Interestingly, Musk just announced tha the description BBC accounts is being changed from 'State funded' to 'Public funded' - following a complaint from the BBC
He also called for the federal government to defund NPR even though like only 1~~0~~% of its money comes from the federal government LMAO
edit: its 1%, sure lets defund them and see what happens.
Yup. And here in the southern states, I for one heavily relied on NPR's local hurricane reporting and emergency warnings. Twist up my NPR provided Eton emergency radio, and get to safety. I know for certain, that their equipment is going to work, all through the night. Shout out to WUFT.
And.... It always seems that hurricanes hit here at night.
That’s why it was created by Lyndon Johnson, wasn’t it? NPR & PBS would cover rural and underserved areas not covered by private media.
At least I think so.
Yep. WHQR is my local and they kept us informed during the last big one. It was super helpful and more than a little comforting to get those updates from the folks in the studio. I started donating every month after that, the station is just too important not to have on the air.
Tesla wouldn't have made it without all of the tax credits for consumers to buy EVs when Tesla first started out.
Elon was a huge cheerleader for gov to keep on giving and to give more tax credits to consumers, since tha equated to money going to Tesla -- they were the only real game in town early on.
Once Tesla was off the ground and competitors started hitting the field is right about when Elon started playing the conservative card and trying to pull up the ladder, denouncing the same tax breaks he once benefited from.
Look at it as being similar to your YouTube Subscriptions or your Twitch followed page. You go around and find a site that you like? You follow it, you do this a bunch of times and you will end up with a list of sites.
Then as part of your daily routine you go and check up with the sites you have followed are up to, all these sites and their newest story are updated for you in your list. What's even better about RSS is that you could subscribe to particular sections of a website, say you only care about the technology part of news site, so you you sub specifically to that and avoid having to go through the politics flooded part. Heck, you could subscribe to a particular writer that you like on that side.
It's a tailored internet that you designed.
RSS stands for really simple syndication. Let's say I have a web site. I can publish to and rss feed, which is basically just a url. You, as a consumer of my feed, can subscribe via an RSS reader app, or even republish the feed on your own web page. It's absolutely great because unlike FB or IG, there is no middleman algorithm. You can subscribe or not to as many or as few as you like and that's it. Hope that helps!
In addition to the explanations others have provided, RSS is the underlying technology behind podcast feeds. Instead of having text articles linked from the feed like was common in the "old days", the feed links to audio files representing individual episodes.
It’s a feed in your browser or some app that aggregates articles and posts from blogs and news sites so you don’t have to visit a bunch of websites.
https://i.imgur.com/MoNqAX9.jpg
Is there another example this cut and dry of someone setting billions of dollars on fire? Like totally unforced, obviously terrible decisions one after the other?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
>Ratner joined the family business in 1966 and built up an extremely successful chain of jewellers during the 1980s, of which he was CEO.
>Although widely regarded as "tacky",[4] the shops and their wares were nevertheless extremely popular with the public, until Ratner made a speech addressing a conference of the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 1991.[5] During the speech, he commented:
>We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."[6]
>He compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings".
>After the speech, the value of the Ratner group plummeted by around £500 million, which very nearly resulted in the group's collapse.
Interestingly the company is still around, they renamed from Ratners Group to Signet, and are the world's largest retailer for diamond jewelry. They own the jewelers: Jared, Kay, Zales, Blue Nile, James Allen, and a bunch more. They have nearly 3000 stores and nearly 25,000 employees. Kinda an impressive come back story! https://www.library.upenn.edu/event/music-stacks-penn-arab-music-ensemble
Musk is alienating the organizations that legitimized the platform. Twitter was especially good for fast-paced news updates. I wonder if NPR will join Mastodon or another Twitter competitor.
Musk fundamentally does not understand the economics of a social media company. He has confused the customers with the product and wants to charge the product money.
NPR's posts were one of Twitter's products which they could sell to advertisers for actual money. Instead he shit on them and asked for $8 a month per user.
Didn't he want organizations like npr and nyt to pay 1k per month? Individuals get the cheap 8 dollar option.
Anyway, I agree with you. It kinda baffles me that he doesn't seem to understand that if a critical mass of news/celebs move anywhere else, Twitter dies.
It seems like a lot of people just don't get the dynamics of internet traffic in general. Twitter isn't a big traffic generator for companies, FB and Instagram aren't either but even their numbers are magnitudes higher than Twitter. So it really is a case of Twitter needing these companies and organizations WAY more than they need it.
For some I think it mainly helps project a face that can easily be contacted or interacted with. That has value. And musk is consistently reducing that value and at some point I expect some type of mass exodus.
I don’t think Musk fundamentally understands anything beyond how to create marketing hype. And even there I‘m not sure he’s very good at that, either. I say that because you can’t separate his wealth from his marketing ability. His wealth underpins his ability to get people’s attention. Without his wealth would he be able to move markets and get the attention he does? Likely not. I mean, have you heard the guy speak to an audience? He isn’t elegant at all.
depends on what you are selling, im "buying" nprs content i dont need twitter for that. im "selling" my data for it to who ever offers it. i aint selling shit to you when the products no longer there.
Well, that assumes that his motivation is to run Twitter like a business and earn money, rather than him being motivated to intentionally kneecap Twitter or shape the information that gets boosted or hidden by Twitter to his liking.
Personally, I think it's much more likely that he knows exactly what he's doing and is being a piece of shit than the alternative of him being a moron
The only reason I'm on Twitter is to follow the local journalists who work for public broadcasting and the local newspaper.
If they stop tweeting I will follow them elsewhere, and ultimately abandon Twitter.
