The Twitter Dilemma And Why It Cannot Compete With Web 3.0
This will be called the "Twitter Dilemma" but they are not the only ones facing it. In fact, it is consistent throughout the social media realm. We also see in with the projects that people like Jack Dorsey are creating.
Web 3.0 is changing the nature of the Internet. At the core is the idea of ownership. We phrase this many different ways yet it all leads to the same conclusion. There is no sovereignty with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, or Google. We are at their mercy.
To make matter worse, we also are a "product of the product". Our actions is what makes them money. In return, we get the user experience and that is all. Sure, Elon Musk is looking to reward content creators, an idea that he has no idea how to implement. Of course, on Hive, we are approaching 7 years of rewarding people for their contributions.
So what is the problem? What is at the core of the "Twitter Dilemma"?
That is what this article will investigate.
Business Model
There is no sense beating around the bush.
When we look at the world of social media, we see the business model that is going to make it impossible to adapt. Basically, it is a broke model that is being usurped.
We are entering a new era. The present social media companies are akin to Blockbuster operating in an age of streaming. It simply does not work.
Social media corporations depend upon advertising. That is their core money maker. They scour the data collected and sell it to companies looking to push their wares. There are indications that some, i.e. Musk, want to get away from that. He is implementing Twitter Blue which is trying to generate revenues through subscriptions. While it is a sound idea, it does not alter the core business model that he operates from.
With Twitter, there is no ownership. All is on the servers of that company. You are at their mercy, essentially at the whims of their algorithms.
Here is a prime example.
@eddiespino had his Twitter account zapped.
This is what he had to say in a post:
Supposedly, I broke their rules but haven't done anything unusual. I do what most Hivers do. Share links to Hive posts, promote Hive, participate in Twitter Spaces, etc. I don't know if it was a mistake or if they just got too strict with the rule about not sharing links from other social networks.
The reason why it was suspended is not really relevant. In the end, it does not matter. The account is gone simply due to the fact Twitter owns it, not the user.
In addition to this one, how many other accounts were suspended in the last 24 hours? How many will be restored?
There was some sage advice to come out of this.
Don't get too attached to your #web2 accounts. At any moment, you can lose it forever. You will lose followers, your Tweets, and all the time and effort invested.
Unfortunately, this is not going to be true in the future.
Social Media Means Finance
What was not lost in the process was money sitting in a wallet. At this time, there is no wallet system on Twitter. Yet, the plans are to implement financial services such as payment. There is speculation cryptocurrency might be involved, which would likely mean that Twitter creates wallet that resides on the platform.
We do know Musk talked about the idea of having NFTs on Twitter. This would also align with the wallet system.
Here is the problem: what happened if there was $10,000 worth of tokens and NFTs in the wallet associated with this account? Not only would that data be lost, so would the money. Twitter, at any time, could essentially cut you off from your assets with no reason or explanation. Forget a court order, they don't even need to tell you why it happened.
People get upset when their social media account is suspended. They get downright angry when there is money tied to it.
Trust And Counterparty Risk
In the end, it all comes down to trust and being able to accept the counterparty risk. Here is where the business model of the existing social media companies fails.
As Musk moves Twitter in the direction of offering more financial services, a greater degree of trust for these entities is required. This is because the counterparty risk increases as the stakes are moved higher.
How does Hive differ?
Really, it comes down to whether the blockchain is running. As long as there are nodes with the software that can be accessed, people can get to their wallets. Whatever is there, as long as one is holding the private key, is accessible.
We see the exact opposite with Twitter. Since account ownership is not in the hands of the users, an episode like this could have huge financial consequences.
The idea behind cryptocurrency was to reduce counterparty risk by eliminating the "middlemen". With Hive, it foster the concept of merging social media along with finance. Elon Musk is taking this to a new level but with Web 2.0 as the foundation.
Hence the "Twitter Dilemma".
As he achieves success, the trust in these companies is going to be exposed. The actions over the last couple years left a bad taste in people's mouths. What happens when there are stories of people losing accounts with $100,000 in them? How will that play with the masses?
It is evident that this will not work. That means either individual account ownership is granted or regulations are implemented where these companies operate like banks. Of course, this brings up the question of whether people will keep trusting regulation as a safety net.
Either way, it appears to be a broken model. This will be exposed when finance is actually integrated into these platforms.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
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Corporate social media is getting worse. The ads can outnumber the good content. If you can get banned for mentioning other platforms then it's useless to me. I know you like Musk, but I think he has done a lot of harm to Twitter. He drove a lot of people to Mastodon, but not so many to see Hive so far.
