Tag Archives: Mastodon

August 31, 2024 · 10:20

If you Musk, you Musk

That setting is a much larger setting then we realise. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o) gives us ‘Musk’s X banned in Brazil after disinformation row’ and I honestly don’t get it. He has the premise of gaining billions closing in on a trillion in business. We get to see “X, formerly Twitter, has been banned in Brazil after failing to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to name a new legal representative in the country” and that is merely the beginning. Judge Alexandre de Moraes has suspended X (aka Twitter) until that is done and in addition Musk sets all fines that are outstanding. I have no idea how much that amounts to. The larger premise is that Musk is sitting on IP that could gain him close to a trillion, if only these people had woken up. The current setting is that this case could invigorate a much larger anti-Musk stage and Twitter (aka X) could be banned from a whole range of nations with anti-Musk feelings. That is not a given, but Brazil just opened that door. Basically any nation with a right wing nuisance could entertain that premise diminishing Twitter and as such Jack Dorsey could buy back X/Twitter for 125 million after selling it for $44,000,000,000 not a bad deal for a 3 year gap. I surmised that it was only worth a maximum of 24 billion at that time. As such Jack Dorsey could be making a killing on the deal whilst the value of that company doubles in the first month he regains control. They say that a foolish billionaire and his money are soon parted, but here that expression takes on a whole new meaning.

And it got so far because Twitter/X, Meta and Telegram because they would not set the larger premise. There needs to be accountability and they all were eager to avoid those. Now we see that social media is being thumped on by a whole range of governments. There is such a think as accountability. I already said so in 2013, now we see that governments have had enough and this first case is likely to open the floodgates.

If is an attack on free speech? No, I do not believe it is so. People should have free speech, but not under the guise of anonymity. If you disagree, say so, but the digital world sees a lot more flames and digital waves when they can say things without revealing themselves. It is the stopgap for chaos to spread their wings. The media has everything to do with this and they are equally guilty (like ‘unnamed sources told us’). So when was that at any time a long standing solution?

Now Elon Musk is cutting his own fingers and soon the solution he had for the world will be largely ignored, and if accepted there will be massive constraints, which would cost him up to 20% from what he could have had. In my book 20% is a lot and when you get close to a trillion it is a lot more than I have ever seen (many like me have that setting).

There is another side to this. At this point Mastodon, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky, Discord, Tumblr, and Truth Social will get to have a place to gain market share against the accounts of Twitter/X. It might not be much, but it is a start. As more nations follow suit there places will gain momentum whilst Twitter/X could she well over 10% of the accounts and even when reinstated, the time gives the others time to get the advertisement revenue that Musk losses. So how will he bring that news to the people who invested in that 44 billion dollar caper? They want to see cash and when that doesn’t come Elon Musk must put up his own cash or lose a lot more. That wasn’t hard was it?

And with the early threat that Musk is pulling out of Europe (October 2023). It becomes an early grave for Twitter. China has its own settings and that will become an increasing pressure whilst one person (aka Elon Musk) gets to live with the invoked byline ‘2022-2025 where has my $44,000,000,000 gone’. A weird setting for a person who at one time had the products that everyone on the planet wanted.

The higher the climb the harder they fall. Enjoy your day

Variations on an application

That is the theme that I was introduced to last night (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65855603). The BBC informs us ‘Facebook owner Meta plans to create Twitter rival’ and personally I think that this is on Elon Musk. He was given a raw deal, he was overcharged and the media REFUSED to look into the matters that Jack Dorsey pushed for. There was nothing but the flaccid reaction of ‘wannabe’ journo’s all over the planet. We then got a new twitter, a new CEO and a few knee jerk reactions. There was too much chaos, then the charging for checkmarks started, 180 degree actions and plenty of people apparently moved to Mastodon or something else. And now Meta is making its version of Twitter. The problem here is that Facebook is a really solid product, as such they can pull it off. I will prosper later on, but this is not about me. You see, the article gives us ““We’re exploring a standalone decentralised social network for sharing text updates,” they said. “We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”” And in light of all the waves that Twitter caused, they might actually pull it off. There will be other issues, but I will leave that for another day. So when we see “The text-based network – which has a working title of P92 – could turn out to be a greater rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter than either BlueSky or Mastodon” we need to realise that this is more than a move on Twitter, there have been noises on the weirdness of Mastodon, as such all three would lose a massive chunk to the Meta variation, add to that a separate stage for adding visibility to Facebook could imply that Meta is about to makes massive waves on the existence of Twitter, Mastodon and BlueSky. None of them wanted it, but they created that worry for themselves and in this case Elon Musk created a lot more worry overall which might have been the signal for Meta to go ahead with this new development.

