You have no data to confirm that the historical data on ticket prices they used is also specific to the Bay Area, only the Taylor Swift ticket price.

You shared this because it aligns with your world view without taking a moment to consider the validity of the data, which is perfectly ironic considering how full-throated you are to try and make a piss-poor argument that I’m somehow trying to be an apologist for capitalism because I dared to challenge data that’s obviously incorrect.

Capitalism is plenty bad for a myriad of reasons, it doesn’t require false information to prove that point. Hyperbole does not strengthen an argument, it weakens it.

Do some self-reflection.

Yeah I can’t think of a single artist off the top of my head that I would personally pay that much to see, but it made my girlfriend happy and that’s worth $100 to me any day

I’m fervently defending not posting misinformation. Don’t get it twisted.

The problem is the insinuation made by the infographic is that artists are to blame for ticket prices.

This would be a much more powerful (and factually accurate) infographic if it focused on fees and how Ticketmaster is largely to blame for the balloon in costs for event tickets over the last few decades.

But it doesn’t say that, at all.

Also, the fees per ticket for Taylor Swift were $22. Not cheap by any means, and a total rip off, again, at the fault of Ticketmaster. But let’s not throw around made up numbers if we’re trying to be factual.

Okay so they used resale prices, AND based it off of average ticket cost for a show in San Francisco, one of the highest COL areas in the country?

That’s not making the logic they used any more sound….

lol yes exactly. Kind of hilarious and stupid that they reference BLS as a source, which I’m assuming they meant for the minimum wage figure to calculate the hours, but they also don’t show what that minimum wage figure is on the infographic….

Just a really poorly crafted piece of rage bait designed to do exactly what it’s doing here - piss people off so they share it.

Yeah but we’re not talking about Ticketmaster fees, we’re talking about ticket prices. If you exclude the fees and just talk about the ticket price itself, they were $79 each, which further invalidates this “infographic” if you can even call it that.

Ticketmaster sucks fucking ass, no debate, but that’s not the point here.

And also, saying any artist “chose” to list on Ticketmaster is kind of disingenuous, almost every large stadium and venue (in the US at least) has a contractual requirement to only sell through Ticketmaster, which, again, is proof that Ticketmaster sucks fucking ass, but isn’t really any artist’s fault. It’s the Ticketmaster monopoly.

I bought 4 tickets to Taylor Swift for my girlfriend and her friends and paid $407.57 total after all of the bullshit Ticketmaster fees.

~$101 per ticket isn’t cheap, but $900+ per ticket is either scalper/resale prices day of the show, or for some fancy VIP tickets, or just a made up number.

Super shitty response to the question you still haven’t given an answer to, after I reiterated again what my understanding of the “so obvious” point was.

Whatever you want dude, happy to block you.

If it’s so obvious why can’t you state it clearly?

It seems like the insinuation is that Threads is artificially inflating user counts with “shadow accounts” that aren’t real - however it’s been clearly determined that they aren’t.

So, if it’s not that, then, again… what’s the “so obvious” point I’m missing?

Threads only shows users who have signed in to Threads. If you mention an Instagram user in a Threads post that has not signed in to Threads prior, the mention is removed because it’s not a valid handle.

I urge you to read through the link in the original post to the Mastodon user who originally made this claim, where you’ll find plenty of people more eloquent than me explaining why this is inaccurate.

But the point you’re making isn’t clear which is why I asked if you could clarify - what is the point you’re making?

What is Meta doing here? I’m not clear on what the point being made is.

If you’re insinuating that they are doing this to artificially inflate user counts, why wouldn’t they be reporting about how there are 2+ billion threads users in the first week?

They don’t need to manufacture hype - like Meta or not, in the first 96 hours they brought in almost 100 million users. Thats a third of Twitter’s entire active user base, in less than a week.

I too understand where you’re coming from, but I think it’s an important distinction, not semantics.

If Meta was simply creating a duplicitous profile for every Instagram user, that would be pretty predatory and misleading.

However, if that were the case, they would also be bragging about having 2+ billion Threads “users”.

It also implies that users could interact with these “shadow accounts” even if that person never used Threads, which is not the case.

As it currently works, if you try to mention a user who is on Instagram but isn’t on Threads, nothing happens, the mention is stripped because it’s not a valid handle.

It’s not forced on you. If you don’t download Threads and log in, you’re not on threads.

This is akin to saying Google Calendar is “forced” on you if you have a Gmail account. They are separate services that use a common credential, you are under no obligation to use any or all of those services.

It’s probably even more simple than that - a single DB with a flag for threads_enabled = true/false.

They made it super clear in advance this is how it would work, the app is called “Threads, an Instagram app”, but as always people froth at the mouth for any opportunity to say “Zuckerberg bad”.

That’s not some big secret. Everyone knows meta sucks. We don’t need to make stuff up to prove that. They do that on their own.

There’s plenty of things to hate Meta for, but this is inaccurate.

You log into Threads with your Instagram account. There’s no “shadow account”, you’re logging into a second service with the same account and credentials.

ka chow

oh good my weekly bean delivery is here

I think you may want to talk to Verizon and make sure you’re clear on network requirements before you buy a new phone - Verizon shut down the remainder of their CDMA network on December 31, 2022.

Furthermore, Verizon supports LTE and 5G-NR which are GSM technologies, so any modern unlocked phone should work without issues.