forked from a13xrzteach/a13xrzteach.github.io
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
Copy pathpodcast.html
696 lines (546 loc) · 29.7 KB
/
podcast.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>The Soulless, Uncreative YRDSB Policy-abiding Podcast</title>
<style>
body {
background-color: #00FF7E;
font-family: "Comic Sans MS", "Comic Sans", serif;
display: grid;
justify-items: center;
text-align: center;
max-width: 50em;
margin: auto;
}
img {
max-width: 20em;
margin-top: 2em;
}
audio {
margin-bottom: 5em;
}
section {
text-align: left;
padding: 1em;
width: 100%;
}
section h3 {
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<img src="static/img/podcast-logo.png">
<p>
Hosted by Ronson Zhao and Michael Skyba
<br>
Sponsored by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego">Manscaped</a>
</p>
<h1>Episode 1: #RIPTwitter, #HelloX</h1>
<audio controls>
<source src="static/audio/podcast.mp3">
</audio>
<section>
<h3>Testimonials</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>"this podcast cured my puerperal psychosis, schizoid
personality disorder, and kleptomania. definitely would
recommend 6/10"</em>
<br>
- Elon Musk, 2023
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>"As a language model developed by OpenAI, I adhere to
guidelines that prevent me from creating content that could
be misconstrued as deceptive or misleading, such as writing
testimonials for media or products I haven't reviewed or
experienced firsthand. This ensures integrity and honesty in
the content I generate. Do you have any other questions or
need assistance with a different topic?"</em>
<br>
- GPT-4, 2023
</p>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Transcript</h3>
<p>Greetings, wonderful viewers, to the Soulless, Uncreative, YRDSB
policy-abiding podcast. By tuning into this podcast, you acknowledge
that you have nothing better to do than listen to high school
students talk about topics they know nothing about! Welp, that's
okay. Not everybody has to do something with their life and make an
impact on the world.</p>
<p>Today's episode is "#RIPTwitter, #HelloX", where we will talk
about Elon Musk's acquisition and rebranding of Twitter.</p>
<p>I'm Michael Skyba, a terminally online student from Mulock. When
I'm not crashing the school board's internal servers, I'm spending
eight to nine hours a day on Twitter. As you'd guess, I'm both
literally and figuratively allergic to touching grass.</p>
<p>And I'm Ronson Zhao, a student from Mulock, who exists. I mainly
use Twitter to look at art, but I don't tweet myself, and I don't
even have an account. So, obviously, I really know what I'm talking
about when it comes to Twitter.</p>
<p>That about sums it up for the introductions of the co-hosts.
First, let's talk about why Elon bought Twitter.</p>
<p>So, prior to recording, we listened to the seventh episode of the
podcast "Flipping the Bird: Elon vs. Twitter", titled "#RIPTwitter",
in which David Brown, Justin Halpern, and Miles Klee talked about
Elon's acquisition of Twitter.</p>
<p>Things like why he did it, what has changed, and what the future
might look like. And in that podcast, Justin Halpern said that Elon
really wanted to be seen as funny, so when he bought Twitter, his
goal was kind of to shape it into this platform that promotes
quote-unquote unfiltered free speech and his brand of humor. So,
what are we thinking about that?</p>
<p>First, I think Justin is kind of pretty mistaken in his
assessment. Like, he's mostly just taking a few pieces of evidence
of like, oh, this joke that Elon made, but he kind of made it up
himself, exactly what Elon's motivation is.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess so. They said a lot about how Elon steals jokes and
whatnot, in attempts to be seen as funny, but I think that's just
kind of how internet humor is at this point.</p>
<p>Yeah. I don't see why Elon would take all these actions just to
be seen as funny, because Justin said that Elon only wanted to be
funny, how he doesn't even care about being famous or rich anymore.
