I would argue many of the large platforms you listed all have potential to be the post-television iteration of cable news. The system desperately needs a mechanism to "get everyone on board" with narratives and the "fragmentation" of the digital space really hurts that end. As long as people are willing to compromise with digital infrastructure run by the system, I'm sure there really is a wide latitude for what options are allowed to exist.
As an aside, I'd be really curious to see polling on what % of the adult/young adult population uses Twitter or Substack. I'd bet that combined they're outdone by Tiktok, especially in terms of hours of attention captured. What makes Tiktok special is that it is a foreign information control system.
Many mastodon/fediverse users (especially mastodon) would be upset at you for putting them in the same bin as "crypto options" because many of the instances are openly hostile to cryptocurrency.
I'd argue the fediverse is ready for primetime we just aren't going to have big tech spin up servers for us!
The advantage of "crypto options" about which I co-wrote in 2006 when e-gold was the leading micro payments option is self-extending networks. We don't need big tech to spin up servers if our routers and servers charge a few sats for moving or modifying packets. We accumulate micro payments and expand the net organically.
Pay to move routers would end spam and ddos attacks by having modifiable policies. As an email recipient I could tell my mail server a list of addresses that can email me free, a default to pay a few sats to get through, and a list that pays a thousand bucks to reach my inbox. Big spam would have to struggle to keep its numbers up.
Distributed denial of service (ddos) would simply die as routers automatically increased fees from nodes trying to overload them.
All large platforms are foreign information control systems. Substack is just getting large enough to get the attention of that unregistered foreign agent called the ADL. It's really a question of money, that is the control mechanism for everything. For now, it's an early adopter, high IQ crowd. The question will be control of funding. The people behind ADL, who control the banks, will start to put the censorship heat on to turn off certain people who contribute to Substack. "Or else the money gets turned off for everything, capishe?"
Late Millennials likely don't bother with FB at all, but Instagram is a contender for them and Gen Z. Tiktok appeals to Mid-Millennials, and certainly Gen Z. FB is largely Boomer and Early-Millennial, if not for how Google has insisted it be a necessary social signal for businesses, I doubt it would have the position it still does.
However IMO, based on what I do with marketing, ads, and so on, the actual king of the hill remains YT, especially now that Shorts is gaining momentum. TikTok's content is still mostly idiotic fluff on par with having a sugary cereal for breakfast, Instagram has more thoughtful content.
Tiktok's algorithm however, is downright scary, it not only caters to existing interests, it knows how to nudge one along into areas that one wouldn't normally seek out and builds up a tolerance/interest into increasingly questionable feeds.
In fact, IMO Google is going to spend more money on it than just about anything else, as their search algorithm is behind the competitive curve with recent advances in AI, Bing hit them with a solid center jab and broke their nose by incorporating ChatGPT early on.
And Meta? That's still a big ?? IMO, despite assurances of how it will dominate, I see mostly rejection or disinterest. Fediverse has potential, it will be interesting to watch its development.
Apr 8, 2023·edited Apr 8, 2023Liked by Mathew Crawford
Good assessment Matthew!
Your comments about facebook posts both here and in your prior post are interesting. I started posting in facebook against pandemic measures before they arrived in early March 2020 and I posted daily there for most of 2020. I did so because that was where my trial audience was -- my friend and professional group -- and I was trying to understand why I was standing alone in a sea of intelligent people.
There were only a handful of supporters who would quietly PM me and literally one or two who were vocal with me.
I stopped posting there a year later because I had lost or alienated a lot of my friends, and the experiment had yielded results long before. It is not a platform for honest discussion and it is not a platform for curating good long form information.
It is still a good platform for sharing personal life with friends and family. Innocuous and harmless pictures of the weather and maybe the odd life event. That's it.
As for twitter, I think perhaps it serves a purpose much like the sport arenas do.
I had a similar experience with FB. My Friend list has been reduced to under fifty people who I actually know in real life and I use it for the limited purpose that you describe.
With the Musk's move and the ADL's condemnation of Substack (nicely dissected by another prominent Substacker) as a haven for anti-antisemitism and extremist views (defined as anyone who does not toe and repeat the approved line verbatim), I believe we're seeing the opening of a new front in the larger "disinformation" war.
