by nitin-pai on 10/10/22, 2:21 PM with 345 comments
by tomphoolery on 10/10/22, 3:11 PM
Lest we forget, Facebook was the ONLY social network people used for a good long while, at least when I was graduating HS and entering college. You had Facebook for actual social networking, band/music pages on MySpace, and everything else was essentially porn bots and pedophiles, aka "spam city". So you have to wonder, if an everything app actually is a good idea, why couldn't the one company who had the most opportunity at the perfect time with as much funding as they could possibly need...not be able to do it?
Just because something works in China, doesn't mean it will work everywhere else. Actually, I would say that if something works in China, your best bet is that it _won't_ work anywhere else. TikTok being a notable exception.
by seydor on 10/10/22, 3:53 PM
by mradek on 10/10/22, 3:22 PM
If there was a protocol for cab hailing, and anyone could roll it out for someone to connect to their network (like xmpp), and anyone could offer to become a driver or play another role like customer support, they earn their local currency and are a part of their local economy. The same protocol could be used in Norway and in Taiwan. There might be a gap that’s too hard to fill, and someone else could create another protocol that works in their local economy, maybe like a matrix protocol. They’re completely different but serve to solve the same problem of real time communication.
Then Elon’s super app could offer users a platform which tries to implement multiple protocols, or have a in app protocol marketplace which is the sub apps. Apps for buying shoes, or buying groceries, or hiring movers. Users could become consumers or agents, so they can both work for various protocols and spend their money on them. They would be vetted and backed by the super app.
It would be fully decentralized, except for the payment part. If you have everyone on your platform you don’t need to issue tokens and other bullshit. Just build something useful and they will come.
by lucasyvas on 10/10/22, 10:05 PM
I've been droning on for a while now that the winners in the OS space will control literally everything. They can steal any idea from any third party developer for their own and integrate it into the OS. You cannot beat that. They can read/write all data. They control the networking and random number generators.
We place a mountain of trust in the operating system, and while I despise Apple quite a bit, I'd never bet a cent against them because they have seemingly done the impossible - they control (virtually) all aspects of the hardware, software, and services.
That is insanely valuable and equally terrifying given their market position. I will be sticking with libre software as much as I can, but we've entered crazy territory. Apple can basically control telecom at this point by saying they are removing the SIM tray or whatever and even the telecom has to lower their head and go along with it.
If you could have a native iOS shopping experience, it would demolish the usability of Amazon and nobody would use Amazon after a while. Any experience is fair game for the operating system - it will absorb whatever it wants to and leave the corpse of your app and service on the road.
by mellosouls on 10/10/22, 3:22 PM
by yboris on 10/10/22, 3:47 PM
The authors argue that self-assessment of property is the best way to evaluate property - allowing for fair tax collection. If you undervalue the property, someone can buy it through an app. If you overvalue it, you end up paying more in taxes. It's a genius proposal that is worth exploring (by reading the book and by trying in the real world).
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...
by droptablemain on 10/10/22, 3:49 PM
by butterfi on 10/10/22, 3:17 PM
by oefrha on 10/10/22, 4:38 PM
I call bullshit on this one. All necessities are also covered by AliPay, and you just need to convince your contacts to communicate through good old phone call/SMS/email/one of the alternative chat apps.
WeChat only dominates all aspects of your digital life if you let it. There’s a huge amount of competition for every single aspect. Citing Gruber on this topic is as good as citing a random Chinese person on Facebook usage in America.
Source: got by in China myself with practically no WeChat usage, certainly nothing essential, for a long time.
by rospaya on 10/10/22, 3:29 PM
by stephc_int13 on 10/10/22, 4:22 PM
The only reason I use Twitter and HN is because of their focused nature.
No Twitter map, Twitter Mail, TwitterOS, Twitter Games etc. I don't want them, and I will actively move away from any products exhibiting this kind of unification strategy.
by cat_plus_plus on 10/10/22, 4:23 PM
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 10/10/22, 6:27 PM
Looking at the list of world's worst tyrants, I don't see many engineers by education, mostly civics and humanities.
by nicgrev103 on 10/10/22, 3:23 PM
by wizofaus on 10/10/22, 7:23 PM
by tristor on 10/10/22, 4:05 PM
by scaredginger on 10/10/22, 3:45 PM
by asim on 10/10/22, 4:01 PM
by danielrhodes on 10/10/22, 6:09 PM
1) It reduces the number of apps you have to download, which in countries where data is expensive for the average person, is a big deal.
2) The proliferation of internet enabled services is still relatively new. So from a branding perspective, it is easier to communicate one service rather than many different services. The US saw a similar phenomenon in the everything app known as AOL back in the 90s.
by elonhype42069 on 10/10/22, 3:28 PM
By parroting his tweets to drive clicks to your own blog you're contributing to the problem, just like journalists putting him (and, formerly, Trump) on "breaking news" articles 24/7/365
by emptyparadise on 10/10/22, 3:27 PM
by emodendroket on 10/10/22, 8:14 PM
by photochemsyn on 10/10/22, 4:08 PM
The only real difference with China is that there, the state actors sit at a higher real-power level than the corporate actors, while the situation is essentially reversed in the USA, with politicians and bureaucrats being little more than mid-level managers in the corporate hierarchy.
