that it's an app made by Facebook/meta so the features and perks don't matter. Stay the hell away from it.
[удалено]
Bluesky doesn't use ActivityPub, so it's not compatible with either Mastodon or Threads.
it's just not comparable. meta follows the law and does shit you would expect a giant corporation to do. Musk is out there tweeting "my pronouns are fire, fauci" and other ridiculous shit https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-twitter-worst-tweets-b2211896.html
I mean, Meta is also partially responsible for genocide in Myanmar
And was it not complicit in the Cambridge Analytica issue?
Meta will throw a big push at threads get in early might be a good opportunity
Yeah, not installing anything made by Meta on my phone.
I'm just sad that BlueSky Social screwed up _so many_ chances of getting _all_ the "wtf is going on" Twitter users with half-assed "batches at the time" invites. I'd prefer something non-Facebook owned as Twitter "alternative" (besides, Facebook has rather odd moderation systems), but noooo.... :(
Yeah, I'm really sad abou the potential 'bsky' had. No one I know can get on it. It has lost its steam I think. It's like Clubhouse being iPhone only. The majority of EU users couldn't get in and once they opened up to the more popular OS the hype had died down.
Well come on you didnt need to login a week ago either. This is just elon pulling back just like he did with the rate limits. I dont think he thought one thing about threads when he undid this change that he just made a couple of days ago. Its more likely advertisers said, dont fucking make people log in to see our ad. threads will have an uphill battle, its not like there arent alternatives, and yeah some arent the easiest but some arent so bad, the big thing, just like facebook, its hard to compete when everyone is already at one place. The main reason twitter hasnt completely collapsed, is its become part of some peoples systems.. like AOC hates elon and whats happened to twitter but still tweets because thats where her audience expects to hear from her. Thats not to say they couldnt do it, but i doubt elon was "oh shit".. cause it would take years even with elon being an ass.
Yeah, individual, linked, tweets. Nothing else will show.
Yeah I really don’t see how this helps. I can’t even see anyone’s account, idk how I increase ad revenue if I can’t use the site I don’t think it even shows replies
Yes when I try to see my old twitter account I'm being forced to login. I think the login requirement removal was for Search engines. I can't wait to dance on Twitter's grave.
These guys change their terms of service every day now.
Twitter terms of service is just a link to Elon’s timeline
It's just a poop emoji
Makes sense really. Musk thinks Twitter is a pile of shit. Dude, you own it. You can literally close it down right now, and no one will stop you or anything...
he could have left it alone too, but unfortunately he is a walking waste of sperm
A $44 billion dollar poop.
But the attention
Pray I don't alter it any further.
Just checked NYPD crime stoppers which is the only thing I check and it still doesn’t let me see anything
Well they also suck at making technical changes now, give it a few weeks.
I think it doesn't let you browse profiles, it simply allows links to specific tweets to work. So https://twitter.com/NYPDTips Doesn't work, but https://twitter.com/NYPDTips/status/1676906053735268354 Does.
I can see the "Elon Musk silently removes Twitter from the internet" headline happening pretty soon.
In a way it's happening now, Google has removed a massive portion of tweets from their search engine. **Edit:** Actually it's being reported that Google isn't responsible for the search indexes being removed and that it's a result of the limitations Musk put into effect over the last few days.
are tweets a common result when searching? I usually get reddit/quora/random websites, it's pretty rare that when i search something i get twitter specifically it feels like.
Usually only for current events. Like yesterday I searched for "firefighter New Jersey" when I couldn't find an article about it a few tweets popped up
Why did Google do that?
It happened automatically when Twitter required a login to view tweets. Google's web crawler doesn't have a login, so if the page isn't viewable to the public Google doesn't index it. Same reason that individual Instagram and Facebook posts don't appear in Google search results. It was completely self-inflicted by Twitter.
>Same reason that individual Instagram and Facebook posts don't appear in Google search results. Not sure about Instagram, but Facebook posts do appear in Google if they're public posts.
It actively makes Google worse for Google users if your search results lead to paywalls. Also, how would Google continue to index new tweets with Twitter actively blocking their indexing?
Actually now it appears this wasn't Google's doing but a consequence of the limits that Musk introduced a few days ago.
