Summary
Stephen King announced his departure from X (formerly Twitter), calling the platform “too toxic” and urging followers to join him on Threads.
King has frequently clashed with X owner Elon Musk over verification charges and political disputes, including Musk’s support for Donald Trump.
Other entities, including The Guardian, German football club St Pauli, and actor Jamie Lee Curtis, have also left the platform, citing concerns over toxic content, misinformation, and hate speech.
Rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky are gaining traction, with Bluesky reporting nearly 15 million users globally.
Better late than never for all of these people, I guess.
Sunk cost fallacy hits people hard.
I wish people would have left earlier as well, but it’s not just sunk cost fallacy. Network effects are a rational reason to stay, and that’s the issue. If he has a community, he loses the community. I get it.
That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once - it’s far more likely their network will follow them in that case, both hurting X more and helping themselves more, and accelerating people leaving as the network effects disappear on X.
The physics metaphor applies pretty directly here: They need to create momentum to counteract inertia.
That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once
I think that’s a herding cats issue. Especially when you’re dealing with a bunch of people with big egos. But it would be nice.
Yeah, for sure. But there’s been trends set off without explicit coordination in the past, especially where there’s an unspoken, unacknowledged pressure built up over time.
I suspect many both celebs and normies are ready to leave, and they’re waiting for an excuse, a signal that they won’t be leaving alone and losing those networks. If Taylor Swift does it, and then some movie star follows, and so on, it can organically cascade.
Anything but Mastodon/Activitypub, eh? These fellas rlly love sucking on corporate dicks, don’t they
It really boggles my mind the cognitive dissonance of everybody constantly complaining about corporations screwing them over, then refusing to use the obvious solution to their problems.
I can absolutely believe that an old guy like Stephen King has never even heard of Mastodon. It’s not like there’s a big Mastodon PR team being paid to advertise its existence.
I can totally believe that he didn’t know about mastodon, but even Bluesky is like a reasonable platform. Threads… I see literally no upside to using threads. It’s on a timer from the beginning to turn into another X. Just look at how long Facebook has been a cesspool of Nazi propaganda.
We’re here for fun. Celebs are on social media as part of their brand. It’s them doing business, and they’re going to use what the feel will reach the largest audience with the least effort on their part, and something with corporate backing likely has customer support for moderation, hacking, and whatever else. They’re not here for a digital revolution, they’re here to keep their name and income stream out there.
I imagine it’s the same reasoning why a business will pay for Red Hat when they could run Linux for free. It may or may not be the best option, but they feel it offers tangible benefits.
This is absolutely correct. And these businesses are typically paying employees to manage these social accounts so there is financial risk with choosing one that’s not going to result in revenue. Why market on a platform with no audience or backing?
I’m not saying I like it, but that is indeed how things work.
Although federated social media has the “chicken or egg” problem with content and attracting users, I’m content with places like Lemmy and Mastodon staying the small size they are right now for a little longer.
Sure, I definitely miss content from other platforms from time to time. But I think your comment about businesses and celebrities rings true. I’m happy to be clear of the grifters and influencers for as long as possible.
Why wouldn’t they want to join this place and be called bootlickers for moderate policy take by some screaming communist from a .ml? Sounds like a great time to me! Getting yelled at by flying squid twice a day is a joy!
This place is primarily made up of a ton anarchist and communists screaming and spreading their own bullshit. Centrist and and less progressive folks are commonly shouted at, called bootlickers, or Nazis for relatively centrrist views.
Mods and admins are far less balanced than reddit or pre x Twitter as well. LWis about to as close to center as you can get and it’s quite obvious.
What do you mean when you say “this place”? Because Lemmy is decentralized, and it can vary wildly by instance and community.
LW. The only instance really even close to supporting commercial needs. I may be missing a few snale ones but LWis the most “normal” for lack of a better description.
StarTrek.website recently defederated from hexbear and we got called names too. I’d say our instance is pretty well balanced and small.
Twitter to Threads is like leaving Derry for Jerusalem’s Lot.
He has a Bluesky account already, and has posted…some.
Everyone I’ve seen (mostly in the tech space) seems to say that Threads feels soulless. I follow a few people there from my Masto account (yay, federation), and that’s all fine and dandy. But I don’t know if I’d trust Zuck in the long run since he already seems to be kissing the ring.
Yes, kissing the ring for sure. I knew Zuck was gone as soon as he called Trump “badass” and that he “couldn’t vote for a democrat” after the first assassination attempt.
Dude stood there and by his luck the bullet missed. This wasn’t some courageous action, this was “standing there until the secret service tackled me.” What exactly was “badass” about it?
I’ve been calling it the Roman numeral for ten site formerly known as twitter. Are people just abbreviating this to ‘X’ now?
I’ve just been calling it twitter
I’ll never deadname a person, but I’ll deadname the shit out of a bigoted transphobic crybaby billionaire’s shitty website.
Should I not be calling it “trans”?
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37394/why-do-some-words-have-x-as-a-substitute
Each post that goes viral is poppin’.
If it really blows up it’s BACKNE and it’s POPPIN’!
But the best xits are all BLOWING THE FUCK UP!
Whole place was covered in pus! means EVERYONE popped it. To pop a xit is to share a post.
Gah. Hep me loard.
