• BURN@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Ad revenue is down (at least) 50% and they just keep making decisions that kick people off their platform.

    I’m pretty sure Twitter advertising and Reddit advertising are in a race to the bottom to see who’s going to have to pay companies to put ads on their site first.

    It’s insane to watch this happen. I remember watching the rise of Twitter as a kid and it becoming ubiquitous with social media, only to see it crash down this quickly.

    I’m speculating, but I’d guess a lot of functionality is being limited because they don’t have dev staff to maintain it, as well as trying to cut server costs as much as possible. I’d honestly be surprised if musk was making these decisions because he thinks it’s good for the health of the platform. There has to be some ulterior motive for it.

    • deong@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It is unfathomable to me how Reddit isn’t profitable.

      Facebook makes a mint by telling advertisers, “trust us, we’ll get your ads in front of people who might buy your product based on a lot of inference around their fairly generic profile data plus some tracking cookies”. One guy should be able to sell a billion dollars worth of ads on Reddit. Just put up a form that says, “which subreddit do you want to advertise in?” and “what’s your credit card number?”. That’s it. They have like 10,000 completely segmented markets just sitting there full of hundreds of millions of people who have self-selected to be members of those communities.

      We spend hundreds of billions of dollars collectively trying to figure out which google search terms might find us a few more solid leads. Reddit has an amazing list of them for every company in the entire world. How in the everloving fuck have they managed to blindly bumble around for two decades without ever falling into the giant pile of money in front of them?

      • Lydia_K@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Yes, yes fucking exactly, how is it not an automatic gold mine!? This vexes me as well.

      • III@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Are you saying you can’t find top-tier developers who are willing to work countless hours for no pay?.. what now?

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        They have plenty of devs, but they’re all the worst in their field. How else could they take a fully developed app and turn it into the dumpster fire itbos today?

        • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          It’s usually not the devs who make the decisions on what to implement; that only happens in the early days of a site when the owners are also the devs.

          C-levels looking to make money are pulling the strings. The devs at any large site just have a list of user stories to burndown.

    • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s funny how the biggest fuckups are happening to the platforms that critiqued the billionaire class the loudest.

      Hmmm

  • soulifix@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    We’re living in very interesting times indeed.

    So we have one billionaire over in Meta, who’s been making it very known how predatory in practice he is with getting your data and they fundamentally shatter the functionality of all of their platforms.

    Then, we have this billionaire here who under a year, has made a total catastrophe of what was once a thriving platform once worth billions of it’s own until he came and acquired it.

    And then we have this not-a-billionaire who, is inspired by the self-destruction of the other platforms that they too, must follow suit, in hopes of aspiring success.

    I wonder what book they’re all reading from in the ways of business, that says if you suck harder, they’ll mean a net positive.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I can’t think of another product I know more about that I don’t use. Just die already, elon is killing you in public to remove the threat of Twitter as an organizing tool for social uprisings and labor as a favor/brownie points/roundabout contracting for other billionaire “buddies”.

    Just go.

  • relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    I don’t see the logic in making this change. Is someone supposed to want to join blue just so they can DM people that haven’t changed the default setting?

  • Gnome Kat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 years ago

    Who is still interested in that stite it’s actually baffling at this point that there are still people on there.

      • Metallibus@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I’ve seen YouTubers also say “nothing else has any users”. I think this is generally the public sentiment and the reason people stick around. I would say that even if there’s no alternative, just leave but… Unfortunately people feel like they “need” Twitter.

        And people say social media isn’t addicting.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Pundits in general. I really enjoy The Majority Report, but it pisses me off how much they criticize Twitter but still talk about what they’re saying on it.

    • lordxakio@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I only use it to get updates and breaking stuff from NFL, ESPN, POTUS, etc. I don’t actually go on it to browse. I wish there was another place where I could the same level of breaking/interesting news/updates

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Those probably have a twitter mirror on mastodon by now. As long as there’s no need to interact a mirror bot would probably work.

  • eek2121@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Damn, Mr. Musk could have made more money betting on stocks mentioned in r/wallstreetbets, and they ALWAYS lose money. Dude seriously needs to have twitter do the opposite of what he thinks.

