The FAQ sounds reasonable, but there's a lot of shady-looking stuff in the actual terms. For instance:
> We may share revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account with you at a rate which will depend, in Twitter’s discretion, on several factors, including the total number and price of Subscriptions purchased for your Super Follows account and the fees and taxes [...] that Apple, Google, Payment Processor, banks and/or credit card companies may assess in the purchase of Subscriptions and in processing payments to you. You understand this and should have no expectation that any particular revenue percentage will apply, or continue to apply, over time.
> We do not promise that the purchase of Subscriptions can be used to redeem any guaranteed sum of money, or any money at all. [...] You agree that we will not be liable to you, and you will not assert that we are liable to you, based on the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account, including for any share of revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions.
> We also do not guarantee that everyone with access to your Super Follows account will have purchased a Subscription.
> In addition, we reserve the rights, in our sole discretion, to [...] withhold, suspend, recoup or set-off Subscriptions revenue (including any earned balance that may have been generated from past or future Subscription sales to a Creator’s Super Follows account)
Also, this is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but I find it hilariously petty that legal notices to Twitter must be sent by both regular email and postal mail, and are only valid on receipt... but notices from Twitter only have to be emailed, and are presumed valid when sent. Just a straight-up "I'm big, you're little, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Compare to Patreon's TOS (https://www.patreon.com/policy/legal) which explicitly lays out the fees they charge. Twitter's version is more like "fuck you, we'll pay you if we feel like it."
Stuff like this is why most people don’t want to pay and the whole thing will be labeled as "meh people vote with their wallets and they prefer ads over payments".
In reality, it’s not in the company’s DNA and slapping payments with those ridiculous terms on a free product is simply not trustworthy.
Patreon is the opposite: clear terms, payments is their DNA, hence people are willing to pay and support creators.
Much as I dislike Twitter as a concept and a company, I think this is a good idea. It's high time the tech majors started to move towards alternative revenue streams from advertisement, and encouraging users to pay producers directly for content with the platform taking a cut seems like a good way to do that.
I don't know offhand who will charge for their tweets or what kind of content they'll be charging for, but I'm confident that the market is far more creative than any of us are at finding ways to use features like this.
Feels like the end state in less competitive markets is that the customer pays AND they get ads. Very hard not to do ads at media companies. At the very least, content manipulation via "promotion".
The problem is that paying customers are the _best_ segment! They're like a delicious cookie of revenue just sitting there. Uneaten. At some point natural growth slows. The forces of capitalism demand at least revenue growth. Where to squeeze it from? The cookie is right there. Paying customers get ads, surveillance and manipulated feeds.
I wish their press release wasn't advocating for a Tarot account that claims to give people psychic healing, though. This sort of thing really undermines their legitimacy in the fight against Covid misinformation.
> I don't know offhand who will charge for their tweets or what kind of content they'll be charging for, but I'm confident that the market is far more creative than any of us are at finding ways to use features like this.
Apparently Twitter will experiment with any revenue model except 1) actually just letting people pay to get rid of ads + see content in chronological order without other bullshit, or 2) allowing users to edit tweets which people have been begging for for years.
>1) actually just letting people pay to get rid of ads + see content in chronological order without other bullshit
It can't because the people most likely to pay are also the ones worth the most to advertisers. Thus you need to charge more to make up for it, thus selecting for even more valuable people, etc, etc.
>2) allowing users to edit tweets which people have been begging for for years.
Due to the high possibility for abuse either by users or people taking over their accounts this is unlikely unless it resets all metrics on the tweet. At which point you may as well make a new tweet. Same reason you can't edit the title of a reddit post.
They’ve degraded the core experience so much that at this point they could charge users for the ability to stop their likes, follows or comments being randomly pushed to other people’s TL.
The issue with edits is the sort of situation where A tweets something B supports/likes so B retweets it, then A edits the tweet and puts something B would not want to boost in. What should happen to B's retweet?
The best option I can think of for edits is to have the edit just delete the original and give you an input field with the text, attachments, and replied-to fields filled in already. (Maybe do something fancy and skip reuploading large media that doesn't get changed.) As far as likes/links/retweets go it's an entirely separate tweet.
That or adding support for a reply to be flagged as having corrections and be promoted to the top of the reply list and somehow highlighted to bring attention to to.
You can see your timeline chronologically: at the top right you have some weird icons that look like little stars, click on it and select a different sorting order.
I just don't get who would pay for this. Maybe I'm getting old.