I've found my comments being randomly "liked" by what appears to be a bot of some kind. I'm confident that my opinions and compliance status are being closely tracked.
It reminds me of when I was a kid and one of my hobbies was listening to shortwave radio and collecting QSL cards.. Any mail that I received from Radio Moscow, Radio Beijing, or other hostile countries would come pre-opened wrapped in a rubber band.
Yes! Same here. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson as the president in Mars Attacks asking "Why can't we all just get along?" in his snarky insincere best.
It made me crazy as a teenager that these adults were prepared to annihilate the whole world with nuclear weapons over some control of territory and resources which (behold) they wouldn't want after it had been nuked if they survived to claim it. Nuking my Substack links persuades me that Twitter hates its users. Why go scorched Earth when I'm not even using "notes" yet?
Because it still hasn't dawned on some people that a truly free market is better for everyone. The synergies and knock-on benefits are too numerous to list here. For a few months it felt that way at Twitter. But the other shoe dropped.
And information is free to move. It costs so little to make copies of any information that it will always migrate to freedom supporting platforms. Why create content where I'm hated? Why pay Twitter to struggle with its algorithms?
I left FB long ago as I was mostly in jail for posting articles during 2012 election. My page was not about my personal life. I was on Telegram a short while but left when the app was 'notifying' me constantly w annoying audio notices. Gab was ok for a while, but then came the Nazi thugs and Andrew's decidedly faux christian stance of allowing them space turned me off. Never on Twitter never will be. Elon has seemingly done some good but no good vibes there. I find Bitchute a Nazi and low brow hangout just intolerable. Rumble is doable as there are some I follow there who use it to say what they can't on yt. Only on YT and here. Haven't been here that long but very glad to have found it. I do, however, in that short time see an increase of trolls.
There are obviously forces that remain, until we get rid of them, still trying to control news and speech. It must not be permitted. I believe we're getting closer to the shake out.
FB just sorta quite censors you. I post stuff on FB but feel like I'm talking to myself. Only about 10 or so people ever see any of my posts, and they have to come looking for it.
I actually think one of the best forms of "social media" was the good old fashioned message board. It wasn't flooded with gifs/pics/memes/links.
The ideal wold be a group of about 25-50 or so active participants writing thoughtful content. I remember we'd get just pages and pages if dialog on a topic over weeks. But on social media content is basically an old dream after a couple of days.
Substack has been AWESOME for me in terms of being user friendly especially with the emails and instant acknowledgements. I'm an IT moron and I can see how it's been designed well. For me this is all another fight between people I support ❤️
Update, Elon has replied to a thread by Bret Weinstein / Matt Tiabbi
"1. Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false.
2. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.
Someone who is not STILL WRONGLY SUSPENDED ask Elon why people are still suspended while he bleats about free speech. Someone ask the big accounts why they spread that LIE for Elon.
Smells fishy to me, but what do I know. Vocabulary of this tweet surely indicates deflection (1), resentment(2) and offense. Matt was not the only experiencing problems, many writers complained and surely Substack is no threat to Elon. He's probably trying to clone Substack for Twitter, also, so this just doesn't sound right.
(Edit) Regardless, the fact remains, Twitter is seemingly a race to the bottom and the algorithm is impossible to tame.
Musk is a billionaire because of government subsidies, both for Tesla and Space X. For him to allow free speech on Twitter would lead to the spigots being turned off (or the flow even being reversed).
Musk choosing Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss (!) to investigate the Twitter Files ensured that it would be a limited hangout.
The one thing about Substack is that it is honest...
Can't say that for any other platform.
Medium for example deleted my whole Blog coz they didn't like what I had too say...
UK Business forum threw me out because I stated rightfully so that the "Hyperloop" is based on my Invention which it is and Richard Branson is a Conman which he is...
Substack made the only logical choice not to interfere with the writer / reader relationship...
As such there is no need to censor and much costs have been saved.
More than this, suppressed voices such as mine who have important things to say are finally heard.
The only people who need to censor others are the ones who have to hide something.
