By "social media" we mean any large computer network that allows people to interact in shared communities. The big ones of course are Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, but we can't forget newer platforms like Discord and Slack.
Dedicated video sites are off-topic here and YouTube has its own separate thread
.
What we should discuss in this OTC topic are news items, business operations, and activities by the networks themselves, not specific things posted by users. Those should go into threads appropriate to the subjects of those posts. For example, if an actor tweets about a film, we'd discuss that in the Media forum topic for the film, not here. If Facebook changes its policies, that could be discussed here.
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are also off-topic — except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg would be acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
One exception is Truth Social, due to its connection to Donald Trump. As there is a forum ban on US Politics, all discussion of Truth Social is off-topic and posts about the platform may be thumped.
The thread's also not about "dumb thing [public figure] said on [social media platform]". If there isn't a specific thread related to the subject of the statement, then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
The hot topic of the day is Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter. We first discussed it in the Computer Thread, starting roughly here
, and I am not going to rehash the entire discussion. Instead, I am going to resume from the last post
:
CNBC: Twitter is reportedly taking another look at Musk takeover bid
Twitter's board is reportedly meeting with Elon Musk and may seek to negotiate on his buyout offer. Musk claims to have secured $46 billion in funding to buy the company at a valuation of $43 billion and is preparing to make a tender offer to its shareholders.
While the board has passed a poison pill, it could be facing resistance to that from groups of shareholders and will want to talk things out rather than face a hostile takeover. It's also possible that Twitter's stock could crash if the offer fails to go through.
Another possible topic was originally posted here
.
Ars Technica: EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content
Following on from the recently passed Digital Markets Act, which requires large tech companies to unbundle first-party software from hardware platforms, the proposed Digital Services Act will require medium and large social media platforms and search engines to police hate speech and disinformation while adding additional protections for children against targeted marketing.
It also bans "dark patterns", which manipulate or trick people into clicking on ads or other content. The article doesn't explicitly say what that means, but I assume it includes things like disguising ads to look like parts of a site's user interface, hiding "close" buttons, and such.
For large companies, the requirements would go into effect immediately. For medium companies, they would have a grace period to implement the changes.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has warned that Big Tech has become “too big to care.”
This phrase, "too big to care", intrigues me. It's an indictment of the idea that these companies have decided that growth and engagement metrics overwhelm any sense of social responsibility.
In my opinion, a law like this would be impossible in the United States, since it would be challenged (likely successfully) on First Amendment grounds.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 8th 2024 at 5:16:31 PM
To confirm -
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are off-topic except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg is acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
(And we'll add this to the pinned post, as folk seem to keep forgetting it)
Let's keep this on track.
As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped. That may include some of the posts before this reminder.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 11:22:45 AM
Jethro Q Walrustitty wrote:
As a rule, threads about specific living individuals (e.g. Musk, Trump, Bernie Sanders) don't get approved.
There was a previous request for a Musk thread here
I think what makes it tricky is that for stuff like Facebook? Zuckerberg is the face of the company but isn't particularly loud about it. It's easy to avoid talking about him much.
Musk vaults into the spotlight and screams "IT WAS ALL ME" whenever twitter does anything at all. It makes it really difficult to identify where the line is between him and the company.
Taking the mod hat off for a second, as this hasn't been double-checked with the team -
If Musk chooses to unban Alex Jones or Donald Trump, or if he swears at Twitter's advertisers for leaving, I think that's on-topic.
The "is he deliberately sabotaging the company?" / "what's his political agenda?" / "Is he playing 4D chess?" stuff is probably not on topic. A lot of it's speculative and a lot of it's using Twitter as a reason to talk about Musk.
His personal brand does try to make him the centre of coverage of X/Twitter. But we can keep it to specifics and not get drawn into the wider stuff.
[edited to expand]
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 1:28:32 PM
I think that the overall idea that the big tech companies and their owners are too powerful to allow us to regulate social media platforms in a way that would benefit public health and safety is an important and under-appreciated aspect of the issue. Big tech billionaires seem to share certain values and attitudes that cause social media platforms to function in ways that are socially counter-productive. Add in the fact that social media platforms exist in order to be an efficient means of delivering messages that persuade people and change their attitudes in subtle, difficult to detect ways, and we have problem.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.I've seen freelance creators moving to Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, but none have the critical mass to work in the same way as Twitter.
