I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests. Actually seeing organic content and conversations in one's timeline seems accidental these days.
What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts? FB/IG are no better, they'd prefer you not post text+images at all, but pivot to video so they can throw ads in between and make their Christmas bonus.
The author has the right idea: instead of wasting your attention on these dumpster fires, focus on the non-corporate communities where your voice is valued. I am trying to do this by hanging out in the forums of software products I use, and commenting on topics there. Unfortunately, even that is not a given these days, as many software makers insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion.
I've spoken about this as well on a blog post [0] about the death of old message boards and the unique cultures they had:
> insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion
Communities moving to discord or slack is really dumb. You lose so much discoverability in favour of real time conversation about a subject that almost always prefers asynchronous communication.
Is it just hipster influence run amok? (shakes fist)
Unfortunately, it's because they can 'engage' their audience better with Discord's features, than they can on an old-school message board system like Discourse.
> I am trying to do this by hanging out in the forums of software products I use, and commenting on topics there. Unfortunately, even that is not a given these days, as many software makers insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion.
Interestingly enough, I often think that USENET was the peak. Despite higher levels of technological sophistication, we seem to have descended into a "great UI, horrible outcomes" world when it comes to online group communications.
All these platforms are reinventions of USENET in various forms. Yes, sure, USENET did have legendary flame wars in some groups. However, for the most part, and particularly in technical domains, it was simple and fantastically useful. I learned a ton through various USENET groups back in the day and even went as far as making several friends, both domestically and internationally.
At this point the genie is out of the bottle. The best we can hope for is that these things get fixed or repaced with some undefined next-generation approach that restores utility and removes one-sided politics from the equation. Easier said than done.
Right. I think people lost sight of the fact that they joined these sites back when they were fun. They stopped being fun a long time ago, and get more out of you using them than you do.
The one positive out of all this is how many people have decided not to look for an alternative. Nobody asked for mindless scrolling any more than anyone asked to sit in traffic.
This is partially why I think the crop of 'new' sites like Post.news, Hive Social, Gas App etc are all flash-in-the-pan stuff that will die off like Clubhouse did.
For one thing, there are too many apps already, no one wants to create another login. And secondly, as you said, people do not want "Twitter, but better". They want Twitter to go back to what it was pre-2016, and that's not possible, that bell cannot be un-rung.
> I think more people are realizing, finally, that social media has been completely hollowed out by corporate interests... What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts?
Aren't the paid accounts targeted to individuals? Corporations were always able to promote their posts and brand online. But it was not really possible for individuals, or at least not targeted for them. And the paid account is a signal that this person is not a bot (at least that's the goal). So wouldn't this change to lead to less corporate influence?
> So wouldn't this change to lead to less corporate influence?
It's the adverse selection issue. The people willing to pay for Twitter Blue are the people that were already using Twitter as a "lead-gen" source; so their content was mostly spam disguised as engagement-bait ("Here are the top 10 writing tips from Harvard professors [thread emoji]").
As for bots, I don't frequent the topics that attract them, so the visible bot activity I've seen is limited to the replies section of high-traffic topics (crypto, covid, musk, politics).
Corporate bots tweet messages, while spambots mostly retweet someone else's post.
Good article, but the author doesn't mention how to find those communities (or if they even still exist)
I used to be a fan of the BB systems, which were a fantastic joy to be part of and contribute messages or even readings and watch other community members grow.
I wish I could go back in time to relive those days because it was the most fun and also the most insightful experience for me on the Internet.
Nowadays, everyone is trying to sell you something
Musk's drama posts if anyone you follow follows him. Stopped Twitter partially because I'm tired of reading whatever his current emotional outburst is.
The question is what changed which in this case Elon shows up on my feed a lot more and his posts are a lot more annoying. And as I said I stopped Twitter to not see his posts.
edit: I could block him but then there's the second order posts about his drama with screenshots. Realized I don't care enough about Twitter to bother and prefer a calmer life.
> The question is what changed which in this case Elon shows up on my feed a lot more and his posts are a lot more annoying. And as I said I stopped Twitter to not see his posts.