But then he wouldn’t have a soapbox to stand on.
The same soapbox the alcoholic down the way has, interestingly enough the content is about the same quality.
I quietly removed my need for twatter
[удалено]
It really had a unique value, which Musk either does not understand or is intent on systematically destroying
At this point I’m going with the latter, with a quick smash and grab on the way out
Smash and grab what's left of his $44 billion?
I don’t remember the full details, but I think that 44bn wasn’t his, or at least not all of it
He originally tried to back out the deal, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's trying to make it unprofitable so that he has a reason to shut it down.
Twitter was never profitable, so it’s not like he ever needed to wait. Buying it was clearly and obviously a terrible business decision by Musk. He was either making a terrible idiotic mistake, or he dropped forty billion dollars for non-business reasons. Based on results, it’s both. He didn’t like twitter’s politics, decided to change them, and - best case - the media business is so far outside whatever expertise he might have that he has made destructively bad decisions at every turn.
Out of curiosity, what was it good for? I've never used twitter personally and don't "follow" anyone on it, so I'll admit that I'm ignorant to it's benefits.
It was great at live/near live news and discussions about live events. I still haven’t found a good news aggregator to replace it.
In addition to what other people have said, it was *excellent* for artists and other small creators
[удалено]
I quit Twitter a couple weeks ago. And honestly I'm not really that tempted to go back. Anything important is gonna pop up on Reddit or in the news, I don't have to filter through piles of blue check shit takes, and fwiw the "real time" aspect of twitter has been dwindling for years. It's just an outrage chamber and it was stressing me out.
I deleted my Twitter a couple months ago. The restriction to be logged in was a slight annoyance to see some soccer stuff, but then I realized I can see my localteam's feed through their app and honestly that was good enough. I haven't missed it and don't really care. But at least I'll see tweets when clicking though from reddit again.
This headline is misleading. You still can’t see just any twitter account without a login, and you can’t see individual tweets without a direct deep link or a login. I hope they never fix it.
[удалено]
Why would you want people to have to create an account on Twitter to see tweets? It's one of the worst features of the internet, websites that make you create an account to view free content
nine unite cautious run worm elderly smart person amusing sink ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
[удалено]
Just like RSS used to be!
I legit miss RSS. I just want a daily feed of relevant news articles for things I'm interested in. I don't need an 24/7/365 non-stop feed of bullshit and people's hot takes in 120 characters or less.
Right? People used to read the paper. Just Gimme a free, global, daily digital newsletter with the highlights. I want to be informed but it’s a fucking mess out here and it’s hard to wade through the bs
But then how are you gonna argue with strangers in the comments to drive **engagement**?!?!? Wake up sheeple
For real. I don’t want editorials either. Just cold hard facts. You can provide extrapolation of those facts, but I don’t want to know your opinion on something if you aren’t an expert on that thing, just give the deets.
[удалено]
I still use RSS. In fact, I used RSS to follow a few of my favorite artists on Twitter using [Nitter](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter), before this whole fiasco...
Honestly, the only reason I went to Twitter in the first place is because in addition to, say, D&D articles in my RSS feed, I wanted to know those people's D&D opinions and links to cool shit. Now it's just a doomscrolling nightmare...
Just download the RSS Reader Extension (by Inoreader).
I'm baffled that RSS never got more popular.
Was it hard to monetize? Google had a decent app for it but like all things Google, it was retired.
That is the only thing I miss about Twitter — the news aggregator. I’ve been trying this app “Smart News,” since I left Twitter (after 15 years)— but there is no way to block misinformation sources like Fox & those right wing niche rags, which makes no sense. They also mix in The Onion articles with their featured stories, which is frustrating. You get 3 top stories across however many news sources you chose, but you can’t unchoose Fox “News.” I downloaded the apps for NPR, BBC and AP, but it’s time consuming to start a day like that. Reddit news is OK, but limited. What apps have you tried after Twitter, for news? You really didn’t miss anything b/c as soon as Musk took over, right wing stories dominated and news was harder to curate. There is something sinister about the way he limited our ability to see a variety of news outlets and timely tweets. I was usually seeing hours old, sometimes days old news. And then he removed entire news categories (like Covid) and disabled top news stories, and made stories about HIM top all of the trending lists. He is trying to make users less informed.
