America & World IV: Trump's Taxing Day

[Asura]

I do miss Twitter as when I have a random thought, see somethng cool or want to have a scroll and read some great pictures or articles I wouldn't otherwise had, there's nothing quite like Twitter. However, a lot of what I done was doom scrolling, reading people scream at others or just nonsense. But not in a Brasseye way, well, not all the time.

The biggest problem with Twitter is, if it goes down, it will have an effect on "the discoverability" aspect of so many people's lives.

The internet has enabled many people to work in the media; authors who publish books on Amazon, indie game developers, artists, photographers, voice actors, models... However, if you're going to open, say, an OnlyFans, you can do that in an afternoon but you can't reach new customers just by doing it. Same for being an author or a dozen other things.

YouTube is the outlier here because YouTube does a lot more "recommendation" than many other platforms; when you go on YouTube you're bombarded by stuff by new related creators, but that's not the case for many platforms.

Many of these creatives used Twitter as the "glue" which ties this together. You publish a book on Amazon, you tell people about it on Twitter.

Losing this will be the greatest loss for the service.

[Neon Ignition]

It's cold, I know, but... I'm alright with that loss.

[Dogg Thang]

There will be other services. I know many have tried but Twitter imploding will force the issue. People will move away from Twitter. It will be a long time before we know what sticks though.

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's the same as all things. If people want/need it, something else will fill the void.

Oh no, Banks are going bust.
Let them, we need banks, others will fill the void.
Oh no, Energy Companies are going bust.
Let them, we need energy, others will fill the void.

Theres always this big panic when something 'Established' starts to go under.

[Protocol Penguin]

I’d be ‘happy’ with Twitter going under were there something that did the same thing (microblogging, mass discoverability) that everyone could migrate over to. Yes, I know Mastodon exists, but that’s never going to take off and get mass acceptance in a way that makes it similarly useful.

[Soundwave]

I’d be ‘happy’ with Twitter going under were there something that did the same thing (microblogging, mass discoverability) that everyone could migrate over to. Yes, I know Mastodon exists, but that’s never going to take off and get mass acceptance in a way that makes it similarly useful.

Have you tried Mastodon??
It's ****ing awful
The whole sign up to some weird server that is highly unlikely to be the same one anyone you actually know is on & then trying to locate said people is such an utter shower it's a joke

I'm on HIVE which seems to be very similar to Twitter but that has only just started coming good now the App is working so I'll probably migrate to there a bit more as it gets better over time but honestly I'll miss Twitter something fierce, it's the only social media I use & as bad as it can be I quite happily skip all the doom and gloom & just read **** that I actually enjoy & I'll miss so many people that I've interacted with that it will have a massive impact on me

Neil

[Hirst]

I liked Twitter when it wasn't full of Donald Trump or Musk - in all honesty it was a decent way to shoot the breeze and post nonsense. It's also very international which I like. You can also opt to simply not follow the big popular people and just have a circle of people you like, muting the occasional nonsense as it turns up. The ability to mute posts containing specific words/phrases was excellent, once you'd worked at it a while you could easily shove away most of the crap without really trying.

For example, here are my muted terms (which are in date order, making an interesting timeline of what was annoying me at various points): musk, elon, gove, wordle, ivermectin, rogan, grimes, pingdemic, blockchain, nft, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, crypto, dogecoin, staycation, starmer, boris, stopthecoup, brexit, boris johnson, itscominghome, it'scominghome, it's come home, it's coming home, thatcher, remoaners, corbyn, katie hopkins, chope, mogg, farage

Does this make me an enemy of free speech? Probably, but I only really want to use Twitter to post up nonsense about old cars and crap ads nobody remembers.

[wakka]

Pingdemic. Man. I'd forgotten all about that one.

[Neon Ignition]

House January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump | January 6 hearings | The Guardian
Nothing will come of it sadly

[Asura]

There will be other services. I know many have tried but Twitter imploding will force the issue. People will move away from Twitter. It will be a long time before we know what sticks though.

True. Still, this comes at a really bad time, particularly for artists. They're about to potentially have to move to a brand new platform, effectively building an audience from zero (people may be unaware, but "I'm now over here, come over here and follow me" doesn't really work so well) in a climate of people creating AI "art".

I'm watching for what comes next though. Like Soundwave I firmly believe that Mastodon is not going to be that. It's decentralised nature, though fantastic in certain ways, creates too many problems; one of Twitter's main qualities is it's ubiquitousness which Mastodon can't have.

[Dogg Thang]

True. Still, this comes at a really bad time, particularly for artists. They're about to potentially have to move to a brand new platform, effectively building an audience from zero (people may be unaware, but "I'm now over here, come over here and follow me" doesn't really work so well) in a climate of people creating AI "art".

Oh, I’m very aware of the challenges for artists. But even before Musk, the algorithm on Twitter had been getting worse and worse. Reach has dropped massively and, with any platform where you are at the mercy of the algorithm, you have little control over that except to play algorithm games. Which is far from ideal for any artist. Like having to bombard Instagram with reels and stories like TikTok only works against artists, for example. There has been a need for a better platform for quite some time now.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2022/dec/20/trump-tax-returns-vote-house-jan-6-us-politics-live?page=with:block-63a1c3c98f08c23d9f5d48a7#block-63a1c3c98f08c23d9f5d48a7

The House is about to vote over whether to release 6 years of Trump's tax returns to the public. With Republicans set to take over soon it's expected Democrats will push this through hard.

[briareos_kerensky]

Embedded Tweet

[briareos_kerensky]

Elon Musk: Only blue tick users to vote in Twitter polls on policy

You can't make this up. LOL.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/20/house-committee-votes-release-trump-tax-returns

Trumps tax returns will be released in the coming days