It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.
I’m sure there were a huge swath of people who used Twitter and didn’t care at all about Musk one way or the other.
Then he rebranded and threw his ego and control in everyone’s face. And all the people who like Twitter IN SPITE of Elon were now forced to acknowledge that their Twitter is gone.
Just like over at reddit now, the latest move has alienated the people who really cared about the platform itself. If they rebranded to “Spez’s World”, though, a lot of the people who didn’t give a shit before would suddenly be ready to bail.
Lmao “Spez’s world” will be so funny though
He has so thoroughly ruined Twitter that you can’t help but wonder if that was his goal from the outset.
Narcissists like him would never seek failure intentionally.
It’s just like Michael from The Office. You see he isn’t doing things on purpose to sabotage everyone, but he can’t control it, he needs the attention and the self worship.
Thanks for this analogy, it’s going to help me see the world in a funnier light.
Elon is a narcissistic idiot, but that’s all he is. He bought the same crap his own PR team was peddling a few years ago, figured he didn’t need his PR team because he was so great (according to propaganda they spread), and went on to confidently make idiotic decisions because of course the real life Tony Stark can make no mistakes
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Actually the number of Twitter users increased
Really?!? That’s surprising.
If it’s active users increased I’d be surprised, but if it’s not I wouldn’t be, most people probably don’t delete accounts when they stop using them
It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.
I wonder if previous twitter execs are feeling a bit bad to have sold him twitter to see it destroyed like that.
I mean it certainly proves Elon is an idiot as he used fraud to manipulate the price and got played instead.
But was it worth it to let him destroy Twitter just because he tried to defraud it?
As someone who doesnt use twitter… yes this was totally worth it!
I’d be bummed out but happy I have an unlimited supply of hundred dollar bills to wipe away the tears.
Yeah. I left with the bluetlicker shitstain bump up in every reply. The dumbest people to ever buy a device and learn English that somehow didn’t choke on rocks as a kid…
Just had enough and had to leave
To be honest, for me it absolutely was the rebranding that made me delete the app.
If you said it was the final nail in the coffin, sure. But for that to be the only reason?? Why??
Are you one of those “my brand truck is better than yours because … bowtie” types?
You are jumping into conclusions. See my other answer here https://lemmy.world/comment/2511227
Here are tips for everyone to enjoy Mastodon (thoroughly explained in the sourced article at the bottom):
- Boost posts you like
- Look at user profiles on their original home server
- Search for content on other instances
- Enable the advanced web interface for Mastodon
- Use groups
- Be your own aggregator with RSS
Source: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3701292/6-ways-to-find-better-content-on-mastodon.html
Lemmy would be soaring too if it weren’t for terrible database code allowing for easy ddos.
Hopefully they can fix that issue and the communist communities stop having hissy fits.
At least it’s open for collaboration so people who can or help contribute to fix bugs for them are able to do so. That’s the beauty of open source, anyone can help out.
I find Mastodon very stuffy and boring, is there a way to shake up my feed? I feel like I’m missing something about how the app works.
Subscribe to the hashtags you’re interested in.
I agree… it feels like the Fediverse doesn’t quite have the same algorithms that the single-corporation services have, and I feel it most in the search to broaden the content I see. Hopefully the exploratory element picks up as time goes on!
The Fediverse doesn’t do algorithmic pushing and that’s a feature, not a bug.
The main ways to find new stuff on Mastodon are all actions taken by you, the user:
- Hashtags. Watch and follow hashtags you like. Hashtags are the main way stuff is categorized, and if you use them liberally on your own posts and find others posting to those same tags you can find accounts which align with those interests of yours.
- Home. Check out stuff in the “home” timeline which will be your neighbors on your own Mastodon instance. (In the case of general instances this isn’t so helpful, but in those instances themed around a hobby, subculture, geographical area, etc. you know you have that common ground with your neighbors to start with.)
- Boosts. When you find people and accounts to follow, they boost (reblog/retweet) things they like, you find things to boost, etc. and it all works like a friend introducing you to their other friends, friends of friends, etc. leading to your own circle of friends increasing.
All these are things you do and you have to put a little work in to make them happen, but it’s purely fueled by your own interests and wants instead of the traditional social-media algorithm which does a little aligned-interest stuff but is mostly powered by whoever has money to pay the platform to force them into your timeline. On Twitter or Facebook you get shown what the platform thinks they can get paid by showing you. On the Fediverse the rules of invasive centralized ad-choked personal-data-harvesting social media don’t apply; you get shown what you actually want and request.
It’s different and change can be scary, but when you get used to the idea that things don’t have to work the old way anymore it can end up being a good thing.
If you think about it, this is actually the old way.
If you think about it, this is actually the old way.
I simply haven’t found as many good engaging posts in Mastodon, though, despite all that. It could be simply the challenge of building an interesting feed when you start from zero, but that’s a challenge nonetheless.
Algorithmic identification of novel content is in my mind neither intrinsically sinister nor beneficial; like all things, it’s a tool and the morality comes out of how it is used.
Things like (optional) recommendation tools could be a useful addition to Mastodon to help users find interesting threads. Could be run on a per instance basis.
Thank God it doesn’t
Follow hagstags and accounts you like. Also ask for follow recommendations and introduce yourself, some hosts share introductions to people.
I’ve been trying to stick to Mastodon and ditch Twitter, but honestly, even though I’ve gotten into the habit of using Mastodon every day, it’s pretty hard for me to resist accepting information from Twitter.
