Over the decades, I have not fallen too heavily into the ‘social media’ side of the Internet for a variety of reasons. The core reason has basically revolved around my right and reason to have some measure of influence and control associated with the objective of generating traffic to an idea of mine in which further objectives can be met.
From email lists all the way to music sales and beyond, social media sites have always created an imbalance within the eco-system of non-organic traffic, let alone the risks and rewards that come with trying to choose the ‘right’ platform for any message. Twitter is one of those examples in which a change in ownership changed its entire ecosystem, thus forever altering how previously contributed content would, and would not, be used.
And unlike changing the channel on a television or radio, there are real and tangible repercussions to the original contributors of the content to a social media site that must always and forever be discussed and sometimes hard-core debated if we are to keep some semblance of humanity lingering around the edges of these Large Language Models now being deployed under a variety of corporate names.
Just take a glance at the outburst of sentiment when the large DNA company, 23andme filed for bankruptcy in 2005. There was a newly imposed sense of urgency over all who had accounts with them, including what would happen to all of the data.