Also this is a good example of how Apple's fees are sneaking into creator content. Out of a $5/mo sub, Apple gets $1.50 as an Apple Tax, yet Twitter still charges money on top of that for processing. The Internet has taken a turn for the worse.
Right now, a lot of "creators" use Twitter to generate leads to sell premium content of various sorts (e.g. paid newsletters, ebooks, etc.). But the premium content has to live somewhere else, and there's a challenge getting people from Twitter to those other platforms.
I can see both the creators and consumers of content being happier if the lead gen and delivery of the premium content could happen in the same place. This especially makes sense if Twitter integrates this further with their Revue acquisition.
A few examples I could imagine:
- This could be used as an alternative to Substack/paid newsletters.
- I could see this being popular with people who share tips like crypto/stocks, etc. Get the basic tips for free, pay to get the good stuff (note: I don't endorse this, I'm just saying I bet it'll happen).
- This is a bit different from everything else I'm mentioning, but I bet celebrities could get their hardcore fans to pay for inside access to various things (e.g. backstage videos).
It's basic patronage of the arts. It's a mechanism that long predates anything to do with the internet. Like a creator? Want them to keep creating? Give them money directly (well mostly directly).
This is very intriguing. I'm most interested to see over time if super following is used mainly for:
1. Real-time financially valuable tweets from experts (market analysts, crypto experts, breaking news that can move stock markets, etc.), where the tweets are perceived as genuinely worth paying for
2. Supporting creative types -- musicians, comedians, etc. -- not necessarily for the tweets themselves, but just to support them because you like them, and maybe you'll get early access to show tickets too or something
3. Paying for content that's genuinely interesting in itself, e.g. short newsletters in tweet form.
I'm not sure the price is high enough for #1 to be a viable business model. I'm not sure enough people will voluntarily pay #2 to make a dent (or they already use Patreon instead). And #3 seems particularly ill-suited to Twitter's short-form.
But we'll see -- it would be nice if this did wind up supporting people financially.
> the tweets are perceived as genuinely worth paying for
If the information is really so valuable, then either:
1) the expected value of paying for it is positive, the purveyor would be better playing the market themself (or working for a hedge fund...) than selling it
2) the expected value of paying for it is negative, the people buying for it are wasting their money
Great, now the timeline is going to be full of "just tweeted X to my super follows, super follow me here: ...". Sounds like more ads.
I guess in fairness you probably don't want to follow people who tweet like this but these kinds of tweets will still be hard to avoid. I'd rather just pay twitter $x/yr for no ads.
Yeah, a few artists I follow were in the first batch and I'm already getting tired of them shilling for Patreon, Twitch subs, Ko-Fi and now Twitter subscriptions, all at once, all over my timeline.
I realize these people need an income but I can't be the only one that feels a bit put off.
You don’t even have to do all that. Twitter has a mute words feature that allows you to target key words so that you’ll never see tweets that have them.
It amazes me how much HN complains about Twitter without understanding the tools Twitter provides. It’s similar in essence to uniformed Anti Vaxxers who’s only contempt with Vaccines are based on lack of understanding.
So it's basically Patreon/OnlyFans but for Twitter. I can't imagine anyone will want this for non-porn purposes, but I guess maybe they're hoping they can scrape off a bit of OnlyFans' market share.
There's also a really active community of really smart people posting takes and interesting viewpoints on Twitter. Most of them seem to have Substacks these days, so this makes sense from my perspective. If Substack is monetized long-form think pieces, then "super follows" could be monetized "smart people thoughts."
I think some people might use super follows to increase the quality of the conversation in their comments (no more bots/trolls), similar to what Vitalik did today [1] but for a wider audience. I liked that thread so much that I think there is something here. Looking forward to it. With obvious caveat it might keep some folks without the means out of the conversation ...
Unless you’re one of the few creators that have set up a DRM scheme using Patreon’s API, Patreon is functionally just a pay-to-view newsletter operating on the honor system and the idea that you’re paying as a show of support, not for a specific product/item.
Creators share text updates, images, video, download links, etc based on paying tiers. A Twitter feed works just as well for that.
Many (most?) artists use Twitter as a sharing/visibility platform already, equivalent to a “free tier” on Patreon but with much better visibility thanks to retweet-sharing and Twitter’s size. Having a smooth on-ramp for casual viewers to transition to patreon-style support could be quite useful.
People who would subscribe to OnlyFans creators. Yeah it's a small set of people but those people are willing to throw down _massive_ amounts of money for that kind of stuff.
