Crowdfunding the purchase of Twitter

[asakiyume]

Now I know several of my friends on here have no interest in/actively dislike Twitter, but I do like it, so my thoughts these last few weeks have turned to 🎶How-do-you-solve-the-problem-of-the-owner.🎶

And I got to thinking, why not crowdfund a buyout? World's largest Kickstarter--$44 billion! Since Kickstarter doesn't take donated money unless the goal is met, and since $44 billion is not likely to be met, people could donate without worrying that it was a scam that was designed just to enrich whoever was behind the Kickstarter. And it would be a great gimmick, worthy of coverage on the news, especially if it picked up any steam at all.

And if it *did* pick up steam, then maybe serious organizations might consider for real whether they'd be willing to put money behind a serious attempt to revive the mortally wounded platform.

The money could be put in trust, only to be used to negotiate a purchase once a board of responsible people/organizations were in place to do the negotiations and run the future organization. There have to be some people who'd be interested who aren't nightmares--former employees of Twitter, maybe? And people who've been involved in running other social media platforms? And maybe people with interests in/experience with foundations or nonprofits?

But as I spun this fantasy out, I started thinking, If this effort got any coverage whatsoever, it would be two seconds before all my social media were hacked, my bank account drained, and vicious slanders and horrible things posted in my name or about me.

Well that doesn't sound great!

What if I did it anonymously? First thing would be to get a new email--I could do that through Duck Duck Go--they're always advertising about being super private. --One of my internal voices.

And how long do you think it would take the forces of the Dark Net to link that account to you? --A very skeptical other internal voice.

Not long, probably --The first one, sullen.

All things come to an end; maybe lots of decentralized, little social-media sites are, in the end, better --Yet another internal voice, one that's good at making backing down from grand plans sound not like timidity but like wisdom.

... Anyway, if I do launch discover someone has launched a kickstarter, I will let you know. ;-)

Comments

[boxofdelights]

You mean if *someone* (who is definitely not you) launches a Kickstarter.

[asakiyume]

Riiiiiiiight! That person with the Proton email account ;-)

[asakiyume]

Edited the entry!

[raven]

If someone were going to start a Kickstarter they would presumably be the initial trustee of the funds, and very large amounts of money passing through one's hands, even through a company one were a sole director of, would eventually attract attention and some careful thought should be given to how to avoid that. If one were one going to start a Kickstarter, of course.

[asakiyume]

I know *some* body gave it careful thought on a walk to the post office, but I have it from reliable sources that that person's knowledge of business law is about as great as the average breeze block's knowledge of business law (#NotAllBreezeBlocks).

The passive voice is useful in cases like this:

Perhaps a kickstarter should not be launched until the committee or board or whatever is already in place.

Oh gosh, now I can hear an internal voice whining about how this is why we never get to DO anything.

[queenoftheskies]

I would be curious to see the results once such a Kickstarter was announced on Twitter!

[asakiyume]

Who knows! Maybe one day you'll get the chance ;-)

[heleninwales]

I am sad about Twitter, though I rarely posted there. It's been very useful over the years for reading commentary on the news, seeing that protest are being organised etc. Also our local train provider posts about delays and problems. However, I much prefer Mastodon for actually chatting and sharing things with others. Because of the algorithms, when I posted to Twitter it felt like sending stuff into a void and I virtually never got liked or shared. I get much more real engagement on Mastodon.

[asakiyume]

I'm really happy to hear that! That's one thing that's good about a smaller, less capitalist-driven space, I think.

[amaebi]

When I first read your tweet about this, my too-long-for-Twitter thought was that you are, I think, getting at what has actually been the value of Twitter: what is golden about it is its role as a public service, strictly defined-- and public goods and services notoriously are not provided optimally by privately owned or for-profit entities.

What has been golden about Twitter has been its role as an easy-access conversation-and-listening place, where isolated people with common interests have been able to meet and create together, and others have been able to learn from them. Black Twitter is, in my view, its shining star. (It has of course and similarly been a toxic recruiting space for Nazis and white supremacists and such. Swings come with roundabouts.)

What characterizes a public good/service is that it's difficult, expensive, or impossible to exclude people from using/enjoying it (whether they pay or not).* Another characteristic of public goods and services is that increasing the number of users doesn't significantly lessen the quality of use for others. Consider highways (most of the time most places). The principle is, congestion isn't much of a thing.**

Those characteristics make it difficult to profit from providing goods or services that inherently possess them. They can be provided (usually at sub-optimal levels) by for-profit firms that are regulated by government or some other all-society-interest organization. Or they can be provided directly by government or some other all-society-interest non-profit entity.