His follower count grew by ~70% so far this year (from an already high number). His engagement numbers are also very high. It would be weird if he didn't show up more on your feed.
> edit: I could block him but then there's the second order posts about his drama with screenshots. Realized I don't care enough about Twitter to bother and prefer a calmer life.
You can use advanced twitter mutes to block words and hashtags
Because of algorithms, even if you don't follow him, you can still see his quotes or likes by people you follow. Although not forced, but hard to avoid.
My ads have gone from mainstream brands to dregs, degens, and grifters. This doesn't seem great, unless Elon's intent is to replace advertising revenue with other sources.
I'm still getting the same tech company and video game ads. Haven't noticed a difference. I block all the accounts that are ads but even then I still get ads from mainstream companies I haven't blocked. Theres still plenty of companies advertising. I have yet to encounter anything sus apart from some rando paying to promote a meme or shitpost.
I guess, traffic is great. I bet a big fire on a busy street leads to a bunch of gawkers too -- but maybe the restaurant next door is not getting any value from that foot traffic.
In the case of twitter's business model they have lost a projected 300-400MM of ad placements for the forecasted year -- so each of those visitors is consuming cost but twitter is unable to collect the impression charges as the buys are lower than the inventory.
So yeah traffic is great -- but not always profitable (especially when you insist on peeing in the pool).
I browsed it recently and the major change was the checkmark. So many trolls have them now. And it seems their content is boosted higher. It’s pretty bad.
They let you browse recommended content and user profiles now without getting a fullscreen "please log in" modal covering the web client, which is nice.
but a huge hit to acquisition AND value add targeted ad impressions (IE expensive impressions). It allows Elon to wave the "hey look at the huge traffic" flag around while self sabotaging the business model further.
Not really. I didn't have a Twitter account before, and I still don't have one. The only thing that's changed is that I find myself using Twitter more...
Moderation seems to have changed by a lot. More gory videos stay up, nsfw pictures stay up, etc. It will slowly go out of control if this is a trend, I would guess.
I can confirm. Used it daily before and after Elon take over and haven't seen any of those. Usually it's visible why auch content is shown on your timeline
I don't think moderation has changed at all. I'm not in the gore-y scene but I wouldn't be surprised if it has always been on Twitter, just marked as sensitive. Most social media sites have that 'dark reality' content scenes.
Same goes for NSFW stuff, that stuff has been on Twitter long before Musk bought it and it will still be available just marked as sensitive (like it always has). I doubt they will go the Tumblr route and kill a giant part of the userbase.
Well, my account has quit bleeding follows and my tweets "feel" as though they have more reach, although that may just be more conservatives returning to the platform.
Could you please stop posting to HN in the flamewar style, and stop using HN for ideological battle? We ban accounts that do these things, regardless of which direction the flames point, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It looks like your account is already over the line at which we'd ban it, because it's primarily using HN for these purposes, but you've also posted good things, so I'd rather persuade you (if possible) to use the site as intended.
> now people are forced to (gulp) participate in the marketplace of ideas.
Nobody is forced to do anything. People don't have to sign up for Twitter. Twitter users don't have to stay on Twitter. They don't have to tweet. They don't have to reply. They can still follow anyone they want, unfollow anyone they want, mute anyone they want, block anyone they want.
Some people think of Twitter as high school debate club on a global scale, but other people have no interest whatsoever in that.
Twitter was being used as a tool to censor one side of the conversation and amplify another. You don't realize how controlled the US population is. Much of what is considered mainstream right now was injected into our society, it was not some grassroots movement.
This was always the misconception about Twitter as the "public square": that authoritarians could somehow leverage something to force people to listen to their bad ideas.
I'm forced to walk through the public square on my way to work or to buy groceries or hang out with friends. I'm not forced to use Twitter; it's just a website that provided an amusing speech product that I enjoyed.
Authoritarians saw Twitter and thought it would be productive for their political ends to force people like me to listen to their bad ideas. They couldn't, because Twitter was a private company that could control the moderation they used to create their speech product; it wasn't the town square and they don't have First Amendment rights there.[0]
Then an authoritarian purchased the platform and thought that it would be productive for his political ends to force people like me to listen to his bad ideas. But he couldn't, because I could delete my account any time I wanted to and find another place to seek amusement.