It's not scratching the itch for him. Doesn't that seem pretty
absurd?</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess so. And I think if Elon wants to be seen as funny,
I think he has kind accomplished his goal but that makes me wonder:
why did he even buy Twitter in the first place? People already saw
him as that even before he bought Twitter. He was already known as
the only CEO who shitposts on Twitter.</p>
<p>So I think it's more likely that it's somewhat more similar to
what Miles was saying, how Elon was kind of forced into it. Where,
maybe it started as a joke, but now he is willing to try to shape
the public discourse of information, and just have more control over
it.</p>
<p>I mean, from what I know about Elon buying Twitter, he did
originally buy it and then he wanted to pull out of the deal but
then he was quite literally forced into keeping Twitter. I think he
made the offer and then he changed his mind later and then they said
no, you can't do that for this contract.</p>
<p>Because at first he wanted it for this many dollars per share or
whatever and then it was classified as a hostile takeover.</p>
<p>And then he had to, he was basically forced to take over, right,
even though he didn't really want to.</p>
<p>But at this point he seems pretty committed to it. He's gone on
and spoke to people about it and gotten more people. He didn't let
it just go to bankruptcy.</p>
<p>I mean, I don't think Twitter was ever really gonna go to
bankruptcy anyways, as long as people kept using it, because Twitter
has a huge user base.</p>
<p>Didn't Elon say that they only had a few months of runway when he
took over, because they were paying so many people for their
salaries?</p>
<p>Yeah, and the solution was to fire all of them, huh?</p>
<p>Well, yeah, that decreased their expenses for 90% or
something.</p>
<p>But then that makes me wonder: is that still the issue that
they're facing right now, because I know Twitter recently has seen
really dumb amounts of ads on the timeline and everything. So, I
assume that that's a measure to extend that runway, if you know what
I mean.</p>
<p>Dumb amounts, like a lot of ads?</p>
<p>That's what I've heard. I've heard that there's way more ads than
there was before. Also, you know Twitter Blue is a thing now. The
limited free things you can see.</p>
<p>That's probably trying to make up for the fact that a lot of
advertisers are very anti-Elon, because Elon says things they
disagree with. They just want to pull out. Wasn't there a talk that
he went on a week ago, where he said, oh, I hate, f-you advertisers,
or whatever.</p>
<p>Wait, really? I didn't even know that. I don't keep up with
Elon.</p>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<p>So what do we think about the idea mentioned on the podcast that
Elon just wants to shape public opinion and be able to control what
information gets to the top? Do we think that's part of his goal,
or?</p>
<p>I think so. Elon has the most wealth out of any person in the
world, right? I feel like you can't get that high just by doing
random things. I think he's pretty deliberate about how he wants to
keep growing.</p>
<p>I mean, the way I see it, though, because they mentioned how he
shared right-wing conspiracies and whatnot, but what if that's
genuinely just his opinion that he wants to share on Twitter? And
just get it out there? Does that really, because you'd think that if
he wanted to control the flow of information, he wouldn't make it so
obvious by publicly tweeting something that would be seen as
controversial. Like you said, he's the richest person in the world.
I don't think he'd be dumb enough to make himself so obvious like
that.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don't think he's trying to propagate propaganda to try to
force one single opinion. I think he just wants to try to make it
more free for people to express whatever they believe in. It just
happens to be that he disagrees with the mainstream view on those
issues, right?</p>
<p>Maybe, because they did say that free speech probably isn't
Elon's actual goal and he was just kind of clout chasing and wanting
to be seen as funny. But do you think that buying Twitter is
something he would do just for the clout.</p>
<p>I don't think that really makes any sense. He already could get
way more clout from actually building successful businesses and
products. A lot of people praise him for, if he has a successful
SpaceX launch or whatever, right? And it seems that's what he's
focusing on. If he just cared about being funny, why wouldn't he
just sell his companies and be a comedian?</p>
<p>And I feel like buying Twitter has actually had the opposite
effect, because I think, at least before he bought Twitter, I
thought the public opinion on Elon was that people liked him.
Because haha funny SpaceX man, haha catgirl tweets, whatever. But
after he bought Twitter, I feel like that's when the public opinion
started shifting against him. So, in a sense, I think him buying
Twitter, if that was his goal, to be clout chasing, to be seen as
funny, I think it has had the opposite effect. So that makes me
wonder if that was really his goal in the first place.</p>
<p>Yeah, if his goal was to be funny, you'd have to say that he just
completely failed on that. But how often does Elon commit to such a
venture and just completely fail?</p>
<p>Cyber truck window incident.</p>
<p>Okay, that's an engineering problem, but...</p>
<p>I kind of mentioned the thing about the ads on Twitter earlier,
but aside from that, you use Twitter more than me, so how would you
say that the user experience has changed before versus after Elon
bought?</p>
<p>Well, I've heard Elon say quite a lot when asked about Twitter
that his goal is to have more unregretted user minutes. You know how
on TikTok, a lot of people would scroll through days of it and then
afterwards, they want to kill themselves, right?</p>
<p>I'm in this picture and I don't like it.</p>
<p>Exactly, so on Twitter, he wanted people to engage with content
that they actually found meaningful and would come away not
regretting it. I feel like that has had a shift for the better.
