Elon Musk is a vote and some due diligence away from owning Twitter outright, think carefully before you quit Twitter, all about Mastodon, the bad news story that is Insteon.
Elon Musk will be taking Twitter private
Twenty-one days after revealing he’d acquired a chunk of Twitter stock, accepting then declining an invite to be on the board, and wondering out loud if he should just buy the company, Elon Musk has an agreement to acquire Twitter.
In a press release announcing the agreement, Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
This is not a done deal, of course. Twitter shareholders could vote down the plan. Musk could still back out as he learns more about the company and its books.
Other assorted thoughts.
- Under Musk’s private ownership Twitter will not subject to shareholders. He will be free to set his own rules.
- Musk will be beholden, however, to those who provided financing – up to two-thirds of the $46.5 billion according to Reuters – and which includes Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays. Musk has put Tesla shares up as collateral.
- I expect that Donald Trump’s lifetime ban will go away. Just as the U.S. mid-term elections are heating up and the 2024 presidential election is on the horizon.
- I’m curious to know what will happen to Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, which has been working with community organizations to “improve the health of the public conversation”.
- Having your speech be free does not mean your speech is free from consequences.
What to do first if you’re ditching Twitter
The joke that quitting Twitter is the new moving to Canada after the presidential election was everywhere on Monday.
But if you’re going to leave Twitter, you should first download your twitter data.
Then you can delete your account.
But there’s a suggestion that you shouldn’t actually delete your account, because you can’t be sure that Twitter will actually delete your information. Here’s sound advice from University of Michigan professor and author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.
Free advice from a longtime friend I can't
because they're an atty (this is not legal advice): make sure that you do your research before deactivating permanently. Your data will still be owned by his company, only you won't have access to it anymore.</p>— Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (Ebonyteach) April 25, 2022
Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter
Mastodon is another social network you’re going to be hearing about. It’s not a single social service, but a platform that can be used by any community.
And there are thousands of organizations and groups using Mastodon to stay connected.
Mastodon’s software is free and open-source (Elon Musk says he wants to make Twitter’s code open-source), and the entire initiative is free of advertising.
What this means is that your community can be a pure – or as nasty – as you want it to be. But that also means you need to do the work to find the community that you want to belong to.
Which is a significant barrier to Mastodon being a true replacement option for Twitter. If Mastodon can figure out how to make it easy for people to browse the communities that are available, maybe people will move to Mastodon.
But I suspect that Mastodon will remain a good solution for groups that already exist and who want to create their own little garden of conversation.
Insteon’s demise is a cautionary tale for home automators
Insteon was an internet-of-things and home automation tech company. I say “was” because the company abruptly shut down last week.
Insteon provided a home networking system and hardware that many people had installed in their homes to control things like lighting, wall outlets, and thermostats.
People with this equipment may not be able to get it working at all, in part because with the required servers now shut down, there’s no way to configure the devices because the smartphone app is offline.
Just a cautionary tale to all of us.
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