5 ms·

Twitter keeps losing monthly users, so it’s going to stop sharing how many

31 points by MarkMc 8y ago

jjbinx007 8y ago
I have little sympathy. Twitter's algorithms can shadow ban accounts at any time for seemingly any reason. I had my account locked for breaking a rule but I never found out what the rule I had broken was. I sometimes have replies to me I can't see unless I search my username specifically. Twitter support seems to be nothing more than a dumb script pretending to be a human. There's no transparency and all these anti-user features mean I for one an fed up with it. When the internet was still young there was Usenet, which wasn't owned by a single corporation. Nowadays we have to submit to whatever whims these private companies dictate. There's no freedom of speech because they're private spaces. Unless we have something akin to Usenet or email where blocking can be done at individual levels but not mandated for everyone by a single corporation I don't want to take part any more.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  We have that, it's called Mastodon and it's more fun than Twitter. https://mastodon.host/@stavros https://mastodon.host/@stavros
villgax 8y ago
Nice, I guess next all publicly trading automakers stop releasing car sales number because of car accidents?
- josefresco 8y ago
  No, a better analogy would be like Toyota not breaking down individual model sales numbers because the Camry isn't selling well compared to competitors.
pjc50 8y ago
We're back to "Twitter does not understand its own users". Partly because it's never even attempted to take money from them. Personally I think Twitter's destruction was triggered by the event it (and many of us) thought of as a great success at the time: the "Arab Spring", Tahrir Square etc. From that point on it increasingly became a political battleground, which is increasingly bot- and sockpuppet- infested, used for targeted harassment, and even from your friends feeds you a steady stream of miserable news. Meanwhile the people who want to "engage with brands" or just look at cute puppies have moved to Instagram, while the bleeding edge communities are slowly drifting to Mastodon. There's probably another reckoning due now that Tumblr has banned porn and some of the affected accounts have moved to Twitter; I expect a FOSTA/SESTA-driven purge sometime in the next year or so.
Grue3 8y ago
Guess locking people's accounts for nothing at all isn't good for your growth! My own account, which I barely use, was locked a few days ago because of "suspicious activity". Not posting anything is suspicious activity now? And there was no way to re-enable it without entering my phone number. I'm surprised anyone is still putting up with this bullshit.
mikestew 8y ago
Twitter can and could be a lot of things, and it certainly is no longer the thing it was when it started. It’s mostly why I rarely use it anymore. As a microblogging tool, I think it was great. At a conference? “Heading down to $BAR_AND_GRILL with John.” “Finally! Sunshine in Seattle today.” But at some point it turned into what I consider the cesspool it is today. Yelling at the wind. Building my “personal brand”. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But mainly a low signal-noise ratio, just not worth my attention. Maybe it’s what some signed up for, but it’s not what I signed up for ten or so years ago. And perhaps because Twitter itself can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be, it turns into something a lot of others didn’t signed up for, either. What do I know, I don’t use it much anymore. But perhaps if they had a better defined mission, and a more narrow view, they’d keep the smaller number of users they end up with. But I guess when you’re building with other people’s money, the mission is “MOAR USERS!”
- mc32 8y ago
  My best use case for it is following people or entities of note in the industry who pretty much keep on point about their particular niche without diverging into much else (aside from some self promotion, but that’s to be expected and I don’t mind since I receive value from their comms).
  - mikestew 8y ago
    Ya know, I thought I'd go that route, but I must have chosen poorly. Many might have held the line for a while, but eventually degraded to about a 20:1 cat/food picture:"what I followed you for in the first place." But they owe me nothing, they can do as they please. And perhaps that's the problem, perhaps Twitter was better suited to having a dozen, fifty or so people that you follow and who follow you. People you might not know intimately, but at least kinda know. So while you might have to put up with "awww, look at Ms. Sylvia Plath, isn't she the cutest cat?" on ocassion, at least you might have some context. IOW, the way I viewed Twitter back in the day was a lot more personal and less public than it turned out to be.
    - mc32 8y ago