Before, I'd only hear about the context of, oh, this person is
trashing someone else, and there's this toxicity. But now, a lot of
the engagement I see is actually posting high quality information
and discussion.</p>
<p>Can that also be just your timeline and people you follow,
though?</p>
<p>Yeah, because I am kind of in a bubble. I barely even talk to
anyone else in real life, so I don't even know what the experiences
are.</p>
<p>That's the thing about social media, right? They talked about
this bubble you're in where you only hear information you want to
hear and see what you want to see, and then you don't get much of
that opinion from the other side. So, I'm wondering if that could be
what you're seeing on your timeline. From what I've seen on Twitter
just based off looking at people's Twitter accounts who I'm
interested in seeing what they have to say, especially in video game
communities, the replies are god-awful.</p>
<p>Did you see those same replies before the acquisition?</p>
<p>Honestly, I think I've started to see more of them, but that
could also just be the communities I'm interested in taking a turn
for the worse, and not Twitter itself.</p>
<p>Possibly, yeah, because if he's going for more free speech, then
he'd necessarily have to permit more low-quality posts. I guess a
lot of people would want to see more moderation there, to have a
higher average quality.</p>
<p>Would you say the moderation, the amount of moderation on Twitter
has gone up since his acquisition, or no? Like, gone down,
sorry.</p>
<p>Um, yeah, I think it has gone down overall, but they have this
feature where it just says "show additional replies", where they
would allow you to post something but they would hide it, because
they assume that it's not going to be useful to anyone.</p>
<p>I've seen screenshots with some people trying to tweet something
and Twitter gives them a message like "Users don't usually tweet
replies like this. Are you sure you want to tweet this?"</p>
<p>Yeah, are you sure you're not a bot?</p>
<p>No, or it's just a check to make sure you don't post
cyberbullying or something. But then a lot of the times it flags
just regular replies. I wonder if that's been gone since Elon took
over, because I haven't seen people talk about that in a while.</p>
<p>Yeah, possibly. If he doesn't want people to be as
self-censoring. The broader point of only seeing things in your
community, I feel could still apply to the hosts as well. Like,
Justin, he doesn't have a full understanding of the entire platform,
right? He just has his posts that he makes, people that reply to
him, right? So, it's hard to get a full view. It's just important
about what value it brings to the people engaging with you.</p>
<p>I guess the value it brings to you is also very much determined
by which communities you choose to be involved with, right?</p>
<p>That kind of spans across to the entire internet, right, not just
Twitter? If you go on YouTube and just look for conspiracy theory
videos the whole time, you'll still get kind of the same experience,
compared to finding programming videos or something.</p>
<p>So you said that the amount of regretted minutes you spend on
Twitter has probably gone down since acquisition. What I wanted to
know is that even before Elon took over, a lot of people were kind
of trashing on Twitter as "this is the worst social media platform"
compared to Instagram, TikTok, and all that. What are your thoughts
on that? How Twitter was before Elon Musk took over?</p>
<p>I think that is true. Before, it would just be only about
engagement. It seems like if you continuously engage with some kind
of content, then the recommendation algorithm would feed you more of
it, regardless of actually how you'd feel about it after the
engagement. So if there was something inflammatory that would force
you to respond to it, then you just get more of it.</p>
<p>Do you think there's been less of that, or?</p>
<p>I think now, negativity literally in the algorithm is weighted
down, in whether it's recommended to people. You know they've also
open sourced the exact algorithm they use for recommending?</p>
<p>No, I didn't know that, but that's interesting.</p>
<p>So people were analyzing that for a while. I think that's a step
in a good direction.</p>
<p>So, overall, you think that Twitter has actually gotten better
since Elon took over?</p>
