Slowly, then all at once
How companies finish up trading while insolvent
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.
I have a suspicion I think has a modest chance of coming to be.
Social media as a collectivity (Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Discord, TikTok, etc) is currently somewhere in the “gradually” or “slowly” part of the equation.
TikTok — newer and also protected by an authoritarian capitalist state — is probably safest. Google has something other than YouTube, while Apple actually makes things, so they can be put to one side. How long Elon Musk uses his ability to make profitable things (Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink) to protect Twitter is very much moot.
Musk’s sacking spree at Twitter has been most prominent, but there are huge layoffs happening at Facebook/Meta, which is itself part of a major employee shed across the sector.
Then there’s Facebook/Meta’s market cap over the last year.
Meanwhile, in a move that parallels conservatives leaving Twitter for their own, distinctly echo-chamber-ish platforms (Gettr, Parler, etc) over censorship, lefties are leaving Twitter because they fear having to defend their claims or someone saying hurty words at them.
They’re heading for Mastodon, without really understanding how it works. I mean, the biggest “node” on Mastodon is Gab, and the second biggest is Pawoo, a Japanese outfit notorious for its tolerance of lolicon (a form of Japanese anime child porn).
Truth Social (yes, Donald Trump’s personal social media platform) is also a Mastodon node, although it’s much smaller than Gab or Pawoo (the problem of being a late mover and losing all those lovely network effects).
Mastodon isn’t happy about this, but because it’s clearly run by the kind of naïve dorks we all (rightly) laughed at school, there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
I’ve seen analogies with MySpace’s “slowly-then-all-at-once” slide into irrelevance, or tumblr hitting the self-destruct button by banning porn. However, it may be that people are simply over social media. It’s like yo-yos, or leg-warmers, or arse-antler tattoos, and humanity is about to move onto the next shiny, glittery thing.
Interesting, we'll have to watch this (my)space. I think tumblr was partly killed by the smut exodus, but in part by the latest batches of mentally ill teenagers joining Tik Tok instead. I don't know how filthy Tik Tok is because I am no longer a mentally ill teenager, so have not joined. I do worry that the next shiny thing is going to be Elon Musk planting microchips in our brains and then beaming Rickrolls directly into our heads until everybody agrees to buy a Tesla.
I am an old Ludditte (sp?), but I enjoy getting opinions/insights from people smarter than I am.
To me Twitter (with all its flaws) is another source of information in an increasingly partisan news world.
We choose who we follow (lots of people like Helen on Twitter).
I paid for a subscription to help support it. Hope that Twitter survives.