Elon went too far with a recent policy and now people are starting to leave twitter for decentralized alternatives like Mastadon and Lens.
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0:00 START HERE
1:57 the drama
6:07 elon puts it to a vote – everyone fires him
7:11 there’s a much larger problem here
7:55 the rise of decentralized social media
9:37 what do these new platforms look like?
11:20 let me be honest…
Hey everyone welcome back now as you may Know it's incredibly hard to get anyone On the internet to agree on anything Right usually someone will associate Themselves with one community and then They'll just adopt that community's Positions on essentially every single Issue they'll also usually have a Neighboring group that they dislike and So the opinions will oppose each other In a very predictable way but today I Saw something that I never thought I'd See in my lifetime okay you had Boomers Millennials Democrats Republicans crypto Bros even furries all coming together Bending the laws of physics to create a Rare and beautiful moment of agreement And the thing that they could finally All agree on was that Elon up in Fact he made such a big error over the Weekend that when Twitter users voted on A poll that he himself put on his page a Majority of users voted for him to step Down as the chief of Twitter now here on Giancarlo buys tokens you could describe Our position on elon's Twitter takeover As being cautiously optimistic okay it Was very clear that the Twitter team Before Elon were making a bunch of Mistakes and were threatening free Speech in certain regards and Elon on Paper has a track record that I don't Know if anyone on Earth can match and he Was saying all the right things in terms
Of you know transparency open sourcing Things uh freedom of speech and moving Away from an advertising model which is Really just about monetizing user data And certainly no one could say that his First opening weeks at Twitter have been Smooth but I gave him the benefit of the Doubt given that there was obviously a Big culture shift in you know what he Was bringing to the table and sometimes That just takes time to smooth out on Top of that there were also indications That Elon was gonna be more crypto Friendly than the prior team and as You'll see in a minute I do think that's One of the most important fixes for what I think is the largest problem in social Media today but despite all that there's Just no way to defend and the latest Policy that Twitter shared on Sunday and Anyone who's being intellectually honest Has to call this out as being you know a Major contradiction to everything Elon Has been saying about Free Speech okay So let's get into it now so this is Called promotion of alternative social Platforms policy okay so Twitter is Where the public conversation is Happening and where people from all over The globe come to promote their Businesses art ideas and more we know That many of our users may be active on Other social media platforms however Going forward Twitter will no longer
Allow free promotion of specific social Media platforms on Twitter so what is a Violation of this policy at both the Tweet level and the account level we Will remove any free promotion of Prohibited third-party social media Platforms such as linking out to any of The below platforms on Twitter or Providing your handle without a URL so The prohibited platforms are Facebook Instagram Mastodon true social some of These other alternative social media Platforms and and some examples here so You can't say follow me at Giancarlo on Instagram or check out my profile on Facebook and things like that by the way This whole page here has actually been Deleted and we'll get into some of the Pushback that they received almost Immediately this is just an archive of The policy that I found finally here it Says accounts that are used for the main Purpose of promoting content on another Social platform maybe suspended Additionally any attempts to bypass Restrictions on external links to the Above prohibited social media platforms Through technical or non-technical means Is in violation of this policy now look I sort of kind of if I squint a little Bit I can see where they're coming from You know in the real world we are pretty Accustomed to businesses not allowing People to just point customers to you
Know competitors for example I can't Just go to my local pizza shop stand in Front of the cash register and just Start talking to people online and tell Them how Giuseppe's down the street has Higher quality pizza at half the price And probably if the owner found me doing That he would kick me out so maybe you Can or argue that it's okay for Twitter To ban accounts that solely exists for The purpose of promoting alternative Platforms you know this doesn't really Make sense from a free speech Perspective because it's not illegal to Promote other platforms but at the end Of the day let's just grant them that Part of the policy for now the problem Is that this goes way beyond that and it Affects people who are just promoting Their own profiles on other Platforms in My specific case you know I'm lucky that YouTube wasn't on the list maybe because They're still developing their own video Solution on Twitter maybe in the future YouTube would have been banned if it Were on the list I would no longer be Able to say anything like hey guys Here's my latest video that I uploaded Please check it out here's a link to YouTube doing so would mean that that Tweet would get deleted and my account Could potentially get suspended now to Make matters worse is the fact that Cross-promoting yourself across social
Media is like the most recommended Practice for protecting your audience From these sort of malicious platform Level decisions in the first place and The reason is because over the years We've seen countless accounts get leaded For reasons that felt arbitrary or were Just not transparent sometimes with no Potential to even appeal that decision And so it just doesn't make sense for You to have all your eggs on one basket Given that a single platform maybe Because of a single executive could Decide to delete your account and your Entire content history would be lost Forever and so the smart thing to do in Order to de-risk the scenario where You're just banned into the shadow realm Would be to cross promote yourself on as Many platforms as you can find for me Personally I use YouTube and Twitter and So if for some unknown reason one were To ban me I would still be able to Communicate with all you guys on the Other channel right and in fact a lot of People on Twitter started following me Because they saw my Twitter Link in the Description to the videos on YouTube and A lot of people on YouTube actually Found me because I have my YouTube link On Twitter okay so it's a symbiotic Relationship the alternative would be You having to manually find me on every Single platform typing in my name which
