Great for the fediverse but also weird reason to jump ship. All the other bullshit was fine, but “whoa they changed the logo now I’m out”?
A lot of people stay because of lingering attachment to the platform. As weird as it is, changing the branding subconsciously tells the human brain “This is a new platform” and that makes switching mentally easier.
You’ve been considering leaving Twitter for a while, and suddenly one morning the bird has flown and Twitter has left you instead.
I think it’s also a clear signal that things are really never going to return to normal, it’s only getting worse from here. Which is easy those of us on the outside to observe, but maybe slightly harder from the inside when you still have most of the community still intact and posting.
I think some of us also had hopes that the new CEO would put a leash on Musk and steer Twitter into calmer waters again, but this was just proof that Musk is still doing wtf he wants and the CEO is just there for show. So people have now abandoned their last bit of hope and therefore abandoned T…I mean X as well.
While I haven’t been an active user in a longer time, I’ve still been a very active lurker until Musk took over. By now, I’ve only checked Twitter every now and then when bored, to see what happened (as I mostly used Twitter as some kind of news feeds for stuff I couldn’t easily follow in any other way). But today I started migrating off completely - going through my follow list one by one and finding ways to follow those things (like local police, local town, local zoo, etc.) in other ways.
For some that means slower news, or only the most important news - which kinda sucks, as e.g. local police info were good to have in real time during major events or when there was some protest going on. For some this even means mailing lists, ugh.
And a few I couldn’t replace at all, so I’ll miss out on those news. Sucks, but hopefully those people/entities will provide their news feed through some better means sometime now.
the CEO is just there for show
The CEO is there to fail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
wall of text to say puppet non-white male CEOs ride failing companies into ground and get blamed. yet they do it anyway. scroll finger hyperactive syndrome flare-up
If I had to guess, she’s negotiated a rock solid contract with an exit package in mind. Either that, or she’s an idiot because there is no fucking chance of being successful with Elon being Elon.
I think it’s spot on. It’s people who were already going through the stages of grief, were kinda stuck in “bargaining” (like: “nah, Twitter is not really dead, it’ll come back”), and the symbolism there about Twitter really being gone-gone fast-tracked them to depression/acceptance.
The stages of grief don’t have to go in that order. People can be angry at Twitter and then jump to acceptance that its never going back. No fast tracking needed.
I was actually aware of that, which is why I wrote depression/acceptance, meaning they probably moved from bargaining to either one of those, thinking either of those 2 stages could prompt people to leave. By fast-tracking, I meant that moved happened faster than they would have if the rebranding hadn’t happened. It’s still a fascinating bit, I have known about the stages of grief for a while, but only learned recently (like, this year) that they didn’t have to happen in order.
- Denial: “There is no way Elon would do that to Twitter.”
- Anger: “This is stupid. Why would Elon do this to Twitter? He’s making things so much worse!”
- Bargaining: “Maybe if I hold out he’ll revert the changes. Maybe Elon has some good left in his heart.”
- Depression: “Why do stupid things like this happen to me?”
- Acceptance: “Looks like Twitter’s dead in the water, we should move on.”
Yeah, I think that’s probably more accurate than what I was thinking, and that leaving belongs to acceptance rather than depression.
They finally started to read the room and noticed the furniture they liked wasn’t there and had been stolen. We’ve already figured out Musk’s antics and that he’s a deplorable human being. They’re finally starting to open their eyes and pay attention, especially now that he’s meddled with their toy.
When spez doubled down and Reddit imploded i moved to lemmy. I also discovered mastodon. But then i realized the reason i used twitter was to follow certain people/accounts none of which are on mastodon.
We had a reason to ditch Reddit, because they forced everyone off our beloved third party apps. But twitter didn’t have this kind of meltdown. Im only a consumer on Twitter, and its still working fine. No reason to quit. The rate limit is dumb but it isn’t the end of the world.
Yup Twitter was for following people and Reddit was for following topics. Lemmy with all the new users is pretty much viable for big topics now but Mastodon doesn’t magically have all the people I want to follow just because it’s a better format.
some dignity might be enough reason to leave it
Couldn’t agree more. I was a fail whale era twitter user. Wayyyyy early user. I ditched it a little bit before musk actually, but I still ended up seeing threads here and there because of Reddit.
