259 Comments

Thank you a thousand times over for amplifying this message in a space that needs to hear it the most.

Every ideological corner of our society has become addicted to free shit, and everyone explains away why they can tolerate the abuse and corruption that comes with not being able to fork over, in many cases, <$10 a month to actually be the target market for a product- while buying coffee and prepared foods that cost as much for a briefer experience.

You will not get independent voices or anything not homogenized and sanitized by Hollywood and mainstream media unless you are willing to actually pay for it.

Twitter going premium would make every single person who participates on it happier with the resulting environment.

Here's where I'm going to trigger some righteous self-defense mechanisms: no one who has time to spend on Twitter doesn't have $3-5 a month available to spend on it. If you literally don't have $3, you have way bigger problems than Twitter.

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I used to develop apps. That shift is why I no longer do. I was able to charge real amounts of money for them in the beginning, usually making $10-15k per month. Then the free/freemium/ad-financed thing happened and fewer and fewer people were willing to pay anything at all. We've reached such a sorry state of consumer values that the only real money is in tricking addicted people out of their money (e.g., microtransactions in games for gems or whatever digital, transient item they're selling).

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Same, my nickname comes from the bodybuilding software I sold for some years. Never made huge money with it but enough for a comfortable living - then came mass adoption of phones, apps and people demanding free shit.

Even if I could sell the app, apps were going for like $1.99 or $2.99, whereas the desktop/laptop software I was selling went for around $29 to $50 (lifetime). I considered making an app, hoping to make it up on volume, but decided against it. Ironically, by then I had a lot of people following me for advice on how to succeed at selling software, so I moved to that realm rather than forever chasing HTML standards, PHP updates, and whatever updates would be required for Android and iPhone apps.

Importantly, I now work exclusively with B2B products, because of that "Everyfink should be free n shit!" mindset out there.

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I have developer friends as well as artist and musician friends who have said precisely the same thing. None of them Big Greedy Corporations, either- the kind of small entrepreneurs we allegedly want to value.

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I agree with most of what you say, except your last sentence. Indeed there are some of us with way bigger problems than Twitter and not necessarily remediable ones. If you think everyone can just go sell a few mangoes in the market to cover a shortfall in rent money, that's some real misperceptions of how a lot of people must live.

Time itself is of great value. People who've never had an option to not work during the years when a little bit of extra time would've been glorious don't necessarily want to work to someone else's demands until they have the blessed relief of dropping dead and finally getting unbuckled from the traces.

I've seen a lot of sad things in my time. One of the saddest was stopping by a McDonald's a bit over a decade ago, where a clearly new employee in her senior years was getting berated by an impatient bastard for not providing that unhappy meal faster. I hoped I'd be spared ever ending up like that.

I'm sparing myself from it, but at a real cost, of course.

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I'm not a Twitter person, but can't you still participate without the blue checkmark?

If so, isn't it free as long as you choose to be uncredentialed?

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Absolutely. The checkmark is for the self-important. The rest of the peasantry can take the earl's tax on them i.e. data collection etc. as the cost of using the road.

I myself have never seen an ad on Twitter but that might be because I read it at a bigger screen magnification so the right-side column is cut off. Handy!

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I have a few adblockers in my browser, do I don't see any ads at all.

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Maybe that's the magic secret I forgot about...

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I was just thinking that isn't being a long time account holder on twitter with a number of tweets already a form of "blue check?"

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I doubt it. Gazillions of trolls out there, some with very big followings.

I signed up Feb. of this year when they eliminated the ability to read public threads if you had no account yourself. I'd first started reading Twitter when I searched for Alex Berenson when his work was being mentioned in other news outlets and I wanted to learn more. From Berenson's threads I discovered eugyppius and EGM just around the time bans started coming down hard. So that's how I found this Substack.

For me therefore it's been an extremely good resource for finding other resources, and for linking to good Substack posts in my replies to others' tweets, since those Substackers are often not on Twitter themselves for various reasons.

If I couldn't use Twitter for any of a variety of reasons, going forward, I can go back to living perfectly well without it, since it delivered what I needed in the first place.

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In fact, I've just now tweeted a link to this Substack post!

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Based on what I've read about what a blue checkmark means, I'm not sure I even want one.

Yes, there are gazillions of trolls out there, but I think I can tell the difference between a troll and the real alex berenson.

And part of that is being, at least at first glance, skeptical of anyone who claims to be someone famous. I could tell you about Avrile Lavigne I met on twitter, said she loved me, and also wanted me to pay her $50.00 for VIP access.

But she loves me, yes? So I said if you love me, you'd buy me the VIP pass and we're good to go.

