A thread for updates on the various ways the internet is destroying everything and the undying hellsites of social media. Let's all laugh at the abyss.
I was going to name one of my fantasy football teams The Third Frank Reich, after the fact that Panthers coach Frank Reich's name is literally Frank Reich III, but it doesn't work when half the country doesn't realize the Nazis are supposed to be the butt of the joke.
Can I still use "UD Jew Hens" if I'm not Jewish? (UD's mascot is the Blue Hen for those that don't know)
Mine is Tuscan Bisciotti
Couldn't be Snyder's of Landover anymore.
You never topped Kaepacino.
TikTok has transformed the concert experience
Across a huge range of genres from K-pop to hardcore, streaming and sharing platforms like TikTok and Instagram are changing the way people think about streamed concert footage and viral moments from a live event. The savviest artists not only know that their audience will have their phones out, but anticipate it. Last year, Rosalía and TikTok jointly earned a Latin Grammy nomination for a music film full of bite-size, clippable moments, all filmed on mobile phones, that aired live on the platform. And Taylor Swift just announced the release of an entire movie of her already-legendary Eras tour — conveniently dropping before the European leg of that tour kicks off.
Livestreamed and social media-boosted concert clips have become so ubiquitous that it’s jarring to look back and remember that for most of the internet’s history, filming concerts at all was verboten. Blogs like NYC Taper and BB Chronicles, alongside an endless rotation of torrent servers, specialized in sharing concert clips and archiving bootleg recordings of vintage concerts. The website Relisten specializes in curating much of the live concert footage shared on the Internet Archive across decades — everything from the Grateful Dead to bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles. The undertone of all these websites boils down to “please don’t sue us”; many of these blogs include disclaimers stressing that their collections are meant to supplement, not replace, the live concert experience.
This shamefaced, don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach to bootlegging concerts has long since been obliterated by the seismic shift created by the era of smartphones. Though some artists still attempt to ban phones and recordings of live concerts, that ship has largely sailed. The order of the day is selfie sticks and vertical zoom. “Put down your phones and dance!” one TikTok user opined earlier this year, only to be met with a chorus of users responding that they could hold their phones and dance at the same time.
The mass mainstreaming of pop music fandoms has also profoundly changed the audience’s approach to concerts. In particular, K-pop stan culture, with its extremely structured process for the concert experience, has profoundly impacted the way fanbases across the world approach live performances: They are to be filmed, micro-analyzed, edited into fancams and bite-size, social-ready clips, and spread across the internet.
Study of financial influencers ("finfluencers") found that most of them return negative gains when their strategy is followed.
The study found that the minority of "skilled" influencers (as opposed to "unskilled" and "antiskilled") tweeted less, and were less reactionary. As such, they were also less followed, meaning more people gravitated towards the louder but poorly skilled alternatives.
Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows them?
The study found that the minority of "skilled" influencers (as opposed to "unskilled" and "antiskilled") tweeted less, and were less reactionary. As such, they were also less followed, meaning more people gravitated towards the louder but poorly skilled alternatives.
Yup. Algorithm rewards hot takes, not accuracy, knowledge or skill.
Plus, human nature. No-one likes actual good financial advice, which takes time and sacrifice. Get rich quick schemes though? We LOVE those. WAGMI!
No-one likes actual good financial advice, which takes time and sacrifice.
It doesn't even take much time. The classic "3 fund portfolio" takes a couple sentences to explain, a few minutes at a brokerage website to set up, and outperforms the overwhelming majority of "financial advice" over the long term (especially after fees are factored in).
It's just that there's nothing sexy about "put your money in a couple funds that cover the entire stock market, and a fund that covers the entire US bond market".
Study of financial influencers ("finfluencers") found that most of them return negative gains when their strategy is followed.
The study found that the minority of "skilled" influencers (as opposed to "unskilled" and "antiskilled") tweeted less, and were less reactionary. As such, they were also less followed, meaning more people gravitated towards the louder but poorly skilled alternatives.
This is the first time I've heard the term "antiskilled" but it seems useful.
*Legion* wrote:Study of financial influencers ("finfluencers") found that most of them return negative gains when their strategy is followed.
The study found that the minority of "skilled" influencers (as opposed to "unskilled" and "antiskilled") tweeted less, and were less reactionary. As such, they were also less followed, meaning more people gravitated towards the louder but poorly skilled alternatives.
This is the first time I've heard the term "antiskilled" but it seems useful.
Well now you are just being skilled... 
Elon Musk’s X sues California over new social media transparency laws
Elon Musk’s X sued California on Friday, challenging the constitutionality of a state law establishing new transparency requirements for social media companies, including how they police disinformation, hate speech and extremism.
X, the social media platform once called Twitter, said the law, known as Assembly Bill 587, violates its free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment and California’s state constitution.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Sacramento, California, X said the law’s “true intent” was to pressure social media companies into eliminating content the state found objectionable.