Just today I landed on a Twitter thread, saw that x and it was like, strangely repulsing…I wanted to get the hell out of there asap
Elon rate limits tweets
i sleep
Elon changes the logo
real shit??
I’ve already had several non-tech people say something along the lines of “What the heck is this X thing on my phone?”
I gotta wonder how many other people are just impulse uninstalling something they don’t recognize off their phone as well, since ol’ Musky boi did this with basically zero user notice as well.
I had a similar thought. Non-techies are going to open up Twitter and see a different logo but it the text still says Twitter and think they’re on a phishing site.
Bass pro shops social media > Twitter/X
The blue bird was the last thing they had left
I think a good amount of it is also “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Twitter users have been taking abuse after abuse. Like many others have stated, they use Twitter to follow specific people. If those people aren’t on other platforms, then they’re going to stay. But after a certain point, the cost becomes too high. Now the platform is rebranded and now it looks as alien as it’s begun to feel. I think that’s why so many are once again leaving. Before they could just ignore everything else going on and try to move on with their day. Not there’s a big, fat X reminding them of how much they’re starting to/already hate the platform now.
Renaming Twitter to 𝕏 is probably the straw that break the camel’s back to those people.
I’d like to think it’s people finally realizing “Holy shit he IS an idiot” but that might be too optimistic
Because tweeting and being on Twitter is culturally relevant. Twxing and being on =…,/‘’''°°X°°""/,…= is sad and cringe.
People run away from things which are sad and cringe.
People run away from things which are sad and cringe.
Threads would like to have a word
I kinda like the name “Threads” but X sounds like something 12 year old me came up with
No one goes around saying they’re on twitter and that they tweet. People aren’t going to leave in any great numbers because it’s now called X.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
By this logic X.org’s logo is a swastika
The logo change has brought out a new wave of articles and tweets about it, and people go “oh no that’s right I’m on twitter! Well THIS is the final straw! Thank goodness there were all these hate articles and tweets that reminded me I was supposed to be angry!”
Also, many of the people who “jump ship” are right back on Twitter within a week. mastodon.social has an entire graveyard of celebrity accounts that haven’t been posted to in months because the outraged celebrities just went back to twitter.
I’m happy for Mastodon (I run a fediverse instance and the more users there are the more chances of interesting people and the like), and some of those people do realize they like the vibe more and stay, and a lot of those bumps are significant for the platform. The thing is, we’re talking a few hundred thousand, maybe a million accounts of 200 million daily active users on twitter.
Remember why Ray Kroc wanted McDonald’s… because of the name/brand. Anybody could make a hamburger/shake shop or shack but he had to have the name because the name was a seller.
Nobody thinks X is cool other than Elon musk and him switching to it is another signifier of how uncool Twitter has become. Every little thing adds to the flow of traffic to the exit.
It’s like watching an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head where every single decision they make is a bad decision. And it’s hilarious.
Yeah it makes no sense. I think the media is just out to trash Elon at every opportunity for any miniscule thing. He is somewhat of an outcast of the billionaires club in that he dies not appear to want to enslave humanity and deny the poors of their rights.
Yea he just settles for treating his employees with no respect and firing them on a whim without their owed severance pay.
Cite examples?
Here’s one big example of unpaid severance pay: https://www.reuters.com/legal/twitter-again-sued-over-severance-pay-bias-during-layoffs-2023-07-18/
Plus I’ve read many comments from insiders before that every single company he runs is a terrible place to work for, in terms of overworking employees.
I mean… take your pick on who he hasn’t paid, there are pleeeeenty of examples out there. He even lost the ability to engage in arbitration over the unpaid severance because he didn’t pay the mediators lmfao. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=twitter+unpaid+bills
Serious question for you- why are you defending him? Like, the information demonstrating he’s kind of stupid and a terrible person is so easily available to you. At this point you have to actively work to remain ignorant of it, and his history of trying to claim accomplishments that aren’t his own. Why bother?
Yeah, I mean, who hasn’t wanted to experiment with putting microchips into baboon skulls, or called someone a pedophile just because they hurt your feelings, or treats their workers like absolute trash? He’s just a regular guy doing regular things and the media is using him as their whipping boy.