What I am saying here is regardless of my blue check status, you're not going to find a lot of trolly stuff from me because I am not known by many people anyhow.

If Facebook offered "blue check" status and their accounts were only started last month, I would be very skeptical of it.

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My point was that if Twitter went premium only, anyone who truly wanted to participate could find the marginal fee that EGM used as an example. SCA has a substack of her own, for example, with excellent writing. If she has two paid subscribers in all the world, she's paid for a Twitter sub with what is essentially found money- and the work needed to do so was not undignified drudge labor at McDonald's but something she was doing anyway.

Anyone with a truly burning desire to use a social media channel can find at least two people in the world willing to pay pocket change to read their ideas.

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I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm not selling a product. I'm not hoping to attract a paying audience, because then I'll need to attempt to find out what pleases them and give them more of it, rather than writing what I want to and hoping a few strangers out there in the galaxy find me, like one or two pieces I've written, and keep reading in the hope that at some point in time I'll write something else they can like.

I spent my working life needing to please bosses so they'd keep paying me. Them days is done. Luxury belief, maybe, but then I ain't never made any knowingly wise choices in my life.

[edited for spelling]

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PS: Any found money I find, it doesn't go for frivolities. Gotta pay the bills first.

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PPS: Anyone feeling so strongly about anything I wrote that they'd welcome the chance to prove it with a handful of filthy lucre, give to the charity of your choice in my name and may the karma land where it will.

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I saw woman berate A Hispanic gentlemen working at Wal-Mart because of his English speaking skills*. I let her have it.

* I always tell people who apologize for English speaking skills... You speak a lit better English than I speak your language.

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As the granddaughter of a pair of illegal aliens later naturalized in an amnesty, I agree entirely with your comment.

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Wow, very poignant words indeed. If I was a customer, I would have wanted to tell that boss at McDonald's to shove it up his @#$.

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Wasn't the boss. It was a customer as I recall.

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A lot (but not all) of those who can't afford to pay justify an expensive car payment, expensive coffee drinks almost every day, dining out/fast food daily or several times a week, convenience items and snacks from a C-store and numerous other expenses that we have become accustomed to thinking is normal in our society. I know there are people who also truly don't have the extra and do live within their means and there will always be free options for people like that...at a different kind of cost. People just have to decide what's important to them. If I can't afford something, I either don't worry about it and do without or figure out a way to make a bit of extra money. Sometimes in real life we just don't get everything we want. Personally, I'm fine with life just like that. The "entitlement" mentality in our society is almost at epidemic levels.

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>> Sometimes in real life we just don't get everything we want. Personally, I'm fine with life just like that. The "entitlement" mentality in our society is almost at epidemic levels.

And frankly exists across the ideological spectrum, hence my frustration with it.

Absolutely no one needs Twitter.

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I have found, since passing 30 hum-hum number of years ago, that workout, skinny-dipping and shovelling snow generally cures most "needs".

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I have not drunk in 40 years... But I'm thinking of starting.

I had 4 years of one Conspiracy Fact which devastated me, then, oh, governments of world want to kill us

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Pretty much.

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When I first heard about this new thing called Twitter, I thought it sounded pretty stupid and I had no interest at all in it. I actually thought it wouldn't last long. Fast forward to today, I still have no interest. I've never bothered to sign up for it, and the only Twitter content I've seen is from someone posting a snippet somewhere else. That's more than enough for me.

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Exactly 🙌🏼

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in my country and probably yours, you get to pay a fairly steep subscription for the privilege of getting a product and then they have fucking cheek to make you watch adverts as well.

no, its one or the other not both.

i wont join unless all ads are gone, i hate adverts, it makes me say well thats another product i'll never buy, yes the list is pretty fucking huge now

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founding

Among my guilty bluebird pleasures is @catturd2, who recently offered to pay I think $100/mo for a special brown checkmark, which he termed a "skid mark".

This is the sort of marketplace of ideas I'm interested in.

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You made me laugh so hard I spot tea out all over my phone 😂

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Hilarious! Catturd says whatever he wants. A kindred spirit.

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I agree, the customer should pay. And the customer should have an ironclad contract guaranteeing no customer data at all be sold or given to third parties.

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240 million people no longer seeing pfizer ads seems like a win for humanity!

I've never had a twit account - maybe I'll go start one and pay the small monthly fee. Just to help ensure pfizer never gets back on it... :-)

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El gato malo and Ivor chudhov two of my favorite substackers. 💕💕💕

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founding

same. I'd add eugyppius as well

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It's funny, we see all the same commenters on all of them. 😄

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Mass Formation Brilliance

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If substack did friends I’d add all of you! 😝

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it'd be one helluva happy hour crowd, right?!

