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Notes -
New Twitter policy just dropped:
It's like the man himself says
ETA:
Seems like some large accounts are calling Twitter's bluff. Dril posted a link to their linktree hours ago and so far both post and account are still up.
ETA2:
Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.
ETA3:
The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.
I've seen this "gotcha, you're a hypocrite!" tweet linked every single time someone has brought up this new policy in a discussion space I'm in, and at no point has the argument (implied or otherwise) gotten any better. Social media platforms are not socioeconomic systems and this is not a "wall" that Elon "built" to "keep people from escaping". At any time people are free to choose to leave Twitter without much consequence, which is not remotely the case if you're, say, looking to move to the US from Mexico, or if it's the 1960s and you're living in the USSR. Yes, yes, you can gripe that you'll lose all your followers or tweets or what have you, but that is not remotely the same as needing to uproot your entire life to move across national borders or needing to go through the US's complicated immigration system, nevermind the risk of death if you tried to do the same in the USSR, and to pretend that they are the same is... to put it politely, a category error.
This sort of hyperbole seems to be the norm around anything Elon Musk does. If Elon bans a bunch of journalists (nevermind all the journalists that were banned before he took over which didn't receive this sort of outcry), it's suddenly a "Thursday Night Massacre" and deserving of its own article on Wikipedia, alongside other actual massacres that took place on Thursday such as:
And just to be sure, let's look at the Chiquola Hill Massacre:
Yeah, that's right. People literally getting shot and murdered and evicted from their homes is placed on the same level of importance and described in the same way as some people being unable to use their accounts on a certain social media app. Nevermind the fact that they still have a huge massive platform to publish their views because, you know, they're journalists and they work at giant media companies, so really this didn't do anything, and to compound the amount of nothing this did, Elon ended up unsuspending them anyway.
I would say something to the effect of "touch grass", but I know everyone's already been told that and clearly it's not working. So instead I will just reiterate that the internet is not real life and Twitter is a platform barely used by less than 5% of the population. It's really not important. Whatever stupid shit Elon Musk does is not going to be the end of the world, and not even the end of Twitter for that matter. If Twitter ever does get run into the ground, life will go on and things will continue as normal.
Indeed - this is just something that fucks with ordinary user for no benefit for Elon whatsoever. Ordinary users do not see social media as exclusive competing religious sects, ordinary users have no problem using twitter, instagram, facebook, tiktok etc. simultaneously.
What Elon thinks will happen:
"I cannot link to my grandma's Facebook page to show my friends latest cute pics of her cat? So be it. I will stay only on Twitter, never ever look at Facebook any more, and tell granny to delete her facebook and move to Twitter if she wants to stay in contact with me."
What will happen:
"I cannot link to my grandma's Facebook page to show my friends latest cute pics of her cat? @#$#%^&&&!!! FUCK YOU ELON!"
We will see whether Elon's mega ego prevails over common business sense.
He seems to be running it as a business. No business gives free publicity to its rivals. Coke is not going to have people posting social media about "hey check me out trying the new Pepsi flavour". The New York Times will not have 'letters to the editor' where Sam of Ninth Street suggests everyone should read the coverage of the story in the Washington Post to get a better perspective.
So there is that, as against how Twitter and other platforms have been run, where people posting use them as begging platforms ("follow me on Facebook Instagram TikTok here's my Venmo buy me a Ko-Fi my Kickstarter is here"). Since people are accustomed to using social media as a means of increasing their income by directing potential readers/viewers/followers to other streams, then of course they're going to object to Elon taking this tool away from them.
I don't know if it's hypocrisy or not. From Musk's point of view, if Facebook or Instagram is a competitor and they're all fighting for a market share of contributors, then it's business sense to say "if you want to advertise on here, pay for it". It's not business sense if people think they should be able to link their own sites for personal use (and personal gain), and as you say, "eff you Muskrat I'm leaving, Facebook lets me link" is the result.
Twitter users are not customers, they are product. Advertisers are customers buying the product, and will pay according to quantity of product.
Will this policy increase or decrease total number of twitter users and total time they spend on twitter? Elon thinks so. Is he right? Only time will tell.
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