Meta decided to launch its social media app as a direct competition to Twitter. The WSJ writes, “Let’s begin the battle.” Facebook parent Meta Platforms announced on Wednesday the launch of Threads. This standalone microblogging application is aimed directly at Twitter, as the unrest among users has increased since Elon Musk became CEO in October.”
Social media is gaining in popularity as a source of news and a way to shape opinion. This has a negative impact on traditional media. People are watching less TV, mainly older people. Pew Research Center reports that “almost half” of Americans already use social media to get their news. With the 2020 elections just around the corner it is important for Musk’s purchase of Twitter to be answered.
The phenomenon goes beyond confirming that social media is becoming more important for news. There are many pieces moving towards what could be called a “new information system” that has a far greater impact than the old tube. Social media, artificial intelligence and even crypto all combine in a way that is still not fully understood to create an emerging environment.
Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly tie it all together. The big players are aware that it will be an entirely new world. Meta’s entrance into the fray underscores just how important it has become.
Musk’s controversial limits on “extreme scraping” of data on Twitter could be seen as an attempt to stop bots from free-riding his platform and capturing sentiment analysis. Data scraping is the process of extracting information from a website into a database. Musk refuses to share the information gathered by others, even if it is analyzed by a dedicated data scraper.
Elon’s needs will go beyond defense. Zuckerberg could have a key advantage in the next contest if his artificial-intelligence investments are able to create an online metaverse. The metaverse can be viewed as a combination of gaming, productivity, ecommerce, extended reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, and social media.
It’s a good thing that Twitter and Threads are collaborating. This is an Alien vs Predator world. The founders were aware of this and relied on checks-and-balances. In a free government, the protection of civil rights should be the same for religious rights. In the first case, it is the multiplicity in interests. In the second, it is the multiplicity in sects. In both cases, the degree of security will depend on how many interests and sects there are.
Checks and Balances are a conflict, and they only offer the possibility of freedom and not its assurance. There are two types of people today. There are two types of people today: those who give up on life because it is meaningless, absurd, and impossible to fight Skynet, and those who pray, “Lord if your time has come let me die in an empty pile of digital brass.”
