Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform
variety.com
Elon Musk may flip the switch to make X — the social network formerly known as Twitter — an entirely subscription-based platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twi…

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.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    231·
    1 year ago

    I hate twitter!

    Use mastodon.

    Twitter has just gotten worse and worse!

    Use mastodon.

    If only there were some other platform!

    …

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Whilst I mostly agree with you, what I use Twitter for, and now Mastodon, is to get real-time updates on projects and events. I follow projects like Asahi Linux (where devs post updates from their personal accounts), or various service providers or trending hashtags to get real-time updates on events, such as say an M365 outage, a zero day vulnerability, or a natural disaster (eg: earthquakes). Sure, there are other sites as well that report on events, but these sites mostly get their updates from Twitter (and not having an account on it would exclude you from participating). Thanks to Twitter, I’ve been able to interact directly with developers, netsec folks, organisations and just randoms from across the world - all of which, has been convenient to do so via a single platform. It’s kinda hard to replicate that sort of interaction across other platforms.

    • mishimaenjoyer@kbin.social
      22·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • mishimaenjoyer@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          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?

          • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            I mean, I already recommended firefish.social, but you are under no obligation to try it. My point is that your experience is very much not typical I think.

            In any case, if you plunk “left leaning mastodon instances” into your search engine of choice that would probably work, but you could also try a popular instance which would address several of your concerns. If firefish doesn’t interest you with its various improvements to the UI, why not just go for the original and (I think) biggest - mastodon.social.

            https://mastodon.social/auth/sign_up

          • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            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?

            • mishimaenjoyer@kbin.social
              1·
              1 year ago

              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.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It works “well enough”.

        unless you tune into the echo chamber most instances are, you’re not going to have interesting conversations.

        I don’t get this. I’ve had many interesting conversations with people on Mastodon. And there are a number of interesting people I follow.

        there is a lack of actually interesting oc posting people on the masto side of the fediverse.

        This is a problem solved by more people joining… And from my POV Mastodon is far more stable and mature than Lemmy is. I’ve had better conversations there without being swarmed by tankies and ultra-partisans as well.

        Perhaps you’ve chosen bad people to follow?