It is amusing. They are all setting out into the unknown toward to the fringes of the internet, and going to see sights they never imagined.
Tumblr last week announced they were going to allow nudity again on the platform. Probably hoping to reverse the exodus to twitter when they banned such content in 2018.
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.
Tumblr caved to a degree and allows some nudity. With Musk talking about a Creators corner for paid subscribers we might see MyFans and Patreon upset. Tumblr had some great artists who much resented censorship. Apple was mad because some KP arriving on Tumblr so killed the app until Tumblr cleaned out the trash. I might think that all site that allow "free" expression ought to have a pay wall and a credit card on record to keep minors away, or at least make it more difficult.
I think that declaring social media as "over" is rather premature. There's been social media on the internet since at least the mid-90s when there was Usenet, which I think pre-dates the WWW. AOL chat rooms, IRC channels from a similar era. All sorts of websites based on technology like PHPBB.
But where it happens changes. And sometimes that can be due to technological change, but sometimes something else, something weirder that's hard to analyse, in the same way that the hot bar in town can lose that status very quickly and a new bar becomes the hot bar.
It's also replaced a lot of other media. There's a thousand news stories about how awful Facebook is but a lot of people now use Facebook groups in place of a local newspaper. All that journalists ever did was to connect an interesting local story with readers, and people are just writing their own copy now. And it's down to a council ward level, which is what most people care about more than what is happening in the town.
BTW Tech is a weird and diverse thing. I think there are often assumptions of tech being liberal (in the US sense) but many techies are hardcore libertarians who are open to free speech and use for all. Even Mastodon seem to take this view that they want it used, but don't have to agree with everyone who uses it.
This is also entirely possible - I'm just speculating (although it is informed speculation - I've been the corporate lawyer managing investment round after investment round for tech firms that don't manage to hit the sweet spot - or, like the bar you mention, somehow lose it).
I think the libertarians you mention are now definitively outnumbered in Silicon Valley (look at the difference between Peter Thiel and the people who came after him at Paypal, for starters). They may still dominate at Mastodon and Minds, though.
That's an interesting thing you mentioned. It may be that it's going to evolve, from people being able to get a ton of money chucked at them and instead, it becomes more of a paid service. I remember some forums where people had to pay £10/month. I don't think they had investment rounds, so much as just set it up with their own money and let it grow. With today's costs I think it might be able to be £3-4/month.
There's a thing with all companies that as they grow, there is a shift from the job being about delivery, to the job being much more about behaviour. In part this is about PR and brands, that once a company becomes public currency, the media will report on them like they don't when they're a startup. It's also that shareholders generally replace founders, who are mavericks and care about building things and adding value with the sort of dullards who follow herd behaviour. Libertarian weirdos generally don't fit in these places and leave. Which eventually leads to the company dying because it ends up being full of people who are happy living off what was built a decade earlier, spending their days playing political games, or drinking coffee in diversity workshops, rather than building.
I was happy to buy a subscription just to be able to edit (I am a slow, inaccurate, two-fingered typist), but the option doesn't yet seem to be available in the UK.
But most of what appears of my feed is thing retweeted by the people I follow. Even if they have good taste, it still raises the noise to signal ratio.
Mastadon devs being upset about Gab et. al. using thier software is unsurprising but hilarious. Because it's Mastadon working as intended.
The whole point is that is that individual nodes can set their own moderation policies and federate as they choose. It's greatest value was always going to be for those who bucked the censorious groupthink of the majors. That much was the plan. But for some reason these lefty devs imagined that it would be lefties like them getting censored.
In fact the "virtuous" nodes are even more deranged and narrow than the big boys so Mastadon only starts working properly when Gab et. al. start "abusing" it.
The really interesting question is whether these evil dissidents will federate with each other (to counter the network effects that of the big boys) or whether run their own walled gardens with Mastadon as just a convenient piece of software infrastructure. If they do the latter, Elon will eat them for breakfast.
“...it may be that people are simply over social media.”
Lord, hear our prayer.
Would be nice. Thing is, we may then come up with something worse...
Snort❗️
It is amusing. They are all setting out into the unknown toward to the fringes of the internet, and going to see sights they never imagined.
Tumblr last week announced they were going to allow nudity again on the platform. Probably hoping to reverse the exodus to twitter when they banned such content in 2018.
https://staff.tumblr.com/post/699744158019190784/this-is-not-a-drill-our-new-community-guidelines
Edit: Brainfart. Tumblr isn't Meta owned.