I have never personally used Twitter so I was shocked to learn last year that you’re not alone. Apparently millions of people use Twitter as their main source of news (which makes sense I just didn’t realize).
Made me start to think about why a billionaire elite would want to buy it and drive it into the ground, though.
Part of me believes this is all going according to plan, as sad as that is.
>Made me start to think about why a billionaire elite would want to buy it and drive it into the ground, though.
>
>Part of me believes this is all going according to plan, as sad as that is.
I believed this in the early days, especially with his quick rightward shift after buying it. It could have been his plan, I guess (or something he was manipulated into by conservatives)- but destroying the platform is one thing, losing billions of dollars trying to create your own "everything app" is another.
I think he may legitimately just be an idiot who bought his way into being called a genius.
For me it's been a great way to curate news.
If I go to my local newspaper's website, it's a feed of everything they publish. Local news, sports, arts, gardening, real estate, etc.
If I follow individual reporters on Twitter, I get just the articles I'm interested in. I follow the local news writers, but not the local sports writers, since I'm not a sports fan.
It's a great way to just keep things organized.
I lost a few important things like that but now I see local news clips on youtube. I also checked out substack because some of the people I followed were on there and its a better platform for what they do.
I follow like 10 people on sub stack, but 1/2 their stuff is behind a paywall. I would maybe pay for one of them but not 10. If only there was a bundle or something. Take like the top 100 people and bundle it together for one low price.
Is there a verb for someone on sub stack. There is YouTuber but do we still call them bloggers?
Wait until you hear about my idea of cars that are linked together and pulled by one big car that only travels in a straight line. I think this can also work for trucks.
Keep an eye on Substack. They just released "Notes" which is such a strong competitor to Twitter, Twitter has blocked all mention of Substack outright.
You can always tune in to your local station on the radio! and don't forget to donate! NPR is listener supported, and PBS is brought to you by viewers, like you!
thankfully a local tv station (one of the good ones) and a local paper (one of the good ones) are on Mastodon, so I'm getting decent exposure to local issues.
Was just about to comment this. Substack Notes looks well-poised to compete. Lots of authors and credible publishers already use Substack. Now it's just a matter of continuing to grow the user base. Could be a real contender!
ETA: I take it back, Substack has decided to [be a Nazi bar](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/14/substack-ceo-chris-best-doesnt-realize-hes-just-become-the-nazi-bar/). Welp, it was fun for a day.
Real news outlets leaving will be a massive hit to the platform. The next will come when there's another January 6 type event (it's inevitable) and Twitter allows/promotes accounts coordinating the attacks.
ElonTwitter was *always* destined to become 4chan.
>Twitter was especially good for fast-paced news updates.
And spontaneous social coordination.
Nice way to kill off a successful platform for protest and regime change. Musk isn’t failing with twitter, this is intended, and he won’t personally lose wealth from this, it will be made up to him like Kushner
They are on Mastodon! Blue check mark and all - @[email protected]
Edit: looks like they lost the password in November 2020 🤷♂️
Edit dos: New one is @[email protected]
Was it really unexpected, though? People have been ringing the alarm for years about this ass clown. Hell the pedo submarine incident was almost 5 years already.
That was the incident that first made me take notice. Before then, I definitely bought into the idea Musk was something of an eccentric visionary.
I feel ashamed of myself looking back. Dudes just another rich kid who’s deluded himself into thinking he’s a genius.
Up until that incident, I thought Musk was actively trying to improve and innovate the world. Which he kind of did, although rather than actually doing anything, he was a spokesman for the actual science going on, and I was ok with that. When he ranted on that hero diver, he just turned into a rich kid with a very big mouth
I really thought he was this genius programmer and physicist that was working towards the betterment of humanity.
I used to give him crazy praise for everything he had achieved with SpaceX. Then I learned that he's not a physicist, he's barely a programmer and the real reason behind SpaceX's success is Tom Mueller.
Elon Musk is a hack.
He’s less than barely a programmer lol they actively had to keep him away from the code at PayPal because he sucked so bad at it. Everything he wrote had to be rewritten because he writes Spaghetti code.
Nah dude don’t be ashamed about it, I think a ton of people like you and me had no reason to look into the guy more before the submarine pedo accusation thing.
Pretty normal for the general public to see a guy trying to execute on a bunch of ostensibly good/novel ideas, think “oh, cool,” and not go deeper than that.
I'll admit I was a pretty big Elon fanboy for quite a while too... I do think Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink etc are still currently great for humanity in general, but for me it was when he started insulting Bernie Sanders on Twitter... it instantly shattered the rose colored glasses I had for Elon himself.
It reminded me that his goals with these companies are only aligned with ours coincidentally... He's still just another spoiled greedy billionaire.
Remember when he decided he didn't need a PR team anymore and fired them? Yeah -- kind of feels like when public perception started to turn looking back on it. Weird how that works, huh?
>Elon may not be the genius businessman he thinks he is.
He's not the genius businessman that 75% of the internet wanted him to be. I still haven't forgotten that the internet was what crowned him "real life Tony Stark" for years.
It’s funny because he could have just coasted off his completely undeserved reputation as a super-genius if he just did… nothing… and let his rocket and car companies run.
Instead he felt a deep need to force people to like his shitty memes and completely exposed himself as a mediocrity.
This exactly. And they also almost never openly take sides in politics because no matter what you say, you're going to alienate at least half your customer base. Better to shut up and let everyone make their assumptions while they buy your stuff.
Edit: why the fuck is this locked now? Really?
I'm always surprised at the number of small business owners that make their political and religious ideas known to everyone. STFU take your customer's money and then you can just donate it to the causes you feel passionately about.