Is it good, is it bad?
I honestly cannot tell yet. Twitter did this massively to itself, even though Jack Dorsey was cause of several issues. Mastodon had a few glitches on its track and I know next to nothing of the third player, but there are more players and now that Meta is getting involved, they will most likely all lose members to the new variation, but that is how it goes. You might be one of the players, but the next innovator will change that setting right quick, this is why I know that all of them including Meta are close to losing millions of members and that writing had been on the walls as early as 2019. So when Meta comes through we will see what happens next.

Enjoy today, tomorrow is another day.

One bowl of speculation please

Yup, we all do it, we all like to taste from the bowl of speculation. I am no different, in my case that bowl can be as yummy as a leek potato soup, on other days it is like a thick soup of peas, potato with beef sausages. It tends to depend on the side of the speculation (science, engineering or Business Intelligence) today is Business Intelligence, which tends to be a deep tomato soup with croutons, almost like a thick minestra pomodore. I saw two articles today. The first one is seen (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64917397) and comes from the BBC giving us ‘Meta exploring plans for Twitter rival’, no matter that we are given “It could rival both Twitter and its decentralised competitor, Mastodon. A spokesperson told the BBC: “We’re exploring a standalone decentralised social network for sharing text updates. “We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”” Whatever they are spinning here, make no mistake. This is about DATA, this is about AGGREGATION and about linking people, links that too often Twitter has and LinkedIn and Facebook does not. A stage where the people needs clustering to see how to profiles can be linked with minimum connectivity. It is what SPSS used to call PLANCARDS (conjoint module). In this by keeping the links as simple as possible, their deeper machine learning will learn new stage of connectivity. That is my speculated view. You see this is the age where those without exceptional deeper machine learning, new models need to be designed to catch up with players like Google and Amazon, so the larger speculation is that somehow Microsoft is involved, but I tell you now that this speculation is based on very thin and very slippery ice, it merely makes sense that these to will find some kind of partnership. The speculation is not based on pure logic, if that were true Microsoft would not be a factor at all.

But the second article (from a less reliable source is giving us (at https://newsroomodisha.com/meta-to-begin-laying-off-another-11k-employees-in-multiple-waves-next-week/) so they are investigating a new technology all whilst shedding 11% of their workforce. A workforce that is already strained to say the least and this new project will not rely on a dozen people, that project will involve a lot more people, especially if my PLANCARDS speculation is correct. That being said, if Microsoft is indeed a factor, the double stump might make more sense, hence the larger speculative side. Even as the second source gives us ““We’re continuing to look across the company, across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluate whether we are deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities,” Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said at an Morgan Stanley conference on Thursday. “This is going to result in us making some tough decisions to wind down projects in some places, to shift resources away from some teams,” Li added.” Now when we consider the words of Susan Li, the combination does not make too much sense. The chance of shedding the wrong people would give the game away, yes Twitter is in a bind, but it will add full steam in this case and they will find their own solutions (not sure where they will look), a stage that is coming and the two messages make very little sense. Another side might be pushing it if Meta is shedding jobs to desperately reduce cost, which is possible. I cannot tell at present, their CFO is not handing me their books for some weird reason.

Still, the speculation is real as the setting seems unnatural, but in IT that is nothing new, we have seen enough examples of that. So, enjoy your Saturday and feel free to speculate yourself, we all need that at times to TLC our own ego’s.

