I suspect it’s because they left the tech sector alone for too long and now major damage control is needed.
It seems like laws and politicians are always a little late to the game with regulations on new technology because they don’t fully understand a new technology or its implications until it’s been on the market for a while.
Unfortunately, that means by the time the technology’s implications have been determined, a lot of damage can have already been done.
I think, similarly, politicians were not examining the tech sector closely when it came to acquisitions; but they realize, now, that they let it fester a little too long.
Hopefully the FTC continues to break up any monopoly it can identify (tech or otherwise), but there’s certainly a lot of work to be done.
This move seems absolutely wild, and I think Match knows it; which is why it’s only available to such a small segment of users.
If too many users have this feature (and who knows how many that would be?) it’'s going to scare away all the regular users. What’s the point in swiping no if that user can just veto your decision anyways?
This move reminds me a lot of what I’ve heard about mobile gaming. The 500USD/month users are whales, but the whales need regular people to play with or they’ll get bored and leave.
Right now, keeping the number of whales to a minimum is important to keep the regular users happy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future some cost/benefit analysis shows that they can take the hit on regular users to squeeze out a few more whales.
It also seems like a bonkers move to pay 500 dollars to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you, too. (But that’s a different issue.)
It seems like Twitter is really trying to find a value-add for Twitter Blue, but I can’t see this enticing anyone.
What is the overlap between people you met on Twitter that you want to have a video call with that you don’t trust with your phone number/ other contact information?
This feels especially value-less when you remember you would only be able to call people who are also Twitter Blue subscribers (approximately 1 in 550).
Primarily the manner in which they contemplated the purchase of Nintendo. It was not presented as wishful thinking, but an inevitability. Microsoft has the money, and all they need is a moment of weakness on Nintendo’s part in which to spring a hostile takeover (or at least, that’s how the email reads).
The fact that Microsoft could leverage its considerable wealth from being the market leader in a different market segment to buy out an entire competitor that makes up a very significant portion of the gaming market, and that doing so would not be for any reason than to be a feather in the cap of the Phil Spencer makes them very dangerous.
Xbox/ Microsoft clearly have money to burn and are on no uncertain terms willing to use it to bully their way into a monopoly of the gaming market.
Regardless of how realistic their plans to take over Nintendo really are. They think the plan is feasible, and they have the money for it. They are incredibly dangerous.
The leaks emerged from attachments to a single court document uploaded to a website hosted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where the FTC is suing Microsoft over the $69 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard.
In a new court order posted today, the judge in the FTC vs. Microsoft case, Jacqueline Scott Corley, confirmed that Microsoft seemingly accidentally provided the court with a version of the documents that “contained non-public information” to the link that held public documents in the trial. The documents have since been removed from the link.
What an incredible own-goal. I’ve felt this acquisition was severely monopolistic from the start, but I know not everyone felt that way. I have to imagine/ hope this helped convince more people how dangerous Xbox/ Microsoft is. Hopefully the acquisition will be blocked now
That’s actually a good point about how some services do require payment to provide safe service to their users. A very close to home example would be your local Lemmy instance. In order to run the servers and keep it ad (and tracking) free, each instance needs donations from their users. The same is true for Mastodon, as you mentioned.
The problem is, I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well, but they all basically boil down to most users not wanting too give money to Twitter, and if they were ok with that, they would already have purchased Twitter Blue.
It really feels like a lot of social media platforms are intentionally self-sabotaging themselves. I keep expecting them to die off every time something like this happens, but they appear to continue on regardless.
I think that social media sites actually dying off is actually impossible with enough inertia (even if their base decreases) and that’s why they are emboldened to do such anti-consumer practices.
All this to say that I’m sure Steve Huffman has immediately started furiously texting everyone he knows about his new idea to charge for Reddit as well as a boosted version of Gold called “Alien Orange” or something.
I know it is a popular sentiment that people should migrate to Mastodon, but I personally think people will migrate wherever the people they follow migrate to.
With this in mind, I suspect Bluesky will be the platform to usurp Twitter; but with Twitter chasing off all their users in the near future, it may go to whichever platform is readily open at the time.
I’m very curious to see if Bluesky or Spill open up when Twitter closes the door on its users. If not, Mastodon may have a shot at being the next large platform…
Basically, I think it’s exactly what @Gaywallet@beehaw.org was saying: these decisions aren’t being made with any actual facts/ data as the basis. The decisions are solely based on “gut feelings” of the higher-ups. Attendance is the only way the higher-ups know how to gauge productivity, and that is going to trump any actual productivity data.
Remote work is such a boon to workers, and from my perception there is not a lot of benefit of mandating in-person work.
It really feels like the push to return to in-person is primarily driven by a combination of propping up the industrial real estate industry as well as managers not trusting their employees, and perhaps some level of maliciousness towards employees.
The return on investment on operating an office space for the nominal increase in productivity really makes in-person work feel like it’s only for the managers’ egos.
The fact that the Zoom CEO is pushing for this to me does not represent a lack of faith in their product, but a strong desire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their employees regardless on quality of life and regardless of return on investment of the cost of operating the office.
While I would certainly like for Reddit to experience the consequences of its actions, I don’t think it actually matters all that much.
Most people will probably go back to Reddit, but there will be others who will not. Right now, as far as I can tell, the best thing to do is not to hope Reddit fails and everyone has to come here; but just comment, create, etc, here and make it a community you are happy with regardless of what Reddit does. (Especially since in all likelihood, Reddit will keep on trucking along for a long while)
Unfortunately, RiF is shutting down too (link)
The trick is to make sure you’ve checked everything else off on your list before getting to that one