Anybody considering leaving Twitter?

[Karl Henning]

Meanwhile this is what I see when I check my TL or profile

I'm getting "cannot load tweets at this time" periodically today, too.

[Spotted Horses]

The collapse of twitter that was predicted did not occur. But media reports say that revenue is down to a third of what it was, and staffing is about a third of what it was. You could say that seems to more or less cancel out.

[Brian]

Many of the people encountering server problems are probably up against this new rule: you are only allowed to see 600 tweets per day (300 if a new account), unless you pay for "Verified," at which point you are allowed to see 6000.

[Spotted Horses]

According to the Musk announcement, "getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users". Seems like users viewing tweets is "pillaging" the service.

[Todd]

You could say that seems to more or less cancel out.

No, it doesn't.

Many of the people encountering server problems are probably up against this new rule: you are only allowed to see 600 tweets per day (300 if a new account), unless you pay for "Verified," at which point you are allowed to see 6000.

Looks like Twitter is moving to a freemium structure.  That is a proven model.  I would not be surprised if various adjustments are made to viewable tweets and other content.  It also seems reasonable to expect that as advertising generates more revenue that users may be offered other pricing structures to opt out of advertising and up viewable content.  Maybe it fails, though Twitter has lasted longer than predicted on this very forum and on the interwebs more broadly.

[Brian]

This software developer on Mastodon thinks Twitter has been having struggles today because it accidentally launched a DDOS attack on itself:
https://sfba.social/@sysop408/110639435788921057

[Jo498]

Many of the people encountering server problems are probably up against this new rule: you are only allowed to see 600 tweets per day (300 if a new account), unless you pay for "Verified," at which point you are allowed to see 6000.

If this rule stays that would make twitter moot for most non-verified users. The earlier restrictions on tweeting out stuff make some sense for "light users" but 300-600 tweets is nothing for receiving information, esp. on a weekend. So if Musk does not want to completely change the character and reach, he needs to change this again. I mean, until recently non-registered users could browse. Now a registered user who might tweet something useful once in a while and amplify stuff by retweeting cannot even browse to a reasonable extent.

[JBS]

Looks like Twitter is moving to a freemium structure.  That is a proven model.  I would not be surprised if various adjustments are made to viewable tweets and other content.  It also seems reasonable to expect that as advertising generates more revenue that users may be offered other pricing structures to opt out of advertising and up viewable content.  Maybe it fails, though Twitter has lasted longer than predicted on this very forum and on the interwebs more broadly.

Is there any data publicly available on Twitter's current ad revenues?
The ads pushed into my TL seem to be ads for evangelical ministries of one type or another, ads for products whose verbiage is clearly targeting MAGA type people, and alternative health products. I have to wonder if the revenue from those enterprises approaches what came in from pre-Elon advertising.

[Todd]

Is there any data publicly available on Twitter's current ad revenues?

Probably somewhere.  Do some digging and report back.

The ads pushed into my TL seem to be ads for evangelical ministries of one type or another, ads for products whose verbiage is clearly targeting MAGA type people, and alternative health products. I have to wonder if the revenue from those enterprises approaches what came in from pre-Elon advertising.

I'll have to take your word for it.  It is so very odd that you gripe so much about free stuff.

[Karl Henning]

According to the Musk announcement, "getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users". Seems like users viewing tweets is "pillaging" the service.

Such a genius, he is....

[Jo498]

I'll have to take your word for it.  It is so very odd that you gripe so much about free stuff.

There are ads (or de facto ads, "sponsored tweets", I got a lot in Arabic for hadj last week despite having no background in that religion, region or language) like in free youtube and podcasts.

I am pissed as I only registered a few weeks ago and barely got a taste of twitter before getting now practically excluded. AFAIS the attraction of twitter is not at all getting stuff "free" (like it is on youtube where one gets music, documentaries and other stuff that is as good as commercial professional productions or an interesting alternative to them for free, except for a few ads) but the informal, undirected interaction of a broad public both among themselves and with "professionals" (journalists, scientists, politicians).
Sure, this generates far more noise and heat than light but it's still a thing not existent anywhere else. If this will now be cut down to far fewer (i.e. paying blue check) users and others cannot even passively browse, twitter will completely change its character, I think.

[Todd]

Sure, this generates far more noise and heat than light but it's still a thing not existent anywhere else.

Twitter has multiple competitors.  As far as I am aware, most of them are free.  Whether they are perfect substitutes is a matter of taste.  But they are substitutes.

I am sure there are various attractive features of Twitter that suffice to draw some users in, but make no mistake, overall user count and activity is materially driven by it being free.  That is how the site was designed and implemented.  Musk is changing the site, and that has dissatisfied some/many/most people accustomed to free stuff they liked and the politicized censorship they craved.  It has also led to people who don't have the first clue about how to run any business offering masterful analyses about what should be done.  The world is oversaturated with social media consultants.

[greg]

According to the Musk announcement, "getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users". Seems like users viewing tweets is "pillaging" the service.

I saw somewhere that he said it was due to high web scraping activity.

Surely would have some limit on throttling requests like any website should typically have, but if there are many people around the world scraping the site at the same time (making just a little bit more requests than the average user), then that seems it could add up to be a problem.

Idk the reason for the higher activity, other than maybe people want to save tweets in case any rules change which affects existing tweets? (idk, just a wild guess)

[DavidW]

I saw somewhere that he said it was due to high web scraping activity.

That was why Reddit made the change with third party api's.  It unfortunately screws over the little guy in the process, but major companies are scraping those social media sites to train their AIs without the social media sites getting much in return.  I don't know if that is the way with Twitter, but it is with Reddit.

[greg]

That was why Reddit made the change with third party api's.  It unfortunately screws over the little guy in the process, but major companies are scraping those social media sites to train their AIs without the social media sites getting much in return.  I don't know if that is the way with Twitter, but it is with Reddit.

Oh, it's the AI's doing the scraping... now that all makes sense.

Well, the immediate solution that comes to mind probably isn't achievable then, or it would have been done already... something like have a separate website with a copy of everything (post/tweets), backed up daily that the AI can use for training, instead of affecting a site with user traffic.

[david johnson]

My Twitter acct. was suspended yesterday.  I never use it, but had broken the rules for abusive/bad content...lol.  My talents amaze me

[Harry]

My Twitter acct. was suspended yesterday.  I never use it, but had broken the rules for abusive/bad content...lol.  My talents amaze me

When Muskie took over I deleted my account.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

So, re the AI training and scraping:  Are companies basically copying the tweets and using the information to attract customers to their own websites?

PD

[Brian]

So, re the AI training and scraping:  Are companies basically copying the tweets and using the information to attract customers to their own websites?

PD

I don't know if it's true, but if so, my guess would be they are plugging all the tweets into an AI so the AI can learn "how to tweet." Then, yeah, at minimum they might create AI accounts to try to attract customers.

Honestly it's surprising if that had not happened already. I've already seen AI generated reviews on Google Maps. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I don't know if it's true, but if so, my guess would be they are plugging all the tweets into an AI so the AI can learn "how to tweet." Then, yeah, at minimum they might create AI accounts to try to attract customers.

Honestly it's surprising if that had not happened already. I've already seen AI generated reviews on Google Maps. 

AI reviews?!  Scary!

I was initially thinking that Twitter was getting tired of folks sharing/reporting information that say like celebrities share with their followers on Twitter.

PD