A major new competitor is now live:
This goes to something that is happening at lots of companies, not just Twitter - and it’s a cool story.
Since the early 1990’s, large companies have used arbitration clauses to evade legal accountability to their employees and customers. Arbitration clauses allow companies to require customers and employees to give up their right to sue, including class action suits, instead requiring them to go into individual binding arbitration, with an arbitrator selected by the company. There is cost to making a claim annd they were frequently unlikely to succeed. This dissuaded people from pursing legal action.
But recently, some law firms automated the procedures for filing for binding arbitration, and sent in tens of thousands of simultaneous request for arbitration - swamping the companies legal departments and running up huge fees. In some cases, the companies decide it’s cheaper to allow the class action suits they were trying to avoid. In other cases they’ve run up huge costs from the tens of thousands of arbitrations - I’m not sure if other companies dodged their arbitration bills like Twitter did, though.
Twitter’s dying, Reddit’s changing, everything else is entertainment – and there’s nowhere left to hang…
Shhh…don’t tell anyone about the Aight-Stray Ope-day…
We don’t need all those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” mucking the place up. Well, certainly not all at once.
I love this place, I’ve been here a long, long time. But there’s something missing here that Twitter has (had?). That’s posts by the real newsmakers/celebrities themselves. If, for example, Janelle Monáe herself would come to comment in the thread about her that was in Café Society a few months ago. As she does sometimes on Twitter.
We had Neil Degrasse Tyson once, IIRC.
Yeah, we only get the cool celebrities.
I guess what I mean is that I won’t be the first person to leave Twitter for another site. I’ll wait to see where the celebrities go first, and follow them. Because they’re the draw.
I wish Randall would post here.
The first impressions of Threads are… not good.
I don’t think this is gonna be the Twitter-killer unless Zucker Carlson changes a lot of things real fast.
(Also, whoever decided to give the hip new social media app the same name as a nightmare-inducing film about nuclear war should probably start updating their resume.)
I’m not sure why anyone thought Zuck was going to be our savior. The Facebook feed has been thoroughly and completely enshittified, but we thought Meta would get it right with Twitter?
Well, not being on Twittster or Wolly Mammoth or Threadbare, all I know is that a brother who is “impressed” by Elmo just joined Threads. And he really likes it so far: “I love watching celebrities show up each day. Gordon Ramsay just started here, and had some great comments. I’ll just interact with them til they get crazy, then I’ll back away.”
Right.
Important thing to note: the Threads release is US only for now; it’s unavailable in the EU because they know the product in this early stage will violate our data privacy laws. Almost certainly, that means Zuck saw an opportunity to unseat a competitor but he just couldn’t resist his natural impulse to use the new platform as an indiscriminate data vacuum, and it will take time to soften that functionality to comply with EU law (or to conceal or obscure the functionality so it doesn’t attract user attention and regulator scrutiny) before launching here.
No Meta product will be the answer in this space, because they simply can’t be trusted.
Ugh, the last thing I want here on the Dope is celebrities throwing their fame around. This isn’t a fan site. If celebs want to post here they should choose an anonymous username and let their posts speak for themselves, just like the rest of us.
I’m not saying I want it here, I’m saying that’s what makes Twitter different. Twitter is, essentially, a fan site and I use it with that in mind —. I am a fan of the accounts I follow.
The SDMB has an entirely different purpose, so it wouldn’t be a good replacement, is what I’m saying.
I miss the old days, you know, before business interests ruined the internet.
So, the 1950’s then?
As of 2 hours ago
Threads is now available to download in over 100 countries including the UK, but not yet in the EU because of regulatory concerns.
Source:
j
I agree with this and won’t care much about Threads until I can actually use it in my PC browser (right now it won’t even load on Firefox). But I know that Meta and other companies REALLY want me to use the mobile app where I have no defenses against the data collection driving the business – so I’m not holding my breath.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one with this mindset. I only use my phone for things that need to be done on a phone.
I am SO glad it isn’t just me, the old man. It was horrible.
I felt the same way about Instagram: horribly, unalterably noisy, so no surprise Threads is more of the same.