<p>Yeah, overall.</p>
<p>What about that name, X? What are we thinking about that?</p>
<p>Well that also applies to how the podcast didn't mention X at
all. It's kind of outdated. Things have changed since then. You
know, with X, it seems like Elon has a broader vision than just one
platform.</p>
<p>I can't lie: I don't see anybody ever calling it X, though.</p>
<p>Yeah, it's hard to, like "Twitter" and "tweet" and stuff is
already such a stupid name, and it somehow got into the minds of
people to use those. So it seems counterproductive to try to change
them.</p>
<p>For me and the general consensus I've seen on the internet is
that Twitter has actually gotten worse since Elon took over. I think
Justin Halpern said so on the podcast as well.</p>
<p>Really, with more spam and false information?</p>
<p>Yeah, more false information, more Twitter Blue people paying for
the subscriptions, getting to the top and whatnot.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, because Miles mentioned that too, how most of the people
paying for Twitter Blue would be just spreading false information
but they would pay to get their post elevated, right?</p>
<p>I wonder what you thought of that, because from what I've seen,
that does definitely seem to be the case. Nowadays, verification
doesn't really mean anything.</p>
<p>Wasn't there that one company or someone who paid for a Twitter
Blue to impersonate them? And they said, like, oh, "insulin will be
free now" and their stock dropped by like 50 percent?</p>
<p>Wait, really? I heard of when somebody bought Twitter Blue to
impersonate Elon Musk.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, and probably got banned.</p>
<p>I don't know.</p>
<p>I feel like, from the posts that I see, even people with Twitter
Blue, they seem overall respectful and just sharing new research or
whatever of machine learning. It depends on what space you're gonna
be in.</p>
<p>This episode of The Soulless, Uncreative YRDSB policy-abiding
Podcast is sponsored by Manscaped, the only below-the-waist grooming
brand. When shaving your sensitive parts, you gotta use the right
tools for the job. That's why Manscaped is here to save the day.
With their new Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra, featuring an advanced dual-head
system and SkinSafe (TM) blades, you can say goodbye to accidental
nicks and cuts on your balls. When you're done shaving, don't forget
to apply the Crop Soother Ball Aftershave Lotion and Crop Preserver
Anti-Chafing Ball Deodorant to keep your balls feeling their best
all day. All of this and more is included in the Performance Package
5.0 Ultra, made for your performance package, which is currently on
holiday sale for 47% off! With code Uncreative, you can get an
additional 15% off on the perfect holiday gift, all while supporting
The Soulless, Uncreative YRDSB policy-abiding Podcast and Michael
Skyba's cybercrime ventures! Your balls will thank you. Thank you,
Manscaped. Back to the episode.</p>
<p>Does Twitter still have that thing where, if you don't log in,
you can't view posts?</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. I think that was only added after the acquisition.</p>
<p>No, it definitely was.</p>
<p>So in certain ways, Twitter has gotten worse like that. How,
specifically for there, I'm pretty sure they're trying to avoid
OpenAI getting their data to scrape.</p>
<p>I guess that makes sense.</p>
<p>I remember Elon said that that would be temporary because I think
he said something about how data scrapers were using more of the
API, were demanding more API calls to actual users.</p>
<p>Yeah, he said they were basically experiencing a DDoS attack with
so many scrapers at once that they had to close it. He said it'd be
reverted.</p>
<p>Yeah, that was months ago. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been
reverted yet.</p>
<p>They have reverted that if you link directly to a post.</p>
<p>Yeah, you can see the single post, but you can't view the thread
or go on the profile or anything like that. Like I said, I don't
have a Twitter account, so I just use open source frontends for it.
If I'm on desktop, I use Nitter, and if I'm on mobile, I use
Squawker.</p>
<p>But even those have had issues. Nitter for a while went down.</p>
<p>Yeah, Nitter was down for a while.</p>
<p>They had to redesign their API and have a guest account system.
