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This is the Facebook playbook: you lure in publishers by promising them a traffic funnel ("post excerpts and links and we'll show them to people, including people who never asked to see them"), and then the rug-pull: "Post everything here, don't link to your own site. Become a commodity supplier to our platform. Abandon all your own ways of making money. Become entirely subject to the whims of our recommendation system."

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

Next will be: "We block links to other sites because they might be malicious."

Then some kind of "#PivotToVideo."

Probably not video (though who knows?) but some other feature that a major rival has, which Twitter will attempt to defraud its captive, commodified suppliers into financing an entry into.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

In case you were wondering, yes, this is canonical #enshittification

Lure in business customers (publishers) by offering surpluses (algorithmic recommendation and an ensuing traffic funnel). Lock them in (by capturing their audience and blocking interop and logged-out reading).

Then rug the publishers, clawing back all the surpluses you gave them and more, draining them of all available capital and any margins they have, until they die or bite the bullet and leave.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

I would also give good odds on this leading to a revivification of the "Pay us tens of thousands of dollars a month for a platinum checkmark and we'll actually show what you post to the people who asked to see it."

That will be pitched as the answer to publishers' complaints about not wanting to turn themselves into commodity Twitter inputs. It will be priced at the same (or more) as the revenues publishers expect to lose from being commodified, making it a wash.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

All of this seems to me to be an "unfair and deceptive business practice" under Sec 5 of the #FTC

If I sign up to follow you because I want to see what you post, and Twitter shadowbans your posts unless they are formatted to maximize your dependence on Twitter, they have deceived me, and are being unfair to you.

#ftc
in reply to Cory Doctorow

This is *very* analogous to the #NetNeutrality debate, where a platform blocks or deprioritizes the things its users ask to see, based on whether the suppliers of those things are its competitors.

I've written about how an #EndToEnd principle for social media could be enforced under Sec 5 of the FTCA, how it would address this kind of sleazy practice, how it would be easy to administer, and wouldn't form a barrier to entry for new market entrants:

pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e…

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Hmm, so #darkpattern usage of deceptive #UIUX practices is becoming a court talking point for platform #Enshitification. Nice. 💯♻️👨‍⚖️👩‍⚖️⚖️
in reply to Cory Doctorow

This also reflects the pattern, going back to the beginning of the WWW, of deliberately undermining its fundamental design principles; in this case, part of the point of hypertext is that people aren't locked down to one site. Which, come to think of it, also echoes the much older pattern of trying to lock down nomadic people.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

This is the kind of shit that should perhaps be nailed to the wall in a digital Bill of Rights.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

@CharleneTeglia

Hmmm, I also read right past that opening sentence. D'oh.

I don't follow how people (try to) monetize on Facebook, so can I get some confirmation: Not only did FB try to do this, but they successfully did it, and have been doing it for X years?

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Word!

(of course, I didn't really expect better from The Elon... doesn't make it right, though!)

in reply to Cory Doctorow

The thing is, the earliest versions of this "algorithmic" ordering was vaguely justifiable, in that people were signing for a longer Twitter/FB feed than they would ever get through, and so one could see -some- justification to ordering it in a fashion that showed them a "better" set of posts than they would see just going purely time-ordered, given that they were always going to miss some posts.

Except, this is where it leads.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Someone should come with a nice catchy name for this kind of business practice.

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

This also shifts the ad-viewing traffic to X/Twitter's advertising, instead of the advertising on the publisher's site.
So X/Tw gets to charge premium prices to advertisers, while also charging a premium price to the publishers for traffic and engagement. Essentially double-dipping on the same resources - X/Tw users' eyeballs

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

they've already tried pivot to video a couple of times - hence the Tucker Carlson show there. Blocking links to other sites, as well as slowing them is already part of the playbook.

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

I wonder if Twitter will be as helpful as YouTube, whose notification options include one for being told what to do as a creator.

I imagine this is why so many YouTube videos are now 35-45 minutes long. They are unwatchable, even though creators spend days or weeks on them. At some point it becomes a cruel joke on all users.

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in reply to Rob Bellinger

@rbellinger
Hmm, this explains all those desperate employees at X talking about the checks they are getting to create 'long form boring videos' about their 95% down traffic from usual platform as a service that somehow monetized only ~0.7% of the Userbase because no one is there but... Bots? idk.