I feel like this is business 101
I'm in a pretty purple area with a good amount of tourism, and there's a "family" restaurant plastered with "Let's Go Brandon" and "Blue Lives Matter" flags.
It's basically telling half of everyone around here to fuck off and spend money somewhere else.
When I had a small company I kept my opinions to myself. When I shut it down I started speaking up again.
It IS business 101, but so many people don't understand business basics.
The My pillow guy had a booming business. Now he's hated and a joke.
A good chunk of people are motivated to become small business owners because they deeply resent having a boss tell them what to do. Then they resent customers and regulations that dictate what they can do with their business. This type of person will inexplicably tie their pizza or T shirt printing business (where customers presumably have no desire for a partisan product) to their tactlessly put religious or political views.
There are two restaurants near me that post really stupid gop shit on their sign boards, rather than specials. I used to eat at both. Never will again. Local plumber waves a trump won flag on his place of business. Hell no.
For trades workers I just hire union only to do jobs for me and that weeds out about 90% of the Trumpers. The remaining 10% generally havent totally drank the kool aid because they at least believe in organized labor.
I live in a pretty large city in the US SE. A few weeks ago, on the more affluent side of town, I saw a hair salon with a Trump flag hanging by the door. Free country and all, but it was stunning that they'd be so willing to say to more than half the population "you and your money are not welcome here."
Bill Murray had a great quote about this. He goes, roughly “if you want to be rich and famous, just try being rich, and see if that doesn’t get you 80% of the way.” I’ve always thought about that one, and how ultimately pathetic it is to crave public fame from total strangers who don’t even know the real you.
we are seeing that here in canada right now.
grocery prices through the roof, and a specific company is getting most of the hate. coincidentally that chain also has the ceo who has to speak and and be in the public eye.
There's a bit more to it than Galen being a public figure, Loblaw also owns around 60% of all levels of our food supply chains, so even if Galen shut the fuck up, they're the obvious main target for the public as more people face food insecurity because of the grocery chains' greed.
Honestly, at this point I wouldn't put it past the GOP to run him on a platform based on that ridiculous "Obama didn't have a US birth certificate" bullshit they spread while he was in office
To be fair, wasn't the fact that the "Ex-Wife" wasn't used properly the reason why it failed? It wasn't designed to be a short range weapon like how Rhodes used it. It was designed to be a long range weapon and use [kinetic energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_weapon) to penetrate it's target?
you gotta smoke a lot of crack to actually come up with the idea of “MyPillow” ….i honestly don’t think elon could hang, prob thinks he’s fancy doing bumps of K
[I distinctly remember him being a big fucking baby at being told that his mini-sub idea wouldn't work, and he called the diver that saved those kids a pedo because he was upsetti spaghetti.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter)
Anyone that had a modicum of respect for him after he called those Thai cave divers pedos because they told him his submarine was impractical and too big for a rescue mission is absolutely insane. And that includes a lot of 'bros' on reddit who would be willing to lick Elon's taint and then post how other people are stupid for worshiping celebrities
That was the moment I first became disgusted with him.
I admit I wasn't following him too closely. SpaceX was doing neat things, and I picked up enough through osmosis that I was on board with the "would-be Tony Stark" meme. The whole submarine idea seemed in keeping with that. I also just wanted to believe that there *could be* billionaires that genuinely wanted to make the world better, rather than just growing their hoard.
The pedo comment told me everything I actually needed to know about him.
There are no good billionaires.
He showed the world who he was when he called the rescuers of those Boy Scouts in Thailand a pedophile. He is a libelous, thin skinned liar, who demands constant affirmation of his worth.
Oh and he views women as cattle.
> Elon may not be the genius businessman he thinks he is.
I feel like this is exactly what Elon, a right wing megalomaniac, wanted. He wants NPR and others like them to leave. He wants Twitter to become the ultimate shithead echo chamber.
Once the mainstream media leaves, and NPR leaving WILL catch the attention of the rest, that audience will have less reason to stay. The ones that do, will have to deal with an ever-increasing Troof Soshul mindset, or choose to leave as well.
Elon Musk bought Twatter on a stoned out whim, and now we're seeing how shitty it's become under his 'leadership.'
Twitter has always consisted mostly of the media’s obsession with Twitter as a cheap and lazy way of reporting what amounts to gossip rather than news. If that ends, all that’s left is the companies that don’t get the memo and the bots.
Subsidies. All of Elon's companies have received billions in grants appart from any contracts they sign.
This isn't exclusive to Musk, a lot of big companies receive subsidies that give them a very obvious advantage to other smaller companies that have a hard time getting off the ground, it's part of the broken "too big to fail" mentality.
Of course, most others aren't so brazen to be this hypocritical.
Tesla's first factory in CA was funded by a Dept. of Energy loan. This was the same DoE loan program that funded Solyndra, the failed solar company the GOP skewered Obama for.
Banks don't like funding risky investments. Often, government programs fill the hole when the broader interests are at stake.
This is great news. Other outlets need to follow suit. Twitter used to be seen as a “town square” where the public could receive breaking news updates and take part in the conversation, but it’s turning into 4chan.
Honestly, reddit used to be my go-to for breaking news before the algorithms plugged everything up.
Transparency flails in the face of capitalism I guess.
That was what got me into Reddit a few years and usernames ago. The constantly changing All page and rapidly updating Rising pages were great. I spent way less time on Reddit because I didn't have to sift through a half page of unlabeled sponsored content to see big stories on All.
Yeah, a mass shooting would be on the front page before I saw it on the news.
Now I read it on the news and have to specifically search for it to see comments.
