Summary
Stephen King announced his departure from X (formerly Twitter), calling the platform “too toxic” and urging followers to join him on Threads.
King has frequently clashed with X owner Elon Musk over verification charges and political disputes, including Musk’s support for Donald Trump.
Other entities, including The Guardian, German football club St Pauli, and actor Jamie Lee Curtis, have also left the platform, citing concerns over toxic content, misinformation, and hate speech.
Rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky are gaining traction, with Bluesky reporting nearly 15 million users globally.
I have many different accounts for some time. People like King thought they definitely wail for Musk to end. BlueSky had not reached the number of users, and types, to make it interesting and useful. In the end, for apps like Mastedon, this is the driver for popularity. Bluesky is much better now, though still missing some types of feeds
Better late than never for all of these people, I guess.
Sunk cost fallacy hits people hard.
I wish people would have left earlier as well, but it’s not just sunk cost fallacy. Network effects are a rational reason to stay, and that’s the issue. If he has a community, he loses the community. I get it.
That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once - it’s far more likely their network will follow them in that case, both hurting X more and helping themselves more, and accelerating people leaving as the network diminishes on X.
The physics metaphor applies pretty directly here: They need to create momentum to counteract inertia.
Big celebrities won’t really be hurt by moving. It’s the small and medium names.
That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once
I think that’s a herding cats issue. Especially when you’re dealing with a bunch of people with big egos. But it would be nice.
Yes, you maybe need a “bandwagon” or some FOMO. Other psychology crap like that.
SAG making a push for union members to leave it would definitely help.
Not a terrible idea. I wonder what Fran Drescher’s position on the election is? I’m betting she’s not a big Elon fan as a union president.
You hear that, @frandrescher? Head over to Bluesky and/or Mastodon and take your minions with you!
Note: I have no idea how to Twitter.
Yeah, for sure. But there’s been trends set off without explicit coordination in the past, especially where there’s an unspoken, unacknowledged pressure built up over time.
I suspect many both celebs and normies are ready to leave, and they’re waiting for an excuse, a signal that they won’t be leaving alone and losing those networks. If Taylor Swift does it, and then some movie star follows, and so on, it can organically cascade.
Sunk cost fallacy hits people hard.
It’s true. I never deleted my reddit posts and comments because I spent like 13 years with that account. A part of my brain says “don’t delete those, you might need them later.” It’s like a natural hording instinct.
A year ago that might have meant something. Now it’s too late.
He has a Bluesky account already, and has posted…some.
Everyone I’ve seen (mostly in the tech space) seems to say that Threads feels soulless. I follow a few people there from my Masto account (yay, federation), and that’s all fine and dandy. But I don’t know if I’d trust Zuck in the long run since he already seems to be kissing the ring.
Yes, kissing the ring for sure. I knew Zuck was gone as soon as he called Trump “badass” and that he “couldn’t vote for a democrat” after the first assassination attempt.
Dude stood there and by his luck the bullet missed. This wasn’t some courageous action, this was “standing there until the secret service tackled me.” What exactly was “badass” about it?
But you see raising his fist for applause was totally not narcissistic and was actually retroactive courage!!
Good guy St. Pauli. They are also currently transforming into a co-op which is unique in German soccer. TRAILBLAZERS!
Is saying “Oh boy, he’s really not the looker, is he?” toxic enough for you guys to send me off to X?
King? He makes his money from knowing how to use words not how to use plastic surgeons.
It’s tailored for your feed based on what you interact with. It’s a mirror my friend, you are toxic.
I never interact with political shit. Why was my feed all political shit? So naturally I deleted my account.
Nop its not a mirror twitter algorithm favor post with the most interactions and where there is the more debate . so twitter IS by default toxic.
A mirror of society maybe
I’ve been calling it the Roman numeral for ten site formerly known as twitter. Are people just abbreviating this to ‘X’ now?
Formerly known as? It’s still twitter.
