Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[celedhring]

NPR isn't tied to the US Government 

[crazy canuck]

/CDM/ it's cute that you think facts matter /CDM/

[HVC]

NPR isn't tied to the US Government 

Freedom of speech means freedom to lie damn you. Why are you so against freedom?

[Josquius]

*this page previously included the NPR in the noted exceptions

Various outlets tried to contact Twitter, but the press contact email is still set to auto-reply with a poop emoji. 

Jeez. Is Musk going mad? Has he stopped caring? Does he think this is playing well somehow?

[Sheilbh]

Still think Musk had half a good idea on Twitter - but Substack had already got there first and have built/are building that product. New product by them:

Hamish McKenzie
@hamishmckenzie
Today we're announcing Substack Notes.

Notes lets writers publish short-form posts and recommend almost anything: quotes, links, images, and comments.

It's coming soon and will look like this


Substack Notes may look like familiar social media feeds. But the biggest difference is one you can't see. It's based on subscriptions instead of ads.

It's social media with a heart transplant.

It's a subscription network.

While attention is the lifeblood of ad-based social media, a subscription network's lifeblood is the money that gets paid to writers and creators.

A subscription network gives you more control.

Substack Notes will let you set the terms of engagement so that it's easy to keep trolls out and even easier to let valuable contributors in.
Notes will be launching soon to everyone. It'll be an early version, so we'll be looking for your feedback.

Let's build a new economic engine for culture together.

https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes

Edit: Also I've said how the thing that helps keep Twitter going is that it's best for watching events happen - it's still the best social media for finding people you fid interesting and getting their takes on things as they happen.

My suspicion is the next step for Substack will be talking to media companies - at the minute it's basicaly people's private income streams (like Patreon) but you can easily see how you tie this in with any news subscriptions you have. News publishers are all focused on their own newsletters but they're free and you could republish here, plus you are "subscribed" to whichever of their journalists you're interested in.

I work at a media company and I remember being on a call to discuss if we wanted to get involved in Twitter's subscription models - and the thing we couldn't work out was what the upside was for a publisher. I think I can see the shape of it here with Substack.

[Jacob]

That sounds good to me... though how close is substack to get into a position to replicate the crucial "news from the streets of popular uprising" or "holy shit, Russia is invading Ukraine - what is happening" role that Twitter has historically filled.?

[Sheilbh]

That sounds good to me... though how close is substack to get into a position to replicate the crucial "news from the streets of popular uprising" or "holy shit, Russia is invading Ukraine - what is happening" role that Twitter has historically filled.?

It's not anywhere near there yet.

Their business model at the minute is paid for newsletters. So if you've signed for a few newsletters you'd get that writers' Notes too - but many writers a free newsletter that's, say, monthly. I imagine they'd generally roll in their Notes into the free version.

But the bit I think that's interesting and could be how Twitter replaces it is I can see the appeal for publishers to do deals with Substack - we're nowhere near there yet. Looking at those Substack examples - I could see almost specific news channels from a publisher, maybe you need a subscription or a registration, and it's almost a liveblog with notes from all of the journalists covering the story. Substack get a cut either maybe from a subscription or as a platform (a bit like YouTube) based on volume.

From a user perspective it'll depend how they do it but ideally you could have say uprising in Cairo (how I got into Twitter), you subscribe to the free bit of various journalists and writers on the Middle East and you could probably search by tag or put them into a specific channel on that topic. It may not happen and could go in a totally different direction. But I think there's something there and I think it's something news publishers could get comfortable with because any deal with Substack is basically to do with subscriptions and rights licensing which is almost every publisher's bread and butter.

Twitter might still be the place for chats among networks or broadcasting x article, or maybe x Substack channel (although I see that Twitter have today turned off Substack embeds ).

But it feels to me like something that could work better (from a publisher's business perspective as much as anything else), than the Facebook/Google/Twitter. They use your content to get more data on a reader of your content often on their platform - and now they get a bigger cut of the ads revenue. Similarly Twitter wanted to work with publishers on their subscription model and I never understood what the supposed upside was - after becoming a very lucrative middle man in publishers' advertising they then wanted to get people to subscribe to them to access content instead of subscribing to the people producing it.

[Josquius]

The problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.
Very likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.

[garbon]

The problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.
Very likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.

Yep.

But then I've always thought of substack as 'oh you want me to pay for some of your blog? pass.'

[Sheilbh]

The problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.

For now. But it's only five years old

Very likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.

I don't think they can.

I'm sure they could technically and in some ways already have tried, but I think Musk's whole plans have demonstrated the challenge of moving Twitter to a subscription model. It's really difficult to shift behaviour for people used to getting something for free (see the media in general) and they're buit to be big which subscription revenues won't support.

But I think for news organisations Substack is a social media company that sits more comfortably with their business model so I think they'll look to do something with it.

[Sheilbh]

So after turning off embeds, Twitter are now flagging Substack urls as unsafe (just tried and got the same message):


Such free speech.

[Hamilcar]

What's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.

[Tamas]

What's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.

Are you sure about that? I mean, impressionable submissive men on a worldwide scale must be a sizeable demographic.

[Hamilcar]

What's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.

Are you sure about that? I mean, impressionable submissive men on a worldwide scale must be a sizeable demographic.

Basement incels are nowhere near the 30% or so of hardcore Trumpers.

[Tamas]

In any case, I read that Twitter has unblocked Kremlin accounts and they are back to among recommended official sources.

I know I am being racist, but are we really surprised that a guy from a rich white South African family is turning out to be a right wing twat?