When you create a platform to allow people to communicate but don't like their Opinion... why do you create the platform in the first place?
Is it not that the rise of "Social Media" came from the permanent and obvious Lies of the MSM?
And the great Gift that is Substack came from the suppression of Voices of the other platforms.
I believe in Humanity... wherever there is a problem we find a solution.
Substack is a solution for a problem created by the powers that be.
I write about this all the time that we have all the solutions to the problems of their creation ready but we are living in a dictatorship by stealth (Occult) which uses Money (Wallstreet) to control the outcome of the actions of the masses to further their Agenda of Mass Genocide.
I noticed early that sometime around mid-2021 that my FB posts seemed to stop reaching everyone; based simply on how vocal my leftard friends used to be in comparison. I'm not sure if that's a factor of direct interference or a byproduct of the FB Lite app I switched over. However,. since about 8-10 months ago - I no longer get your or El Gato Malo's posts in my Substack inbox - ever. I have to click library, then scroll through my subscriptions and click your feed to find what/if you've posted. I also noticed an uptick in unwanted Substack reads inserts of clearly left-leaning writers into my Inbox feed. I've tried to turn it off 2X so far. Maybe it's the Aurora store app; benefit of the doubt and all that.. wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience?
I read El Gato Malo and a few others less simply because I had to channel it all to an email folder and 200ish substacks is still too much to scroll through. But I'm probably an overconsumer (or learning how to create my own searchable research library).
Substacks were a lifeline to me in the darkest days of the tyranny (presently dialled back a bit, but not gone by a long shot in the Canada-lands). Twitter was a good outlet, but I was banned once for sharing a Substack post. When Musk took the helm, it was good to see people coming back. However, my spider senses told me he seemed too good to be true. I've also felt a tingle with the pay for the blue-check policy - it is not the money. It is my credit card info. That scares me. At the end of the day, perhaps he is as charming and on point as his tweets. It is possible. But the SubStack censure is not a good look.
How about we all return to face to face real time actual conversations around a table?
It would fix all this AI driven bullshit. I'm old and cynical, but I had the best conversation with free flowing ideas recently with three other people I barely know sitting around an actual real table. And if you want to write stuff, write! But get offline...it isn't reality and you have no control here.
Thank you, Monika! I feel the same - for 3 yrs I had one person in real life w whom I could express my disgust & dissent for what was going on - Twitter was a haven until my favorites got banned; Telegram was a mess that clogged my phone; and Substack was good till recently, when it seems every Tom, Dick, & Harriet has appointed him/herself an author & is posting newsletters. Like me (what a joke) if I suddenly thought I was an authority on anything but my life. I met 3 people who I could speak with 3 wks ago, and it was such a relief! I had been acquainted w them for 8 months, but we'd never discussed current events.
That's wonderful! I just wrote my latest post about this very topic. We all need to make new friends, perhaps the best we've ever had. Happy Easter to you!
Happy Easter to you - and I have been fed up w the elites also for years! You live in such a beautiful place, but my heart goes out to you for enduring Trudeau's horrible governance - Canada used to be an inspiration... And yes, I've spent 3 yrs online w people who I would never have connected with before February 2020, but feel closer to than in years. Good luck to you!
Pretty handy list summarizing social media for dissidents as of now. Agree with telegrams chaotic nature and the truths you shared about twitter. It's such an infowar battlefield that it dissuades one from engaging after making any posts.
Would it be too cheeky to say "the house wins"?
I would argue many of the large platforms you listed all have potential to be the post-television iteration of cable news. The system desperately needs a mechanism to "get everyone on board" with narratives and the "fragmentation" of the digital space really hurts that end. As long as people are willing to compromise with digital infrastructure run by the system, I'm sure there really is a wide latitude for what options are allowed to exist.
As an aside, I'd be really curious to see polling on what % of the adult/young adult population uses Twitter or Substack. I'd bet that combined they're outdone by Tiktok, especially in terms of hours of attention captured. What makes Tiktok special is that it is a foreign information control system.
Many mastodon/fediverse users (especially mastodon) would be upset at you for putting them in the same bin as "crypto options" because many of the instances are openly hostile to cryptocurrency.
