For myself at least, Twitter has been instrumental in my career, hobbies and friendships. But now, seeing it flounder, and having people shard off to mastadon, bsky, and siloed instances of [insert next federative platform], makes me so very sad. It feels like I’ve lost a key part of my social “surface area”. Things change, I know. What hurts though is that this didn’t need to happen. He ruined something that was, within margins, doing ~alright. It had massive public and social value for many individuals and institutions. With time, of course, we’ll forget he butchered it to death, but for now.. I’m pissed off at this childish fool and all those who enabled him.
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I wonder how alike that is to how people felt when their local bowling alleys, pool halls, etc became less populated and closed down.
I can assure you that, in middle America, pool halls and bowling alleys are still hoppin' nightlife.
On that note, even here in SF the Fillmore Pool Hall is a very fun place to spend some time, and BYO B or pizza is cheap. One thing I miss about life in upstate NY was hitting the old-school bowling alley with score displays that looked like the screens from Alien, though.
Look, Twitter's death sentence was signed when Musk bought it. Profit was always <<< interest payments of the money he borrowed for the acquisition. Twitter will die and this is a last hope to turn it into something else that might be more profitable to ensure it stays afloat for a bit longer.
I just don't really understand why nobody is angry at the old Twitter board for signing the deal in the first place. Yes, Musk was trolling and yes, they have apparently an obligation towards their shareholders to get a good deal for the invested money. But still, the investors in Twitter valued money first and "Twitter's role as global message board" had a lower priority.
> I just don't really understand why nobody is angry at the old Twitter board for signing the deal in the first place.
Because when some idiot billionaire gives you a premium on an already overinflated stock you sign that deal or you get sued into oblivion by the institutional investors who will use their giant pile of money to bury you for letting the deal of the decade get away.
Social platforms come and go. Back then, people gained "views" and "followers" on IRC and blogs. Some pages I follow on FB are dying out because their viewers stop coming on FB and donating. Twitter is next, then it will be Instagram...
Pages on FB are dying because Meta been milking it's content creators for decade. Your content of Facebook is only have reach if you pay for it.
I felt the same when irc was killed (for the people I talked with anyway) by twitter.
Things change. You'll get over it.
Oh I know I'll get over it, as with all things. Still in that grieving place tho :)
I never really thought of it this way. Twitter is a big part of how I stay connected to a certain valuable Circle of friends. It'd be a big loss for me if it went away or became something else.
Why are you angry at this specific individual, and not the system which enables him? I don't think you can celebrate private ownership and hierarchy of command on one hand and despise when it goes wrong without blaming the unnecessary concepts of private ownership and hierarchy of command.
If we only get angry at this one guy, we usher in the next set of his replacements
I’m sorry but that seems like a very fragile system to me - waiting and hoping the next commanders will have a sounder mind and heart, or expecting their wisdom to be beyond our comprehension
> unnecessary concepts of private ownership and hierarchy of command
Claiming that these things are “unnecessary concepts” is a significantly more extreme position than you make it seem. What are the alternatives that actually work?
see the entire field of anarchism for instance, Francis Ford Coppola even has a new movie coming out that draws directly from the works of David Graeber and Wengrow who have written on your kind of anarchy101 level question. I recommend trying wengrow and graeber’s Dawn of Everything or their academic papers. Understood it’s extreme to you. The writing’s there if you have the want to see it.
“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
However besides just sharing that Graeber and Wengrow have documented realities in human history that explored answers to your question (and post discovery of agriculture, and scaled beyond dunbar's number), I'll also share this alternative response from Graeber's earlier works that predate a lot of the really exciting anthro and archaeological discoveries in recent years (the cutting edge research covered in their last book and papers):
“Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom—that the current economic and political system is the only possible one—the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone’s blueprint? It’s not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called “capitalism,” figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin.”
Cool theorizing; but just one example of a current society that has flourished using no private ownership, please?
No current societies are anarchist no. See ya
Typical!
So you have zero evidence (aka much stronger true believer) of what you say working and you want to restructure the world based on fairy tales spun by the likes of David Graeber?
See ya.
Twitter in a system without private ownership: you stay up late in your attic with a flashlight, writing your tweets on a smuggled typewriter. The next day you hand them over to a high-ranking colleague at work who has access to the copier, whom (you hope) you can trust with your life.
Come now, thats unfair and unrealistic. Likely, you get thrown in a gulag for not possessing the license to tweet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union
Yep, this would never happen in a system without private ownership.
As such a system would never give rise to Twitter in the first place (hence problem solved).
Or such a system will forever reside in the Platonic ideal universe forever avoiding any real-world flaws or criticism.
citation needed
maybe you can disclaimer your post that you have the perspective that “By the time we exhaust Earth, we will be a space faring species.” You have a true believer's faith in the current thing
May be place a disclaimer first you don’t believe in real world evidence?
We are all true believers. I believe in a system that has real-world evidence of working and has some flaws that can be fixed over time.
You are a true believer in a system that has scan real-world evidence of working (but a lot of cool armchair theories) and you believe in throwing an entire system in favor of yours.
Btw, good on you for looking up my post history, you did more evidence-finding work than David Graeber ever did ;)
Not at all, you don’t understand the anarchist position if you say that
> He ruined something that was, within margins, doing ~alright
The company lost an estimated 2 billions by the time Musk bought it, with about 200 million lost per year. It also managed to break GDPR laws, and have some of the largest data breaches.
I understand that some people got value from the platform, but a quick death might be the best for everyone involved.