Wow that’s pretty nuts. I knew about him but not the advertising issues.
I do have a Mastodon account and tried to switch but the vast majority of Twitter accounts I follow aren’t currently on there.
Hopefully the other federated platforms take off - I used FidoNet and BBSs in the 90s, and the decentralised Fediverse very much reminds me of those days.
I hear you on Twitter, I think the only reason they’re not going down even faster is that there are people there who are staying for other people. Facebook has that advantage as well. I don’t think Reddit has that kind of specific-person pull, but it’s too early to tell.
The Twitter advertising thing comes up in the news coverage because it’s subject to quantitative analysis, and because advertising is Twitter’s main source of $$$. People can point to dropping ad numbers and say “this is how much worse Twitter is than before Elon bought it.” And I find it extra funny that Huffman is using it as an example of how he can make Reddit profitable by trashing it, because Twitter is most definitely not profitable, and no one but Elon thinks it’s going to become profitable any time soon.
And it should be much easier to transition to Mastodon than Lemmy. Mastodon doesn’t require the same kind of critical mass that Lemmy does. If you just follow cricket, some cricket org can just ask player and teams to start using a Mastodon instance and the users will eventually follow. I’d say Twitter/Mastodon is largely a broadcast platform that’s mostly one way.
Lemmy and Reddit rely more on interaction, both for votes and because comments are more important.
Wow that’s pretty nuts. I knew about him but not the advertising issues.
I do have a Mastodon account and tried to switch but the vast majority of Twitter accounts I follow aren’t currently on there.
Hopefully the other federated platforms take off - I used FidoNet and BBSs in the 90s, and the decentralised Fediverse very much reminds me of those days.
I hear you on Twitter, I think the only reason they’re not going down even faster is that there are people there who are staying for other people. Facebook has that advantage as well. I don’t think Reddit has that kind of specific-person pull, but it’s too early to tell.
The Twitter advertising thing comes up in the news coverage because it’s subject to quantitative analysis, and because advertising is Twitter’s main source of $$$. People can point to dropping ad numbers and say “this is how much worse Twitter is than before Elon bought it.” And I find it extra funny that Huffman is using it as an example of how he can make Reddit profitable by trashing it, because Twitter is most definitely not profitable, and no one but Elon thinks it’s going to become profitable any time soon.
And it should be much easier to transition to Mastodon than Lemmy. Mastodon doesn’t require the same kind of critical mass that Lemmy does. If you just follow cricket, some cricket org can just ask player and teams to start using a Mastodon instance and the users will eventually follow. I’d say Twitter/Mastodon is largely a broadcast platform that’s mostly one way.
Lemmy and Reddit rely more on interaction, both for votes and because comments are more important.