It’s About People, Not Companies →

With Threads starting to federate, there has been push back in corners of Mastodon, with some server admins blocking users from @threads.net entirely. I think just about everyone has complicated feelings about Meta, but I think this kind of move only harms users of the Fediverse.

Adam Newbold has written about this, and I agree with their conclusions:

The entire point of the Fediverse and the ActivityPub standard is to make it easy for people to connect with one another, openly, across different platforms. The Fediverse wants to be open, and it is open by design. When you block another instance on the Fediverse, you’re making a deliberate choice to fracture a part of the network. There are legitimate reasons to do that, but it’s a serious move that should always be a last resort. And when you preemptively block what might wind up being the largest instance ever, well, there might as well not even be a network at all. People who want to connect with one another on either side of that fissure will need to pick one side or the other and connect there. If you’re wondering which side that will be in the context of Threads, you can look to WhatsApp’s two billion monthly active users for your answer.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Threads will be the largest instance on the network in very little time, and once migration is fully up and running, I think many folks may opt to use it as their primary account, leaving Mastodon behind. Cutting Threads off at the server level doesn’t accomplish anything useful.

That said, many people have seen posts on Threads that have been offensive, including a rash of transphobic and other garbage-level content. There’s no doubt that Threads has had many moderation issues — just like every other social media platform, including Mastodon.

However, if someone uses Mastodon as their home base in the Fediverse, choosing to follow a select number of Threads accounts from nice people and useful websites means the whatever algorithmic choices are made at Meta will not wash ashore on their timelines.

That’s the whole point of federated social media, and why this new world is much more interesting than the old.

via Robb Knight

Apple Reportedly Pausing Advertising on X →

Ina Fried at Axios:

Apple is pausing all advertising on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network, sources tell Axios.

The move follows Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as Apple ads reportedly being placed alongside far-right content. Apple has been a major advertiser on the social media site and its pause follows a similar move by IBM.

Musk faced backlash for endorsing an antisemitic post Wednesday, as 164 Jewish rabbis and activists upped their call to Apple, Google, Amazon and Disney to stop advertising on X, and for Apple and Google to remove it from their platforms.

Apple should make this pause a permanent break.

Elon Musk Wants X to be Your Bank →

Jacob Kastrenakes and Alex Heath at The Verge:

Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with “just how powerful it is.”

“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Musk has floated this before, as the pair continues:

The original plan for X.com is clearly on Musk’s mind. “The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000,” Musk said on Thursday’s internal X call. “And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.”

Being furious at PayPal is perhaps the most relatable thing about Elon Musk, but if he finds himself frustrated over regulations concerning cars and spacecraft, just wait until someone tells him about the FDIC.

Some Tasty Numbers Concering X →

Matt Binder at Mashable, reporting on data from Travis Brown about Elon Musk’s 153 million followers:

Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk’s followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.

When it comes to content creation on the platform, more than 62.5 million Musk followers have zero tweets. This would include users who have deleted all of their tweets by the time this data was collected over the past few weeks as well as accounts that have never before tweeted. More than 100 million Musk followers have less than 10 tweets posted to their account.

If that wasn’t concerning enough, this paragraph has to sting:

However, according to this latest collection of @ElonMusk follower data, only around 453,000 Musk followers or 0.3 percent subscribe to X Premium. Mashable reported earlier this week that there were around 830,000 X Premium subscribers in total based on another data set compiled by Brown.

X Gon’ Take It From Ya →

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch:

The owner of the @x Twitter handle confirmed that the company, now known as X, took over his account without warning or financial compensation, telling him the handle is a property of X. The handle had previously belonged to Gene X Hwang of the corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography. In a letter, the company formerly known as Twitter thanked Hwang for his loyalty and offered him a selection of X merchandise and a tour of X’s HQ, as a “reflection of our appreciation.”

I just hope Hwang can get past the police tape during the office tour.

Threads Adds Following Feed, in the Most Meta Way Possible →

Jay Peters, writing about today’s update to Threads:

The much-needed Following feed is unfortunately a bit hidden: you can make it appear by tapping the home icon at the bottom of the screen or the Threads logo at the top. Once you see it, you can switch between “Following,” which shows posts in reverse-chronological order, and “For You,” which is the algorithmically sorted feed the app has offered since launch.

But a few of us at The Verge noticed that Threads will occasionally rehide the Following feed and bring you back to the For You feed after you open the app. (You can test it for yourself by force closing and reopening the app.) Unfortunately, it sounds like that’s by design, based on a statement from Meta.

“For You is the default experience when you open the Threads app,” Meta spokesperson Seine Kim tells The Verge. We’ve asked Kim if Meta plans to add a way to set Following as a default in the future.

I am so glad to see this feature, but I’m not holding my breath that Meta will give the option so many of us want.

Thread Passes 100 Million Users →

Jay Peters and Jon Porter, reporting at The Verge:

Instagram’s new Threads app has already surpassed 100 million users, meaning it reached the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on Wednesday, got there in a matter of days. The number of users can be found in the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads userbase.

Late last year, Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had around 260 million monetizable daily active users. At least he’s taking it well.

Threads

As just about everyone knows, Meta’s Twitter competitor launched last night, and as of this writing, has 30 million users.

I think most people in our corner of the Internet have pretty mixed feelings about it. I love the idea of federated social media, but Mastodon is proving too complex for the masses. Then there is the gatekeeping done by some to keep the platform what they want it to be is a pretty big turn-off for some.

On the other hand, Meta is well… a terrible company with a history of doing terrible things. I think our shared desire to see Elon fail with Twitter is playing into Meta’s hands.

And who knows if Threads will join the fediverse via ActivityPub. They’ve promised support, but it’s already much larger than Mastodon or anything else using the protocol, except maybe for WordPress users who have set things up on their sites correctly. It’s hard to see what Meta gains from using ActivityPub, beyond the obvious and cynical take that it would help them stay out of regulatory hot water. Ahem.

All of that said, most people want to be on a platform with a mix of their friends and favorite content creators and celebrities are. Threads fits that bill. For some of us, that means this new app has a new mix of nerdy Internet friends and people-we-know-in-real-life friends. That’s a bit weird for me, but I’m going to lean into it for now and see where it all goes. I honestly don’t know what I want out of all of this, but at least it’s more fun than watching Twitter burn to the ground.

Maybe Zuck is Winning the Fight With Elon Anyway

A few fun stories this month today in The Social Media Apocalypse:

So as Twitter continues to evolve into the Internet’s silliest island, Meta is ready to come in and build a mansion right on the beach. I don’t often root for Meta to win, but I think if anyone could replace Twitter for the masses, it’s going to be them with Threads.