Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[Karreck]

If this view limit goes into effect, it's going to kill Twitter.

Every single one of Elon's policies has been from a place of deep stupidity. Whether Elon thinks this is a good change because it will reduce traffic or a good change because it will increase incentive to subscribe, both are vastly stupid on his part. He will lose viewers of ads in the form of his free viewers (Though tbf, he killed advertiser friendliness and thus why he probably wants to reduce overall viewers and increase paid viewers) and gain very little in the way of paid users.

There's going to be a point where enough people are quitting twitter for other social media platforms that it will completely tank the site. A critical mass for which there is no recovering from. And I pray that mass is soon, because we know that Elon wanted to use Twitter to greatly affect the 2024 election by pushing misinformation.

Honestly, that's the part that gets me. He spent / leveraged a lot of capital to buy Twitter, and for more than it was worth. You'd think you'd want a return on that investment. And it seems like he is purposefully doing the exact opposite of what is probably good business sense. Unsubscribed viewers may not be subscribed, but they are still eyeballs. And advertisers want more eyeballs on their ads, so why limit those eyeballs? I am not paying the 500,000 views a day price for what could only be 250,000 views.
Not to mention his history with advertisers leaving due to moderation concerns, so he guts moderation. Or trying to sell the prestige of a blue check while simultaneously killing said prestige. Or loudly claiming that Twitter is all about Free Speech while also banning journalists critical of him or his companies, and the whole letting foreign governments censor tweets thing.

It's just "Pissing on an electric fence, drunk country boy" levels of dumb. Except for when those boys survive a shock, they don't piss on the fence again. Musk does the opposite of common sense, and pisses again.
And again.
And again.

[Forogil]

Twitter today:

"To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day"

Needless to say, its going over well. Most platforms require you to login, but I can't think of any that throttle how many you can *read* a day, that's wild that they'd even think that would fly.

Musk's statement just sounds like technobabble in Star Trek. Data scraping would be if someone (like google - or in this case AI-chat-bots) were going through all of the posts to make them searchable (or to produce chats). Why would they have created many accounts for that?

[Dontrike]

Seriously tho, I’d like to see how it plays out. It may work to help combat bots? Idk.

Congrats, with that level of knowledge you would CEO just as well as Musk.

[Breccia]

Data scraping would be if someone (like google - or in this case AI-chat-bots) were going through all of the posts to make them searchable (or to produce chats).

Hasn't Musk been blocking/banning access to a variety of services, whose stated purpose was to search Twitter? And by "hasn't Musk" I mean "here is what I posted"

Twitter will discontinue offering free access to the Twitter API starting February 9 and will launch a paid version, the Elon Musk-owned microblogging website said as it looks for more avenues to monetize the platform.

In a series of tweets, the Twitter Developer account said the firm will be ending support for both legacy v1.1 and the new v2 of its Twitter APIs. It did not immediately say how much it plans to charge for API usage.

The move follows Twitter abruptly changing the terms of its API in recent weeks; the API was used by many popular Twitter clients, such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific. Most third-party Twitter apps have shut down their mobile apps.

In the aftermath of the recent changes that saw Twitter shutter third-party clients, many other app developers had grown cautious about the ways they advanced development atop of the Twitter API. This new move might leave some developers to either abandon their products or pass on the cost to their customers.

Thousands of developers use the Twitter API for scores of things such as tracking changes among Twitter accounts and offering alerts. These are fun side projects for people who might not be willing to pay fees for something that they themselves are not monetizing.

Then there is another specific user base of the Twitter API: Researchers. Twitter’s new announcement might impact research in different areas, including hate speech and online abuse. Universities often use Twitter to study human behavior in different regions. Putting a cap on free API usage could also stop firms working around detecting the spread of misinformation on Twitter.

If an app used to get the info from Twitter directly, it's reasonable to believe that "data scraping" might get the data by reading a bunch of Tweets. And I think Musk still wants to keep that data for himself, either because (a) he wants to sell it and/or (b) he doesn't want people to see how much Nazi hate speech Twitter is paying him to post.

[D Luniz]

Musk's statement just sounds like technobabble in Star Trek. Data scraping would be if someone (like google - or in this case AI-chat-bots) were going through all of the posts to make them searchable (or to produce chats). Why would they have created many accounts for that?

seeing almost every post I make is liked within a day by a pornbot account (and not even the same one, and not something that happened till Musk let the hyenas into the Pridelands.)
It could be that many accounts. Something that he caused.

- - - Updated - - -

You’d think he’d have me?

Seriously, tho, id rather not immediately look at this as the ‘sky is falling’. Let it play out, see what happens.

its been 2 years
2 years that not one day could you look at twitter and say "hey things are improving now"

its safe to say that downward trend AINT reversing with Musk there

[Orange Joe]

You’d think he’d have me?