31 points by MarkMc 8y ago

I have little sympathy. Twitter's algorithms can shadow ban accounts at any time for seemingly any reason. I had my account locked for breaking a rule but I never found out what the rule I had broken was. I sometimes have replies to me I can't see unless I search my username specifically. Twitter support seems to be nothing more than a dumb script pretending to be a human. There's no transparency and all these anti-user features mean I for one an fed up with it. When the internet was still young there was Usenet, which wasn't owned by a single corporation. Nowadays we have to submit to whatever whims these private companies dictate. There's no freedom of speech because they're private spaces. Unless we have something akin to Usenet or email where blocking can be done at individual levels but not mandated for everyone by a single corporation I don't want to take part any more.

StavrosK 8y ago
We have that, it's called Mastodon and it's more fun than Twitter. https://mastodon.host/@stavros https://mastodon.host/@stavros

villgax 8y ago

Nice, I guess next all publicly trading automakers stop releasing car sales number because of car accidents?

josefresco 8y ago
No, a better analogy would be like Toyota not breaking down individual model sales numbers because the Camry isn't selling well compared to competitors.

pjc50 8y ago

We're back to "Twitter does not understand its own users". Partly because it's never even attempted to take money from them. Personally I think Twitter's destruction was triggered by the event it (and many of us) thought of as a great success at the time: the "Arab Spring", Tahrir Square etc. From that point on it increasingly became a political battleground, which is increasingly bot- and sockpuppet- infested, used for targeted harassment, and even from your friends feeds you a steady stream of miserable news. Meanwhile the people who want to "engage with brands" or just look at cute puppies have moved to Instagram, while the bleeding edge communities are slowly drifting to Mastodon. There's probably another reckoning due now that Tumblr has banned porn and some of the affected accounts have moved to Twitter; I expect a FOSTA/SESTA-driven purge sometime in the next year or so.

Grue3 8y ago

Guess locking people's accounts for nothing at all isn't good for your growth! My own account, which I barely use, was locked a few days ago because of "suspicious activity". Not posting anything is suspicious activity now? And there was no way to re-enable it without entering my phone number. I'm surprised anyone is still putting up with this bullshit.

mikestew 8y ago

Twitter can and could be a lot of things, and it certainly is no longer the thing it was when it started. It’s mostly why I rarely use it anymore. As a microblogging tool, I think it was great. At a conference? “Heading down to $BAR_AND_GRILL with John.” “Finally! Sunshine in Seattle today.” But at some point it turned into what I consider the cesspool it is today. Yelling at the wind. Building my “personal brand”. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But mainly a low signal-noise ratio, just not worth my attention. Maybe it’s what some signed up for, but it’s not what I signed up for ten or so years ago. And perhaps because Twitter itself can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be, it turns into something a lot of others didn’t signed up for, either. What do I know, I don’t use it much anymore. But perhaps if they had a better defined mission, and a more narrow view, they’d keep the smaller number of users they end up with. But I guess when you’re building with other people’s money, the mission is “MOAR USERS!”

mc32 8y ago
My best use case for it is following people or entities of note in the industry who pretty much keep on point about their particular niche without diverging into much else (aside from some self promotion, but that’s to be expected and I don’t mind since I receive value from their comms).
- mikestew 8y ago
  Ya know, I thought I'd go that route, but I must have chosen poorly. Many might have held the line for a while, but eventually degraded to about a 20:1 cat/food picture:"what I followed you for in the first place." But they owe me nothing, they can do as they please. And perhaps that's the problem, perhaps Twitter was better suited to having a dozen, fifty or so people that you follow and who follow you. People you might not know intimately, but at least kinda know. So while you might have to put up with "awww, look at Ms. Sylvia Plath, isn't she the cutest cat?" on ocassion, at least you might have some context. IOW, the way I viewed Twitter back in the day was a lot more personal and less public than it turned out to be.
  - mc32 8y ago