Is easier said than done because there Are so many scam artists and imposters That might just have Giancarlo but with Just one letter changed and in fact over The past 16 months I've seen a lot of People get scammed through these Imposters the bottom line is that this Policy was just bad okay there's just no Other way to describe it and all over Twitter you basically saw people come Together and agree that this was a Mistake and perhaps the most high Profile example of this was Paul Graham The founder of Y combinator which is a Tech accelerator and he's just somebody Who has generally achieved almost Godlike status in the tech community and Paul has also been one of elon's biggest Supporters and supporting him since day One when he took over Twitter and always Talking about how people are Overreacting to elon's Twitter policies But he did a 180 and in his last tweet He said this is the last straw I give up You can find a link to my new Macedon Profile on my site which of course was a Violation of the new Twitter policy and Led to him getting suspended shortly After now Elon got so much pushback on This that he's soft in his stance and Came out and pretty much apologized he Said for now on there there's going to Be a vote on all major policy decisions And this won't happen again and then he
Went further with a poll asking if he Should completely step down to which the People responded yeah I kind of think You should now look over the next few Days maybe weeks you're going to see a Lot of hot takes that stay at the Service level okay it's going to be Elong good Elon bad Etc but that's Actually missing the much larger problem Here which is social media Centralization the fact of the matter is That we're all living online more than Ever before the number of hours that we Spend on social media just continue to Go up every single year and a lot of the Value that we provide and the Connections we make do happen on Platforms like Twitter and we're Starting to see that these platforms are Too important to be in the control of Just one person or a small number of Board of directors that can you know Just make these sweeping policy changes Ban a bunch of people and just change The way that we interact with each other On these platforms and so what you're Seeing as a reaction to all these Shenanigans is a rise in interest in Decentralized Alternatives both with and Without the blockchain and the most Popular at the moment is Macedon which Is like a Lo-Fi No Frills version of Twitter but there are also crypto ones As well like far Caster lens and Diesel
Now all these platforms share something In common which is that they generally Believe in the statement right here Which is that can't be evil is greater Than don't be evil now don't be evil is That famous catchphrase that the early Google team used to say and it was all About having a code of ethics that Governed all their decisions right and On paper you know in theory that sounds Great but there's a lot that can impair Their ability to act with those Ethics In mind right for one you know they Could get external pressure from Government officials or just other Third-party organizations they can just Have biases because at the end of the Day they are human and sometimes that Might impact their decisions and then Also just the passage of time as they Retire as new people come into the Company they might not share those same Beliefs so at best this is an imperfect System as we can obviously see today the Alternative is can't be evil and this is Where you take you know large parts of a Social media platform and you move it to A decentralized protocol to remove some Of that power from being in the hands of A small group of people and by the way This isn't just a belief that's held by A bunch of crypto bro you know idealists That don't understand the business world At all it's actually something that we
Also hear from Jack who's the guy who Started Twitter and here he's saying in Principle I don't believe anyone should Own or run Twitter it wants to be a Public good at a protocol level not a Company now you may be wondering what Would one of these decentralized social Media platforms even look like okay and They do have some defining features and I'm going to illustrate them here using The blockchain method which I do think Is the stronger version so first off the User would have much more ownership and Control over their own accounts okay and That would mean holding the keys to Their accounts in their wallet which Would allow them to off opt in or out at You know the platform level at their own Discretion second all of the data and Content on the platform would be Completely open source and not Controlled by a private organization This would mean that anyone can just Permissionlessly build on top of that Data and create services that are Valuable for users and it also means That no one could have their social Graph just deleted off the face of the Internet because no one would have the Power to do so and third because that Data is completely open source it means That anyone can create their own node or Server within that social media platform So for example if Twitter's data was
Completely open it would mean that Someone could create a Twitter clone That contained all the historical data That was on Twitter and even a live Updating feed of all the tweets that are Happening in real time except in this Version of Twitter perhaps they're a Little more loose in the moderation side Or maybe they're actually moderating Even more aggressively than Twitter and This would mean that people would be Able to pick and choose where they want To spend their time because there would Be many flavors of the same social media Platform and you would essentially let The free market decide which nodes would Be the most popular and more importantly While some servers would have the power To ban users from accessing it because The user owns their own account and has Access to their social graph they can Just Port all their data and move to Another server and that's a level of Censorship resistance that we just don't Have today now with all that said I'm Going to be honest with you it does Sound amazing in theory and it's exactly What we need but we're not really close To seeing any of these Alternatives gain Mass Appeal I believe right now the Largest is Macedon which isn't a Blockchain one but it is one that uses Completely open source data and does Have a lot of different servers as we
Mentioned but even Mastodon had only About 1 million active users last month This might be a little higher now with All the latest drama but still much much Smaller than Twitter which have Something like 500 million monthly Active users so it's not even one Percent of that audience and that Chicken and egg problem is very hard to Solve that's why originally I was was Optimistic that Elon would choose to add More decentralized features into Twitter Internally and by the way I think that's Still possible okay I don't think it's Completely a lost cause and so I Wouldn't be that surprised if one of These alternative platforms starts Getting more popular and people are Going to be open to using a new platform For the first time in many years okay And honestly that can only be a good Thing all right guys that's it for today Thanks for watching and I'll catch you The next video