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science

Tagged as Aggregation, BBC, Business Intelligence, Data, IBM Statistics, Mastodon, Meta, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley conference, Plancards, SPSS, Susan Li, Twitter

November 8, 2022 · 14:05

The anger within

We all have it, something sets us off. It is not always fair and just, but to some extent, the buttons pushed are getting to us all, and I am no different. It all started (again) this morning with

Here we see a retweeted Tweet. We get to see dozens a day and we cannot verify the truth on most of them, people with hatred of Elon Musk whilst no one is asking that procrastinating wanker (Jack Dorsey) to properly explain himself. If Musk has a case to fire thousands, then the previous custodians fucked up, they screwed it all up royally and it is all about floating the value of the company, but the media (with less credibility than a crack pusher) refused to set the stage of asking serious questions and it is the bulk of all media, the little who asked seemingly critical questions asked too little of them and they never followed up on them or reported on the simple fact that Jack Dorsey did not elaborate. His feigned apology was all we got and the media helped him massively. We still have no clear stage of the bots, a clear stage of fake accounts and hen this comes to light it will be too late, Dorsey took the billions and ran, with massive help from the media. Media is now slapping Elon Musk every chance he gets and he is waiting time on answering whilst setting the stage for a trimmed and optionally more profitable Twitter. This sinking ship came with a $45,000,000,000 cost. Did you think that it was a hand off to get Dorsey to buy a more luxurious coffin for himself?

Then we get the Financial Times with the claim that Twitter use went up. OK, fair and also a lot seemingly (what I saw) based on people spouting negativity regarding Elon Musk and no one asking clear questions on the changes that came AFTER Dorsey left. Some things do not add up. Several accounts losing hundreds and some claim to have lost thousands. Why would changing the guards have such a setting? Yes, a few hundred might have bailed to an alternative, but when the alternative does not deliver, they will come back. Their ego’s will make them come back and then we will see the excuses of ‘Lets give him a chance’ all whilst that should have been the starting position. I get that some might create a Mastodon (or was that a Megaladon, sorry Jason Statham) account. Makes perfect sense, especially if that person is an influencer, they will go where the masses are, but the right influencer would have a Mastodon already. The stage of one person having a dozen accounts to butter the conversation are in a stage that they do not know where their ‘powers’ are going. That makes sense too, but I would need clear data to identify that part. I do know someone who has that but he is too busy looking after other things.

I do not get the stupidity of the attacks on Elon Musk, even the clearly presented lies and misrepresentation. It goes nowhere, in the end we merely cut ourselves. It is clear that Twitter needs time to get itself on a new path and the media seems very driven to not let this happen. Especially when you consider how much leeway they gave Jack Dorsey, months of reporting constitutes that evidence. You merely need to Google search ‘Twitter’ and see how much critical questions were asked of Jack Dorsey and how much non-accusation based questions were asked of Elon Musk, the numbers should scare you and most people with their attack on Elon Musk are part of that trend. I? Well I do not know what will happen, so I will await until the dust settles and see what happens next. I will fall several steps as I see no need to buy a blue checkmark and more important will be reduced in the seek algorithm. I will not care, I will see the people I follow and I should see their tweets. Only if that fails will I consider moving. We need to take care who we follow with their loud mouths and their needs for attention with failing evidence. Yes there are parody accounts, but we either follow them or we might not care. The anger within is fuelled by the loud making statements that evidence does not support and why is that? It is their ego, or their need for attention as they try to become influencers. There is of course the singular person seeking the limelight for self, but they are seemingly a huge minority. Happy to see them go into the dusk of yesterday. Oh and that statement of government making statements regarding Twitter. I think we should seek these people and their links to Jack Dorsey. Because the loudness of that equation does not make sense, it only makes sense when we consider who they cater to, especially in the beginning of a new equation, they never did that in the age of smoking or anything else, only two hours past the 11th hour did we see the government react to smoking dangers. They had filled their pockets s much as they could and that is a dangerous stage, I get that. But to filter Elon Musk in hour 1 seems adversarial actions that seemingly have no foundation, especially as they never bothered asking Jack Dorsey several serious questions, but that is merely my speculative view on the matter.