The end of Twitter? Elon Musk owns it now

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Do you think Twitter will die the death? Or go from strength to strength?

I think Elon is a prat and will soon come to realise that moderation is needed.

He sounds like Trump going on about 'free speech' and how he wanted to make his own Social Media platform where anyone can utilise hate free speech

Twitter is already a vile cesspit much worse than MN.

If he can’t get the paid for version off the ground he’ll need the advertisers

Listening to a few reports he’s rowed back on some claims re total free speech

It’s also losing money atm apparently

Losing money.
Losing advertisers.
He's confirmed plans to bring in payment for the blue tick this morning, apparently.
I think it's over...

I heard that too

So the legitimate blue tick will be swamped by non legitimate meaning the blue tick is pointless. It’ll make money probably but be a mess.

I think we are sort of missing the point of making people pay even small amounts for an account. Even just 99p a year for an account....

Paying ties you to your irl identity. Period.

Want twitter to not be anonymous? Make people pay....

in my humble opinion, everyone who tweets wants to be heard.
They have news or an opinion.

Can only be a funny, a cute pic of the dog, fund raising, or amazing new science or political insight, whatever.

It's not unreasonable to ask these content producers to pay small amounts.

X for original tweets.
X/2 for retweets or comments.
Free to have an account, a profile pic, a banner pic, to browse or 'like'.

where X is something small, seemingly trivial.
And yes even a tiny charge like X would cut down on abuse, harassment, illegal content, misinformation. Literally would be less work for moderators and make the abusive online profiles less/un profitable.

@lljkk

I've never seen "Dick enlarging ads,. Scams, nazi propaganda, few: share this...., Hot blonde babes in my area" on Twitter. None of it. Not certain if I've seen the precise phrase "You'll never believe what x says...."

The algorithms would have kept it that way, and unless they are changed, hopefully it will stay a gentle place for you.

I have an interest in politics so follow a number of US posters across the spectrum. It's never been a kind place, but the uptick in abuse of all types over the past week or so has been extraordinary - and notable. Unless it simmers down somewhat I do feel I'll be curbing my Twitter use or abandoning it altogether. It isn't worth the bile that is currently there. (And I'm not paying for it.)

There's a good thread (on Twitter!) about how Twitter lost 15-20% of it's future (next year) income due to uncertainty about Musk buying & his policies at an industry event where advertisers normally front-buy (lock in price) their SM advertising. This problem has been building for last 6 months. This is said to be a reason why Twtr is hemorraghing jobs.

What if I wish to be anonymous? I'm not harming anyone, and I've never abused anyone either. But females on Twitter face higher levels of abuse, and/or their opinions can be easily disregarded. So I prefer not to use my identity in any way.

I guess you're presuming that Twitter's database of bank details & names & identities linked to user accounts would be hacked, because I don't anyone is saying it would be a public database. And then someone would be targetted on combined info of them being female or x-minority (which would be revealed by the account when they tweeted, or guessed from the name, no need for sex/minority info in the Twitter dataset). Nasty targetting wouldn't just be on Twitter because presumably that could still happen without the financial/identity dataset, so the concern would be real life nastiness.

So basically, PP is concerned about real life stalking on basis of
if that specific Twitter account has said something to attract abusers (most accounts say very little so don't get noticed)
if Twitter gets its dataset hacked to reveal the extra useful info for abuse
if the abuser wants to engage in all these illegal activities
If abuser knows how to use that info to be abusive
if abuser acts on their desire & knowledge

I won't say it's zero risk, but there are a lot of IFs, plus a few IFs I left out.

Given Stephen King is refusing to pay $8/month (a sod who can afford it), and his reaction is not unusual, looks like all Twitter's investors & most Twitter users are all on a course to Lose Bigly. Shame.

I wonder what Devin Nunes cow (who I like) is saying... that's an anon account Twitter has fought tooth & nail to help protect their true identity.

