Big Tech Twits Get Dumber and Corrupter!

[mormont]

So it appears that Musk is up to his usual tricks.

Originally, blue ticks were a status symbol. This meant that people actually wanted them, so Musk was like 'my cunning business brain sees an untapped market!' The problem is that by selling them, he devalued them as a status symbol, taking away the only reason anyone would pay to have them.

No problem: let's just give blue ticks to a random selection of celebs, making them prestigious again! Problem: the celebs didn't ask for them and don't want them. Well, tough luck: they get them regardless. Except... now you're associating their name and likeness with your (commercial) product to sell it. Without permission. Oops.

I expect the whole thing will be explained away as some sort of technical glitch or blamed on random staffers who get fired. That's the usual next step in Musk's cunning plans.

[polishgenius]

15 minutes ago, mormont said:

I expect the whole thing will be explained away as some sort of technical glitch or blamed on random staffers who get fired.

If it does go to a lawsuit, that'll be made harder by him openly antagonising Stephen King about it.

[Tywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

If it does go to a lawsuit, that'll be made harder by him openly antagonising Stephen King about it.

Or how LeBron was directly offered it and didn't accept, but got it anyways. Seems cut and dried to me. And my understanding is citing a technical glitch would open Musk and Twitter up to even more areas of discovery. 

[mormont]

12 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

If it does go to a lawsuit, that'll be made harder by him openly antagonising Stephen King about it.

And Paul Krugman.

 

[polishgenius]

I've never seen projection so hard in my life.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Since Elon has taken over, the term "status symbol" definitely falls to those completely off Twitter, as he has made even being on the service a suspect position.

Iow's I have more admiration to those who delete than those with the blue tick blemish.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

The problem is that by selling them, he devalued them as a status symbol, taking away the only reason anyone would pay to have them.

Another problem—he’s made them into a culture war issue severely limiting who would actually want them.

There are some pretty useful features on Twitter blue that I think a person especially a media personality would find benefit in.

But they don’t want to be associated with far right culture warriors and/or scam artists.

It doesn’t help when checkmarks try to bully people into paying.

[LongRider]

I saw a comment on twitter that the blue chechmarks came back to accounts with 1 million or more followers, live or dead.  That seems to be the case. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 minutes ago, LongRider said:

I saw a comment on twitter that the blue chechmarks came back to accounts with 1 million or more followers, live or dead.  That seems to be the case. 

Or granted to accounts that never had it.

Also to accounts with a fraction of a million.

 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Twitter is apparently remarkably more usable if you block all blue checkmarked accounts. Since those people are not useful or famous and are instead just sycophants and right wingers you get a significantly less trolly, combative place.

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Twitter is apparently remarkably more usable if you block all blue checkmarked accounts. Since those people are not useful or famous and are instead just sycophants and right wingers you get a significantly less trolly, combative place.

Sounds like an option that Musk and company will get rid of

[Tywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Sounds like an option that Musk and company will get rid of

Or charge people an extra few bucks a month to be unblockable. 

[kiko]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Or charge people an extra few bucks a month to be unblockable. 

That's easy to counter. You can just order the super block feature.

[Tywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, kiko said:

That's easy to counter. You can just order the super block feature.

Then you just charge people more for the super anti-block feature.

As dumb as this all sounds it wouldn't shock me if Musk considered something like it. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

I’m thinking any person who’d follow this guy), or the celebrities Elon marked without their consent if they were on the fence about getting they’re not going to now.

 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

In non-Twitler news, Google went in to downtown San Jose, bought a ton of land, demolished a bunch of landmarks and...is just doing nothing with it any time soon.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/google-puts-10-to-30-year-campus-construction-project-on-hold-after-2-years/

Quote

 

While missing out on a big construction project is bad news for downtown San Jose, Google critically made this decision two years after what CNBC describes as "the first demolition phase." So Google rolled into town with a big wad of cash and many promises, bulldozed everything, and left? CNBC says, "The demolition phase of the project took out a number of historic San Jose landmarks and forced the relocation of others." With the project on hold, the area is now "largely a demolition zone at risk of becoming a long-term eyesore and economic zero." A February report from the San Jose Spotlight ominously noted that, even after the demolition, Google is "not legally required to actually build its campus."

It certainly does not make much sense to build office space right now. The aftermath of the pandemic accelerated the work-from-home trend, and Google's move toward cost-cutting and a "shared desk" policy makes it sound like those office jobs are never coming back. COVID started in 2019, though, and by mid-2021, when construction started, Google's offices had been empty for over a year. Now, after an economic downturn sent Google into cost-cutting overdrive, a Google spokesperson tells CNBC it is “assessing how to best move forward with Downtown West.”

When the plan was approved by the city, Alexa Arena, the director of Google’s San Jose development plan, promised the city Google's project was “about the long haul" and that “we are not a developer that is coming in for five years." The latter half of that quote certainly seems correct.

 

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 4/23/2023 at 4:18 PM, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Twitter is apparently remarkably more usable if you block all blue checkmarked accounts. Since those people are not useful or famous and are instead just sycophants and right wingers you get a significantly less trolly, combative place.

This type of blocking has probably made the Twitter blue even less worthwhile.

Even if you’re not especially political you don’t want to have  all the far right stuff when you just want to check out the replies to tweets from an artist you’re following.

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

In non-Twitler news, Google went in to downtown San Jose, bought a ton of land, demolished a bunch of landmarks and...is just doing nothing with it any time soon.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/google-puts-10-to-30-year-campus-construction-project-on-hold-after-2-years/

 

Some of this is on the city council, because they didn't get any sort of legal commitment from Google to do anything useful with the spaces they were bulldozing.

But it is indeed pretty lousy of Google to wreck a whole neighborhood to no purpose, and their demolition work ended up killing off one of my favorite Vietnamese places.  A nearby nice used bookstore closed down, too, although I can't prove it was the demo work.

[mormont]

10 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

This type of blocking has probably made the Twitter blue even less worthwhile.

Even if you’re not especially political you don’t want to have  all the far right stuff when you just want to check out the replies to tweets from an artist you’re following.

At present, about 50% of my Twitter feed is people discussing how to block blue checks from your Twitter feed. 

It's been a masterclass in how to fail at marketing a product.