Transhumanism is a thing whether we like it or not, hopefully Elon will do it ethically. I don’t care if he said mean things to somone, that is between him and the individual. Provide examples of him treating his employees like trash?
Provide examples of him treating his employees like trash?
Someone fairly recently wrote a very long article about it., but it is only the first drop in the ocean of stories google comes up with about how bad an employer he is.
What are you on about? Every opportunity to trash him??? He can easily change his behaviour, he’s a trash person so he doesn’t. He absolutely wants to deny the poor their rights, look at how he treats the workers of twitter and how he spoke of those he fired. I truly don’t know how you can be this blind unless it’s willful. Get real
Twitter shrunk its staff by 3700, many of whom left of their own volition. Examples of some companies that cut more jobs then Twitter that nobody seemed to givr a damn about: Amazon 27k Meta 21k Accenture 19k Alphabet 12k Microsoft 10k Salesforce 8k Disney 7k Dell 6.6k
I guess the people working at those companies just don’t matter huh?
I don’t see any other billionaires fighting for basic human rights like free speech other than Elon. He doesn’t have a perfect track record on that count but it is better than the flat 0 of the rest of that clique.
HAHAHAHAHA you cannot be serious? Yes freeze peach warrior Elon. Get. Fucking. Real.
Great contribution, gold star.
Because you aren’t worth it. You clearly ignore evidence being placed in front of your face so there isn’t a point. Literally start googling about his management of twitter, all the evidence is there. But you won’t
Ask people from India or Turkey what they think about Elon fighting for free speech. Especially after he said, “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” Which means he’s all in favor of what North Korea considers free speech.
You should really learn to separate claims with actions. Musk likes to claim he fights for free speech (well he used to, for some reason he hasn’t really talked much about it lately), but he has not only done nothing in favour of them but actually opposed it during his ownership of twitter.
Also, I don’t know what kinda gotcha you think you have with those layoff numbers. It is as if you think that people here just love all those other corporations and only hate Musk, when that is the opposite of the truth.
Wait, what? Have you ever heard of longtermism? “Your stupid peasants’ suffering today matters little if we can take humanity to spaceTM. Don’t hold back progress.” If this is not enslaving humanity and shitting on the poor, I don’t know what is.
What are you even talking about? Care to elavorate? How is he making anyone suffer?
No, you’re sealioning, this is a waste of time :/ he’s at least as scummy as any other billionaire, like Zucky, Bezos, Gates, Thiel and all the other ones nobody hears about.
Why do you think the media goes so hard after Elon and we don’t hear much or anything at all about the others? Why is there a rabid cult of anti muskers that try to denigrate him at every opportunity? What is their agenda? When someone is singled out it should make you reflect on the reason why. He is hardly the worst billionaire around yet he gets all the flak.
Why do you think the media goes so hard after Elon and we don’t hear much or anything at all about the others?
Because the others stay out of the spotlight. Musk deliberately shitposts and wants to be seen, so the media (and everyone else) sees him and reacts to that.
But if you take your time to actually acquaint yourself with matters, you will notice that the media and everyone else are also very busy criticising other corporations and other billionaires. It is just that Musk being the narcissist that he is, very much like Trump, deliberately create stories on a daily basis through his poor judgement and constant craving for exposure.
The media drooled all over him and carried him until he declared war on them. Look up news of him before 2020, there is hardly anything negative (and there should be, he’s been manipulating stock and treating employees like shit, like the other Billionaires). When did the media say anything critical about hyperloop? You live by hype, you die by hype.
He doesn’t need to enslave humanity, just his Mars colony. As far as money over rights are concerned, his ‘free speech absolutist digital town square’ sure does give a lot more privileges for those willing to pay.
Musk has openly stated his support for the Republicans and for right wing causes countless times during his twitter shitposting period. If anything he has more openly voiced support of enslavement of humanity and the denial of the rights of poors than most of his billionaire colleagues, who are mostly all too smart to voice those ideas anywhere in public.
Removed by mod
None of it was fine, people have been browsing for alternatives ever since Elon Musk took over.
