Conversation

Notices

1. mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 17:13:00 UTC mhoye

   A few last thoughts about Facebook and Threads.

   Their claimed user numbers are obviously bullshit. Even taken at face value, millions of people clicking a new button is not millions of people using a new service.

   Second, their business is serving ads only. They have as an organization proven, repeatedly, that they will accept any adverse human impact up to and including genocide as long as their graphs go up. Their stated intentions are irrelevant and believing otherwise makes you a mark.

   • mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 17:12:58 UTC mhoye

     in reply to

     Anyway are a lot of people on here who phoned in their poli-sci credit in first year and think being able to write their own shellcode means they can reinvent the humanities from first principles, who don't quite have the self-awareness to realize that ideology is an attack surface and they're years and maybe decades behind on their updates.

   • mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 17:12:59 UTC mhoye

     in reply to

     Finally, there's not a lot of evidence that people will switch services en masse for any reason other than a tectonic failure of their current service. Microsoft spent billions on Mixer, it was one click away from Twitch and it didn't matter. Nobody is moving off Threads to the Fedi, but interesting posts from the Fedi will keep people clicking around in Threads.

     The utility of the Fedi to Facebook is shelter from regulatory scrutiny with a side helping of content farming. That's it.

   • mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 17:12:59 UTC mhoye

     in reply to

     I often wonder if the common nerdbrain social fallacy that friendship is transitive - A(f)B & B(f)C -> A(f)C - somehow metastasizes in our minds and blinds us to the metabehaviors and strategies of organizations that pay lip service to our goals and values. "Microsoft😍Linux", then buys github to monopolize the world's devchains. "Google❤️AI-ethics" until ethics impedes market domination, then goodbye.

     To Amazon's credit, at least they never snowed their own employees pretending to give a shit.

     James Broadhead repeated this.