By doing so, California is forcing companies to adopt the state’s views on politically charged issues, “a form of compelled speech in and of itself”, X said.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist” and the world’s richest person, bought Twitter for $44bn last October. He also runs the electric car company Tesla and space exploration company SpaceX.
Civil rights groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate have identified increases in the volume of hate speech on X targeting Jews, Black people, gay and trans persons since Musk took over.
The office of California attorney general Rob Bonta, which enforces state laws, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
AB 587 requires larger social media companies to issue semiannual reports that describe their content moderation practices, and provide data on the numbers of objectionable posts and how they were addressed.
The law also requires companies to provide copies of their terms of service. Failure to comply risks civil fines of up to $15,000 for each violation a day.
Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, signed the law last September, saying the state would not let social media be “weaponized” to spread hate and disinformation.
Ridiculous. The law doesn't specify anything about speech.
I would say there's no way this gets past a judge, but with the way judging has been going lately...
TikTok food tourists leave a bitter taste in Amsterdam
It is 3.30pm on a Friday and 28-year-old German Lisa Wulff is in a half-hour queue for bubble tea and “toasts” at Amsterdam’s Chun cafe.
“I’ve seen it on social media, and it looks good,” she says. “My generation is more on Instagram, but I have a younger sister, so I saw it on TikTok.”
She is one of 23 million overnight tourists expected this year in Amsterdam and is looking to eat in the city’s famous De 9 Straatjes – “nine little streets”. One brick road down, the queue for posh chip shop and fellow social media sensation Fabel Friet stretches across a bridge.
They are symptoms of a certain kind of tourism, inspired more by social media than classic attractions or guidebooks, also seen in Italy and Spain, but very evident in this small, heavily visited country.
While the number of tourists appears to be back at peak 2019 levels, Amsterdammers complain that many appear more inspired by Instagrammable food, lazy bike rides and “window shopping” in the red light district than by the city’s top hotels, museums and galleries.
Some are particularly concerned about social media-influenced flash crowds in places used to a meandering stream. Outside Fabel Friet, a notice asks customers “kindly to respect our neighbours by not eating your fries in front of their houses” while Brenned Tieman on security duty asks tourists to move to the canal to eat their fries with “war” sauce (mayo, satay and onions).
Although Fabel Friet started promoting itself during the pandemic with viral TikTok clips handcutting chips or magically forming them into the shop’s name, co-founder Floris Feilzer would prefer a Michelin star to social media fame.
“We are done with the TikTok label,” he says. “If you don’t have the quality, it won’t come to anything. It’s about having great products, and a heart for the business and for the neighbourhood. A lot of residents come here for chips.”
At Chun cafe, owners Melissa Cheung and Kelvin Chan see things slightly differently: they feel social media – they use Instagram – gives small businesses a democratic and inclusive channel for promotion. “While we don’t actively post on TikTok, we’ve been thrilled to see the spontaneous buzz generated by individuals who share their experiences,” the couple said.
Looks Like Twitter Shadowbanned The New York Times, Which Advertises on Twitter
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has apparently shadowbanned The New York Times, preventing users from seeing tweets that link to the newspaper’s coverage. The move smacks of a particular irony, given that the Times is one of X’s major advertisers and is currently running campaigns to promote its new sports site, The Athletic.That’s according to a new report in Semafor, which compared engagement on tweets with links to the New York Times’ website to tweets that link to competing news services, including the BBC, CNN, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Engagement on tweets about the Times dropped dramatically in late July, and continued to fall throughout August. During the same period, engagement on posts about other news sites rose or stayed about the same.
It appears that X singled out the Times, specifically, to limit users’ access to its coverage. X and The New York Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Elon Musk isn’t quiet about his disdain for the world’s most popular newspaper. The billionaire said it delighted him to remove the Times’ verified badge on X in a recent interview.
The data used in the Semafor report came from NewsWhip, an analytics firm that tracks engagement on social media. NewsWhip found that the Times’ engagement was consistent compared to other news sites on Facebook, which suggests the problem is on X alone.
For example, former president Barack Obama posted two links to the New York Times on X over the last week. The two posts were both seen by fewer than 900,000 users, dramatically lower than any other tweets by the former president since X added data about views earlier this year. By contrast, one of Obama’s tweets to a story on Politico, for example, garnered 13 million views alone.
This isn’t the first evidence that Musk—celebrated by his army of blue-checked devotees as a champion of free speech—uses his social network to limit the speech of people who bother him often. In reality, a mountain of evidence suggests that Musk is a champion of censorship. Congress has taken notice. In August, tests showed that X throttled Musk’s rivals by adding a delay to slow down page loads when users clicked links to other websites. The problem affected competing social media platforms such as Facebook, Threads, and Bluesky, as well as news sites including the New York Times and Reuters. Other websites in similar categories were unaffected, suggesting the issue was a targeted attack.
Again, it was never Freedom of Speech, it was always an ideologically motived op.
Time to nationalize every company owned by a billionaire.
Wrong thread.
I'm not going to watch that because I like my blood pressure where it is, but it tracks.