The main intellectual breakdown from which a lot of these people suffer is that the marketplace of ideas _already exists_ and it's what brings you things like, for instance, a liberal Twitter and an authoritarian Parler. These companies are (and should be) free to seek out their customers by shaping the product they produce by any means they want, including by banning you or deleting the things you say that will alienate or annoy their core consumer group.
[0]: obviously relevant and timely discussion of government action doctrine deferred.
I _started_ using again Twitter after 6 years, when all this drama started (don't ask why, I don't have an answer).
Here's what I've noticed has changed:
1) It's fun again! Not at all in the same way as back in the first year, but in a commercial way, like TV or something
2) It's best enjoyed if you just go ahead and smash that block button whenever you encounter someone pushing an agenda. I have certain political leanings, but I'm happy to bring out my block-gun even for people who lean with me. I simply don't want that kind of heaviness trying to be discussed in a mob-ruled short message format. Many reasonable views are also unpopular or unfashionable
3) It's no longer about hearing from your friends or people you picked. Guess this is a result of point (1), but what you see seems to be _only_ what the algorithm knows you want to see, which is a real shame
I only read tweets from (self) currated lists of science / institutional Twitter accounts that provided great content or ideas (random examples: ESA, Ken Sheriff, Brian Krebs, Blender etc).
The fundamental change was switching over to the "latest" feed instead of "top".
This skips all the inflamatory and political drama-lama stuff that is (almost) never relevant in the long term (and if it is, it will be reported elsewhere in long form).
In fact whenever I feel "enganged" by Twitter it's usually because they, once again, switched my timeline mode back.
I wish there was a way to get a "topical feed" that allows me to discover without the obvious attempts to inject unreleated content (in particular anything from the mind of Elon Musk)
Twitter is not going anywhere anytime soon; there is no replacement. Mastodon does not fit the needs of the millions of users using the platform daily. I believe that Twitter will terraform what we think of as social media, and with that, a new way of communication will emerge
"I'm emotionally detaching myself from social media"
"I have no idea what will come next. And if I'm honest about it, I think I don't actually care. Every day that passes I seem to care less and I’m resenting more the distractions and the checking of who said what."
"I do have a natural instinct to just quickly Tweet what’s on my mind. Partly I need to refrain myself from doing that"
"On your death bed, will you wish you had tweeted more? Not me."
"I got an invite and set up an account on Post, but honestly, I can’t be bothered. The same goes for Mastadon [sic]"
Twitter always has been a rage factory before the Musk takeover and I already created and closed my account on the same day after trying it before many years ago. It is still an outrage machine.
It is not just Twitter that is the problem, it is the entirety of social networks that are outrage machines, and the solution is not replacing it or joining one that is worse than Twitter.
> If a good thing comes out of this whole Twitter chaos, I hope that people return to smaller communities.
This is the reason why Twitter, etc isn't going anywhere due to its central ease of discovery, no matter how bad the outrage machine is on there. This is what the author fails to realise and the journalists still can't stop using it and linking Tweets, since their audience is still there.
> stop caring so much about building an audience and learn to connect authentically again.
Yet in order for the author and other journalists to monetize their articles and get more eyeballs, they need an audience, hence the reason why many of them need to use Twitter to advertise and grift their Substack newsletter(s). [0]
The immediate collapse of Twitter has been greatly exaggerated by the past few weeks by a very small subset of angry screeching voices and doomsters.
All these people saying "social media is bad" -- are doing so on social media... Is it so hard to imagine for some Twitter may have filled a role similar to Hacker News? Personally, I got lots of value from Twitter, following people in the game development community. Now that's moving into various silos that are hard to find, disconnected from one another. I'll miss how it was just like I miss TIGSource and how I'll miss Hacker News when it eventually succumbs to the fuddy duddies.
Medium is a dead platform. There is so much long-form content created that their algorithms can't keep up with tagging, categorization, and discovery (it seems).
I find it incredibly hard to get real articles on the platform that are not either
(1) the same 5 "insights" about a certain topic that had been flooding LinkedIn for years prior
(2) copy-paste "solutions" from StackOverflow posts.
