Just got done driving for five hours so I don't have a whole lot of gas left for posting but here goes nothing. There's been a lot of drama with Twitter and the Musk Takeover. My partner in crime listens to a podcast that is apparently called Content Mines. I just looked it up and couldn't find it for a second because I thought it was Content Minds. Opps.
In any case these guys are always talking about tech, social media, politics, and things of that nature. Politically they lean pretty left, which is unsurprising given the context I have just presented. They talk about crypto a fair amount too, but many of the talking points are quite basic, opting to focus on the scams and the 'fact' that Bitcoin 'wastes energy'. Things like that.
On the drive we listened to one episode that goes over Elon Musk being sued over trying to back out of the Twitter deal. It's interesting that this lawsuit is still happening and didn't get pulled back even though Musk ended up going through with the deal. A breach of contract is a breach of contract, after all. Free money.
They also went over those emails that got released to the public. Apparently even though Musk owns multiple tech companies he was asking for help with 2FA like a Boomer? Like most left-wingers, they do not think very highly of the guy.
https://www.thecontentmines.com/p/elon-musk-is-not-a-deep-thinker#details (13 min in)
Richest man in the world can't figure out how to make Twitter work on his phone.
Ah I found the podcast so might as well link it. They also went over the conversation with Jack Dorsey talking about the need for Bluesky and decentralized social media. I didn't notice it the first time I read those messages, but the way these guys spin it is that Musk is kind of an idiot. Interesting perspective for a billionaire that owns multiple tech companies.
17 min in
The way they spin this conversation is that Musk is kind of an idiot that has nothing to add to this conversation whatsoever, instead opting to inject nothing statements into it that are just filler in between Jack talking. To be fair it's pretty clear that Musk is so deep into operating on a platform of centralized control that he probably just doesn't understand decentralization whatsoever.
Elon Musk is really just a dumbass?
I mean probably not, these guys just don't like him, and for good reason. Just today I'm seeing that Musk is basically holding Twitter devs hostage and telling them to work 80+ hour weeks or they're fired... so that's great. But as the title of this post implies I really would rather just talk about the whole Blue Check debacle.
$5? $20? $8?
$5/m to edit Tweets? lol?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587523701452464131
- elonmusk
Kind of comical honestly.
Internet paywalls are WEB1. I can only conclude that Musk is going to run this platform into the ground with these "ideas". A paywall is not an idea, it's the most basic bitch thing that every person in WEB2 knows they need to avoid at all costs to retain users. Luckily it's just a paywall on premium service (Discord Nitro is the same model) and he is confirming that users will be able to monetize their content on Twitter to make up for these costs but... that just implies there will be more ads and profit sharing between Twitter and "content creators".
And let's be honest... Twitter isn't exactly like YouTube in terms of quality content. A Tweet is not something people work on to build value. It's shitposting, and the assumption that shit-posting can be monetized on WEB2 is... ambitious, to say the least.
And you know what's funny?
Despite all this ridiculous bullshit, it's quite apparent that these changes are good for crypto and particularly good for the Hive ecosystem. Most people on Hive were clearly being tossed into an echo-chamber on Twitter with almost zero reach. The day that Musk took over my reach on the platform went from zero, to a number greater than zero. I went from no one ever following me or liking my Tweets to a normal trickle of engagement with random users on the platform (non-hive ppl).
20 minutes into the podcast
They start talking about how they would eliminate bots and other spam with micro-payments in Dogecoin or Bitcoin to make a comment. Again, just hilarious that Hive has already solved these problems 10 times over and then some... and we did it years ago. Yield farming bandwidth is a pretty innovative solution to this problem that nobody at the top even seems to realize exists as an option. So weird. Billionaires just can't wrap their head around what needs to happen here; not even Jack (although he seems to be closer than anyone else).
Conclusion
I'm pretty tired and I've said what I've needed to say. Twitter just got a lot less boring, but the chance that Musk runs it into the ground with bad ideas is significant. Of course when he integrates Twitter into Tesla and self-driving cars are tipping each other Doge to allow rich people to cut in line on the freeway, who knows! Will be interesting no matter what happens. Failure is more of a learning opportunity than success in cases such as this.
Paywalls are exactly the opposite of what we should be trying to accomplish with next-gen social media. But then again everyone on Hive already knows this. Yes, charging a micro-fee is a great way to eliminate spam and moderate the network in an automated way. The problem is the flip-side to that; the mechanics that make these paywall models WEB3 instead of WEB1. Users need to have provable ownership over the platforms themselves, and this is something that billionaires like Musk are simply never going to understand or even tolerate; instead opting to control everything in a very heavy-handed and annoying way. Good luck with that.