We'd figure out everything there is to know.......

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and have a better time doing it!

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It's really just unemployed Steve and Nancy, sitting in their trailer in the Ozrks with a lot of bot accounts.

Or are we back to fearing russian bots again, I can't keep up?

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I am so disappointed that people who are essentially weirdos with secret agendas think that they are entitled to

1) Dictate advertisers on how to spend their monies

2) Tell us what to think and what NOT to think.

I am very sad that they poisoned themselves with Covid vaxx, we prevented them from poisoning the entire population, but they just would not stop with their self righteousness.

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What about us weirdos without secret agendas? We demand agenda-equity!

(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

In gaming, we call those kinds of people for "Stop having fun"-guys, since they generally objct to people enjoying a game - console, computer, cards, tabletop, P&P RPG, whatever - the "wrong" way; i.e. not the way they diktate is the only one true way.

They also come in the subset "Rulef*cker", meaing someone using legalistic and lexicalic interpretations whenever they benefit from it.

Evryone participating, freely and voluntarily to their own desire and heart's content, is EvilWrongBad to the SHF-guys.

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Igor I posted your article and this one on a FB comment section about today’s meltdown on Twitter. The crowd who is lamenting the take over. I didn’t preface either link because I didn’t want to prejudice any viewers, even though I always include a preface on my own posts. I have to admit I was shocked by the response. One dude told me he didn’t waste time reading blind links. I just responded, well that’s your loss then I guess, I don’t care! I have grown so used to the useful links in substack comment sections, with or without a description, that I honestly don’t understand why someone would be so hostile. How many times have I followed a blind link to be utterly dazzled! How many times have I thought, meh, nothing burger. Isn’t that just the name of the game? It’s up to me? Why preclude the dazzle just to avoid the dust? But I think we all know the answer to the difference between us. Anywho, those articles are out there now and maybe there will be some curious cats willing to take a chance on my blind links where they might learn a thing or two!

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Closed minded people "I only listen to MDs" -- show them McCullough -- "i only listen to MDs posting in authoritative sources" etc

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My initial reaction: nothing is free. If one believes that twitter was free; one is delusional. You are being force fed ads and propaganda by corporations. As you both have stated the user is the product. $8 or be consumed. I know what my choice would be.

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Nov 5, 2022·edited Nov 5, 2022

I run Brave browser with excellent ad blocking and privacy features. I don't have a twitter account and visit people's twitter page directly (bookmark them). It works great and have never seen ads on twitter.

Why would I want to give Elon Musk (or anyone else for that matter) $8/month? Twitter is a cesspool, most of the replies to an interesting tweet are from subliterate morons and are vacuous at best. It's all about sick burns and people trying to show off how smart they are. Cernovich calls these attention-seekers "reply guys" and he's got them pegged. Using the method I describe above I just read people I find interesting.

For that matter, why would I want to give a substacker $5/month? Berenson's substack says "tens of thousands of paid subscribers". Berenson gets 80% of that, $4 times 20,000 subscribers = 80 grand per month minimum. Why would I give him another nickel, particularly when he pleads poverty to sue Twitter then settles secretly?

There's plenty of stuff that is free. Most of the best substacks are people that do this as hobby and actually have a real job (or are retired) and aren't using it as a hustle. Then there are those that use their substack as a way to make a living, who are always hawking subscriptions, only letting paid subscribers comment, or hiding their posts. Who needs it? These people act like they are in an esteemed journalistic class, as if performing internet research and then writing about it takes some advanced skill. It doesn't, anyone with some smarts, time on their hands, and literary skills can do it.

Agree with the comment that if you aren't paying you are the product not the customer. However, that is easily defeated with a good privacy browser. There is no need to be sending any of these people money unless you truly support their cause.

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Agreed--I just started $4.99 a month. II get to edit typos now (within 30 min of tweet).😉

I also wanted to show my support as the enemies of freedom are trying to get advertisers to boycott Twitter.

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Wait. I didn’t know that was available. For $5 a month I can edit tweets?

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Gato, your data mining thoughts are spot on, and I can validate this from personal experience.

I suppose I am risking doxxing myself, but... awhile back I was leading a team that built an NLP/AI application platform that ingested, among other things, the Twitter firehose, that had the ability to make inferences based on incomplete yet related data.

We were looking for outliers - needles in the largest haystack on the planet - and despite the epic signal-to-noise ratio, we found some *extremely* interesting and valuable bits of information, particularly in the investment, M&A and public health sectors.