People who have thought of Twitter as software are failing to understand its value, which is mostly crested moment-to-moment by the vast cloud of users.


* You can of course exclude people from Twitter (though sock puppets), but strong exclusionary fences would change the nature of the space and remove a lot of its public service power.
** Increasing numbers of Twitter users changed the nature of the space, and early adopters sometimes mourn knowing everyone. Toxic users of course damage the experience-- but that's not *numbers*, it's *nature*.

[asakiyume]

Yes--you've said it perfectly.

In the fantasy I spin that *doesn't* involve the hacking of my accounts, a group of committed people are brought together (that very useful passive voice again), with relevant skills, and they guide the setting up of a way to run Twitter as a nonprofit, like Wikipedia.

Something as big as Twitter would still need a-lot-a-lot of funds to pay for all the moderation, hardware, and energy required to run it. But there are many examples of huge nonprofits. I suspect all huge organizations in our world have problems (I think that goes along with the hugeness), but I'm sure there are some that are more or less ethical and more or less fiscally responsible--so that committed group would model their set-up on that.

[athenais]

I remember having similar fantasies about Livejournal, but couldn't imagine coping with the work it would take. And I still miss it in a very "wasn't life so different thirty years ago" way. I have never again found that kind of random meeting community, not at Twitter certainly although I value the 170 or so accounts I follow there as they are mostly artists, photographers and dress historians I would never have found otherwise.

[asakiyume]

I feel like the diminishing of Livejournal (LOL, sounds like Galadriel, saying she'll go into the West) happened just so much more slowly, and in the context not of actual forces out to destroy it but of other forms of social media attracting people. With Livejournal, I felt pointlessly frustrated in other users--that they weren't sticking around, that if they were, they weren't posting the same way they once were, etc. But of course I wasn't and didn't, either. I think what I didn't realize with LJ was times change and people change, in cyberspace as in 3D space, and just like the neighborhood you grew up in doesn't stay the same--and you don't stay the same--it's the same online. And that would be true for Twitter, too, even if Elon Musk hadn't come along. But what he's doing now just feels like vandalism, like killing a thing dead rather than letting it have its evolution and its twilight.

I think it's great though that you had similar fantasies about LJ. I guess the founders of Dreamwidth must have as well--and actually did the thing. Though of course Dreamwidth now is not like LJ was then. ** big evanescence-tinged sigh* But it's its own thing, and I'm glad to be here, have to say.

[yamamanama]

The best thing to happen to Livejournal would be the Russian version of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

[asakiyume]

I've closed the door on LJ, but for those still persevering, yes!

[yamamanama]

44 billion dollars seems unrealistic. But maybe Musk will cause Twitter's value to tank so badly, we could buy it for much much less.

[asakiyume]

I think that very well might be the case!

[light_of_summer]

This is a fascinating idea and comment thread—thanks!

Aside from the main point of your post (which is intriguing), I really like hearing about someone besides me who is habituated to having multiple internal voices.

If you ever decide you'd like some fairly serious exposure for the Buy Twitter Kickstarter idea, you might try sending it to copperbadge on tumblr, possibly for his regular weekly "Radio Free Monday" public service blog post. Last I heard, he had something like 20,000 followers, and he might get a kick out of the idea.

BUT! I will totally understand if you prefer not to spread the idea farther, because of the possible risks.

I wonder if the combination of making a new account and posting from somewhere like a public library internet station might be sufficient for preserving anonymity. I don't know. And I don't know who to ask about that.

I might possibly know someone who'd know someone who'd know about the business law questions—let me know if you'd like me to pursue such a connection, and, if so, whether you'd like me to link the first person in the potential contact chain to this blog post, or if you'd like me to float the general idea without identifying you in any way.

...This discussion about public good online makes me think back to the Community Memory Project, which I was peripherally associated with, back in the 1980s. (I was an employee of a for-profit software startup that was intended to benefit Community Memory. Like most startups, it didn't last too long, and I don't think it ever turned a profit. But I learned—and was exposed to—a lot, there. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article linked above has only the barest reference to CM after the 1970s, and none at all to the failed startup that was intended to benefit it. I wonder if the omission was on purpose, or if the wiki page's content suppliers just didn't know about the later happenings.)

[asakiyume]

Oh wow, thank you! This is exactly the sort of synergy I was daydreaming of having--that I would post this, and precisely, someone like you would come along who had connections and one thing would lead to another.

I don't know yet if I will really pursue it... I like the story pursuing it makes in my head, but my real lived life is pretty full, and do I really want to take from other things I enjoy to do this? In the story in my head, the protagonist's time is more flexible--it stretches to accommodate things like a massive Kickstarter.