The unfolding twitter.com disaster

A few clients have asked for my views on Twitter and Mastodon, so here they are in one place.

Should I be worried about what’s happening at Twitter?

The short answer is yes, for a few reasons, all underpinned by a simple fact. Elon Musk paid $44bn for Twitter, when independent estimates placed the value at more like $20bn, and it seems to have plummeted to around $8bn since then. They have a significant revenue and debt problem, with advertisers pulling away in droves (see below). Twitter is going through a period of significant layoffs, and very poorly-thought-through experimentation, leading to several major issues already and almost certainly more to come. But the main issues for a company today are:

1. Ability to impersonate. Twitter used to have a verification process to help established organisations demonstrate who they were. That’s been torn up, and now anyone can ‘buy’ verification for $8 a month. The net result is that anyone can pretend to be anyone, with predictable results:

That prank cost $8 (to get the white tick mark you can see). There’s more where that came from. Twitter is now trying to backtrack on this approach, and formerly verified users are getting their status back, but the problem isn’t going away just yet. Musk has to extract significant amounts of money from people and companies somehow.

2. Trusted space. Musk has repeatedly emphasised his belief in freedom of speech, even hinting at maybe letting Donald Trump back onto the platform, and his arrival at Twitter has coincided with a massive increase in racist, homophobic and violent content. Advertisers can’t risk being associated with this, and so they’re pulling out. Trust is such an important part of any social network - the best way I’ve heard it described is that “moderation is the product”, and as trust is in seemingly terminal decline I can’t see this being fixed with Musk in charge, as he seems unlikely to backtrack on his decisions and principles.

3. Doubling down. In the face of a catastrophic drop in revenue, most companies would quickly backtrack and try to make amends. But Musk ain’t most companies. He seems committed to the decisions that have led him here, and even if there was an about-face he’s fired a lot of the people who can actually reverse the course, and begged some of them to come back. As of today, Saturday 12th November, it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. As a long time user of Twitter myself, I will take the optimistic view and hope that Musk eventually sells Twitter - no doubt at a massive loss - to a new owner who has a more positive vision of where the product can go, coupled with the ability to attract the kind of talent that can get it there. But no-one knows for sure.

So where’s everyone going?

Hard to say without having all the different platform stats to hand, but from my standpoint (admittedly part of the tech community) I’m seeing a few people re-focus on Instagram, a few head back to Tumblr and a lot move across to Mastodon. None of these are quite the same as Twitter, but…

Hold on, back up. I’ve heard a lot about Mastodon. What’s that about?

The best way to think about Mastodon is that it’s a collection of connected Twitters. Anyone can download the code and create their own version of Mastodon on their own server, and connect it with the others. Any user on any Mastodon server can follow updates from any other user on any other server (subject to moderation). My username on Mastodon is @Casablanca@mastodon.cloud, because I secured the @Casablana username on the @mastodon.cloud instance a while back. I’ve been happily following whomever I like.

OK, so Twitter hasn’t exactly ended up in a good place. How do we know what will happen to Mastodon?

Each copy of Mastodon has their own server administrator who can configure their server as needed. This is where it gets nerdy and interesting. A server admin can decide to remove individuals from their own server (like Twitter did with Trump), but can also hamper access to users on other servers. They can even block entire servers - for example, if there was a server full of nazis. Server admins have the power, pressure and responsibility to make the experience as good as possible for their users, whilst also making sure these same users behave themselves by enforcing whatever rules they think are necessary to keep the peace.

Many of the server admins are going to great lengths to declare their moderation policies so they can quickly squash inappropriate behaviour. And as they’re generally not being influenced by advertisers, or having to generate huge amounts of revenue for shareholders, they can operate independently. Of course, given that anyone can create a Mastodon server we can expect to see the same rapid period of social experimentation that we saw on Twitter. Newcomers can and probably will fall a-foul of written and unwritten rules.

So, in theory, we have a system of carrots and sticks and checks and balances that could lead to the best ever social network…

How’s it working out so far?

Y’know, it really isn’t bad at all. There’s an official Mastodon app, and a few unofficial ones, and while they’re not as good as my preferred Twitter app (Tweetbot) they’ll do for now (Update 9 Feb 23: the makers of Tweetbot have now created a version for Mastodon called Ivory, and it is brilliant). But most importantly, I can tell you that the vibe is generally very positive. In fact, it’s highly reminiscent of Twitter circa March 2007, when I first joined - friendly, positive, left-leaning, progressive folks, very little in the way of commercial activity or politics. My Mastodon account has been a little slow at times, I couldn’t upload a photo at one point, but those who remember the Fail Whale will hopefully forgive the server admins as they do their utmost to cope with a massive influx of new traffic and people to moderate.

I’m still on Twitter by the way (Update 23 Feb 23: not there anymore), and suspect a lot of new people on Mastodon are simply hedging their bets in case Twitter collapses in on itself rather than going all-in at this point. And there are still plenty of people on Twitter who aren’t on Mastodon yet. But there are some celebrities (like Stephen Fry) who have made the jump across. And yet others (like James Gunn) who have set up a parallel account on Mastodon attracting over 7,000 followers with him. Could be we’re approaching a tipping point.

Right. So what should I do next.

The situation at Twitter is unpredictable and fast moving. I think it makes sense for companies and individuals on Twitter to find a home on Mastodon quickly, partly to secure the user name they want, but also as insurance in case Twitter bites the dust. One big downside of Mastodon is that it’s hard (not impossible) to find your friends unless you know their username, and even then you can’t do it in bulk. There are tools such DeBirdify that search through your Twitter followers to find people with Mastodon accounts in their twitter bios, but of course that only works if they’ve joined Mastodon and posted their Mastodon account there (Update 23 Feb 2023: now that Twitter has disabled third party apps from using their APIs, most of these tools have stopped working).

My candid advice for individuals on Twitter is to create a Mastodon account quickly, and publish that account on your Twitter feed and in your bio. It’ll help your friends find you if things head South. And then start hanging out there anyway to discover the vibe for yourself.

My advice for companies is to landgrab their company name on the main Mastodon servers as soon as possible. This is to reduce the risk later on that Mastodon becomes the dominant service, in which case you’ll want to lay claim to your name - just as with URLs, and more traditional social networks. You can point multiple Mastodon server names at the ‘one true’ account in the future if need be.

But which server do I choose?

This has been one of the biggest blockers for people joining Mastodon. It’s hard to choose the best server and, in many cases, the most popular servers have disabled new account creation as they come to terms with the volume of traffic.

If you’re a company, you might have some luck reaching out to a server admin to offer financial support in exchange for the account name you want. And you might even consider spinning up your own Mastodon server, for you and your customers…! I’m happy to give you some pointers if you want to drop me a line.

For everyone else, it really is just a case of trial and error - keep looking and persisting, and eventually you’ll find a cool home to make your own. You can move your account easily later on if need be.

Start here. Have fun!