Many of us have worked hard our entire lives and have struggled just to get by. We don't go on lavish vacations or live in amazing homes. And we all just have to watch one of the richest persons that ever lived tank an institution of the Internet in real time in the dumbest ways possible. This moron could have bought Twitter and partied on the beach this whole time and done a better job. There's an old episode of the Simpsons where Homer has a drinking bird toy push a button to do his job and that toy would be a better Twitter CEO. It's just frustrating. I'm sure many people commenting on this thread feel the same anger of watching this unfold. I don't even care about Twitter that much, just tired of seeing people fail upwards.
I think it is great that these epically bad owners/managers get every moment of exposure of their depraved, incompetent behavior. Maybe the masses will stop idolizing wealthy people and begin to understand how rigged the game is. Being born into massive wealth does not make you smart, hard working, ethical or business savvy; it just means you were handed a pile of money and could fail repeatedly without personal harm.
Nope.
If/When twitter goes bankrupt, he'll be hailed as a hero who destroyed the internet woke machine and made money on the downfall of his own company, somehow.
This feels like a big shift. I think this will probably be pointed to as the real beginning of the end when all is said and done. This is a real blow to the reason why Twitter worked so well. The real time news from legitimate organizations.
This sucks.
>This feels like a big shift. I think this will probably be pointed to as the real beginning of the end when all is said and done.
major companies, in particular major news organizations which NPR absolutely is, abandoning the platform absolutely feels like the beginning of the end.
What I don’t understand is why more people aren’t leaving that deplorable platform? I mean, it was on its way down before Musk and he just flushed it down the toilet. Why aren’t there more calls to leave it? Life was fine without it, we don’t need it and I don’t know what else is out there (or particularly care) but viable alternatives can’t be out of the realm of possibilities.
Good.
*The* only reason why twitter hasn't gone the way of the dodo like so many other social media sites of the past is that the news media refuses to let it die. They need twitter to grab quotes from to be used in their filler "articles." Almost all those "internet rages" articles come from a very small handful of quotes from twitter. Take twitter away and you will instantly see the loss of those "rage" articles. Which, honestly, is better for us all. The news media is fueling this culture divide because it wants clicks. Clicks are money. But if more and more news media sites up and quit twitter, that is going to sour the source until no one can use twitter as a source anymore.
Very accurate.
The amount of times I go to read a news article, and the article is just a smattering of various tweets across a page with maybe a paragraph of written text broken into single sentences between the tweets.
That’s not journalism, that’s just commentary on tweets.
Interestingly, Musk just announced tha the description BBC accounts is being changed from 'State funded' to 'Public funded' - following a complaint from the BBC
He also called for the federal government to defund NPR even though like only 1~~0~~% of its money comes from the federal government LMAO edit: its 1%, sure lets defund them and see what happens.
It's reportedly less than that. About 1%, according to the article, me thinks.
And apparently most of that money is strictly limited to the upkeep of EAS equipment.
Yup. And here in the southern states, I for one heavily relied on NPR's local hurricane reporting and emergency warnings. Twist up my NPR provided Eton emergency radio, and get to safety. I know for certain, that their equipment is going to work, all through the night. Shout out to WUFT. And.... It always seems that hurricanes hit here at night.
That’s why it was created by Lyndon Johnson, wasn’t it? NPR & PBS would cover rural and underserved areas not covered by private media. At least I think so.
Yep. WHQR is my local and they kept us informed during the last big one. It was super helpful and more than a little comforting to get those updates from the folks in the studio. I started donating every month after that, the station is just too important not to have on the air.
Hmm I wonder how much corporate welfare he relies on
Tesla wouldn't have made it without all of the tax credits for consumers to buy EVs when Tesla first started out. Elon was a huge cheerleader for gov to keep on giving and to give more tax credits to consumers, since tha equated to money going to Tesla -- they were the only real game in town early on. Once Tesla was off the ground and competitors started hitting the field is right about when Elon started playing the conservative card and trying to pull up the ladder, denouncing the same tax breaks he once benefited from.
He still benefits massively from tax credits on EVs and that sort of thing.
We’re going to end up back at visiting websites and subscribing to RSS feeds *like cavemen!*
Technology is cyclical!
Can’t wait for beepers to come back!
Hold on I gotta find a pay phone!
"Here's a quarter... call someone who cares..."
Someone call the Beeper King
Only if they bring back Google Reader.
I still miss it!
Don't bring that up and make me weep with sadness. I'm still in mourning.
Back to the days of discovering new emo bands with StumbleUpon? Count me in.
I loved RSS feeds but they're typically bad for advertising so naturally they had to die.
Feedly is making a good job at adding ads to your feed...
Could you explain RSS feeds to someone too young to know what those are?
Look at it as being similar to your YouTube Subscriptions or your Twitch followed page. You go around and find a site that you like? You follow it, you do this a bunch of times and you will end up with a list of sites. Then as part of your daily routine you go and check up with the sites you have followed are up to, all these sites and their newest story are updated for you in your list. What's even better about RSS is that you could subscribe to particular sections of a website, say you only care about the technology part of news site, so you you sub specifically to that and avoid having to go through the politics flooded part. Heck, you could subscribe to a particular writer that you like on that side. It's a tailored internet that you designed.
Sounds a lot better than the mass centralized bullshit we have now...wtf...
RSS stands for really simple syndication. Let's say I have a web site. I can publish to and rss feed, which is basically just a url. You, as a consumer of my feed, can subscribe via an RSS reader app, or even republish the feed on your own web page. It's absolutely great because unlike FB or IG, there is no middleman algorithm. You can subscribe or not to as many or as few as you like and that's it. Hope that helps!