From $1 Billion to Almost Worthless: FaZe Clan Runs Out of Hype
Three months after its July 2022 debut on the Nasdaq, FaZe Holdings Inc. threw an exclusive party at a San Diego nightclub, hiring the rapper Travis Scott to promote its stable of video-game stars and YouTube personalities.
Social-media influencers mingled with gamers in expensive streetwear. Many looked bored as they filmed the event for their online channels. Well past midnight, Scott appeared for a 15-minute show, his voice barely audible over the thumping bass. The party, which cost $1.7 million, got the company and a sponsor’s name in hundreds of Google search results, YouTube videos and Instagram stories. Lee Trink, FaZe’s chief executive officer at the time, hailed the event as a great success.
“We achieved all of the things we would have hoped for, including making money,” he said in an interview after the party.
But with losses mounting and the shares tumbling, the company fired Trink, 55, on Sept. 9, replacing him on an interim basis with Chief Financial Officer Christoph Pachler. Interviews with seven former employees describe a mismanaged organization marked by poor spending decisions, excessive pay and expansion into unprofitable categories like esports. The company, which employed 112 people at year end, has been enmeshed in controversies involving its online personalities and announced two rounds of layoffs this year.
Los Angeles-based FaZe reported a $48.7 million loss from operations last year. After initially projecting that it would debut on the stock market with a $1 billion valuation, its shares have tumbled to 18 cents from over $20, reflecting skepticism that the social-media activities of young, largely male gamers could ever be a sustainable business — even if they have millions of fans. Last month in New York, followers of one influencer, not a FaZe Clan member, set off a riot in Union Square over a giveaway of game consoles.
Management, meanwhile, is evaluating its options, including a possible sale of the company, Trink said before he left.
“FaZe is definitely going to weather it,” he said in a June interview. “FaZe is no stranger to controversy. It’s part of why we’re so compelling.”
Trink couldn’t be reached for comment after his dismissal.
I've yet to see anything e-sports related that didn't look like a complete Mickey Mouse operation. At least in the English language world - I know StarCraft has had quite the run in South Korea, though its position in the culture at large often seems to be exaggerated.
I love that calling something a "Mickey Mouse operation" is a pejorative, because the actual Mickey Mouse operation is one hell of a well-run thing.
https://mstdn.social/@halfcocked/111...
"However dumb you might think Elon Musk is, you're wrong. It's so, so much worse than you thought."
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/...
Another manager at the meeting said that couldn’t be done right away. “We can’t get out safely before six to nine months,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sacramento still needs to be around to serve traffic.”Over the years, Musk had been faced many times with a choice between what he thought was necessary and what others told him was possible. The result was almost always the same. He paused in silence for a few moments, then announced, “You have 90 days to do it. If you can’t make that work, your resignation is accepted.”
The manager began to explain in detail some of the obstacles to relocating the servers to Portland. “It has different rack densities, different power densities,” she said. “So the rooms need to be upgraded.” She started to give a lot more details, but after a minute, Musk interrupted.
“This is making my brain hurt,” he said.
“I’m sorry, that was not my intention,” she replied in a measured monotone.
“Do you know the head-explosion emoji?” he asked her. “That’s what my head feels like right now. What a pile of f—ing bulls—. Jesus H f—ing Christ. Portland obviously has tons of room. It’s trivial to move servers one place to another.”
I've yet to see anything e-sports related that didn't look like a complete Mickey Mouse operation. At least in the English language world - I know StarCraft has had quite the run in South Korea, though its position in the culture at large often seems to be exaggerated.
My incredibly narrow view on the entirety of e sports is that people saw that Diago Justin Wong fight go viral and thought it was the beginning of unlimited profit.
"However dumb you might think Elon Musk is, you're wrong. It's so, so much worse than you thought."
I feel like we need a separate "Elon Was a Mistake" thread.
Cripes man. You could pull people of the street and a reasonable percentage of them would know moving servers is not trivial. And the ones who don't get it, would get it with minimal explanation.
If I was that lady, I'd be all "thanks for giving me 3 months notice, Elon. That's plenty of time to brush up my resume and get out from under your monumental clusterwankery"
I've yet to see anything e-sports related that didn't look like a complete Mickey Mouse operation. At least in the English language world - I know StarCraft has had quite the run in South Korea, though its position in the culture at large often seems to be exaggerated.
The Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Year 3 Championship last weekend was one of the coolest, most well organized, high quality broadcast, completely hype event with bananas storyline and plot that I’ve ever seen in a sporting event. ATL 28-3 levels of drama. Esports is great where the underlying game and format lends itself to being highly watchable. But every game is not an esports. Just like every service shouldn’t be a subscription service.
The language filter messes up the url. Changes the i in batsh*t
Revisiting this. Reddit may have "won" the battle, but are losing the war.
Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
I'm one of those left-and-not-coming-back users. Lemmy has enough activity to scratch some of those itches, but I just do less time wasting on these sorts of sites in general now.
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