I know of plenty of writers/podcasters/video creators that make a steady income via substack/patreon, but that's all long form content that can't be hosted on twitter. I can't imagine there are many people with twitter feeds valuable enough to pay for.
i wouldn't pay for tweets, but i might be happy to support people whose regular tweets entertain or inform me (right now i do it via patreon for a couple of them)
I think that's there to insinuate that this dividend is not under their control. If Apple were to introduce an overhaul to their finance structure as was anticipated last week, they'd likely adjust the margins to suit.
> Super Follows is a way for people’s most engaged followers to help them earn money for their contributions on Twitter. When someone offers a Super Follows subscription, their Super Followers can see bonus Tweets created especially for them. Super Followers receive badges on all their replies to the person they’ve Super Followed, letting them stand out in the conversation.
I feel like this would have been a good idea 5 years ago, but Twitter has become increasingly irrelevant in the interim. Using it now, it feels like Twitter is largely another soapbox for journalists and politicians, while most normal users have gradually peeled away. I take no pleasure in saying this - I have had an active Twitter account for 12 years, although I rarely tweet nowadays.
OnlyFans is a UK-based company and Twitter is US-based. I sometimes wonder how much of stuff like this is just governments trying to capture value with their own companies rather than letting it go to foreign companies. I know we saw virtually this same thing with TikTok/Instagram Reels.
Seems a bit conspiratorial but I don't otherwise know why Twitter would implement this.
It appears that, given the 0 refund policy, blocking super followers will cost the followers money. Oddly, this feels good for folks who would otherwise be harassed by such an amplification mechanism.
[+] [-] teraflop|4 years ago|reply
> We may share revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account with you at a rate which will depend, in Twitter’s discretion, on several factors, including the total number and price of Subscriptions purchased for your Super Follows account and the fees and taxes [...] that Apple, Google, Payment Processor, banks and/or credit card companies may assess in the purchase of Subscriptions and in processing payments to you. You understand this and should have no expectation that any particular revenue percentage will apply, or continue to apply, over time.
> We do not promise that the purchase of Subscriptions can be used to redeem any guaranteed sum of money, or any money at all. [...] You agree that we will not be liable to you, and you will not assert that we are liable to you, based on the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account, including for any share of revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions.
> We also do not guarantee that everyone with access to your Super Follows account will have purchased a Subscription.
> In addition, we reserve the rights, in our sole discretion, to [...] withhold, suspend, recoup or set-off Subscriptions revenue (including any earned balance that may have been generated from past or future Subscription sales to a Creator’s Super Follows account)
Also, this is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but I find it hilariously petty that legal notices to Twitter must be sent by both regular email and postal mail, and are only valid on receipt... but notices from Twitter only have to be emailed, and are presumed valid when sent. Just a straight-up "I'm big, you're little, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Compare to Patreon's TOS (https://www.patreon.com/policy/legal) which explicitly lays out the fees they charge. Twitter's version is more like "fuck you, we'll pay you if we feel like it."
[+] [-] WA|4 years ago|reply
In reality, it’s not in the company’s DNA and slapping payments with those ridiculous terms on a free product is simply not trustworthy.
Patreon is the opposite: clear terms, payments is their DNA, hence people are willing to pay and support creators.
[+] [-] LegitShady|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ufmace|4 years ago|reply
I don't know offhand who will charge for their tweets or what kind of content they'll be charging for, but I'm confident that the market is far more creative than any of us are at finding ways to use features like this.
[+] [-] xyzzy123|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that paying customers are the _best_ segment! They're like a delicious cookie of revenue just sitting there. Uneaten. At some point natural growth slows. The forces of capitalism demand at least revenue growth. Where to squeeze it from? The cookie is right there. Paying customers get ads, surveillance and manipulated feeds.
[+] [-] Natsu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DaiPlusPlus|4 years ago|reply
Apparently tarot-card readers
[+] [-] jzb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcinzm|4 years ago|reply
It can't because the people most likely to pay are also the ones worth the most to advertisers. Thus you need to charge more to make up for it, thus selecting for even more valuable people, etc, etc.
>2) allowing users to edit tweets which people have been begging for for years.
Due to the high possibility for abuse either by users or people taking over their accounts this is unlikely unless it resets all metrics on the tweet. At which point you may as well make a new tweet. Same reason you can't edit the title of a reddit post.
[+] [-] felipeerias|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamevn|4 years ago|reply
The best option I can think of for edits is to have the edit just delete the original and give you an input field with the text, attachments, and replied-to fields filled in already. (Maybe do something fancy and skip reuploading large media that doesn't get changed.) As far as likes/links/retweets go it's an entirely separate tweet.