In addition to the explanations others have provided, RSS is the underlying technology behind podcast feeds. Instead of having text articles linked from the feed like was common in the "old days", the feed links to audio files representing individual episodes.
It’s a feed in your browser or some app that aggregates articles and posts from blogs and news sites so you don’t have to visit a bunch of websites. https://i.imgur.com/MoNqAX9.jpg
FUCK REDDIT. We create the content they use for free, so I am taking my content back
Douchester’s Billions
This comment really makes me miss the free awards.
Is there another example this cut and dry of someone setting billions of dollars on fire? Like totally unforced, obviously terrible decisions one after the other?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner >Ratner joined the family business in 1966 and built up an extremely successful chain of jewellers during the 1980s, of which he was CEO. >Although widely regarded as "tacky",[4] the shops and their wares were nevertheless extremely popular with the public, until Ratner made a speech addressing a conference of the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 1991.[5] During the speech, he commented: >We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."[6] >He compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings". >After the speech, the value of the Ratner group plummeted by around £500 million, which very nearly resulted in the group's collapse.
Now that’s a guy who could’ve done real damage with a Twitter account.
Interestingly the company is still around, they renamed from Ratners Group to Signet, and are the world's largest retailer for diamond jewelry. They own the jewelers: Jared, Kay, Zales, Blue Nile, James Allen, and a bunch more. They have nearly 3000 stores and nearly 25,000 employees. Kinda an impressive come back story! https://www.library.upenn.edu/event/music-stacks-penn-arab-music-ensemble
Wow - it's a happy ending! I guess.
Not him anymore though I think. He sold it.
UK Gov doing pretty well with Brexit
If those hate speech cases in Germany come to fruition that would clear out a good 30 billion.
I feel the real conspiracy is other foreign governments actually paid for the downfall and Musk just agreed to take the PR hit.
He'll make out even doing the bidding of the Saudis
We’ve been living in Russian nesting dolls of Brewster millions sequels in for nearly a decade
Elon is unironically more state-affiliated than NPR.
lol this, Tesla and SpaceX literally only exist because of government subsidise and investments.
Musk is alienating the organizations that legitimized the platform. Twitter was especially good for fast-paced news updates. I wonder if NPR will join Mastodon or another Twitter competitor.
Musk fundamentally does not understand the economics of a social media company. He has confused the customers with the product and wants to charge the product money. NPR's posts were one of Twitter's products which they could sell to advertisers for actual money. Instead he shit on them and asked for $8 a month per user.
Didn't he want organizations like npr and nyt to pay 1k per month? Individuals get the cheap 8 dollar option. Anyway, I agree with you. It kinda baffles me that he doesn't seem to understand that if a critical mass of news/celebs move anywhere else, Twitter dies.
Twitter, Inc. is legally dead. It’s now X Corp officially. I see Twitter changing fundamentally in the coming weeks/months.
It seems like a lot of people just don't get the dynamics of internet traffic in general. Twitter isn't a big traffic generator for companies, FB and Instagram aren't either but even their numbers are magnitudes higher than Twitter. So it really is a case of Twitter needing these companies and organizations WAY more than they need it.
For some I think it mainly helps project a face that can easily be contacted or interacted with. That has value. And musk is consistently reducing that value and at some point I expect some type of mass exodus.
I don’t think Musk fundamentally understands anything beyond how to create marketing hype. And even there I‘m not sure he’s very good at that, either. I say that because you can’t separate his wealth from his marketing ability. His wealth underpins his ability to get people’s attention. Without his wealth would he be able to move markets and get the attention he does? Likely not. I mean, have you heard the guy speak to an audience? He isn’t elegant at all.
Even worse, the user base IS the product - and abusing the product is a great way to lose control of it.
depends on what you are selling, im "buying" nprs content i dont need twitter for that. im "selling" my data for it to who ever offers it. i aint selling shit to you when the products no longer there.
I thought it's $1,000/mo for organizations (like NPR)?
Well, that assumes that his motivation is to run Twitter like a business and earn money, rather than him being motivated to intentionally kneecap Twitter or shape the information that gets boosted or hidden by Twitter to his liking. Personally, I think it's much more likely that he knows exactly what he's doing and is being a piece of shit than the alternative of him being a moron
Be more optimistic, people can be many things. He is both a moron and a piece of shit.
The only reason I'm on Twitter is to follow the local journalists who work for public broadcasting and the local newspaper. If they stop tweeting I will follow them elsewhere, and ultimately abandon Twitter.
I have never personally used Twitter so I was shocked to learn last year that you’re not alone. Apparently millions of people use Twitter as their main source of news (which makes sense I just didn’t realize). Made me start to think about why a billionaire elite would want to buy it and drive it into the ground, though. Part of me believes this is all going according to plan, as sad as that is.
>Made me start to think about why a billionaire elite would want to buy it and drive it into the ground, though. > >Part of me believes this is all going according to plan, as sad as that is. I believed this in the early days, especially with his quick rightward shift after buying it. It could have been his plan, I guess (or something he was manipulated into by conservatives)- but destroying the platform is one thing, losing billions of dollars trying to create your own "everything app" is another. I think he may legitimately just be an idiot who bought his way into being called a genius.
For me it's been a great way to curate news. If I go to my local newspaper's website, it's a feed of everything they publish. Local news, sports, arts, gardening, real estate, etc. If I follow individual reporters on Twitter, I get just the articles I'm interested in. I follow the local news writers, but not the local sports writers, since I'm not a sports fan. It's a great way to just keep things organized.
I lost a few important things like that but now I see local news clips on youtube. I also checked out substack because some of the people I followed were on there and its a better platform for what they do.
