{"id":24192,"date":"2022-11-22T22:01:39","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T22:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=24192"},"modified":"2023-07-02T00:48:56","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T00:48:56","slug":"if-twitter-goes-down-where-will-crypto-twitter-migrate-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/11\/22\/if-twitter-goes-down-where-will-crypto-twitter-migrate-to\/","title":{"rendered":"If Twitter goes down, where will crypto Twitter migrate to?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>Note:<\/em> Subscriber emails are currently misbehaving. I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/topic\/subscription-email-links-go-to-wordpress-not-to-my-blog-post\/#new-topic-0\">posted to the support forum<\/a> about the issue. Please <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/11\/22\/if-twitter-goes-down-where-will-crypto-twitter-migrate-to\">click here<\/a> for this post from your email.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Cryptocurrency uses chats on Telegram and Discord heavily. But crypto Twitter is the town square. Twitter is where you follow the big guys, it\u2019s where you promote your altcoin scam, it\u2019s where you brag to your fellow degens,* it\u2019s where you expose the other degens\u2019 backsides hanging out.<\/p>\n<p><small>* yes, the most terminal crypto gambling addicts proudly self-label as &#8220;degens.&#8221; Sorry.<\/small><\/p>\n<p>So if Twitter falls over &#8230; where do our degen friends regroup?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/11\/22\/if-twitter-goes-down-where-will-crypto-twitter-migrate-to\/fail-whale\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-24193\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-24193\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fail-whale.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fail-whale.png 680w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fail-whale-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fail-whale-348x215.png 348w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Twitter will be fine, you commie<\/h3>\n<p>There are two main schools of opinion on the future of Twitter:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Elon Musk has demonstrated himself to be working well outside his expertise, and has destroyed Twitter\u2019s technical capabilities as well as its income stream.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Everything will be fine. Elon is a genius, you SJW.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The first school tends to people who know about computers and system administration, and the second school tends to non-techie marketers who will sell you a course for $49.<\/p>\n<p>Musk seems to think that if a four-engine jet can stay in the air on one engine, the other three can be sold for scrap. This turns out to be incorrect.<\/p>\n<p>This is why bits are visibly falling off Twitter, like a Tesla on autopilot randomly shedding bumpers and doors. The home page comes up &#8220;Something&#8217;s gone wrong.&#8221; Notifications will fail to load. If you go to a tweet URL, it may come up unavailable until you reload a few times. Some accounts just can&#8217;t be searched. Images fail to load. Account switching on the apps is unreliable. Direct messages don\u2019t get through. Search keeps failing.<\/p>\n<p>Large distributed systems are like horses, they spook easily and look for excuses to die of fright. Poor ol&#8217; xe-1-1-0.cr1-lon1.twttr.com, <a href=\"https:\/\/fishmech.tumblr.com\/post\/127359129398\/horses\">thought of ants and died.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I would like Twitter to keep working \u2014 but I will not be surprised if there\u2019s a major outage soon, as systems whose entire teams quit or were fired start to fail.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s before Musk scared off the big Twitter advertisers. <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/11\/03\/welcome-to-twitter-mr-musk-heres-your-accordion\/\">As I noted last time:<\/a> if Musk, Thiel and Sacks want a culture warrior Twitter, they\u2019re going to have to bankroll it out of their own pockets. Including those billion-dollar interest payments.<\/p>\n<p>If everyone who knows anything about sailing suggests it\u2019s time to check out the lifeboats, you may want to go and have a look.<\/p>\n<h3>The elephant in the room<\/h3>\n<p>Mastodon is absolutely not Twitter, but it\u2019s where a lot of people are going from Elon\u2019s broken network.<\/p>\n<p>Mastodon is a federated network founded by annoying nerds and queer leftists, and they set the tone. Anyone can set up an isolated instance \u2014 Gab and Truth Social both run on Mastodon code, for example \u2014 but if you want to be in the main federation that people think of as Mastodon, it has content and behaviour rules around slurs, hate speech and so on. Post nicely. Break the content rules and you and your whole server may be shunned.<\/p>\n<p>Only people who follow the worst blockchain idiots will understand this \u2014 but Mastodon is <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/09\/16\/vitalik-buterins-philosophical-essays-theyre-not-good\/\">Balaji Srinivasan&#8217;s &#8220;Network States,&#8221;<\/a> only plausible, functional and built by nice people rather than a fantasy of seasteading on the blockchain that can only work in a neoreactionary&#8217;s fever dreams.