Look at the financials. Twitter was a mess before he got there.
He might have pushed people away but, according to the company, the MAUs are increasing. It is hard to know since it no longer a public company.
As for Mastodon, like many others, it gets its day in the sun only to fade.
Remember Hive social? What happened to that? What about whatever the hell Trump was building? Where is that?
You are right, Hive (ours) keep chugging along in spite of few knowing about it. This will not be the case forever. We are seeing some important developments starting to roll out.
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We shall see. Some people just want a simple user experience and Twitter has that. I understand Hive Social looked similar, but they could cope. Don't get me started on Trump...
I have played with lots of platforms, but I will favour more open and decentralised ones. I may keep accounts on others for when they are useful to me. Hive is my priority.
I have got much love for Elon too, but the guy really is becoming a dictator to everyone, users and workers alike.
Do we have a Mastodon community?...It looks weird there but I heard it is the decentralised web2 twitter.
There are some Hive people on Mastodon, but no specific server or community. It's an alternative option, but I suspect most people will stick with Twtr anyway.
I wanted to share a post and thought about the fact that I could get blocked...nobody wants to be that stressed for a post.
Only thing that stands for twitter is it's features which are not yet out by other competitors like media embeds, space, videos and one more important feature. Twitter is used by left wing for narrative setup. George soros funds a lot of journalists to start a propaganda twitter hashtags, and so a lot of real humans and the bots happen to give more weight to twitter for getting the information in the trends.
Wait. I though Twitter was taken over by the right wingers with Musk catering to that audience?
I wish the left-right would get there shit straight.
Seems Musk is pissing off both sides which shows he is doing a good job.
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Lol...I think @devpress is talking about the way Twitter typically is.
Twitter was and is like this even before Musk.... and Musk is not right winger, he's just china funded for backdoor into US economy.
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There is a problem in Hive, and that's downvotes.
I agree about centureship resistance and ownership of assets...
But instead of trools some users get downvoters, I just got this @spaminator downvoter who is for no reason started downvoting my post, inclusing the latest one and my comments.
Let's see that @spaminator downvotes my comment here...
COme on, you can't downvote according to whims and fancies, its centralised down to user who is generally powerful so other hive users who are small feel intimated and vulnerable and it curbs our freedom of speech and expression.
Really, Hive should do something to remove arbitary downvoters...its high time... what if one user gets unfortunate enough to be trolled by a downvoter or more...sucks then, they will leave the platform, whatever the other Web3 benifits of Hive are...
@spaminator what's your reason to target me suddenly... and your doing a rotten job considering you were Hive watchers, who blacklisted accounts that were spam, or plagmarised etc...of downvoting my posts now... I hope this stops, its not healthy...
My post was not spam, not plagmarised etc... there's evidence in it...
what should we do about downvoter like @spaminator ?... who downvote without justification.
Anyway...
I don't know why you got downvoted, but they tend to have reasons. It can be down to 'whims and fancies ' just as upvotes are. The ability of every user to downvote as they see fit is part of Hive. There can't be central control of that.
Remember that we can give out more upvotes than downvotes.
I don't think the problem is the downvoted, it's the abuse of power.
Either for upvotes or downvotes. If we did not had downvotes we could not prevent spam and abuse.
I do think that there should be better ways to appeal on Hive and this automatic downvotes affect the retention. But in some cases they are necessary to give a notification to curators.
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There are ways to tweak the system.
We also have the ability to look at the tribes. Notice how LEO doesnt seem to have this issue. While people believe that Hive is the only asset on Hive of value, they will miss the entire forest.
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Leo there is no downvote... that's good, bad content can stay unrewarded and spam content can be removed... I hope Hive would look at the issue, abuse of downvote power is definitely a problem in Hive...
I agree... they should tweek it definitely because I am not the only one having this issue, there were a lot of others, where big account holders out of ego downvoted post.
I don't downvote posts unless its spam, if its bad content, I downvote really small amount, anyway I don't have much downvote power, and give that author a chance to correct etc...
Abuse of downvote power is a issue in Hive, I am glad if Leofinance is free from it!!
I hardly care about that downvote, but I don't want a downvote troll, and since 3 downvotes came from that account I was rather scared... anyway
Instead of complaining about it in a comment section by taggin an account that isnt going to see, why not go into the discord and ask them why they are downvoting you.