Seriously, tho, id rather not immediately look at this as the ‘sky is falling’. Let it play out, see what happens.

Yeah we know you need access to your "European news"

[Breccia]

id rather not immediately look at this as the ‘sky is falling’.

Just going to back this response:

its safe to say that downward trend AINT reversing with Musk there

There objectively is no "immediately" here. This thread is how many pages? How many months? This is not the first step, this is the continuation of a journey. The sky is between 25% and 60% closer to the ground, depending on if you count users or market value. This isn't about whether or not the sky is falling, it has been for a while. The question is, why do you think this move, specifically engineered to make Twitter less friendly to use, will cause the sky to go back up?

Seriously does anyone think this move was good for Twitter users? Not owners, users? How, exactly, will limiting views help Twitter get views?

[Jester Joe]

Idk the inner workings of Twitter. If it’s bad, it’s bad. If it helps, it’s helps. Musk has shown that he’s open to hearing the people and changing things quickly to adapt. Im sure they’ll work it out, but my reactions to most things is that I don’t get worked-up about things I can’t control.

Just let it ride, man…

He fired the people he should be listening to, and listens more to random people on Twitter who have no idea what they're talking about either.

[Dontrike]

You’d think he’d have me?

Seriously, tho, id rather not immediately look at this as the ‘sky is falling’. Let it play out, see what happens.

"Sky is falling"? I'm laughing at it being destroyed bit by bit. I lose nothing by twitter going down.

[unfilteredJW]

Im sure they’ll work it out, but my reactions to most things is that I don’t get worked-up about things I can’t control.

You can’t be serious typing this out can you?

Your screeing on this forum has been almost exclusively you whining about things you want to control.

[Forogil]

seeing almost every post I make is liked within a day by a pornbot account (and not even the same one, and not something that happened till Musk let the hyenas into the Pridelands.)
It could be that many accounts. Something that he caused.

Bots naturally use many different accounts (if they are bots; people sometimes act in weird ways) - I don't see that the same is true for data scrapers.

[diller]

God elon is such a bitch

Seriously tho, I’d like to see how it plays out. It may work to help combat bots? Idk.

Seriously, what is wrong with you?

Then again you admit to not knowing I guess.

[Orange Joe]

Idk the inner workings of Twitter. If it’s bad, it’s bad. If it helps, it’s helps. Musk has shown that he’s open to hearing the people and changing things quickly to adapt. Im sure they’ll work it out, but my reactions to most things is that I don’t get worked-up about things I can’t control.

Just let it ride, man…

When and where has he shown this?

[Paranoid Android]

Anyone who pays for advertising on this site, WTF are you doing? This has to be killing your business in just people now getting limited but damnit for me, I would be pissed right now if an advertisement for Disney, Ford and whatever else is counting against my view count. Thus, I hope more and more users block every advertisement, which I do these days no matter what, they see.

[Biglog]

The funniest part in all this is that Google is Twitter's #2 advertiser. So if you're wondering what advertisers are left on there, that's one of the big ones. So if a Google Cloud customer pulls out or doesn't fully pay their bill, as appears to have been the cause of this (despite prior comments to the contrary), I wonder if that will make the parent company will reconsider where to spend their advertising dollars. That would be the cherry on-top, if this debacle ends up costing them their #2 advertiser also.

The whole nonsense data scraping story was so strange too, rather than admitting the real issue. It doesn't take much knowledge of IT infrastructure to know that was disingenuous. The literal day they lost significant levels of bandwidth (their Google Cloud capacity) because their contract date was up on 7/1/23, they suddenly are forced to significantly throttle all Twitter user bandwidth. That's what really happened, not this silly story about a sudden need to stop "data scraping" by throttling users, which doesn't even make sense from a technical standpoint. And even if it they were considering a major risky change like that, they wouldn't do it a) on the day same day their Google Cloud contract expired (lol), and b) on a Friday before a long holiday weekend (double lol). Investors were already worried about the risk of the 7/1 date, because the contract renewal concerns and this exact risk of a major outage/impairment from it had become a story in the financial news a couple of weeks prior.

[Karreck]

but my reactions to most things is that I don’t get worked-up about things I can’t control.

Your recent posting history is filled with you get worked up about things you can't control.

[DarkTZeratul]

its been 2 years
2 years that not one day could you look at twitter and say "hey things are improving now"

I know it might feel like two years, but it's been eight months.

[Breccia]

God elon is such a bitch

I don't care for that. I'll contact support!

(several seconds later)

I got a poop emoji. This response looks like it might be automated.

[Forogil]

I don't care for that. I'll contact support!

(several seconds later)

I got a poop emoji. This response looks like it might be automated.

Seriously? Is Elon running support as well?

[Breccia]

Seriously? Is Elon running support as well?

If you can call what he's doing "running"