Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, which could result in the social media company's trust and safety teams being crippled, Platformer reported on Saturday.
I don’t think that there’s any conspiracy or ill intent there.
It’s just that the tech bubble is exploding and investors are running out of money - or rather are running out of willing to spend money for these social media platforms.
So they go public or get bought by some ultra rich people.
There’s also the issue that as communities grow to insanely bit proportions, the operating costs also grow exponentially. Server costs of course, but then you also need to start investing in teams of lawyers, support, community managers, dedicated DevOps and developers… all of that while the community loses its sense of being part of a “little village” and get less inclined to financially help foot the bill.
These social media services have pretty much committed suicide - or egocide rather because I don’t believe that they will go anywhere. They’ll stay afloat without issues, but they’ve lost their souls a long time ago. They’re working for money now, and not for their community or users anymore.
And they cannot go back either, because the operating costs don’t just go down by themselves, so they need to act greedy in order to survive. There’s nothing the Reddit or Twitter leadership could do to stop that now. It’s a one-way byproduct of uncontrolled growth.
The right “moral choice” for these leaders would probably be to just let their platform slowly die while alternatives emerge - but that’s a very painful thing to do when you invested 20+ years of your life into it. Dorsey managed to do it for example, which is impressive and quite commendable.
I’ll add that it’s unlikely that the Fediverse will suffer from the same fate, because… there’s no management. There’s an “agreed upon” structure but everyone can do their own thing and that’s what’s beautiful about it. It cannot “lose its soul” because as a contract/protocol, the “soul” of the Fediverse is the only thing that makes it exist. It might splinter, it might evolve into different “universes”, but it will never die.
It’s pretty much a re-creation of how the 2000’s internet worked. Which had its problems, yeah, but which was also a very resilient and independent place.
I don’t think that there’s any conspiracy or ill intent there.
It’s just that the tech bubble is exploding and investors are running out of money - or rather are running out of willing to spend money for these social media platforms.
So they go public or get bought by some ultra rich people.
There’s also the issue that as communities grow to insanely bit proportions, the operating costs also grow exponentially. Server costs of course, but then you also need to start investing in teams of lawyers, support, community managers, dedicated DevOps and developers… all of that while the community loses its sense of being part of a “little village” and get less inclined to financially help foot the bill.
These social media services have pretty much committed suicide - or egocide rather because I don’t believe that they will go anywhere. They’ll stay afloat without issues, but they’ve lost their souls a long time ago. They’re working for money now, and not for their community or users anymore.
And they cannot go back either, because the operating costs don’t just go down by themselves, so they need to act greedy in order to survive. There’s nothing the Reddit or Twitter leadership could do to stop that now. It’s a one-way byproduct of uncontrolled growth.
The right “moral choice” for these leaders would probably be to just let their platform slowly die while alternatives emerge - but that’s a very painful thing to do when you invested 20+ years of your life into it. Dorsey managed to do it for example, which is impressive and quite commendable.
I’ll add that it’s unlikely that the Fediverse will suffer from the same fate, because… there’s no management. There’s an “agreed upon” structure but everyone can do their own thing and that’s what’s beautiful about it. It cannot “lose its soul” because as a contract/protocol, the “soul” of the Fediverse is the only thing that makes it exist. It might splinter, it might evolve into different “universes”, but it will never die.
It’s pretty much a re-creation of how the 2000’s internet worked. Which had its problems, yeah, but which was also a very resilient and independent place.