Bonum Certa Men Certa

Twitter.com is Back Behind 'Paywalls' (or Walled Gardens Rather, Zero-Cost for Now), Social Control Media as a Whole is Perishing

Give Gemini a go, there's no "platform" and no "central" point/s

Net topology
THE TWITTER WALLED GARDENS ARE BACK!



Summary: Manipulative social control mechanisms (falsely disguised as "media"*) -- e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter -- are having a rough time; it moreover seems apparent that their ability to keep eyeballs (user retention) has eroded, as we noted 1.5 years ago

JUDGING by what goes on at Reddit right now, the "masters" are desperate for profitability. They deny people access to stuff that's already there and has long been there. How long before YouTube starts taking old videos offline unless you pay to keep them online? And what about Twitter? How long before you must pay to use it? Or to access some features? No, Twitter Blue is nothing compared to this. The way things are going, maybe Twitter will go offline this year, maybe next year. There's no business model (with most of the revenue wiped in less than a year profitability is more elusive than ever) and now people cannot view a tweet without logging in. It's back to the way it was at the start of this month. That being the case, Google should just delist the Twitter.com domain. ALL OF IT. Don't make bait for people to create an account for no good reason. At the moment there's not even a teaser, it just looks like a paywall (with free sign-up). How many people will create an account just to read 50-200 characters of text? We're checked among us to be sure it's not a UK- or browser-specific thing, replicating the same behaviour from different parts of the world and it seems like universally (no matter which page is requested) Twitter.com is behind walled gardens again. ALL of it. One theory is that they're not being targeted by DDoS or "Hey Hi" but are just eager to boast about many new sign-ups. But at what cost? Is Elon Musk preparing to blame something other than himself for the death of Twitter, BOTH as a site AND as a business?

"At the moment there's not even a teaser, it just looks like a paywall (with free sign-up).""It seems to be the case that even with JavaScript enabled it requires login before displaying any tweets," one person said, but since December 2020 JavaScript has been strictly obligatory to access anything there (unless Nitter is used, but that's a gateway, a read-only proxy of sorts).

Some people might say that it's a "defensive" move, but what is being defended against? It seems like a self-harming move. For those who think it's because of Facebook, well... yesterday and today we saw articles such as this one, asserting "time spent in the [Threads/Facebook] app falls by 71%," contrary to the FOMO-inducing hype from Zuckerberg and his chums.

"Maybe they will find out there's life after fake "friends" and fake "followers" (a bizarre and superficial yardstick, also volatile and temporal)."From what we can gather, many people left Twitter, went to Threads, changed their mind, and then gave up on both. In other words they may be quitting social control media altogether. "It looks like that has happened," one person said, is that "they've left Twitter, tried Threads, and then quit."

Maybe they will find out there's life after fake "friends" and fake "followers" (a bizarre and superficial yardstick, also volatile and temporal). As a source of revenue those were always just speculative bubbles waiting to implode. This also applies to YouTube, which as a business appears to be floundering; it's searching for profitability and in the process it's attacking the users (passive viewers) and the creators.

Thankfully we never depended on any of these "platforms".

"Social media needs to burn." -- Cory Doctorow in “Let the Platforms Burn” 2 days ago

“Rydman claims lies about government are being fed to international media [...] If you go on Twitter and look at the activity of various researchers, social media activists and even journalists, you don’t have to look too long to find these kinds of cases..." -- Finnish blog which is sceptical of social control media earlier this week (grain of salt needed)

"Excessive trust in political knowledge increases on social media [...] This trend may be attributed to the online platforms that provide an environment where individuals can easily find affirmation for their beliefs without necessarily improving their level of political literacy." -- same blog earlier this month, covering disinformation online

____ * Technically or legally speaking, what all those sites (or "platforms" or "apps") boil down to is "Digital Sharecropping", which this site explains as follows: "Sharecropping is a sucker's game and always has been. To grow your business, you need to own your content." See the historical meaning of this analogy.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
 
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux FUD From Slopfarms, Blaming Linux for Microsoft Issues; Even WebProNews Has Become a Slopfarm (Googlebombing "Linux" With Slop Images and Fake/Plagiarised Text)
The Web is really getting bad; it's also overwhelmed by fake material or plagiarised material, wherein the plagiarism gets disguised/hidden by LLM sausage factories
Links 03/06/2025: Tiananmen Square Massacre Censorship and Growing Military Activities Around Taiwan
Links for the day
Linux is Already Dominant (Android), Let's Make GNU/Linux Dominant in Desktops/Laptops as Well
"Dr. Stallman recently warned everybody about Microsoft."
The Loyalty to Microsoft and the Salaries From Microsoft (Funding SLAPPs Against Techrights and Tux Machines)
Garrett always knows better. He knows everything best.
Windows Falls in Italy as GNU/Linux Jumps to 5%
Italy knows a thing or two about digital autonomy
Nigeria is All Android and Google
Windows down to almost nothing in Africa's largest population
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Second Wave) Not Limited to Redmond
"More layoffs at Microsoft as axe falls in Washington and California"
Gemini Links 03/06/2025: Forth System and "Common Lisp is a Dumpster"
Links for the day
The Leaks Were Right: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in May, Then Another Wave in June
Just as we've been saying for over a month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 02, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 02, 2025