- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Still seems way overpriced. Doesn’t even have name recognition anymore.
I don’t get that platform. I just signed up for mastodon and am not sure I’m feeling that either.
I feel like these Twitter-style sites are just …like… Keyboard warriors. It’s just smug post after smug post.
It honestly creeps me out. Like I see all these popular political posts by profile icons I recognize… But every post is just whinging…
Who are these people and why do they get popularity and even mentioned on the news as truth when their posts have no sources and are just bullshit political emotion. Then you read a news article that “Twitter is cancelling…”. All because there was one post about with someone acting like a dick.
Transforming Twitter into an ‘everything’ app is a terrible idea. Why? Take WeChat, for example. Initially a messaging app, it now incorporates a multitude of services including short video clips similar to YouTube, Twitter-like posts (for friends only), a wallet linked to a bank card, and more. One of my Chinese friends said, ‘You won’t find anyone in China who doesn’t use WeChat because it has everything we need!’ It seems that users are quite satisfied with the services WeChat provides.
However, they may be overlooking the drawbacks of such centralized applications:
- Privacy issues: Identity verification is required; without it, most features are inaccessible.
- Censorship: I suspect that all communications are stored on a central server, with algorithms designed to detect sensitive content or keywords related to politics, NSFW material, etc. Since it’s linked to your identity, you could easily end up on a blacklist.
- Account suspension: The developer has the power to suspend accounts at any time due to the centralized nature of the system.
- Security risks: If someone gains access to your phone or passcode, they could access your money, your contacts’ information, and your personal details, since it’s an ‘everything’ app.
- Manipulation: Show those news that the country or the company want us to, hide those that are not helpful to them.
These issues and risks are inherent in centralized platforms and social media but consolidating them into an ‘everything’ app only amplifies the risks. My friend mentioned that WeChat hasn’t introduced a subscription fee yet, but Twitter and other services have.
I mean, an ‘everything’ app might be feasible in a restricted country like China, in the United States? Hell not! But, Big Tech and governments have the monopolistic power to make these things happen, so we have to find alternatives. The sooner we migrate, the sooner we can reduce the risks that I mentioned above.
The digital world is incredible, but also dangerous. It’s best that we start protecting our own privacy rights, our right to speak freely, and our right to control our own minds and discern the truth.
However, they may be overlooking the drawbacks of such centralized applications
My guy it’s wechat. It’s china. The drawbacks are that they are chinese.
Nobody questions the drawbacks of your entire life being on an app and you being valued on a social score.Wechat als always had the backing of the central government. They got funding and, probably more important, the government slowed or outright banned other apps. The Verge has a good piece on it.
To put this in perspective, they lost an average of $2B per month in value. According to HUD, there were about 582,000 homeless people in the US last year. $2B per month is enough to house all of them nearly 4 times over if you assume $1k per month in housing expenses.
What a monumental waste of resources that could have made a difference. Musk just sucks
It’s not real money, though. It’s all just speculative value based on estimates of future revenue.
The real barrier to ending homelessness is the large number of real estate vacancies that are held open to prop up the price of the housing market. Twitter’s lost value has nothing to do with that.
You’ve missed the mark on two counts:
- Musk raised $44B of real money to buy Twitter and bring it into private ownership. I’m saying had he just left well enough alone, he could have used that money for other purposes
- Your point on adding more supply to the real estate market to prop up prices is the opposite of Econ 101 - more supply, all things equal, will reduce prices. Mental health is a much larger barrier to receiving help for the homeless.
I used to volunteer weekly with homeless and housing insecure people in Philadelphia and untreated mental health or substance abuse was an issue for many. There are also barriers to receiving government aid that would assist them because many programs require an address or the process is unnecessarily complicated.
Housing is just one step. They would also require a great deal of counseling, job training, and medical attention to reintegration into society. Anyway, my point was simply to illustrate what a magnificent waste of resources it was to buy Twitter.
Musk raised $44B of real money to buy Twitter
He raised $20B by using his own (highly inflated) Tesla stock as collateral. So this wasn’t new money, it was a swap. He covered the balance with Twitter’s own equity as collateral (which is a big reason why he’s been so cavalier with its devaluation). This new money was effectively just to keep a business in the red from running out of operating income.
more supply, all things equal, will reduce prices.
Not under a cartel. And real estate markets are increasingly cartelized, with large vacancies kept off the market clearing rate in order to prop up the book value of the rest of the market.
untreated mental health or substance abuse was an issue for many. There are also barriers to receiving government aid that would assist them because many programs require an address or the process is unnecessarily complicated.
Which creates a vicious cycle, sure. But the solution is to reclaim vacant real estate from speculators and use it as real housing.
Building more investment properties and vacant luxury units to increase book value of real estate does nothing to reduce homelessness.
Housing is just one step. They would also require a great deal of counseling, job training, and medical attention to reintegration into society.
All services that are best delivered to housed populations. What’s more, they’re services with a universal application. You don’t just need to be homeless to benefit from professional counseling, education, and public health care.
But, again, sky high real estate costs make these services prohibitively expensive to expand into neighborhoods.
Delivering these services at cost requires local governments to reclaim vacant real estate kept open at above market clearance rates and turning it over to public sector service providers.
all the people that imagine their home prices are as high as they are, will fight tooth and nail to prevent this. the empty house market is crazy, just look on a “social home sharing site”. houses are hotels for the few.
As someone who sees my property tax bill jump 10% / year, I have no interest in rising real estate prices. I’m not selling any time soon and I use my house to live in rather than to invest.
But the 44B was payed, so they do/did exist. Now he could have just NOT bought twitter and spent half of this money on the poor et voilà no more homeless for at least 4 years.
But you are right with the rest.
But the 44B was payed, so they do/did exist.
It was mostly debt swaps. Elon traded equity in Tesla for equity in Twitter.
Well akschually probably about 22/23 billion were cash according to reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/how-will-elon-musk-pay-twitter-2022-10-07/
According to a Reuters calculation, Musk had about $20 billion cash after selling part of his stake in Tesla through multiple transactions in November and December last year and April and August.
My mistake. I mistakenly thought he’d simply swapped the Tesla stock at face value, rather than cashing it out via a brokerage.
No problemo. I usually don’t give a shit about this kind of stuff, but if a single person buys for such a huge sum, I maybe look into it.
There is no “real” money. It’s all speculative based on what value people assign to it. For example, you may have noticed that the US dollar has become worth significantly less in recent years. Shares and fiat currency just have different volatility.
The US dollar has outpaced nearly every other global currency. Five years ago you’d get 100 yen to the dollar. Now you get 150.
But cartelization of the supply chain means we don’t get to see the benefits of low import prices. The difference all goes to business profit, while real increases in material and labor get passed on to the consumer.
Netflix buys anime for pennies on the dollar and sells it back at escalating rates. They spend less and we pay more.
The US dollar was just an example so this discussion is tangential to the point I was trying to make. That said, your argument does not support an increasing value of the dollar - it only says it has increased in value relative to other currencies. But I’m sure you know that inflation has been staggeringly high which means you get less food on the table for a dollar, and salaries have not been keeping up.
Or put in other words, if you were to invest in US dollars instead of shares then you would have seen the value of your portfolio going down, in terms of what it can get you at Costco.
That said, your argument does not support an increasing value of the dollar
Increase in exchange value means the cost of imports fall.
Is it, though?
Its a digital message board on some overpriced servers.
And a lot of consumers on it
