- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Elon Musk said he will charge all X/Twitter users a fee to be on the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.
“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," said Elon. I can’t believe that this is the only solution he can think of.
Dealing with bots would be Elon Musk’s responsibility, considering he’s the only one profiting significantly from X, not us. Elon Musk steals our data and censors each of our posts, now he even expects us to pay to clean up the mess he created.
Plus, the problems with X go beyond just bots. The algorithm and programming decisions are negatively impacting user experience and manipulating people’s minds.
We want a town square where everyone is free to have & voice an opinion. I do not believe we have to pay ”a small monthly payment” for such a place, especially in a country that should value these freedoms & suppressing ideas.
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Why do I have to see the face of this idiot almost daily? I don’t use that shit X and never will. What’s the appeal? I even could understand TikTok somehow, but X/Twitter? Where’s the informational value in these completely useless posts there?
I hate twitter!
Use mastodon.
Twitter has just gotten worse and worse!
Use mastodon.
If only there were some other platform!
…
let’s not pretend mastodon is a viable alternative at this time. sure, it’s not an ad-algo-hellscape yet (meta will change that tho) but you’re at the mercy of whatever powertripping admin you have to deal on the instance you’re on. unless you tune into the echo chamber most instances are, you’re not going to have interesting conversations. it’s very slow, has barebone features and there is a lack of actually interesting oc posting people on the masto side of the fediverse.
I feel like these comments are from folks who haven’t really used it. The traffic on your specific instance isn’t really the point most of the time. And the fact that you can find another instance easily if the guy in charge of your instance is an asshole is a pretty huge feature. Who runs the other instance of Twitter you can move to?
You can migrate your account and followers/following lists until you find an instance where the admin isn’t a “power tripping asshole” - and I’m not convinced that’s a widespread problem in any case.
The Mastodon interface is kinda barebones though still not as bad as I think you are describing, but I migrated (gasp) my entire mastodon account to firefish.social, which federates with Mastodon, with a couple of clicks, and the interface and features there are really great. (And there are also multiple firefish instances to choose from in case the admin becomes an power tripping asshole)
But most importantly:
unless you tune into the echo chamber most instances are, you’re not going to have interesting conversations
Why wouldn’t you be following people from the broader fediverse? The federated feed on firefish (and on most instances I’d think) scrolls by so fast I have to pause it to read anything. There’s plenty being posted. Certainly no less comparatively than I see on kbin/lemmy, and it gets better continuously.
I’m all for using what you like and avoiding what you don’t, but this is like an infomercial-level criticism of Mastodon, like when they spend 45 secs showing you how hard it is to scramble eggs and cook them without their forty dollar gadget.
i’ve been on two instances since last fall: one mastodon, one pleroma.
on the mastodon one i found out by accident, that i was “shadowbanned” from it’s own public timeline. inquiring why this happend, the mods didn’t told me. when i asked then that i would like to know what i did “wrong” and if they could lift this, they said “no”. i deleted my account after that.
the pleroma one was even worse because literally on day one i was zerged by some american internet rightwingers because i posted something they didn’t agree with. i deleted my account after that.
what do you suggest, how many times should i move/delete my account until i found an instance that at least gives me the twitter treatment instead of just doing random policy?
on the mastodon one i found out by accident, that i was “shadowbanned” from it’s own public timeline.
I’m not sure that’s actually possible for a mod to do on Mastodon. Did you make your posts “unlisted” by default by accident?
mod/admin/whover was behind the support mail address told me, that someone made a complaint about my account (they refused to tell me what the problem was) and that they unlisted/shadowbanned me from the servers public timeline.
For those that are saying “no” because it’s Musk: would you be willing to pay to your account on Lemmy, Mastodon, or any other social network that you happen to use?
Let me be specific: I am not asking if you donate or contribute to any server. I am asking if you’d sign up to a social network that required payment from every user as a measure to avoid spammers and to keep the service running.
No because it would exclude all the interesting people, I’d much rather donate to keep a door open for all.
it would exclude all the interesting people
Are all “interesting people” so cash strapped that they wouldn’t be able to afford a $10/year membership?
Anyway, what if I told you that my instance provides “group-based” billing? You could, e.g, get a 10-account package for $5/month and give access to 9 other people there.
I would still try to come up with some form of vouch or sponsorship-based system, where the paying members get to approve non-paying members if they have a backing sponsor.
donate to keep a door open for all.
Donation-based instances are not sustainable. You can see that already with Mastodon. They used to be able to get enough funds to even support upstream projects, now they are invite-only. Turns out that “keeping the door open for all” makes the operating costs rise faster than the revenue from donations.
Interesting people barely have time to pop onto Twitter every now and then, they’re not going to bother if it costs money
And I guess we’ll see which system ends up bearing fruit, I think we’re already seeing the capitalist walled garden model falter, I suspect your more collectivist model won’t have the momentum to replace it but while the commons might trip and start with a dozen different stumbles the sheer force of its ever growing ubiquity will carry it through.
Especially as hardware continues to get cheaper and software more efficient, hosting a few thousand users on a federated server is already fairly trivial, its only going to get easier the more hurdles are removed through innovation and tech creep.
A monthly fee seems idiotic but yes please do it! Please!
That said I think a $5 signup fee on Mastodon or Lemmy that is not refunded if you get banned would seriously help stop bots. They only make pennies per bot and if you make their cost even minimally painful the economics fall apart.
It would also stop most regular users from signing up. This kind of stuff being free has just become the norm.
Even better!
lol
Lol this saga just keeps getting better
You couldn’t pay me to use that cracker platform. I thought reddit was bad after they fucked over all the moderators, then comes xhitter with open pedo-nazis being boosted to the front page. Both are shit for the same reason and i’m never going back to either.
