I’ve had this feeling that since there are forces that do not want us to have free speech, and that the destruction of Reddit and Twitter does this effectively, creating a chilling effect, destroying social links and communities. Might it not be an intentional effort to stifle the ability of the downtrodden to organize and fight the power?
There are so many other ways things are engineered to benefit the minority and prevent the majority from gaining power, why not this too?
Just a thought rattling around in my head.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. “Don’t attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence.”
This ^^. It turns out that Elon is just a narcissistic idiot who doesn’t actually have good business sense, at least in the software world. The types of things he’s been trying are better explained as someone who wants Twitter to make more money but doesn’t understand how people actually think and behave and doesn’t realize that these decisions will alienate users and destroy the product. Spez decisions seem similar, although on the whole I think he’s less of a people idiot than Elon, and is probably just under tons of pressure to improve the financials right now and is making bad short-sighted decisions as a result.
Great take on this. Elon is a lot like the dog who caught the car. He has no idea what to do now.
Either this ^^ or whatever has been lost is just a series of casualties in the search for money. There’s not much money to be made by hosting free speech alone - that social media companies do what they do to enable free speech is a popular misconception. Above all they want to make money, and if you need to do that free speech thing at a net loss for a couple years before you start milking your users for all they’re worth, then so be it.
As for Twitter, it could be argued that His Muskiness has been kind of a trial-and-error guy for his entire career - so far it’s worked out pretty well for him. Twitter is just special in that his random ‘let’s just try this and see if it sticks’ decisions instantaneously affect (and piss off) millions of people in a very public way. Maybe that’s why Twitter is such a challenge for him.
As for Reddit, Spez doesn’t exactly keep his admiration for Elon a secret. If Elon joked about improving Twitter’s ‘bottom’ line by shoving a cucumber up his arse, Spez would probably be spotted in the closest supermarket’s produce section within the hour.
I appreciate your sense of humor, regarding cucumbers.
I was never really under any illusion that they weren’t in the business to try and make money but your pointing it out does really highlight that their motives are profit driven above all else and merely short-sighted and intended to improve quarterly gains Rather than actually being organized.
I guess it turns out that allowing profit to be the only motive it’s just generally bad, right?
Edit: speech to text.
That helps. Thanks. Maybe I should drink less anxiety juice, ie coffee.
Edit: I had to look it up because I wanted to provide the link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
A sinister conspiracy is certainly… much easier to believe in than the existence of two rich idiots.
Reddit and twitter have never been “free speech”
If you want free speech as in complete anarchy, host your own webserver in international waters.
This has happened with other online platforms constantly over the course of the internet’s history. It’s why there is an enshittification meme that everyone is learning about.
This time it happened after some years where a critical mass of society has coagulated on those platforms, so the effect is more dire.
It really just might be idiots with too much money. Musk makes changes willy nilly without much peer review in the similar way the Titanic sub rich guys did before it imploded.
Then Steve Huffman was like, “Hey, I wanna get investors and money! Screw the people, the whole site is mine to play with like Elon does.”
Money corrupts, man. It’s overly worshipped by society because of its necessity and now here we are. It’s a whole other system for the rich vs the poor.
But to go along your route of thinking, I’d still say no because powerful social media is even powerful when the people who use it are heavily propagandized. (especially by Russia) So when communities fracture into safer sites, propaganda loses its grip and has to work harder to spread influence.
