Not how this works
Here’s why Elon’s cunning plan is so stupid:
Twitter has applied a temporary limit to the number of tweets users can read in a day, owner Elon Musk has said.
In a tweet of his own, Mr Musk said unverified accounts are now limited to reading 600 posts a day.
If you don’t use Twitter that might sound reasonable, like the Guardian and the Washington Post and similar saying you can read X number of articles for X price. (They don’t do that, but they could.) But Twitter doesn’t work like a newspaper, because what you see is what Twitter decides to show you. It mostly works because what Twitter decides to show you is shaped by what you’ve liked in the past, but this is new Elon Twitter, and lately it’s been regularly showing me garbage that seems purely random. The future will be “here are your 600 random garbage tweets, there you go, see you tomorrow.”
So everyone will leave, and Elon will be saying “What just happened?”
I wonder if that counts posts one scrolls-by, or just those one actually opens.
I also wonder if it applies to those of us who access Twitter via browser rather than through the app. I don’t know how these things work (obviously.)
His other brilliant idea is to stop people without accounts from reading tweets. I tried to make an account twice last night, but couldn’t. Got an error message both times.
Now I can’t see what Finn The Abandoned Cat is doing.
And neither can I, even though I have an account. Most people can’t. It’s just a garbage fire. Wish I could smack him upside the head.
It’s working again now though. For the moment.
Like Learie I don’t have a Twitter account. I used the web to follow Twitter links that our host provided. There were a handful of individuals that I would check on, ranging from daily to weekly. Twitter showed me ads, and more recently promoted tweets. I’m sure they were able to do some data scraping of their own to add information about me to a database they could monetise in some way. I don’t feel the need to sign up to an account so they can gather even more information about me to monetise more effectively. I really don’t follow Musk’s logic. He’ll sell fewer advertising impressions, reduce the mind space that Twitter occupies in our collective conscience, and some more content creators will go elsewhere. Once again he’s coming across like the kid clutching their soccer ball and screaming ‘my ball, my rules’. Sure he can, it’s his right, but nobody will be better off including him.
I don’t even think it’s entirely his right, even though he did buy it, it’s his money, yadda yadda. Legally and technically no doubt it is his right but morally not 100%. When a medium of communication becomes as influential and widely used and depended on as Twitter has, the owner has some responsibility not to smash it for jollies.
Morally… Yes I think I agree with that. But again, Musk has had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his grasp of morals, or even just good sense and he repeatedly reverts to the six year old with the soccer ball. For all its faults and inability to make a decent return on capital even under its founder wing, Twitter was an exceptionally useful and powerful SM app. Easily the best of a dubious bunch. It’s sadly hilarious that Musk is turning it into a walled garden even more restrictive than anything Apple has ever done. I mean, Apple has never turned around and said sorry you’ve listened to enough music/podcasts,TV for today. Arguably they should, I might get more useful stuff done.
Ophelia @6 Another consideration are the paid users, and not just individual subscribers, but API data access users who pay exhorbitant costs, and others such as ‘twitter celebrities’ who’s fame depends on twitter followers. They have no say because it’s a private company, not a democracy, so they are subject to whatever changes to the platform, price hikes, or rules and restrictions that twitter decides to impose.
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-data-api-prices-out-nearly-everyone/
This is all a money grab, and those who hold the reins at twitter know how dependent people (and companies, organizations, etc.) have become. Addiction level stuff for some. There is absolutely a moral component to how it’s run, but one they can (legally) choose to ignore. I think they are aiming for a balance between running the platform into the ground and maximizing profit, but it looks like the current strategy leans toward the former.