• GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    I just had a funny thought.

    So on one hand you have the accelerated pace of enshitification brought to you by AI on top of the existing enshitification.

    On the other hand you have these website companies whose entire goal is to get big and sell to the giants, bringing with them their hot new user base and data.

    Together that means that by the time a website is “big enough” to do a buyout a portion of the user base is already bots and AI content and that will only increase.

    Eventually meta or whoever will buy some site that is already functionally worthless. Trading ghost towns. Racing to catch the thin film of actual human users and content that is on the margins, itself racing to escape the grey goo of AI bullshit consuming everything in their wake like the Langoliers

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 days ago

        It’s the only logical solution for the user at this point. The other “services” are so deteriorated with ads you can’t even call them that without denying your lying eyes.

        If I buy a box of 100 pens and it has 1 pen and 99 bananas I didn’t buy a box of fucking pens no matter what happened during the exchange ritual. Eventually people will have that same moment for all these websites where they realize whatever they were there to find isn’t there.

        • Red_October [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 days ago

          Hmm. All this talk of pens and bananas is giving me an idea. I’m trying to be a UX/UI designer right now. Maybe we could make alternate, secure versions of every popular social media app but change them just enough to not get sued.

          We could even bring back myspace… if we wanted…

    • DogThatWentGorp [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 days ago

      Bit idea: company that promises social media firms more convincingly human bot users for the express purposes of making advertisment and data selling seem more valuable…

      …shit that’s what this whole thing has been for like the last decade or so huh? I’m sure that’s not a bubble waiting to burst. There certainly won’t be some kind of controversy about social media data being totally fucking useless in the next few years because it turns out like 80% of the user base wasn’t real for who knows how long.

      Watch it pop off because of the coming AI bust that will suspiciously lower social media engagement by double decimal percents overnight, thus triggering an fcc investigation because it would be an issue that effects primarily investors.

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 days ago

        …shit that’s what this whole thing has been for like the last decade or so huh?

        yea

        I was a young man when Steve Jobs came out looking sickly and apple stock immediately took a hit and it was then I realized this is all a stupid hype game for lanyarded dipshits

    • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 days ago

      Ah, but a company like Meta doesn’t care whether a site is all bots so long as advertisers still pay for ad buys. Crashing this particular market requires advertisers to be aware of how worthless Meta ads are (they are already pretty worthless but companies keep buying them!).

  • SchillMenaker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    I looked up the valuation and I found around $30 Billion? That’s a fucking joke. In the era of wildly inflated assets and tech valuations the overwhelmingly most popular social media platform should be worth at least 10x that even if it is only US operations.

    • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 days ago

      Twitter was sold for $44B. So yeah the US side of TikTok which is WAY larger (and can actually sell ads!) than Twitter ever was and certainly larger than Twitter is now/ever will be with South African Farce Hitler in charge. $440B sounds correct in today’s “valuations are made up and the dollars don’t matter” economy. Meta is valued at $500B+ even though facebook is and has been dead for years now. They still have IG which is way smaller in usage compared to TikTok. In the US anyway and as far as I’m aware.

  • userofnames [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    the stuff was already running through oracle servers iirc, so it makes sense in that way. ellison is 100% a cia stooge cutout guy so i think the intelligence community is goood with all this. i still don’t understand why china would agree to this, maybe to keep good grace or something

  • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Wait so this is actually happening? I thought China would hold out forever. Doesn’t their legislative body or a committee get a say in this? I guess they aren’t handing over the algo, just kind of selling the name and user base. Or maybe they are selling the algo?

    I hope that Chinese people decide not to sell. That would be a great way to show that their country is actually democratic and not controlled by capitalists.

    That sucks if it happens though. I hope someone makes a new app that uses the original algorithm.

  • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    It’s still unclear to me exactly what the deal is here.

    So it -sounds- like they’re only selling US operations and will retain a global app version and operations which are under the ownership and control of non-US ownership but there will be a brand new app which people have to move to which will have some version of the algorithm.

    I guess I’m curious then if the algorithm is being licensed to them or if they’re buying it outright and global tiktok will rent it back and this might give CIA ghouls direct control of that to influence the global version of tiktok or what is going on there. Just how independent and separate is say Tiktok in France or Russia or Vietnam going to be from this new US control? Does this mean kicking out the zionist ghouls from the new global structure and sending them over to the US one or do they stay there censoring pro-Palestinian content?

    • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      It does seem like the intent is to create a siloed American TikTok. Conservative media mogules know it’s easier to control the narrative when you cut off outside perspectives.