At most, many hoped things would ultimately stay the same, which they definitely didn’t. The biggest hurdle is that a lot of people there are waiting for their friends and favorite content creators to pick what place they will move to, and content creators are extra hesitant because they don’t know if they will have as much following and reach as they used to. I see a bunch of smaller creators pretty much mourning their careers.
people do weird things
This will be one of the first “in your face” things that is immediately noticable by a finicky user base that only understands and associates value to popular brands. Musk just removed the popular and familiar brand that people are comfortable with, so why would those people stay?
Made a mastodon account yesterday mainly out of curiosity. Never been to Twitter.
So they might be counting just me lol
And probably won’t matter much.
This user surge will probably go crawling right back in a week or two.
Every surge will retain more people as every surge brings more content.
That’s true. I just don’t expect this one to be quite so consequential as the others.
Yeah, if moving to Threads wasn’t enough to hold people there, I doubt Mastodon will be able to hold them either.
Also how do they know it is a twitter exodus and not a Reddit or Threads exodus? I quit reddit entirely and I know many who have as well. It seems much more likely to be the case.
I get your point, but Twitter is more analogous to Mastadon than to Lemmy.
People really love their cute animal logos I guess, #whatcanyoudo?
Mastodon has become super stable. It is the place to go.
Absolutely - though some people find it too bare bones. It’s designed to be a bit of an anti-Twitter, after all.
Those looking for something more flashy might be interested in checking out, for example, Firefish. The Firefish site also includes a neat “Fediverse software comparison”, which lists popular federated services and some of the features they currently have. Personally I prefer the stripped down approach of Mastodon, but reasonable people might disagree. :)
Oh, and there’s also elk.zone, an online user interface for Mastodon that behaves a lot like Twitter. Similar to those “old lemmy” sites (like old.lemmy.world) in a way, but as an online app similar to wefwef.app.
Is Firefish the same thing as Calckey?
I created a Calckey account a couple of weeks ago but it was basically a weird Mastodon with even fewer people from what I could tell.
Yes, Calckey updated and rebranded (?) as FireFish. https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Firefish%3F
Important to note, the fewer people should not significantly restrict your experience. Everything is part of the same network.
Good point. I did follow a few accounts I already follow on Mastodon. But then I thought “I have a Mastodon account already… Why am I doing this?”
And the Emojis instead of starring a post was throwing me off.
edit: I see there is a star online now. Maybe it was just the Kimis app that was weird.
The apps have definitely been the biggest thing holding me back. Kaiteki seems perfect but also broken on my phone right now :/
Yes, it’s just a rebrand. It’s similar to Mastodon in some ways but with many many more features.
It’s federated so you can follow and interact with all the same Mastodon people.
Problem is it’s not super stable and the federation doesn’t work too well…
Very interesting to read people’s experiences, as I don’t have any first hand experience. I’ve just seen enthusiastic content from users and figured it was a better fit for some people.
Might be a bit too much on the bleeding edge still - not entirely unlike kbin and Lemmy. Would you say that it’s rough enough that you wouldn’t currently recommend it to people?
Xodus*
No they had it righ….oooh, i see what you did there.
𝕏odus
Yes, ‘X’ odus
Movement of Jah people
Oh yeah
Great game
It amazes me how badly these billionares are at running businesses.
Like im an engineer and Not in my wildest dreams could I have destoyed a company like Twitter faster than musk.
Like Did he do it on purpose?
It HAS to be on purpose. Nobody can get to billionaire levels of wealth and be completely inept, right? RIGHT?
Begin rich makes one feel infallible. Thinking one’s self to be infallible leads to these kinds of decisions.
It’s probably worse when one has convinced himself one’s suceess so far was 100% personal skill, rather than 90% luck and 10% skill.
Unfortunately, once you get enough money the system is designed to keep you wealthy no matter how much you fuck up.
Like, Trump has had multiple failed companies including casinos thay failed because he had them competeing with each other.
Yet while he’s probably not a billionaire he still has the status of “wealthy” and managed to fail into the most powerful position in government.
Musk had more money, and therefore can fuck up way harder and still be fine. He could burn Twitter to the ground for all the effect it would have on him.
The reason is that they know people with money, and those people listen. For example, Musk only had to post about his attempt to buy Twitter in a groupchat, and he got Billions of Dollars from them to do it, unchecked. Regular people don’t get their ear, and even if they do for some unfathomable reason, everything is checked meticulously.
