Semafor reports that the Chinese government is unhappy with their investment in Twitter:
State outlets, which put considerable resources into amassing millions of followers on Elon Musk’s social media platform — including by buying ads, deploying bots, and hiring influencers — have recently seen their growth plateau.
The growing popularity of Bluesky, which has a largely liberal base and harder-to-manipulate algorithm, has sparked “worried chatter within Chinese state media circles,” a former Xinhua and China Daily employee wrote in his newsletter.
Huh. I wonder if Elon is aware of this? But even if he is, I imagine his giant Tesla factory in Shanghai keeps him keenly aware of the need to accommodate the needs of the Chinese state.
I thought the whole reason Musk pitched a fit over buying Twitter in the first place -- before a court essentially forced him to -- was that it was full of bots and shit and no-one could get a handle on its legitimate traffic metrics. Now that he's controlled it for a couple of years, its basically...a miasma of bots and other shit no-one has any idea what to do with. It's taken longer than I thought, but I can't see how he keeps this up. He's hemmoraging users and ad revenue and the debt payments are costing billions and although Musk is richer than god, that's still walking around money. Musk doesn't seem to give a shit, but his backers and other lenders, incluidng the Saudis, might.
At some point the board at Tesla will have to grow a spine. Somehow.
I’m very concerned Musk is going to lean on Trump to shut Bluesky down.
Small beans. They, the Nerdreich, is going for broke. They, and that's why Elon is sitting where he is, want crypto to accepted and backed by real currency – probably to cash out.
https://www.thenerdreich.com/thoughts-on-president-elon-musks-pending-tech-takeover-of-us-government/
Ultimately, what determines the quality of a social media site, all else being equal, is who is using it. Right now it looks as though X is going down the tubes because it lacks a user base that provides quality content.
I had a Twitter account only briefly and when it became X, I cancelled. I have little use for that type of feed. I got out of Reddit because it's filled with trolls in the sections I visited, all spoiling for fights.
I registered with Bluesky mainly to add to the momentum, although it is certainly a lot better than X! Time will tell.
I read reddit on (computer) gaming topics. There is very little political talk or trolling, probably because the people running those subreddits don't want any, and moderate in such a way to eliminate them.
And that means there is a nice stream of useful discussion. There is a "tragedy of the commons" or a more malicious version of it (aka "flood the zone with shit") in unmoderated conversations. If a conversation becomes popular and visible enough, invaders will come and make it unusable if they can.
This blog floats on the hairy edge of that phenomenon, in fact. Probably not quite considered dangerous enough to just swamp it out, though we do have our trolls on duty here.
Ever since going private, info on (M)onthy (A)ctive (U)sers from birdsite comes from an unreliable source -- Musk. While he claims user growth, it doesn't appear actual traffic has grown; in fact according to Sensor Tower, user engagement was down ~23% from before Musk acquired birdsite and in spring of this year. That growth is mostly coming from bots, it appears. Post-election, users reported a sudden drop in followers. Apparently, with its influence operations over, the owners of said bots have shut down.
TwiX is a mouthpiece for Musk. That is all that it is anymore. He seems to be happy to run it at a loss so long as everyone is made to listen to his drug addled thoughts.