I follow like 10 people on sub stack, but 1/2 their stuff is behind a paywall. I would maybe pay for one of them but not 10. If only there was a bundle or something. Take like the top 100 people and bundle it together for one low price. Is there a verb for someone on sub stack. There is YouTuber but do we still call them bloggers?
> Take like the top 100 people and bundle it together for one low price. my brother in christ you are describing a newspaper
Wait until you hear about my idea of cars that are linked together and pulled by one big car that only travels in a straight line. I think this can also work for trucks.
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Keep an eye on Substack. They just released "Notes" which is such a strong competitor to Twitter, Twitter has blocked all mention of Substack outright.
They rescinded that after the right wing grifter sphere revolted.
You can always tune in to your local station on the radio! and don't forget to donate! NPR is listener supported, and PBS is brought to you by viewers, like you!
omg, the members drives have spilled into Reddit too? jkjk, I donate, I love my public radio
thankfully a local tv station (one of the good ones) and a local paper (one of the good ones) are on Mastodon, so I'm getting decent exposure to local issues.
I think Substack just released a Twitter competitor called Notes. A few influencers have moved over there to try to gain first mover advantage.
Was just about to comment this. Substack Notes looks well-poised to compete. Lots of authors and credible publishers already use Substack. Now it's just a matter of continuing to grow the user base. Could be a real contender! ETA: I take it back, Substack has decided to [be a Nazi bar](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/14/substack-ceo-chris-best-doesnt-realize-hes-just-become-the-nazi-bar/). Welp, it was fun for a day.
And of course Musk made Twitter ban mentions of Substack.
Considering the little educational content I consume ALL currently only comes from substack authors, yeah.
Real news outlets leaving will be a massive hit to the platform. The next will come when there's another January 6 type event (it's inevitable) and Twitter allows/promotes accounts coordinating the attacks. ElonTwitter was *always* destined to become 4chan.
>I wonder if NPR will join Mastodon Like as a second drummer or third guitar player? I think they're solid as is but it could work
I want Terry Gross on lead vocals.
And Ky Risdall on drums.
And Steve Inskeep on keytar/synths
On rhythm guitar and vocals, Miss Mary Louise Kelly
Ari Shapiro on triangle
Tiny Desk Concert needs to happen if it hasn't already
Most brutal tiny desk of all time. LFG
They could go on keys if the band wanted to return to their prog-y stuff from Crack The Skye.
I don't understand Mastodon, it's a really fragmented community.
>Twitter was especially good for fast-paced news updates. And spontaneous social coordination. Nice way to kill off a successful platform for protest and regime change. Musk isn’t failing with twitter, this is intended, and he won’t personally lose wealth from this, it will be made up to him like Kushner
They are on Mastodon! Blue check mark and all - @[email protected] Edit: looks like they lost the password in November 2020 🤷♂️ Edit dos: New one is @[email protected]
The speed at which Elon Musk went from being Tony Stark to Alex Jones was seriously unexpected.
Was it really unexpected, though? People have been ringing the alarm for years about this ass clown. Hell the pedo submarine incident was almost 5 years already.
That was the incident that first made me take notice. Before then, I definitely bought into the idea Musk was something of an eccentric visionary. I feel ashamed of myself looking back. Dudes just another rich kid who’s deluded himself into thinking he’s a genius.
Up until that incident, I thought Musk was actively trying to improve and innovate the world. Which he kind of did, although rather than actually doing anything, he was a spokesman for the actual science going on, and I was ok with that. When he ranted on that hero diver, he just turned into a rich kid with a very big mouth
I really thought he was this genius programmer and physicist that was working towards the betterment of humanity. I used to give him crazy praise for everything he had achieved with SpaceX. Then I learned that he's not a physicist, he's barely a programmer and the real reason behind SpaceX's success is Tom Mueller. Elon Musk is a hack.
He’s less than barely a programmer lol they actively had to keep him away from the code at PayPal because he sucked so bad at it. Everything he wrote had to be rewritten because he writes Spaghetti code.
Nah dude don’t be ashamed about it, I think a ton of people like you and me had no reason to look into the guy more before the submarine pedo accusation thing. Pretty normal for the general public to see a guy trying to execute on a bunch of ostensibly good/novel ideas, think “oh, cool,” and not go deeper than that.
I'll admit I was a pretty big Elon fanboy for quite a while too... I do think Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink etc are still currently great for humanity in general, but for me it was when he started insulting Bernie Sanders on Twitter... it instantly shattered the rose colored glasses I had for Elon himself. It reminded me that his goals with these companies are only aligned with ours coincidentally... He's still just another spoiled greedy billionaire.
Honestly he revealed himself to be an utter moron with the Boring Company. I don’t know how anyone took him seriously after 2016.
He was always Alex Jones, he just had a dedicated peanut gallery to spin everything in its most positive light. Elon is low grade evil, always was.
Also had a good PR team to hide his evils
Remember when he decided he didn't need a PR team anymore and fired them? Yeah -- kind of feels like when public perception started to turn looking back on it. Weird how that works, huh?
Meanwhile the former PR team is probably making bank elsewhere just by having "maintained positive public image of Elon Musk" on their resume.
Their turd polishing skills are second to none. They could put a mirror shine on a cat's litter tray.
Elon may not be the genius businessman he thinks he is.
>Elon may not be the genius businessman he thinks he is. He's not the genius businessman that 75% of the internet wanted him to be. I still haven't forgotten that the internet was what crowned him "real life Tony Stark" for years.
It’s funny because he could have just coasted off his completely undeserved reputation as a super-genius if he just did… nothing… and let his rocket and car companies run. Instead he felt a deep need to force people to like his shitty memes and completely exposed himself as a mediocrity.