<\/p>\n<p>Foolish people will tell you it doesn\u2019t matter which Mastodon server you pick. This is not at all the case, and it\u2019s one of the biggest barriers for newbies. It\u2019s the early 2000s, and you\u2019re at the whim of your forum admin throwing a tantrum. I\u2019m <a href=\"https:\/\/circumstances.run\/@davidgerard\">@davidgerard@circumstances.run<\/a>, camping out on a friend\u2019s small private server. But the large \u201csafe\u201d servers are often blocked by other servers due to bad moderation, much to their users\u2019 dismay. It turns out moderation is the hardest problem in social networking, because humans can\u2019t scale like computers can.<\/p>\n<p>Some of your favourite crypto critics from Twitter are on Mastodon, including <a href=\"https:\/\/ioc.exchange\/@ncweaver\">@ncweaver<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/hachyderm.io\/@molly0xfff\">@molly0xfff<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@BennettTomlin\"> @BennettTomlin<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@CryptoCriticPod\">@CryptoCriticPod<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/indieweb.social\/@web3isgreat\">@web3isgreat<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@PeterJHowson\">@PeterJHowson<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/toad.social\/@davetroy\">@davetroy<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@tante\">@tante<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.me.uk\/@CatherineFlick\">@CatherineFlick<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/econtwitter.net\/@Frances_Coppola\">@Frances_Coppola<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.nz\/@winstonsmith\">@winstonsmith<\/a> posts some New Zealand crypto news.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a whole pile of finance people on Mastodon. Financial Times FT Alphaville has its own account and its own server: <a href=\"https:\/\/alphaville.club\/@FTAV\">@FTAV@alphaville.club<\/a> \u2014 organisations and companies are recommended to set up their own servers. There\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/econtwitter.net\/\">econtwitter.net<\/a> for economics enthusiasts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cryptodon.lol\">Cryptodon.lol<\/a> is a server for cryptocurrency people, run by Phil Daian. Cryptodon follows the main federation content rules, so post nicely. Vitalik Buterin is on Cryptodon as <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptodon.lol\/@vbuterin\/with_replies\">@vbuterin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s apparently someone already posting thirst traps with model photos asking for crypto, LOL.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m finding the <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.keylesspalace.tusky\">Tusky<\/a> app on Android extremely usable. I\u2019m told all the iOS apps sorta suck, so the charity that develops Mastodon has hired a developer to make a decent one.<\/p>\n<h3>What could replace crypto Twitter?<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019m enjoying Mastodon, but I can&#8217;t get crypto work done on Mastodon the way I can on Twitter. Mastodon doesn&#8217;t have crypto bozos hanging their backsides out for the world to see the way Twitter does, and the way BitcoinTalk did in the early days. It turns out the idiots are a feature.<\/p>\n<p>Mastodon isn\u2019t a suitable candidate to replace crypto Twitter, mostly because half of crypto Twitter couldn&#8217;t hold back for ten seconds from posting slurs, and would be booted immediately.<\/p>\n<p>BitcoinTalk was the centre of everything in the olden days, and it\u2019s still up and running \u2014 but it probably can\u2019t take the load.<\/p>\n<p>I expect crypto Twitter to persist as long as the service doesn\u2019t have extended outages and is halfway usable for the task. But if enough parts fall off, where do you think crypto Twitter will regroup?<\/p>\n<p>(Zero people are moving to anything with a token and\/or a DAO. Don&#8217;t be silly.)<\/p>\n<p>By the way \u2014 the original Twitter Fail Whale artist, Yiying Lu, has an official Fail Whale merchandise store. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zazzle.com\/store\/failwhale\"><i>Zazzle<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/11\/22\/if-twitter-goes-down-where-will-crypto-twitter-migrate-to\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25704\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-25704\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons-1024x679.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/coked-up-neoreactionary-morons-1536x1018.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Musk seems to think that if a four-engine jet can stay in the air on one engine, the other three can be sold for scrap. This turns out to be incorrect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2158,3316,487],"class_list":["post-24192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-elon-musk","tag-mastodon","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fail-whale.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24192"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25706,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24192\/revisions\/25706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}