The golden age of the internet that existed prior to 2015 is likely never coming back. There are several reasons for this:
One, the surprise victory of Donald Trump in 2016 forced an immediate shift in what the powers of the media allowed We The People to see and not see.
Free speech as such is no longer supported among people with power.
We witnessed it with Covid-19, as they shut the world down and told us the common cold would kill us all. When the reality was, all they had to do was shelter the elderly and the compromised.
I’m compromised, I’m not vaccinated… and I survived Covid.
We then saw it again when BLM and Antifa destroyed our cities. The mainstream media called it “mostly peaceful protests” but the insurance companies of the damaged property would tell you otherwise if they dared to speak up.
Sure, there are exceptions, like Elon Musk. But that leads to the second problem – the weaponization of advertising.
In the aftermath of 2016, political organizations realized, quite accurately, that politics and elections are largely a battle between opposing media organizations.
Highly effective boycotts gutted conservative media organizations and ensured more active content moderation on left wing social media outlets.
Advertising brought in more than 90% of Twitter’s revenue last year – advertising is down about 60% since Elon Musk took over.
Companies do not want to be on a social media platform where people say things that could get them in trouble.
This is leading Musk to try to get people to sign up for “verified accounts”, creating a new revenue stream.
Then there’s the role of the state. Whether exaggerated or not, Russia used social media to some extent in the 2016 media campaign.
Maybe that made a difference, maybe it didn’t.
However, it gives intelligence agencies in every Western country the excuse to get involved with content moderation on the grounds of preventing foreign interference and misinformation.
Until recently, the United States government regularly met with various social media organizations to make specific requests for censorship. A federal judge issued an injunction against this, but it was recently lifted. The practice will likely resume.
Providing information is, after all, always going to be a role of government – fact or not. In cases of disease, national security, or anything else that is deemed a critical national interest, there needs to be a way to distinguish true information from false.
Why wouldn’t the government have a role in managing information directly?
The answer of course is that in a free country, the government is not a Ministry of Truth telling people what they can and cannot see.
However, for better or worse (probably worse), most people seem willing to make sure that they are “protected” from misinformation rather than allow error to spread online.
Still, does that mean Elon Musk’s campaign to try to skew things back towards free speech is doomed? Not necessarily.
Meta’s Threads, on paper, looked like it would succeed. It boasted (not surprisingly) major media support, was a safe space for corporate advertising, had a great base with Instagram, and was far more popular with world governments.
Right off the bat, it looked ready to be the Twitter-killer, boasting about 100 million sign ups right as it launched.
Yet the honeymoon stage has already worn off.
Daily active users have fallen from 49 million on July 7 to just 23.6 million in the most recent weeks.
Time on the app is down to just 6 minutes. Threads has had to impose rate limits because of skyrocketing spam.
Musk is already mocking it. “Lmao,” he tweeted, also calling the app a copycat. (He’s also suing.)
Still, Threads may benefit from being the world’s first truly astroturfed social media app.
With TSLA falling after earnings this past week because of declining margins, he will soon need to concentrate on his core business.
Musk’s horse in the presidential race, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has faltered badly.
Congressional Democrats and the White House are ready to gut him once they get the opportunity.
In contrast, Threads will enjoy a constant flow of revenue and support from media, government, and corporate America.
Can Musk turn it around? He will need to go big or go home – somehow find a way to turn Twitter into a profitable space for creators, incorporate a payment system (X) that he’s spoken about for some time, and use it as the basis for the “universal app” he’s dreamed of.
Yet it’s Musk against the world.
Threads will never be as good as Twitter. Unfortunately, the new global economy doesn’t select for quality or things that are interesting.
It selects for the things that can make money and retain advertisers.
The sad truth: Most people don’t really want freedom – they want to be entertained. And of those who want freedom, even fewer are willing to pay for it.
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