(3) corporate updates
What I find interesting about Twitter hatred is that it is all related to the platform slowly shifting towards not engaging in politically one-sided censorship and cancellation. That's it. Nothing else. Call it freedom of speech if you must.
This continues to expose the holes in an ideology that purports to be for A and it is nearly always for B in almost everything they say. Pick any area A, listen to what they claim and then watch B is what they actually do.
In this case, it is about such topics as open-mindedness, inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, objectivity, seeking truth, balance, unity, representing everyone, etc. What they actually do is almost always the opposite to these and other concepts.
If Twitter/Musk came out on Monday, proclaimed to revese course and go all-in on one sided moderation in favor of that ideology, the company and Musk would be hailed as heroes by every single person, politician and entity currently at war with them.
That, right there, should make everyone take pause and think.
Why?
All you have to do is imagine a world where the opposite ideology controls all media and thought drivers.
That would be just as much of a nightmare as what we have managed to walk into today.
We do not want either ideology to hold a monopoly of control over what messages are allowed and who can speak. That is precisely what happens in nations we all agree are, at a minimum, oppressive and abusive to their population. Sadly, we have veered more and more in that direction over the last couple of decades. There are people out there who's entire careers have been destroyed just for having opposing thoughts. That isn't supposed to happen in the western world. That is not supposed to happen in the US. Yet, it has. And we have to fix it.
Equilibrium in social and traditional media exists when both ideological camps have about the same number of things to not be happy about. It also happens when no particular "tribe" can exercise overwhelming control over thought, media and messaging. Good, bad or ugly, that is the best formula for progress. Stomping and cancelling opposing viewpoints has never delivered positive results in the long term.
Here on HN, downvoting and flagging are sometimes used this way. It is my opinion these tools have to go away or have to have a very serious algorithmic change in order to prevent their use as means to silence that with which one disagrees. Yes, this is a difficult issue online forums have had to contend with since the days of USENET. Not easy at all.
A long time ago one of my mentors explained he liked the idea of "If you can't say anything good about someone, don't speak". While not a hard-set rule, the way I personally try to use that concept on HN is that I never downvote or flag any post. In the years I have been here I may have done so a handful of times. I always welcome intelligent opposition to anything I say. That's how we learn. I never downvote. If a conversation gets derailed, I might try to get it back on track a few times. If I fail, I just leave. I see downvoting as a cheap-shot attempt to silence that with which you disagree, rather than a control for quality. Same with flagging.
> What I find interesting about Twitter hatred is that it is all related to the platform slowly shifting towards not engaging in politically one-sided censorship and cancellation. That's it. Nothing else. Call it freedom of speech if you must.
Are you stating that Elon’s behaviors since owning the platform has been neutral and not one sided? I feel like the Paul pelosi tweet, unbanning nazis, and hunter Biden hype has shown that not to be the case.
Call it freedom of speech you say… is that what the continual ban of Alex Jones is and rebanning of Ye shows?
Personally, I’m hating on Twitter because a) Musk is a narcissistic asshole and my tolerance for those types has plummeted since 2016, and b) the American right loves to whine about being censored while breaking all sorts of rules and norms, and generally acting like complete sociopaths. There is no “balance” to be had with an ideology that spews hate and lies, and gleefully supports taking power by whatever means necessary, even if it happens to make up half of the voting population. If the other side were full of Liz Cheneys instead of Trumpists, that would be a different story. But American conservatism has morphed into something completely decrepit over the last decade, and there is nothing unfair about platforms disproportionately moderating it into the ground — simply because it has a disproportionate share of rule breakers.
> American conservatism has morphed into something completely decrepit over the last decade, and there is nothing unfair about platforms disproportionately moderating it into the ground
Your comment is the best evidence of the problem we are having. The messaging is so one-sided that you and others actually believe this and don't have a clear view of what is actually going on.
This is where the utter ignorance of Latin American history in the US is a great failure of our educational system.
Gloria Alvarez, a prominent Latin American Libertarian offers an excellent take on this history. This history represents a virtual time machine you can use to understand both what is going on today in the US as well as what not to do. Virtually everythign you see today in the US was tested multiple times in various ways in Latin America. The result: Utter destruction. Americans' ignorance of history has consequences.
