Alessandro Paluzzi, a developer who routinely digs into app code to expose unreleased features, tweeted early this morning that Meta’s Twitter clone, Thread, had been released into the Google Play store. It appears as though that was a mistake, however, because the app is nowhere to be found now.
I’m so sick of corporate control over social media. The more I think about it the more absolutely insane it seems to me.
How does it seem insane? Genuinely I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.
The idea of adding a filter between human connection that will distort the message for profit is crazy for a few reasons. Most of all because it simply doesn’t need to happen.
I mean how many of the current worldwide ills are a direct result of algorithms designed to increase engagement through ragebaiting? Disinformation is effective in no small part due to these algorithms making sure you’re made enough to engage and doom scroll. As long as you have a profit motive in these discussions this will be inevitable as far as I can see.
When you imagine a world without Fox/Twitter/Meta/Reddit/Google (not all as culpable of course) force feeding things intent on making you engage (most easily though anger/rage - thanks evolution) it’s hard not to picture a better world. The internet pre-corporate control was a very different place due to a number of factors. I would argue mostly due to a lack of profit motive on social connection.