Proud of that no context page turn

I can accept everything about furries except their bad taste.

poprock wrote:

If you have an existing, long established account, it seems fine. The algo does what it’s supposed to. New ones? Not so much.

I set up an empty Twitter account about six months ago, just to see what would happen. Blank bio, no profile pic, no posts. Followed a few accounts from people I already know and left it sitting there. It now has over a thousand followers, and every single one of them is either a sex worker or a spambot for a porn site.

I get weird bots. Not quite sure what the point of them is, maybe trying to build followers to sell the accounts or something. Picture of a hot lady, and either no posts, or a single weird post like this

Basically the spam is flooding Twitter, anyway. Between bot followers, low-rent promoted posts, and random users’ tweets being pushed into your timeline with a ‘follow me’ button … It’s getting to be more ads than content.

Musk talking about a subscription for all users.

That's the tipping point right?
Not just because people don't want to pay for it but it creates a barrier that takes effort to bypass. Not a lot of effort of course but it breaks that habit of picking up your phone and checking.

Going back a few pages now, but I do love how whenever I use New Coke/Coke as an analogy for X/Twitter, everyone pushes their glasses up, adjusts their fedoras, and starts pointing out how it's not an exact parallel. I know. It's an analogy. It's not going to be an exact one for one. One's a drink and one's a website, for starters.

But LivDiv beat me to it. Have a link to verify: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/19/elon-musk-twitter-x-subscription-fees-users-posts

The man's a genius. Twitter wasn't profitable, but it was popular... so I'll make it less popular and then charge people to use it. Like taking a shit in someone's sandwich, then offering a turd removal service for a nominal fee.

Is he trying to kill it?

Tbf all the alternatives are fucking gash and way too many people are addicted enough that they'll pay a fee for it. It'll be grand, just as it was with all the recent controversies. Multiple will threaten to leave, nobody will care, the world continues.

Yossarian wrote:

Paul the sparky wrote:

Is he trying to kill it?

I don’t think he’s trying to kill it, I think he fundamentally misunderstands it.

RedDave2 wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

That's one way you can remove your entire userbase, yes.

If he removes 50% but keeps a paying base, this might work.

50% is an insane number to think he can retain. 5-10% would be a massive success.[/quote]

To be fair, I accept you know more on this then me. But since Musky Balls took over we keep hearing how the system is going to collapse (it hasnt) everyones going to leave (they havent) and its losing money (which it was anyway) 

I'm amazed how so many patreon/ only fans account make tons of money. There is clearly a market of internet user who will pay to access communities. For example look at us here - haven't most of us said we would contribute to keep the place running? I imagine thats the mindset Musk wants to access. They dont want to pay, but they dont want to lose what they have.

Twitter has collapsed repeatedly and keeps getting patched back up and loads of people have left. My Twitter feed has a fraction of the activity it used to have. My morning Twitter scroll used to take me back maybe two or three hours in my timeline, now I give up at the point where I start reading Tweets I read the night before.

RedDave2 wrote:

To be fair, I accept you know more on this then me. But since Musky Balls took over we keep hearing how the system is going to collapse (it hasnt) everyones going to leave (they havent) and its losing money (which it was anyway)  I'm amazed how so many patreon/ only fans account make tons of money. There is clearly a market of internet user who will pay to access communities. For example look at us here - haven't most of us said we would contribute to keep the place running? I imagine thats the mindset Musk wants to access. They dont want to pay, but they dont want to lose what they have.

Patreon and OnlyFans are direct communities. You pay a subscription to a specific creator. It's a method of support. It's not comparable to paying a fee to access Twitter, where the beneficiary is Elon Musk, and you get access to white supremacists.

5-15% seems about the rough guideline for the amount of users that you can turn into subscribers. And that's when you've thought about it and planned for it, and got a proper plan in place and all the rest of it. Even if he can make the economics of that work, those users are now paying for a Twitter where 85-95% of the user base has fucked off. Having done his best to kill a globally recongised brand, he'd have killed the only other thing worth any money - the critical mass of users that makes it worth logging on in the first place.

Even if it's 50%, taking out half the userbase overnight would devastate it.

Fully with monkey here, charging would be the final nail in the coffin for Twitter.

My view is that a lot of people have been threatening to leave for a while now but it's easy to open the app or the site on a browser and get drawn back in.

A paywall adds a barrier that will slow people down, make them think and eventually not bother.

I was in a similar boat. I deleted my accounts but would still have a lurk now and again. They changed it so non-account holders can't view stuff. I don't bother at all now. That barrier between lurking and having an account is too much to be arsed with.