I'd argue the fediverse is ready for primetime we just aren't going to have big tech spin up servers for us!
The advantage of "crypto options" about which I co-wrote in 2006 when e-gold was the leading micro payments option is self-extending networks. We don't need big tech to spin up servers if our routers and servers charge a few sats for moving or modifying packets. We accumulate micro payments and expand the net organically.
Pay to move routers would end spam and ddos attacks by having modifiable policies. As an email recipient I could tell my mail server a list of addresses that can email me free, a default to pay a few sats to get through, and a list that pays a thousand bucks to reach my inbox. Big spam would have to struggle to keep its numbers up.
Distributed denial of service (ddos) would simply die as routers automatically increased fees from nodes trying to overload them.
All large platforms are foreign information control systems. Substack is just getting large enough to get the attention of that unregistered foreign agent called the ADL. It's really a question of money, that is the control mechanism for everything. For now, it's an early adopter, high IQ crowd. The question will be control of funding. The people behind ADL, who control the banks, will start to put the censorship heat on to turn off certain people who contribute to Substack. "Or else the money gets turned off for everything, capishe?"
Late Millennials likely don't bother with FB at all, but Instagram is a contender for them and Gen Z. Tiktok appeals to Mid-Millennials, and certainly Gen Z. FB is largely Boomer and Early-Millennial, if not for how Google has insisted it be a necessary social signal for businesses, I doubt it would have the position it still does.
However IMO, based on what I do with marketing, ads, and so on, the actual king of the hill remains YT, especially now that Shorts is gaining momentum. TikTok's content is still mostly idiotic fluff on par with having a sugary cereal for breakfast, Instagram has more thoughtful content.
Tiktok's algorithm however, is downright scary, it not only caters to existing interests, it knows how to nudge one along into areas that one wouldn't normally seek out and builds up a tolerance/interest into increasingly questionable feeds.
In fact, IMO Google is going to spend more money on it than just about anything else, as their search algorithm is behind the competitive curve with recent advances in AI, Bing hit them with a solid center jab and broke their nose by incorporating ChatGPT early on.
And Meta? That's still a big ?? IMO, despite assurances of how it will dominate, I see mostly rejection or disinterest. Fediverse has potential, it will be interesting to watch its development.
Good assessment Matthew!
Your comments about facebook posts both here and in your prior post are interesting. I started posting in facebook against pandemic measures before they arrived in early March 2020 and I posted daily there for most of 2020. I did so because that was where my trial audience was -- my friend and professional group -- and I was trying to understand why I was standing alone in a sea of intelligent people.
There were only a handful of supporters who would quietly PM me and literally one or two who were vocal with me.
I stopped posting there a year later because I had lost or alienated a lot of my friends, and the experiment had yielded results long before. It is not a platform for honest discussion and it is not a platform for curating good long form information.
It is still a good platform for sharing personal life with friends and family. Innocuous and harmless pictures of the weather and maybe the odd life event. That's it.
As for twitter, I think perhaps it serves a purpose much like the sport arenas do.
I had a similar experience with FB. My Friend list has been reduced to under fifty people who I actually know in real life and I use it for the limited purpose that you describe.
With the Musk's move and the ADL's condemnation of Substack (nicely dissected by another prominent Substacker) as a haven for anti-antisemitism and extremist views (defined as anyone who does not toe and repeat the approved line verbatim), I believe we're seeing the opening of a new front in the larger "disinformation" war.
I've found my comments being randomly "liked" by what appears to be a bot of some kind. I'm confident that my opinions and compliance status are being closely tracked.
It reminds me of when I was a kid and one of my hobbies was listening to shortwave radio and collecting QSL cards.. Any mail that I received from Radio Moscow, Radio Beijing, or other hostile countries would come pre-opened wrapped in a rubber band.
Yes! Same here. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson as the president in Mars Attacks asking "Why can't we all just get along?" in his snarky insincere best.
It made me crazy as a teenager that these adults were prepared to annihilate the whole world with nuclear weapons over some control of territory and resources which (behold) they wouldn't want after it had been nuked if they survived to claim it. Nuking my Substack links persuades me that Twitter hates its users. Why go scorched Earth when I'm not even using "notes" yet?
