Some trivial musings about the X: or, social media service formerly known as Twitter which somehow got the name of the originally failed attempt to rebrand Paypal. Originally posted on my Bluesky, which for some whatever reason is still in closed beta.
- I still think the turning point of all of this now was when Musk on Twitter called the British rescue diver a pedo guy, and got a significant amount of support from his fandom (while being righfully critized in any other media).
- People blame Musk for the dumpsterfireification of Twitter, but let’s not forget the board that cashed out to let him destroy whatever democratic potentials it had. Sure, Musk is a particularly aweful individual; but he was empowered to be that, systematically (i.e. unfettered stakeholder capitailsm, libertarian disruptor myth, etc). Future dejavus are expected.
- Musk, the human embodiment of Succession. Mattson’s attitude + Roman’s worldview + Kendall’s strategy + Shiv’s ego + Logan’s treatment of employees.
- For a user, the “everything app” simply means one login for all kinds of services with use data synched between them. Guess what: Google, Amazon, FB already did some of that. And we already know the downsides.
- Spiral of X-ilence theory:
1. Comments added by blue checkmarks get automatically promoted to the top (that’s what they pay for, after all).
2. Non-mark users get the impression that the whole conversation is dominated by trash.
3. So they, in return, avoid partaking.
4. Resulting in the whole thread becoming more dominated blue checkmarks. Return to 2.