That or adding support for a reply to be flagged as having corrections and be promoted to the top of the reply list and somehow highlighted to bring attention to to.
[+] [-] dgellow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uuddlrlr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leephillips|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sellyme|4 years ago|reply
This is called "Lists" and has been a free feature of Twitter since 2009.
[+] [-] adoxyz|4 years ago|reply
Also this is a good example of how Apple's fees are sneaking into creator content. Out of a $5/mo sub, Apple gets $1.50 as an Apple Tax, yet Twitter still charges money on top of that for processing. The Internet has taken a turn for the worse.
[+] [-] the_bear|4 years ago|reply
I can see both the creators and consumers of content being happier if the lead gen and delivery of the premium content could happen in the same place. This especially makes sense if Twitter integrates this further with their Revue acquisition.
A few examples I could imagine: - This could be used as an alternative to Substack/paid newsletters. - I could see this being popular with people who share tips like crypto/stocks, etc. Get the basic tips for free, pay to get the good stuff (note: I don't endorse this, I'm just saying I bet it'll happen). - This is a bit different from everything else I'm mentioning, but I bet celebrities could get their hardcore fans to pay for inside access to various things (e.g. backstage videos).
[+] [-] hamburgerwah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hotgeart|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crazygringo|4 years ago|reply
1. Real-time financially valuable tweets from experts (market analysts, crypto experts, breaking news that can move stock markets, etc.), where the tweets are perceived as genuinely worth paying for
2. Supporting creative types -- musicians, comedians, etc. -- not necessarily for the tweets themselves, but just to support them because you like them, and maybe you'll get early access to show tickets too or something
3. Paying for content that's genuinely interesting in itself, e.g. short newsletters in tweet form.
I'm not sure the price is high enough for #1 to be a viable business model. I'm not sure enough people will voluntarily pay #2 to make a dent (or they already use Patreon instead). And #3 seems particularly ill-suited to Twitter's short-form.
But we'll see -- it would be nice if this did wind up supporting people financially.
[+] [-] mikepurvis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moonchild|4 years ago|reply
If the information is really so valuable, then either:
1) the expected value of paying for it is positive, the purveyor would be better playing the market themself (or working for a hedge fund...) than selling it
2) the expected value of paying for it is negative, the people buying for it are wasting their money
[+] [-] rojoca|4 years ago|reply
I guess in fairness you probably don't want to follow people who tweet like this but these kinds of tweets will still be hard to avoid. I'd rather just pay twitter $x/yr for no ads.
[+] [-] meibo|4 years ago|reply
I realize these people need an income but I can't be the only one that feels a bit put off.
[+] [-] Jcowell|4 years ago|reply
It amazes me how much HN complains about Twitter without understanding the tools Twitter provides. It’s similar in essence to uniformed Anti Vaxxers who’s only contempt with Vaccines are based on lack of understanding.
[+] [-] warning26|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taylorlapeyre|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thorgutierrez|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/143319573790756454...
[+] [-] rgbrgb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warning26|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaitWaitWha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deviation|4 years ago|reply
But I do hope it stays pure and becomes a way to genuinely support a creator who provides valuable opinions or views.
Perhaps a scenario like being able to super-follow the person behind a Wall Street Journal article, instead of the journal fees instead.
[+] [-] kodah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perihelions|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ammpleeeww|4 years ago|reply
Unless you’re one of the few creators that have set up a DRM scheme using Patreon’s API, Patreon is functionally just a pay-to-view newsletter operating on the honor system and the idea that you’re paying as a show of support, not for a specific product/item.
Creators share text updates, images, video, download links, etc based on paying tiers. A Twitter feed works just as well for that.
Many (most?) artists use Twitter as a sharing/visibility platform already, equivalent to a “free tier” on Patreon but with much better visibility thanks to retweet-sharing and Twitter’s size. Having a smooth on-ramp for casual viewers to transition to patreon-style support could be quite useful.
[+] [-] vichu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slimginz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praisewhitey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rexf|4 years ago|reply
Their revenue breakdown wording is interesting. It implies Apple could change their 30% cut, which is always possible, but doesn't seem likely?
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kreutz|4 years ago|reply
I could hardly follow that paragraph.
[+] [-] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbob45|4 years ago|reply
Seems a bit conspiratorial but I don't otherwise know why Twitter would implement this.
[+] [-] mromanuk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiliancs|4 years ago|reply
I wonder if the note was added last minute :)
[+] [-] bitwize|4 years ago|reply