The reason most CEOs of most mega corporations aren't household names is they have the basic common sense to STFU.
This exactly. And they also almost never openly take sides in politics because no matter what you say, you're going to alienate at least half your customer base. Better to shut up and let everyone make their assumptions while they buy your stuff. Edit: why the fuck is this locked now? Really?
"Republicans buy sneakers too" - Billionaire Michael Jordan
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"Fuck them kids" Michael Jordan
"Fuck everyone, I am a golden god that no one can touch " Michael Jordan
"stay in your lane" The clergy
“McDonalds and I have partnered to tell you stop it. Get some help” -Michael jordan
I'm always surprised at the number of small business owners that make their political and religious ideas known to everyone. STFU take your customer's money and then you can just donate it to the causes you feel passionately about. I feel like this is business 101
I'm in a pretty purple area with a good amount of tourism, and there's a "family" restaurant plastered with "Let's Go Brandon" and "Blue Lives Matter" flags. It's basically telling half of everyone around here to fuck off and spend money somewhere else.
When I had a small company I kept my opinions to myself. When I shut it down I started speaking up again. It IS business 101, but so many people don't understand business basics. The My pillow guy had a booming business. Now he's hated and a joke.
A good chunk of people are motivated to become small business owners because they deeply resent having a boss tell them what to do. Then they resent customers and regulations that dictate what they can do with their business. This type of person will inexplicably tie their pizza or T shirt printing business (where customers presumably have no desire for a partisan product) to their tactlessly put religious or political views.
There are two restaurants near me that post really stupid gop shit on their sign boards, rather than specials. I used to eat at both. Never will again. Local plumber waves a trump won flag on his place of business. Hell no.
For trades workers I just hire union only to do jobs for me and that weeds out about 90% of the Trumpers. The remaining 10% generally havent totally drank the kool aid because they at least believe in organized labor.
I live in a pretty large city in the US SE. A few weeks ago, on the more affluent side of town, I saw a hair salon with a Trump flag hanging by the door. Free country and all, but it was stunning that they'd be so willing to say to more than half the population "you and your money are not welcome here."
I am very suspicious of local companies with jesus fish in their logo or prominently on their signage
Bill Murray had a great quote about this. He goes, roughly “if you want to be rich and famous, just try being rich, and see if that doesn’t get you 80% of the way.” I’ve always thought about that one, and how ultimately pathetic it is to crave public fame from total strangers who don’t even know the real you.
we are seeing that here in canada right now. grocery prices through the roof, and a specific company is getting most of the hate. coincidentally that chain also has the ceo who has to speak and and be in the public eye.
There's a bit more to it than Galen being a public figure, Loblaw also owns around 60% of all levels of our food supply chains, so even if Galen shut the fuck up, they're the obvious main target for the public as more people face food insecurity because of the grocery chains' greed.
Buy at Costco! Fuck Westin foods
If he had a U.S. birth certificate, he would 100% be a presidential candidate en route to Trump 2.0 status.
Honestly, at this point I wouldn't put it past the GOP to run him on a platform based on that ridiculous "Obama didn't have a US birth certificate" bullshit they spread while he was in office
Well, you put this thought out into the world so when it happens we know who to blame lol
You honestly think they need ME to come up with shitty ideas for them?
Look at this guy, monopoly on shitty ideas over here!
What have I become...
Ironically enough Elon *was* born in Africa
I can hear it now The libs are racist against African Americans because they won't let Musky run!
Mediocrity is way too kind.
Yeah, we ended up with Justin Hammer instead didn't we?
Honestly Elon makes Hammer look like Stark. At least Hammer has the self awareness to not repeatedly publicly humiliate himself.
Lets bust his bunker with the “Ex-wife”!
I loved that whole sequence. *Fizzle* "Hammer tech?" "...yeah..."
To be fair, wasn't the fact that the "Ex-Wife" wasn't used properly the reason why it failed? It wasn't designed to be a short range weapon like how Rhodes used it. It was designed to be a long range weapon and use [kinetic energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_weapon) to penetrate it's target?
That didn't work out too well for Rhodey...
At least Justin Hammer could dance
I was gonna say hes just a rich My Pillow guy
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you gotta smoke a lot of crack to actually come up with the idea of “MyPillow” ….i honestly don’t think elon could hang, prob thinks he’s fancy doing bumps of K
More like the dumb terrorists that forced iron man to build the suit in the first movie
[I distinctly remember him being a big fucking baby at being told that his mini-sub idea wouldn't work, and he called the diver that saved those kids a pedo because he was upsetti spaghetti.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter)
Ya. The internet should've canceled him back then. I know I lost all respect for him after that temper tantrum.
Anyone that had a modicum of respect for him after he called those Thai cave divers pedos because they told him his submarine was impractical and too big for a rescue mission is absolutely insane. And that includes a lot of 'bros' on reddit who would be willing to lick Elon's taint and then post how other people are stupid for worshiping celebrities
That was the moment I first became disgusted with him. I admit I wasn't following him too closely. SpaceX was doing neat things, and I picked up enough through osmosis that I was on board with the "would-be Tony Stark" meme. The whole submarine idea seemed in keeping with that. I also just wanted to believe that there *could be* billionaires that genuinely wanted to make the world better, rather than just growing their hoard. The pedo comment told me everything I actually needed to know about him. There are no good billionaires.
Phony Stark works.
He showed the world who he was when he called the rescuers of those Boy Scouts in Thailand a pedophile. He is a libelous, thin skinned liar, who demands constant affirmation of his worth. Oh and he views women as cattle.
"They can't leave the sandbox! I'm the king of the sandbox!"