We could have scooped the NYT, WSJ and Bloomberg on multiple occasions, and discovered pathogen spread in areas before the CDC (perhaps not quite the triumph we thought at the time, but still...).

Unfortunately, as is often the case with promising tech, we had to go to ground due to a loss of funding, but what was crystal clear at the time was that Twitter is perhaps the greatest data mine in history.

We are currently having another go at another startup building similar tech but for a different use case.

Recent developments may call for (yet another) pivot.

Carpe diem, baby.

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Here's what I think may be sabotage within Twitter's ranks (what a surprise...):

Over the past 3 weeks, and especially within the past week, I have had FOUR Twitter accounts "permanently suspended" with all my "Followings" and "Followers" deleted. All the time and effort that went into building my "Followings" and (the much-fewer) "Followers" was summarily deleted by some asshole within Twitter.

For EACH of the suspensions, they said "after careful review" which included NOT telling my what Rule I broke, what Tweet got me suspended, and not telling me what language within a Tweet got me suspended. Just, Death Penalty. And even the "Appeals" process was pointless. They never responded to my appeals, never bothered to say even when I asked what it was that got me permanently suspended.

I can only guess that the POS human beings making these decisions are doing so out of malice, and are doing it to many (millions?) of peons who don't have major followings and thus don't have public advocates for their reinstatement. How many of us will try to get back on Twitter ONLY so many times, before we eventually just say "F it. I'm going elsewhere" or nowhere else at all, just give up? I know I won't keep trying to get back on, if as happened almost simultaneous with my most recent account creation I get permanently suspended, as others may experience as well.

And mind you, I've used 3 different email addresses and birthdates, 2 different phone numbers, and a VPN routed through two different portals (or whatever). Still, my most recent attempt was immediately permanently suspended because (and this time they answered) I was trying to circumvent their other suspensions.

But then how can I ever get back on? I can't. And the human debris in Twitter making these decisions at deleting and blocking thousands and thousands of peon user know that.

After the first suspension and appeal, Twitter even admitted in an email that they suspended me in error and that my account was now active again...BUT IT WASN'T. It never was restored. It's still suspended.

Pure speculation, pure anecdotal, I know. But Musk needs to get his (shit)house in order, and soon. I know he knows that, but I don't know that he knows just how much sabotage is going on 24/7.

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It's a retreating army spiking tanks and drilling gun emplacements before the invaders show up.

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Agree 100 percent. Got booted off twitter with no appeal...they didn't read what I wrote, it was an algorthim that didn't like a word.

There are no appeals in Twitter, its all machines.

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I really hope he can manage it and quickly. Before these self righteous assholes do more damage. Saw some people discussing WARN lawsuits?? Not what I wish for Elon

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I wouldn't mind paying to be a twitter "customer" the problem is that there are so many other important paid "subscriptions" that it can put a dent in one's disposable income. Particularly for those on a fixed income. There needs to be some "free" access, so people aren't' left in the dark. Thanks to all those that help make this possible, that includes you El Gato Bueno.

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I hear ya. Will need to do business until I am dead so I can afford subscriptions and information. “Neeeeeeeeed input!!!!” - #5

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As Andrew Wilkow says (and a feline should appreciate this) “the mouse never asks why the cheese in the mousetrap is free”. Also Musk should shutdown every advertisers account if they don’t pay.

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Actually in my experience mice are very wary of free cheese. And if a cousin mouse is lured in and trapped - humanely or otherwise - that's it. The mice get the picture and no further mouse ventures near.

This is why very very sadly you have to poison the poor little things all together by putting poisoned grain in packets they chew open thinking they are being very clever.

There is a metaphor here I am groping for.

But anyway, if only it were possible to explain to mice that there is free cheese outside if they would only go there.

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Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Here is my $8 Elon. I cancelled Netflix over a year ago when they were responsible for some censorship of free speech. Any company that does not support Elon with advertising $$$’s comes off my companies I purchase from. Declined Pfizer, will decline any other company guilty of trying to promote censorship. Name and shame.

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This is the awesome thing about Substack -- no ads means the writers provide content for the READERS, not for the clicks!

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But do we know that $8 converts us to 100% customer? Perhaps it only makes us 50% customer, and the remaining 50% is still product.

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Good question. Here's the "in principle" answer:

The price has to be high enough that the loss of the number of subscribers outraged at being data points is a greater loss than the sale of the data.

I suspect once/if Twitter goes premium you will see "freemium" shit channels picking up the runoff and monetizing their userbase the same old way, and a Twitter user base that will jump ship if they perceive they are being used.

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Another slogan, "you get what you pay for" which is why Twitter is garbage.

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