Bots don't buy shit do they? If they do do you want them to buy your shit though? You do? For real? 🙊🙉📲💩

in reply to Rob Bellinger

@rbellinger
A few years back, Many Youtube creators went to 10+ minute video. The algorithm promoted 10+ minutes, and longer videos could also have more than one ad. The amount of sudden padding for what often was 3-5 minutes of content was incredible and often unwatchable.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

They tried this with Mastodon and Linktree links in the past but had to revert it due to backlash. I can definitely see them trying it again

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

they already tried and failed to do long form video at least

"Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show is haemorrhaging viewers with 85% drop from first episode, reports say"

the-independent.com/news/world…

in reply to Cory Doctorow

hasn't he already been pushing video pretty hard lately?

I think he was highlighting both pre-recorded and live streaming. Even did some game streams himself to show it off.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

i love how this is just like, "start a blog." i mean, i feel like the logical end of all this is... blogger, 1999?
in reply to nerdseyeview

@nerdseyeview I've been seeing a bunch of reminders from tech people I follow to just have a blog, because then at least you have your content & history when you leave whatever enshittified platform you next leave. And they're reposts of reminders they were putting out 5, 10+ years ago so not to do with XFormerlyTwitter.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

it is most likely also why X has just removed both the "excerpt" and the URL itself (!) in link rendering - this way one is less tempted to click on it. Good, enshittification of that platform continues.

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Interesting how he makes it sound like these are the decisions of an autonomous entity and not his own.

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to atlan

@atlan It reminds me of police reports where the vehicle struck and a weapon was discharged.

Honestly it also reads like someone better at the written word is working on his posts, too

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Did you see that pranksters are tweeting links to stories on Elon, so that his smirking mug shows up, but then adding their own headline? E.g.:

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

I love how Musk seems to have just learned how this works 🙄
in reply to Cory Doctorow

#Xitter is completely useless without the ability to post links. The only other major user base they have besides neo-Nazis are journalists posting links to their stories.

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

I hate to say it, but this practice drove my creative partner + me away from publishing so much of our work online (mainly travel photography with cultural analysis).

We could put 20, 30 hours into a photo-heavy post, link to the usual platforms, and get 7 hits. Whereas in the past we might have gotten 1-3k.

A year or so after publishing, we would start to see Google referral traffic -- all people who were trying to buy the sandwich we wrote about, no doubt.

Cory Doctorow reshared this.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Left that insane asylum almost a year ago, with 0 plans to return.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

"Long-form"? Does he know what website he accidentally bought?! 🙄
in reply to Cory Doctorow

Best thing is to delete that shit platform and firebomb their offices.

But I hate waiting in lines.

in reply to Cory Doctorow

and this late in the game, if any brands or "content creators" are stupid enough to fall for it, it's on them
in reply to Cory Doctorow

I'm getting in my mind this running comedy sketch idea:
an image of Elon at a table by himself next to a table of normal people talking, enjoying each others' company, and not even noticing him. Over at his table, Elon tries to pretend he's having a great time on his phone in a loud, obnoxious way that makes it obvious he's trying to interrupt them. (cont)
in reply to Cory Doctorow

I’m over the primadona’s ideas of what and how people should be. He’s just another facist despot wanna-be that spent a lot of money to be able to manipulate people. And his bet failed.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

If you post it THEY own it. It's ALWAYS been in the TOS, and the TOS of EVERY corporate social media site. ALWAYS. Everything.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

so more Ayn Rand screeds on X. Pandering to its remaining user base.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

I remember a few years ago when publishers faced an existential threat when site traffic slowed down. The solution was to post headlines to social media (where people were spending their time) and have that traffic come back their way. If they can't generate traffic organically, they stop receiving traffic from social media, and now AI text generators will summarize articles without accessing the page how are they supposed to generate revenue? Maybe dedicated apps on your phone?
in reply to Cory Doctorow

Mastodon dot co
YouTube

Nuff for me..

Meanwhile ouch pod.link/kremlinfile/episode/e…

in reply to Cory Doctorow

"our algorithm"....

Oh, what animals do I have to sacrifice to get regulation enacted upon algorithms/

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Anytime Elon starts a post with "Interesting", you just know it's going to be something stupid, harmful, or both
in reply to Cory Doctorow

my yesterday experience from that xite is that after this change, I'm _more_ likely to click the link than before. 🙂
in reply to Cory Doctorow

I'm quite literally watching his talk on this subject at Defcon 31 as I type this m.youtube.com/watch?v=q118B_Qd…

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

the best content online is the kind that gives me so much value that I go AFK to think about it.
in reply to Cory Doctorow

Musk's algorithm does not try to optimise time spent on twitter, as it shows me ads every 5 tweets which push me away from the hellsite! QED