Lol i just cant imagine that level of ineptitude.
Am I living in a simulation?
The level of ineptitude is common, the combination of wealth and that much ineptitude, usually less so, given being able to afford the best education and advisers. So it takes a special sort of billionaire to be this inept.
While that’s true, I think it’s more that rich people tend to insulate themselves from actually driving direct actions most of the time, so we see their stupid decisions after they’ve filtered from the Board, to the CEO, to the VPs, to the directors, to the managers, and finally, to the workers that actually do things. Really stupid things filter slowly back up as impossible, or as they hit snags over weeks and months, so it takes a couple rounds for them to really mess things up. Not to mention people softening the edges as it passes through the chain to make it more reasonable.
Elon being front and center, and actually ramming things through is what makes this so uniquely inept. Normally we wouldn’t know that all of these terrible ideas are straight from him, and blame could be shifted around to scape goats.
Agreed.
It’s just the Dunning-Kruger effect at work, he thinks because he successfully ran a rocket manufacturing company to viability that he’s definitely going to be able to run a social media company too.
Turns out the B2B style government contract model isn’t exactly the same as B2C social media advertising model.
I’d argue that it’s Drunning-Kruger plus being surrounded by stupid yes-men that agree with everything you say or do
Do we know for sure? He could just be so arrogant he doesn’t acknowledge advice.
His initial wealth of 42 million dollars came from working on travel software. He used that wealth to become rich by founding x.com, a payments company that failed. How does a failing company lead to massive wealth you might ask? Well, that failing company merged with PayPal.com, and Musk was CEO of the merged company for about 6 months before he got fired. PayPal went on to be huge, so after he was fired he made his fortune on his shares. Next he invested money in Tesla, bought the title of “co founder” even though he wasn’t, waited 7 years passively then noticed the company wasn’t going anywhere, replaced an exec or two and then took credit for turning the company around. So yeah, maybe that’s his end game? Make Twitter (now x.com) as bad as the old x.com so someone merges and gives him stocks and fires him again?
And yet, despite all that, this somehow still feels notably inept, even for a man whose primary goal in life, at the moment, appears to be demonstrating how thin his attachment to reality grows by the day.
Yup, he’s an inept piece of garbage that made it to the top by chance.
Sounds like it’s time to re-watch Glass Onion. Elon Musk is Miles Bron.
It was on purpose. Its completely obvious the powerful right in America wanted Twitter gone. I bet it could have swung the overton window with how much influence it had.
Like Did he do it on purpose?
At this point, I’m gonna say yes. Yes, he did do it on purpose. Why? The conspiracy theorist in me says it’s to push people into Meta’s Threads, building it up even more before it federates, in an attempt to kill the Fediverse like Google did with XMPP, because the Fediverse is the fastest growing bastion of corporate-influence-free speech on the Internet.
Or he’s just an idiot. 🤷♀️
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by yadda yadda…”
Yeah I’ve got a feeling this guy isn’t a master of 6D chess, planning some far flung strategy 10 steps ahead. I think he just likes to shitpost and cause drama
Maybe that second one tho.
Like Did he do it on purpose?
I think this gives him credit where it isn’t due 😂
Personally, I think he’s just a magic blend of incompetent, arrogant, and in over his head. Large companies are slow moving for a reason and we’re seeing why in real time.
Whether or not it’s on purpose, I think that Twitter was vulnerable to this outcome due to literally years of mismanagement. Dorsey hadn’t given a fuck for quite some time, and Twitter’s problems always grew faster than its solutions.
Personally, I think he’s just a magic blend of incompetent, arrogant, and in over his head.
I know this is the Case. I am just amazed at how incompetent he is.
I’m mean if there were an incompetent olympics he would win silver (the highest possible medal).
It’s like he has a bet that he had to destroy Twitter but he wasn’t allowed to just shut it down or kick everyone off.
Every move has been bad. It has to be on purpose. Is this how billionaires get their kicks?
The investors were the kind of people that don’t want the kind of on the ground, quick fact reporting that happened during uprisings and the like.
It can’t be a coincidence. They’re tanking the most popular tool for getting quick communication out.
And at precisely the same time reddit goes down the shitter too. And threads. So many “coincidences.”