I’ve just been calling it twitter
I’ll never deadname a person, but I’ll deadname the shit out of a bigoted transphobic crybaby billionaire’s shitty website.
Should I not be calling it “trans”?
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37394/why-do-some-words-have-x-as-a-substitute
Just make “X” catch on as a popular Euphemism for “Trans.”
Please don’t, thanks
Merry transmas.
I’ve been calling it Xitter, the X is pronounced sh
Yep, and each post is a Xit, still pronounced with the mandarin X.
Each post that goes viral is poppin’.
If it really blows up it’s BACKNE and it’s POPPIN’!
But the best xits are all BLOWING THE FUCK UP!
Whole place was covered in pus! means EVERYONE popped it. To pop a xit is to share a post.
Gah. Hep me loard.
The mandarin X is pronounced similar to SH pronunciation in English.
Like Xiaomi is pronounced “Show me”
So Xitter and Xit are not pronounced with the Z sound you are thinking.
Xitter! It’s poppin’!
Twitter to Threads is like leaving Derry for Jerusalem’s Lot.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Good for him, though, he’s trying.
Hey, I get these references!
So it’s like moving from Salem’s Lot to a house near the town of Ludlow, along a busy highway with a pet cemetery nearby?
Anything but Mastodon/Activitypub, eh? These fellas rlly love sucking on corporate dicks, don’t they
Mastodon is a far worse experience than Twitter and Bluesky, it’s not a 1:1 transition.
Attitudes like yours certainly isn’t attracting any new users…
Sure, but he’s not wrong. I’ll never get why people love to rail again corporations and enshittification while using those sites.
It really boggles my mind the cognitive dissonance of everybody constantly complaining about corporations screwing them over, then refusing to use the obvious solution to their problems.
I can absolutely believe that an old guy like Stephen King has never even heard of Mastodon. It’s not like there’s a big Mastodon PR team being paid to advertise its existence.
I can totally believe that he didn’t know about mastodon, but even Bluesky is like a reasonable platform. Threads… I see literally no upside to using threads. It’s on a timer from the beginning to turn into another X. Just look at how long Facebook has been a cesspool of Nazi propaganda.
I’ve been using Bluesky for a couple of days and I honestly think it’s okay. I’m not big on microblogging in general, but I can follow just my long-distance friends and no one else and only have to see other people’s crap if one of my friends shares it. So that’s nice. My only issue with Mastodon was one of the same ones I had with Twitter- if I followed people I was interested in but didn’t know, my feed just got too busy for me.
But that seems to work for a lot of people?
Mastodon is like Costco. They don’t advertise much.
Lemmy is definitely its own little bubble. People here really misestimate the average person’s exposure to tech news or how much they can understand or care about operating systems and distributed protocols.
You’re all in here shouting about this to eachother and nobody hears you.
Do you think people on Lemmy talking about Linux are trying to court non-tech people? It’s a discussion board, and it has communities for discussion of Linux. What do you think you’ll find when you go there?
That’s right, people discussing Linux. Wild.
I dont think that at all. I think when people ask “why not mastodon” it’s coming from a place of misconception. Their own exposure to this knowledge and information is disproportionately higher than the world average, but it’s so much higher they can’t really comprehend how low the average is.
Much like a billionaire thinks a banana costs $10, a lemmy user thinks people know about mastodon at all.
Yeah like the average person has never heard of enshitification. It’s not even an established concept in their mind.
They may have a vague sense that things are getting shittier on the big platforms, but probably don’t even consider smaller platforms or decentralization as solutions
Someone should tell him
Good point. Does anyone know an animator? I’ll write some promotional material.
Or sometimes the PR team of niche and new tech are a bunch of insufferable twats.
Look, this time Leopards Multiglobal, Inc will not eat our faces!