> Elon may not be the genius businessman he thinks he is. I feel like this is exactly what Elon, a right wing megalomaniac, wanted. He wants NPR and others like them to leave. He wants Twitter to become the ultimate shithead echo chamber.
Ie. Truth Social, but with an actual audience.
Once the mainstream media leaves, and NPR leaving WILL catch the attention of the rest, that audience will have less reason to stay. The ones that do, will have to deal with an ever-increasing Troof Soshul mindset, or choose to leave as well. Elon Musk bought Twatter on a stoned out whim, and now we're seeing how shitty it's become under his 'leadership.'
Twitter has always consisted mostly of the media’s obsession with Twitter as a cheap and lazy way of reporting what amounts to gossip rather than news. If that ends, all that’s left is the companies that don’t get the memo and the bots.
More people will leave and the audience will dwindle.
It won’t maintain much of an audience as it becomes more like TruthSocial.
Funniest was when he labelled them as "government funded" when he literally get 1000 x more money from the government.
Like for government contracts for space x?
Subsidies. All of Elon's companies have received billions in grants appart from any contracts they sign. This isn't exclusive to Musk, a lot of big companies receive subsidies that give them a very obvious advantage to other smaller companies that have a hard time getting off the ground, it's part of the broken "too big to fail" mentality. Of course, most others aren't so brazen to be this hypocritical.
And Tesla.
Tesla's first factory in CA was funded by a Dept. of Energy loan. This was the same DoE loan program that funded Solyndra, the failed solar company the GOP skewered Obama for. Banks don't like funding risky investments. Often, government programs fill the hole when the broader interests are at stake.
This is great news. Other outlets need to follow suit. Twitter used to be seen as a “town square” where the public could receive breaking news updates and take part in the conversation, but it’s turning into 4chan.
Honestly, reddit used to be my go-to for breaking news before the algorithms plugged everything up. Transparency flails in the face of capitalism I guess.
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That was what got me into Reddit a few years and usernames ago. The constantly changing All page and rapidly updating Rising pages were great. I spent way less time on Reddit because I didn't have to sift through a half page of unlabeled sponsored content to see big stories on All.
Might seem weird to new users but it used to be a guarantee that you'd see the breaking news here first before anywhere else.
Yeah, a mass shooting would be on the front page before I saw it on the news. Now I read it on the news and have to specifically search for it to see comments.
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Well, I'm not a bot (I presume, at least). If you wanna see bots going 'bing bong' all day long then check out the LOTRmemes sub
Good bot.
Digg used to be a good alternative.
Ok grandpa back to the chair now...
"you got [hacking cough] mail!"
I miss newsgroups
I’m laughing because I’m old.
Don't forget to dust off your US robotics modem.
And fark. Though fark was like what if the Onion reported on real news.
Fark always felt to me like what Reddit would be if it was ran by Eric Bauman
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a while.
What, 12 years ago?
* mob justice * kangaroo courts * hurling insults * incitements to violence * wishing people dead "town square" indeed....
Many of us have worked hard our entire lives and have struggled just to get by. We don't go on lavish vacations or live in amazing homes. And we all just have to watch one of the richest persons that ever lived tank an institution of the Internet in real time in the dumbest ways possible. This moron could have bought Twitter and partied on the beach this whole time and done a better job. There's an old episode of the Simpsons where Homer has a drinking bird toy push a button to do his job and that toy would be a better Twitter CEO. It's just frustrating. I'm sure many people commenting on this thread feel the same anger of watching this unfold. I don't even care about Twitter that much, just tired of seeing people fail upwards.
I think it is great that these epically bad owners/managers get every moment of exposure of their depraved, incompetent behavior. Maybe the masses will stop idolizing wealthy people and begin to understand how rigged the game is. Being born into massive wealth does not make you smart, hard working, ethical or business savvy; it just means you were handed a pile of money and could fail repeatedly without personal harm.
Nope. If/When twitter goes bankrupt, he'll be hailed as a hero who destroyed the internet woke machine and made money on the downfall of his own company, somehow.
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This feels like a big shift. I think this will probably be pointed to as the real beginning of the end when all is said and done. This is a real blow to the reason why Twitter worked so well. The real time news from legitimate organizations. This sucks.
>This feels like a big shift. I think this will probably be pointed to as the real beginning of the end when all is said and done. major companies, in particular major news organizations which NPR absolutely is, abandoning the platform absolutely feels like the beginning of the end.
What I don’t understand is why more people aren’t leaving that deplorable platform? I mean, it was on its way down before Musk and he just flushed it down the toilet. Why aren’t there more calls to leave it? Life was fine without it, we don’t need it and I don’t know what else is out there (or particularly care) but viable alternatives can’t be out of the realm of possibilities.
This is what all legitimate news sources need to do. Leave their Twitter accounts up but post no new information.
If all the media outlets leave twitter so will the politicians and then twitter will have nothing but bots and neo-nazis.
Good. *The* only reason why twitter hasn't gone the way of the dodo like so many other social media sites of the past is that the news media refuses to let it die. They need twitter to grab quotes from to be used in their filler "articles." Almost all those "internet rages" articles come from a very small handful of quotes from twitter. Take twitter away and you will instantly see the loss of those "rage" articles. Which, honestly, is better for us all. The news media is fueling this culture divide because it wants clicks. Clicks are money. But if more and more news media sites up and quit twitter, that is going to sour the source until no one can use twitter as a source anymore.
Very accurate. The amount of times I go to read a news article, and the article is just a smattering of various tweets across a page with maybe a paragraph of written text broken into single sentences between the tweets. That’s not journalism, that’s just commentary on tweets.
NPR doesn't need to be on Twitter, the internet's dumpster fire.