Populism, both on the right and left, has destroyed more nations than most can imagine.
What is populism? A simple example: Vote for me and I will cancel your student debt. Vote for me and I will give you free healthcare. Vote for me and I will take from them and give to you. Vote for me because you are all oppressed and I will fix it. Etc.
Populism exists both on the right and left. In the US, however, the vast majority of populist-based destruction comes from one ideological side. That's just a fact. And this, BTW, is the same side that has destroyed so many nations in Latin America.
The clue is simple: Look for favors or grants to large numbers of people in exchange for votes. Then go look at the net outcomes in those populations to see just how destructive it is.
Populism is a mechanism for psychological manipulation. This isn't new. Rome, among other things, fell to populism.
If you really want to understand the Latin American context here's an excellent intro, again, by Gloria Alvarez:
One of the fundamental characteristics of destructive populism is to create division.
You have to create an enemy by vilifying "the other side", whatever or whoever that might be. Once you divide a population you can apply energy and drive them like sheep in whatever direction you need them to go. If you can convince one group the the other group are "complete sociopaths", you have them precisely where you want them and the rest is easy: repeat the message, pass Go, collect $200 and votes.
Today the internet allows for a great degree of granularity in crating division and hatred around a wide range of differentiating vectors. This makes control far simpler. Each group can be brought into resonance by feeding energy into a single topic. Simple, effective and powerful. And, again, used by both the left and the right to great effect.
The only way to mitigate this is to break the cycle of hatred and division by walking people out of the cave and give them an opportunity to see reality, rather than the shadows prepared for them.
Politically one-sided social media creates massive monoculture audiences that are easy to indoctrinate, manipulate and drive into hating everyone else. Repeat the same message over and over again and you can get people to believe anything.
People actually believe that everyone who isn't "them" are evil sociopaths. Job well done. The indoctrination machine works without a flaw.
What Musk wants to do with Twitter is to stop this platform being used for for this purpose. This isn't easy, it is going to be messy and it will take time. Yet, in the end, it is the only approach that will push society forward and limit the ability of populist political scum from attempting to divide and conquer.
> The messaging is so one-sided that you and others actually believe this and don't have a clear view of what is actually going on.
A lot of words, but I saw all I needed to see on January 6, the lead up to which was entirely predictable back in 2016 to those who bothered looking. There is a place for conservatism in American politics, but the Republican party has soiled its reputation forever.
American conservatism has a way forward: disavow Trumpism, affirm democracy and democratic norms, and start a new conservative party without the baggage (which has happened in the past). But discounting a handful of brave exceptions, the right is happy to do whatever it takes to hold power, even if it means disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and (soon) ignoring the vote entirely. If that’s not indicative of sociopathy, then I don’t know what is.
> Populism exists both on the right and left. In the US, however, the vast majority of populist-based destruction comes from one ideological side. That's just a fact.
An utterly bizarre assertion given the previous administration, which was almost entirely based on pandering, favors, and loyalty testing. Your “fact” is an opinion, and it is wrong.
Ironically, you appear to be a victim of the same problem you are describing.
This is not what the author was saying. The subtitle of "The slow goodbye to Twitter" is "I'm emotionally detaching myself from social media". It wasn't an article about the future of Twitter, it was an article about the future of the author. "On your death bed, will you wish you had tweeted more? Not me."
What point is there in continuing to post when it's clear Twitter will give preferential treatment to paid accounts? FB/IG are no better, they'd prefer you not post text+images at all, but pivot to video so they can throw ads in between and make their Christmas bonus.
The author has the right idea: instead of wasting your attention on these dumpster fires, focus on the non-corporate communities where your voice is valued. I am trying to do this by hanging out in the forums of software products I use, and commenting on topics there. Unfortunately, even that is not a given these days, as many software makers insist on a Discord for tech support and discussion.
I've spoken about this as well on a blog post [0] about the death of old message boards and the unique cultures they had:
[0] https://fuzzcrush.xyz/blog/dead-forums-extinct-communities-a...