As Twitter and Meta stumble, the app wars heat up - MSNBC

The app wars — that is, the arms contention among societal media apps for our time, attraction and idiosyncratic information — are successful afloat swing. And, entertaining arsenic they whitethorn be, the implications for nine could beryllium grave.

Both Meta and Twitter, 2 of the astir salient societal media companies successful the world, precocious announced tidal waves of layoffs successful an evident effort to recalibrate, arsenic each focuses connected ways to grow and monetize its platforms.

FYI: In the integer world, this is often done by either charging for a work that was erstwhile escaped oregon allowing targeted advertisements.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk did the institution nary favors successful attracting advertisers by snidely rebutting a senator's concerns that users were capable to impersonate him connected the platform.

Meanwhile, advertisers are flocking to TikTok, which continues to soar financially contempt concerns implicit privacy issues and the dispersed of disinformation connected the platform.

And the utter horribleness of Twitter and the Meta-owned Facebook has been capable for immoderate to crook to societal media apps similar Mastodon. Speaking personally, I’m much of a Somewhere Good guy. 

Choices abound!

Whatever your prime (I whitethorn dependable similar a breached grounds astatine this point), I often nonstop radical to technologist Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns the Future?” to larn much astir the Big Tech arms race, and the power that almighty computers — similar those owned by the world’s apical tech companies — tin wield implicit society. 

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Fortunately, astatine slightest successful the lawsuit of Twitter and Meta, the leaders of some companies haven’t been coy astir their quest for domination and a near-total ownership of our attention. I’ve written antecedently astir Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s openly stated desire for his company's virtual world level to beryllium a one-stop store for each VR travelers. Musk has been likewise unfastened astir his desires to physique an “everything app” (essentially, a azygous app that would harvester a clump of apps' features into one). For what it’s worth, that program may not adjacent beryllium legal. 

But marque nary mistake: The combat for users — and the information that travel with america — is afoot. With each these choices, I urge you instrumentality amended enactment of the radical who power them when deciding which to use. And I counsel knowing wherever they basal with respect to protecting you and your accusation from nefarious actors.