    I have never seen a billionaire try to go from billions to zero so hard in my life. It is like he is showing the U.S. government why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

    Is there a fund that lets me do long term shorts on rich people?

      • eek2121@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I made a lot of money from GME. I bought a bunch of shares early on for $10-$50 and sold the morning when Robinhood yanked the buy button. However, most WSB plays are money losers.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The didn’t buy Twitter for a profit.

    He bought Twitter to destroy it because big free horizontal communication platforms are bad for billionaires.

    He can’t just close it, so he just destroy it little by little until it is no more.

    The same way conservative groups bought Tumblr because it was too sexual liberating for their conservative views.

    • notatoad@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      he offered to buy twitter for a joke, and he actually did buy twitter because a court forced him to. not because this was some grand plan to accomplish anything - he literally spent months in court arguing that he shouldn’t have to buy twitter, and he lost. that’s the only reason he owns twitter now.

      • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        “mistake” in this case actually means by shooting his mouth off and thinking he was smarter than everyone else in the room. He fucked around, then immediately began finding out.

    • Isthisreddit@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      You give Musk too much credit. The fucking guy is a big baby with impulse issues - who happens to have billions of dollars at his disposal. He is running Twitter exactly as I would think a dipshit narcissistic tantrum baby would run it, although dismantling Twitter does coincidentally benefit the top .1% for now

    • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      He bought Twitter because he (along with the Saudi royal family, the monarchy ruling Qatar, and the larger worldwide cabal of authoritarians) thought he could use it to control public discourse in the same way oligarchs bought up newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations in the past. He’s killing it because he never understood what most people liked about Twitter, he only understood what he liked about Twitter (getting a lot of attention and being able to be shitty to people without having to actually socialize).

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I don’t think so, solely because his ego wouldn’t allow it. Tanking Twitter is making him a laughingstock. There’s no way he would’ve done that intentionally.

      • Melpomene@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        This has always been an interesting point for me. If I buy a secondhand Tesla, I’ve signed none of the agreements made between the initial buyer and Tesla. I wonder if I could disconnect it and hack the interface to unlock the disabled features that don’t require network access, or spoof the authorization for some of those?

    • MrFlamey@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s much harder to fuck up so quickly, since a Tesla is not a live service, so there’s not a lot that will change about the already sold cars.

      I guess if Musk decides to save money by firing engineers and reducing QA on the car software, and insists on pushing really buggy software then it could get gnarly I guess, but I don’t think he’s that stupid, and I don’t think all these Twitter moves are entirely about trying to make a profit; It’s so bad I think there is a level of malevolence involved.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    To be honest, this is the only reason why I still have Twitter. I use it to contact various companies and ask for tech support. If I can’t do that now, then there’s no point to keep the account alive. Self-proclaimed genius is kind of an idiot. Just recently he complained about 50% drop rate in ad revenue, after killing ability to view tweets without account.

  • Amilo159@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Seems like Reddit and Twitter are having a race on who can burn their house down faster.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I think Reddit is in a fat trimming stage where they kick everyone off who they aren’t monetizing, then scale their systems to drive down costs. Then try to squeeze their user base even further. If they aren’t making money off of me, why would they want me using their systems? That’s their mentality.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        That just seems so crazy as they ramp up to an IPO. Yes, let’s alienate users. reduce our overall active users, and throw hissy fits at our mods who are volunteers without whom, this site cannot operate. That should establish confidence in the marketplace. I just don’t understand the thinking here.

        People will say ‘enshittification’, well okay, but even on paper, all their moves have been so bad lately, and they don’t seem to care. It’s weird. Seems to me for example a platform with 100 users and 40% monetization is inherently more valuable than a platform with 40 users and 100% monetization. That’s just my stupid opinion though.

        • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          It is because they have sheer numbers and that is what they are selling. Probably trying to get conversion ratios high to try and attract investors.

    • Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Because the short-term equation is easy:

      Would you rather have 10 users paying nothing but taking up server space and bandwidth? Or would you prefer 1 paying user and 9 people leaving? In the short term, option B is a win-win.

      And if that leads to Twitter becoming a dead husk of itself, oh well, that’s a problem for next quarter