That's the same as asking writers to pay to submit their newspaper articles, to pay to write pamphlets, for Mumsnet Users ...you to pay per forum posts.

You'd be fine with MN making money off the content you paid them to write???

It’s only blue tock that will be paid for

If someone has a spoof or sets up a copy account and buys a blue tick how would a user know it’s not legitimate

All I'm suggesting is I would like to tweet, and retweet, and keep my actual name (and thus, gender) private, for the reasons I said in my previous post. Women aren't treated kindly or equitably in certain areas on Twitter.

The more I think about it, I don't know why Twitter would demand to know identity information (in most cases), or have identity, or need to keep payment details, even. I top up my phone anonymously. Twitter must have a database of login details that probably includes either phone &/or email in all cases, but unless you want a payment card for record, then wouldn't be required to keep payment details on record for ordinary accounts.

Most Twitter Accounts could continue to be just as anonymous as they are now. Only the blue tick people might have different rules.

MN has a different business model & a different communication model from Twitter (or Facebook even). MN doesn't have thousands of organisations, journalists, scientists, lawyers, techie types, engineers, politicians & other kinds of pundits posting here under real life identity. I can't hide MN posts by simply muting someone (or block them from seeing my posts). I still browse for MN content, rather than MN feeding it to me according to their own algorithm. MN posts don't have character limits or follower-followee relationships. MN can't risk losing all content by charging us to post. MN is not as big as Twitter.

Anyway, I know my idea won't take off. But it's a shame because there are some things I enjoy hugely about Twitter and are very unique (compared to any other SM site) to what Twitter is today. I will miss them.

Yes, but to charge content creators is madness, who else does that?

TikTok and YouTube pay their content creators because z as I said , who is going to pay to create content??

Interesting rumours flying about on Twitter, seemingly confirmed by Musk, that several blue tick applicants were offered it in return for money by some Twitter employees.

Yes, but to charge content creators is madness, who else does that?

Scientific journals. £3000 per article is the going rate.
We the authors of the science, our institutions pay to subscribe to the journal AND we slog to create 3500 words of brilliance which we then pay £3k to make Open Access.

Precedent is there.
£9k or £10k for an article in Nature.

There are deals to get "free" publishing in hybrid journals. I admit I don't know how that is really paid for. The hybrid ones are mediocre reputation, so we scientists trade off funder demands (we must publish open access) with career advancement (would be better if in more expensive journals).

Has been normal model for many years.

Social media is a totally different ball game to science journals though.
All the biggest social media platforms are free and pay some of their creators if over certain views etc

Science Journals. I guess how else would they be funded? Do you want advertising in them? Sponsors from interested parties?

Social Media is a different beast, surely?

Most the science journals are in some way sponsored AND many have ads AND they charge to publish the articles AND they charge institutions to subscribe to them. Some have other income streams, like from conferences, web page ads, they get academics to be editors for them for free...

Example (because they didn't even want to see my article so I am holding a small grudge)

British J. of Dermatology.
Currently with Wiley, about to jump over to Oxford UnivPress.
Sponsored by Brit Assoc of Dermatologists
Banner advertisements at top of each pdf (this one is for dermititis)
Ads on the website
£3300 to publish an article with them if your institution isn't part of a deal
Subscription charge = £2800, digital only, with OUP for 2023, one year.

There are publishing house deals, btw, all of OUP or most of Elsevier, almost nobody should pay the full whack £2800.

How should Twitter become profitable, if not charging content creators, and given the advertisement model has never paid the bills. What alternative funding stream could keep Twitter going?

Twitter isn't a necessity, if it's not a viable business, then why should the customers/content creators be the one to prop it up?

If TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and the like can make a fortune whilst paying their content creators, then Twitter must be able to do something....

.

I see that Musk has now told Twitter staff they must sign up to work long hours at high intensity by tomorrow or they are out.

What an absolute twat that man is.

Life in the Musk universe sounds like hell...

www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/

I wonder how many staff will walk away