It's pretty unfortunate. That's kind of the problem with Twitter
still being a for profit company, that they always have to do things
to ensure that they get profit, even if it harms the usability for
the users, right?</p>
<p>That kind of goes into what we were saying earlier about that
runway being really short apparently.</p>
<p>Yeah. They have to make drastic measures to try to get the money
back.</p>
<p>So if people really don't like Twitter, then what do you think
the alternative is?</p>
<p>This was also mentioned in the podcast that a lot of people are
moving to BlueSky, which is founded by the original owner of
Twitter, Jack Dorsey, I think his name is. BlueSky is a lot better
in different ways. Like for instance, everything is open if you
have, well, right now it's wait-listed because they don't want to
open up to the public. But once it's a public launch, you can just
go and post, see everything, there are no ads. You control what you
see, things like that. It's easy to scrape.</p>
<p>The issue with these open source alternatives, I feel, is that
they never ever get the amount of users that make social media worth
what it is, right? I think social media, the important part is the
social aspect, that everyone's there, everyone's kind of talking.
They said on the podcast that one of the benefits of Twitter is that
when a big event happens, Twitter is where everybody flocks to, say
their opinion and whatnot. I feel like with these open source
alternatives like BlueSky and Mastodon, even non-open source ones,
like I remember Threads was a big thing when that came out.</p>
<p>With minus 80% users in the week.</p>
<p>I feel like they could never get that user base all stationed
there.</p>
<p>You don't just go on platforms to post into the void. You want
see other people reacting to it, and then respond to their posts.
It's hard to gain that user base.</p>
<p>Even for Meta, when they launched Threads, that just didn't take
off. I mean, it took off and then Challenger explosion and it went
boom. 80% down.</p>
<p>It's pretty unfortunate, because most people, even though it's
technically tied to Instagram, you didn't just instantly have
Instagram's base of posts. And they had their own UX problems. But
the good thing about Mastodon is that it's on this technology called
the Fediverse. Have you heard of that?</p>
<p>No, I haven't.</p>
<p>It basically allows you to have any social media platform that
uses the Fediverse can interact with any other social media platform
that uses the Fediverse.</p>
<p>Okay, so which social media uses the Fediverse?</p>
<p>None you've heard of, but theoretically.</p>
<p>Exactly, right?</p>
<p>The problem is with the initial base, but if you were to get,
imagine all of Twitter's users were on Mastodon, then I could make
my own social network with my own policies and systems. As long as
it interacted with the Fediverse, all of those users could still
communicate from it.</p>
<p>Yeah, but again, you'd have to have all the Twitter users on
Mastodon, which I just don't think happens. We can look to another
example that I think, I don't know if it's more recent or not, but
when Reddit made its API non-free anymore. Everyone was talking
about, oh, RIP Reddit, we're all getting off Reddit. It's still
alive and thriving.</p>
<p>A bunch of moderators decided to close their subreddits for a
while. And the Reddit team was actually pretty skilled with that,
where they were saying, okay, we're going to start emailing
moderators, telling them, oh, if you can't do a good job, you're
going to be replaced.</p>
<p>All of that, you know, we saw on r/place, like all the "fuck
spez"s that was posted everywhere on that. And yet, Reddit is still
the number one platform of its type. All of that just for basically
nothing to change. So I don't think Twitter is, like Mastodon, Blue
Sky is ever going to be able to do something like that.</p>
<p>It's going to take more of a fundamental opposition. Like, do you
think, imagine if Twitter gets even lower and lower on runway and
they eventually make people pay like $5 a month to use it.</p>
<p>I think people would still pay that. Honestly. Making people pay
even for Blue right now, it seems like it should have killed Twitter
a little bit. Clearly it hasn't. I think people just don't want to
switch over to other platforms. You have that issue of people don't
want to switch over because nobody's there. But then if nobody
switches over, nobody's ever going to be there.</p>
<p>It's hard to get the initial wave of all the people that want to
stay together.</p>
<p>Another thing is that big corporations and stuff often use
Twitter as their main way of communicating with the general public,
and changing that would take going through layers of like
corporation stuff, which I don't think is realistic.</p>
<p>Social media managers, they usually report to this person and
have this system that they follow.</p>
<p>It's not as simple as, oh, let's switch over to Mastodon. It's
like, oh, let's have a business meeting to arrange another business