Odds are there is a reason and not just whims and fancies.
Of course, you are falling prey to just focusing upon Hive again. You do realize those downvotes likely have no clout with LEO, CTP, or some of the other communities.
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I helped a friend get this done once... it actually works.
can't find that @spaminator at discort
I searched for @spaminator at discort and did not find the account, its hive watchers, I tried the discort link in that spaminator account but its not relavent.
that's why I tagged that account here...they should see it, but I agree its rather not good to tag them in a comment on your excellent article on web3 and potential of hive, I should have tagged that @spaminator in a comment under my own blog I guess...
I am sorry for inconvenience...
There is nothing as sweet as a decentralized social media platform
The person losing a significant amount of money won't forget the court order if the funds aren't returned...
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
It's crazy, I saw the post on the suspension and I was beginning to imagine. Musk seems to be continuing the tool on suspension of actions, who knows who might be next and for doing absolutely nothing too.
That might be the case.
Or it could be the algos are written so deep in the code, that havent uncovered it all.
Hard to tell but they did mention that the code is a mess.
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Hmmmn... that makes a lot of sense. I hear they cut down their work force or less than 2k people so I can't imagine how that small size would be minding people's words that way.
Did you see what happened to belemo? It was absolutely ridiculous. It also happens that when you come back they start monitoring you for bad behavior.
Great article Task!
I think that it's a great problem they will have in the near future. Imagine my Twitter had the same amount of money as my Hive account, that would be a great abuse from them.
Cheers!
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It would be abusive but then abusive and mega tech companies go together.
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These big tech companies are doing the best for us but they don't know. They do not believe in people's choices and are forceful with their rules and regulations...lets see how well that plays out for them.
Musk could be a bit extremist to get things the way he wants and Twitter seems to be a clear example, the guy is very smart but I dont see Twitter any mayor changes that benefit the users, at the moment he is just trying to make Twitter a profitable business by taking from his users, besides the ads and the things they may charge the main problem is ownership, lets say even if ppl pay for their account meaning they paying for the resources they using space, data, etc at least provide them the option that they cant be lock out but can be isolated/mute and a proper customer support so things can be sort out when they happen, even a three strike system can work but Twitter is the platform that just ban accounts without saying why
The destiny for Web2 is oblivion
It is crazy that these people will make the need for Web3. I can't believe that it has become this wide spread. Well its all good for us, we are ready for the future I think the world will follow suit. The centralised world is just a guise for censorship
The centralized networks can do whatever they want and it sucks to be banned for it. I have seen quite a bit of things happen on the various networks such as Youtube when people are always on the edge because they don't want to lose their livelihood.
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I was reading that Tim Ferris (4 hours workweek book guy) has regularly banned his Twitter accounts and the only hint is that he often put links to his podcasts, Apple Podcasts. He is like very successful with his podcasts. And Twitter resents this, apparently. Wait to see if I find the link: cannot find it. It was about how you do not really own what you build on Facebook and Twitter. Told them about Hive.
people don't get that there is more at risk if their social media account gets banned. People who have been limited by PayPal, or locked out of their wallet by Coinbase will understand that there even is a risk to there financial engagements, because I think many people assume there money is protected like it is with a bank. If aa bank closes your account , they cant just keep your money. If you get limited by PayPal they will not give you your money for 180 day's, with no way the abirritate or anything. So I agree, a social media platform that ties financial assets to your account would be bomb waiting to explode for anyone who gets banned , and has a large balance in their wallet..
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Excellent write-up as always, Taskmaster. I am EXTREMELY skeptical of anything Musk says, because I know his track record of delaying things and under-delivering until the very last possible moment.
With that being said, I think that integrating payments within Twitter is a good idea, but, as you correctly point out, without true control and ownership of the #web2 account, no one is going to gain anything real.
At the drop of a hat, you can be suspended or banned off Twitter (just like what happened to LeoFinance's official YouTube channel) without warning, cause, or reason, and you lose all access to your work and connections.
I have seen this same thing play out on LinkedIn, where one of my good friends (who I've made through cryptocurrency community) lost his network of over 40,000 connections - because he was sharing writing about NFTs and cryptocurrency + blockchain.
It is clear to me, that, without ownership, this entire payments concept for Twitter is an empty promise - because it will never reach the potential of what Hive ALREADY has had since day 1.
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