If this is a Brewster’s Millions situation, and he just has to lose $44 billion dollars in a year, I’m voting we let the writers stay on strike.
I still think if you look at his investors it spells out leaders who want Twitter not to be viable as a platform for coordinating democratic efforts. So yes, he did it deliberately.
The other stuff didn’t bother people enough to leave, but rebranding? That’s the step too far. Anyway Mastodon usage has fluctuated a good amount over the last few months so I don’t think that’s a good metric for people fleeing Twitter, or should I say X (what a terrible name).
Twitter’s value was in its branding as the case with any ubiquitous product. There was zero reason to change it other than to further damage the entity. Fine with me Elon, go ahead and kill it, one more failed corporate driven media site. We don’t need any of them.
Could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I actually hate rebranding by itself too. I see a totally new name as just trying to escape their bad name, likely earned by their previous misdeeds.
<cough> alphabet
<cough> <cough> meta
Fucking allergies, geez.
Pretty sure both of those were for financial reasons (easier reporting requirements etc). As in, both Google and Facebook the companies still exist, it’s just that they are now owned (along with other companies such as Waymo and Instagram etc) by Alphabet and Meta respectively.
Yeah, I really don’t get why people would care much about branding. It’s everything leading up to that that’s starting to wear people out.
Don’t underestimate the value of a brand. One of the most common reasons people stick around even after negative change is because it still feels familiar and safe.
Now? This isn’t Twitter anymore. It may look and feel like Twitter did yesterday, but this is the moment where people stop and look around and ask “What happened?”
Even when Facebook reformed into Meta and Google reformed into Alphabet, they still kept the old brands, to the point where people still call Alphabet “Google” more often than not. Other companies, when they want to get rid of a brand, will slowly phase it out. An ISP like Charter becomes Charter Spectrum, then over time just become Spectrum.
Dropping a brand overnight like a hot potato upsets the customer because brand identity is (tragically) huge in the modern day.
Now? This isn’t Twitter anymore. It may look and feel like Twitter did yesterday, but this is the moment where people stop and look around and ask “What happened?”
I think this is the main thing. It’s like, why draw so much attention to this thing that people liked fine before and which you want to mutate into some sort of hypermonetized cyberpunk dystopia omninetwork? Changing the name to something vague and edgelord is like a big giant sign that says, “REEVALUATE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS APP RIGHT NOW!”
It’s also the most noticeable for the common user. You can ignore an entire logo change (one that sucks by the way)
They don’t. This story is a nothing burger. Mastodon user count has actually gown down by ~400,000.
The author attempts to justify their opinion with the logical fallacy: correlation equals causation. But they only consider the times when the correlation is in their benefit. When user count goes down, the author ignores it.
For perspective, Threads user count also went down: to 13 million users. 10x more than Mastodon.
Yeah and it especially doesn’t make sense since the twitter apps - where most people use twitter - are still called twitter and still have the twitter logo. Nothing has changed, and even with a name change and logo change nothing is going to change. It’s still twitter, and the people hate-tweeting that they’re leaving are still going to stay, since they’ve been hate-tweeting that they’re leaving since Musk bought the place lol.
What are the sources for this “user exodus”? Where are the stats, the numbers? It’s just clickbait by people that want twitter to die.
Oh God have you met people? When people talk about their tweeting, the neurochemical feedback mechanism is “oh wow you tweet?” It’s filled with positive cultural context.
If that response becomes “wtf is twxing?” that entire zeitgeist just collapses and people will view the service with active repulsion. Like a toy they’ve grown their identity out of. Or a cringe dress they wore to their sibling’s wedding.
Everybody has a breaking point, right? This could have been the breaking point for many people.
I’m looking at this as “various little breaking points” some very trivial, but when taken as a whole, could break someone’s tolerance, causing someone to be an eX-user.
Everybody has a breaking point, right? This could have been the breaking point for many people.
Something that literally makes no difference, like a name change?
There’s a reason McDonald’s isn’t called Kroc’s.
If McDonald’s changed their name it works make no difference at this stage.
I don’t think you understand how important branding is.
I do, but it’s irrelevant when a company has 500 million users.
Those examples I showed you are companies the size of Twitter. It affected sales in a major way. Many of them had to walk it back.
