Monetizing downvotes is a stroke of inspired genius on Elon's part. To target the most unhappy, permanently-online conflict addicts, and turn them into whales. Twitter has always been an addictive Skinner box for many people; now that addiction can be converted into money pretty directly.
I predict this will become the new norm for social media. Before this, monetization attempts focused on positive endorsements: "promote" a post, "sponsor" a submission, super-upvote with "Reddit Gold". Positive, like the advertising industry they imitated. But these were rooted in outdated ideas of what social media is or how it works. Misery is the most powerful force. If you're a FAANG, you have to monetize on the negative engagement to profit on a grand scale.
edit: If it wasn't clear in my tone, I don't approve of this antisocial trend at all. But I do think it's profitable and I do think it will therefore continue, in this direction.
>Before this, monetization attempts focused on positive endorsements: "promote" a post, "sponsor" a submission, super-upvote with "Reddit Gold". Positive, like the advertising industry. But these were rooted in outdated ideas of what social media is or how it works. Misery is the most powerful force. If you're a FAANG, you have to monetize on the negative engagement to profit on a grand scale.
I don't have anything real to add, I just want to point out that the movie Monsters, Inc had a redemption arc for the monsters, and it was the opposite of this.
Based on Twitter's history, the feature will be silently disabled and dropped from support after the first few months. No matter what features Twitter deploys for crowd control, people always find a way around it. And Twitter's decisions are so CEO driven that they only survive as long as it's on the CEO's radar.
It's undoubtedly the worst way to run a major application that turns into pretty much a vital public service.
The easiest way to counteract this move is to just run a bunch of automated accounts the parrot the exact same message. Trends are literally hijacked every day and brute forced onto everyone's view regularly because there is no way for Twitter to honestly control timelines to suit their profit...
The way things are run are beyond dumb, and corruption has been present in operations as far as I can remember. It is utter torture on honest users, and eventually those honest users leave and never come back, and that's exactly when the investment will never be able to make a comeback in value.
Social sites are successful when they appreciate users, but they always end up trying to convert a free service into a paid service, and that's when they die fast. Twitter already had disgruntled users, asking them to now pay is not going to go well at all.
it will create a pro elon echo chamber (no one is paying for twitter blue except for freaks) and it will make the service die. a reddit you have to pay for? and ruled by paying users? no thanks
Nothing genius about it. Musk simply deconstructs the product and checks every element for its costs, replaceability, or marketability, then, if a profitable path was found, he just walks it.
I predict this will become the new norm for social media. Before this, monetization attempts focused on positive endorsements: "promote" a post, "sponsor" a submission, super-upvote with "Reddit Gold". Positive, like the advertising industry they imitated. But these were rooted in outdated ideas of what social media is or how it works. Misery is the most powerful force. If you're a FAANG, you have to monetize on the negative engagement to profit on a grand scale.
edit: If it wasn't clear in my tone, I don't approve of this antisocial trend at all. But I do think it's profitable and I do think it will therefore continue, in this direction.