Category: Social Media
The Divorce⇢
Casey Newton, in an excellent edition of Platformer:
From the start, my strategy on Twitter has been to tell jokes about tech, use the engagement on those posts to grow a following, and then promote my work to that following. (Some people who read my tweets also became friends and sources; Twitter was great for that, too.)
Now, awaiting Musk’s latest tweets, I find myself anxious that one of his former employees could be physically assaulted or worse over what the CEO is posting. I don’t know how, in that environment, to make little jokes about Google’s latest failed messaging app, or bad PR pitches, or any of the other bits I have been doing on Twitter forever. I don’t know how to pretend that what is happening is not actually happening. I don’t want to provide, even in the smallest of ways, a respectable backdrop against which hate speech against my fellow LGBTQ people, or Black or Jewish or any other people, can flourish.
Verified Twitter Account Announces Free Insulin⇢
…but as you can probably imagine, that verified badge cost someone a mere $8. Jordan Liles has more:
On Nov. 10, 2022, a Twitter account with a “verified” checkmark badge and a display name of “Eli Lilly and Company” tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” The account’s handle was @EliLiIlyandCo. However, this was nothing more than a parody account, as its bio clearly said.
The message was engaged with tens of thousands of times. At last check, it was nearing 20,000 combined reweets, quote tweets, and likes.
"Get Me Out of Here"⇢
Adi Robertson has more experience reviewing AR and VR products than just about anyone else, and wow does she have some words for Meta’s new $1,499 Quest Pro:
The problem is, the Quest Pro isn’t very good. It’s a device seemingly launched without plan or purpose, highlighting VR’s persistent drawbacks without making good use of its strengths — and topped off with some irredeemably bad software. We might be seeing a roadmap for where Meta is going, but right now, it’s not a particularly fun place to be. And if Meta lingers there much longer, its metaverse is in trouble.
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue⇢
In the upheaval surrounding Twitter’s changes to its verification system, many were left wondering how accounts posing as politicians, journalists, musicians, athletes and others could be noted as official. As it turns out, the checkmark was the way to go after all.
Jay Peters at The Verge has more:
Twitter is rolling out another type of checkmark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay for a blue checkmark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or public figures will get a gray “Official” checkmark, according to a thread from Twitter’s Esther Crawford, who is heading up the new Twitter Blue initiative.
Twitter is Literally Breaking⇢
It’s just been a few days since Musk let go roughy half of Twitter’s staff, and the cracks are already beginning to show, as Elizabeth Lopatto has discovered:
I can’t change my screen name on Twitter. I can change my bio. But not my screen name. So although I was helpfully trying to describe myself as “Elizabeth Lopatto (parody)” that simply wasn’t possible.
[…]
I have no idea what’s causing this problem but I’m not the only one experiencing it. My coworker Alex Cranz can’t change hers either. Neither can Jay Peters, Tom Warren, or Sean Hollister. However, our coworker Mitchell Clark can! Cranz, Peters, Warren, Hollister and I are all verified. Clark isn’t.
Twitter Blue Drops Ad-Free Articles⇢
One of the Twitter Blue perks was ad-free access to more than 300 US publishers through a deal known as Ad-Free Articles.
Twitter would pay publishers an amount roughly equivalent to the ad revenue for a view, and in return subscribers would be able to read pieces on Twitter Blue Publisher sites without ads.
Twitter has cancelled this feature overnight, with just one day’s notice. Publishers were sent an email announcing the change.
‘A Misinformation Nightmare’⇢
Amanda Silberling, writing at TechCrunch, on Twitter’s supposed plans to charge users $20/month to be verified:
Musk and his buddies view this plan as a way to get people to actually give Twitter money. But by monetizing a symbol that currently has value, they will ultimately remove all of that existing value.
Blue checks exist on social platforms as a means of combating misinformation. Currently, if someone makes a fake account pretending to be a world leader, journalist or celebrity, it’s easy to tell it’s a fake if the account doesn’t have a blue check. But under this newly proposed system, there’s not much incentive to pay the $20 per month to stay verified, especially since the once-coveted symbol would be available to anyone willing to pay. It’s quite possible that bad actors trying to pose as journalists to spread fake news would be more incentivized to pay the $20 than actual journalists.
The Clown Car Company⇢
Nilay Patel, in a fantastic piece about the challenges that You Know Who faces with his purchase of Twitter:
Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.
[…]
The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff. Do you know why YouTube videos are all eight to 10 minutes long? Because that’s how long a video has to be to qualify for a second ad slot in the middle. That’s content moderation, baby — YouTube wants a certain kind of video, and it created incentives to get it. That’s the business you’re in now. The longer you fight it or pretend that you can sell something else, the more Twitter will drag you into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech. And if you turn on a dime and accept that growth requires aggressive content moderation and pushing back against government speech regulations around the country and world, well, we’ll see how your fans react to that.
Meta Employees Meh on Meta’s Metaverse Experience, Leading to Meta Conversation in Leaked Meta Memos⇢
Alex Heath, in the best lede I’ve read all week:
Meta’s VR social network Horizon Worlds — the company’s flagship “metaverse” app — is suffering from too many quality issues and even the team building it isn’t using it very much, according to internal memos obtained by The Verge.
Twitter Had Plans to Build an... OnlyFans Competitor⇢
Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton have published an in-depth piece at The Verge that dives into a plan Twitter was working on to become more profitable:
In the spring of 2022, Twitter considered making a radical change to the platform. After years of quietly allowing adult content on the service, the company would monetize it. The proposal: give adult content creators the ability to begin selling OnlyFans-style paid subscriptions, with Twitter keeping a share of the revenue.
Casey Newton, on Elon Musk’s Purchase of Twitter⇢
On a day of record-temperature hot takes, Casey Newton has the best coverage of the Musk/Twitter deal I’ve seen so far.