The band Muse has surrendered its Instagram and X handles to Meta after the release of its new AI agent, Muse.
The English rock band Muse has been renamed on Instagram and X from “Muse” to “museband.”
Despite the band Muse having had its Instagram account since 2012 and its X account since 2008, it has seemingly surrendered the handle to Mark Zuckerberg’s newest AI agent.
“Surrendered” is only applicable if the band had a choice.
Remember folks, calling out shitty wording is necessary to defeat propoganda.
They had a choice. They chose to advertise themselves on the “Grandma’s Racist Rants And Old White Guys With Sunglasses Who Hate Poor People” platform. Color me shocked that it’s turning out to have been a bad choice.
They chose to advertise themselves on the “Grandma’s Racist Rants And Old White Guys With Sunglasses Who Hate Poor People” platform.
While true, they also advertised themselves on a platform most Americans use.
Say what you want about someone’s ability to not use a social media platform in the first place, but if you’re a band that depends on… people, it’s hard to just decide not to put yourself out there on a platform where so many people are.
The network effect is real. It’s where people’s friends, family, celebrities, bands, etc all are. Leaving means leaving people who are important to you.
A lot of people find it easier to leave platforms like Twitter now, because the platform is such a shell of its former self that it doesn’t even provide what many people originally came there for, but if you’re on Instagram, Facebook, etc, it still often provides people with easy communication to/from family and friends, and organizations like bands with access to an audience, promotion, visibility, etc.
Leaving the platform means leaving fans, and giving up visibility. I wish everyone could just quit Meta’s platforms and crush the company, but there’s a very simple collective action problem at play here that makes it very difficult, don’t discount that.
I think it applies differently to famous, rich, figures who already have an audience. They could loudly announce they’re leaving facebook. A chunk of their fans would follow. They’re already rich, they can tank losing some fans. It would be better for everyone to get people off Facebook platforms and onto open ones.
Some local band that’s struggling to get their first EP out I could maybe cut some slack on going to where the people are.
That’s fair. Still, I do think it’s a tad unreasonable to expect of people, when it can significantly impact their popularity and thus their income, when the actual effect of them leaving is usually that… essentially nothing happens to the company they’re leaving from.
Unfortunately, Facebook and its users likely won’t care much if someone leaves the platform, as long as they can keep scrolling. It’s gotta be on a very large scale, with a lot of people giving up portions of their audience before more people start genuinely moving to alternatives.
significantly impact their popularity and thus their income,
The person referenced successful bands that don’t need more money. That’s really no different than saying, “You can’t expect billionaires to stop being evil when it would significantly impact their income.”
essentially nothing happens to the company they’re leaving from.
The network effect works both ways. See Myspace and Friendster.
I absolutely hate that so many people still use these shit platforms run my the worst people on the planet. That said, if you are famous, there is a dilemma where, if you refuse to use these platforms, someone will make a fake account that purports to be you.
They’ll do that whether you have an account or not.
At the same time, these people would have the pull to really promote the alternatives. Imagine if a channel with tens of millions of followers announces they are leaving for the Fediverse. Thing is, they are most likely getting a metric fuck-ton of money on Instagram and the like, so I’m not counting on that to happen anytime soon.