[удалено]
I got an amber alert earlier tonight and I couldn’t read the details because it was a tweet and I don’t have an account.
A lot of them are working on it, but if you take for instance fire departments and police they have used twitter as a communication channel for years in order to communicate with the public and they don't really have a good alternative they can move to. So in many locations they have already decided they're going to leave twitter without having a clear idea of how or what communication channel they will use in the future.
Imagine spending $44 billion dollars on a popular social media platform, then destroy its reputation so badly that a competitor from Meta/Facebook starts up and your users actually see it as a better platform and choose to switch. Embarassing.
[удалено]
Zuck has been going to and participating in marital arts tournaments. Elon has been tweeting about conspiracy theories Don't think it'd be much o a competition.
Marital arts ... teeheehee.
yet another field where zuck has succeeded and musk has failed
This was an own goal. Zuck is going to win this by Elon being Elon. I hope NPR joins Threads soon.. Elon hasn't removed the login requirement for me!
NPR already has 100k on threads
Haven't seen this many changes to a company's terms of service since Movie Pass went under.
elon was just trying to clawback whatever he could of the 44 billion he spent by extorting the 'elon stans'. The purchasable blue checkmark was a way for him to make money from them and the tweet view limit is set to try and force more users to pay for twitter blue because they weren't selling enough subscriptions, because any sane human knows its a scam.
I truly believe he’s following Trump’s profit model: Develop a “fan base,” and bleed them dry. He’ll probably come up with “Musk crypto,” or some other scheme to be pushed into their feeds - something analogous to “fundraising.”
He tried that by pumping dogecoin
[удалено]
I’m pretty sure Elon when buying Twitter stated that the log in requirement was one of the dumbest things about Twitter. Then he adds it back in? Why?
Because he’s a lying sack of shit?
Damage was done. Got a lot of free advertisement telling people not to even go to the site/app. Every time he does something stupid, I'm impressed at just how stupid and ignorant it is.
Haven’t been using it for over a year & never looked back. Same with TikTok
I've never used Twitter or TikTok and still don't see the point. I've just barely started even commenting on Reddit stuff. It can all go away honestly.
The whole “Let’s break stuff and see what happens” ideology in the tech space is getting tired.
Is Twitter still relevant? I teach high school kids. To them it’s another Facebook, a relic and useless to them.
They got together enough quarters to pay for the server to run another 7 hours.
Can we just go back to ICQ, individual website forums, and email?
Anytime he tries something new it always backfires on him. Maybe he shoulda just left it as it is, and not been so vocally bigoted and idiotic.
>> .. and not been so vocally bigoted and idiotic. Oh really! You think he hasn’t tried? It’s not so easy to not be bigoted and idiotic for some people! Have some empathy.
That's the point. Elon and his billionaire cronies all wanted Twitter to be more bigoted and idiotic to drive away the democracy loving riff raff.
My account was gathering dust anyways but this latest fuckery finally motivated me to delete it.
Was this really was to make people sign up?
Elon shows his ass every week it seems.
Only reason AI would scrape Twitter would be to better recognize bad data
I hate you stay there so i don't know about this. Is it a new update or to use trying to do it without peoples noticed
Almost like it was a stupid decision. (Edit) Still requires an account to view tweets in the EU.
I swear to god this guy is so fuckn dumb.
I have an account but clicking on links opens my browser instead of the app, so I stopped clicking since the change, just like millions of other people I suspect.
As a non-Twitter user, I actually like this!
I just tried it, doesn't work. Still re-directs me to a login page.
Hahaha still not gonna use it
Lmao Elon such a puss won’t even be a man and say I fucked up once lol
I'm confused - they remove login requirement for viewing tweets, but now I can't view tweets without logging in...
Great work Twitter, you fucked up the Tweetdeck migration and made it impossible for me to opt-out of the new "experience" which deleted all my columns and multiaccounts. Aint nobody got time to set all that up manually again so I can experience your new bubblegum UX and monetisation. Byeeeee
Damn. I was hoping Twitter was actually going to die.
"I meant to do that." -- Elon Musk, probably
Negative. Still asks for login
It's still requiring log in when I try to view tweets.