The same applies to hospitality and the sort of small independent restaurants that would rely on Twitter for events and last minute cancellations.
(I suspect it's also made restaurant kickstarters a lot harder)
I setp up a Blue Sky account because of the situation X/Twitter is in.
Now, concerning it's future, twice I've heard Musk's announcements threaten the idea of me staying in X/Twitter and twice it turned up nothing. To make this more on-topic, I must ask: what will be the very thing to look out for that will really end X/Twitter?
Edited by HallowHawk on Dec 12th 2023 at 9:51:27 AM
My understanding is that the way artists use Twitter means that they won’t lead an exodus, they will follow one.
Should another mixed-use platform emerge with greater user numbers then Twitter we will see artists shuffle across and allow their Twitter accounts to die, but they’ll be following the general users, not directing them.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAs harsh as it is to say, this is really a case of Let's See YOU Do Better!. Running a niche social media community is easy: just get a Discord server, appoint a few friends as moderators, and off you go. Running a social media platform with mass-market appeal is really hard. How do you host it, how do you develop it, how do you market it, how do you moderate it?
If you hire people to do all that work, they expect compensation. If you run ads to support the site, you have to be accountable to the advertisers (and deal with the people who block ads for whatever reason). If you use subscriptions, you have to convince people to pay for things they get for "free" elsewhere. You can promise to keep everyone's data private and never market it, but then Facebook crushes you on features because it can afford to hire all the star developers.
A platform can't just be against things. If you build your user base on "lol Twitter sux", then you'll get a very particular and niche user base. Expanding that past the critical mass for widespread appeal is much harder than it looks.
I'm not saying these things are impossible, but I am not hitching my wagon to any of these alternative platforms until/unless they show that they can leap the hurdles.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 12th 2023 at 1:08:18 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The "best moderated platform" isn't a million miles away from Apple's walled garden approach for curating apps. Quality can be a selling point.
But moderating on that scale can be horrible. Cost is one reason why FB and X tend to automate it. Another is that otherwise someone has to read or view all that stuff.
Any platform big enough to be a viable contender is also big enough for the porn spammers, the far right and other extremists. It'll also get real and faked stories from wars and politics around the world. Potentially in dozens of different languages.
There will also be attempts to undermine various high-profile court cases. Or naming underage victims and defendants.
There have been news stories talking about people who worked as content checkers there and how it ground them down.
And at that point you also start talking to the police, in many countries, on a regular basis.
Yeah with a large enough site you’re not only needing moderators, you’re needing all the support structure that comes with having staff be repeatedly exposed to horrific content.
Police forces have to specially train people and provide them with psychological support to process that kind of stuff, even then I think such roles have a high turnover rate.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
At that point it really becomes a full time job. Not to mention the toll exposure to that kind of stuff takes.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Dec 12th 2023 at 3:38:26 PM
My musician pageAnd then you're paying potentially thousands of moderators to work on the site. That's a huge expense that ad revenue just doesn't cover.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If he wanted to kill Twitter, he would just pull the plug and be done with it. Musk doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would waste billions on an elaborate smoke and mirrors game to achieve a goal while appearing to do the opposite. He would just pull the plug and tell the world it was the best decision to make under the circumstances.
His actual goal seems perfectly straightforward: now that he got what he didn't really want in the first place, he has decided to make it his personal platform for his political views and his old dream of creating the Everything App. That is very clearly his goal, and I don't doubt he is sincere in that.
It's jsut that, well, he's really bad at actually achieving that goal. He doesn't really know how to run a social media platform, he is incapable of stepping over his own shadow or see the flaws in his plans, he is too convinced of his own right to let anyone else convince him of his wrongs, and he keeps stuffing his foot in his mouth at the worst possible times, when he could just as easily hide behind the best paid PR team in the world, if only he had the good sense to do so.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times