meeting where we can explain what Mastodon is and what's wrong with
Twitter.</p>
<p>To this executive who then has to send this ticket and get
approval on this.</p>
<p>So I don't think that's really going to happen.</p>
<p>For example, OpenAI. If they're posting all their updates on
Twitter, that's where the engagement is going to be and everyone
else will follow that engagement, right?</p>
<p>I think for the majority of people, the changes that have been
happening to Twitter, like whether, even if it is bad, I don't think
it's bad enough to warrant them switching over where they have less
of a user base to communicate with. For example, I mostly look at
artists' Twitter. If you're an artist just posting your art on
Twitter, I don't think the changes that have been made are really
going to be a reason for you to switch over.</p>
<p>It's only if you really dislike Elon Musk. But even then, I think
overall Twitter is not that much different from the user's
perspective as you'd expect with Elon.</p>
<p>Alright. So here's a question. With the #RIPTwitter hashtag, what
do you think people are mourning the death of?</p>
<p>I feel like, yeah, because the point is that if it was already
trash before, what are they losing? But I feel like a lot of these
people don't even think about what they're saying. They just hear
all their friends, oh, Elon Musk, now everything's going to be
ruined. Oh, my friends are saying #RIPTwitter, fine, I'll just join
them.</p>
<p>I don't know if it just comes from a fundamental dislike of Elon
Musk and believing that he's going to mess it up or anything like
that. I think it's just another example of people just hopping on a
bandwagon on social media.</p>
<p>It's pretty unfortunate on a corporate level when companies all
go out for advertising.</p>
<p>Alright, so what do you think is going to happen to Twitter as we
move forward?</p>
<p>I feel like Elon has sufficiently invested in the platform that
he has a serious interest in propagating it. He's been successful
enough in his other businesses that I think he would be able to
manage it properly, and keep the viewers here. Even if a lot of
people are kind of staking the death of it.</p>
<p>But at the same time, at this point, I don't know where Elon
wants to take Twitter. Especially after he didn't revert the not
being able to view tweets unless you sign in thing. I'm like, okay,
so what are you trying to do with this platform right now? Right
now, what I see of Twitter is I think it has gotten worse overall
with more monetization and whatnot. I understand that that's
necessary. But I think with Twitter Blue promoting people who don't
really say anything worth being promoted. And just kind of the
overall need to sign up and whatnot so that people like me who just
wanted to view tweets without engaging in it ourselves. I think
those are some of the main benefits of Twitter, being able to see
the stuff that people actually like being pushed to the top. That's
kind of gone now.</p>
<p>I think it's hard for for Elon to stay consistent in a view that
Twitter has a public place with a public purpose. I feel like at
this point, all you can do is just try to patch holes and try to
keep the runway going for a bit.</p>
<p>Yeah, so I feel like he is honestly trying to play a catch-up
with just everything that's been going on with the platform and like
the users, right?</p>
<p>He's been lucky that recently, even the OpenAI drama, people are
still going to Twitter for those latest events. It hasn't died in
that sense yet.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don't think Twitter will die. But I also don't really
see it becoming a better platform in the future.</p>
<p>It's kind of like how the podcast mentioned Facebook, where, at
once, when it was first released, everyone was there. It never
really completely died, but it still kind of faded away into one
community.</p>
<p>I don't think that's going to happen with Twitter, at least in
the near future, until some other new social media platform comes
along that does everything Twitter does but better, which I just
don't think exists yet.</p>
<p>That is true, because Facebook, I think Twitter was kind of what
replaced Facebook, wasn't it?</p>
<p>I think it was a combination of Twitter and Instagram.</p>
<p>Yeah, Instagram is for all the food and gym pictures, and Twitter
is all for the harassment.</p>
<p>I mean, I guess in the end, Facebook did win, because Meta and
Instagram.</p>
<p>When you see Elon talking to Mark Zuckerberg, that's when you
have to start getting...</p>
<p>Yeah, that's when Twitter's going to die. It all comes back to
Meta.</p>
<p>Well, there you have it, wonderful viewers! The first episode of
The Soulless, Uncreative YRDSB Policy-abiding Podcast, covering
Twitter and Elon Musk’s acquisition, brought to you by two high
school students who know nothing about the topic. Make sure to tune
in next week to hear us discuss the underground organ harvesting
market. Thank you again to Manscaped for sponsoring this episode,
and we’ll see you next time.</p>
</section>
</body>
</html>