As far as the claim that Monopoly, the board game, is often held up as a demonstration of capitalism, the word unregulated should be inserted.
Here's a game (I call it Risk-Opoly) that would demonstrate how capitalism actually worked in Europe right before World War One: take a half-dozen Monopoly boards, each representing an individual country/region, and let each game proceed until a clear winner on each board became apparent. Then that winner can buy machine guns, tanks, fuel, artillery, shells, ships and soldiers to attack the other boards. This of course is not the only way Empire-scale wars break out, but I think it matches European/American/Japanese/Russian industrial-era history pretty closely.
by Roark66 on 10/10/22, 7:45 PM
by barelysapient on 10/10/22, 9:17 PM
by kiawe_fire on 10/10/22, 4:38 PM
Forcing apps and services to adopt open standards is also potentially problematic. If a government body chooses the standard, then they can also exert control over the limitations and features that must be implemented.
I do think we need legislation to promote openness and interoperability, but that does not have to mean that every thing anyone builds must adopt the same set of standards - only that they allow for and accommodate certain user actions and accessibility.
by unity1001 on 10/10/22, 3:22 PM
by davidkuennen on 10/10/22, 3:17 PM
by nova22033 on 10/10/22, 8:54 PM
by BrainVirus on 10/10/22, 4:33 PM
by the-printer on 10/10/22, 4:06 PM
by mclightning on 10/13/22, 8:28 AM
by 0xbadcafebee on 10/10/22, 3:25 PM
by null_object on 10/10/22, 3:09 PM
'who looks at Twitter of all things and says “I’d like to see this expand in scope such that a lot more, if not all, of my digital life can be here”?'
by spaniard89277 on 10/10/22, 3:47 PM
by MomoXenosaga on 10/10/22, 9:14 PM
by adultSwim on 10/10/22, 5:01 PM
by HarHarVeryFunny on 10/10/22, 5:05 PM
Twitter's problem is how to remain relevant in a world where the teenagers have already moved on to newer, cooler, apps like TikTok and Snapchat. Repackaging Twitter with clones of TikTok and Snapchat seems highly unlikely to work. See FaceBook and Google's failed attempts to capture the TikTok user base.
Turning Twitter into a 4chan-like "free speech" haven, infested by Trump and the MAGA crowd doesn't seem it would exactly add to the attraction. Making Twitter users pay per tweet (another Musk suggestion) ain't gonna do it either.
by chiefalchemist on 10/10/22, 4:29 PM
by kome on 10/10/22, 4:15 PM
by robertlagrant on 10/10/22, 3:04 PM
It makes sense that it would come from a more authoritarian country first. But Whatsapp, say, could add payments and similar features if they were valuable to users.
This is all commentary on something Elon Musk probably said in the hope that investors would fling cash at him, of course.
by dandare on 10/10/22, 3:38 PM
> Monopoly, the board game, is often held up as a demonstration of capitalism, teaching players how business works.
I don't think I need to read any further.
by imwillofficial on 10/10/22, 6:12 PM
by machina_ex_deus on 10/10/22, 3:19 PM
A startup succeeds or fails on its own. A company trying to do everything will have to include a lot of failures.
The real problem is that all those companies eventually get bought and eventually end up as a team of some giant corporate which then abuses it. Pre planned everything app won't happen in capitalism, by Elon musk or anyone else, but an app that bought all others can happen.
by andrewla on 10/10/22, 3:22 PM
It's being taken as a given that WeChat is an "everything app" and that Elon Musk was using "everything app" in that (not universally accepted) context for the meaning of an "everything app".
The article makes some tolerably good points about concentration of power and that's totally fine, but putting it in this context just seems silly.
by gw99 on 10/10/22, 3:11 PM
Same as purchasing Twitter?
by gjsman-1000 on 10/10/22, 3:31 PM
The moment we realize this, I think that we should stop giving critics so much influence and acting like their criticisms are automatically valid for being criticisms. (Maybe it's just me, but I have increasingly low respect for critics because it is actually such a lazy, easy job that drags down everybody even trying to do something.)
by chatterhead on 10/10/22, 3:35 PM
If people thought the "checkmark" was a big deal just wait. There will be all sorts of tiers of validated personhood which will grant access to things others don't get by being anonymous. It's going to become a private company; and the currency doesn't need to be an open-trustless system; but rather a deanonymized one that won't trade on exchanges and won't be subject to the SEC rules the same way Dave & Busters isn't.
Then, he should open Twitter up to share conversions from coins and sell Twitter back to the people as a people-owned and managed social media giant. He could double his money in less than 24 months.
The first step of course is putting me in charge of the whole damn thing.
- La Flama Blanca