Midweek Update: Social Extortion

This weekend, there were two interesting pieces news in social media. The first was that Twitter was making two-factor authentication (2FA) via text only available to Twitter Blue subscribers. While there are other methods than text message for 2FA, Engadget reports that 74.4% of users who employ 2FA rely on text. The following day, Meta revealed that paid verification was coming to Instagram and Facebook, which, among other “perks” like “exclusive stickers for use in Stories and Reels” also includes “extra protection against accounts claiming to be you, and direct access to customer support.” Twitter Blue costs $8 to $11 per month while Meta’s verification will cost $12 to $15 per month.

There is a bit of schadenfreude in watching these tech behemoths flail. They promised investors that the line would always go up, and then when they hit a snag (Apple disabling add tracking for Facebook, Twitter being purchased by the world’s most insecure individual), they are now struggling to find revenue streams in a landscape that no longer sees them as particularly valuable. Twitter and Meta are now trying to wring out every last dollar they can from their most loyal users while providing services that should have just been part of the package.

Remember, when you’re on social media, the product is you. Once we understand this, then we have to make a conscious decision: will I trade my data so it can be sold to advertisers in exchange for the communication privileges and (if I have a particularly large following) the audience the platform grants me? No one is obligated to use social media, but we knew that “free” carried an asterisk with it.

Now that it’s harder to scrape your data due to both privacy laws and business moves by companies like Apple as well as the aforementioned dumb moves (Mark Zuckerberg spending $36 billion on crappy VR Second Life will never not be funny) have sent these companies scrambling for revenue. It’s telling that both companies think “paid verification” is a solution rather than an oxymoron. Both companies have already given the game away with Twitter offering different color badges for various entitites after Twitter Blue impersonations went wild (as anyone could have foreseen) and Facebook requiring a government ID before they let you pay them money to put an icon next to your name. But there doesn’t seem to be a lot to stop me from saying, “I’m Dr. Matt Goldberg and vaccines will cause you to sprout a third arm. You can trust me because I’m verified.” There’s a clear gap between your name and what you purport to do. Providing verification for a fee only muddies these waters.

It gets worse for the regular user who doesn’t want to pay as security features recede only to a paid tier. It feels particularly libertarian that security is based on whether you can afford it rather than something that benefits the health of the platform overall. It also doesn’t help that neither Twitter nor Meta have been particularly adept at proving they can provide strong security whether you pay them for it not. It would be better for both platforms if they provided the best security and content moderation possible for all users, thus making them inviting platforms that can grow and foster audiences for reliable revenue, but instead, they now seem more precarious than ever. I’m also reluctant to believe that Twitter or Meta are going to rush to my rescue just because I pay them a monthly fee.

Social media isn’t dying, but it is changing. Twitter is an albatross for Musk that he doesn’t have the competence or patience to fix and it’s a drag on all his business endeavors. Meta seems rudderless as it continues to push for the Metaverse despite lacking any consumer demand for such a digital frontier, especially one overseen by a guy who seemingly gets called in front of congress every 12-18 months because there was another big Facebook scandal and he’s gonna promise to do better. Users can see the flaws, and they’ll just go elsewhere. They’re not going to pay for features these sites should already provide.

What I’m Watching

I’ve watched some really terrific movies lately. I finally watched Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Deathtrap and went head-over-heels for it. Seeing Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve spar over the art of writing a play in a deliciously meta narrative was a total delight. I also watched Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball, which is the rare sports film that is also a romance film where both elements are equally strong. It’s hard to think of any outside the Ron Shelton/Kevin Costner movies. Finally, I’ve viewed DreamWorks Animation movies with skepticism for so long that I don’t exactly leap at the chance to watch them. But Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was getting such positive buzz that I decided to head to the theater to see it, and I’m glad I did. It’s funny, heartwarming, and the animation is gorgeous. If I had seen it in 2022, it likely would have broken into my Top 10.

What I’m Reading

I’ve now moved on to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and she does not mess around. The prose is beautiful, but one of the elements of the book is how the past is always present, which means characters’ thoughts and the story flow from the present into flashback and back to the present with only minor transition so you can feel how the trauma the characters experienced never really left them. “Enjoying” isn't the right word for this book, but I’m already seeing why it’s considered a masterpiece.

In other reads:

• I recently rewatched Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which I hadn’t seen since it was in theaters. Back in 2020, I started working my way through every Disney Animation theatrical feature, and then kind of hit pause for 2022, but I’m now back at it. I kind of dismissed Atlantis at the time (although I was kind of “aging out” of Disney in the sense that I thought I was too cool Disney movies at the time), and revisiting I can see its merits, although it doesn’t completely work for me. However, I was glad to finally read Drew Taylor’s great piece on the making of the film that he wrote in 2020 for Collider. It’s got some fascinating info on how the film had to be scaled back not only from its original vision, but how it could have impacted the larger Disney empire had the film succeeded.

• I also encourage you to read this piece by Jack Mirkinson in The Nation about how The New York Times is repeating the same mistakes it made in covering gay people in how it’s covering trans people. The impact of the Times can’t be understated (I encourage reading Margaret Sullivan’s Newsroom Confidential for more on how the Times doesn’t just report the news, but its influence shifts the entire media ecosystem). One of the major issues with the Times is that it thinks it’s being an objective arbiter of the country’s mood, so if people on the left say, “Trans people should be treated like anybody else,” and people on the right say, “Trans people shouldn’t exist,” then technically, the moderate position (at least as the Times seems to be doing is), “Hey, maybe being trans is harmful to children, and all we’re doing is just asking questions.” But because there is no middle ground on “Should a person exist based on who they are?” the Times’ reporting is frequently harmful, and, as Mirkinson and others have pointed out, then gets utilized into new propaganda from the anti-trans voices the Times is boosting in the first place. The outlet must do better because this is not an academic distinction, and their reporting can lead to seriously negative outcomes for vulnerable populations.

What I’m Hearing

Carrying over from my previous Substack, I highly recommend Bear McCreary’s score for God of War: Ragnarok. The closing track he did with Hozier, “Blood Upon the Snow”, has been on repeat in my house.

What I’m Playing

I’ve now moved on to Hogwarts Legacy, and you can tell I’m a sad, gigantic nerd because my favorite part is taking magic classes and having teachers tell me I did a good job. I’M SO BROKEN.