It’s ok to get information from places like X/Twitter or Reddit. It’s even fine to have an account. But it’s better to post your OWN material to platforms that best align with your sensibilities.
It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.
Whether its lemmy or mastodon, or kbin that grows, we’re all benefiting. That’s the beauty of federation.
There were stories that Tesla had a team in place to distract Elon any time he showed up to the office, and I absolutely believe that. Now that Elon has Twitter to distract him, I wonder what that team is up to.
Honestly, I joined Twitter begrudgingly in 2015 after ignoring it for years only because I thought it might be easy to keep up with some interesting news before it hit Reddit… and it worked for a while…
Now, I just wonder why I’m still there at all.
I also don’t.see why I might want a mastodon account at this point though… I don’t feel like I need a replacement for something that I never really liked…
Can we have something nice here please? I miss when the internet was nice, and you were allowed to talk to each other about whatever you wanted.
TRON FIGHTS FOR THE USER!
You have pretty skin.
Thank you! I got it off the back off a well fed lady!
Apparently, as a competitor of any major platform you just need to get close to the features your adversary has and wait for that site/service to start the process of enshittification, let’s see if reddit makes more blunders
I feel that reddit is already at this stage. It started feeling more like a half-bombed corporate minefield so I decided to flee the site one week ago. This site feels much more like things should be. You can even browse on a decent site on your phone.
Try Voyager/WefWef from a browser, it improves the UX a lot
Why are people so fucking addicted to Twitter? It’s just people posting a few sentences about shit I see on the Internet already. But what do I know, I’ve gone my entire life without using the stupid shit. Maybe I’m not taking into account how many people want to be internet celebrities with their parroted tweets and recycled jokes. Why is it so hard to make another site where dumbass celebrities can feed 2 lines to the drooling masses?
Twitter culture (depending on what parts of twitter you were on) was really hard to explain. Unless you used it and really knew how to, you don’t really get the benefit from it. Its feed structure combine with post length and algorith meant that it was really easy for you to know what other people were saying about things going on right now (reality shows, football matches etc). It also made searching for news so easy (due to its Trending feature), so you were kept in the loop about things.
The meme culture of Twitter was also very unique. I can say with absolute confidence that Twitter memes were bomb (before Musk ruined it). Way better than any memes I’d come across on Reddit or Lemmy so far.
The only problem is you had to take Twitter in small doses. Stan culture and cyber-bullying culture were real negatives of Twitter. Certain people on that app were unhinged and that went unchecked because of how echo-chambers were set by the algorithm. You really had to check yoursel to make sure you weren’t being corrupted, especially because cyber-bullying was so normalised there (at least in my experience).
I’m there for the artists. A ton of artists share their artwork on Twitter because of the enshittification of deviantART. I am not sure where they will end up now.
It was really good for artists and entertainers (streamers included) to gain a following
Wouldn’t you have to care about nfts though? I feel like I’d rather have their art on a T-shirt.
Fuck spez. Why isn’t he doing more psycho shit like Elon so he can move more people to Lemmy.
Hoping they rename Reddit to Y or some such
Musk trashed Twitter with intent, by design, and on purpose. Elon Musk is worth 95 Billion more now than when he bought Twitter.
The continued forced cognitive dissonance is the grandest example of info_corpo_kabuki i’ve ever seen. It’s all just so fucking dumb.
Elon bought it to trash it so he could have access to Saudi markets for his electric cars and rocket ships. The face he’s a fascist fucking cunt who gets to stick it to liberals where they most liked to exchange news, information and organize online was just a bonus for him.
I don’t buy this, simply because he bought it. He didn’t need to destroy it, could could have just turned it off.
This. He’s on the hook for a relatively small percent of his personal wealth. He has a ton of government contracts, which equate to cash flow. To insulate that cash flow, he needs a loss. He can get that loss by destroying the value of Twitter, which he also artificially inflated by making an insane offer in the first place.
The thing that folks don’t get is that money is different when you have none, some, and a ton. When you have none, you are effectively living moment to moment - when youre out, you spend what you have on your immediate needs, and make it work the rest of the time.
When you have some, which is most of us, you may live paycheck to paycheck, but you can still plan two weeks at a time and may have some long term plans.
Elon musk and others in his bracket could literally burn 99% of their wealth and still have more money than almost anyone else. This level of rich is marked by planning years in advance, and having contingency plans to take advantage of set backs. For example, a market crash for most of us means we lose wealth and still probably never recover it. But for Elon musk, a market crash is just a fire sale on stock. He can sell at a loss for tax benefit, or he can buy up stuff at step discounts. The benefit of wealth is that ever situation can make you more money.
Honestly, I think he did what worked for him before. He came in like a tornado, shook things up, and then tried to fall back on the people he depends on. Those people weren’t there because they thought he was ruining what they built (former twitter guy and the other peeps). Also, he was forced to buy at a higher price so he’s constantly desperate which he isn’t used to, so he’s acting from a different place. Now he’s trying to pick up the pieces from a loud fail that he also isn’t used to with no PR, because he’s now convinced that the odds are always in his favor even when they’re are going to be a percentage of fails 100% of the time. He’s fucked up basically and hasn’t in awhile, and has no one to blame so he’s imploding.
Yes thank you, this is what’s happening for sure. He’s so immature and petty and he can’t hide it.
