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Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk. That’s all I see in technology media these days. Will the Tesla and SpaceX CEO close the deal and buy Twitter? Will he somehow wriggle out of it? What brain fart will he tweet that will be treated as serious because he’s very, very, very rich?
Keen-eyed readers may have picked up a note of boredom or frustration with the endless coverage of the guy in my introduction. (Feels like we learned nothing from the endless coverage of Trump’s tweets.) I am, however, very interested to see what he might do to Twitter if he buys it.
The New York Times’ Kevin Roose has six predictions about how the company would change under his ownership. Some of his previously floated ideas involve making algorithms open source (if this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry, it doesn’t make much sense to anyone else either) and deleting fewer posts (hope you like harassment and hate speech!). These aren’t good ideas but they’re at least fascinating from a huh, I wonder exactly how that will ruin things kind of a way.
Assuming Musk buys Twitter — and the eggheads who know this stuff seem to think that’ll be the end result, given that he signed a pretty airtight agreement to buy the company — I think the purchase will be viewed as one of the events that mark the end of the current era of social media platforms and the ascendance of a new one.
For the past decade and a half, give or take, the dominant social media products have been arranged around the public, shared platforms. With platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, all the users exist in the same space, more or less. In some ways, this seems like the normal way of doing business on the internet — similar to visiting a website.
But in another way, it’s pretty unusual when you consider the majority of humans throughout history have socialised in private ways. Like, if I give you a call, I would assume that we’d be the only ones listening (unless you get viciously Mean Girls’d).
This era of social media was built around encouraging people to socialise publicly. Hell, remember when Facebook’s major way of communicating was writing on people’s profile walls? This way of communication is great for platforms — there’s nothing more interesting than seeing what other people are saying or doing — but less good for people who need to consider how each audience (your friends, your family, your future boss, bad faith actors taking stuff out of context).
The downsides of this approach are real. There’s a famous tweet by @maplecocaine: “Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it”. When someone’s post goes viral for the wrong reasons, it’s often because they didn’t consider what would happen if 10 million people saw it rather than their usual 300 followers. Sure, they might have a dogshit take but let’s be honest: we’ve all had stinkers from time to time and it shouldn’t mean that our family gets death threats.
Anyway, now Twitter might be drastically changing its products in a way that makes me very pessimistic about its future. Facebook looks like it’s dying as it sheds users. I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram follows a very similar pathway soon.
Instead people are spending time on the new tech juggernaut TikTok; messaging apps like WhatsApp, Meta’s Messenger and Snapchat; chat platforms such as Discord (like Slack but for fun!); and the most recent buzzy app BeReal. These are all very different, but what they have in common is that all but one are “dark social” — platforms where social interactions are invisible to the public. Instead of being out in the open plains of social media, people are retreating to online enclaves with curated communities and individuals.
The only exception is TikTok, but I believe that the Chinese short video app is so algorithmically driven that it’s essentially private. The main user experience of TikTok is viewing whatever videos get served to you by the platform’s algorithm. Following someone’s account barely matters as a large proportion of the videos served to a user are from accounts that a user doesn’t already follow. In fact, TikTok is actively taking steps to move away from a shared platform experience — they got rid of a “Discover” tab in the app that would show trending hashtags and sounds. There’s no shared TikTok experience.
These trends aren’t new. Many of the platforms mentioned have incorporated some dark social features, like Instagram’s disappearing Stories. But it’s my belief that we’re really hitting the tipping point now. With social media, momentum can move quickly. Myspace went from the top perch to obscurity before most of us could blink. I think we will look back at this period as the moment it all changed.
Hyperlinks
Tell us what data you had leaked and we’ll show how a scammer can ruin your life
I had a lot of fun making this interactive demonstrating how someone can use a data breach to cause a lot of headaches. (Crikey)
ATO ‘influencer tax’ crackdown on celebrity endorsements
A technical yet interesting change that could have a decent impact on the way influencers do tax. (SmartCompany)
Optus says it needed to keep identity data for six years. But did it really?
In the fallout of the Optus leak, the company claimed it was legally required to retain the amount of data it held. But that’s likely not entirely true. (The Conversation)
Attorney-general warns politicians after confirming integrity commission could access encrypted texts on WhatsApp and Signal
The tech angle on the federal anti-corruption commission story. (ABC)
A YouTuber is trying to claim an expensive video game weapon as a tax deduction
I’m imagining an ATO boffin shaking their head, trying to understand whether a collector’s phlogistinator is directly related to this person’s income or not. (Crikey)
That’s it for WebCam this week! I’m off for the new few weeks, so you won’t be getting a WebCam or two (hope you don’t miss me too much). In the meantime, you can find more of my writing here. And if you have any tips or story ideas, here are a few ways you can get in touch.