Because it still hasn't dawned on some people that a truly free market is better for everyone. The synergies and knock-on benefits are too numerous to list here. For a few months it felt that way at Twitter. But the other shoe dropped.
And information is free to move. It costs so little to make copies of any information that it will always migrate to freedom supporting platforms. Why create content where I'm hated? Why pay Twitter to struggle with its algorithms?
"Nuking my Substack links persuades me that Twitter hates its users."
The information security geek in me suspects that the true purpose behind Elon buying Twitter is to mine personal data for his next "thing".
Those who "it still hasn't dawned on that a truly free market is better for everyone", have an agenda.
True. And it is opposed to my agenda which is not only to be free but to free the slaves, stop the wars, and end tyranny.
👍👍👍mine too!
I left FB long ago as I was mostly in jail for posting articles during 2012 election. My page was not about my personal life. I was on Telegram a short while but left when the app was 'notifying' me constantly w annoying audio notices. Gab was ok for a while, but then came the Nazi thugs and Andrew's decidedly faux christian stance of allowing them space turned me off. Never on Twitter never will be. Elon has seemingly done some good but no good vibes there. I find Bitchute a Nazi and low brow hangout just intolerable. Rumble is doable as there are some I follow there who use it to say what they can't on yt. Only on YT and here. Haven't been here that long but very glad to have found it. I do, however, in that short time see an increase of trolls.
There are obviously forces that remain, until we get rid of them, still trying to control news and speech. It must not be permitted. I believe we're getting closer to the shake out.
George, when you say Twitter serves a purpose much like sports arenas
I can only picture Colosseums with hungry lions and tigers. No?🤷🏼♀️🤔🤨
lol, indeed, I think the experience ranges from a roman colosseum to a basketball game.
FB just sorta quite censors you. I post stuff on FB but feel like I'm talking to myself. Only about 10 or so people ever see any of my posts, and they have to come looking for it.
I actually think one of the best forms of "social media" was the good old fashioned message board. It wasn't flooded with gifs/pics/memes/links.
The ideal wold be a group of about 25-50 or so active participants writing thoughtful content. I remember we'd get just pages and pages if dialog on a topic over weeks. But on social media content is basically an old dream after a couple of days.
Tons of discussion on Matt Taibbis substack chat on this.
Substack has been AWESOME for me in terms of being user friendly especially with the emails and instant acknowledgements. I'm an IT moron and I can see how it's been designed well. For me this is all another fight between people I support ❤️
Me too - I just like to write - it saves my soul and is generally better than being hit by a taxi.
Update, Elon has replied to a thread by Bret Weinstein / Matt Tiabbi
"1. Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false.
2. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.
3. Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack.
10:49 am · 8 Apr 2023
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1644638493883211779
Can you link to the where?
yes, here https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1644638493883211779
Someone who is not STILL WRONGLY SUSPENDED ask Elon why people are still suspended while he bleats about free speech. Someone ask the big accounts why they spread that LIE for Elon.
Smells fishy to me, but what do I know. Vocabulary of this tweet surely indicates deflection (1), resentment(2) and offense. Matt was not the only experiencing problems, many writers complained and surely Substack is no threat to Elon. He's probably trying to clone Substack for Twitter, also, so this just doesn't sound right.
(Edit) Regardless, the fact remains, Twitter is seemingly a race to the bottom and the algorithm is impossible to tame.
Musk is a billionaire because of government subsidies, both for Tesla and Space X. For him to allow free speech on Twitter would lead to the spigots being turned off (or the flow even being reversed).
Musk choosing Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss (!) to investigate the Twitter Files ensured that it would be a limited hangout.
Yep elo him attends to elo him''s interests.
The one thing about Substack is that it is honest...
Can't say that for any other platform.
Medium for example deleted my whole Blog coz they didn't like what I had too say...
UK Business forum threw me out because I stated rightfully so that the "Hyperloop" is based on my Invention which it is and Richard Branson is a Conman which he is...
Substack made the only logical choice not to interfere with the writer / reader relationship...
