But Musk is not alone in that or even the first. In 2019 Zuckerberg planned the same for Facebook with the introduction of the crypto-currency Libra.²
At that time Libra seemed to have gone nowhere as Visa, Mastercard, ebay, and PayPal pulled out of Libra project in 2019.³
Still, the fintech Libra Networks was registered in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2019 for Facebook (2,5 billion users in 2019) and its subsidaries Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger (each about 1 billion users).⁴
So the difference seems to be that whereas Zuckerberg in 2019 tried to establish financial services based on crypto-currency throughout his platforms, it is not clear whether Musk wants to rely on crypto as well (as crypto was one major reason the aforementioned Visa, Masertcard, PayPal pulled out of Libra).
But both projects planned to become an "online bank" of sorts. With the difference that as a fintech, by siphoning off user data, data of purchases, and behavioural statistics no bank is allowed to do, they can create financial products much faster and distribute them via their platofrms far more widespread than any bank could.⁵
In fact, back in 2019 Zuckerberg didn't seem to realise but Musk now does seem to understand that both platforms are not or are no longer in the ad-business but in the online banking business. That is: Hitherto both platforms thought of their business as creating profits by selling ads to users who in exchange for their eyballs are permitted the free use of these platforms. But should the transition from ad-business to fintech prove successful, this will have major impact on the global financial markets and banking sector -- up to the default of major banks.
Obviously, the syphoining-off of behavioural user data is not only relevant in the financial and banking sector but in all areas where "prediction products" can contribute to manufactoring, product development, AI training, purchasing optimzation, etc. These "prediction products" can even themselves be traded in what Shoshana Zuboff has called the "behavioural futures markets".
Combine state surveillance with capitalist surveillance, and the separation of people in two groups (the more or less hapless customer-citizens on the one hand and the unaccountable producer-citizens on the other) has significant consequences on democracy as "asymmetries of knowledge translates into asymmetries of power".⁶
But even without the societal and political ramifications, the economic and financial look most impactful. No wonder that Musk expects Twitter/X to "be ultimately extremely valuable"¹ And it may explain why Zuckerberg shows interest in the #fediverse. He who creates the first global "banking app" will rule the field. A pretty dire development from the days when m-pesa was created to link African agricultal communities an dcustomers in 2007.⁷
One hundred million downloads & signups, but I wonder how many have posted at least once. I'd like to see their monthly active users number when it comes out.
#Meta / #Facebook is building a #Twitter clone under their #Instagram brand. Apparently, there's discussion of various #ActivityPub #Fediverse projects' lead developers signing an NDA and having discussions with them.
The participants appear to be deleting evidence.
I'm not spinning a conspiracy theory. I just don't think Gargron or Dansup have any idea what kinds of restrictions an NDA can contain. They risk long-term damage to their projects and some impact on their careers.
So is it just #Reddit or all of surveillance capitalism following #Twitter lead to charge for the open API access that had empowered their adoption? #lemmy#fediverse
♲ @kixik@lemmy.ml:
Reddit will begin charging for access to its API
Not sure how that will affect libreddit or teddit. That'd would prevent me to get some news on specific channels, which when interesting enough, I brought to lemmy, 😀
@clacke I was here in 2009, so it was still early days, but apparently not as early as it felt. For example, the former Twitter employee who created some of the standards that Identica and StatusNet used (including at least one that Mastodon still uses) was unknown to me. I remember hearing about #Twitter plans to federate with #Identica, but I was not aware that they had sent at least one message across networks before deciding to go toward the walled garden model.
This "WeChat does everything" idea sounds similar to what App dot Net was trying to do. If I recall correctly, ADN was supposed to be a support layer where different things could ride atop. They built their microblogging thing and I think there were a few alpha products being built, but they ran out of funds. I think partly because their biggest product was the microblogging site, and it was mostly a smaller and paid version of #Twitter ... it is hard to gain enough paying customers for the same thing that a larger zero-price competitor offers.
So let's say Twitter goes 100% paid, will they still be the world's leading source for news and information? I cannot answer, but I don't expect to be among their customer base.
From 2022-09: Forbes co-sponsored a session for decentralized socnets ... included some early #Twitter builders
Article's writer clearly didn't have good sources for some things, though. For example, there were "more than 40" #Mastodon instances. I'm positive there were more than 4000 at the time.
Manchmal schießt es aus sehr unerwarteten Ecken gegen #Twitter. Das bayrische Landesamt für neue Medien prüft nun, ob Twitter gegen den Medienstaatsvertrag verstoßen hat, weil Tweets von #Musk massiv priorisiert werden. www.blm.de/infothek/pressemitt…