We’re here for fun. Celebs are on social media as part of their brand. It’s them doing business, and they’re going to use what the feel will reach the largest audience with the least effort on their part, and something with corporate backing likely has customer support for moderation, hacking, and whatever else. They’re not here for a digital revolution, they’re here to keep their name and income stream out there.
I imagine it’s the same reasoning why a business will pay for Red Hat when they could run Linux for free. It may or may not be the best option, but they feel it offers tangible benefits.
This is absolutely correct. And these businesses are typically paying employees to manage these social accounts so there is financial risk with choosing one that’s not going to result in revenue. Why market on a platform with no audience or backing?
I’m not saying I like it, but that is indeed now things work.
Yup, I just replied to another comment, what’s so bad about having a place that’s just regular people? I enjoy having my comments actually read here and getting to know some of you to some level. I’d lose interest in this place if it turned into new Twitter. I can’t compete with Taylor or Beyonce or whoever the flavor of the week is. We can have both platforms if we so choose, so why wreck one for the sake of another?
Although federated social media has the “chicken or egg” problem with content and attracting users, I’m content with places like Lemmy and Mastodon staying the small size they are right now for a little longer.
Sure, I definitely miss content from other platforms from time to time. But I think your comment about businesses and celebrities rings true. I’m happy to be clear of the grifters and influencers for as long as possible.
Exactly. For all the things that typically get complained about: one product trying to do everything, people coming in to monetize things, feeling like your voice gets lost in oceans of comments, it seems like people forget that when it comes to the Fediverse.
The same guys that spent all that time being mad about potential federation with Threads are mad that this place isn’t going to be Twitter 2.0? It doesn’t make sense to me. If you want ads and celebs, go see them at their place. Keeping this just place us regular people doesn’t need to be a negative. There’s room for both.
Well, if the corporatized platforms all went to federated instances, it’d be a lot easier to pack up and move to a different platform, or fix the existing platform by choosing different instances. It would make those platforms better and we would probably still have our own spaces either using different protocols, or different clusters of instances who only federate with each other.
Threads being federated is not them actually trying to be federated, but trying to EEE the open competition, and I think that is more of a threat to us than people joining mastodon.
Edit: I’m realizing that I’m kind of contradicting myself here lol
There is a slight learning curve to Mastodon. Is there a method for verifying accounts? Honest question there. I signed up for Mastodon years ago but I used it as often as I used Twitter which is to say never.
Why wouldn’t they want to join this place and be called bootlickers for moderate policy take by some screaming communist from a .ml? Sounds like a great time to me! Getting yelled at by flying squid twice a day is a joy!
This place is primarily made up of a ton anarchist and communists screaming and spreading their own bullshit. Centrist and and less progressive folks are commonly shouted at, called bootlickers, or Nazis for relatively centrrist views.
Mods and admins are far less balanced than reddit or pre x Twitter as well. LWis about to as close to center as you can get and it’s quite obvious.
StarTrek.website recently defederated from hexbear and we got called names too. I’d say our instance is pretty well balanced and small.
What do you mean when you say “this place”? Because Lemmy is decentralized, and it can vary wildly by instance and community.
LW. The only instance really even close to supporting commercial needs. I may be missing a few snale ones but LWis the most “normal” for lack of a better description.
LW?
It’s still small, so the whole platform still feels like one of the larger reddit subs. The same people show up everywhere, and if you want to create a niche community, you’ll go months without seeing any posts.
It was 10 years ago.
People just want to be smug now cause it’s the cool thing to do.
Bro should’ve went to Mastodon.
Sai King has left Twitter, so he has.
If you’re on Bluesky, maybe bombarding him with followers there would shift him in that direction https://bsky.app/profile/stephenking.bsky.social
Edit: For the record…
https://www.threads.net/@stephenking 268K followers
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenking.bsky.social 223.9K followers
https://x.com/StephenKing 7M FollowersDrat, this Tower’s level
I did get a warning to not engage in level hopping, which is why I must emphasize not to do so again