No difference to you. If indeed people left because of that then it made a difference by definition.
At this point I am pretty convinced he’s doing it on purpose. I don’t quite understand why, except maybe as a weird flex. Or maybe the world’s billionaires got together and decided to kill Twitter because they hate all the negative press? IDK, but the whole thing is just too surreal.
It is surreal that a single capitalist can be motivated to take down a monolith like Twitter. Yeah I’m convinced it’s intentional. Funny when I first heard he bought Twitter for the price he paid my initial thought was he’s buying it to kill it, but then I thought nobody would waste that kind of money on a personal vendetta. I guess Elon is just that crazy.
The Saudis personal vendetta…
Twitter is an important tool for social uprisings and the Saudis are just one of many that would like to see it gone.
I’d take that with many grains of salt, brands and influencers aren’t moving and neither are their followers
That’s not terribly surprising, given that both of those groups rely most heavily on network effects: the very point of such accounts requires being where their audience is, especially brands. Those kinds of accounts will move en masse only when most everyone else has already done so
Also, we do have some influencers here - namely a few Linux youtubers, and technology connections. Basically it’s those that you would somewhat expect to have a presence on a budding social network like mastodon.
I see George Takei and Neil Gaiman post on there :)
Wasnt aware technology connections was on masto. Admittedly I dont use my mastodon all that much, becuase I dont really much enjoy the microblogging formula as much as a more forum like system like I could get from reddit and now lemmy, but the only youtuber Im familiar with that Ive been able to find there thus far has been NotJustBikes.
Exactly, no one cares until Mr beast or Beyonce moves and they aren’t going to mastodon haha
I would like more of a sports presence here tho and unfortunately sports beat writers I followed on Twitter aren’t coming here
No, screw sports! Open your own instance for that. It was so annoying to block sports on reddit every single week.
Why did you have to do it every week?
Because a new sub would pop up every week. Braves, nhl, baseball, redsox, golf, etc.
Yeah I meant more in it’s own instance vs here. But what I’m saying is even if I do I won’t get the breaking news content I want because the journalists are not switching over
There are some bots on Mastodon that mirror tweets from sports reporters that I’d followed on Twitter.
It’s annoying that’s you can’t respond to things like mailbag questions, but I can still get breaking news, NFL training camp reports, etc.
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Yeah. Apparently called fanaticus.social
Found it on https://join-lemmy.org/instances
I hear ya. Sorry, I didn’t mean to shit on your hobbies and interests. Everyone likes what they like.
If they do, it will be because we’ve reached an arbitrary critical mass. Think, mastodon has 2.1M active users now, twitter has 230M active users.
Mastodon will be considered viable at roughly the same number of users that caused the media to think of twitter as “mainstream”
I’m thinking at least 20M users, 10x what mastodon has now.
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They’re not going to go to mastodon, but there have already been a pretty big exodus to Threads. I have a feeling that’s going to be the thing - twitter is going to die slowly mostly in favor of Threads, meanwhile Mastodon and the fediverse will probably continue being a minor player for a while.
Threads will kill nothing for as long as it remains unavailable in Europe due to breaking GDPR.
Bluesky is more likely, particularly given its Twitter’s former ceo building it.
Bluesky just barely hit a million users is still invite only and is largely in a beta state, and though I’m not on it, everyone I know says it’s a zombie platform and they’d rather be on Mastodon for nerd shit or Threads for normie shit. Threads has over 100m users already. The numbers alone make Bluesky not really worth mentioning, and effectively Threads killed it within the first day. Dorsey has also shown a track record of having no idea what he’s doing. Probably half of the things people think about with Twitter come from the community. @mentions, rt, the term “tweet”, etc. The twitter app was developed by a third party and bought.
As much as Zuckerberg sucks, Meta actually runs like a real company with adults at the helm. Dorsey’s already fucking up bluesky not learning anything from his time at twitter and not making moderation a priority. Brands are already embracing Threads over Twitter and Bluesky because they don’t want their ads showing up next to porn and nazis.
Oh, and as for GDPR, Meta has already stated they plan for a later launch, and again since it’s a company of (sociopathic?) adults, they’ll actually get it done, but it’s already effectively over.