Ah, that's interesting - and may even work. Porn is humanity's ID, and seems to find its own level everywhere.
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.
Actual lol.
That’s pretty funny, right there.
Tumblr caved to a degree and allows some nudity. With Musk talking about a Creators corner for paid subscribers we might see MyFans and Patreon upset. Tumblr had some great artists who much resented censorship. Apple was mad because some KP arriving on Tumblr so killed the app until Tumblr cleaned out the trash. I might think that all site that allow "free" expression ought to have a pay wall and a credit card on record to keep minors away, or at least make it more difficult.
Good point about keeping minors out. Setting the social media age at 13 was /deranged/.
I think that declaring social media as "over" is rather premature. There's been social media on the internet since at least the mid-90s when there was Usenet, which I think pre-dates the WWW. AOL chat rooms, IRC channels from a similar era. All sorts of websites based on technology like PHPBB.
But where it happens changes. And sometimes that can be due to technological change, but sometimes something else, something weirder that's hard to analyse, in the same way that the hot bar in town can lose that status very quickly and a new bar becomes the hot bar.
It's also replaced a lot of other media. There's a thousand news stories about how awful Facebook is but a lot of people now use Facebook groups in place of a local newspaper. All that journalists ever did was to connect an interesting local story with readers, and people are just writing their own copy now. And it's down to a council ward level, which is what most people care about more than what is happening in the town.
BTW Tech is a weird and diverse thing. I think there are often assumptions of tech being liberal (in the US sense) but many techies are hardcore libertarians who are open to free speech and use for all. Even Mastodon seem to take this view that they want it used, but don't have to agree with everyone who uses it.
This is also entirely possible - I'm just speculating (although it is informed speculation - I've been the corporate lawyer managing investment round after investment round for tech firms that don't manage to hit the sweet spot - or, like the bar you mention, somehow lose it).
I think the libertarians you mention are now definitively outnumbered in Silicon Valley (look at the difference between Peter Thiel and the people who came after him at Paypal, for starters). They may still dominate at Mastodon and Minds, though.
That's an interesting thing you mentioned. It may be that it's going to evolve, from people being able to get a ton of money chucked at them and instead, it becomes more of a paid service. I remember some forums where people had to pay £10/month. I don't think they had investment rounds, so much as just set it up with their own money and let it grow. With today's costs I think it might be able to be £3-4/month.
There's a thing with all companies that as they grow, there is a shift from the job being about delivery, to the job being much more about behaviour. In part this is about PR and brands, that once a company becomes public currency, the media will report on them like they don't when they're a startup. It's also that shareholders generally replace founders, who are mavericks and care about building things and adding value with the sort of dullards who follow herd behaviour. Libertarian weirdos generally don't fit in these places and leave. Which eventually leads to the company dying because it ends up being full of people who are happy living off what was built a decade earlier, spending their days playing political games, or drinking coffee in diversity workshops, rather than building.
"I think the libertarians you mention are now definitively outnumbered in Silicon Valley "
We are outnumbered, but larger in number than it looks. Because most of us are better at understanding social context than James Damore was.
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.
I was happy to buy a subscription just to be able to edit (I am a slow, inaccurate, two-fingered typist), but the option doesn't yet seem to be available in the UK.
But most of what appears of my feed is thing retweeted by the people I follow. Even if they have good taste, it still raises the noise to signal ratio.
Agree.
But I am sure that as soon as you recognize the noise, you compensate.
And much (like Helen's comments) is original or a furtherance of original thought.
Mastadon devs being upset about Gab et. al. using thier software is unsurprising but hilarious. Because it's Mastadon working as intended.
The whole point is that is that individual nodes can set their own moderation policies and federate as they choose. It's greatest value was always going to be for those who bucked the censorious groupthink of the majors. That much was the plan. But for some reason these lefty devs imagined that it would be lefties like them getting censored.
In fact the "virtuous" nodes are even more deranged and narrow than the big boys so Mastadon only starts working properly when Gab et. al. start "abusing" it.
The really interesting question is whether these evil dissidents will federate with each other (to counter the network effects that of the big boys) or whether run their own walled gardens with Mastadon as just a convenient piece of software infrastructure. If they do the latter, Elon will eat them for breakfast.
The whole thing is ridiculous.