As such there is no need to censor and much costs have been saved.
More than this, suppressed voices such as mine who have important things to say are finally heard.
The only people who need to censor others are the ones who have to hide something.
I agree that the platform should not be the judge of who is important, or which things they have to say are important or okay.
I go even further...
When you create a platform to allow people to communicate but don't like their Opinion... why do you create the platform in the first place?
Is it not that the rise of "Social Media" came from the permanent and obvious Lies of the MSM?
And the great Gift that is Substack came from the suppression of Voices of the other platforms.
I believe in Humanity... wherever there is a problem we find a solution.
Substack is a solution for a problem created by the powers that be.
I write about this all the time that we have all the solutions to the problems of their creation ready but we are living in a dictatorship by stealth (Occult) which uses Money (Wallstreet) to control the outcome of the actions of the masses to further their Agenda of Mass Genocide.
Water as energy.
Free education.
99% of Problems solved.
I noticed early that sometime around mid-2021 that my FB posts seemed to stop reaching everyone; based simply on how vocal my leftard friends used to be in comparison. I'm not sure if that's a factor of direct interference or a byproduct of the FB Lite app I switched over. However,. since about 8-10 months ago - I no longer get your or El Gato Malo's posts in my Substack inbox - ever. I have to click library, then scroll through my subscriptions and click your feed to find what/if you've posted. I also noticed an uptick in unwanted Substack reads inserts of clearly left-leaning writers into my Inbox feed. I've tried to turn it off 2X so far. Maybe it's the Aurora store app; benefit of the doubt and all that.. wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience?
I read El Gato Malo and a few others less simply because I had to channel it all to an email folder and 200ish substacks is still too much to scroll through. But I'm probably an overconsumer (or learning how to create my own searchable research library).
Substacks were a lifeline to me in the darkest days of the tyranny (presently dialled back a bit, but not gone by a long shot in the Canada-lands). Twitter was a good outlet, but I was banned once for sharing a Substack post. When Musk took the helm, it was good to see people coming back. However, my spider senses told me he seemed too good to be true. I've also felt a tingle with the pay for the blue-check policy - it is not the money. It is my credit card info. That scares me. At the end of the day, perhaps he is as charming and on point as his tweets. It is possible. But the SubStack censure is not a good look.
what is Operation Uplift?
https://www.campfire.wiki/doku.php?id=operation_uplift
https://www.campfire.wiki/doku.php?id=operation_uplift
Jinx.
Meet Elon Musk:
https://www.corbettreport.com/musk/
How about we all return to face to face real time actual conversations around a table?
It would fix all this AI driven bullshit. I'm old and cynical, but I had the best conversation with free flowing ideas recently with three other people I barely know sitting around an actual real table. And if you want to write stuff, write! But get offline...it isn't reality and you have no control here.
Thank you, Monika! I feel the same - for 3 yrs I had one person in real life w whom I could express my disgust & dissent for what was going on - Twitter was a haven until my favorites got banned; Telegram was a mess that clogged my phone; and Substack was good till recently, when it seems every Tom, Dick, & Harriet has appointed him/herself an author & is posting newsletters. Like me (what a joke) if I suddenly thought I was an authority on anything but my life. I met 3 people who I could speak with 3 wks ago, and it was such a relief! I had been acquainted w them for 8 months, but we'd never discussed current events.
That's wonderful! I just wrote my latest post about this very topic. We all need to make new friends, perhaps the best we've ever had. Happy Easter to you!
Happy Easter to you - and I have been fed up w the elites also for years! You live in such a beautiful place, but my heart goes out to you for enduring Trudeau's horrible governance - Canada used to be an inspiration... And yes, I've spent 3 yrs online w people who I would never have connected with before February 2020, but feel closer to than in years. Good luck to you!
Go to Twitter and type “Trump” into the search bar, and see which result appears first. That tells me everything I need to know.
Substack induces a self-sorting of commenters and authors according to their real interests. Lose that and substack is over.
Pretty handy list summarizing social media for dissidents as of now. Agree with telegrams chaotic nature and the truths you shared about twitter. It's such an infowar battlefield that it dissuades one from engaging after making any posts.