Meta has already been hit with antitrust by the EU. Even if they later get around the fact they’re breaking GDPR by datasharing all the instagram accounts (which is where the inflated number of users comes from) they can not get around the Digital Markets Act coming into effect next year which carries a fine of 10% of all global revenue for actions like this.
I remember when facebook changed its looks to mimic twitter (the whole newsfeed launch was part of that.) I can’t believe it. After 10+ years, fucking facebook might actually dethrone twitter.
It’s been stated that Meta intends to federate Threads with Mastodon eventually, so either will ultimately be viable.
I have zero faith that will happen. I don’t think they anticipated how well threads would be adopted and that saying they’d federate was just a hedge.
I bet they’ll pull a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I’m sure that’s what they want. A free and open platform that doesn’t rely on advertising and isn’t there to make a profit? Kill it!
A few instances will likely federate with threads, but probably not the interesting ones…
I think the implication was that Threads will not actually federate
Oh I think they’ll do, just to not miss the train, and then they’ll find a “smart” way to “destroy” federation and get people on their side… But we’ll see…
That seems like good news for Mastodon
Hopefully this means there are accounts on Mastodon actually worth interacting with. Like 99.9999% of posts on Mastodon are literally just about Mastodon, or stupid tech shit I don’t care about.
Use the hashtag and follow people you find interesting. Your feed will improve as you curate it to your liking. It’s on you. There is no algorithm feeding you.
Yes and no. For example, I work in pest control and mostly lurked twitter for pest control content, as a lot of experts in that field used twitter exclusively and never bothered with facebook, instagram, reddit, discord, or any other networking site.
There is absolutely no pest control content from those experts on Mastodon at this time. Niche, I know, but its a concrete example about how not every base is covered on Mastodon (yet).
Its silly to blame people for not flocking there when there is a demonstrable lack of content.
Made a mastodon account but most people’s I know don’t use it, so yeah. Might be why I’m using Lemmy more. Topics are usually more interesting than individual people.
There are no people I find interesting. I cannot stress this enough, Mastodon has absolutely jack shit for content. A hashtag with relevancy to me might have two posts, EVER, both from dead accounts.
It is a barren wasteland. I am very much tired of people assuming I want to be spoonfed content when I just want there to be any content at all.
There is no algorithm feeding you.
Mmmm say it again
I mostly just used Twitter to keep updated on various indie games/artists/authors/content creators. I’d imagine they would go to Threads or Tiktok’s new thing before giving Mastadon a shot, and some of them have.
I don’t want to be a downer; Mastadon would be my favorite Twitter alternative with how it functions, but in its present state Mastadon just doesn’t work for my use case. I think for now I just have to phase Twitter-likes out of my life unless I’m willing to bite the bullet on putting up with meta or 𝕏.
The tech community moved to Mastodon in mass. I follow tech and cannot keep up with the feed.
chronological forums are still the best form of online community :/
You can have your feed in chronological order on twitter
Edit: Sorry I meant on X. You can stop downvoting now. Geez…
First!
This is a good thing! Corporate social media is a bad thing.
I thought Twitter rebranded to 69Boobies420 ?!
You mean 69Boobies420Hitlerdidnothingwrong#Jewspiracy#Libsgetrekked
That’s Elon’s new screen name. You’re getting the two confused.
It’s really good. Twitter doesn’t need to lose for Mastodon to win. But, also, Twitter is probably about to lose.
Nice
69
Lol
Nice
Nice
I never used Twitter, but I’m enjoying Mastodon + Lemmy!
I’m trying, lol. Just followed a bunch of accounts on Mastodon in an attempt to make my homepage more interesting. Loving Lemmy, but while I don’t necessarily want the absolute deluge of bullshit like reddit has, for my taste the fediverse still has a lot of growing to do (and I hope it gets there!)
Same thing for me over here, trying to subscribe to enough communities to make my home feed custom enough, but if I’m bored, test c/all
You always get a boost when Elon does something stupid but I’m not seeing anything unusual about this one… ‘soaring’ is relative. Usual is 500-1000 an hour and we’re currently at 1500.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110774139508082609
I think people get excited because hypothetically, growth should accelerate. The more people are using mastadon, the more mastadon becomes a viable alternative to shitter
Shitter is actually a nice mastodon (former twitter) client! :D
