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  • mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
    May 10, 2026, 4:25 AM

    @osma @nomdeb @benroyce

    Didn't work *for you*. Twitter worked great for the Black people that finally had an outlet for highlighting racism.

    And advertiser model or no editorial board, are not what made Twitter vulnerable to a fascist takeover. What made Twitter vulnerable to a fascist takeover was the fact that one of the world's fashiest dudes was rich enough to buy Twitter on a whim. Billionaires can and have bought newspapers on a whim too.

    I agree that Mastodon isn't as vulnerable to billionaire drunk purchases, as there are too many little pieces to buy. It's like squeezing jello. But again, by percentage, there are more fascists on the Fediverse than on Twitter, and it's not particularly close. And the abuse Black people experience on the Fediverse is worse than on Twitter and in other places. The Fediverse isn't magic.

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Replies

  • Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦osma@mas.to
    May 10, 2026, 5:25 AM

    I said nothing about whether it worked for *me*, or for Black people. It didn't *work*. They couldn't make it profitable enough to be protected from a fascist takeover.

    I also said nothing about the moderation models of fedi. This place has a LOT of designed-in issues, which I've not been shy to talk about.
    @mekkaokereke @nomdeb @benroyce

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  • mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
    May 10, 2026, 5:58 AM

    @osma @nomdeb @benroyce

    If the definition of "work" that you are using is "profitable enough to prevent a fascist takeover," then no publicly traded company can work. So it's a statement more on capitalism and publicly trade companies than about Twitter in particular.

    Maybe that's the point that you're making? You're focusing on the attractiveness of a centralized target?

    I'm not trying to be argumentative. I think we agree on most of it, but I want to make sure that I understand you correctly.

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  • Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦osma@mas.to
    May 10, 2026, 7:12 AM

    I could name a number of long-term profitable publicly traded companies that have been able to avoid (as well as resist, and even actively block) takeovers. Nevertheless, in the case of Twitter, that is a sidetrack. Over its history, Twitter was a capital-destroying enterprise, yet because it was a media, with ability to excert editorial control over content, it was attractive for those who seek such control - eg, fascists. That's the nature of most media.
    @mekkaokereke @nomdeb @benroyce

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  • Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦osma@mas.to
    May 10, 2026, 7:22 AM

    To be clear, my argument is not that centralized enterprise is necessarily bad, or that capitalism is necessarily bad, or that technology is. But what is bad, every time, is allowing *anyone*, whether that's Elon, Orban, Goebbels or the New York Times, to excert editorial control over the public (social) conversation. There must never be one "town square". Media MUST be a collection of competing voices.
    @mekkaokereke @nomdeb @benroyce

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  • mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
    May 10, 2026, 5:48 PM

    @osma @nomdeb @benroyce

    Profitability cannot stop a fascist takeover. Only valuation can. If a publicly traded company gets a takeover offer large enough, they have a fiduciary responsibility to consider it. They will probably have to put it to the board. If the board says yes, then they have to sell.

    The main way a publicly traded company can avoid this, is by making themselves more expensive so that they don't get an offer. Puffer fish are harder to swallow. KKR stuff.

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  • mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
    May 10, 2026, 8:45 PM

    @osma

    First of all, this is my thread, and my mentions. I decide what's main track and sidetrack.

    Now that we've cleared that up: the fact that Twitter was effective for combating the harms that I want to talk about are important to me. Mastodon is not effective at those things, because there are not enough Black people here. But there could be.

    Mastodon not being attractive as an acquisition target has nothing to do with whether or not there is or is not algorithmic content viewership here or editorial control. It is because even if there were 1000 algorithms and 1000 editors, they would all be independently owned. We agree on the decentralized point. I've already said that.

    But we don't agree on what makes a platform vulnerable to fascist takeover.

    As in, even if every major instance on Mastodon agreed to a single editor standard tomorrow, it would still not be as vulnerable as Twitter, because everyone could switch away from that the day after if they chose to. And because Mastodon is not a publicly traded company with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder returns.

    If I email Eugen and Renaud tomorrow, and show them definitive proof that Mastodon is unlikely to generate $10B over the next 5 years, but that if he takes my $10B, me and my fashy friends will return that to shareholders within 2 years, Renaud can just laugh in my face, tell me to get stuffed, and block my number. He won't be sued later for not considering the offer. This has nothing to do with Mastodon being a media or not.

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  • Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦osma@mas.to
    May 10, 2026, 11:57 PM

    Okay then. Do you know how many times in its history was Twitter able to post a positive earnings result and how much capital it destroyed while publicly listed?

    Twice in ten years and approx - 1.8 billion $. That's what made it vulnerable. No one wanted to compete with Elon's ketamine induced crazy bid. Not even Elon himself.

    Did you know that Netflix, meanwhile, did fight off a hostile takeover by Carl Icahn?

    Did you know Paramount was fought over in a bidding war?
    @mekkaokereke

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  • mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
    May 11, 2026, 12:06 AM

    @osma

    OK, I'm disengaging because we're not going to agree on this, and because we've reached the weird part of the conversation where you're trying to 'splain specific corporate takeover attempts and their successful defenses to me, when the executives that defended against those takeovers are personal friends of mine.

    Be well.

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  • Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦osma@mas.to
    May 11, 2026, 12:11 AM

    So you did know that profitability does lead to valuation and makes a public company defensible. I did suspect as much. I hope we still do agree that competing voices on a level playing field matter. Be well.
    @mekkaokereke

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  • Jérôme Petazzonijpetazzo@hachyderm.io
    May 10, 2026, 8:20 AM

    @mekkaokereke @osma @nomdeb @benroyce

    Are there some reliable metrics on the safety of various social networks for different populations? (I feel like this is a hard question because I don't even know where to start if I were to measure that. Number of hateful messages received per N messages seen? Sent? Per unit of time? Which population categories should we consider? How do we determine what constitutes a hateful message?)

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