It seems like a feature that they should have had at launch. I haven’t downloaded Threads and don’t intend to, but I was surprised when I read that this was something they didn’t have before. Seems like one of the most common things users would want to do.
I think they were rushing it to try to take advantage of Twitter's X-plosion. From my understanding, it was a bit of a mad dash behind the scenes to get to the initial release.
They tried to get away with not having it, hoping people would be happy consuming curated (paid) content and making them advertising bucks. I bet they had it ready to go from the get-go and were hoping they wouldn't have to turn it on.
Do you have any evidence that the placement in algorithmic timeline was monetized? They have said that they expect to eventually roll out advertising, but for now at least, there aren't any (explicitly inserted) ads.
I've noticed that the Following tab for me is kinda empty since a lot of people I'm following aren't posting much yet. I think the algorithmic view was mostly there to prevent the app from feeling like a ghost town as it was getting started.
@realcaseyrollins I feel as if people are only sticking with the platform because of a few reasons.
They want to go where the majority of people are
The Brands & people they like to interact with haven't jumped ship either
They are unaware of alternatives such as Kbin or Mastodon (as well as any other that I can't think of atm)
They are Elon fans and hate to think otherwise.
They are super right wing and don't want to join a 'Woke' platform
They don't think a Decentralised system would work
There's probably more other reasons and would love to know your thoughts about what I feel is some of the reasons people don't want to leave X or Twitter, What ever you want to call it.
Mastodon also doesn't feed you content from my understanding, you have to curate your feed yourself, and a lot of people don't mind the algorithm of places like TwitterX and Facebook feeding them random stuff.
@JelloBrains Yes you are right, mastodon doesn't have the 'normal' feed they are used to. I like the explanation that it's like a Garden, you have to pick the weeds but the things you grow are much sweeter in the end.
For me the majority isn't even relevant, I'm on Twitter specifically to follow certain people or organisations which are related to my interests. I barely use Twitter these days but most of the accounts I follow are still on Twitter and bascially nobody is active on Mastodon (or any other alternative I can access for that matter).
I love the idea of Mastodon, but it's worthless to me if my timeline is empty. Lemmy and Kbin are different because they're organised around topics instead of people.
@astrionic I did actually make this point in point number 2. The Brands & people they like to interact with haven't jumped ship either.
This is where Threads is a good example of why it needs to federalize as it actually does have a lot of Brands & people on there and if it did, it would be able to interact with Mastodon as well as the rest of the Fediverse. As well as in my point number 1. They want to go where the majority of people are.
Some people are like sheep and go with the flock, if a big company or influencer moved over to Mastodon or any part of the Fediverse they might actually move across themselves, even if they crosspost it's a good start allowing people to move away from TwitterX if they wish to. But yes the Fediverse has fewer people & brands of the moment but in due time people will mostly get fed-up with being toyed around by these centralized platforms.
But can you even try BlueSky? I looked at the website, but it appears to be invite only. Which is a strange choice as it seems like it will prevent it from ever succeeding.
Seems like a risky move. The whole transition away from old Twitter could be over before bluesky even joins the race. It’s definitely lost my vote in favor of Mastodon. I can register for Mastodon right now.
Lots of Twitter users I know that “want to leave” twitter are waiting for bluesky. It’s like there’s no other alternative for them, only bsky. I don’t know how long these expectative thing will work out for bsky. Especially now that threads is around.
I don’t know why people would join yet another corporate backed social network that exploits them and use their personal information and their content for profit.
It's gonna go public eventually, this is like a closed beta kind of thing. The purpose seems to be more to get people curious about it and foster a certain culture which I must say that they've been pretty effective at. They strategically handed out invites to a lot of black twitter users for example, which is smart since black twitter has historically been an important cultural force on the internet
Up to a point. Google+ was invite only for so long that by the time it became available to the general public no one cared anymore. When people signed in with their new accounts they couldn’t find anyone they knew, and they never came back.
Really stupid on Google’s part, because they launched at a time when people were angry with Facebook for selling private user data, and a lot of users probably would have moved to G+ if they had been able to.
Because they're alternatives to Twitter?
Not everybody on the Internet cares about censorship, data leaks, or centralized services. In fact, most people don't. You just happen to be in a bubble of mostly like-minded people here on the Fediverse. For everyone else out there, now that their digital house is on fire they just want to find a new house that's as close to their old one as possible.
Yes, I signed in out of curiosity, and I was completely disoriented because there was no feed of just the people I followed. I kept clicking around, thinking I was missing something obvious.
Remember, this is the guy who said this about his chances in the event of societal collapse:
Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Given how much of a douche he's being (and only because he has organizational power, and not because he has people skills) in the event of a disaster, he'd probably be one of the ones to bite it first, or to be sent on an mission for expendables, to be honest.
When you can't just wave around money or org chart power to solve your problems, then people will start showing how they really feel about you. The way he's running Reddit into the ground shows that he's not a good leader, and the way he's pissing everyone off right now by following in the footsteps of a huge failure (Musk) who's also a jerk is just proving that he's an idiot AND a douche that wouldn't do well if society went awry.
"Investors are fed up. Fidelity, which led Reddit’s $700 million funding round in 2021 with a $10 billion valuation, has cut its Reddit company valuation by 41% since it invested. This could scupper Reddit’s plans to eventually go public with a reported valuation of $15 billion."
The app owners will work with him to prevent AI training from taking data from the site for free. And any issues the third party apps have doing that will be shared by the official app. They're not special in that regard. You can't really have public secrets behind a paywall. It doesn't really work.
There are many, many options here that are only being held back by Huffman's ego. Imagine losing billions in valuation because of personal ego. I bet investors are thrilled.
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